A Surrey State of Affairs (28 page)

She was so befuddled by fever that she couldn’t keep up the charade. I still find it hard to believe her capable of such dissimulation in the first place. This wretched new DJ friend of hers must have led her astray.

In any case, I have no further time for speculation. I have packed water-purifying tablets, lightweight clothing, disinfectant, insect repellent, cotton wool, and an emergency flare, and I am ready to depart. Heaven only knows what awaits. Wish me courage.

  
SATURDAY, JUNE 21

I am still alive. That is about the most positive thing I can say about my current situation. Even this state of affairs may not endure: an obstreperous airport security official confiscated my water-purification tablets.

Once, in happier times, I visited the Rodin museum in Paris. There I observed the famous sculpture
The Gates of Hell,
which featured writhing, contorted, debased, and demented human forms. That is what Ibiza reminds me of.

  
THURSDAY, JUNE 26

Sophie and I have returned safely from Ibiza. There were moments during the trip, such as when I was subjected to the reckless ineptitude of Hispanic taxi drivers, when I feared that I would never type those words.

When I got to the address Sophie had given me, a nondescript sixties-style apartment building, I climbed a set of concrete steps and knocked tentatively on the moldering door. This was hardly the bougainvillea-clad villa of expatriate fantasy. After two further raps, just as I was cleaning my fist on a wet wipe and wondering if the imbecilic taxi driver had taken me to the wrong place, the door swung open.

A skinny girl with an orange tan and headphones around her neck, who transpired to be Daisy, let me in, cheerfully saying “You’re Soph’s mum, right?” and showing no sense of shame. Passing through a tiny, hot, and messy flat, I found Sophie sprawled in bed, wearing a bikini, her feet tangled up in dirty sheets, with piles of Milky Way wrappers, bronzing lotion, flip-flops,
Hot
magazines, and makeup scattered around her. There were photographs stuck to the mirror of her posing with friends in clothes that would be too small to fashion a silk vest for a Siberian hamster.

“Hiya, Mum,” she said woozily, smiling and grimacing with pain. I felt torn between the desire to take tender care of her, as any mother of a sick child will understand, and to put my hands on my hips and give her a good talking to. In the end, I oscillated between the two. Sophie spent most of the time burying her head
under a pillow, perhaps through a belated sense of shame at her loathsome piercing, perhaps because whenever she emerged I made her gargle with saltwater.

The combined effects of the heat and the emotional stress gave me such a terrible headache that I had to raid the bathroom cabinet for some pills. They perked me up so much that I soon felt like taking a brisk stroll to get some fresh air, and I ended up walking the length of the bay and back fourteen times. Exercise can be terribly therapeutic. Blotting out the near-naked revelers and the ghastly, thundering, monotonous music, the natural beauty of the scene made me feel strangely euphoric.

The rest of my time there was much quieter. I nursed Sophie back to health, attempting to cook wholesome food in her tiny, dark kitchen, which was stocked with nothing more than a box of stale Frosties and a bottle of ketchup. I tried to ignore Daisy, which was easy as she was always either out or asleep.

As soon as Sophie was better, I booked our flights and here we are. Fortunately, she had to remove her tongue stud to pass through the metal detectors in the airport.

  
FRIDAY, JUNE 27

Sophie kept to her room today. I do hope she will perk up in time for her nineteenth birthday, which is next Friday. I’m going to organize a last-minute party: it will do her good to have something to look forward to. I’m thinking a marquee, ice cream, trifle, fairy cakes—all her old favorites. I might even book a magician. His first trick could be to make the tongue piercing vanish.

  
SATURDAY, JUNE 28

You’ll be pleased to hear that the planning is well under way for Sophie’s party. As it’s such short notice (I had presumed she would still be in France), I decided—for once—to stint on
formal etiquette and phone the guests rather than sending out invitations. The family will all be there, as will Reginald, David, and Ruth, and several of Sophie’s old primary school friends with whom she has lost touch, and their mothers, with whom I have not. Rupert asked me several times what Sophie thought of the plan before agreeing to come. I don’t know why he’s being so stubborn. What’s not to like about a party?

After some deliberation, I decided to invite Gerald along with all the other bell ringers. While not wanting to give him any inappropriate encouragement, I’m also anxious to get things back to a normal footing as quickly as possible, to avoid rumors of any description. Miss Hughes has almost a supernatural insight into other people’s affairs, especially when her hearing aid is turned to maximum.

After making my phone calls, I dipped into Facebook for the first time in some weeks. I found that, once the initial excitement had worn off, it is a little like using e-mail, except with more advertisements and baffling invitations to turn all my friends into zombies. This time, however, I noticed the section for “events.” After two hours of studious concentration, I was able to set up a page for Sophie’s birthday party, complete with a lovely picture of a smiling clown. My Internet skills have certainly progressed since I first joined—Rupert would be proud. I invited Sophie, of course, and managed to remember a few of the names of her sixth form friends and invited them too.

I filled in the “event description” as
An afternoon of fun, fairy cakes, and magic to celebrate my daughter turning 19. Dress code: Ladies’ Day at Ascot before it went downhill.

8:30 P.M.

I am just testing my LapTop to make sure it still works. After dinner, Sophie swept out of the room and knocked a
glass of wine all over it. I hope she grows out of her clumsiness soon.

  
SUNDAY, JUNE 29

A rather strained Sunday lunch today with Mother, who I picked up from The Copse, and Rupert, who drove down from Milton Keynes. Since Sophie had to hide her swollen tongue from her grandmother, and the only line of conversation that this same grandmother would take with Rupert was to ask him if he was playing cricket this summer, which he wasn’t, and whether he was seeing a young lady yet, which he also, alas, wasn’t, there was little in the way of lively conversation. At one point Mother said to Sophie, “Cat got your tongue?” and I found my-self replying “If only” before I could stop myself. All in all I was relieved, for once, when Jeffrey opened up the paper before the pudding was finished, giving me an excuse to start clearing away.

  
MONDAY, JUNE 30

Today I attempted to have a heart-to-heart with my daughter. She has been at home now for nearly five days but has done little more than mope, watch television, and eat Ben & Jerry’s ice cream directly from the carton. The summer stretches out ahead of her. She doesn’t feel up to going back to the eco lodge for the final week of the project, and there are more than three months to fill before her first term at Bristol starts. At her current rate of activity, that would equate to twenty-four tubs of ice cream and ninety-six episodes of
Ricki Lake.
I fear for the effect on her mind, and her figure. Something had to be done.

I knocked on her door at eleven
A.M.
and was greeted with an apathetic “Yeah?” She was sitting up in bed, wearing a Little Miss Naughty vest top and painting her nails bluish black. I
started off on a sympathetic note, examining her tongue and asking if it still hurt. From there I shifted to the soothing qualities of ice cream, the quantities of which she could look forward to at her party on Saturday, and beyond that to how many days lay ahead of her before the term began. Just as I was persuasively setting out how these days might constructively be filled by helping Miss Hughes with Cats in Need or signing up to be a Tawny Owl at the local Brownies group, she interrupted me. “Don’t be such a mentalist,” she said, yawning. “I’ve got plans, yeah?”