Every Good Girl (21 page)

‘Henry, I'm sorry, all that hard work and I haven't even offered you a drink,' she said, getting up and heading for the fridge.

‘Oh
God
,' Emily declared angrily, hurled herself off the sofa and out of the door.

‘Now what have we done?' Henry asked, looking perplexed.

‘I've been nice to a man,' Nina said, by way of explanation.

‘Oh and that will never do,' he teased.

‘Not in Emily's book, not right now. Oh and I've
forgotten Lucy! She's over at Megan's. Look help yourself to a beer and I'll just dash across and fetch her. Won't be a sec.'

‘No, I won't stay actually,' Henry said, collecting up his brushes and stowing them upside down in a jam jar next to the sink. ‘I've got a hot date with a take-out, a video and a blonde. See you tomorrow?' He and Nina went out together through the back door, and parted at the front gate. Nina crossed the quiet road in which a black cat sat washing its back leg and waiting to cross someone's path for luck. ‘Come on puss, over here,' she called to it, but the cat didn't move, simply gave her a sly glance and went back to its cleaning.

‘Hi! Come in and see if you can find your daughter!' Megan greeted Nina. Behind Megan was a wall of sound and fury: gunfire, shrieking and squeals. ‘Well obviously the girls are on speaking terms again!' she said, following Megan through to her steel and white kitchen.

‘Shouting terms, more likely,' Megan yelled above the din. ‘They're being SAS heroes kidnapping some world-threatening monster. They've tied Sam to the banisters up on the landing but he doesn't seem to mind.'

‘They probably wouldn't care if he did,' Nina said. Paul, perched on a kitchen stool and leaning against the worktop, emerged from behind a large newspaper. It crossed her mind that if he could see into her kitchen, he might also be able to keep watch via her sitting room window and possibly even see into her bedroom. He slid off the stool and greeted Nina with a kiss on each cheek. ‘Hello Paul, how are you?' she said.

‘Fine. How is your mother? Lucy said she was due out of hospital today.'

Megan slid a glass of wine into Nina's hand.

‘She's fine. Well, so far. My brother lives with her so he'll be there to keep an eye on her.' Nina sat on a stool next to Paul and watched Megan chopping vegetables. She did it with surprising clumsiness, considering how neatly she moved and how delicately expressive her fingers were when she spoke. Large uneven slabs of carrot, hacked leeks and shredded celery piled up on the board beside her and were then hurled carelessly into a vast blue Le Creuset cauldron. Nina would be willing to bet though that something sumptuously appetizing would somehow be the result. It had to be, to match this perfect nuclear family. The Brocklehursts, attractive devoted parents, pair of pretty children and the blessing of the third pregnancy, were what Joe would call an advertiser's wet dream.

‘So he's not married then, your brother, or is he divorced or whatever?' Megan asked.

Nina laughed. ‘No! Graham's never got round to leaving home. Mother made him much too comfortable! I don't suppose he ever will now.' Paul and Megan exchanged glances, which Nina speedily interpreted.

‘I don't think he's gay, if that's what you're thinking. He's just not bothered either way,' she told them.

‘Oh come on, everyone's bothered, one way or another, surely!' Paul said. It's only natural. He must have some secret vices!'

Nina felt slightly aggrieved. It was none of their business. However had she got into talking about this? ‘Well he's happy enough, so what does it matter?' she sipped at the wine, but found it sour.

‘Classic sex crime profile,' Paul commented casually, leaning forward and looking as if he was only pretending to be serious.

‘What is, exactly?' Nina asked, daring him to spell it out.

‘Mother's boys. Men who've stayed too long tied to Mummy's apron strings. It's the first thing the police look for when there's a nasty murder. You know, you must have read it countless times,' he said simply, with a taunting grin.

‘Oh Paul, stop it! I'm sure Nina's brother is a perfectly nice man who just happens to prefer home cooking to living in a bedsit on beans and take-outs.' Megan attempted peacemaking.

‘Yes he is.' Nina put her glass down, appalled to find that her hand was trembling. ‘And I'm sure that when the police catch the man who's been molesting girls on the Common, they'll find he's a
perfectly nice
man with a saint of a wife and some perfectly ordinary children. Now, where is Lucy – I really must take her home.'

