It's Raining Men (3 page)

As Gladys Coffey showed the slim, dark-haired woman into the lounge, her calm and friendly smile belied all the activity going on in her brain. Gladys might have had the title
‘Housekeeper’ but she was so much more than that: protector, guard dog and, if it came to it, bouncer. Her brain was fast-screening the woman in the plain black suit for any signs of
artifice, any hidden agenda. She could usually sniff out an interloper at one hundred paces, but, for once, her radar was circling smoothly without encountering the slightest blip.

‘Please sit down, Mrs Hawk,’ said Gladys. ‘Can I get you a cup of tea?’

‘Thank you, but don’t go to any trouble on my account. I’m fine.’

Joan Hawk smiled and Gladys saw how generous and full her lips were. Coupled with those nice dark-brown eyes and sharp cheekbones, they meant Mrs Hawk would be a very attractive woman if she
applied some make-up and unloosened her long hair from that tight, frumpy ponytail. Luckily Mrs Hawk seemed as far removed from her predatory namesake as could possibly be, if this introduction to
her was any guide. She was as dull as a beige bungalow. Absolutely perfect. Lord Edwin Carlton was a very rich old man and was getting more doddery by the day. And he was lonely. Gladys
didn’t want him falling prey to a flattering line of banter and a pretty face.

‘Lord Carlton will be with you shortly,’ said Gladys as she left the room. She could tell him to go in now that Mrs Hawk had passed the first stage of the interview – i.e. she
had got past Gladys.

As the door closed behind the housekeeper, Joan Hawk looked around her at the opulent lounge with its plush sofas and huge picture windows framing a view of the sea in the distance. It was
beautiful here; she had a good feeling about the place. It was what just she, a poor impoverished young widow, needed: solitude, space and in such a splendid setting. She looked up at the portraits
on the wall. Mostly they were of old men in powdered wigs, their faces preserved in oil. But taking centre stage, above the great fireplace, was a stunning depiction of a woman in a navy-blue
dress. A woman with long dark hair, brown eyes and full red lips. A woman with shapely legs, full breasts and a tiny nipped-in waist. She was the woman Joan could so easily be with a little powder
and paint and the right clothes.

Joan had seen the advertisement for a clerical assistant in
The Countess
and couldn’t get on the Internet fast enough to look up more details. She could hardly believe her luck:
Carlton Hall was huge and inhabited by one solitary old man with no heir. Joan could smell the rich pickings from a mile away. Not only would there be treasures around the house to palm but the
possibility of becoming Lady Carlton was in the bag if she played her cards right – and play them right she would because lonely, rich, older men were her speciality.

Joan did her homework thoroughly. There were hardly any details about the immediate area but the nearest towns, Wellem and Whitby, had lots of information about them. Joan decided that she would
say she came from Wellem, presuming, quite rightly, that it might be advantageous to say she was a fairly local girl. These old village types were more likely to trust someone who came from the
area.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the door swinging open and in walked a slight, wiry man. Joan knew he was seventy but he looked much older, his back stooping with age, his ghost-white hair as
thin as gossamer at the sides but much thicker on top, thanks to an obvious toupee. He was dressed immaculately in a brown suit, with a folded blue handkerchief in his top pocket and a matching
cravat at his neck. Lord Edwin Carlton himself.

‘Good morning, good morning,’ he said with a surprisingly strong voice for someone who looked as if a breath of wind might be able to lift him off his feet. ‘Delighted to meet
you, Mrs Hawk.’ He extended a small, soft hand.

‘Joan, please,’ she said, standing to shake it. Her firm grip echoed his.

‘Well, delighted to meet you, Joan,’ he said, and as he sat down he trilled a little laugh that told Joan Hawk he instantly felt at ease in her company. ‘Do sit down. Would you
like some tea or coffee?’

Joan saw his pupils dilate ever so slightly as his eyes rested fully on her. She was very good at spotting such things.

‘Your housekeeper very kindly asked me but I didn’t want to put her to any trouble.’ She gave a regretful little shrug which sent a clear message that she did want some
refreshments really.

Edwin rose dutifully from the ornate French sofa and skipped almost skittishly across the room and out of the door, returning a couple of minutes later.

‘Gladys is on the case. We shall have tea,’ he announced. ‘Now where were we?’

