Every Good Girl (20 page)

Monica suddenly didn't like fish after a lifetime of claiming it as far superior to meat. Nina and Graham had been raised on what Monica had referred to as the brain's building bricks (green vegetables were scaffolding) right from the time they could do their own bone-extracting. Nina had grilled her a large and juicy plaice, bought that morning from the man with the van who parked by the pub twice a week and who plied a brisk and expensive trade based on his assertion that he'd just come straight up from the coast. ‘He probably has,' Sally once said cynically. ‘He probably lives in Eastbourne and drops in at Billingsgate on his way up.' The fish was moistened with lemon, delicately drifted with pepper and dill and parsley. Nina thought it looked delicious.

‘Aren't you eating?' Monica asked, as Nina laid a tray with an embroidered linen cloth and Sunday cutlery.

‘No, it's a bit early for me. I'll eat with the girls later,' she said. ‘I'll just stay with you till Graham gets home. I've left him another fish in the fridge. All he has to do is grill it.'

‘Ye-es, maybe.' Monica sounded doubtful. ‘I suppose you couldn't just . . .'

‘If you're going to ask me to stay on and cook for Graham, no I couldn't,' Nina told her, laughing. ‘You shouldn't expect so little of him, he must feel quite insulted! Come on, into the sitting room, you can eat this in front of the News for once.'

‘All this fuss and I've gone right off fish. They gave us slabs of it in hospital but it didn't taste real. Fish doesn't come in neat oblongs,' Monica complained, but she walked ahead of Nina, slowly making her way across the hall to the sitting room where the fire blazed comfortingly and the cat waited on the sofa.

Nina followed with the tray, watching how her mother placed her feet more firmly, more deliberately on the carpet than she used to. This, only a few years ago, was a woman who'd won the local drama cup for her energetic performance as Lady Macbeth. Now she looked down as she walked, not up and ahead in her usual rather stately way, making sure that her feet were exactly where she thought they were. She's more nervous than she'll admit, Nina realized, suddenly feeling more qualms than she'd so far allowed herself about the time her mother was accustomed to spending alone. ‘Alone' wasn't a problem when you were active and capable and when going out or staying in was a matter of simple yes-or-no choice. Worried, she foresaw Monica gradually deciding that visiting friends, the bridge club, the Guild, the garden centre were in turn becoming just too much trouble. She could become more and more isolated, perhaps over something that pride wouldn't allow her to admit like the slippery dangers in unswept autumn leaves, or a wobbling kerb-edge at the crossroads by the Common.

The house seemed to be full of traps too, in spite of the bleak new stair rail which stretched pale and offensively modern opposite the polished oak banisters. Monica's beautiful old silky embroidered rugs suddenly seemed to consist only of threadbare, shoe-catching edges. The elegant lamps on the tables at each end of the sofa looked spindly and insecure, their wiring treacherously looped on the way to the plug sockets. Even the supremely placid cat seemed a danger, waiting to choose its moment to plait itself among Monica's unsteady legs and topple her, head zinging into the sharp wooden door frame or shattering through the glass display cabinet.

‘Graham and I wondered if we should get you one
of those alarms,' Nina suggested, settling the tray on the low table in front of her mother. Monica's face wrinkled with distaste, though whether at the unwanted fish or at her suggestion, Nina chose not to ask. ‘You see ads in the Sunday papers for them,' she went on. ‘You can be linked to a council helpline, wear the bleeper round your neck and then if anything happens you just press it and you've got someone to come and sort you out.'

‘Who, some stranger? Poking about in the house? I could be lying there helpless while they burgle.'

‘No, a neighbour, me, Graham – whoever you decide to give a key to. Suppose next time you fall over you're nowhere near the phone. You could be lying there till Graham's shift finishes, or longer if he goes out somewhere.'

Nina watched Monica's fork playing with the plaice. She was eating it, but grudgingly. Nina stopped talking. It might be enough just to plant the idea; Monica could mull it over and decide she'd been the one to think of it for herself some time later. While she was eating probably wasn't the best time to conjure up awful images of her lying helpless on a floor, getting cold, bleeding heavily, immobile. Monica's own night-time imagination could be relied on to supply those pictures, Nina was sure.

‘The food wasn't actually
that
bad in the hospital, considering,' Monica commented, cutting a Jersey Royal potato into eight minuscule bits.

‘You'll think about the alarm later then, won't you?' Nina said quietly, going to clear up in the kitchen. From the doorway she heard her mother saying, as if to reassure herself, ‘But Graham doesn't go out. Hardly at all.'

Graham was looking forward to getting home. There'd be Mother back again, someone to shout ‘Is that you?' as he came in, in the way that told you she wouldn't want it to be anyone else. It wasn't the same, just having the cool grey cat waiting there, sitting on the stairs being aloof but rubbing round enough when it came to tin-opening time. Cats didn't ask you about your day, didn't sympathize when you told them about that cow of an A & E sister who refused to help with the dodgy lift doors because that was Maintenance not Medical. Mother made all the right noises, the cat just licked its paws and blinked and looked superior. On the other hand, it would be trickier to get out of the house at night now, popping out to see Jennifer. He'd have to think about inventing some more owl activity on the Common, or wait till Mother was safely in bed, nice and early with cocoa and a Catherine Cookson. It wasn't a good time to unsettle her with the truth. In fact, when was?

Jennifer was just passing as Graham reached his car. He didn't wonder what she happened to be doing wandering through the staff car park, didn't think to calculate that the dusty acre of scrubland tucked away beyond the mortuary wasn't on the way to or from anywhere.

‘You'll be glad to have her home,' Jennifer said, coming to stand next to him as he unlocked the Fiesta door. They were squashed together between his car and a scarlet Passat. When Graham opened his door there seemed to be even less space. She was very close.

