The Hive (21 page)

She stopped. Rachel, her eyes wide, her hands on her face, had obviously got there before her.

“Oh…shit.”

“You didn't tell Heather they were going out for the day? Did you not know she was planning this big party?” Melissa didn't seem at all judgmental, just genuinely baffled at the turn of events. Still, Georgie thought it safer to head straight for the defensive.

“Well, now I think of it, there might have been a bit of prattling on…”

“Rachel?”

“Um, well, I think she might've mentioned it…”

“But look, Melissa, thing is, I've known her for donkey's years, and there's always been the prattling on. You can't listen to all of it, else you'd go stark staring…”

“You do need a sort of filter…” explained Rachel.

“Yeah, a filter. Like on your computer. Against, you know, whatchamacallit…”

“Spam,” finished Rachel.

“That's it.” Georgie nodded. “Exactly. Heather does talk a lot of spam…”

They were all three huddled together now, at the bottom of Heather's stairs. It had all the hallmarks of a medical briefing in a hospital corridor: the doctor, the loved ones, the horribly wounded patient behind the closed door.

“I got here a bit early,” Melissa whispered, the handle still firmly in her grip. “We just had time to take down the banners and the balloons and hide the cake. I just don't see how the misunderstanding could have happened. How can someone throw a birthday party by mistake? Heather is trying to be brave, but she does seem to be—well—quite
unnaturally
upset about it all. Almost traumatized. Could there be something else bothering her, do you know?”

“Nah. This is just normal. Believe me, unnaturally upset is her default position. Get used to it. Heather is a teacup, life is a storm.”

“I see. A teacup,” repeated Melissa, “which talks spam.”

“Precisely.” Georgie always appreciated it when people got her—not everyone did. That was a very nice little summing up indeed. She was starting to like the cut of this Melissa's jib.

“OK.” Melissa finally opened the door, cocked her head in the direction of the kitchen. “You can go through now.”

Preparation time:
almost nothing. Worst luck

“I was asked, of course…” Clover was clutching her plate to her large chest as they queued for the buffet in Heather's dining room, “but Damian was seeing the ed psych this morning, and you know how long you have to wait to get a slot.”

Nope, thought Rachel.

“And anyway, the children just have to come first. That's my philosophy. So I said to Bea and the girls”—here Clover raised her voice significantly, spraying the sound around, pressure-hosing it into all ears—“‘THAT'S SO SWEET OF YOU TO INCLUDE ME IN BEA'S BIRTHDAY SPA TREAT BUT VERY SADLY I AM GOING TO HAVE TO TURN DOWN YOUR KIND INVITATION.'”

Rachel checked the room. Well done. It seems everyone heard that in here. And the kitchen. And probably the other end of the High Street.

“And then of course serves me right I had the most frustrating morning because Damian suddenly just like that went down with this head cold that's going around. I mean sod's law it had to be a head cold. Chop his leg off and he can do a page of level five maths blindfold, but with a head cold, well, just not himself. How's Poppy doing at maths?”

“Fine, I think. I mean, I haven't actually chopped her leg off yet.” Rachel slapped her own wrist, raised her eyes ceilingwards. “Been that busy…”

Clover blustered on. Almost as if she wasn't even listening. Almost as if she didn't actually care about Poppy's maths, or her leg.

“And I did want it official, on a bit of paper, that he
is
exceptional because I think it just helps when you're dealing with schools…”

Rachel ducked out of the queue again. She'd rather starve to death than get stuck eating with that old baggage. She wandered past the lounge—like the dining room, too crowded to go into. Hamish and a few other toddlers were in the sunroom on the back, curled up in front of a DVD. The whole house was suddenly heaving. Bizarre as it may seem, Heather, of all people, appeared to have pulled off a significant social success. Rachel poked her head into the kitchen, where the hostess-with-the-mostest was standing alone at the sink, vacant, ashen, like a zombie, and pulled it out again, irritated.

