Every Good Girl (15 page)

‘What? Husbands?' Sally looked horrified.

‘No, babies,' Nina confessed.

‘Oh God, don't say you're getting broody now. It must be the spring weather.'

Nina pushed the parcel into her bag and made her way to the door. ‘Doesn't matter how I feel,' she said, smiling brightly. ‘I don't have anybody to feel broody
with
. So it's irrelevant, isn't it?'

‘Not at all. You must simply make more effort to find someone. Have you looked in the back of the
Sunday Times
lately? There's usually a rush of likely victims at this time of the year. Something goes to their heads in spring.'

‘Isn't it dodgy though, meeting some stranger like that? I mean they could be axe murderers, standing there in some nice bar waiting for you with their neat pink carnation and just desperate to cut your throat.'

‘Don't be daft! Look, leave it to me. I've got a brilliant idea – I promise I'll fix you up, trust me.'

‘“Trust me”!' groaned Nina. ‘Now why does that give me a terrible sinking feeling?'

Monica was sitting up in her bed, looking as if she'd been in waiting position for some time. Nina's heart sank. Her mother didn't look any more settled in than
she had the night before. Then, Nina had been happy enough to put her impatience down to unadmitted fear and shock, but now there was no mistaking cussedness.

‘They said I can't go home, not until Social Services have been round to assess the house,' she told Nina. ‘It's outrageous. Aren't we always being told they're desperate for the beds? It's going to be days. I'm not even allowed to decide for myself whether I'm capable of getting around or not.'

Nina sat on the orange plastic chair beside the bed. It was too low, and her mother was looking down at her in an imperiously enquiring way that Nina recognized from childhood. Any moment she would be saying something like ‘And what makes you so sure you've got all the answers, Miss?'

‘There's no point letting you go home if you're in danger of falling again or doing something even worse to yourself. That way you could be occupying the bed for months. Can you get around? Have they let you get up this morning?'

‘Oh yes,' Monica conceded grumpily. ‘They let me get up. One minute they won't let you move, the next they're saying ghastly things like “Upsa-daisy, we don't want to go getting a nasty thrombosis now do we?” I've got these ghastly white stockings. They make my legs look dead already. I expect the rest of me will soon catch up.'

Nina laughed, and her mother's face twitched at last with humour. ‘Everyone gets those in hospital now, even teenagers. It's just a precaution. You can always come and stay with us for a while, we could all take care of you between us,' Nina offered, handing her the chocolates.

Monica laughed loudly and the rest of the ward's
permed grey heads turned to listen. ‘Oh heavens, Nina that would be terrible, we'd never get on. And your girls are so noisy. No, I'll get Graham to fix the stair carpet and then everything will be fine. I might even promise not to go up and down stairs while there's no-one else in the house. Anything just to get out of here. I can feel myself ageing and decaying in this bed.' She stared around the ward at the other patients, some of whom were several years younger than her, and then said in what might have been meant as a whisper, ‘I'm sure it's catching, you know. I'll be as dead as they are if I stay more than a couple of days.'

‘So, if you get this job, you and your mum get ten days lazing around in the Caribbean, is that right?' Joe asked Lucy as they drove to Kensington.

Lucy was sitting in the back of Joe's Audi surrounded by the essential trappings of her modelling career. Gas-fuelled curling tongs were heating and would soon be singeing the cream leather seat; her book of photos was on the floor beneath her favourite, shamingly clean trainers. Three sweatshirts were laid out beside her and the ever-present Sophie, who sat in the front next to Joe, had the responsibility of choosing which one went best with her black jeans. Sophie's role was to be an admiring observer. She was quicker at running, climbing and squirming through nettles on her tummy, but this today was Lucy's speciality and she was on the edge of being over-excited and showing off.

‘We don't laze around,' Lucy declared with exaggerated scorn. ‘We
work. Really
early in the mornings so that it isn't too hot. And I expect,' she added grandly, ‘there'll be some evening shots too, because of the magnificent sunsets.' She returned to brushing her hair and
dividing it into strands for curling, not meeting Joe's gaze in the mirror.

‘
Magnificent sunsets!
You've been watching too many holiday TV programmes. Can't be bad though. Well lucky old you, isn't she Sophie?' Joe teased.

