The Hive (12 page)

“WHAT?” Rachel twisted round and looked into the buggy with mock horror. “Oh my God, Mum! You're right!” She slapped her hand over her mouth. “What have I done? I have no recollection…One minute I was outside the supermarket…then…Christ…I must've blacked—”

Bea's dad laughed.

“A-ha. So that means Georgie's there, then.” The carrots were now pointing accusingly at Rachel. “Even Georgie's at Bea's girls' lunch. But not you. Of course. You,” she wiggled the carrots emphatically, “are left holding the baby.”

“I don't blame her,” called Graham cheerfully. “That's 'cause she's not daft as all that. Are you, Rachel?”

Rachel gave a smile and a grateful wave in the direction of the guttering and turned to leave. “I think I'll be off. Before you call the police.”

She reversed back down the side path, smiling. She liked Bea's dad. She had liked her own dad, of course. She'd visited more back then, she knew—when her dad was alive. When she could expect some sensible conversation and a bit of peace and quiet. It had been much calmer then. Now the whole house and garden were in a state of perpetual motion, she just didn't fancy it so much. She shook her head as she set off. How her dad would have hated all this self-sufficiency rubbish. It was a blessing, probably, that he had been spared it.

Preparation time:
well, days, really, what with all the thinking and planning and what-have-yous

Cooking time:
not enough. Nowhere near enough

Heather passed the last few plates around the table and sat down among the silent lunchers.

“Gosh,” said Bea sweetly. “What fun. What did you say this was again, Heather?”

Heather closed her eyes as she answered. Perhaps, when she said the words, they could magically become true. “Filet de canard avec sauce de raisin et de pine whatsits and tempura des endives avec dumplings of cauliflower.” She opened them again. No change.

Georgie took her knife, lifted up her duck fillet and peered underneath it. Heather felt self-conscious enough without Georgie playing up.

“Except, um, the dumplings didn't quite work so I thought we could manage…”

Georgie lifted her plate up to eye level and tapped the bottom, listening for evidence of a secret compartment.

“And then, um, the tempura, well…Colette took the whisk—”

“Don't you go blaming me,” Colette cut in. “You had the kitchen to yourself for most of the m—”

Bea raised an eyebrow. Colette shut up.

Georgie tipped her plate gently, to establish the presence of moisture.

“Oh,” finished Heather mournfully. “The sauce. I…must've…forgotten the sauce.”

“Let's just call it Duck and Nuts, shall we?” asked Bea of the table as she picked up her knife and fork. “Two of my absolutely favorite things and practically
Atkins.
All protein, few carbs. Heather, you're totally awesome. How yummy. Tuck in.”

Heather was too miserable to pick up her fork. The morning had not gone according to plan. All that cozy hanging out and breeze-shooting had not come to pass. Instead Bea had answered the doorbell, exclaimed about Heather's new look—she had noticed everything, the boots, the cardi; Bea just sees more than Rachel, that's the thing—and then disappeared off to the shower. And no sooner had she dumped her stuff on the kitchen island and wandered over to the notice board to check out the invitations and appointments than the doorbell had rung again and then again and all the other volunteers had trooped in and spread around the kitchen like smashed eggs so that Heather had been practically falling out of the back door and into the painted box that said
WELLINGTON BOOT'S
. Even though most of their stuff seemed to come out of a carton labeled
TESCO FINEST
, and she was trying to do proper, actual cooking.

Heather dared to raise her eyes to the table, and saw, to her amazement, that they were all doing exactly what Bea had told them. They were tucking in. It was another miracle. And now Bea was raising a glass, about to propose a toast. Not to the Duck and Nuts, surely? Although, actually, it was a rather good, if simple, combination…

“I am
so
pleased to see you all here today. You see, this lunch,” Bea smiled around the table, “is more than just another fundraiser. It is a Thank You. A Thank You from a totally grateful me to the
totally
awesome all of you, for helping me get through the juggling act”

Georgie winced.

