Tell Me Everything (11 page)

“That must have been nice,” I said.

“I've just been trekking through Asia for the last month. It was wild, you know.” I looked at the colored bracelets on his tanned arms and nodded as if I did know. “All being well, I've got a place at Oxford for September anyway,” he said. “Reading English.”

“That's nice,” I repeated.

“And what about you? Any ideas? Art was always your subject, wasn't it?”

“It was nice,” I said. I'd turned into a goldfish, opening and shutting my mouth with nothing of any substance coming out. It wasn't that I couldn't think what to say, it was just that I couldn't slot back into being the particular Molly Drayton he thought I
was. I didn't want to. “Anyway, I must go. Things to do and all that, you know.”

“You can't just go like that. It's been ages. Don't you want to know how everybody is?”

“Of course,” I lied.

“Go on. Ask me any name and I'll tell you what they're doing. I keep up with everyone. It's kind of my thing.”

I stared at him. Didn't he ever stop talking?

“Leanne,” I said.

He paused. “Can't remember her,” he said eventually. “Was she in your year, or mine?”

“Mine,” I said. “Anyway, I did hear something about how she's gone to France. I think she's in show business or something. It sounded very exciting anyway.”

He laughed, the kind of condescending laugh I suddenly remembered the kids at school always used when they felt they'd been caught out. “Leanne. I think I'm remembering something about her now. And you? What are you up to?”

I imagined him in the pub later, with all the others. Sitting round the table, talking and laughing, just how I'd used to envy them. “Guess who I bumped into today,” he'd say. “Molly Dray-ton. You remember that stunner from Year Ten. She's gone off a bit now, mind you. Got fat.” And then they'd all start remembering, although him best of all because knowing other people's business was “his thing.” “Wasn't there something odd about her?” he'd say. “Something about her father. And she's come back here now.” They'd huddle together, just as they used to when I watched them. Before I had to rush off to make sure my father didn't catch me, because by that stage, even looking would have got me into trouble.

I swallowed the fear down. I needed to keep in control. “This
and that,” I said. “I'm in retail now, working my way up to the top, you know.”

“Good for you. Retail's the place to be, or that's what my parents keep telling me. They'd prefer me to do something practical too. Hey, maybe we could have a coffee or something when I've finished?”

“That would be nice,” I said. “I can't today but I'll give you a ring.” At last I turned to leave.

“Wait. You don't have my number.” He was scrabbling in his pocket for a piece of paper or something.

“No, really,” I said. “I've got to go.”

He shrugged. “Well, maybe I'll catch up with you another time,” he said.

“You too,” I said, stupidly. “But I must get on. Time presses, you know.” I pushed past him, only half-looking over at the salon although I could see Miranda standing at the window, watching us intently.

“Molly.”

I stopped, although I didn't turn round. I was so frightened he was going to say he'd just remembered what the funny thing with my father was.

“I wish you well,” he said. And that was all, but I knew he meant it. For some strange reason, I wanted to cry. I ran into the shop.

Time presses. Pressed time. Did I really think I had the power to make time stand still? Was that even what I wanted anymore?

T
he square mirror in the shop toilet was so small that when I leaned forward to have a look at my teeth the rest of me faded away until I became one huge mouth. I drew my lips right back and turned my head from side to side.

I'd finally got rid of my braces about two years ago, but seeing Joe had reminded me how you were supposed to keep going back regularly. My whole childhood used to be full of continual examinations and checkups just to keep standing. They didn't seem to be necessary anymore. Did that mean they never really were? All that time and money.

“Molly?”

I spooked my reflection with a brief imaginary roar before going back through to the shop to see what Mr. Roberts wanted.

“Here she is. Now, Molly, there's someone I want you to meet.”

Mr. Roberts was speaking in that phony, too-cheerful voice people always use for dogs, babies and wheelchair users. I was just looking round for the awkward customer when I noticed the small, pointy-nosed woman he had his arm around.

“This is my wife, Mrs. Roberts,” he said. “Here she is then, Joan. This is Molly.”

Mrs. Roberts nodded at me, giving me a stern once-over at the same time.

