The Secret Life of a Slummy Mummy (36 page)

I think of the tense hour spent roaming small villages in the Avon valley after I simultaneously forgot to tell Tom to turn off the M4 and then discovered that a key page covering said villages was missing from our British road map.

‘Dramatic,’ I say. ‘We covered a lot of ground.’ Including arguments about 1) why our clothes were packed in plastic bags instead of suitcases, 2) how despite the plethora of plastic bags in the boot, there were none available for episodes of car sickness, and 3) on what grounds we ever considered ourselves compatible enough for marriage.

‘Was the resort very high?’ she asks politely.

‘Sort of average. It was very cold though,’ I say. ‘Did your husband manage to take any time off work?’

‘He came out on the orange-eye both weekends,’ she says. Then, when she sees me looking bewildered, ‘The Easy Jet flight to Geneva that leaves early on Saturday morning.’

Yummy Mummy No. 1 shifts her attentions to Tom.

‘I’d love to show you around, Tom, and see what you think of the house,’ she says. ‘Although I know that you parted company with glass extensions many years ago.’

‘Well, it was my bread and butter for a long time,’ Tom says. Then she calls her husband over to come and meet us.

‘Guy, Guy,’ she peals, ‘come over and meet the Sweeneys. They’ve just got back from Les Mendips, it sounds fantastic.’

Guy walks over from the other side of the room. He is smiling in the manner of someone who is clearly used to being in control of situations. A man who is never short of a good anecdote over dinner, who knows how to make a woman feel
as though she is the only person in the world that he is interested in, who can survey a room and spot the person most useful to his career and engage in conversation with that person without them realising that he is networking.

It is the same smile he uses when closing a Big Deal, or showing off in front of junior colleagues or meeting his mistress’s friends for the first time. He lifts a bottle of wine in greeting. I watch him closely, wanting to register the exact moment when he realises that he is no longer master of all he surveys.

It takes a few seconds longer than anticipated because along the way he stops to greet other guests and takes the opportunity to look round the room and bask in the attention. For a short man he has a large stride. When he is perhaps two metres from us, the smile disappears completely and for a moment he stands stock-still in shock, his eyes flitting from Tom to me. For a moment I imagine the room is falling silent, then Guy moves forward again, a little stiffly perhaps, but mustering a passable show of pleasure, although, as he gets closer and shakes my hand, I can see the muscles around his cheeks twitching with the strain of maintaining this friendly expression. His eyes, however, are not smiling. They are cold and angry.

‘I’m lucky he’s here, last time we were meant to meet friends for dinner he had to go to Paris for work,’ says Yummy Mummy No. 1. ‘Work is his mistress. Isn’t it, darling?’ Tom tenses beside me and we hold hands a little too firmly to reassure one another.

‘Nice to meet you,’ Guy says, formally shaking our hands. Tom takes longer to recover and while he manages to shake Guy’s hand, he recoils slightly when he is released and slides it
into his back pocket, where it darts restlessly in and out for the next five minutes.

‘Lucy is on the parents’ committee,’ Yummy Mummy No. 1 says warmly to Guy. ‘She helped organise tonight and managed to persuade the woman who heads it up that we didn’t need to come dressed as our favourite character from a book.’

‘The quid pro quo is that the summer fete will have a Roman theme,’ I say.

Tom and Guy remain still and silent.

‘She is one of my firm allies,’ says Yummy Mummy No. 1, looking anxiously at Guy as if willing him to say something appropriate. I try to resist being flattered, because I know she is going through the motions and that I will still be passed over in the playground if there are tastier morsels on offer.

‘I’ve heard a lot about you,’ Guy says finally, putting his arm round Yummy Mummy No. 1, to steady himself. He fills Tom’s glass with wine and I notice that his hand is trembling slightly.

‘Can I borrow him for a moment?’ she asks me, pointing at Tom. ‘I really want to show him the kitchen extension. We had the same architect as David Cameron. He lives round the corner. Very exciting to be living in the shadow of the next prime minister.’ She moves away, one hand in the back pocket of her jeans, showing off her bottom in all its tight-arsed glory, a gesture that I know is directed specifically at Tom. He whispers in my ear as he moves away, ‘Nothing middle-aged about that.’ I know that on the way home I will run into a wall of silent reproach, but I also know that I can rely on Tom to avoid a scene.