Joan saw him glance quickly at the portrait above the fireplace. She knew he was thinking that there was much more than a passing similarity between them.

‘My last secretary, alas, left things in rather a mess,’ said Edwin, sitting down again. He sighed heavily. ‘Then again, she was seventy-nine and very forgetful.’

Joan nodded sympathetically, hoping that the smirk of early victory which was threatening to lift up the corners of her mouth didn’t show. Did anyone say ‘secretary’ any more?
She would have been forgiven for thinking she had just zipped back in time to the fifties.

‘I’m an expert at organization,’ said Joan, imbuing her voice with an equal balance of softness and self-confidence. ‘As you have no doubt ascertained from my C V, I come
highly recommended.’

‘None better, none better.’ Edwin nodded. ‘This is the first time I’ve actually advertised for anyone. I’ve always used local ladies as secretaries before but . .
.’

The door opened and in came the burly figure of Gladys pushing a tea trolley with a very old and delicate china tea service on it. She must have either had it all ready or zoomed around like a
Tasmanian devil getting it together, thought Joan. She saw Edwin’s face light up at the sight of the tiered plates of cakes. This man has a sweet tooth, she immediately deduced. He was almost
clapping his hands together at the sight of the Victoria sponge. All the better for a heart attack.

As Gladys poured the tea, Joan could tell that her ear was cocked towards the conversation.

‘So you were saying you’ve always used local ladies before,’ said Joan. Edwin opened his mouth to speak, but Gladys butted in.

‘There’s no one suitable in the village,’ she said.

‘At least no one under seventy,’ added Edwin. ‘I was born not far from here,’ said Joan. ‘At the other side of Wellem.’

Edwin smiled broadly. ‘Were you really?’ he said, as pleased as if she had just told him she was from Camelot and had a huge lottery-winner’s cheque for him. He turned to
Gladys for approval. ‘Isn’t that encouraging, Gladys? A local girl.’

Joan saw Gladys’s eyebrows lift. She only ‘hmm’ed’ but Joan could tell she was impressed. The old bag was clearly softening. It was another good call; they did prefer
local folk working for them. She had been right. Gladys might have been an expert at reading people but Joan was a grand master.

‘Milk, sugar?’ asked Gladys.

‘Milk and one sugar, please,’ Joan answered. Women like Gladys trusted women who had sugar. They weren’t as self-obsessed, preoccupied by their weight. For the same reason,
Joan leaned over and took a Victoria sponge slice. Women trusted women who ate cake. Especially women who complimented the women who had made the cake.

‘Oh, this is so light,’ flattered Joan. ‘Is the baker local?’

‘I made it myself, actually,’ said Gladys. Joan could see she was trying not to beam.

‘Oh.’ Joan showed the right amount of surprise. The sort of delighted shock that was tempered with admiration without sliding into sycophancy. ‘It’s lovely.’ And
there was no better way to say that it was lovely than to wolf it down and reach for another slice. ‘I love home-baked stuff. It goes straight to my hips but I can’t resist
it.’

She saw Mrs Coffey smile a smile that reached up to her eyes and totally engulfed them. The woman was defrosted and it had taken only two little pieces of sponge and a cube of sugar to do it.
There was no need for any more to be eaten now. Joan hated anything that could affect her perfect figure.

‘So,’ said Edwin, the word heralding that the interview was to be resumed and Mrs Coffey could go. He waited until she had. ‘There’s a cottage in the grounds that comes
with the job. Gladys has had it cleaned and repainted. It’s small but comfortable.’

I’ve got the job, said Joan to herself, but she contained her delight and nodded at his words as if hooked on every one of them.

‘To recap, then,’ continued Edwin. ‘You’re a local girl with a flair for organization. And my housekeeper likes you.’

‘Well,’ began Joan, making a girlishly extravagant gesture of wiping crumbs from her face with delicate dabbings of fingertips, ‘I like to think I’m as organized as
anyone can be and if your housekeeper likes me then that’s great because I hate not getting on with anyone I work with.’

Lord Edwin Carlton held his hand out. ‘Then that’s good enough for me. Welcome to Carlton Hall, Mrs Hawk. You’re hired.’

Everyone wants happiness,

no one wants pain,

but you can’t make a rainbow

without a little rain.