“of my first half-term as
a working woman.
”

“It was a pleasure.”

“We had such a good time with your kids.”

“I did not,” Georgie pointed her knife towards Bea, “help you in any way.”

“I'm surprised,” said Clover, “not to see Bubba here. Didn't she take them all to Thorpe Park for you?”

“Mmm.” Bea was nibbling on a pine kernel, making it last. “She couldn't make it today, sadly.” She stopped and put down her knife and fork. “I do hope they're settling in all right. Scarlett's a bit worried about poor little Milo, says he's terribly unhappy, suspects he's Special Needs. Has anyone else mentioned him at all?”

“My boys said he was annoying,” said Colette. “They asked him to go in goal the other day and he went and lay down in it. He is a bit strange—”

“Do you think she gives him Fruit Shoots?” butted in Clover anxiously.

“—but I can't say they were worried exactly.”

“Oh, I'm sure it's nothing. I'll have a word with their teacher—I've got the staff all coming to supper next week. But you know what Scarlett's like—little mother to the whole school.”

“Lovely girl.”

“Defo the next head girl.”

“I don't know,” Bea sighed. She looked genuinely worried and uncertain. “The whole Green family seems…Oh…What is it, do you think?”

“They don't fit in,” put in Colette firmly.

“What? You think they don't
belong?
” Poor Bea sounded so worried.

“Nor do we want them to, if all they do is knock back the Fruit Shoots,” added Clover.

Bea was astonished. “
Really?
Do we not? And is
that
what it is?” She shook her head sadly. “Is
that
the general view? I always thought it was sort of lovely for our children to mix with
all
different sorts. But you all think it's better for the poor little
different
ones perhaps to be somewhere where they can really
thrive?
”

Heather wasn't at all sure that, somewhere in the back of her mind, she didn't have a few worries about what Bea had just said. Didn't Maisie rather like Milo? But before she had a chance to clear the mental space to think it through—it was a knotty one, this—Georgie just suddenly boiled up and over like milk in a pan.

“Well, fortunately it doesn't really matter what you think, Beatrice.” She was spitting nuts. It was actually revolting. “The national education policy on inclusivity in mainstream education is one teeny-weeny thing you can brush off your overburdened shoulders.” She stood up. “'Cause it's not bloody up to you. God, I need a cigarette.” And she just blew out the door.

Well, thought Heather. They were only chatting. There was certainly no need for all that. Heather gazed across at Bea, sitting in the middle of the oval table with a faint furrow to her brow, looking fantastic. While Heather was trying to cook, Bea had washed and straightened her long blond hair and she looked so gleaming, so elegant. From time to time, she twinkled her narrow cornflower eyes and folded her neat straight features into a pretty smile as the voices recovered, swirled and bubbled around her. Oh, Bea, Heather thought dreamily as she looked upon this vision. Oh, Bea…

The noise had been registered by her subconscious some time ago, but it was only now that her conscious mind tuned in and identified it. Humming. Rachel was actually humming. She was strolling up the hill, pushing Hamish in his buggy, and she was humming away like a…like a…like an actual happy person or something.

Rachel had forgotten all this—what a positive thing it was to have a little one around the place; how they imprinted their wholesome routine upon the days of everyone about them. It was only 1:30, and she had already run around down at the rec, had fruit, juice and a midmorning story, got some work done while Hamish played around her on the floor, and partaken of a delicious luncheon of fish fingers and green vegetable. She'd even popped in on her mum. It was so much more than she normally achieved that Rachel felt quite ashamed. Where did it come from, this idea that it was small children who killed your fun and tied you down? The freedom of having her own kids at school had resulted in hour upon hour of a freedom which she spent trapped, staring at her own four walls, subsisting on meager rations and achieving, on an average day, sod-all.

