The People at Number 9

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“That was afterwards. I overcompensated,” Sara laughed, but she found herself welling up. “He was really mean. Called me a frigid little prick-tease and got off with Beverly Wearing right in front of me.”

“What a cock!”

“I know. But the funny thing is, even though he was a total cock, I’ve always wondered what it would have been like. It’s kind of haunted me, because I never really enjoyed it with any of the others. I think I was just trying to show him that I wasn’t… what he said.”

“Well, at least you did – show him, that is.”

“I don’t think he even noticed, to be honest. I was never girlfriend material for someone like him. I only came on his radar because of the play, and the one chance I had with him, I blew. I still think about that kiss…”

It was true, she did still think about it; more and more lately. The trouble was that the harder she tried to recall the facial features of Philip Baines-Cass, the more they tended to meld into Gavin’s.

There was a pause while Lou tipped herself out of the armchair, drained the last of the Calvados into their glasses, and shuffled backwards on the hearthrug until her back met the sofa.

“Funny, isn’t it?” she said, taking a thoughtful sip. “How different it all could have been, I mean same for me. God, I shudder to think of it! I was almost with that computer programmer from Slough.”

“You!”

“I know! Imagine. He wasn’t actually a computer programmer, obviously; nothing quite that bad.” They chuckled. “His name was Andy. He was a very sweet guy, and he’s loaded now. My Mum never misses a chance to slip that into the conversation: ‘I saw Andy Hiddleston at the weekend, Louise. Did I mention he’s a property developer?’” She rolled her eyes. “She’s never quite forgiven me for breaking off the engagement.”

“You got engaged?”

Lou nodded, delighted with the incongruity of it all.

“Until I went for my interview at St Martins and realised the world had other plans for me.”

“Poor Andy!” Sara sniggered.

“I know,” agreed Lou, “he didn’t take it very well,” she shook her head and grinned fondly, “then again; I’d only have made him miserable. Can you imagine? Me in a double-fronted, Bath-stone villa with a monkey-puzzle tree and a waxed jacket…”

“… Two-point-four children…”

“… A Range Rover…”

“… And a lobotomy!”

Sara started giggling and found she couldn’t stop. She forced the back of her hand to her mouth in an effort to control it.

“Come along, Camilla, we’ll be late for pony club!” said Lou in a plummy accent.

“Now then, Nicholas, don’t cry,” joined in Sara. “All big boys hef to go to boarding school.” Lou beat the hearthrug in merriment. Tears ran down Sara’s face.

“Introducing… the new… Chairwoman of the… Townswomen’s Guild,” Sara tried to say, but it came out as a series of gulps and squeaks.“Mrs Andy Hiddle…” she gasped, then keeled over on the rug, insensible with mirth.

6 (#ulink_a4ff8cbb-f4c3-509f-a07c-d0f855e18554)

It was hard to concentrate the next day, partly because of the hangover, but mainly because, somewhere along the line, Sara had lost even the small shred of enthusiasm she’d once had for her job. She found herself reading and re-reading the same phrase – “I don’t really have a preferred supermarket and tend to use whichever is most convenient” – until the words merged into one another and ceased to hold any objective meaning. For a stopgap job, NPR Marketing had taken up an awful lot of her time. Other creative types who had joined when she did had long since moved on. Anders the miserable Swede now wrote voice-overs for Masterchef; Tracy Jackson was a lobbyist for the Green Party. But NPR had granted Sara two generous periods of maternity leave and, although her game plan had been to return after Patrick’s birth for no longer than her contract dictated, five years had somehow elapsed and she was still sitting at the same desk, in what was essentially a cupboard, opposite the talented but cynical Adrian Sutcliffe.

A part of Sara had known for a long time that her and Adrian’s relationship was unhealthy. They were co-dependants, facilitating each other’s inertia through corrosive humour. As long as they channelled their creative energies into satirising the futile nature of their work, the slavish ambition of their less talented colleagues and the passive-aggressive behaviour of their workaholic boss, Fran Ryan, they could kid themselves that they were, respectively, a novelist and a journalist manqué.