‘Are you sure you want to go? I'm sure Joe will understand if you'd rather just stay here.'

Nina pushed aside a pile of Emily's clothes (clean and awaiting drawer space, or overdue for the laundry basket?) and sat on her daughter's unmade bed. From beneath it, the sleeves of a grey jumper could be seen splayed across the floor like a murder victim. The air of chaos made Nina's fingers twitch with the urge to start sorting. Like a child told off for fidgeting she sat on her hands, determined not to pick up so much as one grubby garment. For that way lay the thwarting of a developing independence by heady parental control: Nina refused to be tempted to emulate her own mother, who was still fondly picking up, sorting and washing Graham's dropped socks.

Emily was selecting more clothes, some from a drawer and some tugged out of the piles, and shoving them into a pair of Sainsbury's carrier bags. She seemed to be covering all social possibilities: from a night of minimal dress in the gluey heat of a club to a freezing sulky walk along the wind-blitzed Thames. Late on Sunday night they would all be brought home and tipped carelessly out to join whichever heap seemed appropriate at the time and the bags would float softly across the floor, wafted by the breezes of Emily's to-and-fro presence until they graduated to becoming the overflow for her rubbish bin. In between
now and Sunday night the house would be agonizingly quiet, just the metallic click-click of Genghis's claws on the kitchen floor, his snuffling by the door, the spooky night-time whirring of the hamster's wheel.

Nina shivered. She wished she wasn't going out, wished she hadn't promised Sally. It wasn't the being out, or the lightly surfing chat with a table full of strangers that troubled her, nothing beyond the normal laziness that went with the effort of getting ready and actually getting to the restaurant; it was more the gloominess of coming back to a house that sounded of nothing and no-one.

‘I do want to go. I want to see Dad and it's somewhere else to be. And it's near really good shops,' Emily said. She hauled out the grey jumper and sniffed at it. ‘There's another day in this I think,' she decided cheerfully, cramming it into the bag on top of a pair of emerald green boots.

‘There, that's everything,' she said, picking up the bags and heading for the door. ‘Is Lucy ready? Can we go now?'

‘What's the big hurry?' Nina asked. It was on the tip of her careless tongue to add
It's only your dad
. Not so much of the ‘only', she reminded herself.

‘Oh I don't know, I'm just ready to go out. I've been in for ages, like some kind of invalid. Only I'm better now. Well nearly, I think.'

Nina followed her down the stairs. Lucy was waiting at the bottom, her little cat-face looking up at them anxiously. ‘If anyone from Little Cherubs rings, you will call and tell me won't you, Mum? Promise?'

‘Of course I will,' Nina told her. ‘Whyever wouldn't I?'

‘Whyever should they ring, you mean, after you beat up Sophie and screwed up your audition. I bet you're
off their books for good. I bet you're blacklisted, no-one employs troublemakers,' Emily taunted her sister. Lucy's eyes filled with tears. ‘You are such a cow, Em.'

‘Oh look don't start a fight now, not when you're off to spend the weekend with Joe. He doesn't need you two turning up in awful moods.'

Though why
not
, Nina thought as she picked up Lucy's bag and hauled it out of the front door and into the car boot. Why should he only get them on best behaviour terms? She made a quick wish that in his presence (and Catherine's, oh especially Catherine's) they should have at least one vicious (but quick) row and that they should absolutely not clean the bath after use. In addition, one of them should suddenly become vegetarian and the other might accidentally stumble heavily against the biggest shelf-load of the art deco elongated ladies. More cheerfully she went on, ‘I'm sure having the odd tantrum has never stopped most models from working. People have very short memories in that business, so don't worry. Though I think you could write Angela a note, apologizing. That would help – you should have done it days ago really. Tantrums are one thing, but there's no excuse for bad manners.'

Lucy brightened and leapt into the back of the car. ‘I'll do it at Dad's. On his computer.'

‘No, by hand. More personal and more as if you mean it,' Nina said.

Emily swung all her bags into the back of the car, clutching them in front of her as if scared all her precious possessions might be taken away at any moment. Nina looked in the rearview mirror and noted that none of the bags' bulges seemed to be book-shaped.

