Blowing It (14 page)

‘But—’

‘Clover, stop this right now. Please,’ Lottie snapped. She had had enough. ‘Next Christmas Mac and I probably won’t even
be
here. OK? I know it sounds brutal but you’re past thirty, not three.’

‘So where will you be, then?’ Clover sounded defeated.

‘Junkanoo!’ Lottie got up and started swaying around, waving her arms rhythmically, the little mirrors on her purple skirt catching the light and sending miniature rainbows dancing across the table. ‘It’s a festival in Nassau – parades and costumes and music and all that and it starts in
the
early hours of Boxing Day so I’m afraid we’re not likely to be dragging in the yule log this time round! I don’t get it, Clover – why can’t you just be happy for us? You moved out from here a long, long time ago!’

‘Shall I go up and make a start in the attic?’ Susie suggested. ‘Leave you to sort out your demons on your own?’ She stood up, opening her taupe leather bag and pulling out her notebook (cream suede-backed and rather covetable, Clover noted) and her silver ballpoint pen.

‘No. I’ll come. If you’re chucking things out, I want to see what’s going. I want my rocking horse. And I’m bagging Ilex’s train set for him.’ Clover followed Susie to the hall staircase, squashing an urge to shove her over on the wide oak boards that Mrs Howard had so thoroughly polished to a glassy finish that morning. She was going to need back-up, she could see that. She would have to get together with Ilex and Sorrel, out of range of Mac and Lottie, and plan some sort of strategy. If they really were determined to sell the house and take off round the globe, they were going to have to do it with proper organization and safety in mind. They were not, whatever they thought, gap-year students at the peak of health, strength and vivacity.

‘Dear Trinny and Susannah …’ Sorrel, taking advantage of being alone in the school computer room, didn’t know quite what to say next. How best
to
convey, in an e-mail, that she was on her knees here, in classic begging position? She should probably have asked for this years ago, starting after the time her mum had come to the primary school nativity play in one of those bright Peruvian gathered skirts with rows of braid all round it and a matching knitted Inca hat with the ear flaps. All the other mums had looked like lawyers in little black suits, every one of them the ultimate example of perfectly groomed high maintenance. Lottie had looked as if she was dressed for a folk festival. And then there’d been the episode of the ancient Afghan coat. A few years ago, when fake versions of them had been in fashion, Lottie had gone up to the attic and, after a good afternoon rooting through various boxes, had triumphantly retrieved her original one, bought in Kensington Market, 1972. She’d scorned the new ones, saying they didn’t have the right smell. Too bloody right, that was. Once whiffed, never forgotten. That time it had been the carol concert. Sorrel, from the church choir stalls, had gone sweatily sticky with mortification, as she watched the congregation members closest to her parents starting to mutter to each other, wafting the air, holding tissues to their noses and shuffling as far away as the crowded pews would allow. Lottie and Mac, of course, had been totally oblivious, no doubt all blissfully loved-up in a memory-lane sort of way, maybe recalling Times Gone By where that hideous, stinking coat had figured. Euw … Sorrel
thought
– wishing this hadn’t crossed her mind – maybe they’d used it as a rug, for outdoor— No-no-no! She mustn’t think like that. Too, too gross to contemplate.

‘Wotcha doing?’ Gaz crept up behind her and fluffed up her hair. Sorrel, reacting automatically, leaned forward with her hand over the screen.

‘Gaz! Don’t
do
that! Did no one ever tell you it’s rude to read people’s private stuff?’

Gaz pulled out a chair beside her and pushed his leg against hers. She wriggled away, cross and embarrassed, quickly changing the screen back to her Hotmail inbox.

‘Hey, settle, why don’t you?’ he said. ‘I only came to say hi. I thought you might be looking up stuff for the trip. I am still coming with you, aren’t I?’

‘Are you? I don’t know. Only if you get it together. Have you had your shots yet? For Thailand and Vietnam if we’re going there on the way back? You need yellow fever and typhoid and hepatitis and—’

‘Whoa … wait – what happened to Australia?’ Gaz looked pale. ‘And have
you
had all those? Already?’

Sorrel relented. ‘Well, no not yet, but I will be. Some of them you have to have a few weeks before you go. I’ve had other things to think about anyway.’