‘I’ll catch up with you later, Lucy, there is something I have to discuss with you,’ says Yummy Mummy No. 1. This time I
manage to contain the impulse to invent exciting scenarios. Still, if she wants advice about schools, then my transformation into Mother with Gravitas will be complete.

Guy and I are left standing together. I take the bottle of wine from his hand and pour myself a generous glass, then place it on the table where the answer machine sits. This time it is not blinking at me. I perch on the edge of the table and Guy turns around to face the window so that no one can see us talking.

‘Are you a Cameron fan?’ I ask politely. ‘Or do you think that inside every Tory lurks the spirit of Norman Tebbit?’

‘What the fuck are you playing at?’ he asks. His voice is quiet but laced with aggression and his face is so close to mine that I can feel the heat from his breath. ‘A return visit, within a week no less? I’m minded to call the police. Your fingerprints must be everywhere.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I say. ‘What would you tell the police?’

‘Well, you tampered with my home, stole my wife’s underwear, and then left that . . . device in my pocket,’ he says furiously. ‘You know it was still running when we got home.’

‘We wore gloves,’ I say.

‘I know, because you left a pair in my wife’s dressing room,’ he says. ‘I had to take them to work with me to dispose of them.’

‘I was just an observer. The only thing I did was help to delete Emma’s message to you both and I think you will agree that I have done you a favour. Consider the alternative,’ I say, trying to calm him with logic.

He puts a hand on the back of his head and starts rubbing it irritably. I notice that he is losing his hair.

‘Look, sorry, I’m under a lot of stress at the moment, Emma is refusing to take my calls, my wife is watching my every move.
I think you could have given me some heads up,’ he says. ‘Why didn’t Emma tell me that you know my wife and that our children are at school together?’ He groans.

‘I had to come because I helped organise this,’ I say, waving my hand around the room a little more forcefully than intended. ‘As for Emma, perhaps the question is better directed at her.’

My arm hits something hard and I turn round, just as the contents of the glass of wine spill on to the striped shirt of another father from school. I look up to see if I know the person that I am about to apologise to and feel that familiar quiver of excitement grip my body as I see Robert Bass trying to soak up the excess liquid with a dirty-looking handkerchief.

‘God, I’m sorry,’ I say, wondering how such a small glass of wine could cause such a large stain on his shirt. ‘Guy, this is Robert Bass, his son is in the same class as our children.’

‘So, you’re the writer,’ says Guy coldly, after an inappropriate silence, and I know that he is following this trail to its logical conclusion. ‘Lucy has told me about you.’

‘Oh,’ says Robert Bass, looking pleased.

‘We were talking about her ski holiday in Les Mendips,’ says Guy. ‘And the morality of skiing off-piste when you know it could cause an avalanche.’

Then he walks off without saying anything more.

‘I’ll go and find a towel or something,’ I say to Robert Bass, feeling uncharacteristically flustered by this situation.

‘What’s eating him up?’ he asks. ‘I’ll come with you.’ We walk out of the sitting room into the hall. There is no one there. Everyone is either in the room that we have just left or downstairs in the kitchen. I go into a small room beside the front door that I remember from my visit last week. It looks
like a cupboard but runs the breadth of the house and is used as a coat room and general dumping ground. At the end, overlooking the garden, is a small sink. I pick up a towel and hand it to him.

‘How did you know about this room?’ asks Robert Bass, soaking up wine with the towel. He picks up his glass and gulps down what is left without taking his eyes off me. He is looking at the outline of my wrap-dress, where it is set against the skin at the top of my shoulder, tracing it from the hard bone of my sternum to the soft contours above my cleavage. He chews his lower lip thoughtfully and stares at me with such intensity that I have to look away.

‘Instinct,’ I say.

‘You must have good instincts then,’ he says.

‘Sometimes,’ I say.

‘Well, we’re definitely off the beaten track here, Lucy,’ he says, closing the door behind him.