“She'd got it into her head that you were some blond bombshell,” Mr. Roberts said. “I told her don't be silly. She's just Molly. Molly's not like other girls. She doesn't care for all that stuff. Didn't I tell you that, Joanie? Well, are you satisfied?”

I tried to smile at Mrs. Roberts but she was looking round the shop now. Her large handbag was hooked over her elbow, and her hair was tightly pulled away from her face under the scarf she had tied round her head. She reminded me of someone and then it came to me. God knows my father hadn't been much fun, but he did have one party trick, which consisted of him dressing up as the Queen and singing “My Old Man's a Dustman.” We used to beg him to do it every Christmas.

And Joan Roberts could have been his double, even down to her beige, buttoned cardigan.

“Pleased to meet you,” I said, resisting the ridiculous urge to curtsy.

“And you too, I'm sure,” she said, and that's when I got a second surprise. Her accent was foreign, her voice husky.

“I don't mind telling you it's lovely to see you here though, pet. I never thought I'd get you in the shop. I know it's not your thing,” Mr. Roberts told his wife. “We miss a woman's touch here, what with it just being me and Molly.” He seemed nervous and kept darting little glances at me, as if he was daring me to say something stupid like I was a woman too, but Mrs. Roberts was walking round the shop properly now, trailing her fingers over the shelves. She stopped once to look at the display of colored pens I'd made one Thursday afternoon when no one had come
into the shop. I'd pasted plain paper up on the wall and started drawing a garden of flowers that customers had added to as they tried out the different pens. I would take little kids there when they got bored of browsing with their parents. There were butterflies and trees, and one of the art students who came in had even drawn a little swing with a small blond girl on it. We were running out of space.

Mr. Roberts and I watched her in silence. He jolted his arm up once, when she rested her hands on the ladder, but other than that he seemed rooted to the spot. I was surprised to feel nothing. Just interest. I couldn't take my eyes off her. Mrs. Roberts shook the ladder slightly, looked up at the shelves and then went back to her slow pacing round.

“Is this all your doing, Molly?” she asked, when she came back to us. “The cleaning, sorting out the stock and making everything look so much nicer?”

I nodded.

“Then I think you are managing well without me,” she said. “It all looks very satisfying compared to how it used to be with just my husband, who really doesn't know how to make things nice. Very satisfying indeed. Jules, I have finished here. I will expect you back for dinner.”

He rushed over to open the door for her and as she was leaving the shop I saw him take her elbow. I thought he was going to help her out, but he raised her hand to his lips and pressed his mouth against it. She looked over to where I was standing, as if she'd known I was watching her all the time, and she smiled very briefly at me and then was on her way. I raised my hand up in a kind of farewell salute.

Mr. Roberts was beaming when he came back. He tried to bustle round, acting as if he was busy, but he couldn't keep it up.

“My wife is a remarkable woman,” he said. “She keeps me well under control.”

“Is she French?” I asked.

“We've been married thirty years next September,” he said, ignoring me. “The best decision I ever made.”

“They do say French women keep their looks when they get old,” I said. I had been reappraising Mrs. Roberts ever since I first heard her speak. Her bone structure, for example, was more Audrey Hepburn than my father's, the tightness of her lips due to discretion, not pure bad temper like his.

“Old?” Mr. Roberts looked cross. “She's much younger than me.”

“Well—” I wanted to say something lighthearted about how that wasn't hard, but I didn't want to shatter this light mood. Apart from exchanging the “information” Mr. Roberts and I didn't usually speak much.

“I suppose I was comparing her to me,” I said.

He relaxed down. “Oh Molly,” he said. “Everyone's old compared to you. You are a goose, but you've done well today. You must feel proud at how pleased Mrs. Roberts was with your work. She doesn't give out compliments to just anyone.”

It was only later I noticed he'd folded the ladder up and put it away. He saw me looking at the shelf. “Just tidying things up,” he said, turning too slowly for me not to see his blush.

“
S
o are you going to tell me about him?” Miranda asked when we met up for our afternoon ciggies later. “Was that the famous love of your life?”