‘Like what? Like revision and stuff?’ He ran a hand up her bare leg and under her skirt. The hand felt, as it always did, warm, firm and eager. That was the good and bad thing about Gaz – he was really
good
at the sex stuff and more or less always up for it. When you were feeling stressed and nervy, he knew all the right moves. He could be a bit quick, but then so could she – they didn’t go in for blaming each other when one of them was way ahead. It could just as easily be the other way round another time. Whichever, it worked for them.

‘No, not revision. Just small things, like where, exactly, is the place I call “home” going to be, once my folks have sold up and vanished? They haven’t thought about
me
at all. I’m, like, way down the list. Probably after packing the mosquito repellent and re-homing the chickens.’ Sorrel felt a bit tearful, which wasn’t at all what she’d come into the computer room for. She was supposed to be persuading Trinny and Susannah to sort out what her parents intended to wear for the Leavers’ Family Lunch. They were sure to say she was a horrible girl for asking. Stupidly suburban and selfish. She flicked away a tear.

‘Whassup, babe? Why are you so stressed? You can always come and live with me, over at mine.’ Gaz put his arms round her and pulled her close. He smelled of Dove deodorant. She’d wondered where hers had vanished to, the last time he’d stayed over. Now she knew.

Sorrel laughed. ‘At yours? Let me see, do we live in your room with your swotty brother or go in with your sister’s baby? Or what about your gran’s room? Don’t let’s miss her out! I think not, Gaz; one more
person
in your place and the walls will burst. But thanks for the offer.’

‘Just a thought.’ He shrugged. ‘Hey, we could get our own place! What do you think? When we get back?’ He pulled in closer to her. ‘We could be together, like properly, you know?’

Sorrel smiled but said nothing. She’d been with Gaz for over a year now. Lottie had been younger than her when she’d met Mac. By the time she was Sorrel’s age she’d had Ilex and was actually married, a full-on wife, albeit a rock-chick teenage one. Sorrel had asked her about that, wondering why she’d gone through with actually marrying, so very young. Sorrel had expected her to say, ‘Because you had to, back then’ or ‘To make Ilex legitimate’ or something, but no. Instead she’d come out with the simplest, most honest one of all: ‘Because I loved Mac.’ How harsh and cynical Sorrel had felt. She hadn’t thought of that one.

She liked Gaz a lot. He could be stupid and lazy and slack about being on time and keeping enough petrol in his car but he was funny and sweet and he loved her. But she didn’t love him. And there must be something of her mother in her because, when it came to thinking about who she lived with,
properly
lived with in the sharing-it-all sense, the way Manda and Ilex were, rather than the just-friends-sharing-a-flat one, she definitely wasn’t planning to shack up with someone she
didn’t
one hundred per cent love. So that would have to be a no. She
nuzzled
closer to him, hoping he wouldn’t really be expecting a serious instant answer.

‘Gym showers?’ Gaz, misunderstanding, pushed a wisp of her hair aside and murmured in her ear, all soft, damp breath and sexy warmth.

Sorrel giggled. ‘What
now
? I’ve got a Pinter class in half an hour!’

Gaz pulled her to her feet. ‘That’s plenty of time, for you!’ he said, leading her to the door.

‘But someone might come …’

‘Who’s gonna come? Apart from us?’ He laughed. ‘You know it’s always safe in there. No one’s used them since the day they were built. You can tell by the rust. Come on, let’s go.’ Tugging her along the corridor with him, Gaz picked up speed, dodging clumps of younger kids mooching in slow groups out of the lunch hall.

Sorrel gave in and raced alongside him, clutching his hand. A fast blast of dirty, half-clothed sex would set her up for an afternoon of Pinter revision and for having queen-bee Carly and her back-up crew making snide remarks every time she contributed to the discussion.

Sorrel had put her hands over her ears and sung ‘Way too much information’ to the tune of ‘We Are the Champions’ when her mother had told Sorrel (and the rest of a drunken lunch table of old-hippie friends) that she’d been conceived in the pantry of the Flaming Cow restaurant while the builders renovated the dining room only a few feet beyond the
door
. Would she now be surprised that her daughter was about to have speedy, breathless, teenage sex against the grubby tiled wall of a potentially rather public shower cubicle? Or would she simply put it down to genes?

