City solicitors, the very distracting articles about downsizers in the newspapers, and then Geraldine, at forty-two, suddenly wondering if she ought to be wanting another baby, there came a time when Mr and Mrs Adams decided they had no choice but to take stock.
Geraldine’s best friend, impoverished and non-productive ‘children’s author’ Kitty Mozely, had already moved from London with her daughter, Scarlett, to a pretty cottage on the outskirts of Fiddleford. As part of their stocktaking process Clive and Geraldine went to stay for a weekend with her and, as they told her at the time, they were very impressed. Not only was Fiddleford a beautifully quaint little village, it was also at the heart of a ‘fascinating’ social whirl.
Kitty had pulled out all the stops that weekend, of course, because she wanted her friends to come and live nearby. She roped in people for dinner and for drinks, and managed to get them all invited out to lunch, so that by the end of the weekend, Clive and Geraldine had almost certainly experienced the peak of Fiddleford’s sociability.
But it is true, too, that there is a generous sprinkling of ‘fascinating’ people in the neighbourhood. Apart from the McShanes and the Maxwell McDonalds, there is Daniel Frazer, the world-famous hat maker, who owns a cottage on the road to Lamsbury. He and his American boyfriend come down most weekends, and can often be spotted in the Fiddleford Arms, living it up with their fascinating friends. And then there’s Annie Millbank, who was the love interest in lots of seventies movies and now stars in a series of coffee ads. She lives on her own, mostly drunk, in the Mill House about a mile beyond the Retreat. There are the peoplefriendly former government minister Maurice Morrison and his curiously hideous wife, who are renting the manor in the next-door village, and he can often be seen, sniffing around, glad-handing the locals; Solomon Creasey the art dealer comes down with his numerous beautiful children and a different beautiful girlfriend at least every other weekend. He owns a large house hidden behind a high wall, bang in the middle of Fiddleford, and on summer evenings, when the windows are open, the whole street can be filled with the smell of his cigars and aftershave, and the sound of him – laughing usually, or yelling very large figures into a telephone. Solomon Creasey, though not yet forty, is a man with an inscrutable past. Nobody really knows where he came from, but the main thing is that he once discovered a Rubens at auction and has since held the British record for achieving the greatest profit on any single painting ever sold. One way or another he is very rich. Kitty Mozely (the non-productive children’s author) makes a courageous play for him every time they meet.
Anyway, after Clive and Geraldine’s weekend visit to Fiddleford, non-productive Kitty, whose writing career has long since ground to a standstill, and who is often bored and lonely, became increasingly determined that they should follow her to the area. She would ring up Geraldine in her City office and regale her with stories of all the glamorous people who dropped in for drinks (nor was she above a little lavish embellishment), and she would swear that she and her daughter Scarlett had never been happier. She claimed that since moving to Fiddleford Scarlett didn’t watch television any more. (Actually, enigmatic little Scarlett had never been that interested in television.) And she claimed that Scarlett’s new favourite dish was baked fennel, which was an outright lie. ‘I can honestly say to you, Geraldine, my only regret is that we didn’t make the move sooner!’
Geraldine was not – is not – a woman who likes to be outdone. Certainly not in the social whirl. And not even over vegetables. So she and Clive finally blocked out an evening together to discuss their future. And by the end of dinner, in spite of all of Kitty Mozely’s efforts, in spite of the wonderful – and fashionable – savings they would make by sending Ollie to the local village school, they had pretty much decided to stay put, which was a great relief to both of them. They slept better that night than they had in months.
Two days later Kitty rang to tell them that the Old Rectory in Fiddleford was up for sale.
They only had to see it once. It was perfect for them; built 250 years earlier, as if exclusively with the requirements of third-millennium Hampstead downsizers in mind. It was a small, symmetrical, irreproachably pretty Georgian manor, with six little sash windows on the first floor and two on either side of a wide, stone-pillared front porch. It was set back from the village street, with a drive that curled through a small copse of trees and down into a little valley. It was private, elegant, and not at all cheap. Clive and Geraldine fell in love with it. Their Hampstead house sold very quickly, and for the asking price of £1.85 million, making them an encouraging £790,000 profit, much of which they blew on their extravagant ‘improvements’. They built the tennis court and the swimming pool, employed an interior decorator who specialised in a rustic-contemporary look, opened a small, exclusive practice in a converted town house in Lamsbury, and have been happily munching through Messy McShane’s Fresh Organic Vegetables ever since.
Or quite happily.
Or actually (unofficially speaking) not very happily at all. Downsizing, they have discovered, is not quite as easy as it looks. And though the piece in the Saturday Telegraph was fun, it couldn’t sustain them for ever, and there are times when Clive and Geraldine secretly feel quite breathless with horror at the smallness of their new lives. They might glance up from some exclusively priced little conveyancing job and hear the hideous, monotonous cawing of the ravens outside, or the pitter-patter-plop of the soft grey English rain. They might glance out from their rustic-contemporary, newly shuttered Georgian windows, and notice that it’s already growing dark, and that the evening looms with only each other and the blip of Ollie’s computer games for company.
Recently, Geraldine has been finding it increasingly difficult to sleep. She lies awake at night, next to Clive, and she can feel the quicksand of Downsizers’ Oblivion closing in around them, sucking them in, and she wants to scream for help. And Clive, too, can lie quietly beside his wife, blinking in the absolute darkness, and he’ll think about the important cases he and Geraldine might have been involved in if they had stayed in London, and he’ll think of the humdrum papers on his desk, and of their practice, which is far from thriving and he’ll think, This is hell. This is not what we worked so hard for.
But they always put on a brave face in public. Of course. Not even Kitty Mozely – not even each other – would have guessed how difficult they were really finding it.
So. It is tea-time at the Old Rectory on the Monday after the Friday-night limbo party and Kitty Mozely and Geraldine, who have both made a highly competitive point of stopping their non-existent work in time to pick Scarlett and Oliver up from Fiddleford Primary School, are stretched out on the lawn in front of the house discussing the sujet du moment, as they have chosen to refer to it: Fanny Flynn. Fanny is not a popular woman in Fiddleford at the moment.
Geraldine Adams and Kitty Mozely had both been present at the shirt-stripping incident, when she had swept out of the village hall with Louis’s glamorous American arms around her, and they were still there afterwards, when she returned to the village hall with Grey. But neither has yet had a chance to speak to her, which is frustrating for them. It means they are unclear about exactly what happened to whom, and why, and are still, nearly seventy hours later, trying to piece the full drama together.
‘I notice she didn’t come out to the gate after school this afternoon. Did she? To have a chat with the parents – which she might have done. She ought to, really, every day. So the parents can get to know her. But really,’ tuts Geraldine, sitting up slightly to stir saccharin into her tea, ‘after Friday…’
‘After Friday it’s the least she could do,’ Kitty agrees.
‘It’s all very well. But she does have our kids in her care. I personally think she ought to have sent the children home with a letter of explanation. Don’t you? I mean, so many parents were there at the limbo, witnessing…People like us can take these things in our stride of course but a lot of parents…’ Geraldine is briefly distracted by the sight of a chip in the Chocolate Plum polish on her toenail.
‘Absolutely,’ murmurs Kitty, lying back, eyes closed, exhaling cigarette,