Blowing It (17 page)

Mac stubbed his cigarette out on the step beside him and stood up, stretching his aching legs. Cold stone, even in late May, wasn’t the most sensible thing to sit on. He actually felt chilled, right through
the
worn denim. Perhaps he should take a cab down to Harvey Nicks and stock up on some new threads. He made his way, rather stiffly, and feeling mildly dizzy, out into the bustle of Piccadilly and back towards Green Park station. Possibly he’d had more to drink than he’d thought – though he was sure Doug had drunk the bigger half of the claret, and they’d each only had the one glass of champagne with the oysters. The dizziness receded, now he’d picked up pace towards the station, though his head was starting to throb and he hoped he wasn’t going to turn into one of those people who, as they age, start picking up weird sensitivities and allergies to all the things they’d most enjoyed in life. What was that all about? You heard about it happening – Mike on the pub quiz team couldn’t eat soft cheese any more – it made him wheezy. Lottie had a friend who’d suddenly gone allergic to her own twelve-year-old cat. Was it some kind of celestial revenge, some paranormal way of telling you that you’ve drunk/eaten/smoked quite enough of whatever it is for one lifetime?

Mac hesitated outside the station. The dizziness briefly kicked back in and then out again, leaving him feeling nervously certain that if he ventured down the steps he’d be sure to lose his footing and tumble down at least half of them. Instead he walked to the roadside and hailed a cab, giving the driver the address of Holbrook House and feeling relief and gratitude that the driver accepted the
thirty-five-mile
journey without a quibble. Well, it was worth it, Mac thought. He couldn’t wait to see Lottie’s face when he told her that this time next year, as the Del-Boy saying went, they could be millionaires. Again.

ELEVEN

‘I HOPE THERE
won’t be fish. I hate fish.’ Gaz was sprawled low in the Mini’s passenger seat with his feet twitching away on the dashboard more or less in time with Gorillaz. Sorrel hated him doing that. OK, so her car might rattle with empty Diet Coke cans and Pringles tubes and the seats might be mostly hidden under various items of clothing, books and odd pages from magazines but that didn’t mean she also wanted the dusty imprint of huge trainers all over the vinyl. She made a conscious, calm decision not to say anything about it, as practice for when they went travelling. If she picked on every little thing he did that just slightly annoyed her while they were away, they wouldn’t last three days together, let alone three months. Perhaps it would rack up some good karma, as her mother would put it, if she bit back on negative comments and saved her grumbles only for things that might actually be dangerous. One of these was
that
Gaz always messed around with door handles. He’d once fallen out of the Mini when she’d first had it. Luckily they’d still been on the Holbrook House driveway at the time, rather than doing seventy on the A3. His excuse had been that he liked to check he could get out in a hurry, in case of a crash or something. If he mucked about with the doors on the plane to Australia she’d definitely have something to say about it. She thought briefly of warning the crew that he’d need watching, in case he started trying to do the Doors To Manual thing thirty thousand feet up, but that would have them on full-scale nutter-alert and the two of them would be sure to get bumped off the plane somewhere in Germany.

‘There won’t be fish,’ Sorrel promised him. ‘I told Clover you don’t like it so she won’t be cooking it. She’ll probably play it safe with chicken. Either that or she’ll be ordering in a Chinese delivery from The Good Earth.’

‘She might do fish. She might do it on purpose. She might hate me.’ Gaz was now gripping the sides of the seat. Sorrel smiled to herself, put her foot down and overtook a builder’s van, narrowly missing the central reservation, and sending adrenalin lurching. She didn’t risk taking her concentration off the road to look at Gaz but she imagined he had his eyes tight shut and his fingers crossed. Sometimes it was quite cute that he was such a wuss, like when he needed her to take spiders out of the bath or opened her bedroom door so warily in
case
a bat had got in, but in the car it was really infuriating and counted as a definite criticism of her driving.

‘Why would Clover hate you? Why would you think that? She invited you tonight, didn’t she?’ Sorrel wasn’t having this. He’d been willing enough to come to her sister’s for this loony siblings’ dinner where they were apparently (according to Clover) supposed to hold some kind of secret top-level talks about the parents’ plans for selling up and running out on them all. He’d said he was really pleased Clover had asked Sorrel to bring him along (Sorrel wasn’t going to tell him that it was probably because Clover couldn’t face the thought of a dinner that didn’t conform to the equal-numbers male and female rule). All Gaz had to do now was try to have a good time. Not a lot to ask.

