Home Truths (19 page)

‘You have me,’ Ben said, tufting life into the flatness of her hair, ‘and for me, You're just what this doctor ordered.’

Ben could not reach Cat on her mobile phone the next day and it unnerved him. He had considered going in late but there was a departmental meeting he could not miss. She'd assured him she felt fine, that She'd slept well, that she felt much better than she had the previous day. He'd studied her face carefully. Pale but not drawn; her eyes dull but not so desperate now; She'd washed her hair and styled it.

‘I'll be fine,’ she told him. ‘I'm going to fanny around the flat for a bit, do some ironing then go through the jobs in yesterday's
Guardian
.’

‘I'll phone you later,’ he'd told her, with a glance at his watch and a tender kiss.

And he had been trying to. But her phone was off. Now he wasn't sure what to do. Nip home during his lunch-hour? Not practical, as the afternoon surgery was always a busy one. Phone her sisters? He didn't think She'd thank him for that, at the moment, though he felt they would. He tried both phones again and left messages on each. Over lunch by himself in the canteen, he wondered if Cat had found much demand for sports journalists in the job pages of yesterday's
Guardian.

Ben tried her phone a final time, five minutes before his afternoon appointments were due to commence. She answered. Thank Christ.

‘Hi, just me,’ he said, feigning a casual tone.

‘Oh. Hi.’ She sounded odd.

‘You OK, babe? I've been trying all morning.’

‘I'm fine. I can't really talk right now.’

Was she whispering? Why was she whispering? Ben shook his phone. ‘Hullo? Where are you? Are you all right?’

‘I'm fine. I'm at work. I Don't know their policy on personal calls.’

‘At
work
? What work! Cat?’

‘I'll tell you when I see you tonight. I finish at 6.30. I'm fine. See you later.’

At
work
? Cat had a
job
? What sort of job? How could she find one and start there and then? What was she doing? This time last week he would have been delighted for her to have been so proactive and successful in finding a job. Instead, he worried that her haste was indicative of some state of denial. It was only forty-eight hours after meeting her mother and father for the first time.

Ben's secretary was buzzing through the first patient. Ben glanced at the notes. Ah yes, the male ballet dancer with the tendonitis. Later, between patients, Ben sent Cat a text message; hopeful that She'd be able to respond, whatever her employers' take on mobile phones.

job wot job? DrB x

The answer came an hour later.

Dovidels!

There are eighteen branches of Dovidels, up and down the country, comfortingly uniform in their classic bookshop interiors, a brave and stubborn reaction to the cavernous bookstores found in city centres and commercial parks. In design, Dovidels shops are bright and stylish; burgundy-coloured shelves edged in maple, limestone floors, leather armchairs and sofas. For Cat that day, it was the lure of such a chair and the opportunity to flick through a new Lance Armstrong biography in an amenable environment. Over an hour later, she was still there and the friendly manager who'd said hullo to her earlier now remarked in passing that there was a job going.

‘You look part of the furniture already,’ he added.

‘Have I outstayed my welcome?’ Cat worried.

‘Not at all,’ he said.

‘Are you serious about a job?’ she asked.

‘Yes. Do you love books?’

‘God yes,’ said Cat, ‘but I Don't have any experience – I was a journalist. A sports journalist.’

‘Hey – you wrote words, now sell them. Are you interested?’

‘I think I am. Yes. Yes I am.’

‘When can you start?’

‘Now?’

‘There speaks a Dovidels girl. Welcome.’

Kate and Max and Merry Martha

Over the time that Cat had spent analysing the roofscapes, making long-distance phone calls and finding herself a job, Fen and Pip had been trying to find their feet too, seeking a balance of their own amongst the debris of their family trauma. They've left messages for Cat by phone and text and they've been in touch with each other to say, Hullo, how are you feeling, what should we do. But the truth is, they Don't know how They're feeling or what they should or can do.

Like Cat, their initial and instinctive priority is to establish firm footing in their individual lives before they can tackle their wider roles as sisters, half sisters, nieces, daughters.

‘Fen, well
hullo
! We haven't seen you in ages! Come on in, come on in. Just wait until you see Max – he has four teeth and another two breaking!’