“Eyes front,” said Adrian now, “Rosa Klebb at three o’clock.”

Sara snapped out of her reverie and battered her computer keyboard with a flurry of random keystrokes.

“On my way to Gino’s,” said Fran, “can I get you anything?”

“Ooh lovely,” said Sara, “tuna melt for me, hold the mayo.”

“Why do you let her do that?” said Adrian, after Fran had gone.

“Er… because it’s lunchtime and I need something to eat,” said Sara, with the interrogative upward lilt she had picked up from her children.

“You know what she’s up to, don’t you?”

“She’s getting my lunch?”

“Yeah, so you don’t leave the building.”

Before Sara could make a suitably acerbic retort, Fran had popped her head back into the office.

“By the way, can I tell Hardeep that you’ll ping the survey across by close of play today?”

“Yep. On it,” Sara said, picking up her biro as she spoke, ready to throw it at Adrian as soon as the door had closed.

Lately, Sara’s boredom was making her rebellious. Neil’s promotion was practically in the bag, and he had hinted on numerous occasions recently that she might at last like to “free herself up” from the rigours of work, which she took to mean free him up from the necessity to dash round Waitrose after a hard day at the office. She had resented the suggestion at first, but since Lou had been so encouraging of her writing, she was beginning to harbour serious ambitions in that direction. When Fran returned with her sandwich at one thirty, she didn’t bother to minimise her computer screen; instead, she doubled the font size.

As the front door banged shut behind Nora’s father, the draught wafted an empty plastic bag up in the air. Nora watched it as it rose and seemed to inflate itself with his very absence, before floating back down and lodging between the banister rails. She started to sing quietly,

“Bye baby bunting, daddy’s gone a-hunting, she sang, over and over, until the words became, not words, but sobs.

“One tuna melt,” said Fran, barely able to tear her eyes from the screen. Sara scrabbled in her purse and handed Fran a fiver, which she took, without shifting her gaze.

“It’s okay, I don’t need any change,” said Sara, pointedly.

“No, right,” said Fran, remembering herself. “Er… well, bon appétit,” she added, giving Sara a terse little smile before she left the room.

“The worm turns!” said Adrian, with grudging respect. Sara nodded in haughty acknowledgement and took a greedy bite of her sandwich. A large gobbet of mayonnaise dripped onto her jumper.

On the train home, she spotted Carol’s Simon getting on further down the carriage. Normally she’d have lowered her eyes to her Kindle, certain in the knowledge that everything they had to say to one another could be covered on the short walk between the station and their road, but she had hatched a plan and was bursting to tell someone, so she called out his name.

“Oh, hello, Sara.” He started to thread his way through the carriage towards her. She could tell from the look of portentousness on his face that he had some news of his own to impart. “I expect you’ve heard…” Sara prepared herself for the death of a pet, or a recurrence of Carol’s sister’s ME.

“What?”

“Cranmer Road got a stinking OFSTED report. One step away from special measures.”

“Shit!” Sara remembered her words to Gavin, as he’d urged a reluctant Arlo over the threshold on the first day of term: “Don’t worry, it’s a really lovely school. You won’t regret it.”

“Carol must be doing her nut.”

“Oh, I think she’s secretly quite pleased,” said Simon, “she’s been looking for an excuse to go private for ages.”

Sara stretched her lips into a smile.

“It was the numeracy that did it, apparently,” Simon added, “that and inadequate special needs provision.”

“Inadequate special needs? That’s a travesty,” spluttered Sara. “They bend over backwards at that school…”

Simon raised a didactic finger. “Ah but special needs includes GAT, you see.”

“GAT,” repeated Sara dumbly.

“Gifted and Talented,” said Simon, patiently.

Of course. The middle classes were in revolt because they thought the Head was squandering resources on the thickies instead of hot-housing their little geniuses.

“Ridiculous,” she said.

