Queen Mum (8 page)

*

By the time I came back to bed my feet were frozen. It was only 3 a.m. so the room was still dark, except for the red glow of Tom’s digital clock. I lay down next to him,
pulled the cover up to my neck and curled my body round his back to get warm.

It was then that I began to wonder.

*

*

Looking back, did I set out to dislike her?

Before Kim and I met for our one and only lunch date, Kieran the producer came round and had a chat with me, talked about the aims of the programme, the target audience, the great feedback
participants had got in the months after their episode had aired. I asked if he knew how Juno was getting on and he said no, that was in the hands of his colleague at the other house and they
didn’t communicate during filming. Liar, I thought. So I asked how it was going at Cestrian Park. ‘Good,’ was all he gave me.

‘How’s Manny doing?’ I said.

‘Great.’

‘And the girls?’

‘They’re great too.’

After a whole week there must have been something more to say, but he wasn’t giving it up. He did tell me that they’d film Kim and me for about an hour, then edit it down to a couple
of minutes at the most.

‘You understand, we may even cut you out altogether?’ I said I didn’t mind. ‘So, as far as you can, try to ignore the cameras. Do what you’d do if Juno was
here,’ he told me lightly.

I still expected it to be Juno when I walked into the kitchen, which is mad, I know. By rights I should have been nervous about being
on TV!
but I wasn’t; the weirdness was not the
men in black standing around with electrical equipment, but Kim being in Juno’s place. She was sitting at the table but she got up straight away and came over to give me a hug. Her hair smelt
of cigarettes. I wondered what Manny thought about that.

‘Come in, come in,’ she was saying, as if it was her house. The cameras wheeled back as she crossed the floor. ‘Let me make a brew. I’m doing cheese on toast for us, is
that OK? Or I can open a tin of soup.’

Her voice was husky, her tone friendly, and I should have liked the familiar Bolton cadences. But she was just wrong for the place.

‘Cheese on toast is fine. Have you worked out where everything is?’

‘Oh yeah. I had all the drawers and cupboards out on the first day. She’s a load of gadgets, your friend, han’t she?’

As Kim moved round the room I took in again her shape – smaller than Juno, curvier – and her fair colouring. Unlike Juno, Kim wore full make-up, and her hair was sleek and straight.
A good cleavage, and she wore her faded jeans well, with little black boots. I got the impression she was enjoying the cameras on her.

‘How are you getting on with the girls?’

‘Oh.’ She turned from the grill. ‘Brilliant. They’re smashing. I tell you, we get on like a house on fire.’

My heart swelled with pride on Juno’s behalf. ‘They are lovely, aren’t they? Very polite, and mature.’

‘Yeah, I said to Lee before I ever came, I’ll get the girls on my side from the start. Everything else’ll follow.’

You seem pleased with yourself, I thought.

Over the meal I got chance to look at her face more closely. She had a few lines round her eyes and her mascara was too thick. But she’d been pretty, in an obvious sort of way.

‘And how do you get on with Manny?’

‘Oh, Manny.’ She flicked her hair back over her shoulder. ‘Yeah, he’s coming round. He was a bit . . . you know, stand-offish at first.’

‘That doesn’t sound like Manny.’

‘I think it was just, we’d got off on the wrong foot. He didn’t like me smoking in the house, fair enough, so we agreed I’d go outside, I’m trying to cut down
anyway. But then he picked up this book I’d brought, ’cause I knew Juno didn’t work so I thought I’d be sitting around a fair while, and he sort of sneered at it.’

I thought of Sunday lunches we’d had together at the pub, Manny sharing out the paper, separating the supplements and passing them round. ‘Which are you most in need of,’ he
always said to Tom, ‘Style or Culture?’ Great joke.

I shrugged. ‘I’m sure he didn’t mean to. He sometimes looks stern even when he’s happy.’

‘Whatever. He came in later with another book and said – ’ she put on a posh voice – ‘“Have you ever read Emily Lincoln? She writes the most amazing
characters, and they’re from your part of the world.”’

‘He recommends her to everyone. He met her on an arts course once, that’s all.’