‘Manda will be there,’ she continued. ‘You like Manda, don’t you?’

This was like soothing a three year old. This had so better not be a new role he was thinking of taking on: the whingy, hang-back boyfriend, borderline agoraphobic. Next thing, he’d morph into one of those weird stay-home adults who never went anywhere because they ‘wouldn’t know anyone’. Lazy, that’s all
that
was. That friend of her parents, Kate, the one who was married to junkie George, the guitarist from Charisma who’d died, she’d gone through all that. Sorrel remembered Lottie phoning her every time there was a party on somewhere, or
to
see if she fancied going to the theatre or out with the women or whatever and Kate always said no, because it might involve new people, new places. Lottie had lost patience eventually. Sorrel had sat on the stairs cuddled up to the dog for comfort (she couldn’t have been more than ten, she recalled the soft, shaggy wolfhound had been so huge) and listened in excited alarm to her mother shouting down the phone, something she’d absolutely
not
normally do: ‘Kate, stop bloody thinking everyone’s going to be looking at
you
! They’re
not
, OK?’ And then the next thing, Kate suddenly married an earl and moved to a Scottish castle. That probably counted as one top result: living on a remote Highland rock, it was more than likely that finding anyone at all to socialize with (apart from sheep) was pretty much out of the question.

As she parked the Mini, it occurred to Sorrel that Clover’s house looked like something made by the My Little Pony people. It had plaster mouldings like icing-sugar flowers and was so birthday-cake pink and white. The top of the wall to the small front garden was planted with a froth of pale blue forget-me-nots and at each side of the front door there was a pink pot painted with white spots and trailing with something that looked to Sorrel like tiny starry daisies. She supposed that was what you did when you were a mother with no job – you spent your time prettifying your surroundings. Would she do that? On balance she rather hoped she’d have a
career
that left her just that bit short of free time (journalism was the current choice, something comfortable in a magazine office, preferably with lots of clothes and make-up freebies thrown in) so that she wouldn’t have to do stuff like gardening. But hey, it worked for Clover. Clover was a born nest-maker.

‘Nice gaff,’ Gaz commented, looking up at the windows. Sorrel felt more optimistic. Either he meant it (good) or he had decided to make an effort at last (very good).

She slid her arm round him and gave him a soft, slow kiss. ‘It’ll be all right. You know them all and they won’t bite you. I might though …’ She sank her teeth gently into his bottom lip and he pulled her closer but she opened her car door and backed away from him.

‘Later, maybe!’ she teased. ‘But only if you’re good.’

‘Aren’t I always?’ Gaz grinned at her, climbing out of the passenger door.

‘Perhaps you are,’ she said. ‘But I wouldn’t tell you, in case you get conceited.’

‘It’s times like this I really wish we had a nanny,’ Clover grumbled to Sean as she ripped up basil leaves to scatter onto six individual tomato tarts. Sophia and Elsa were playing a boisterous game that involved weaving in and out of the chair and table legs, rolling around on the floor and squealing at the
tops
of their voices. What she’d give right now to have some kind, capable girl take the two of them off her hands, lead them to their rooms to be bathed and put to bed and have a chapter of
Peter Pan
read to them. If she ever
did
get one, the nanny would have to be able to read English really well – a good grounding in classic children’s books was something Clover believed in devoutly: these were stories that stayed with you through your whole life, along with cosy memories of who read them to you and where you were. Her earliest story-memories somehow mixed Peter Rabbit with the scent of cannabis, someone playing a guitar and lights flashing by in the Mont Blanc tunnel, but when she thought of Holbrook House, she could conjure up the Bambi figures patterning her white nightdress, the pinkish glow from the toadstool bedside lamp and Lottie, cosy in a purple velour Dance Centre outfit, reading her and Ilex to sleep with
The Wind in the Willows
.

There was another piercing shriek from Elsa and Clover wasn’t quite fast enough to stop her landing a hefty punch on her sister’s arm. Any minute and it would be all-out battle-stations.

‘Could you take them upstairs for me, please, Sean? Settle them on our bed with a DVD or something? They’re so hyper, they’re driving me mad. There’ll be tears.’