Previously, Fen had found Kate somewhat overpowering, her house a little intimidating and little Max rather annoying. Kate's life was all so fastidious, so impeccably ordered, so terribly grown-up. Kate's life, it seemed, barred tiredness, fretting and mess. The walls and floors, an elegant chorus
of ochre and taupe, were miraculously unscuffed and gunk-free. There must be rusks and rice cakes in places other than labelled Tupperware in the meticulously organized cupboards. Mashed into the rug, perhaps? Down the sides of the sofas, surely? Apparently not. Max's hand-crafted wooden toys were so tasteful and so amazingly unchewed. How could Kate's baby never be sticky? How had he managed to sleep through the night since ten weeks old? And have four teeth and another two breaking? How did Kate have a wardrobe free from stains and why did her hair always look so good? How on earth could a baby co-exist so happily with decorative pebbles placed on the side of the modernist fireplace?

Fen had been avoiding these mums-and-tots gatherings at Kate's because invariably she left feeling personally unkempt, grubby even, self-conscious about her surfeit of stained clothing and split ends. She also felt petulantly discomfited with her own home: shelves yet to be painted, cushion covers in need of a clean, gaudy plastic toys with tinny electronic jingles and indeterminate stickiness, beakers with mismatched lids, no ensuite utility room, an ooze of Johnson's baby shampoo treacherous on the bathroom floor. She tried to rationalize how, if Cosima was partial to the woodchips in the playground, what a meal She'd make of decorative pebbles at home. After gatherings at Kate's, Fen would return home convinced her organic food wasn't organic enough, her baby wasn't teething quickly enough and that somehow she as a mother wasn't doing anything quite well enough at all.

Fen didn't much connect with Kate, didn't care for her plasma TV, shared nothing in common with her birth story, was irritated by her success with broccoli and her smugness with Max's centile chart. But more than her hair, Fen envied Kate her composure; her ability to achieve so much with so little visible expenditure. How could Max have four teeth
and two breaking yet his mother have no dark circles around her eyes? How was it possible for Kate to prepare such successful dishes utilizing organic vegetables of every colour when there was no evidence of it daubed on her kitchen walls? How did Kate get so much enjoyment out of these banal gatherings when Fen left them feeling inadequate and insecure yet bizarrely envious? How was Kate able to be constantly so gracious? It made Fen feel all the more frazzled and fractious.

However, the day after Fen discovered Derek and met her mother, she made a beeline for Kate's and was the last to leave. Suddenly she found all the tasteful, neutral loveliness utterly soothing. She coveted Kate's walls and rugs and home cinema system, the shiny Lexus jeepy vehicle parked outside. Fen now felt slightly in awe of it all, as if here was a proper and conventional grown-up environment to which to aspire. She found herself far more conversant with the group than She'd ever been, happily imparting her recipe for carrot-and-sweet-potato fritters to a cheerily receptive audience. She made plans with Beth to take their babies to SplashyKins at the local swimming pool the next day and even suggested to the group at large that they all meet at the café in Highgate Woods the day after that. She asked Joanne for her hair-dresser's salon, she wrote out Susie's salmon pie recipe, she took down the number of Kate's decorators and made a note to phone Lexus for her nearest dealership.

Fen suddenly didn't mind that Cosima had fewer teeth than her contemporaries, nor was she remotely worried that her baby was happy to sit Buddha-like whilst the others were keenly attempting to crawl. Fen's overwhelming ambition, just then, was not to compete but to blend in, to fit the scene as evenly as Kate's walls ran from soft ochre to antique buff. To dull down elements of her sense of self in return for an environment of safety and belonging seemed no compromise
to Fen. It wasn't too dissimilar to her first days at university, when she chattered to anyone even if she sensed little in common, let alone any potential for lasting friendship. Just having company was the key. Thus she joined practically every university club, from Cycling to Cluedo, Wine Soc. to Winnie-the-Pooh Soc. – £1 for a sense of belonging was a small price to pay. It all helped to pass the time in a new world and made it seem not such a hostile place. Over a decade later, Fen found herself a new club out of necessity; Yummy-Mummy Soc. (London North branch), with daily activities to tag along to. Blend, blend until all is refreshingly bland.