It really was turning into the kind of hot summer you don't imagine ever coming to an end. The French restaurant had put tables out in the street, music blared from open car windows, people wore less clothes than they would on the beach and no one gave it a second thought. A mother and child walked past us now, both licking ice creams, drops dribbling down off the kid's chin.

“Him? That was Mrs. Roberts,” I said. “His wife.
Ju-elh-ses
wife.” The letters rolled round my mouth when I tried to copy her accent. I chased after them with my tongue. “She's called
Joo-ann.”
It couldn't have been her proper name, surely. It didn't sound very French. It was difficult to roll that one anywhere.

“Jules? What are you talking about? I meant that little chappie you were chatting up in the street.”

I had to think who this could be. Mrs. Roberts's visit had wiped everything else from my mind, and then I laughed. She meant Joe. “Nope, that was only a boy I was at school with. No one really.”

“His hair could do with a good wash and condition.” “I hadn't noticed. So guess what—Mrs. Roberts is French,” I said.

“Everybody knows that.”

I was shocked. “I didn't,” I said. “You could have told me.”

“What's it to do with anything? She never talks to anyone round here anyway. Typical Froggie, thinks she's much better than any of us. She even gets her hair done in London.”

“Froggie? You love France, Miranda. St. Tropez and all that.”

“I used to.” Miranda tossed her head. “You move on.”

She'd just had her highlights done by one of the other trainees and, although I'd told Miranda how super she looked, like a blond Julia Roberts, it resembled more a mangy old lion at a cut-price zoo. It made me think even more of Mrs. Roberts, having the taste not to take risks like that.

“She said I made the shop look nice,” I said.

“And so you do, lovely. How many times have I said you're being exploited? You've a talent, you have. You should be on the telly doing that
Changing Rooms
program. I bet you'd be better than any of them. Prettier too. Why don't you try it? Have a bit of ambition.”

I laughed. I couldn't help it. “They're trained,” I said. “Proper designers. You can't just get on television like that.”

“So go to college and train. There was this film we were watching at home last week about women in a university in America. Oh, the main woman, the teacher they all wanted to be like, she had lovely hair.” Miranda put her hand up to her head automatically and then glared at me. “Or are you going to spend the rest of your life working in a stationery shop?”

“You're happy staying in the salon,” I pointed out. I wasn't ready for this attack.

“But that's different. Even if I do stay, I've a ladder I can
progress up. I'm an assistant stylist now, soon I'll be a senior stylist and then I could even get my own chair. Anyway, I'm thinking of going back to college at nights. Study for some A levels. Maybe I'll go to university or something. I love books and stuff, or I used to anyway.”

I stared at her. Ambition was never something I'd associated with Miranda before. “I've got a ladder.” I laughed suddenly, thinking of Mr. Roberts at the bottom with me at the top, but Miranda had no idea what I was talking about. “For sorting out stock,” I added unnecessarily.

She shook her head as if I'd said something stupid again. This was becoming a habit with her. “You don't have to pretend, Molly. Anyway, what I wanted to say was that we were wondering if you were able to come and have tea with us one day.”

“We?”

“Mum, Dad and me.” Then she caught me smiling at her. “Ooooh, you wicked minx. Just because you're falling over yourself with nice young men doesn't mean we all are.”

“Plato used to say that when the first man was created, he was too strong so God cut him in half,” I told her. Liz had been talking about this in the library. “That's why we're always searching for our other side. When we fall in love, we complete everything we've been missing even though we haven't been aware of the gap.”

“If you say so.” Miranda sniffed. “I might dream about silly things, but in real life I'll settle for someone nice-looking, decent and hard-working. You can keep your Plato.”

“My Plato in the park,” I said.

“Sometimes you don't talk sense.”

I couldn't tell her because it would probably scare her and she'd never speak to me again, but if I loved anyone just at that very moment it was Miranda. Every bit of her, from her silly hair-style
to the tiny little handbag she carried that never held anything so she had to keep her cigarettes in her pocket, to her wobbly shoes and those big hoop earrings she always wore. I even loved her too-low T-shirt with the lacing across her enormous chest. Loving Tim made it so much easier to love other people.