‘I’m going to have to disappoint you: he was the god of kissing. Found it quite difficult to kiss my husband afterwards. But don’t tell him that,’ Frederica said.
I was trying to remember every detail of the conversation for full dramatic recount effect, when Jen1 came twitching over with a list in her hand. ‘Frederica, as you know, Stirling Hall Fete Day is just around the corner and I’ve volunteered to coordinate all the stalls. Have you been approached to open the fete? You do such a great job. I know people love to see you there.’
‘Yeah, like our own Stirling Hall royalty. Frederica is a fantastic queen’s name. We’ll try and get a red carpet for you this year,’ Clover said. Jen1 tutted and frowned at her list. Frederica giggled and told Jen1 she’d be happy to do it.
‘Right. We need to allocate stalls. If I could just have everyone’s attention,’ Jen1 said, picking up a spoon and dinging it on a glass.
‘First off, homemade cake stall. If everyone is in agreement, I’d like to run that one. Everyone needs to contribute at least one cake. I’ll be sending home paper plates in the school bags, so look out for them. Last year lots of people donated shop bought cakes, but let’s see if this year we can get you all in the kitchen doing your bit. Come on, how difficult can it be? Get cooking with your children, remember, quality time, quality time. Don’t forget absolutely no nuts and please list all the ingredients on the label.
‘Who wants to run the welly-wanging stall? Emelia? Great. Now, we’re getting really subversive this year and having a tattoo stall, wash-off, obviously. Vile, chavvy as anything I know, but the children love them. The headmaster has agreed as long as they are removed for school on the Monday.’
She looked round the kitchen. ‘Maia, you can be our tattoo expert. I think you’d be perfect for that.’
‘I’ll do that with you,’ Clover said, but not quite quickly enough to cover the silence in the room.
‘Okay, fine, let me know what I have to do.’ I reminded myself that I was here to look nice enough for other mothers to invite my children to play. Which ruled out flashing the love heart on my left buttock or demanding to know why I, above all the others, would be perfect for the tattoo stall rather than the bloody tombola or serving the Pimms? People brought their gazes back from the furthest point of Jen1’s manicured lawn as the conversation turned to who was going to provide the ‘guess the number of sweets’ jar.
‘Finally, we need volunteers for tickets and refreshments for Oliver! It will come round very quickly, though I don’t think the children know which roles they have yet, do they?’ Jen1 said.
‘They do, they’ve already been rehearsing,’ said Frederica. ‘Marlon is playing Oliver.’
‘Hugo hasn’t said anything.’
‘Isn’t he one of the workhouse children?’ said Frederica.
‘But that’s only a small part, isn’t it? Hugo always has a lead part. We get a teacher down every Wednesday from LAMDA to tutor him. Who’s playing the other big roles, the Artful Dodger? What about Fagin?’
I’d never seen Oliver! but something about the Artful Dodger rang a bell. The auditions had been on the second day of term though, so I was pretty sure Harley wouldn’t have a lead part. He’d only ever been in one play at Morlands as a toy soldier, so I imagined they’d given him some crappo role, like a passerby or a lamp post just to include him.
Frederica glanced at me. ‘Isn’t Harley playing the Artful Dodger?’
‘I think he said he was, though I might have got that wrong.’ I looked at Jen1 whose lips had disappeared completely, wrinkled up like an old sweet wrapper. She hopped off her stool and started scooting about the kitchen picking up coffee cups and crashing them into the dishwasher. I saw her tip the remains of the chocolate brownies into her Brabantia bin. The hostess with the mostest had run out of welcome.
Time to go, but first I needed the loo. Jen1 pointed through the back of the kitchen, with a flick of her wrist. ‘Out there.’ It had one of those funny freestanding glass wash basins, which were a bugger to clean because all the splashes of water drip down the outside and collect in a manky puddle at the bottom. I took my time, studying the photo collage of Jen1 in her bikini, in a motorboat, in a hammock, ribs sticking out like she needed a bloody good steak and chips and a couple of cream cakes. I spent ages rubbing in the Molton Brown hand cream. I might as well get silky smooth hands out of my visit.
As I opened the door, I heard her say, ‘I didn’t realise Stirling Hall provided scholarships for poor children. I suppose they are trying to expose our children to all walks of life. Is that a new thing?’
I walked into the kitchen. I failed to keep the tightness out of my voice as I said, ‘I pay for my kids, just like you do. Nice to meet you, everyone, I need to get off now. Thanks for the coffee, Jenny.’
‘It’s Jennifer.’
She didn’t show me out.
Friday was a low point in my week because I spent the entire day in the house I hated cleaning the most – lots of those white ornaments with drippy shapes of women holding babies and whole shelves of decorative bells and silver spoons embossed with Lisbon, Sicily, Madeira and every other place Cecilia and Arthur had been cruising. Plus Cecilia herself, of course, whose idea of letting things slip was not hoovering the back of the airing cupboard every week.
That Friday, nearly two weeks after the kids had started at Stirling Hall, was particularly grim. I’d been dragging the Hoover up and down three flights of stairs as Cecilia had people ‘coming from the country’ for the weekend so she needed me to have a ‘quick do’ on the third floor, but didn’t take away any of my usual chores to allow me extra time.
I’d already been late to pick up Harley and Bronte once that week and the school had been very clear. More than ten minutes late and they charged for after-school club. I just had the kitchen floor to mop when Cecilia called me into the ‘snug’, where the smell of lavender was fighting with something citrussy. Cecilia sat propped up on a pile of cushions with her feet in a bubbling foot spa as though there was nothing more pressing to do, while a woman with a tidy ponytail and white uniform perched on a stool, massaging her hands.
‘Maia, I’m in such a state. I’m going to a black tie ball with Arthur tonight and I can’t decide which nail varnish goes with my dress. Would you be a dear and get it out of the wardrobe for me? It’s the long purple one with the fishtail and gold trimming.’
I don’t think I managed to look overjoyed but I still ran upstairs two at a time and raced back down, not caring that I was scrunching the silk up as I tried not to trip over it. I burst back in, just remembering to hang the dress on the door rather than throw it on the settee.
‘Thanks, Maia. Have a look at the nail varnishes and tell me which one you think goes best with it,’ Cecilia said.
The grandfather clock was chiming three o’clock. I needed to leave in the next thirty seconds. I plumped for a pink thing on the first row of the rack.
‘Here, how about Pinking Sheer?’ I said, reading the bottom.
‘That’s quite nice. Can you find Poolside Passion to compare? It’s quite a bright colour. That might be it on the second row.’
I started turning up the different bottles with all their stupid names, Punks in Pink, Pinking the Perky, Pinking Obvious, but no Poolside Passion.
The beauty therapist carried on massaging cream into Cecilia’s hands, making no attempt to help me out. In the hired help category, she obviously considered that someone who ripped out pubic hair was far superior to someone who just cleaned it out of the shower.
‘Cecilia, look, I’m really sorry,