Findlay carried on as he hung up his coat, then added, ‘Martina’s grandma did make a football out of a pig’s head and it’s true. I’ve seen the film.’
Kate, who’d been on the verge of pushing him gently into the Butterfly Room, stopped. ‘Film?’
‘She’s got a film of it on her phone. Arthur,’ he yelled, then, turning back to Kate said, ‘is Arthur going to my new school?’
‘We don’t know what school Arthur’s going to—why don’t you ask him?’
Findlay ran over to the Home Corner where Arthur was kneeling in front of the oven, removing a large green casserole pot that he’d put a Baby Annabel doll in earlier.
‘What school are you going to?’
Kate waited.
Arthur was about to respond when one of the nursery staff went up to Findlay and said loudly, ‘Shall we give this to Mummy?’ tugging pointedly at the mask on his head.
Sighing, Findlay pulled it off and pushed it into Kate’s hand, turning his attention back to Arthur.
‘We need knives and forks,’ Arthur was saying, efficiently.
‘We have a no-masks policy at nursery,’ the woman said.
‘I forgot,’ Kate quickly apologised before virtually running along the corridor with Flo towards the Caterpillar Room, where she handed her over to her primary carer, Mary.
She got back to the car without running into anybody else she knew, and checked her phone. There was an ecstatic message from Evie telling her that Aggie was ‘in’, an almost identical one from Ros re. Toby Granger, and a message from Harriet telling her in a strangely officious manner that Casper had won a place—won?—and reminding her to bring a food contribution to that night’s PRC meeting. Kate hadn’t even given it a thought.
She drove the car round the corner to Beulah Hill and parked outside the property Jessica had told her about. The house had nets up at windows painted peach, and a dead laurel in the front garden. She got the letter out of her breast pocket and read it again, just to see if anything had changed since she put it in there. She reached the Yours sincerely, Jade Jackson—Head of Admissions at the end. Nothing had changed. She felt, irrationally, that Findlay not being offered a place at St Anthony’s had something to do with Jade Jackson being Jamaican.
We are writing to inform you of the outcome of your application for a Southwark primary school. Your child has been offered a place at Brunton Park. The school will be contacting you with further information shortly….
She watched a pit-bull urinate against the tree on the other side of the window, then tried phoning the Admissions line, knowing how hopeless it would be trying to get through on the day all the offers had gone out. She listened to the engaged tone until she was automatically disconnected, then tried phoning St Anthony’s instead, eventually getting through to a woman who told her the school was once again oversubscribed and how this year more than twenty-five places had gone to siblings.
The woman cut her off before Kate even got round to telling her that they attended St Anthony’s Church every Sunday—every Sunday—or asking whether the school had definitely received the Reverend Walker’s letter confirming this.
She pushed her head back roughly against the car seat and tried phoning Robert, who didn’t answer, so sat contemplating No. 8 Beulah Hill instead. She was going to be late for her first appointment, and didn’t care.
At No. 22 Prendergast Road, Margery stood listening to Martina clean the bathrooms, then went back into the kitchen, humming a Max Bygraves song to herself as she started on the pastry for the corned beef and onion pie she’d decided to make for Robert’s tea that night. She watched her fingers lightly pull the mixture together in the way she’d been taught as a girl by her grandmother, who went mad playing the organ, and thought of all the different kitchens she’d watched her fingers do this in over the years, and how the fingers had changed—grown lines, knobbles, arthritic twists and turns and finally gone all loose; so loose that the few rings she had would probably have already fallen off if they hadn’t got caught in the loose folds of skin round the knuckles.
The litany of industrious sounds coming from upstairs comforted Margery as she rolled the pastry and lined the pie tin—Communists certainly knew how to clean. When she went to wash her hands, she saw the envelope Kate had left for Martina on the surface by the sink. She went into the hallway and listened. Martina had just started hoovering. Margery went into the lounge and took another envelope out of Robert’s desk drawer—it wasn’t actually Robert’s desk, it was Kate’s, but Margery always referred to it as Robert’s—and went back into the kitchen.
She quickly tore open Martina’s pay packet and pulled out a twenty-pound note. She stood there for a moment, brushing flour off her nostrils with the crisp new note and knew that, according to her calculations, there was no way Kate and Robert could stretch to eighty pounds a month on a cleaner. Margery knew the Hunters’ finances as well as any accountant because she’d spent the better part of yesterday morning going through their two fiscal files. The Hunters were, in her opinion, in dire straits—she didn’t know how they kept the show up and running or why they weren’t collapsing under the strain of their imminent financial ruin. She could only surmise that Robert was keeping it from Kate and bearing the burden alone. She didn’t understand her son’s marriage. It seemed unnatural to her; more important still, it was unsustainable. What was it Robert said to her all those years ago: ‘Wait till you meet her, Mum—she’s going to change the world—not just mine; everyone’s. Kofi Annan beware.’
Well, personal finances were clearly below the likes of Kofi Annan, but Margery knew bailiffs—had had experience of bailiffs throughout her childhood, and she could smell them in the air now. Kofi Annan or not, when it was time they came for you and nothing could keep them from the door. They went where they were sent and didn’t discriminate. Margery stuffed the twenty-pound note into the new envelope as the hoover cut out upstairs, put it back on the bench by the cooker and opened two cans of corned beef that she’d bought with her from East Leeke. When she turned round, Ivan the cat was standing motionless on the kitchen floor, watching her, its back arched. She felt immediately nauseous; cats always made her feel nauseous. They brought her underarms out in a rash and gave her vertigo.
Then the phone started to ring in the lounge and she wasn’t sure what to do about it because Ivan showed no sign of moving, was in fact now sending out a hissing spit in her general direction. Even without Ivan, the phone alarmed her with its flashing lights and antennae.
‘You want me to get?’ Martina called out from the upstairs landing.
At the sound of Martina’s voice, Ivan relaxed and strolled past Margery towards his bowl, brushing her ankles.
Margery jogged quickly into the lounge and started to wrestle with the still ringing phone, eventually pressing the right button—because it might be Robert; it might always be Robert…
It was Beatrice, Kate’s mother.
‘Margery—how are you? I had no idea you were in town.’
Town? What town? ‘The cleaner’s here,’ Margery said, for no particular reason.
‘That’s nice,’ Beatrice said after a while.
So the cleaner was news to Beatrice as well. Margery relaxed a little. ‘She’s from Czechoslovakia,’ she explained.
On the other end of the phone Beatrice, unsure why they were talking about the cleaner, said briskly, ‘There’s no such place.’
Margery baulked. ‘What?’
‘There’s the Czech Republic and Slovakia, but no Czechoslovakia.’
‘Martina never