Nothing to Lose (19 page)

‘Philip Clayton?’ The shaven-headed prepubescent on reception, whose name badge said he was Aaron Perks, looked down his list. Even his fingers had acne. ‘Planning?’

Jasmine nodded. This child was probably about twelve, obviously new, and fortunately didn’t have a clue who she was. ‘Is he still here? I don’t have an appointment, but if you ring through and tell him it’s Jasmine . . .’

The boy looked at her rather unflatteringly. Women giving merely first names and wanting to see high-ups without appointments obviously registered as mistresses in his book. Jasmine, in her baggy combat trousers and big T-shirt, clearly didn’t fit the remainder of his mental picture. However, being new, he diligently punched out the number.

The wait seemed interminable. Aaron picked at a scab on his neck. Fortunately, an answer from planning prevented him moving on in his excavations. ‘Hello. You took ages! It’s Aaron. Is Mr Clayton still there, please? Oh, right – well could you tell him there’s a – a lady to see him. Says her name’s Jasmine . . . What? I dunno, do I?’ He stopped and surveyed Jasmine up and down before continuing his conversation. ‘Yeah, I suppose so. Is she? Christ. OK, I’ll tell her.’

He replaced the receiver. ‘Mr Clayton’s secretary says he’s still in a meeting and would you wait down here?’

‘That’s fine. Yes, I’ll wait.’ Jasmine stared him out, knowing full well that Verity, Philip’s long-time, bolster-bosomed and loquacious secretary, would have told the spotty Aaron that Mr Clayton’s daughter was plump and plain. It was rather unflattering to realise that he’d so readily accepted her identity from the description.

She drifted away from the reception desk towards the seating area – all beige leatherette and plastic trailing plants. Aaron, who had broken off from a period of frenzied scratching, had three lines ringing at the same time. Taking the opportunity of skipping across the marble tiles while he was preoccupied, Jasmine headed for the lifts.

Planning was on the top floor. Jasmine had always thought this was rather risky, given the suicidal tendencies of the back hander brigade. However, up here where the air was rare, there were fewer people to stop her and ask what she was doing. It must, she’d always thought, be like trying to get into the Oval Office in the White House. Porch extensions and loft conversions were obviously Ampney Crucis’s answer to being in charge of the global nuclear holocaust.

She pushed open the door to Planning – Executives Only. CAD machines whirred with geometric screen savers on vacated desks, several blueprints were being regurgitated from a copier, and somewhere in the empty office a phone was ringing. Jasmine was pretty sure that it was Aaron trying to track her down, or at least warn Verity that the holy portals were about to be invaded by someone large and shaggy.

‘Heavens!’ Verity powered her way from the inner sanctum at that moment, wearing something hand-knitted in fondant pink. Jasmine blinked. Verity was a big knitter.

She always knitted Yvonne tea cosies for Christmas. Jasmine had worn them for years as winter hats. ‘Jasmine! Dear! I personally suggested that you should wait in reception. I thought Aaron said that you’d been informed of the instruction?’

‘He must have got it wrong then.’ Jasmine returned the faux smile, noticing that Verity was in the middle of squirting Eau Savage into her well-displayed cleavage. ‘Is Dad still in his meeting?’

‘No, no, fortuitously that finished just a second or two ago. He’s just preparing to be leaving for lunch – ah! Here he is!’

They both turned and stared at Philip as he strolled through from his office. Verity had practically emptied the scent bottle by now and the fumes had reached killer toxicity levels. Jasmine wondered why her father had his shirt buttoned up wrong.

‘Jasmine!’ Philip didn’t smile. ‘This is a surprise.’

‘Er – yes, isn’t it? Look, sorry to catch you on the hop, but I never seem to be able to find you at home. Um – I wondered if we could talk?’

‘Well – I was just going to take Verity to lunch. Business, of course. Is it important?’

This was just so strange, Jasmine thought, speaking to her father as if she were some junior employee, like Aaron, who had a problem with the filing system or something. She suddenly felt very lonely. ‘Well, yes, really. But mine’s business too – so maybe we could all go together?’

Verity looked as though she’d rather be dining with Dr Crippen.

Philip shrugged. ‘Up to Verity, of course, but yes, maybe we could have a little time together. As long as it’s nothing to do with that bloody greyhound stadium.’

‘Nothing whatsoever,’ Jasmine beamed. ‘Verity? Are you going to come as well?’