‘Yes. She didn't like it much in there,' he told her, grimacing towards the buildings behind him.

‘So I heard!' Jennifer laughed. ‘Mary on the ward told me she certainly had them running about.' Graham frowned and she put a hand on his arm. ‘I
don't mean like room service in some hotel,' she reassured him. ‘I mean she seemed to like everything just
so
, all efficiency.'

‘She has very high standards,' Graham said, defensively. ‘She just likes things done properly. If she sees that someone's been left stranded on a bedpan for half an hour, calling for help and not getting any, then I think she's right to make a fuss for them.'

He made a move towards the car, but Jennifer's pillow of a bosom seemed to form a barrier. Her breasts loomed between him and the car seat. He'd have to rub his ear against them if he wanted to get inside. Usually this was the kind of thought that helped him get to sleep at night but just now he simply wanted to get away, get home, be Monica's son, not Jennifer's – what was he? – boyfriend? partner?

‘Sorry love. Look, don't be so serious! Get your mother settled in and maybe we could go for a drink. Not tonight, that wouldn't be right – but maybe tomorrow? What do you think?'

Graham thought that would be all right, especially if agreeing would mean he could get into the car. And she was now showing something like proper respect. ‘If I can get someone to come and sit with Mother, then yes, tomorrow might be fine. Or perhaps after the weekend might be better, so she's feeling safe,' Graham conceded. Jennifer moved away at last and he sighed, feeling as if her breasts had been squashed into his chest preventing his breath from coming out properly.

Driving along the road, away towards the Common, he allowed himself to think about those breasts again. This time he imagined them naked, big and firm, the same ballooned shape as they were when she was dressed. He knew some big women drooped terribly when all support was removed, but somehow Jennifer
looked as if she didn't. Unclothed she would still be rounded and mountainous but soft and warm at the same time. His hands sweated on the steering wheel and he was glad of a string of red traffic lights to give him time to compose himself before he got to the house. Nina had said she would buy plaice for supper. He liked that.

‘I'm back! Has anyone who isn't me thought about food?' Nina shouted as she walked down the stairs to the kitchen. She stopped at the doorway, amazed. ‘Good grief, it looks wonderful! You've transformed it!' she said. Henry, at the sink washing brushes, turned round and grinned, pleased. ‘Well I thought I'd just get as much done as I could while it was quiet. Is it all right? I mean we can go over the walls with any colour you like, it doesn't have to stay white.'

‘No, no it's fine, I love it all fresh and pure. It looks twice the size. I really like it all empty like this.' She walked around, enjoying the feeling of clean space. Joe's flat was like that, all open and uncluttered, apart from that awful strangling bedroom. Henry had moved the dustsheets from the sofa and chairs, there was a crowded vase of cornflowers and white stocks on the table and someone had taken all the books out of the cupboard and put them back on the shelves.

‘There's just the windows and doors and skirtings to do now, all the eggshell bits. More white?' Henry asked.

‘No,' Nina decided instantly, looking at the flowers. ‘Blue paintwork. A really rich, Caribbean sea blue. And the curtains can all go to the jumble. I don't think I want any.'

‘What? Just empty windows? You can't.' Emily came into the room, catching the end of what her mother
was saying. ‘People will be able to see us, we'll be spied on.'

Nina laughed, ‘Who's going to look and from where?' Emily came across and glared out of the window, her face daring anyone even to think of glancing in. ‘Look! See that? That new man across the road up in that room, he's looking, he can see right
in
!'

Nina followed her gaze. ‘Oh that's only Paul. He's set up an office in that small bedroom. I don't suppose he even gives us a glance, really.' He
was
looking though, Emily was right. She waved up at him and he waved back. Probably he couldn't see more than a couple of feet into the room. Equally probably he wondered what kind of woman she was, gazing out and up at him like that. ‘Perhaps you're right,' she told Emily. ‘OK, a plain blind at the front window, but no-one passes round at the back, there's only the garden.'

Emily shuddered. ‘Well that's even worse than people passing. Someone might climb in and start looking
on purpose
. You just wouldn't know, because you couldn't see them from inside when it's dark. They could be pressed up right to the window and you wouldn't know.' She slumped onto the sofa and curled up, hugging her arms round her body. ‘You're just so innocent, Mum, you'd never think anyone
evil
might be out there. Lucy would probably hope there
was
. Anything for an audience.' Nina went and sat next to her, taking her limp, unresponsive hand.

‘Goodness, I'm sorry Emily, it was just a frivolous suggestion really. Of course I want you to feel safe and private. I should have thought before I spoke. But you know you really mustn't let this incident on the Common blight your spirit. That way, the man will have won, made you a real victim.'

‘I know, I know. And he didn't really hurt me, I
know all that. But he could have, he might with someone else.' Emily picked at the edge of her sweatshirt. The ribbed band was coming apart from the rest of it, and Nina wondered how long she'd sat that day, just brooding and picking. Emily continued in little more than a whisper, ‘I just feel depressed because men've all . . .' and here she looked up from under her fringe and glanced across at Henry ‘. . . all got that strength, deep down packed away in case they really want to use it. And when they
don't
use it, they're just being polite, aren't they? With that strength they know they can just get their own way any old time. I hate them for it. I hate them all.'

‘Er . . . I'll see you in the morning shall I?' Henry, the brush-washing completed, stood in front of Nina, his hands on his hips and the zip of his jeans at her eye level. Any amount of primitive stirring might be going on behind the denim. Perhaps only deliberate distracting thoughts of say, England's last test defeat, keep most men from pouncing whenever the urge takes them. Emily's almost right, she thought, looking up at him, but, get real, only almost. Henry was waiting, grinning and looking untidily boyish. There
were
Nice Men.