Going Loco (22 page)

From her sparkling attic window, one morning in the last week of June, Belinda observed the arrival of the cleaning lady. Mrs Holdsworth came three times a week, these days. She entered without noise or bother, and was no longer permitted to smoke except in the garden. Swearing had been prohibited. In the intervening months, Linda had trained her to Hoover and dust, tidy and polish, and do simple shopping for haddock and eels. According to reports, the rest of the house was like a palace. Linda had also instituted a Time Wasting Box, into which Mrs H must insert 50p if she tried to start a conversation up the loft ladder. Belinda felt a twinge of sadness at this. A nice old philosophical chat with Mrs Holdsworth about why God made lungs so complicated would have been pretty welcome, the way she was feeling right now.

Far away downstairs, a phone rang. Belinda strained to hear it. When Stefan and Linda were both out, sometimes she would drag herself to the top of the loft-ladder to hear more clearly, but usually she just stopped tapping the keys for a minute. Today, as she paused midway through ‘The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog’, the muffled voice leaving a message was her new agent praising her ‘Up the Duff’ column in the Effort. Belinda liked the sound of this new agent: he had
parties for clients and, on occasion, even came to the house with good news and a bunch of roses. The phone rang again almost immediately, with a different voice but the same congratulation. This time it was Julian Barnes.

Wow, thought Belinda. She had no idea she knew Julian Barnes.

Three months on, Belinda still could not believe her luck. Linda had continued to remove from her every worry and obstacle of life – including some she hadn’t even admitted to herself. Look at the way Linda disposed of Mother, for example, then forbade Belinda to feel bad about it. ‘If you grieve, then I’ll feel guilty,’ Linda explained. ‘And if I feel guilty, I’ll have to leave. Which I assume you wouldn’t want. Besides which, grief always saps creativity, and we can’t have that. So buck up, Belinda. Look, as far as the world’s concerned, you’re dealing with the bereavement brilliantly. Honestly, I’m congratulated on my surprisingly high spirits everywhere I go!’

That Mother had died through the dreadful accident of slipping on a piece of squid had been accepted by the police and was, in any case, the truth. But the incident had linked Linda to Belinda in a complicity that made both of them uncomfortable. Belinda’s move to the attic took place within a day, and was mainly Linda’s idea, but it made sense to them both to separate Belinda totally from the life downstairs. Especially if she kept crying, and getting on everyone’s nerves.

‘I did it for you!’ Linda would remind her. ‘Her love wasn’t unconditional. Conditional, judgemental love – well, it isn’t worth having.’ And although Belinda secretly disagreed (she rather liked the idea that love should be deserved), she had to admit that a great weight had been lifted from her psyche with the death of Mother. Yes, she blamed herself for not intervening more quickly when she heard the fight downstairs on that fateful night. She wished she had been a better daughter. But she did feel better in some ways. No longer was there
somebody in the world who automatically thought badly of her. As an incidental symptom of this reaction, her attitude softened towards squid. She still couldn’t eat it, of course, but nowadays it was certainly welcome in the house.

Meanwhile, look at this block about babies, too. Again Linda had blazed the trail. Why had Belinda been waiting to have children, putting things off? Because she felt inadequate? Because she felt unqualified, not good enough for motherhood? Fortunate, then, that Linda entertained no such weaselly doubts on the subject.

‘But you will make a marvellous mother, Belinda,’ she’d said, on that momentous day conception was confirmed. ‘And Stefan will be over the moon about it. You know what he was like when he got back from Sweden.’

‘Am I the first to know? Oh, Linda!’

‘Of course. Do you want to see the test-kit thing? I can get it from the bathroom.’

‘Oh yes, please.’

‘How do you feel?’ Linda gave her a conspiratorial wink.

‘Fine. No different. I can’t really believe it.’

‘Belinda, I’m so happy for you. I have to say it. I think you’re doing absolutely the right thing. Especially when there’s been a death. New life! Congratulations.’

‘Thanks.’

‘And I’ll do everything, as usual. Eat coal, whatever. I’m fit and strong.’

‘You’re marvellous. When you first came, I would never have thought one day you’d have a baby for me. Tell Stefan I’m blooming.’

And now Linda was making Belinda famous with this column about the pregnancy, and earning more in a month than Belinda expected to receive when the doubles book was finished! It was amazing how life turned out, really.