‘Well, to be honest, seeing as it was my luncheon invitation to start with, I rather feel it is I who should be offering to include you.’

Jasmine rapidly worked out the syntax. She hoped that Verity worded the planning department’s letters with more fluidity and thought that she probably didn’t.

Suddenly irritable, Jasmine sighed. ‘Well, no, it’s Dad’s lunch and I want to talk to him and you two have all the time in the world to discuss car parks and multistorey shopping centres and things, don’t you? So, are we all going?’

Jasmine couldn’t be sure, but she had a feeling her father was shaking his head. When she looked at him he appeared to be twitching slightly.

‘Have you been bitten?’

Verity coughed. Probably the Eau Savage rapidly clogging her airways, Jasmine thought hopefully.

Philip shook his head more publicly. ‘A touch of prickly heat, maybe. Verity? Are you going to join us?’

‘No, I personally don’t think I will. You two pop along to the Crumpled Horn for a nice little tete-a-tete. I hear they’re doing pizza.’

‘And you’ll be all right?’ Philip looked solicitous.

‘I’ll be perfectly fine, thank you.’ Verity wriggled her two-ply candyfloss shoulders and looked martyred. ‘I’ve got some Ryvita in the desk.’

The Crumpled Horn was packed with its usual mixed lunchtime trade of tourists and local workers. All the pizza had gone.

Jasmine had sat beside Philip in the air-conditioned car for the ten-minute journey and they’d talked warily about generalisations. It had given her even more of the sensation of a minion being entertained by a potentate.

Once ensconced in the same window seat as she’d occupied on the day of Benny’s funeral, Jasmine agreed to have whatever Philip was having and watched as he made his way to the bar. The feeling of loneliness engulfed her again. It would have been so nice to have a proper father-daughter relationship with him, but it was far too late now. He’d always been distant and censorious, and Yvonne had always been busy and panicking about germs and what the neighbours thought. Benny had stepped in and been mother, father and friend.

It shocked her to realise in that happy, warm, laughing place that she didn’t actually love either of her parents.

‘I’ve ordered shepherd’s pie,’ Philip announced, returning with a pint of Old Ampney for her and a whisky for himself. ‘I got salad with yours.’

‘Great.’ Jasmine would have preferred chips. ‘Dad, let’s not beat about the bush here. I know what’s going on. Can we be grown up about this?’

Philip sucked in a mouthful of whisky and coughed alarmingly. Jasmine thumped him on the back until his breathing returned to normal.

He was still gasping, but didn’t look as though he was about to have a seizure. His eyes, however, were still watering. ‘About what?’

‘The Merry Orchard Shopping Plaza.’

Philip exhaled and strangely, Jasmine thought, smiled. He swallowed, wiping his eyes on a paper napkin. ‘Ah – right – yes, of course. I wondered when that would come up. What have you heard?’

‘What everyone else has heard, of course, but I need to know the truth.’

‘Truth? Truth?’ Philip looked agitated. ‘Who knows what the truth is?’

‘Well, you, presumably, seeing as you’d be the one to pass the plans.’

The shepherd’s pie arrived then, and there was a lot of shuffling of plates and glasses and cutlery around the table. As soon as they were organised again, Philip wolfed down half a dozen of his chips, then nodded. ‘I thought you said it had nothing to do with the bloody greyhound stadium.’

‘I lied. I’m good at that. I think I must have inherited the skill from you. No, let me finish . . .’

Their plates were empty by the time she’d stopped talking. Philip had looked alternately shocked and outraged – especially at the bit about her piling Benny’s inheritance into the revamping of the stadium – but she hadn’t let him get a word in.

‘So, that’s it. The Benny Clegg Stadium will start its resurrection immediately after the bank holiday. If you – or whichever speculator you’ve done a deal with this time – thinks they’re going to knock it, and my beach hut, down, then you’ll have a fight on your hands.’

Philip swirled the last of the whisky round his glass. ‘You’re just like him, you know.’

‘Who?’

‘My damned father! Stubborn, single-minded, bloody tenacious.’

‘Really?’ Jasmine glowed. ‘God – thank you. You couldn’t pay me a bigger compliment. So? Have the plans been passed, or was that just another of your nasty schemes to upset my first night as a bookie – and any hopes I might have for a real future?’

Philip’s fist crashed on to the table, making the plates rattle. Several people stared. ‘Jasmine! Being a bookmaker is not a real job! I do not want a bookie for a daughter! Have you any idea how humiliated, degraded, and embarrassed I was at school and college by being a bloody bookie’s son?’