Probably mine, she thought to herself. Why couldn’t he think of it himself? It was obvious she was up to her eyes in the cooking. He was willing
enough
to join in and do his bit with the girls whenever Clover asked him but sometimes she really wished he’d see what needed to be done and take the initiative. It was so exhausting, thinking of everything. All Sean’s thinking-processes were kept for his work. Ask him to organize a full-scale bells-and-whistles launch for a major new product or a multi-celebrity post-premier party for a West End show and he’d be Mr Organization. But on his way home he pressed a sort of ‘delete’ button in his brain. Her own fault, she supposed as she drizzled olive oil on the tarts, for making the house so decidedly her own territory. But then could you blame her? She needed a secure comfort zone. It was her citadel against Sean once more pressing that other ‘delete’ button: the one labelled ‘fidelity’. If it happened again, at least she’d have her … what? For a moment it crossed her mind that the proper term for what she hid behind was nothing more profound than soft furnishings. She felt all her confidence wavering. It wasn’t
just
soft furnishings. No. Her home was a lot more than that. It was about heart and soul – all those things Sean would think soppy. That was what Holbrook House was all about and the reason for this dinner.

‘Jeez, Clover, you’ve gone to town a bit, haven’t you?’ Sean said as he came back into the kitchen after depositing his daughters in front of
Chicken Little
. ‘The table looks like something out of the Harrods fine china department. I didn’t know we
had
that many glasses! It’s only your family, isn’t it? Looks more like you’re expecting Charles and Camilla!’

Clover froze. ‘It’s not too much, is it? I wanted to do it properly. They won’t …’ She bit her lip. ‘They won’t laugh at me, will they? I know I wouldn’t usually – it’s just—’

‘Course they won’t, princess!’ Sean gave her a swift kiss. ‘They’ll love it! Especially Manda – right up her street. I bet Ilex’s idea of a posh home dinner is using a fork for his pizza. Come on, let’s you and me have a sneaky glass of fizz before they get here. Just a livener, get us in the mood.’ He gave her a fond hug and nuzzled her hair. ‘You smell gorgeous,’ he murmured. ‘And you’re doing a great job in here – I’m starving.’

Clover sipped the cold champagne and felt the bubbles sizzle on her tongue. Perhaps she had overdone things. What was she doing, coming over all 1980s corporate wife when it was just a family supper? Maybe the importance of what they were supposed to discuss had got the better of her. Still, it was too late now to change anything: the doorbell was ringing and she could see the spike-haired outline of Gaz’s head in the frosted glass of the front door.

‘Why do you keep looking round?’ Manda asked Ilex as he turned the car into Clover’s road. ‘You keep peering about all over the place, like you aren’t
sure
where she lives or something, or maybe like you’re looking for someone.’

Ilex smiled nervously at her. ‘Um, just keeping an eye on the traffic, road conditions, all that.’

‘There isn’t any traffic down this road,’ Manda pointed out. ‘You’ve been driving like some nervous learner all the way here, slowing down and staring up side roads and stuff. Are you all right?’ Ilex didn’t reply, concentrating instead on backing the BMW into a space that might turn out to be a bit too small.

Manda reached her hand across and laid it on his thigh. ‘Are you a bit worried about this evening? About whether it might end up in a big family row?’ Ilex glanced at her. Manda’s eyes were glittering strangely as if a big family row was the one thing she was really, really looking forward to. Perhaps there would be one. It hadn’t really occurred to him. Surely they were all there because they had opinions (though possibly not the same ones) about Holbrook House being sold. What was there to argue about unless someone had changed their mind and was all for it? He wasn’t actually that much against it – so long as Mac and Lottie did something sensible with the proceeds. Some hope, there.

‘I’m fine, honestly,’ he insisted, giving up on the space and aiming instead for one further up the road, past Sorrel’s black Mini.

‘Honestly’ wasn’t exactly the most accurate word, he admitted to himself. If he was to use ‘honestly’ in
the
sense of ‘completely truthful’, he’d have to admit that he was only fine while there wasn’t a pink, cat-painted Beetle in sight either in front or in his rear-view mirror. It seemed to be everywhere he went and he was wondering if feeling borderline terrified was going to be a permanent emotion. He was
way
over the terrified borderline tonight, that was for sure; Wendy could be out stalking, a few cars behind him. He could picture her with that little gleeful smile and her tongue between her teeth, playing cat and mouse among the traffic while trailing him from Battersea to Richmond. If she had, she could knock on Clover’s door at some point during the evening, stride in and claim him as her property. God, he hadn’t even slept with her. Not that anyone would believe that, if she told them otherwise. Especially Manda.