Pip McCabe's career was an odd one. There is little true structure to being a clown. Children have birthdays but once a year and being married to a well-off accountant had enabled Pip to cut right back on her weekend work. Tuesdays and Thursdays she worked as Dr Pippity, her clown-doctor alter ego, a vastly different form of clowning for which she was rigorously trained to bring an alternative form of therapy to the children's wards at St Bea's hospital. During school holidays, Pip was rushed off her stripy, clodhopping feet, performing as Merry Martha in Golders Hill Park, on Parliament Hill, at Brent Cross shopping centre and the KidsKorners in theme-pub gardens.

Often on a Monday, She'd visit Fen, or spend hours on the phone nattering with Cat, since her return. However, the day after Pip met her mother, lost half a sister and discovered Django was called Derek, her appointments diary was frustratingly bare. It wasn't as though she had an agent she could phone to ask, ‘Any jobs going for today?’ But Pip had to get out of the house because thoughts were starting to lurk around her soul, badgering her mind and hurting her heart, and once they took hold, she feared they'd never let
go of her. Where better to hide than behind a slather of slap and motley.

So Pip undressed. She pinned back her hair with kirbygrips, laid out pots and palettes, sponges and brushes and slowly masked Pip McCabe from view. She pulled on a pair of lurid tights that She'd customized from two pairs – one leg green and sparkly, the other red and stripy. She put on a polka-dot ra-ra skirt and a lemon-yellow top bedecked with patches of orange material. She rejected the multi-coloured waistcoat because it was an old one of Django's and she did not feel like having him around her today. Finally she plaited her hair into pigtails so tight they stood out at right angles to her head as if She'd suffered a comedy electric shock or was the head of the Pippi Longstocking Appreciation Society. Before she left the house, she took the bucket from under the sink. She drove to Brent Cross shopping centre and spoke to management about loitering with intent to raise money for charity. They gave her the go-ahead, knowing her well.

Four hours later, Barnardo's was £193 richer. She took the loose change to the bank and sent the charity a cheque immediately. The next day she dressed as Dr Pippity and immersed herself into her ward rounds at St Bea's. The following day, Wednesday, she was back at Brent Cross as Merry Martha but raised a disappointing £109.56 for Barnardo's. She drove back to Hampstead, parked the car outside the flat and, still in full clown guise, walked up the High Street with her bucket of change. She queued at the bank before brandishing the bucket at the teller and being invited to take a seat whilst the money was counted.

It was a beautiful afternoon. Tom would be finishing school, just up the road, in an hour or so. But today was not a Dad and Pip day, it was a Mum and Rob day. So Merry Martha swung her bucket and headed off for a stroll
on the Heath. She decided to walk to Kite Hill, overlooking Parliament Hill fields, because the Kenwood side was out of bounds on account of it being the space she traditionally shared with her sisters.

Preschool children pointed at her, delighted, and she happily performed impromptu tricks and mimes much to their delight. Finding a bench, Pip sat. She turned her face to the sun and attempted to smile at its warmth, despite the risk of make-up meltdown. A cloud came and her face chilled. She opened her eyes and tried to see. She couldn't see the view. She could stare right into the mess of it all but was unable to deflect her gaze. Tears started to well caustically in her throat, impervious to any attempt to swallow them down. They squeezed themselves out of her eyes, resistant to frantic blinking and the digging of nails into the palms of the hand. Attempting to stem the impending flow only provoked her nose to clog with snot that impaired breathing and crackled audibly. Pip realized she could no longer break it all down into objective physiology. She'd just have to break down. Her throat was aching and her nose was running and her eyes were streaming because she was crying. She swiped at her wet cheeks and itched her nose vigorously against her arm. Then she buried her head in her hands before rubbing and rubbing her tired, hot eyes.

‘The clown is crying!’ Pip heard a child's delighted whisper.

‘It's all part of an act,’ Pip heard a parent explain. ‘It's called
miming
, darling.’

‘Does she have a red nose?’ the child continued. ‘I can't see – her hand is in the way.’

‘We'll have to wait and see,’ the parent enthused.

Oh shit
, thought Pip,
can't a clown sit in a public space and cry in private?

Of course not.

And then Pip thought,
Oh shit, when I look up, my slap
will be smudged to gruesome effect and will surely frighten the child.