Having It All (62 page)

‘Speaking of girls, your next-door neighbour is popping back in a mo. She’s got something to ask you.’

‘Ah. She and Angelo probably want me to water the cat or something.’

‘Are they going away?’

‘They’re
always
going away.’ Her neighbours, Viv and Angelo, shared the disconcerting energy of the prosperous early retired. They were both over sixty but had
arrested their image at about twenty-six. Viv had the look of the young Mary Quant, all miniskirts, sharp bob, and big necklaces. Angelo had well-cut grey hair, almost shoulder-length, and was
given to wearing hoodies in pale apricot. They drove around in an open-topped Mini with loud Sixties music blaring. If there was a line between eternally youthful and weird and creepy, they were
just the right side of it. Though, looking at them, Ella sometimes wondered if anyone admitted to their age any more.

It was a constant source of surprise to Ella that Viv and Angelo also had an allotment. And this, it transpired, was the source of the favour Viv wanted to ask when she rang the doorbell half an
hour later.

‘Sorry it’s so late. Cory said you’d be back. It’s just that we’re off at the crack of dawn. And I just wondered, Ella love, if you could cast an occasional eye
over the allotment for us. Once a week will do, twice at the most.’

‘How long are you away for?’

‘Only three weeks. Diving in the Isla Mujeres.’

‘Where on earth is that?’

‘Mexico, I think. Angelo booked it.’ Viv and Angelo went on so many holidays even they lost count. Their pastimes always made Ella feel slightly exhausted. Paragliding, hill walking,
white-water rafting, cycling round vineyards – there was no end to activities for the fit and adventurous well-heeled retiree.

‘And what would I have to do?’

‘Just keep it looking tidyish. The allotment police are a nightmare. Keep threatening to banish anyone who doesn’t keep their plot looking like Kew Gardens.’

‘There aren’t really allotment police, are there?’ Cory demanded.

‘No,’ Viv admitted. ‘That’s what we call the committee. They used to be old boys in braces and straw hats. Now Angelo suspects they’re all LGBT.’

‘What is LGBT?’ Ella asked.

‘Mu-um!’ Cory corrected, looking mock-offended. ‘Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender.’

‘Good Heavens!’ Ella didn’t often feel old but she did now. ‘Well, that’s pretty comprehensive.’ In fact it probably said more about Angelo than the allotment
holders.

‘You just need to do a bit of deadheading, sweep the leaves, look busy. We’re always being reminded of what a long waiting list there is – of far more deserving people than we
are. Here’s the key.’

Viv kissed her three times. ‘Oh, and by the way, we’ve had a burglar alarm fitted next door. Angelo insisted.’ She handed Ella a piece of paper. ‘Here’s the code if
it goes off. You’ve got our keys anyway, haven’t you?’

‘Yes,’ agreed Ella, beginning to feel like an unpaid concierge.

Viv was already down the garden path. ‘Off at six. Angelo hates wasting a whole day travelling so we have to get the first flight out.’

‘You have to admit,’ marvelled Cory, ‘they’ve got a lot of get up and go for oldies.’

‘Too bloody much, if you ask me. They’re trying to prove there’s nothing they’re too old for.’

Ella double-locked the door and dragged the bolt across, then began drawing the heavy silk curtains, undoing the fringed tiebacks with their gold gesso moulding. This was a job she especially
liked. The old house with its wooden floors and oak panelling always seemed to emanate a sigh of satisfaction and embrace the peacefulness of night-time.

‘You know, Mum,’ Cory’s thoughts broke in, ‘you really ought to do the same.’

‘What? Deep-sea diving? Or paragliding?’

Cory smiled ruefully, laughing at the unlikely idea of Ella throwing herself out of anything. ‘Get a burglar alarm.’

‘I hate burglar alarms,’ Ella replied. She almost added: ‘You can’t forestall the unexpected, look at what happened to Dad’, but it would have been too cruel.
‘You’re beginning to sound like your big sister Julia. Come on, time for bed. Do you want a hottie?’

Cory shook her head. ‘I think I’ll stay up and watch telly for a bit.’

