Every Good Girl (24 page)

Emily shivered outside the mansion block and looked up at the few lighted windows. It was nearly midnight. She checked the piece of paper, squinted at her reflection in the glass door and rang the bell marked 34.

‘I don't expect you to come straight home and have sex with me, so please feel free to relax.' Mick handed Nina a large freezing glass of vodka and tonic and smiled at her.

‘I'm relaxed enough. I give my own expectations priority over yours, so please don't worry about me,' Nina said primly.

Mick laughed. ‘If I knew what the hell you were talking about, I'd probably say “OK yeah, fine”,' he teased.
‘Either way, I guess I'm being put in my place, so I apologize for mentioning the “s” word. Can we start again?'

Nina laughed, he looked so contrite. He also looked rather uncomfortable, squashed into a small frilled chintzy armchair with not enough room for his legs in front of the gilt and glass low table in the Athenaeum hotel bar. He reached across and picked up the dainty pink bowl of cashew nuts. ‘God that restaurant, not enough food to fill a cat. Are you still hungry? Do you fancy a sandwich?' Mick looked around for the waiter, who handed him a menu of bar snacks. ‘How about a round of smoked salmon? I could murder it.'

‘Actually I ate loads. My first-course companion was the one who passed out, and believe it or not at that point he had plenty to say – I think I could, under hypnosis, even tell you the name of her lawyer and their children's birthdays.'

‘Yeah, I know. It's terrible how some people never get over it. Still at least the poor guy was trying, making an effort to get out. For every one like him there's a hundred sitting lonely in a grotty bedsit eating beans out of the can and flicking through the wedding photos. Believe me, I've been there.'

‘I always thought men who were halfway presentable were snapped up by lone women the minute they'd assembled a laundry bag full of dirty underwear.'

Mick pulled a face and chuckled. ‘You've got to be joking. If a man even looks as if he doesn't know one end of an ironing board from another these days, most self-respecting women run a mile. They've usually just escaped from all that.' The waiter brought a vast silver platter piled with smoked salmon sandwiches. Mick
picked up one in each hand, clearly as starving as he'd claimed to be.

‘I've got a brother who's never so much as plugged in an iron,' Nina told him. She picked up a piece of watercress and chewed on it, savouring the hard metallic taste.

Mick guffawed, ‘What? Well in that case he's either sending laundry out or he's still living with his doting mum. Which is it? Can't be the mum though, not really.'

‘It is, actually. They seem to like it that way. She looks after him in exactly the same way she has since he was a small boy, and he lives there still sleeping in his childhood room, going to the pub now and then and still having plane-spotting for a hobby.' She felt disloyal suddenly, and wished she hadn't said any of this. It was private, it wasn't even any of her business, let alone his. Mick was a stranger though, never likely to be seen again, so as in a confessional it felt safe to say it all. What Paul had said about criminal psychological profiles still rankled in her mind. I'm just testing, she concluded, picking up a sandwich that she didn't really want, just probing at more and more of this stuff to see if Mick will come out with something like Paul's opinion.

‘I bet she wouldn't have let
you
stay home and be pampered like that,' he commented. ‘I expect you were brought up to go out and do all that for some husband.' He looked at her admiringly. ‘Lucky old him, if you don't mind me saying, you don't get many wives like that to the pound these days. Where is he now? How did he let you get away?'

Nina's laugh sounded brittle even to her own ears. ‘He's worshipping at the feet of some young blond gorgeous thing who thinks the only place for a kitchen
is at the back of a restaurant. No seriously, I never did go in for the cossetting and skivvying that Mum does for Graham. I think I had some kind of allergic reaction to it. If I ever lived with the kind of man who actually asked “Have I got a clean shirt?” I'd probably strangle him.'

Mick sighed, ‘The first woman I married wouldn't even let me into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. Hand and foot she waited on me till I felt like a helpless baby. Then one day she got radical and went off to live with another plumber. A female one this time. You can't believe how liberating it was for someone like me, filling my own fridge.' He hesitated for a moment then added, ‘Lonely though. All those meals are always for one.'

