The Look of Love (7 page)

‘I have,’ Shirley admitted. ‘For shoplifting.’

‘Wow! Will you get an ASBO? Cool!’

Shirley laughed, cheered by her granddaughter’s admiring approval.

‘But … how come you were shoplifting?’ Bella asked, mystified. She was trying to work out whether it would be a better thing if this was a deliberate turning to crime or an accidental lapse of memory. For the sake of her mother’s sanity, she found herself coming down firmly in favour of the first option. Please, she thought, let it just be a new but short-lived hobby.

‘Oh it was all just a stupid mistake!’ Shirley looked a lot better now, almost as if she were enjoying herself. Bella suspected she probably was. ‘I tried on two dresses, bought one, and accidentally walked out of the store wearing the second one. That’s all. I simply forgot to change back into my own clothes. But they made me so cross! There was this
ridiculous
bossy woman in the security office, wearing one of those badges that make people feel important. She kept asking me if it was
my age
. If it was a
lapse. And
she kept calling me “my dear” as if I was some frail old thing in my dotage. I told her I was
not
her “dear”. And I absolutely
didn’t
have
lapses
. I was insistent on that! So then the police came and I’ve been charged with theft.’

‘Aaagh! Mum! Didn’t you think maybe she was trying to help you get off the hook? If you’d played the slightly
forgetful card you would have been able to hand the dress back and simply go home.’

‘Bella! Are you mad? When you get to my age you’ll understand. Don’t you realize I’d rather be banged up in Holloway with a bunch of tarts and junkies than even
pretend
I’m going senile? It would be tempting fate.’

‘Good on you, Gran. Don’t let them push you into old-age madness.’ Molly plonked herself heavily down on the sofa next to Shirley. A small cloud of dust and cat fur flew up around them, brightly lit in the sun’s rays through the sloped glass roof.

‘But the price of not being pushed into dementia is that you’ll have to go to court and go through a trial and all the trauma that goes with it. Wouldn’t it have been worth playing the part to get away with it? I mean, it’s not as if you meant to steal it.’ Bella truly hoped not, anyway. Maybe next time she went over to Shirley’s she’d sneak a look in that massive triple wardrobe she had. Possibly there’d be any number of designer frocks in there, labels still on, security tags attached.

‘Oh, it won’t be that bad,’ Shirley laughed. ‘I’m pleading guilty. So much easier. I’ll tell them I absolutely didn’t intend to steal, but clearly I did it and I’ll apologize and let them do their worst. So you see, Bella, I just wanted to get away for a few days … well, it’ll be in the local paper this week and I decided I could do without the whole neighbourhood clacking around my
door. Small-town Surrey doesn’t have a lot of excitement. Even the resident rock stars spend all their time on the golf courses. I know what it’ll be like; people will be dropping in to “sympathize”. I’ll have Lois Dobbs from opposite, knocking on the door with a Victoria sponge and a demand to
confide
. Well, I don’t want to.’ Shirley’s gung-ho mood suddenly evaporated, and she glanced out of the window at the garden as if already anticipating missing green outdoor spaces from a bleak prison cell.

‘Look – I don’t know a lot about the law,’ Bella said. ‘But I do know that if you plead guilty to shoplifting, you’re saying you absolutely
did
intend to do it. Premeditated, all that.’

‘That’s right, Gran. We did it at school,’ Molly chipped in. ‘You have to have meant
to permanently deprive
the shop of the goods. And you didn’t. So you have to say not guilty.’

‘No!’ Shirley was adamant. ‘If I say it was unintentional, it’ll drag on for months. And … and …’ She looked down at the rug fringe that she was playing with again and almost whispered, ‘There’ll be … medical reports.’

There was silence for a while, then Shirley said, ‘When you get to my age, you’ll understand that whatever the cost, you’d rather be found bad than mad.’

Oh, the relief of getting away for an evening’s respite from the problems that were collecting inside the house like a slowly gathering swarm. Bella went out just after eight, leaving Molly and Shirley exchanging opinions about padded bras as they finished supper together. Shirley was of the view that Molly should ‘maximize her assets’, as she put it, and Molly was saying she couldn’t be doing with underwiring and having a cleavage to flaunt. ‘I like my male friends to look at my face when they talk to me,’ she said, reasonably enough.