Ella went down to the basement kitchen and made tea, thinking of Laurence. It was the little habits that she missed most, the comforting routines that knit together your couple-dom. And here she
was still doing it without him. Now all she had to look forward to was babysitting her neighbours’ allotment while they swanned off living the life of people thirty years younger. Except that
people who were actually thirty years younger couldn’t afford to do it.

Ella turned off the light, listening for a moment to the big old house’s silence. It had been a wreck when they’d bought it, with a tree growing in the waterlogged basement. She had
coaxed the house back to life with love and devotion, steeping herself in the history of the period, studying the other houses in the square so that theirs would be just as lovely.

‘Good night, house,’ she whispered so that Cory didn’t think she’d finally lost it. ‘We’re all each other has these days. Too much to hope anything exciting
is going to happen to me.’

She shook herself metaphorically as she went upstairs to bed. She’d tried so hard to resist self-pity during the dark days after Laurence’s death, she was damned if she was going to
give in to it now.

Sal stood in the wastes of Eagleton Road hoping a taxi would come past. She shouldn’t get a cab, she knew. It was unnecessary and not even something she could charge to
expenses, as one could in the heyday of magazines, when staff just charged everything they liked and The Great Provider, aka
Euston Magazine
, paid up without a whimper. Now the publishing
landscape was getting as bleak as Siberia.

Sal began walking desultorily towards the tube station, playing one of her favourite games which decreed that if a cab went past before she got there, fate intended her to jump into it, and who
could argue with fate? Sal realized she was stacking the odds by walking particularly slowly in her unsuitable high heels. The thing was, these shoes were made for taxi travel and no one,
especially their designer, had envisaged a customer schlepping down the uneven pavement of Eagleton Road.

Fate was on her side and a lone cab hove into view with its light on.

Sal hailed it with all the joy and relief of a refugee getting the last berth on a transport ship out of some war-torn hotspot.

‘Middlebridge Crescent, please.’ They headed off for the rather sleazy enclave in North Kensington, on the borders of upmarket Notting Hill Gate, where Sal had managed to find an
unfurnished flat thirty years ago, settling for four somewhat uninviting rooms in an unappealing road in exchange for the nearness of its glamorous big sister.

The truth was, although Sal gave every appearance of being the career woman on top of life, there were aspects of living she was hopeless at: mortgages, pensions, savings plans. None of these
had ever caught her imagination like sample sales, freebies to exotic spas, London Fashion Week – these were what made Sal’s heart beat faster.

She paid the cab driver, and was touched that he waited till she had safely descended the steps to her front door, in case any marauding mugger should be concealed there. ‘Goodnight,
miss,’ he called, although he knew and she knew that this description, though technically true, was an entirely generous gesture.

‘Good night,’ she responded, opening her grey-painted front door. Funny how grey front doors had suddenly become
de rigueur
on brick-fronted houses, and any other colour
suddenly seemed strange and somehow wrong. That was how fashion worked, of course. Grey wasn’t simply the new black, as far as front doors went; it was the new red, green and blue.

She shivered as she turned her key, grateful for the warm embrace of central heating, which might not be as enticing as a waiting lover, but was a lot cheaper to run and far less
temperamental.

October already. Incredible. She smiled at the memory of the photograph of the four of them and then recoiled at the thought of how many years ago it was. She had never imagined that here she
would be, more than forty years later, living alone, paying her way, dependent for her standard of living on the whim of Maurice Euston and his daughter Marian, who had just been elevated to
Managing Director.

It struck her as she sat down on her aubergine velvet sofa and shucked off her agonizing heels that the all-important Christmas issue would be out by the end of the month. Of course, the whole
thing had been put to bed months ago. All those children simpering round the Christmas tree in cute pyjamas had actually been sweating in a heat-wave. All the same, she – Sal – still
believed in the fantasy. It didn’t matter if they had to cheat a little to make the fantasy work. She had never felt cynical and bored, never wanted to shout: ‘Oh for God’s sake,
I’ve heard that idea four hundred times before!’ at some hapless young journalist.