There is a point in a relationship where what is left unsaid becomes more important than what is said, and I have just reached this juncture with Robert Bass. But what I should have said to him at this moment, was that my intentions were noble when I offered to search for a towel, and that I didn’t intend to lure him into a glorified cupboard. Instead, I remain silent. The light is on, but it is still gloomy and we are swaddled from the outside world by layers of coats and jumpers which hang neatly on pegs on both sides of the room. It is the kind of moment that you look back on with the benefit of hindsight and wonder how things might have been had you gone down a different route. It is a time for decision-making.

He puts out his hand and with his middle finger he traces the line he burnt with his eyes a minute ago, until it rests in that
soft cleft in between my breasts. I hear a gasp, a noise that might be imperceptible in a less silent context, and am surprised to discover that it emanates from me. The pleasure is exquisite. It is as though my mind has separated from my body and I am observing this happening to someone else. I lean back against Yummy Mummy No. 1’s sheepskin coat and tilt my head slightly towards the ceiling, to give him access to the lower regions of my neck. Now I am the one chewing my lower lip. I don’t want him to stop, but I don’t want the responsibility of responding.

He takes his finger away, and I gasp again, because every part of my body demands more attention. Then I see him lean towards me. He puts one hand against the wall of the coat room, letting it rest at the top of my arm, and the other inside my dress at the top of the shoulder, pulling it slowly down to expose most of my upper body. I shiver with the pleasure of anticipation. The risk of discovery only adds to the excitement, and I wonder how for so many years I have managed to stay away from this kind of encounter. Then he leans towards me, the same hand that was on my shoulder now pulling me towards him from somewhere above my shoulder blade, and we are about to kiss when there is a knock on the door.

‘Lucy, is that you in there?’ says a male voice outside. ‘Lucy?’ The fear of discovery is slightly alleviated by the fact that it isn’t either Tom or Robert Bass’s wife. But the knocking is so insistent that inevitably it will attract the attention of other guests.

I go to the door and open it slightly to find Celebrity Dad standing outside.

‘Sshh,’ I say putting my finger to my lips.

‘You don’t need to be quiet at a party,’ he shouts, pushing his
way in through the door. ‘I knew it was you, Sweeney. I was in the garden and looked up to this window and recognised your dress.’

‘The garden?’ I say.

‘I thought you might be doing coke,’ he says.

‘Doing coke?’ I say.

‘Are you just going to repeat everything that I say?’ he asks.

He is now inside the room and shuts the door behind him. Robert Bass has moved to the back and is standing behind some long coats beside the sink. I can see his legs sticking out at the bottom among pairs of wellington boots and shoes. Celebrity Dad, however, has his own agenda and pulls out a credit card and a small bag of white powder from his jacket pocket. He locks the door, then, in swift succession, sits down on a small stool, takes a magazine from a pile by the door and efficiently starts chopping up lines of cocaine. He generously passes the magazine to me but I decline.

‘I have enough problems going to sleep without any chemical inducement,’ I say.

He leans over the magazine, and snorts a line through a rolled-up twenty-dollar note. He is so familiar to me that I wonder momentarily, through the haze of wine, unconsummated passion, and lack of air, whether I am in fact watching one of his films. Possibly one directed by Quentin Tarantino. Then I start to calculate whether it would be worse to be discovered in flagrante with one parent or assumed to be taking drugs with another, and I realise that there is not much to choose between the two and that I must get out of this room as quickly as possible.

‘So, what were you doing in here then?’ Celebrity Dad asks. He is looking at my dress, hanging off my shoulder. I pull it
back up but it gapes over my stomach. The only solution is to untie the dress completely and start from the beginning again. So I briefly unwrap the dress and then curl it around me, tying a tight bow above the waist.

‘I’m readjusting,’ I say. ‘I wasn’t expecting an audience.’

‘It is so great to be out of LA and back in a country where women look like women,’ he says enthusiastically. ‘I love all that tits-and-bums stuff that you get here, it is so much healthier than dealing with middle-aged women with prepubescent bodies. So readjust all you like.’

‘I really need to get some air,’ I say, when I am convinced that I have recovered decorum. ‘I think I’ll go and have a walk round the garden.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ he says. ‘That woman was doing my head in, asking me about what extra activities my children do, whether they are going to apply for Harvard, my views on parental discipline. She’s enough to drive anyone to drugs.’