‘Not really,' Sophie said sniffily. ‘My mum and dad, they said that children doing modelling is, er . . .' she hesitated, either groping for the word they'd actually used, or suddenly deciding she needed to find a more polite one for the circumstances.

‘Common?' Joe suggested, grinning at her.

‘Um, I think so. Something like that,' she admitted.

‘What's common mean, exactly?' Lucy asked from the back seat. Joe looked at her in the mirror. Her eyes were wide with pretend wondering. A chunk of her long chestnut hair was wrapped round the curling tongs. The ends would get split and over-dry. The finished result could make her look like something from one of those all-American Junior Miss Peanut Princess pageants. All Lucy needed now was jailbait raspberry lipstick and some heavy-handed dollops of mascara. Even though she was required to turn up resembling a normal, natural child, she, as all the other hopefuls would be doing, was pulling out all the stops. There would be nine-year-olds who'd had French manicures, tiny blondes would be blindingly highlighted and every child would already own her own bulging make-up bag. Joe felt depressed and secretly thought Sophie's parents probably had a point.

‘Common means vulgar, downmarket, naff, grotty,' he informed Lucy, thinking with sad disloyalty, please God don't let her get this job. As he pulled up outside the casting studio, he regretted his plea. Worse would be the rejection she'd feel if she
didn't
get it. Either way, he thought as the three of them went inside to
find Angela, Lucy's agent from Little Cherubs, Lucy shouldn't have to be going through it at her age, however much she claimed it was her choice.

Once through the hall door, the worst of Joe's fears were confirmed. Inside the rather shabby building, the air was stifling with hair spray. Lucy's loosely waved hair was of restrained subtlety compared with the flamboyant full-scale perms of some of the contenders. One poor girl with waist-length black ringlets, Joe calculated, must have spent several days having her hair ragged and curled. He was the only father, the only man apart from a couple of twittering young ones who he presumed were doing the model-selecting and who looked at the assembled dozen children as if they were loose tigers. The mothers, smartly supporting but cleverly not outshining their daughters, were mostly turned out in neat pastel sweaters or a forgettable background of navy blue. The hall, by contrast was almost dismally dingy, with peeling green paint like an early family planning clinic, and a dusty old grand piano half-covered by a crocheted blanket in a depressing shade of musty yellow. The high, paint-flaked windows were blurred with filth and there was a faint underlying smell of stale beer; Joe guessed the place was probably mostly used for theatrical rehearsals. So much for the glamour industries, he thought, looking round at the fussing mamas and their pretty poodle-daughters. ‘Christ, it's like bloody Crufts in here,' he said. When running music to film for ads that featured children, he'd never considered this meat market aspect to casting. Those bright confident little faces plugging the cereal or crisps gave no hint of the horrors of mass casting.

‘Lucy, darling. Over here and let me have a look at you. Got your book? Good. A touch of blusher here and
here I think . . .' Angela, a vast woman in billowing purple, bustled up and gave Lucy a fast and professional up-and-down appraisal, ignoring Joe completely. She glared suspiciously at Sophie, who was looking bored and chewing a grubby nail and said, ‘And who is this?'

‘Sophie, my friend. She's only here because she's coming home with me after,' Lucy explained. With undisguised hostility, Angela stared at the child who, compared to the others present, looked as if she'd been sleeping rough and never seen a comb.

‘Yes well, little girl, you just sit here out of the way with Lucy's daddy; and you'll be nice and quiet, won't you?' Angela ordered. Joe grinned at her, feeling a comfortable conspiracy with the scruffy, unimpressed child. Sophie's navy blue school sweatshirt had a big streak of misrouted lunch down the front of it and the knees of her corduroy trousers were baggy and ingrained with mud. Behind her was a girl in a pink and gold Versace T-shirt who would probably faint if she spilt so much as a drop of water down herself. Beside her, a curly redhead was idly picking at a leftover chickenpox scab on her bare midriff. Lucy was led away to line up next to a child in orange frilled socks, a pair of lime green cycling shorts and a yellow baseball cap. Her face, contrasting with her winter-pallid limbs, was coated with exuberant tan make-up.