‘Oh.’ Kim licked the edge of her hand where the cheese had caught it. ‘I see. Anyway, Tuesday he goes, “Let’s watch a video,” and he showed me this
black-and-white film about – I couldn’t tell you what it was about, to be honest. There was a cow on a bed at one point. Bloody weird.’

I smiled. ‘I know the one you mean. It’s part of a surrealist collection he has. He’s got a thing about them at the moment.’

‘Then we went to the theatre, that was Thursday, and saw this play about a woman who was kept in a box because her dad had been a bear. That was the plot. I clapped at the end but I
can’t say I got what was going on. So, all in all – ’ she leaned across the table to me and lowered her voice, which was a pointless exercise with microphones everywhere –
‘I’m feeling thick.’

I wondered what would happen if I went, ‘Yes, you probably are.’ I said; ‘You shouldn’t feel that way. It’s just that Manny has this tremendous interest in the arts
because of his job. It makes us all feel inadequate from time to time.’

She beamed. ‘You’re a love. He’s all right, I’m having a nice time. But, I tell you what, do you know what I said to him when we came out of the theatre? I said,
“This isn’t
Educating Rita
, you know.” I was laughing but I sort of meant it. I think he’s under the impression I spend all my time watching
Coronation
Street
.’

‘I’m sure he’s not,’ I said.

While I filled a washing-up bowl, Kim went to the back door for a cigarette.

‘So, tell us about your friend,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘How do you think she’ll be coping round at mine?’

Where to start. ‘I was hoping you’d be able to give me an idea about that, actually.’

Kim raised her eyebrows but said nothing.

‘Well, you know she doesn’t work. But she’s not idle. As you’ll have found out this week. She does a stack for charity—’

‘I know, I’ve been in the hospice shop all morning. I’ve had ironing up to my eyeballs, like I don’t get enough with Lee and the lads.’

‘—and she gives a lot of time to the girls. She likes home-making, gardening, cooking. She’s fairly tidy and organized. She’s a very kind person and she’s, oh,
bristling with energy, all the time. She’s a terrific organizer. Say, if you wanted to throw a party, Juno would have the ideas and the drive to make it go with a swing. Last year she did a
Mexican one with a piñata hanging from the beech and we all had to take turns—’

‘I prefer my parties spontaneous; you know, everyone piling back after the pub. I can’t be doing with too much planning.’

‘Juno’s spontaneous too.’ I knew how stupid I sounded. I tried a different tack. ‘So, what changes have you made this week?’

‘Oh!’ she laughed. ‘Nothing specific. You spend a few days just sussing out how everything normally works, do you get me? Like, the way Juno’s got them all in a rota with
the washing-up and meals, fantastic. So I haven’t mucked about too much with that. But they’ve a funny set-up with the TV, I think they only watch one programme a night or something.
And they’re always, what,
around
you. My lads, they spend three-quarters of their lives shut away in their bedrooms, you wonder what they get up to, or perhaps you’re best off
not knowing. I’d say, generally speaking, they need to loosen up.’

‘Who? Sophie and Pascale?’

‘All of them.’ Kim exhaled smoke into the garden. ‘I’ve got some ideas up my sleeve for next week. Should shake them up. In a fun way.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Right.’ I wanted to argue that Juno was fun too but I didn’t know how to say it without it sounding limp. ‘Listen, from what you know of Juno
and your family, what do you think she’ll be doing in your house this week?’

Kim gave a half-smile and leant her temple against the door jamb. ‘Banging her head against a brick wall, I should think,’ she said.

Blue smoke curled up above her, off into the sky.

*

That night Tom and I had the sad, clinging-together sex that we sometimes have these days. There were months when, after we went to bed, we lay apart, weighted down against the
mattress with grief. Then, about a year after Joe died, we had a period of really frantic sex, I don’t know why or where it came from. Possibly we were trying for another baby; I left my cap
out once or twice but I never conceived. Just as well. I’m not sure I could have opened myself up to all that potential heartbreak again. Now the sex we have is, what, desperate; Tom holds me
tight as he can, pushes so far into me I can feel him in my guts, like a faint labour-twinge. Once he burst into tears afterwards, but when I tried to talk to him about it he threw the covers back
angrily and took himself off to the bathroom, locking the door.