Sal loved magazines. When she was growing up on her Carlisle council estate, she hadn’t been able to afford them and had devoured as many as she could at the hairdresser when her mum had
her Tuesday afternoon cheap-rate shampoo and set. They remained a gorgeous parcel of me-time. Gift wrapped with glossiness and sprinkled with celebrity stardust, they brought pleasure to millions.
Well, maybe not quite millions, that was half the problem, but thousands anyway. To Sal, a magazine was still something you held in your hand, savouring the thrill of flicking through the first
pages, not something you summoned on your iPad or furtively consulted online during your lunch break. She knew you had to keep up, though, and had worked hard to make sure these options were there,
and as inviting as any offered by
Modern Style
’s rivals.

Sal made herself a cup of green tea. She mustn’t let the magazine take up her entire waking life. She was no workaholic. She had other interests and passions.

Didn’t she?

Laura parked in the driveway of her solid suburban house. She had been careful only to have two small glasses so that she would be below the limit. Laura preferred driving to
taking the bus or tube. Somehow it meant she didn’t have to leave the protective cocoon of home, and that was how she liked it. You could argue that the tube was more interesting. All those
different nationalities. People reading books, e-readers, free newspapers, playing games on their phones. And the fashions. She liked seeing all the ways young women put their clothes together. But
there were also beggars, stringing you some story, the noisy drunks talking out loud to themselves, and the exhausted, worn-out workers who made Laura feel faintly guilty about her easy life.

Tonight, though she knew it was awful, she also felt slightly smug. It was amazing that, out of the four of them, she was the only one who was truly happy with her life. Ella had had that
tragedy, so utterly unfair, out of the blue like that; Sal never thought about anyone but Sal, which was why she’d ended up on her own; and Claudia had been married a long time, but she was
always moaning about Don’s head being in the clouds, and they never seemed to be soulmates. Not like she and Simon were.

It was an object of pride to Laura that Simon loved her and his home as much as he did, that they were perfectly happy in each other’s company. Of course she loved her friends, but Simon
came first.

And she knew he felt the same about her. In fact, the only source of friction between them was their children. When Bella had become a Goth, Simon was appalled. Laura, on the other hand, rather
admired her for it. She knew that she herself was a boringly conservative dresser and partly blamed this for Bella needing to express her individuality by clothing herself like the heroine of a
Hammer horror film in a silk top hat, veil and Victorian riding gear. When Bella had dyed her silky blonde hair inky black, Simon had almost cried.

And she knew that their son, Sam, quiet, heavy-metal loving Sam, who loathed all sports, was a disappointment to Simon too. Simon had been so thrilled at having a son that he had plonked him in
front of the TV for
Match of the Day
from the moment he was born. And the only result had been that Sam hated football until he was at least twelve.

Even though it could be stressful at times, Laura was still grateful that both her children lived at home. Home and family were the same thing in her book. And, Laura had to admit, their
children were especially precious after all the fertility problems they’d had. There had been times when Laura had almost given up. Simon had argued the whole thing was taking too much of a
toll on her, though she’d felt that he was referring to himself. He had hated all the rollercoaster of hope and disappointment of assisted conception even more than she had. And then,
finally, at forty, to find that she was pregnant with Bella! She would never forget that positive pregnancy test as long as she lived. And to make their world complete, Sam had come along two years
later.

Ever since their arrival, she had wanted to be here for them, not out at work, but providing a safe and happy environment. She relished being home when they came back from school and shouted,
‘Hi, Mum, I’m back.’

Still hugging herself at how much she loved them she went up to bed. The sight of her bedroom always made her happy. It was so exactly what she’d wanted. Soft carpets, crisp white linen,
roses in a vase. The air in the room was cold since Simon, the product of boarding school, liked the window wide open. It was one of the few things besides the children that they argued about.
Fortunately, he slept like a corpse so she could get away with closing it as soon as he nodded off. If she remembered, she would guiltily open it a few inches in the morning before he woke.

As she slipped into bed he murmured and turned. She thought perhaps he was feeling amorous and experienced a wave of guilt as he shifted back to the wall, eyes closed.

The sheets had been clean this morning, which always gave her a dilemma. There was something seductive about clean sheets, but, equally, did one want to spoil them with the messiness of making
love? Not that they had much of that these days. Simon seemed perfectly affectionate yet rarely pushed for sex. Laura had even wondered about Viagra.