She caught sight of Georgie through the sliding doors, out on the patio, cigarette in hand: a forlorn sight, smoking on her own like that—a lone swan on a winter's day, pining for its mate. Its Benson & Hedges–smoking mate. She misses Jo, thought Rachel with a tug. We all do, in our various ways. Certainly nothing's the same without her. Rachel slid open the door and slipped out into the bleak air.

“Coming to join me?”

“Only if you can guarantee a Clover-free environment.”

“I can. She's an antismoking nutter.”

“Give us one, then, to ward off the evil.” She bent into the flame as Georgie lit it for her. “How's Jo doing? She does know we're thinking about her, doesn't she?”

“Yeah. She just can't face anyone at the moment. I'm still picking the boys up for her every morning, which means I can keep an eye. I think it's hell; how can it not be? But she's back at work—she had to—and they've given her day shifts now, which is something.”

“Is she getting any help?”

Georgie flicked her ash in the flower bed. “Your Melissa. She's going round three evenings a week, apparently. Counseling all of them, for nothing. Jo says she's just been completely amazing. And it's all been cooked up by your headmaster.”

Rachel felt a flush of pleasure. “He's not my headmaster.”

“Really?” Georgie bent down while she stubbed her cigarette out on the side of a plastic urn. “Isn't he?” She pulled herself up to her below-average height and pinned Rachel down with her clear blue eyes. “Come on. Cough up. What happened last night?” She leaned in with a naughty, Year 7 sort of grin. “Didja snog him?”

“Oh, Georgie…”

“Hiiiiiii! Mind if I join you?”

“Oh. Hello, Bubba. Course not.”

“Sorry. Smokers only,” butted in Georgie. “You don't smoke.”

“I do, actually—on the sly. And you can't get near the food in there, so I need something to stave off the after-workout appetite. Funny. I wasn't even going to come. I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm just determined to lower the old profile this term, duck right down beneath
les parapets.
And to be honest I was starting to wonder if anyone even
liked
me. I know, so silly, I don't mean my really lovely proper friends like you two—just, you know, the absolutely
teeming
masses, but then Melissa called and said she really needed me here 'cause nobody had turned up, and of course I dropped everything—well, I didn't really have anything
to
drop at that actual, precise moment but I would've anyway 'cause I just
adore
Melissa, I don't know if you know her at all but she
is
quite fabulous, I am totally
en-slaved
—and anyway I was just so
touched.
They
need
me, I thought, they
like
me. I've got nothing on until I take Milo to the ed psych and that's not till two-thirty. Anyway, so I get here and you can barely get in Heather's little
door. Sweet,
these houses, aren't they? So snug. I've never been in one before.”

Preparation time:
a bit of fiddling about with the purée, thank goodness, so that stretched it out a bit and delayed the inevitable

The queue for dessert was snaking out of the dining room, down the hall and up to the front door. Sod that for a lark, thought Georgie. “Sorry, excuse me, thanks, if I can just get through…” She traveled up it, sideways. This was her paramedic-in-a-crowd act: polite, professional, firm, it worked every time. They all pressed to one side to let her pass and within seconds she was at the table, piling fruit and cream into a bowl and heaping chocolates onto a plate. Why did anyone ever stand in line? It was a good question to which she had never found a satisfactory answer. She sighed. The human psyche was a wondrous thing, and not without its mysteries.

She darted up the stairs, kicked open the door to the spare room and slammed it behind her. Scoffing in front of everyone wasn't quite on, even she could see that. This would do nicely—might even have a nap straight after. She had just kicked off her shoes and curled up on the bed when the door burst open again.

“Oh. Thank God. It's only you. Not the pudding police.”

“No,” said Rachel, coming in. “But I've half a mind to call them. Budge up.” She kicked off her shoes and sighed as she sank onto the bed. “Can you remind me, in my second incarnation, to come back as an educational psychologist?”

“I'll make a note.” She still clutched her bowl in tight. “You're not actually expecting me to share any, I hope?”