‘Ah, but what about the ones you’d like to be
more than friends
with?’ was Shirley’s argument. Bella, leaning on the bus shelter and fishing her Oyster card out of her bag, wondered if her mother was really suitable company for Molly. She’d have the girl looking at the Myla website within minutes of Bella’s absence, and be offering her nipple tassels and a feather-handled riding crop for her eighteenth birthday.

The River Fox garden wasn’t busy for a warm September weeknight. Some of the writers were already there and had dragged three of the long outdoor tables together in a row, bagging plenty of space for the group. The Thames – at mid-tide – was moving sluggishly and with a faint late-summer sheen of blue algae on it. A posse of Canada geese wandered on the garden’s grass, boldly demanding crisps from customers who were more scared of the birds than of the Please
Don’t Feed The Geese notice that was up on the fence.

Jules – whose frequent poetry-competition wins well qualified her for the group – was there with Dina and Phyllida. Phyl wrote hugely successful historical thrillers under two different names and Dina taught creative writing at the local adult education college, was undertaking a very slow PhD in the subject, and had had a novel (ground-breaking, according to Dina) on the go for a good three years. Bella tended to avoid Dina, as any conversation usually ended with Dina denouncing all popular contemporary fiction as ‘mindless rubbish’, and with Bella pointing out that as writing was a full-time career for some people, it could be useful to write what people actually like to read.

‘I didn’t know you were coming tonight; you should have called, I’d have given you a lift.’ Jules broke away from the beginnings of an argument about the role of literary agents. She was sitting at the table with a glass of lemonade and a bag of pork scratchings. ‘I saw your mother arrive at your place earlier and thought you must be staying in with her. Or possibly going out with her.’

‘I wasn’t sure I was coming either, but once I decided, I definitely didn’t want to bring the car. I
so
need this drink.’ Bella climbed on to the bench seat beside Jules, getting a sharp splinter in her calf and spilling the top inch of her glass of wine in the process. (‘Small or
medium?’ the barman had asked. ‘Large,’ Bella had snapped, before apologizing. It wasn’t his fault that she could soon be borderline bankrupt and homeless.) ‘These stupid tables,’ she murmured, pulling the wood out and dabbing at the tiny spot of blood that was left. ‘But … sometimes you just have to get away. It’s been a tricky few days. James has turned up and wants us to sell the house.’

‘Bleed’n’ ’ell!’ Jules spluttered her lemonade. ‘Has he not noticed that you live in it? Can he force you to sell?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve lived there on my own with the kids for over ten years since he left … but it seems that might count for nothing, because on paper it’s still half his. He hasn’t contributed at all though, so I’ll have to find out where I stand legally.’ Bella sipped her drink. ‘I suppose I should have seen it coming. This week, I’m feeling I should have seen a lot of things coming.’ She smiled at Marcus, who was joining the table with his wife Sally; the two of them were scriptwriters, working together on a follow-up to a successful sitcom series. Both had short floppy fair hair with overlong fringes and wore striped tops – Sally’s a Boden Breton, Marcus’s a cheery pink and white – with jeans. Was that what happened when you worked, lived and raised your children so very closely together, Bella wondered, the same way dogs and their owners start to look alike?

‘Things not going well?’ Phyllida chipped in. ‘Is it deadline hell for you right now?’

‘No – I finished a book a while back, thanks Phyl. I’m halfway through the next one. No, it’s just … well, home stuff. Everything going wrong at once.’

Phyl chinked her glass against Bella’s. ‘Well, you’re away from it tonight, my darling. Out among friends – you can leave all that stuff behind. And well done on the deadline thing. I live in constant battle with it.’

‘Goodness, don’t you churn them out! You and Phyllida both!’ Dina exclaimed. ‘Isn’t that more than one a year? But then of course …’

‘Yes, two a year,’ Bella told her. ‘But my Orchard Girls books are for a series, which makes it easier as I already know the characters. And it’s not as if I have to do much of the creating. For these big series, the plot decisions are made at editorial level and we writers just do a form of colouring in.’

‘Of course, you’re writing for the
young
. Remind me, what’s the age group you’re aiming at? And it’s essentially
romance
, isn’t it?’

‘About eleven to whatever age, really. There is an element of romance, but it’s very tame and safe. Girls get to that love-curiosity stage at such a wide age range,’ Bella explained, thinking at the same time about the word Dina had used: ‘churn’. Hard work, churning. The word reminded her of Tess of the D’Urbervilles as a
milkmaid. Making butter would have given her wonderfully muscly arms.