‘Whichever way you look at it, it seems none of us can get it quite right,' Nina sympathized.

‘Too right,' Mick agreed. He raised his glass: ‘Here's to muddling through!'

‘I've got to be home by midnight. There's a friend of Mother's from the bridge club in babysitting,' Graham told Jennifer. He couldn't be late, he'd said he was going owl-watching again and Mother had given him a look. Jennifer glanced at her watch and pursed her lips, calculating. ‘Doesn't give us much time, not if you don't want to turn into a pumpkin. Perhaps we should make a move – it's nearly closing time anyway.' She was already out of her seat, collecting her handbag from under the table.

The pub was full of raucous groups of men who seemed to be celebrating a late season football win. Graham, this year, couldn't even remember who was going to be in the Cup Final, hadn't felt involved in reality enough to take any notice, not since Mother's
accident and Jennifer. For all he knew, Accrington Stanley could be back in the league and up for transfer to the premier division. He picked up his jacket from the back of the chair and put it on, carefully holding onto his shirt cuff so it didn't get rucked up inside his sleeve. ‘Where are we off to then?' he asked Jennifer. ‘Do you want me to run you straight home or do you fancy a stroll by the river?'

She was giving him a very odd look. When Mother looked at him like that he had to spend a good few minutes working out what he'd done wrong. Usually she told him before he'd decided.

Jennifer didn't say anything, but took his arm and walked him out into the cool night air.

‘We'll go back to mine,' she told him. ‘We've got nearly an hour. That should be enough.' She was smiling, her eyes looking as if there was a secret. Graham blushed, thinking of her breasts again bursting though her uniform overall. He hadn't had a lot to do with sex, but that didn't mean he spent less time than anyone else thinking about it. Lads at work would be winking and nudging now if they could see the look in Jennifer's eye. They'd be leering and yelling that he was in there, was on a promise. They made it feel like a dirty thing, but then that was the strange thing about sex: it was no fun if it wasn't.

Graham fumbled with the car keys and they clambered into the Fiesta. It smelt of Murraymints. His hands were clammy on the steering wheel and he looked at Jennifer's legs as she arranged herself on the seat beside him. Stretched inside their shiny black tights her knees were round and soft and gleaming pale through the nylon. Most men took this for granted, had wives and girlfriends they could feel like this with whenever they wanted. He wondered, for the first
time, what it would be like to have a woman who was
not
his mother to come home to every day, to share a home and feel comfortable and snug with. Would there still be the thrill of the sinful about sex, of something that was not allowed? Or would it become just another thing you did, a hobby like plane-spotting or something dull and day to day like eating or even going to the bog?

Jennifer lived on the second floor of a block of flats on Nina's side of the Common but in a street where the shops were battened down under metal awnings after closing. No-one was around, just a skinny dark cat running across the road and sliding under a broken garage door and the sound of a large dog barking nearby.

‘No lift I'm afraid. Let's just hope the stairs don't wear us out,' Jennifer said, unlocking the main door. Inside, the stairs smelt of disinfectant as if someone at least made an effort. ‘It's a bit small but it's all my own, which is nice,' Jennifer told him. ‘Though I wouldn't mind moving on if I got the chance. Round here you need three locks on the door.'

Graham wondered what he was supposed to say. He sympathized about the need for security. He and Mother had window locks; he assumed everyone had. At least Jennifer wasn't on the ground floor where prowlers could look in through her bedroom window while she dressed, or worse, watch her sleeping and she'd never know. He sat awkwardly on the small grey corduroy sofa, watching Jennifer fussing over coffee through the kitchen door. He wondered what she looked like asleep, wondered if he'd ever have the chance to be there in the morning when she woke instead of what he could tell he was going to be doing tonight, dressing in the dark while she dozed, creeping
home, and sneaking back to his own room to take his clothes off all over again.

‘You could come for tea. Meet Mother,' he found himself saying.

Jennifer appeared at the kitchen door, two mugs of coffee steaming in her hands. Her face was split by a beaming smile. It was just as if he'd given her a present.