She walked around the school fence and turned left, past the little Budgens. Hamish nodded off. Right at the sub–post office and there she was at the top of Mead Avenue. Didn't that lovely Melissa say she had just moved into Mead Avenue? It seemed incongruous, somehow, to think of that exotic creature settling here. Rachel turned in, to take a better look. It was a long, narrow road that fell down the hill and wrapped itself around the curve of the land, but that was its only decent distinguishing feature. All the houses were recently built and exactly the same—neat, square pods, designed for the raising of neat, square families. Not a sharp, pointy irregular triangle like her own. The humming, she noticed, stopped.

This was prime St. Ambrose catchment, so Rachel knew quite a lot of the Mead Avenue set. They were indeed a set, with their Avenue Fireworks and their Avenue BBQ and their matching Avenue Christmas lights; they were always busy hatching something. All that community this, community that—it got right on Rachel's nerves. A weak wintry sun shone down upon the trimmed lawns, reflecting off the cleaned gutters. Presumably it always shone on Mead Avenue; it wouldn't have the nerve to do otherwise. Or was this merely the natural radiant glow of neighborhood smugness? Just because estate agents called their address “desirable,” they seemed to think everybody wanted to live there. Well, not Rachel Mason, thanks very much.

She pushed on down the hill, holding tight onto the buggy to resist the strong gravitational pull. The buzz of the hedge trimmer assaulted her even before she rounded the bend. Wretched things, she tutted. Surely not even Hamish could snooze through that racket. And then she turned and saw ahead a house that she had never before noticed. How had that happened? It was hardly new: possibly even Victorian, definitely pretty, significantly larger than its neighbors, substantial rather than grand. It was sitting behind a high Leylandii hedge, atop a large, upward-sloping front lawn, and quite clearly she had never noticed it before because she hadn't been able to see it. A huge old tree in front of the house was in the process of coming down. That place must have been hidden for decades behind all that foliage. The machine droned on. Another branch was for it. Rachel and the buggy passed the tall hedge, got to the drive, peered round into the garden. And there, with mufflers on her ears and the hedge trimmer in her hand, was Melissa.

Preparation time:
hard to say really, because Sharon went round to Jasmine's to get started, but what with a coffee and a catch-up the morning seemed to run away with them

Cooking time:
a lot longer if you haven't got that Heather hogging the stove, thanks for asking

“Oh, how lovely,” said Georgie as the mains was put in front of her. She'd only come back in because she was still starving after Heather's lamentable effort and now look: “Duck.” She picked up her cutlery with a weary air.

Across the table, she could see Heather as she had seen Heather so very often down the years: nervously sensing some sort of disaster, trying to gauge how much of it was all her own fault. Not really having much of a clue.

“Well, this is a disaster and a half, isn't it?” said Clover in helpful clarification. “Thank God I bought those canapés…”

“Sorry,” Heather mumbled. “We—I—should have had more coordination.”

“Not at all!” said Bea sweetly. “We're so lucky that you've done all this and it is all so special and such a treat. Next time, Jasmine, you might perhaps use a bit more sesame oil? And I think, Sharon, just two minutes more on the duck? Otherwise, wow, delish.”

“Cooking,” said Georgie, in her
MasterChef
voice, “doesn't get tougher than this.”

Bea broke the respondent silence. “Now, is there any more in that bottle, Abby?”

The bottle was in front of Bea. Abigail got up, went round to her side of the table and filled Bea's glass. Georgie held out hers too—if she must be here, she may as well take the opportunity to knock it back a bit—but didn't get any. “I hope you'll all still have me back next year when I've moved up to senior school.” Abby shuddered. “God. I can't believe it's actually about to happen. Terrifying.”

“My friend's boy's just started this term,” said Clover. “She says it's sheer hell.”

“We're all watching you, you know, to see which school you go for,” said Jasmine to Abby. “You can try it out for us.”

Georgie yawned a spectacular yawn.

“So hard, so hard,” Abby continued. “What is the right school? Ashley's mum, you know—”

“The fat one,” said Colette.

“Talk about Fruit Shoots.”

“Yeah. Well. She—”

“Oh dear,” whimpered Heather. “Can't we change the subject?”