‘So I suppose for them you’re a kind of jump-off point, leading them on to the chick-lit and bodice-ripper stage later!’ Dina laughed. Bella didn’t.

‘Oh come on now, Dina, surely anything that gets them reading has to be good?’ Phyl interrupted.

‘Well, within reason. But by eleven, of course, there’s C. S. Lewis and any amount of
quality
literature. I swear by
Treasure Island
, myself. Now that
is
adventure,’ Dina half conceded. ‘But don’t get me wrong! I do admire you, Bella – you do all that and the journalism too.’ Somehow Bella didn’t feel remotely admired. Dina was looking at her as if she was from another planet. Planet Chav, at a guess. So, she wrote about feisty adventurous young teens. So, when you put it like that, did Jacqueline Wilson. And J. K. Rowling. Both responsible for getting a whole generation of children absolutely besotted by books. It couldn’t be bad.

‘So how about you, Dina?’ Bella asked brightly. ‘Thesis all done?’

‘Gosh no!’ Dina laughed. ‘It’s a painstaking process! And of course
the novel
is only part of it. I’m at the stage of battling with the demons of character purity. It’s all terribly Chekhovian. My mentor has hinted about the Costa prize, but of course that’s way in the future!’ Dina pushed back her long mane of hennaed frizz and took
off her glasses, rubbing the lenses vigorously on her long purple skirt. ‘I don’t expect to get a
final
draft worked in under another couple of years.’

‘Is your editor OK with that?’ Jules asked. ‘And what does your agent say?’

‘Ah … well I haven’t actually chosen an agent yet,’ Dina admitted. ‘My mentor feels one should be absolutely
ready
. I tell my students the same – the essence of creative writing is about
the voice
. And of course you can’t expect to find
the voice
until you’ve studied those of the great and good. Otherwise, to think one can write borders on
impertinence
. And of course there’s all the research. I may have to move to Moscow.’

Phyl leaned forward. ‘Dina, sweetie, you’re writing a novel, not changing the world. Just
make it up
.’

Bella bit her lip to stop herself laughing. Luckily, she was distracted by the arrival of Chloe and Zoe, who were picking their way across the goose-crap grass carefully, carrying drinks and bringing Saul between them like a prize.

‘Hello everyone!’ Zoe said cheerfully. (It had to be – Bella noticed the gold Z on a chain round her neck.) ‘I’ve brought someone to meet you all! This is Saul Barrett and he’s got an exciting proposition for us!’

Saul caught sight of Bella and smiled. She hoped she looked better than when he’d last seen her, all blotchy and sauce-smeared. For a second, she remembered the
gentle touch of his thumb on her skin, and could feel her face going pink. She suddenly realized Zoe was in full flow and tried to concentrate.

‘… Anyway, Saul’s production company needs a group of people so they can each be made over: dress, hair, make-up, the lot. Colour counselling, you name it. He thinks we writers could be just the thing. If anyone’s up for it, that is! I mean, think of the publicity!’

‘Oh, the great media machine,’ Dina sniffed. ‘Shouldn’t one’s work speak for itself?’

‘Trinny and Susannah already did that group thing,’ Sally pointed out. ‘I saw the one about the dog-breeders, and wondered why they put them into bright satin frocks and stilettos. You can’t jog a spaniel round the park in that get-up. Plain silly.’

‘Ah, but this is a bit different,’ Saul told her. ‘It’s about the group bonding, living together for a short while and helping each other find their own solutions, rather than being lectured at by those who don’t properly understand how they live on a day-to-day level. It’ll be far more about the group than the presenters. They’ll be just the enablers, the catalysts. Which is why I thought
writers
. Articulate by definition, always got something to say. It should make great TV.’

‘What’s it called?’ Dina asked.

Saul hesitated. ‘Er …
Fashion Victims
. But don’t let that put you off. This is absolutely
not
about ritual
humiliation by 360-degree mirror and big pants, I promise. It’s more about mutual support and so on.’

‘It’s a pilot then?’ Marcus asked, one media professional to another.

‘Yes, a pilot. Hopefully part one of six; we’ll see how it goes. I really want to start with a bang, so when Zoe suggested this group I thought we could talk it through, if enough of you are interested.’