I Should Be So Lucky (17 page)

The flat was stirring into life. She could hear muffled sounds from the kitchen TV and the whirr of the Magimix, which meant James was up and about. He was always first in the kitchen, needing a caffeine fix the moment he was up, and he also liked making her breakfast treats – smoothies, waffles, the kind of thing you would never get on a rushed school morning. Marco and James always said she had to think of their place as home, just as she did with Viola, but sometimes it felt like being at a luxury villa or a boutique hotel – or, at least, what she’d read about them in magazines. They were taking her to Ireland in a couple of weeks, for a holiday in a horse-drawn gypsy caravan. She was looking forward to it, but couldn’t help wondering how the two men would cope without their fantastic multi-way shower and their espresso machine.

Rachel, now wide awake and scenting coffee, had a quick shower and pulled on her denim shorts and a T-shirt. The sunlight through the blind slats told her the day was going to be a gorgeous one, and she wanted to be outside.

‘Hi, James!’ she greeted her father’s partner, who was now out on the terrace at the ironwork table with
The Guardian
and a dense-looking cup of coffee. ‘Shall I take Cyndi into the square?’ she asked. The little golden spaniel, guessing what she was saying, bounced to her feet from where she’d been lying under James’s chair.

‘Hello, darling, sleep well? And yes, please, do take Cyndi for a run around – if you don’t mind being on poo duty. They are
very
strict here and quite right too. Bags are under the sink. I’ve whizzed up pancakes for breakfast – fancy that?’

‘Yum! Ten minutes? I’ll take Cyndi’s ball – she loves that.’

The garden square was empty and so silent Rachel almost felt like tiptoeing around. The pink and yellow roses climbing the perimeter fences showed off their full-bloom glory only to her. No children were yet scrabbling about on the climbing frame or fighting over the swings. There was no litter, no discarded cans, no graffiti, no branches pulled from the trees like in the park and on the riverside at home after a hot summer night. Only the scent of an unseen somebody smoking nearby spoiled the perfect morning. Cyndi, excited at the space and freedom, bounded around on the grass, chasing the raggy old tennis ball Rachel threw for her, then finding a spot under a buddleia bush to deposit a neat pile of crap.

If Rachel was for a moment tempted to leave it where
it
lay, one look at the hundreds of windows surrounding the garden told her that there’d be sure to be someone who noticed her negligence. She took the plastic bag from her pocket and approached the heap, wrinkling her nose.

‘Aww, so who’s a good little schoolgirl then?’ A taunting voice came from a bench just beyond the bushes. Rachel straightened up, her bag of dog shit dangling from her fingers. She held it away from her body, conscious that it was still repellently warm. Terrific – just what any girl would choose. To come across the boy she’s been fancying when she’s carrying a bag of dog doo.

‘You can’t just leave it.’ She went across to the bench and sat beside him. Ned was in an old white T-shirt with a black and white Debbie Harry on the front, not wearing the tobacco-coloured cardigan he’d bought from her. This disappointed her, which was ridiculous, as who would want to wear wintry cashmere when it was already so hot out? His hair was all over the place and he looked as if he’d just got out of bed, which he probably had. She wondered about his room, whether it was an untidy heap of clothes, trainers and electronics or if he was a neat-nerd. She’d guess the first one.

‘I could,’ Ned said, flinging his cigarette end under the roses. ‘But then, me, I wouldn’t have a dog. I might in the country, not here.’

‘She’s my dad’s dog.’ She instantly felt a bit disloyal to lovely Cyndi. She sounded as if she were disowning her for the sake of agreeing with this boy. She threw the tennis ball and Cyndi sprinted off after it, tongue lolling and glossy golden fur rippling. He’d called her schoolgirl again, she noted, wondering if that was because he’d already forgotten her name. And only yesterday he’d been sort of asking her out. She slid the bag of dog poo under the bench. She had to deal with it, yes, and take it with her to put in the garden’s dog bin, but she didn’t have to be clutching it in her hand while they had a conversation.

‘So, Schooly,’ he said. ‘You live on this square too. Which house?’

‘Over there.’ She pointed. ‘And you?’

‘Back that way.’ He nodded vaguely in the direction of the far side, where the houses were on an even bigger scale. ‘Usual thing, folks, sister, baby sister,
people
.’ He shrugged as if disconnecting himself from his entire family.