“Aw, go on.” Rachel laid her head on Georgie's shoulder. “I'll tell you everything about last night…”

“Hang on, I said I was interested, not sharing-my-pudding interested…” She reluctantly held out the bowl. “Come on then: snog or no snog?”

“Of course no snog. Really, George…”

Georgie wrenched it back again. “No snog, no strawberry.” She took a mouthful and spat it out in horror. “What the hell has she done to this? That woman's got cooking Tourette's.”

“Honestly. It's nothing. We just had to have this dinner, that's all. And now we're working on this pain-in-the-neck time line that he's taking a bit too seriously. But he did walk me home. And it was raining, and we sort of huddled under his umbrella.”

“She just can't look at a nice simple ingredient and not bugger about with it. This isn't a recipe, it's an act of violence. Why does she always have to try and turn everything into something it isn't?”

“But nothing's going to happen with him. Nothing's going to happen with anybody. Ever. When I got home Josh was still up, and he was just looking out of his bedroom window, staring at us coming back. Arms folded. Didn't say anything, of course. Mind you, he hasn't said anything for months now. But can you imagine? Ever doing anything in front of your kids with someone who isn't their dad?”

“Colette seems to have got the hang of it. I said strawberries, cream, clear as day. Can she not follow the most simple instructions?”

“I mean, it was always ‘Er, yuck, get a room' if Chris so much as pecked me on the cheek. It amazes me how they cope with weekends with the bloody intern, but they do. I really think this timetable's helped so much. Normalized everything…”

“Christ. She's stuck some muck in this cream. Tastes like toothpaste.”

This marked a whole new low in St. Ambrose cuisine, but Rachel wasn't bothered. She was picking out strawberries and popping them in her mouth with, it seemed, a total disregard for her inner self.

“He's nice, though, Tom. The amazing thing is that we've never met before. He grew up near me, you know, and was at college down the road from my art school. And we were on the same ‘Not in My Name' march and all that sort of stuff.”

She took another so-called strawberry and dipped it in the polluted cream. It was too awful to watch. Georgie had to avert her gaze. She focused instead on the dressing-table stool that Heather had made in her upholstery class.

“So that's funny. 'Cause, I mean, something could have happened. Once upon a time. If we had actually met. Life's like that, though, isn't it? You drive around, having no end of near misses—and most of them you don't even know you've had. So, yeah, he's a lovely bloke. And we do get on very well. But there's no chance of it ever coming to anything.”

Of course, Georgie had noticed that the last six months had taken their heavy toll on Rachel. She had watched as her weight had dropped off and her natural ebullience dimmed. But it was only really then, that moment, as she witnessed her uncritical consumption of Heather's vile muck, that she saw fully on display the damage that had been wrought. This, here, was a woman with little or no self-respect.

“I mean, there he is, single as anything, swinging along with a rucksack on his back. Whistling a happy tune. Who on earth would want to join up with me and my excess baggage?”

Attitude to food was, in Georgie's world picture, the most reliable key to the spiritual well-being of any adult. She was surprised it was not subject to more government interest. Politicians were always banging on about “national happiness,” after all, and asking those sorts of nosey-parker questions about finances and health and sex that made people complain about the nanny state. But surely, the most obvious questions of any nanny state worth its salt would be things like “Did you sit down to a proper supper?” and “What did you have for breakfast?”

“So we haven't arranged to do anything else. It was just that stupid auction thing. That's all. Nothing to get excited about.”

Oh yeah? Georgie sincerely hoped that this headmaster was planning on behaving himself, or he'd have her to deal with…

The door opened again. “Here you are! I was wondering where you'd got to. Who are we hiding from?” Bubba barged in and sat down at the dressing table. “There's no pudding left either. I
must
say I didn't get much for my fifteen quid. Still, I'm a good half a pound over at the moment. It's actually just exactly what I need right now: one proper, full day of nil-by-mouth.”