‘Homework, Em?' she suggested tentatively.

‘No chance. I've been doing nothing else for days. Give me a break,' Emily growled.

‘It's your life, your A-levels,' she conceded as she backed the Polo out of the drive.

‘Exactly.'

‘I'm not going to do any exams,' Lucy stated.

‘Oh yes, and how come?' Nina asked.

‘Hey, if
I
have to,
you
have to,' Emily growled.

‘Well I'll be so rich and so famous I won't need them,' Lucy said seriously.

‘Look, you're only
pretty
. It's no big deal. It doesn't get you that much in life. Only the more shallow and stupid of men,' Emily said with exasperation. ‘And you probably won't be pretty for that long, so what then?'

‘I'll marry a mega-rich movie star man. And then I still won't need exams.'

‘Give me strength,' Emily sighed. ‘Mum, where did you and Dad go wrong with her?'

Nina laughed. ‘Don't know. Lucy my love, you seem somehow to have absorbed some very dodgy values from a whole other age. I know, this weekend, tell all this to Catherine and see what she has to say about it. If she's going to keep living with Joe, maybe it's time she put in some effort towards the other aspects of his life. He doesn't come just as one lone person.'

‘You make us sound like heavy baggage,' Emily said quietly.

‘No, no you're not baggage, never that, but you are responsibility.' Joe knew all that, Nina thought as the car crawled through the Friday evening Fulham traffic. He'd never, not once, shown the slightest sign of
not
wanting to take his full share in caring for the girls. Not once in the past year had he said ‘No, not this weekend, I've got something on.' If he'd only been half as
good at husbanding as he was at fathering . . . A Fiesta cut in in front of her and she slammed her foot on the brake. ‘Bloody stupid sod!' she shouted, over-reacting furiously.

‘Chill, Mum,' Emily said, emerging from her doze against the back window.

‘It's OK, I was thinking of someone else,' Nina murmured.

‘So, what would you like to do this weekend? Any ideas?'

Catherine looked at the two girls as if they were strange exotic animals with dangerous habits. She stood awkwardly in front of them, close to the front door as if she might need to bolt off into the night, and her arms were wrapped round her body as if she didn't quite know what to do with her hands. Joe wasn't home yet; he'd phoned from a difficult recording session with apologies.

Catherine's shaky discomfort made Emily feel enormously happy. It was something to do with pecking order, as in who, exactly, counted as the guests in Joe's apartment. She was also pretty sure she hadn't been forgiven for the early morning phone call. She and Lucy, cruelly recognizing someone in victim mode, looked at each other, which was a mistake because it sent their faces into contortions of suppressed giggles.

‘We don't need to do anything special. We'll just hang out,' Emily told her, thumping across the polished ash floor and collapsing, with her bag-lady possessions around her, into the cream sofa. The cushions sighed gently as she settled deep into the seat and she smiled contentedly. This flat was very comfortable, very sleek, her friends would love it.

‘If you and Dad ever want to go away, you know, like
for a few days' romantic trip or something,' she said, a sweetly radiant smile, hinting at willingness to please, beaming from her face, ‘I could stay here with just my friend Chloe and look after the place for you. Keep the burglars out. It's so peaceful here, we could get on with some exam revision.'

‘Well that would be very . . . er, kind.'

‘Really, it's no problem!' Emily shrugged. Lucy giggled treacherously and Emily glared.

‘I think I'll go and unpack my stuff,' Lucy decided and Emily got up and followed her upstairs to the room they shared at the back of the studio balcony. Below them, Catherine was carefully rearranging the squashed cushions and brushing teenage dust off the fabric. Emily trailed her fingers along the back of the ancient grey leather sofa that used to live in Joe's studio back at home. Her nails traced the grooves where the cat's claws had wreaked damage.

‘I used to lie on this when Dad was working. I used to tell him which tunes I liked most and when I thought it was all rubbish,' she said.

‘I did too,' Lucy added. ‘It was me who told him which was the best sound for that advert where the car drives across the desert and straight up the mountain.
He
chose something that sounded
squishy
.'