‘So can you get in here from your own garden or do you have to go round to the gate?’ It was a totally lame question but she didn’t really know what else to say to him. Why didn’t sparkling conversation come instantly to her head? But it
was
very early in the morning.

‘Huh? Not sure what you mean …’

What was so hard to understand? For a moment she considered that he might be really a bit dense. Not good
and
potentially so disappointing. ‘I mean, my dad, he’s got the lower-level apartment with the garden, so …’

‘Oh it’s a
flat
?’ He looked rather confused, as if he’d
heard
of people who lived in apartments but had never actually met any. Perhaps he hadn’t. How exotic would he find Emmy, who lived in a council flat? ‘Right. No mine’s, like, you know, like a
house
. So yes, garden. Gate. All the usual.’

‘Nice.’ She took another look across the gardens, at where he’d indicated earlier. What was it Marco had said about that side with the massive, stupendously expensive houses? “Banker wankers” was the term he’d used, she was sure. Ned’s dad must be one. Or his mum. Probably both.

‘I don’t live here all the time,’ she said. ‘I live with my mum mostly.’

‘Hang around here long enough and you’ll get scouted for a model. Or has it happened already?’ He reached across and picked up a hank of her hair, twisting it up behind her neck in a knot. ‘You look OK. Nice legs. A camera would love you.’

She laughed. He’d forgotten her name, sure, but he was definitely flirting. ‘No, it hasn’t happened! Why would it? And anyway, I don’t want to be a model. I want to be a … oh, I don’t know, a doctor or a vet or something.’

‘A vet? That is, like,
so
gay!’ He was laughing at her. But what was so funny?

‘So “gay”?’ she challenged. ‘You can’t say that. It’s wrong to use it like that. Like it’s insulting.’

‘No, it’s not! Course it’s not. What’s your problem? It’s just
something you say
. Not an insult.’

‘I don’t say it. Not ever. Not everyone does! It’s … it’s
gayist
?’ She couldn’t think of the right word. Typical.

‘Gayist? What, like homophobian or wha’ever? But I’m so not!’

‘Well, don’t say it then!’ Whistling to Cyndi, who trotted up beside her, she got up from the bench and stalked off, back towards James and Marco’s flat.

‘Rachel!’ he called after her. She refused to look back in spite of an involuntary inner tingle that he had, after all, remembered her name. Hell, what would she be like if he ever actually kissed her? Not that she wanted him to now. Not ever, not after what he’d so carelessly said. She heard thumping footsteps coming after her.

‘Rachel?’ He stood in front of her, forcing her to stop. He looked into her eyes, his face so close to hers she could see all the tiny individual flecks of colour in his grey eyes.

‘You forgot this.’ He handed over the little plastic bag of Cyndi’s shit as tenderly as if it had been a bag of rare birds’ eggs.

‘Thank you,’ she said solemnly, taking it from him, then flounced past him and continued her walk of protest, trying to keep her head up and some dignity.
Not
easy when you’re carrying a bag of excrement and trying, in spite of stubbornly insisting on making your point, so damn hard not to laugh.

‘It looks like I owe you again, Greg. You keep rescuing me and I can’t thank you enough, but you don’t have to, you know. I was going to fix the window myself,
should
have done it myself, being a capable twenty-first century woman,’ Viola said to Greg later as he finished reattaching the window pane.

A sparkly look and the raised eyebrows told Viola that Greg wasn’t entirely convinced. Given her track record with him so far, it wasn’t really surprising.

‘But it was me who broke the window in the first place. It was me who screwed up our lunch thing the other day – Mickey can be such a bossy cow, but deep down it was my own fault. I knew that marquee had to go back but I wanted a bit of time with you. As for the window, you’ve paid me for it royally in bacon rolls and coffee.’

‘Yes, but it was my idea
to
break the window. It was me who was locked out, not you.’

‘Hey, what does it matter?’ He looked up at her from squidging in the last of the putty, treating her to the playful-Alsatian smile again. ‘It’s all sorted now.’

‘So did you get a lot of grief from Mickey last night?’ It was a question Viola had been dying to ask since he walked in, looking amazingly well rested and with the curled ends of his hair still shower-damp. So he hadn’t
had
to sleep in the Land Rover, then. He cleared the last smear of putty from the glass.

