The Playdate (10 page)
Debs swung her legs, kicking the sides of a purple—“miscellaneous”—box. She could hardly hear the screams from
the children next door at all in here. That was fine. She’d just stay here till they stopped. Turning her head, she looked around at the green-striped wallpaper. Maybe they would be able to decorate it in time for Alison staying at Christmas. If her sister would actually accept their invitation.
Or maybe Allen would eventually move into this bedroom permanently. Debs looked around it. The pretense of him coming to bed each night as if they behaved like a normal married couple would eventually wear out. One night, she knew, he would walk through the bedroom door in his pajamas as usual, and say, “Good night, love,” but instead of climbing into bed and gently turning his back on her, he would politely walk back out and disappear into this room.
As she thought about it, the familiar flash of memory burst into her mind.
“Oh no,” she groaned, shaking her head to brush it away.
But it was no good. There it was. She and Allen walking up the stairs of their hotel, her a little tipsy from the wine, Allen nervous and upright, and then . . .
A sudden loud noise made Debs jerk her head round.
She stood up and looked round the little bedroom. It was a distant scraping whine that was getting louder by the second, like a skateboard down a rough tarmac road.
The whining rapidly increased in volume, breaking into a loud rumbling over her head.
“What on earth?” she muttered, going to the window. It sounded like a plane, wheezing and roaring right above her. It was as if it had appeared out of nowhere and almost landed on her roof.
Looking straight out of the back window, across the roofs of the terraced houses behind and toward the tall transmitter mast on the top of Alexandra Palace, she couldn’t believe what she
saw. A second plane was advancing toward their house, from a mile or so away.
As she watched, the noise started again. A long whine that became louder and louder as the plane descended toward her house. With a crack like thunder, it came over Churchill Road and rumbled heavily above her head.
“Allen!” she shouted, running downstairs and into the sitting room. “There are planes flying right over the house—did you hear that?”
He looked up over his glasses and frowned.
“Um, I’m not sure, love. There are planes everywhere in London.”
“I know that, love, but these two were . . .” As she said it the whining started again, as a third plane began to approach. “There!” she exclaimed, excited. He couldn’t have been deaf enough to have missed that, could he?
But Allen just shrugged. “No worse than King’s Cross. Really, Debs. You’re a right live wire tonight.”
Oh, this was ridiculous.
She walked back out of the sitting room and went to open the front door, remembering at the last minute to take the squashed cardboard boxes they had left in the hall and stuff them in the recycling box. Replacing the black lid firmly, she stood up and raised her head. A jumbo jet glided above her, sounding as if its pilot were revving its engines just for her.
Where had they come from? She hadn’t heard a single plane since they’d moved in on Thursday.
Shutting the front door, she walked briskly into the kitchen and hunted through the pine dresser left by the Hendersons until she found the phone book. She marched back to the hall and picked up the phone.
“This isn’t right, Allen. Really. Something has changed,” she called into the open door of the sitting room.
It took her a minute to find the number, and she then waited another five till someone answered her call at the end of a very long list of automated services about flight arrivals and parking. Her own query seemed to have no category of its own so she pressed and pressed each option for “another query,” until a man eventually picked up her call.
“Heathrow. Can I help you?” a voice said.
“Hello. I’m sorry. I’m ringing about your planes,” Debs gabbled into the phone. “I have just moved into Alexandra Park in North London and suddenly they’ve started coming over my house and making a ridiculous noise.”
There was a pause at the other end of the line.
“Madam, North London is on the landing path to Heathrow. Depending on the prevailing wind, planes will sometimes fly over Alexandra Palace.”
“What? But we came here lots of times before we moved in and never heard a plane once. Now, it’s so noisy. It’s as if there’s a motorway above my head.”
“Well, very occasionally, it might be over your house.”
As he spoke, another plane roared overhead.
“Can you hear that?” she shouted. “Can you?”
“Can I hear what?” the man said.
“That plane!” she shouted.
“Madam, I work at Heathrow.”
“Well, OK, but I want to make a complaint.”
There was silence.
“About what?”
“About the planes coming over my house.”
“Uh . . .”
In the end, he gave Debs an address to write to and she put the scribbled note on the fridge under a magnet. She’d do that first thing tomorrow.
At least it had taken her mind off the children next door, she thought. They were quieter now, just one of them apparently still awake, his tantrum diminished into a distant whimper. She walked back to the spare room and sat, bracing herself for the next plane.
Allen popped his head around the door five minutes later to see her with a pillow wrapped around her head.
“Do you want a cup of tea?”
She looked at him and put the pillow down.
“Allen, I’m worried we’ve made a terrible mistake. Can you not hear these planes? They have been nonstop for half an hour. Endless. Flying over our heads every minute. And that’s not all. The children next door screamed for over an hour. And the woman on the other side of us isn’t even there at the moment. What happens when she gets back and starts thumping around in her house, flushing toilets and . . .”
He came into the room and sat beside her on the bed. He said nothing for a moment, and in that silence she heard her own words echoing back at her, and wished she could keep her mouth shut; wished she could take it all back.
Finally, Allen lifted his hand and patted her leg. “Come on, love, you’re just very tired from the move. Come downstairs and have a cup of tea. I think you should try to get an early night tonight.”
