The Rise and Fall of a Domestic Diva. Sarah May

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      Margery tore off the rubber gloves she was wearing and strode purposefully to the kitchen door, standing on tiptoe and running her finger along the top of the frame. ‘Look.’

      Kate stared at her.

      ‘Dust!’ Margery said and, as she said it, Kate had a sudden memory of Margery filling the indoor drying rack with baby vests and sleep suits after Findlay was born, saying, ‘You’ll be washing at least twice a day from now on.’ Stumbling blearily around the postnatal void and trying to come to terms with the fact that she had become two people, Kate had nothing at her disposal with which to defend herself against Margery’s prediction of infinite domestic drudgery.

      ‘I never knew you were meant to clean the top of doorframes.’

      ‘I had an electrical engineer round once, who complimented me on the top of my doorframes,’ Margery said, as if this settled the matter.

      ‘Well, Martina’s coming today.’

      ‘Who’s Martina?’

      ‘The cleaner.’

      Margery digested this rapidly, staring at the dust on her fingertip. ‘I never heard Robert talking about a cleaner; he’s never mentioned a cleaner to me.’

      For a moment, Kate thought Margery was going to cry—it looked like her eyes were starting to water.

      ‘She’s a friend’s au pair.’

      ‘Where’s she from?’

      ‘Bratislava.’

      ‘Have you given her keys?’

      ‘Of course she’s got keys.’

      ‘Oh, I couldn’t…I just couldn’t.’

      Margery was about to predict something apocalyptic when there was a banging sound from upstairs, followed by screaming.

      ‘What’s that?’ Margery yelped, her nerves shattered under the duress of the newfound information about the cleaner who’d infiltrated her son’s household.

      ‘Shit—Flo.’

      Was somebody breaking into the house to kidnap Flo? When she was a child and her mother lost her temper she used to say she was putting her out for the gypsies to take, but now it was the Arabs you had to be careful of. As everybody in East Leeke knew, there was a buoyant market for blond children in the Arab world. Were they coming for Flo here—now? The world was a terrifying place Margery thought, her mind full of Arabs scaling drainpipes—too terrifying sometimes.

      Ignoring the strange whimpering sound that Margery, immobile, was making, Kate ran upstairs.

      Flo was lying on her back on the stained carpet in their room, howling, and Findlay was kneeling beside her. When did Findlay come upstairs? She couldn’t even remember him leaving the kitchen.

      ‘I was waving at the face in the other house, then she fell,’ he said, waiting.

      ‘The face?’ Kate picked Flo up, tentatively feeling her head and looking out of the window. There were no faces at any of the windows in the house opposite, which—local rumour had it—was some sort of Albanian- or Russian-run brothel. ‘She’s fine,’ she tried to reassure him, as Flo started to calm down.

      Findlay remained motionless. This wasn’t good enough.

      He wanted to know why she had permitted such a thing to happen and it dawned on her, standing there cradling Flo, that he was angry with her. The eyes staring at her through the slits in the Spiderman mask, which he must have come upstairs and put on himself, were angry. She’d shattered an illusion he didn’t want shattered and now he knew that mothers—in particular, his mother—sometimes left their babies on beds and forgot about them, and sometimes the babies rolled off.

      She tried to think of a comforting lie to tell him when she heard the post being pushed aggressively through the letterbox by the postwoman, who had some minor mentalhealth issues.

      From the top of the stairs, she made out the red gas and electric, and the one from Southwark Council that would be their second and final reminder for overdue council tax. Between the recycling bag and piles of shoes that were beginning to look like something a UN forensic scientist might go to work on, was a brown A4 envelope that had to be the letter from Schools Admissions.

      ‘Was it okay to wave at the face?’ Findlay called out behind her.

      Ignoring him, she stumbled down the stairs towards the letter.

      ‘How is she?’ Margery said, watching her.

      ‘Who?’ Kate couldn’t take her eyes off the brown A4 envelope.

      ‘Flo. What happened?’

      ‘Oh—she rolled off the bed.’

      ‘You left her on the bed?’

      Kate swooped down on the letter from Schools Admissions, trying to decide whether to open it now or in the car.

      ‘What’s that?’

      ‘The letter from Schools Admissions.’

      ‘Well open it,’ Margery said, impatiently. She’d been in on most of the week’s conversations leading up to this moment—and the rows; like the one that had resounded through the ceiling last night.

      With Flo balanced awkwardly on her shoulder, Kate—now nauseous with anticipation—ripped open the envelope and scanned the lines of the letter over and over again until she became aware of Margery watching her.

      ‘So?’

      ‘What?’ she said, stupidly.

      ‘Did he get in?’

      Kate carried on staring stupidly at her and it was only when Margery said, ‘Well, that’s a relief,’ that she realised she must have nodded.

      ‘Your face,’ Margery said after a while.

      ‘My face—what?’

      ‘It’s a picture.’

      ‘It’s gone bendy,’ Findlay put in from behind her on the stairs.

      Margery, still watching her closely, didn’t look entirely convinced. ‘Don’t forget to tell Robert.’

      ‘I won’t,’ Kate said, automatically, with a sudden awful feeling that Margery was about to ask to see the letter—when the doorbell rang, followed by the sound of keys turning in the lock. ‘Martina!’

      Pushing the letter quickly into her suit jacket pocket, she ushered in Evie’s Slovak au pair who, Kate sensed, much preferred the Hunter family to Evie and the rest of the McRaes at No. 112.

      ‘Hey—it’s Spiderman.’

      ‘Tell me about the pig,’ Findlay said, running up to her.

      ‘Not СКАЧАТЬ