“Well, I’m not so sure…” Simon demurred. Then, sensing an ideological rift opening up, asked quickly, “How’s work?”

“Oh, you know, alright.”

Suddenly, Simon was the last person with whom she wanted to share her burgeoning literary ambitions. She could just imagine the smirk on his face as he relayed the news to Carol that she’d given up work to write a novel.

She expected better of Neil though.

“I’m not saying, don’t do it,” he said defensively over dinner, “I’m just querying the timing, is all.”

Sara tried not to wince at the Americanism. They seemed to be creeping into his vocabulary lately. She wasn’t sure if he had picked them up from watching back-to-back episodes of Breaking Bad, or from reading American business manuals, but, either way, they didn’t enhance his credibility as a literary adviser. He seemed to think she should do a course. As if creative writing was something that could be taught, like car maintenance or Spanish. And yet, the most irritating part of this suburban inclination of his to kowtow to “teachers”, was the fact that it piqued her own insecurity. She didn’t want some second-rate novelist picking over her work. She much preferred Lou’s bold exhortations to “just go with it”, to “trust the muse” and “tap into whatever’s down there.”

Now she found herself becoming tearful with frustration. She planted her fork in what remained of her quiche and tried not to let her voice quaver.

“I don’t think you realise what it’s like for me,” she said. “I’d like to see you spend eight hours a day writing consumer questionnaires.”

Neil looked up in dismay and Sara realised, with a mixture of satisfaction and shame, that the tears had clinched it for her, as they always did with Neil.

“No,” he said, apparently overcome with contrition, “you’re better than that. I totally agree. Go for it then. You’ll have six whole hours a day while they’re at school.”

Sara was about to point out that creativity wasn’t necessarily something you could turn on and off like a tap, but thought better of it.

“It certainly won’t hurt to be around more,” she said, “especially with the school on the slide.”

“What do you mean?” said Neil.

“They’ve had the thumbs-down from the inspectors,” said Sara, rolling her eyes, “so expect a mass exodus. Carol’s already looked at St Aidan’s, apparently.”

“We don’t have to copy Carol.”

“It’s not Carol I’m worried about,” said Sara, “it’s her influence on the others.”

“Carol is a bad influence on the other parents,” Neil affected a pedagogic tone.

“I wish you’d take this seriously. Carol wraps Celia round her little finger.”

“And I should care because…?”

“Celia’s Rhys’s mum, and Rhys is Caleb’s best friend.”

“I think you’re making a meal of it. Boys aren’t like girls. It’s easy come, easy go.”

But the damage was done. Sara could only look at Cranmer Road with a jaundiced eye now. As she and Lou sat in the school hall, the following week, waiting for the Harvest Festival to begin, her eyes roved critically around the display boards. BE KIND TO OTHER’S read one poster, its misplaced apostrophe less worrying than the conspicuous indifference of the Year Ones to its message. When the piano struck up the opening song, and the children joined in with their warbling falsettos, Lou dabbed a sentimental tear from her eye, but Sara felt like crying for a different reason. The “orchestra” consisted of three recorders and a tambourine; the harvest gifts, displayed on a tatty piece of blue sugar paper, were mostly dented cans of Heinz soups and dubious-looking biscuits from Lidl. This spoke eloquently to Sara of the disengagement of the middle-class parents. The only item of fresh produce was the pineapple she had donated herself. Most distressing of all was the palpable unease among the staff. Gone, were the wide smiles and big encouraging eyes. Gone was the sense of camaraderie and fun. To a man and woman, they wore the weary, defeated expressions of an army in retreat.

As they stood together afterwards, drinking instant coffee from polystyrene cups, Sara was astonished by Lou’s effusiveness.

“I can’t tell you how relieved I am,” she said.

“Oh?” Sara dragged her gaze from the clusters of muttering, Boden-clad parents dotted around the room and forced herself to focus on Lou’s beaming face.

“I can see the kids just blossoming here,” she said, “there’s such a buzz. It makes me absolutely certain we’ve done the right thing moving back.”