Easy for him to say, with his deaf ears. How on earth was she going to sleep with that toilet flushing through the wall? And the planes now, too. Don’t tell me it’s not real, she wanted to scream. I can hear it!
“OK, love, good idea,” she said, getting up and following him out of the door.
As she went down the stairs she stopped for a second.
There was complete silence now from next door. Beautiful, still silence. The children must all finally be in bed.
It wasn’t the children, really, she reasoned as she followed Allen down the stairs. She didn’t mind the noise of children very much at all. What she hated was when children shouted and their mothers did nothing to stop them. It wasn’t that difficult, after all.
I am running. I am running so hard I can’t breathe.
I haven’t run this fast for years. My new sandals are clicking on the pavement on Oxford Street, and I am darting between a man holding a board on a stick that says “Trainers sale this way” and an actor I recognize from an American TV series, a baseball hat pulled firmly down on his head.
It is 5:20 on Monday afternoon. I have just finished my first day at work. I have forty minutes to arrive back at Alexandra Park and pick Rae up from after-school club, which, I was informed by Ms. Buck, closes promptly at 6
P.M.
The train journey takes thirty minutes alone. How could I have been this stupid? To forget that any trip around London needs a safety margin of at least fifteen minutes for unexpected signal failures and gridlocked traffic. Especially, I now realize far too late, when a child is involved.
I keep running, my head spinning with what has just happened at work.
* * *
In the end my nerves about returning to Rocket were justified. The moment I walked into the newly refurbished studio this morning and saw the white marble floor, reception desk carved out of an interior designer’s idea of lunar rock, and soundproofed sound rooms each with a new £50,000 sound desk, reality hit.
This was not a game. It could not be a whim.
I am back in the real world, where you are paid for doing a job, and sacked for not doing it properly.
“Callie!” Guy shouts with a smile, coming toward me with a welcome hug. Since I last saw him, his tight black curls have relaxed and turned gray, causing his deep-set brown eyes to emerge. In a black skinny knit and jeans he looks like a rakish, older Calvin Klein model. “Great to see you, mate. How does it feel to be back?”
Absolutely bloody terrifying.
“Brilliant!” I smile, nodding at the new receptionist, Megan, who could be Alice in Wonderland’s older, sensual sister complete with pretty white chiffon dress, long tanned legs, and a blue ribbon in her hair. Self-consciously, I pull down the short sleeve of my silver dress, which now makes me feel as if I am trying too hard.
“I’ll show you round the new features on the software, then I’ve got a promo for you to try out on,” Guy says, straight to business. “Megan will show you where the new kitchen is.”
“Oh,” I say, picking up my bag and following him. “OK. Sure.”
What was I expecting? A long chat over coffee where I could apologize for being a tearful wreck the last time I saw him, and thank him for helping me out? Where I could ask him how it’s going with Ankya, the leggy Polish fashion photographer? No.
I am on the clock again, I realize, slightly bewildered. Every minute I stand here, I am earning money. In the time it has taken me to say hello to Guy, follow him to the sound room where I will be working, and sit down on a client seat shaped like a satellite dish, I have probably earned enough to pay for a sandwich at lunchtime.
Responsibility weighs heavily on my sequinned shoulders.
* * *
It is 5:25
P.M.
I have nearly reached Oxford Circus Tube, and am forcing my protesting legs to take me the last few yards when my phone rings.
“Yes?” I say, gasping. This is ridiculous. I need to start doing some exercise.
“Cal?”
Suzy’s voice is so out of place in this crazy, frenetic street it takes me a second to recognize it.
“Oh, hi. Hi,” I reply, holding one finger in my ear to hear. “Is everything OK?”
“Um . . .” She hesitates.
My face goes cold.
“What?”
“Hon, don’t worry. She’s fine—well, I mean, she’s not ill. But I just thought I better tell you that when I picked Henry up at three-thirty she was kind of upset about going to after-school club.”
“Really? What do you mean, upset?”
Taxis flash by in rows of black and yellow neon. Two teenagers carrying Topshop bags push past me, banging my leg, shrieking with laughter. I am finding it difficult to hear.
“Well, she was crying. She said she wanted to come home
with me and Henry. So I gave her a hug and told her Mommy wanted her to go to after-school club, and that you’d pick her up as soon as you could. I’m sure she was fine when she got there, but I thought I’d better warn you, anyway.”
“OK, thanks. Listen, I’m running so late!” I shout. “I’ve got to get on the train, but I’ll pop in later.”
I run down the stairs into the Tube. That hadn’t even occurred to me. Rae seemed so happy to go to after-school club. What if she doesn’t want to go back? After the day I have had, I cannot allow myself to contemplate that right now.
* * *
Once Guy finally left me this morning, it all went wrong immediately. I pressed three buttons and lost half an hour’s work.
“Sorry, it just disappeared,” I say, pointing at the blank computer screen as he walks back into the room.
“Didn’t you switch on autosave?” he murmurs.
I groan inwardly. Novice mistake. I bet he’s wondering what he’s done asking me back. Should I offer to pay him back for the lost half hour?