‘Mickey? No – I haven’t seen her.’ Viola had a vision of a cross half-woken woman, head firmly lodged under a pillow in protest at her husband staggering into the bedroom and disturbing her in the dawn hours. She pictured her sliding out of their house before seven to take a long run along the riverbank and across the common so she could come panting in later before Greg was even awake, all smugly exercised to make a point about how
some
people didn’t carouse about all night. Except he wouldn’t have been there … he was here, with someone else. Not that she counted as
that
kind of ‘someone else’. Absolutely not.

He was sniffing at the greyish sludge of putty that was left on his thumb. ‘I love the scent of this stuff, don’t you? Linseed. Clean, luscious oil. Here, have a whiff.’ He offered up his thumb under her nose and she put her hand on his wrist, steadying it while she inhaled the smell, not quite trusting him not to smudge it all over her nose and think it hilarious.

‘Mmm – it’s giving me a déjà vu,’ Viola said. ‘It’s a real flashback to something from years ago. There was this family friend we used to call Uncle Oliver. He was a painter and Mum took me to see him in his studio sometimes. I must have been about six, I think. It was really messy there, the kind of seriously untidy that really impresses a small child. There were paint
tubes
and pots of oil everywhere, the floorboards were all spattered with paint and canvases were leaning against the wall. Mum kept telling me to be careful and not to touch and he said none of it mattered, I could do anything I wanted. He gave me a brush and a bit of board and squeezed dollops of oil paint out on to a palette for me. So I could paint while they drank wine and talked.’ Viola stopped for breath, thinking how much this must
not
be of any interest to Greg. Why would it be?

‘Sorry – I’m rambling.’ She turned away to collect up their coffee mugs and take them to the kitchen.

‘No, go on, what did he paint?’

‘Landscapes, sometimes seaside scenes as well. Turbulent stuff. He was called Oliver Stonebridge; quite well known in his day. There’s a really scary, stormy one that Mum keeps on the top landing. I always used to run fast past it when I was little, trying not to look.’

‘I’ve heard of him, vaguely. Dead, isn’t he?’ Greg was loading his tools into their box. He’d be gone in a few minutes and the day – with Rachel over in Notting Hill – would be all hers.

‘Yes, years ago. Mum wore scarlet and purple to his funeral because he’d told her – she said – that she looked terrible in black.’

‘Who looks terrible in black?’ Naomi strode in through the French doors at that moment, clutching her bag from the night before. ‘I know you,’ she said, not
waiting
for Viola to answer, jabbing a finger towards Greg. ‘That car out there – you brought our Vee home in it after her puncture.’ She turned to Viola and asked, ‘So is this going to be a new friend?’

‘Possibly,’ Greg answered warily.

‘You’re here very early. It’s only just gone nine.’ Naomi looked past the two of them, glancing round the room, expertly checking for evidence of some kind and then seeming distinctly disappointed.

‘If you’re looking for signs of …’ Viola was going to say ‘a night of passion’, but thought better of it.

Greg looked at his watch. ‘Yes, it is early, isn’t it? How was your evening? And have you only just come home?’

He was teasing Naomi. A dangerous game, Viola wanted to warn him. She could feel the words ‘walk of shame’ about to come up in the next sentence. She managed to suppress a wave of laughter and gave Greg a warning prod. Naomi didn’t do humour in the mornings, only suspicion.

‘I have just come home, thank you. I could hear voices so I thought I’d come and see who it was. But if you’re going to stay around, Mr New Friend, you’ll want to get something different to drive,’ Naomi told him. ‘Green’s very unlucky for cars. Anyone’ll tell you that, especially this one.’ She nodded towards Viola, then stalked grandly across the flat’s sitting room and through the door to her own part of the house.

‘You nearly accused her of having a naughty night,
didn’t
you?’ Viola said, trying not to smart from the reference to green cars, as soon as Naomi had gone.

‘I very nearly did,’ Greg agreed. ‘And as a reward for
not
saying it, you have to promise me something.’

‘I do?’

‘You have to come out planting with me one night, just so you can see for yourself there’s no murder involved.’

Viola felt a bit torn. Yes, she was madly curious about his nocturnal gardening and, yes, she’d admit there was a thrill about the idea of seeing him again, but – there was the Mickey factor. Although … digging a hole in the ground and stuffing in some hardy perennials was hardly a hot adulterous date.