ANON

Lara tried to chop the red pepper like Delia Smith – the knife tip never leaving the board and the heel doing the cutting, in an action apparently reminiscent of rowing a
boat – but Keely’s laser gaze was putting her off any rhythm and the knife was going all over the place.

Really, she didn’t know why she was bothering to make her speciality pasta dish. Keely and Garth would both sit at the table, poking at it with their forks as if it were a dead animal, and
then, when it had gone completely cold, push their plates into the middle of the table and announce that they didn’t like it and were off to see what else was available.

Lara prided herself on being quite a good cook – not as good as the domestic goddess that was her friend Clare, of course, but then Clare could have given Nigella a run for her money. She
was always sending Lara recipes on email which she had tried and tested. Even so, in the three months that she had been living with James and his children, nothing she had put in front of his
eleven-year–old son, Garth, the Olympic nose-picking champion, and his fourteen-going-on-forty-five-year-old daughter, Keely, had hit the button. Home-made fish and chips, pasta, rice,
chicken, steak, lamb, fajitas – you name it, she’d tried it all. And yet everything had been greeted with pairs of curled-up Elvis lips.

‘What’s that supposed to be?’ said Keely at last, upping her silent staring treatment to something more active. She stood leaning against the worktop, arms folded, her whole
body oozing teenage attitude.

‘Beef pasta,’ Lara answered, forcing a jolly Doris Day smile.

‘What sort of pasta?’

‘Cavatappi. The curly stuff.’

‘So it’s spag bol with curly pasta instead of the long thin variety?’

Lara blew her cheeks out.

‘Well, it is and it isn’t. This one has got a few more ingredients in it than a spag bol,’ replied Lara, feeling her face begin to heat up and begging it not to. It would only
give Keely the satisfaction that once again she had ‘got’ to her.

‘Like what?’

‘Courgettes.’

‘I hate courgettes.’

‘And mushrooms.’

‘I hate mushrooms.’

Lara knew it wasn’t really the food, it was her – Lara – that was the problem. And not only because she was Lara, Keely’s father’s live-in lover, but because she
wasn’t
her
: the one whose name haunted her. The one whose name was on the edge of Keely’s tongue, just waiting to run free into the air at every available opportunity. And sure
enough, when Keely opened her mouth again
that
name sprang like To m Daly off the top diving board.

‘When Tianne used to stay over, she made the best spag bol in the world.’

‘Oh, did she?’ Lara tried to look and sound composed, but she didn’t quite bring it off. That bloody name. Tianne (a compound of Tina-Anne) Lee.
Tianne used to make us
laugh like drains. Tianne used to be an absolute riot. Tianne’s farts smelled of Chanel Number Five.
Bloody Tianne. More and more Lara felt like the unnamed heroine in
Rebecca
,
but in her case it wasn’t James’s ex-wife, Miriam, that was ruffling up the waves, but bloody Tianne Lee, James’s ex-girlfriend: the equivalent of the first Mrs de Winter. Except
she wasn’t dead. She was alive and well and living in a trendy flat in Notting Hill with her swishy dark-brown hair, spray-tanned skin and incapable-of-being-closed legs.

Lara glanced up at the clock to see it was ten past eight. She stirred the sauce with annoyance. Why was James getting back in from work later and later? Especially when she told him that
tonight she was leaving the office early in order to make everyone a family meal. Even more especially because it was Friday night and who didn’t want to rush home at the weekend? She had
never realized that children could cause such stress – especially ones who so obviously resented her. She badly needed James at home to smooth the way and support her because the situation
wasn’t getting better however much she’d hoped it would. He was the bridge between them and without him around, the two sides would never unite in an arc of cordiality.

Before she’d moved in she’d taken the time to try to get to know Keely and Garth, and even though they were quiet when she used to visit, she had presumed that they might grow to
like her, because she was keen to like them. Lara had had a happy childhood, despite her family not having much money. She certainly didn’t have the privileges that James’s children
had, but she was always loved and well fed and felt safe. The last thing she’d ever wanted to do was make the children feel threatened by her, and she’d been prepared to do anything to
make them get on with her. She had tried everything and had even looked up on the Internet how to win over a partner’s offspring. None of it had worked. It was as if they knew she was pulling
out all the stops to befriend them and the aim of their game was to block all attempts. Lara had cried to herself in the bath a few times but James merely said they would ‘come around
eventually’. The twelfth of never would happen before ‘eventually’ did, she thought.