“I’m glad,” said Sara. She felt vindicated, now, in her decision not to worry Lou and Gavin with the news of the bad OFSTED. She couldn’t imagine what kind of regime the kids had been subjected to in Spain – some draconian hangover from Franco’s time, perhaps – but if they thought Cranmer Road was a happy seedbed for their young, then who was Sara to disagree? Unfortunately, a dissenter was already heaving into view.

Celia Harris was a sweet woman without political nous or cynicism. She and Sara had bonded at the nursery gate and Caleb and Rhys had been close friends ever since. Celia was a Cranmer Road stalwart. She had overseen fundraisers and socials and accompanied every school trip that either of her bright, speccy children had ever been on. The news of the OFSTED report would, Sara knew, have hit Celia like a hammer blow. She loved the school, but she loved her children more. Like a football player who would lay down his life for his club until moved to a rival team, Celia’s allegiance, though fierce, was also fickle. And seeing her now, brow knitted, flat, conker-coloured boots squeaking over the parquet, Sara could tell that she was already on the transfer list.

“Sara, hi,” she said, grasping Sara by the elbow and leading her out of Lou’s earshot. All the time they were talking, Sara could see Lou over Celia’s shoulder, sipping her coffee and trying to conceal her curiosity.

“I was thinking,” Lou said, later, her hands at ten and two on the vast steering wheel of the Humber as she drove them all home, “Gavin should go in and do some art with the kids sometime. He’d get a real kick out of it.”

“Yeah,” said Sara, “definitely.”

It had been three weeks since Sara left work and four since she had entrusted her novella to Lou for some critical feedback. Her first day of freedom was spent billowing duvets and scouring mildew off the shower curtain. When Neil had asked her, on his return from work, how the book was going, she reminded him sharply that she was writing a novel, not a board paper. The next day, after rearranging her desk a number of times, experimenting with the height of her chair and opening and closing the window, she sat down purposefully in front of the computer to re-read Safekeeping.

She had finished the closing paragraph with a sigh of satisfaction. It wasn’t half bad, for a first draft. In fact, its competence was, in a way, its main problem. She knew that what she had written was only the skeleton of a larger, more ambitious work that she must flesh out and bring to life, but it was hard to see, from her very partial standpoint, where she should insert new material, and what, if anything, could go. She had heard the phrase “kill your darlings”, but there was barely a line in it that she wasn’t a little in love with, so that would mean dumping the lot. She really did need Lou’s feedback now, and, despite her reluctance to hassle her friend, whom she knew to be struggling with creative decisions of her own, she decided to take the bull by the horns.

She knocked and rang next door to no avail. However, the Humber was parked outside, and when she peered through the letterbox, she caught a distinct whiff of toast, so, finding the door unlocked, she decided to take her chance.

“Hi? Only me…” She pushed open the kitchen door. The room was empty. Four crumby plates stood on the table, one of which had a mashed cigarette stub on its rim. There was a heady perfume hanging in the air and an unfamiliar suede jacket slung over the back of one of the chairs. They had company. She was about to leave with even greater stealth than she had come, when she heard footsteps tripping lightly up the basement stairs.

“White, one sugar; black without…” Lou was muttering, like a mantra, under her breath. “Oh my God, Sara! You frightened the life out of me.”

“Sorry, you did say if there was no answer I should... Listen, you’re busy. I’ll leave you to it.”

“That’s okay, we were just having a coffee break. Why don’t you join us?”

There was a difference in Lou that Sara couldn’t put her finger on. Her appearance was as carelessly stylish as ever – hi-tops, threadbare jeans, a hip-length kimono over a skimpy vest – but it was less her appearance than her demeanour that had changed. She had a slightly self-conscious air, as though acting a part in one of her own films. Watching her, Sara could almost read the stage directions: Lou loads the coffee percolator and stands on tiptoe to reach the cups from the shelf. She is a sexy young woman in the prime of life.