‘I'd like that,' she said. ‘I could bring a cake, that is if your mother wouldn't feel affronted. Some people do, in their own homes.'

‘I'm sure she wouldn't. Not if it was a chocolate and walnut one anyway.'

Jennifer hesitated with the coffee, looking at a door beside the bookshelves. ‘We'll take this through there then, shall we?' she said, a small nod indicating that Graham should open the door. He stood up. He didn't know if it was the cake, or the invitation or what was going to happen on the other side of the door, but he felt that something important was settled.

‘You're freezing! What are you doing out on the streets at this time?'

Did he need to ask, Emily thought angrily. Did he want her to spell it out?

‘Have you had a row with Catherine and stormed out?' Simon grinned at her, leading her through a large curved doorway into his room. The walls were painted deep pink – Vulva Pink, she found herself thinking. A giggle burbled in her throat as she thought of it on one of her mother's hand-made top of the range bloody fancy paint charts, labelled exactly that. It could be darker than Foreskin and lighter than Nipple.

‘What's so funny?' Simon asked. ‘She hasn't thrown you out has she?'

‘No. Anyway how could she? It's Dad's flat, not hers,' Emily said, resorting to stroppiness to cover embarrassment. What
was
she doing there? Or at least what was she doing there that might sound convincing. She'd assumed it would all be extremely easy, that he'd know the script. Also, according to Chapter 6 of
Man-Date
, she was doing this all wrong. She shouldn't be throwing herself at him, but waiting for
him
to throw himself at
her
. She should be tantalizing him with cool distance – carefully being the first one to end phone calls, refusing dates that didn't involve vast cash outlay. Unreal.

She perched neatly on a saggy purple sofa and scuffed her feet on the stained maroon carpet. A previous owner must have had a leaky dog, she thought, looking at the series of smudgy stains. Or maybe Simon just had lots of wild parties.

‘You said I could come. Soon as I like, you said,' she told him, her voice full of accusation, looking up at him and trying to seem bold and sure of herself. It seemed a better option than looking demure and vulnerable (as per Chapter 1). He sat sprawled in a cane armchair inspecting her. He looked amused, as if she was a funny little flown-in creature that he didn't quite know what to do with.

‘Perhaps I'd better go.' She stood up and shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans. ‘It wasn't a good idea.'

‘Oh I don't know,' Simon said quietly. He offered her a cigarette. She took it and sat down again, looking at it carefully before putting it to her lips, not trusting herself to put the right end into her mouth. He leaned across with his lighter and put his hand to her hair as he came close with the flame. She felt the pressure of his hand on her ear. It was just a hand, she told herself,
just a male hand no different from Nick's except Nick's would be inside her bra by now. His mouth was now beside his hand, close to her neck and breathing gently on her skin.

‘Come to bed,' he said, then he sat back and smiled at her. ‘After all, it's late.'

‘Is Nina coming today? What time is she coming?'

Monica sat at the kitchen table turning the pages of her newspaper too quickly to be able to read anything properly. Graham put the shoe-cleaning box back in the cupboard under the sink and looked up at her. She'd asked two questions. The second one implied that she already knew the answer to the first one. But if so, why did she ask it? He wondered if she was losing her mind a bit. How much, was the big question, and how quickly. Perhaps she wasn't losing it at all, but was just too impatient to listen properly. That would be like her. He hoped, deeply hoped it was that. She'd never been patient, never seen the point of waiting for the green man to show at traffic lights before crossing the road.

‘Look at that,' she'd say, watching some careful soul obediently hovering on the pavement edge, staring at empty streets, just because the pedestrian light hadn't changed from red. ‘You'd think people could use their own common sense at a road junction.' He'd always liked her busy spirit. She was a woman who got things done. Got things done for him, of course, come to think of it. Got his food cooked, his laundry done, his life smoothed out. That couldn't be denied.

‘I wanted her to take me to Sainsbury's,' Monica said. There was a small, new whine to her voice, as if she more than half expected Nina and the whole world
to let her down. The note had been there ever since she came out of the hospital, the tone of a woman who assumes she'll be disappointed.