She shook her head. ‘Why should you be? Grandpa was strong and honest and kind and funny. What more could you want from a father?’

‘One who didn’t live in a council house and make his money from setting odds on bloody greyhounds!’ Philip looked near to tears. ‘All my classmates had fathers with their own businesses, they all owned their own houses, they had holidays abroad, and went to London to see shows at half term. They –’

‘Jesus, you’re just a snob. Grandpa must have worked so hard to be able to send you to school and college, and all you could do to repay him was sneer and be ashamed of him!’ Jasmine was shaking with anger. ‘Look, I don’t want to hear any of this. You’ve got to live with the fact that Benny gave you everything and you never, ever said thank you – and now it’s too late. I’m so glad I’m not living at home any more!’ She stood up, catching her knees painfully on the underside of the table and uptipping the glasses. ‘Just tell me whether the Merry Orchard Shopping Plaza is or isn’t going ahead and I’ll leave you to your sad snobby life. Just tell me whether or not the north-east corner of Ampney Crucis is due for total annihilation and I promise I won’t embarrass you ever again.’

Philip exhaled. His face was white. Jasmine still felt no pity for him. He pursed his lips. ‘Very well, then. No doubt you’ll hear this soon enough now the press embargo has been lifted. No, it isn’t.’

‘Really?’ Jasmine felt the grin unfurling and knew it would be ear-to-ear within seconds. ‘It really isn’t happening? Really, truly? Is that because the greyhound stadium is part of the heritage of Ampney Crucis? Is it because the planners can see the sense in the stadium bringing tourists and money into the village? Is it –’

‘It’s nothing to do with the poxy stadium!’ Philip roared, making a holidaymaking family on the next table jump.

‘It’s because of the sodding beach huts! The namby-pamby conservationists on the council – and didn’t I say at the time of the last local elections that it was a mistake to vote in Lib Dems and Greens? – have decided that that damned ramshackle row of decrepitude is our answer to bloody Southwold! They’ve slapped a bloody preservation order on them!’

Practically doing handstands all the way down the cliff steps, Jasmine couldn’t wait to spread the glad tidings. Leaving Philip to settle the bill, she had only remembered long after she’d left the Crumpled Horn that she’d meant to ask him about the separate bedrooms bit. Still, first things first. She’d tell Peg and everyone the brilliant news, then she’d ponder over the disintegration of her parents’ marriage. There were only so "many things a girl could deal with at one time.

Perching on the veranda steps, she flipped open her mobile phone and punched out Peg’s number, staring out at the flat, glittering expanse of the sea. Children skittered in and out of the shallows while their parents lounged in deck chairs, rubbing in Nivea and soaking up the welcome return of the sun.

‘Peg? It’s me, Jasmine. We’re OK! Yes, honestly! The stadium is safe! The shopping plaza isn’t going to happen. Oh God! Don’t cry – you’ll set me off . . . What? Oh, yes – tell Roger and Allan and everyone. I know! Yes, fine – I’ll see you this evening and we’ll have a proper celebration then . . .’Bye.’

Deciding that she really ought to drag this week’s washing to the Launderette – the lack of machines was one of the few drawbacks of living in the beach hut – Jasmine unlocked the door and negotiated the furniture. After changing into a pair of knee-length shorts and a denim shirt of Andrew’s which she knotted at the waist, she bundled all the laundry into a black bag, helped herself to the last doughnut in the miniature fridge which Clara had given her, and jumped joyously from the veranda.

Hoicking the bag across her shoulders, she felt that a walk into the village along the water’s edge would be much more pleasant than struggling up the cliffs with her bundle and forcing her way through the tourists at the Crow’s Nest and Eddie Deebley’s. The sand was warm under her bare feet, and she smiled beatifically at the children sticking flags into the tops of sand castles, then looked back fondly at the row of brightly coloured beach huts that was her salvation.

‘Oh, sorry!’ She stumbled across an elderly couple who were blowing up a Lilo behind the Punch and Judy stall. ‘I really must look where I’m going.’

Picking her way more carefully now through the sun-worshippers, she headed for the shoreline, having to skirt a complete square of stripy windbreaks. She smiled to herself. Probably honeymooners not wanting to be disturbed. She felt a pang of envy. How wonderful it must be to be so much in love with one person that you just wanted to exclude the rest of the world.