The only fly in the ointment – it was now more like a
gluey knot of drowned bluebottles – remained the book. Because after spending several months devoting herself entirely to it, Belinda found to her astonishment she didn’t give a damn. No one could have predicted this development, but the more she studied the literature of doubles, the less she saw anything remarkable in it. It was Dr Jekyll and Mister Bleeding Obvious, as far as she was now concerned. Even her formerly favourite story, the Hans Christian Andersen one about the shadow, seemed curiously pointless. Given the choice, she read ‘The Ugly Duckling’ and ‘The Princess and the Pea’ instead. Her notes had started taking a sardonic turn, and she had written
‘SO WHAT?’
in big letters across the front of her Dostoevsky. ‘Existential angst, my arse,’ she surprised Linda by saying once, when she popped up to borrow some Sartre.

Sensing the problem, Linda had offered to help out, and had started reading
The Confessions of a Justified Sinner
in her weekly BBC car before the
Late Review.
But, secretly, Belinda was thinking of dropping it altogether. They didn’t need the money, after all. And she had to admit that in the context of the high profile Linda had acquired for Belinda Johansson in the media, the doubles book was going to look rather dull and earnest when it appeared under her name – rather like the bathetic little tomes on Euclid that Lewis Carroll turned out, when everyone was expecting more
Alice
. Lumbered with
The Dualists
, Linda would have to do such a lot of explaining next time she was invited to Number 10. If the book simply evaporated, it might be better for everybody.

So, up in her converted loft (thankfully with
en suite
facilities) she just typed a lot about quick brown foxes jumping over lazy dogs, and tried not to ask herself three hundred times a day whether the quick brown fox was the
alter ego
of the lazy dog, or a totally separate entity with its own agenda. Bloody doubles. Why was everyone so obsessed with them? Even
Jago Ripley, the man who admitted to the attention span of a zucchini, had got interested recently, apparently.

‘Hello?’

Belinda jumped with fright. An intruder on the landing!

‘It’s me. Viv.’

‘Oh fuck,’ cursed Belinda. She looked in panic around her attic room. Apart from jumping out of the window, there was no way out.

‘Belinda, can I come up?’

‘No, you can’t.’

Belinda regarded the trap-door with horror. From the telltale clanking sound, Viv was already ascending the ladder.

‘I’ve got to see you,’ came Viv’s voice. ‘I need to talk.’

‘Bugger off. Who let you in?’ Belinda’s heart was racing.

‘Please, Belinda. I’m coming up. This ladder’s terrifying. There’ll be an accident on this one day.’

Belinda realized there was nothing for it. As Viv’s head appeared through the trap door, Belinda picked up a carton of Mars bars and emptied it over her, simultaneously yelling, ‘Help!’

‘Belinda, you bitch, ouch!’ cried Viv, retreating.

She crawled to the window, flung it open and yelled ‘Help!’ again. Thank goodness, Linda was emerging from a taxi in the road below, with a half-dozen Harvey Nichols carrier-bags. She looked up and saw Belinda at the window. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Help!’ she yelled. ‘Linda, help! Come quickly! Viv got in!’

Linda shoved money at the driver and raced indoors, but was too late. Viv had taken fright at the bombardment of confectionery, run downstairs and escaped through the back door – presumably with the help of Mrs Holdsworth.

‘Are you all right?’ Linda called, as she tackled the loft-ladder. It clanged and swayed as she mounted it at top speed. ‘Belinda, I’m so sorry this happened. Viv must have gone mad.’

Belinda caught her breath. ‘I’m OK,’ she said. ‘I’m OK now you’re here.’

Linda took her podgy hand and patted it. ‘Of course you’re OK. You’re lovely. Everyone loves you.’

Belinda reached for a tissue in her velour tracksuit bottoms. ‘It was a shock, that’s all.’

‘Of course. How did you get on today with the book?’

‘All right, I suppose. It’s taken an interesting animal turn. Foxes and dogs.’ ‘That’s interesting.’

‘Mm. Julian Barnes phoned, I think. To say he liked the column.’

‘Well, there you are.
He
likes you.’

Belinda rolled over on her stomach. It was her most comfortable position, these days. ‘I’d love to read my “Up the Duff” column sometime,’ she said, gently. She knew it was an awkward subject.