Oh God. Oh God-oh-God-oh-God. Ilex put his hands over his ears, closed his eyes and just about managed to stop himself from laying his miserable head down on his desk. What a mistake he’d made. What a fucking catastrophic idiot he’d made of himself. Wendy! Wendy Bloody Murphy! Aaaagh! He could barely think of her name without groaning. Whatever had he been thinking of? Well actually, he could answer that. He’d been thinking of having some extra-mural hot, furtive sex with a firm and sturdy policewoman, fumbling under her uniform like an eager terrier going for a rabbit. And what had he got? Well no uniform for a start.

What was it she’d said, that first day when she’d dropped him at the office door? Oh yes, ‘I’ll be the one in the funny car!’

Well, obviously, he’d imagined it would be the cop wagon. Anyone would think that. But no. Any idiot wouldn’t: they’d realize that off-duty cops didn’t wander around in their uniforms simply for the fun look of it. Their out-of-hours life wasn’t a bloody fancy dress party. No, of course they didn’t get to take the car home. It wasn’t a toy. So there she was, all disappointing in come-and-get-it mufti
(black
skirt, one of those leather link belts, tight pink top-and-cleavage job), sitting in a drop-head old-style pink Beetle with scarlet and orange cats painted all over it. No surprises, she’d referred to the dreadful vehicle as her ‘Pink Panther’. She had a nodding cat on the dashboard, a dangling air freshener in the shape of a cat’s head and a Garfield collection lined up and grinning on the back seat. Could it get worse? Oh yes.

‘You look a bit shocked!’ she’d said as he climbed in, keeping his head down and looking over his shoulder as he prayed no one from the office caught sight of him. He’d tried a nervous laugh and she’d given him the look: a bit fierce, disconcertingly challenging, and said, ‘OK, so it’s a surprise. But what did you expect? You’re not one of those men who hoped to have me in the police car in full-on uniform, now are you?’

A joker would say, telling it to this point, ‘Oh how we laughed!’ And he’d done his best. Oh, he’d really done his best, laughing till he thought he might throw up.

It was only a couple of drinks. She’d been on orange juice, down at the pub by Hammersmith Bridge, and when he’d said that no, he didn’t think he’d better go back to hers, not this time, things to do, etc, she’d whipped out her diary and got him booked in for the next day, lunchtime.

‘I don’t want to rush things,’ she’d claimed as she dragged from him his mobile number, office number
and
the exact position, window-wise, of his desk. He’d hate to be up against her in a professional sense. She could drag a GBH confession out of an Archbishop. And so ‘rushing things’ would be what, exactly? Having full-on sex with him right there and then against the wall, under the bridge, before his first pint had settled? She was a very touchy-feely sort, all little flickerings with her fingers on his arm, squeezing past him far more closely than she needed to. Hardly what you’d call subtle in her intentions. Now if she’d been in the full-scale navy blue …

So now here he was, three dates in and a victim of his own stupid fantasies. Wendy was so keen, it was terrifying. She must have taken lessons from the police dog-handlers in Not Letting Go. She kept saying she ‘Just Knew’ they were meant to be together. She called him Lexy and had given him a photo of herself, in a frame decorated with kittens, for his desk.

She was outside now. He could see her from the window, parked up opposite the building in her horrid little car, tweaking at her spiky hair in the rear-view mirror. The lipstick would be out in a minute, and then when he tried to sneak out and simply go home for an evening of peaceful telly, curled up with Manda (aah … lovely, uncomplicated, beautiful Manda – why did he ever look at anyone else?), she’d pounce and make him go to the pub with her, ask him yet again to go back to hers
and
maybe this time tell him she’d moved the flat-mate out so they could make a proper home together. At what point could he, he wondered, get enough nerve up to tell her she was barking, both in the ‘mad’ and the up-the-wrong-tree senses?

The phone rang. He hardly dared answer it. If it wasn’t for the Pilgrim riverside apartment thing still going on, he’d divert the calls to Simon and let him deal with everything. Very gingerly, as if half expecting electric shocks, Ilex picked up the phone.

‘Ilex? Clover. Listen, I think we should get together, don’t you? About Mum and Dad and the house?’

Ilex said nothing, feeling almost tearful with relief.

‘Ilex? Are you there? Don’t you think we should talk about it, just you and me and Sorrel? See if we can get them to slow down and think things through a bit?’

‘Mmm. Maybe. What are they actually doing?’ Ilex felt a bit out of the loop here. Any spare brain-space seemed to have been taken over by the Wendy dilemma. He hadn’t given Holbrook House or his parents much thought at all over the past days.