‘Getting into character, I think that's called,' Joe said to Sophie as together they looked at the child in amazement. One by one the girls were called behind a vast white screen where test shots of them playing with a beach-ball were taken. Each of them stepped forward confidently as she heard her name, fixing a beaming, well-trained smile as she went. Joe and Sophie could see shadows of the children on the
screen, see lightning flashes as the photos were done. Bored, Joe took out his paper and started doing the crossword. Sophie, disobeying Angela's strict request, got up and wandered about. Joe glanced up but didn't call her back; after all, there was no trouble to be got into there, the place was beyond damage . . .

‘I
hate
you, Sophie!' Joe was jolted out of an elusive anagram by the sound of his daughter shrieking. ‘You're not even supposed to be here!' There followed the unmistakable sound of fist connecting with face, followed by a howl and a scuffle. On the big white screen, like a very early movie, shadow play of a pair of girls, one lashing out, one defending herself, could be clearly seen. ‘Oh God,' Joe groaned, ‘A cat-fight.'

‘Out! Out at
once
!' Angela came looming from behind the screen, hurling out a furious Lucy, her curled hair flying madly and her eyes full of jealous tears. Her face was red-streaked and ugly with anger. Aghast would-be models and their fond mothers stared. Smugly, the mothers claimed the hands of their well-behaved darlings and drew them protectively close, away from the tantrum.

‘I've never seen such behaviour!' Angela began, taking in Joe with her accusation.

Joe looked at her in amused disbelief. ‘In this business? You must have!' he said, ‘What's up Lucy, broken a nail?'

‘Sophie! They've picked
Sophie
!'

Joe, fighting a disloyal is-that-all, felt sorrowful sympathy for the distraught Lucy. ‘After what her parents said about modelling?' he said, then addressed Angela: ‘“Common, naff and vulgar”, weren't they the words?' Angela, hands on hips, looked outraged. ‘And Sophie doesn't even have an agent to pay, does she?' Joe couldn't resist taunting her.

‘She'll need one,' Angela replied.

‘No child of nine needs an agent. They need their childhood. Now wrap up things with Sophie and let me get these girls out of this place,' Joe said, hugging Lucy and feeling quite desperate to get her back home, to toast, Ribena, normality and Australian TV soaps.

Joe wasn't even trying to take it seriously. Nina could see quite easily that the only thing he was trying to do was keep a straight face. Megan, all flowing gentle silk and the calm smiles of the beatifically pregnant, was trying to make sense of what Sophie was telling her in the Malones' kitchen.

‘They want
you
to be a model? You mean
posing
for a
catalogue
?' Her nose wrinkled in amused disgust. Sophie shoved her hands deep into her pockets and put on a don't-care face. Lucy marched to the fridge, noisily took out a can of Coke and sat at the table to drink it, pointedly offering nothing to her former friend.

‘Lucy . . .' Nina warned. Lucy pretended she hadn't heard and continued drinking. Nina decided she could be dealt with later, and firmly. That made two of them to be cross with: Emily hadn't even come in from school yet, and it was after five. She'd probably claim she'd been revising in the library, pretending she'd completely forgotten she was supposed to be doing the supper.

Megan continued to look prettily puzzled, overdoing it, Nina rather thought, seeing as the situation wasn't that difficult to understand. What she was doing was acting the epitome of middle-class flummoxed, when faced with something that was tainted by possible vulgarity. In Megan's mind, Sophie was clearly only one
white high-heeled step away from posing topless in a tabloid newspaper.

‘I think they're getting about a thousand pounds each for this one,' Nina threw in mischievously, risking a glance at Joe. He winked back at her, understanding.

‘
Really
? Heavens!' Megan seemed to have got the hang of that bit fast enough. ‘Well Sophie, let's get you home and after supper maybe we'll see what Daddy says.' She turned to Joe and treated him to her biggest smile and her radiantly shining azure eyes. ‘Thanks so much for collecting her from school. I'm sorry she's caused so much trouble.' Megan looked nervously at Lucy, and then back to the glowing beginnings of a good-sized bruise on Sophie's left cheekbone. ‘Girls can really surprise you sometimes, can't they?'