‘I’d be so embarrassed, though. You’re the real writer, Belinda. I’m only pretending.’

‘Mm.’ Belinda picked at a lump of congealed tomato sauce on her T-shirt. ‘It was really scary just then, Linda. I suddenly saw what this looks like to Viv. Me upstairs on my own, you downstairs with Stefan, me getting so fat and slobby, and you having the baby. You telling me all the time that I’m lovely. If she didn’t understand this was all for my sake, she could so easily get the wrong idea. She’d think you were stealing my life, or something far-fetched like that!’

Linda smiled. ‘You’re not getting fat.’

‘I am, a bit. I had to have my wedding ring sawn off, didn’t I?’

‘You’re lovely. You were too thin before, that’s the truth of it.’

Belinda glanced around for a mirror but then remembered Linda had kept them all downstairs, for fear of accidents.

‘Mother never thought I was lovely. She said I’d let myself go.’

‘That’s a silly expression.’

‘She wasn’t right, was she?’ Belinda sniffed.

‘Never. Maggie sends her regards, by the way.’

‘Does she ask after me?’

Linda hesitated. ‘Well, not always. But I tell her anyway. She’s on the mend, I think.’

‘Oh, good.’

‘I think she’s going to be happy, at last.’

‘That’s nice.’

After Mother died, something happened to Linda. She stopped being an enigma. On that ghastly March night, after the police had been and gone, keeping them up for hours with questions, she let down her guard. At precisely the same time as Stefan told Jago all about his dual identity in Malmö, Linda finally sat down and talked about herself, prompted by Belinda.

‘All those things you told the police,’ Belinda said. ‘I didn’t know any of it. I felt so stupid that I knew so little about you. You never said your real name was Janice. Or that you grew up in Crawley. That sort of thing changes everything.’

‘Does it? I don’t see that. I’m Janice from Crawley, not the last of the Romanovs.’

‘No, but tell me. Please. When did you change your name?’

‘When I came back from France, when I was thirteen.’

Linda got up and opened the oven. She was baking the salmon, compelled by sheer force of habit.

‘Go on,’ said Belinda.

‘I never talk about this.’

‘Just this once.’

‘You promise not to laugh?’

‘Of course.’

‘You see – look, it’s not a big deal. Don’t expect much.’

‘OK.’

‘Well, when I was thirteen, I went on an exchange visit for a month to Grenoble.’

‘Yes?’

‘I know, lots of people do it. This was a direct swap, though, which we later discovered is quite unusual. I had a great time in Grenoble, although I was homesick. A month is a long time to a thirteen-year-old. The trouble was that, when I got back, something quite upsetting happened. I turned up at the house in Crawley and – well, my parents barred the front door and told me they preferred to keep the French girl.’

‘What?’

‘I know. I was devastated. I just stood there with my suitcase. I’d brought them souvenirs! Mont Blanc in a snowstorm, that kind of thing. Individual chocolates with alpine flowers on. I was looking forward to showing off my French. But they said they’d thought about it quite hard and decided the French girl was more interesting than me, and that she fitted in better. They had all had a lovely time without me.

‘I didn’t realize they were joking, you see. Especially since they’d piled my stuff in the front garden. Guitar, recorder, teddy bears, jewellery box. Mum said afterwards that my face was a real picture! All the neighbours had come out to watch. The French girl said, “
Au revoir
, Janice,” and they shut the door.’

‘Linda, that’s dreadful. How could they be so cruel?’

‘The French girl had talked them into it – apparently she’d persuaded other families before, and told them it was always hilarious when the kid got home. But it wasn’t hilarious this time, because I burst into tears and ran off. I took it so seriously. Well, after she’d gone, and my stuff was back in the house, my parents told me they were really disappointed in me
for not seeing the funny side, for not trusting them. “We are shocked and hurt, Janice,” Daddy said. He had gone all white around the mouth. He was furious. “You let us down very, very badly.”

‘So that’s the story. Obviously, in the end, I felt so guilty about hurting them that I ran away.’

Belinda was appalled. Her own mother had undermined her gently, over decades, like a lone termite gnawing her foundations. Linda’s parents, by contrast, had gaily picked her up by the heels and dropped her down a lift shaft. ‘But you didn’t hurt them,’ she said. ‘Think about it, Linda. They hurt you. They should have apologized to you, not blamed you.’