The Model Wife (11 page)

Gary was Louise’s on-off walker, a bald widower with a heart of gold. Louise wouldn’t dignify him with the term boyfriend. When asked why, she’d reply: ‘He works in insurance and he’s got a hearing aid.’ Gary was a very useful escort to the cinema and to tennis-club functions, who was shelved whenever someone more appealing came on the scene.

As usual, at the mention of Gary, Louise wrinkled her nose as she might at one of Clara’s used nappies. ‘He’s fine. He’s booked a little holiday for us in the Lake District.’

‘Oh, how lovely.’ Poppy yearned for a holiday, but even though Luke got a very generous six weeks off a year, three of them had to be spent with his children and the other three had to be spent finishing his book. ‘We’ll fit in something,’ he said, whenever she asked him about it, but they never did.

‘Hmmm. The hotel’s only four stars, but it does have a spa. Of course, we’re sharing a room, but that shouldn’t be a problem, thanks to these new sleeping pills I’ve got.’

‘Mum!’

‘One in his glass at dinner and one in mine and there’ll be no hanky panky,’ Louise continued.

‘Why didn’t you just ask him to book separate rooms?’

‘He’d have been upset, and I can’t stand it when Gary gets upset. This puppy-dog look comes into his eyes and… Oh, Clara! Off Louise please! I don’t want you laddering my tights.’

Poppy opened her arms. ‘Come to Mummy.’ She hugged her daughter tight, inhaling her sweetness, marvelling at the softness of her skin and hair.

‘Oh, darling, I
was
hoping for fresh.’ Louise plucked the teabag out of her mug and gazed at it balefully. ‘Did I tell you Christine and I are off next weekend to a spa in Malaga? Should be lovely. I’ve booked a facial, a full body scrub and a Thai head massage so far.’ She looked her daughter up and down. ‘Anyway, enough about me. What about you? Any more thoughts about going back to work?’

Not you too! Poppy felt a sudden flash of resolve.

‘Actually, yes,’ she said. ‘I’m about to hire a nanny.’

Louise put down her cup in surprise. ‘Really?’

‘Yes. She’s just finished working for a colleague of Luke’s. They say she’s great.’

‘Polish is she? I hope so. They’re the best girls at the moment, so loving and excellent at housework, which wouldn’t go amiss. And cheap. I wish there’d been more of them around when you were growing up.’

‘I don’t know where she’s from. Her name’s Brigita.’

‘Almost definitely Polish. Don’t hire an Australian whatever you do, they’re always picking up venereal diseases and getting drunk on duty. Still, that’s the best news I’ve heard in ages, Poppy. Get you out of the house at last. Maybe you’re a chip off the old block after all.’ Louise looked dubious at this pronouncement. She took a sip of her tea. ‘Ugh. This tastes like mud.’

‘The teabags are quite old,’ Poppy admitted. She vaguely remembered buying them when she was pregnant with Clara and being good about what she put in her body.

Luke reappeared, in chinos and a stripy shirt looking very Ralph Lauren. ‘Well, I’m off now,’ he said sheepishly.

‘And I’d better be going too.’ Louise pushed her mug aside. ‘Can’t finish that anyway.’ She bent down and kissed Clara on the nose. ‘Now you be a good girl for your mummy,’ she said, then she pecked Poppy on the cheek. ‘And
you
think about what I’ve been saying.’ She pulled a copy of the
Daily Prophet
out of her bag and dumped it on the table. ‘I’ll leave you this.’

Luke kissed Clara and then his wife.

‘Look, I’m sorry about this. You should have told me you had something planned. Let’s get Glenda to babysit and we’ll have a special birthday celebration in the week. Wednesday’s my day off.’

Watching her husband and mother walk down the front path together, Poppy felt more desolate than ever. Everyone else was going out, having lives and here she was stranded at home with a child she adored but, she could only whisper it to herself, was beginning to resent. She hated to admit it, but much as Louise infuriated her, she was slowly beginning to understand why she’d made some of her choices.

‘Where Daddy?’ Clara asked.

‘He’s gone out,’ said Poppy, going back into the kitchen. She picked up the
Prophet
and began flicking through it, enjoying the paparazzi shots of Minnie Maltravers, her model icon, scowling into the camera as she left a restaurant, a feature about Robbie’s readmission to rehab. She turned another couple of pages and…

HOW I SAID GOODBYE TO
MY HUSBAND AND HELLO TO
GREAT SEX

With a howl of fury, Poppy threw the paper across the room. Bitch. Bitch. Bitch. Now Hannah was attacking her in the bloody
Prophet
. Was nowhere safe any more? She retrieved it and read on, infuriated. All this guff about the children being away with their father when the truth was the children were locked in their boarding schools. It was all so unfair.

Suddenly she had had enough. The flicker of resolve she’d felt earlier, hardened into something steely, like Sarah Connor in
Terminator
squaring up to save the planet. She picked up her phone, scrolled rapidly through her texts and retrieved a number.

‘Hello, is that Brigita? Yeah, hi, my name’s Poppy. I gather you’re looking for a nanny job…’

13

If Poppy’s Saturday wasn’t much fun, Thea’s was proving to be as about enjoyable as a colonoscopy. After her first couple of gruelling weeks back in the London office, it was time to visit her gran, a visit which, since she’d sold her car when she moved to the States and hadn’t yet got a new one, involved a train ride to Guildford and a taxi to the small village where the nursing home was.

Thea felt as if a toad was lodged in her throat. She hated these visits although she never dodged them. When she’d lived in London, she’d tried to go twice a month but her time in New York had put paid to that. Gran doesn’t know if I come or not, she would tell herself, all she does is sit in her armchair talking to herself, watching old films on her enormous television. But it didn’t make Thea feel any better. Even if that was true, she knew her grandmother’s family should be with her, at least some of the time, not some random nurse ignoring her ramblings.

It was so hard to accept how Toni Fry’s life had altered in just a couple of years. Thea had always loved her grandmother’s perkiness, the way she took such an interest in everything. Once Thea left home, she returned to see her mother and Trevor perhaps four times a year, but whatever else was going on in her life she visited Toni at least once a month to tell her about her achievements and where she was going next. Gran loved hearing stories about trips to Iraq and Afghanistan. ‘Girls these days are so lucky to have such adventures,’ she’d say longingly. ‘Make the most of it for your gran. I’m living through you.’

But one Sunday four years ago, Thea arrived at the bungalow to find the front door wide open. She hurried inside calling: ‘Gran, Gran?’ No answer. She searched the house. Toni was nowhere to be found; there were no signs of an intruder. She was about to call the police, when the front door opened and her grandmother walked in wearing her dressing gown and slippers.

‘What have you been doing?’

Gran looked taken aback. ‘Me? I just went for a walk.’

After that, this sort of incident became more frequent. Thea remembered bumping into Rosa, one of her grandmother’s oldest friends, in the street. The three of them had a good chat. When Rosa finally said goodbye, Toni had turned to Thea and said, ‘Darling, who was that?’

Toni was an avid reader. She’d loved books all her life, treasured them and looked after them. To help her get her brain back, Thea started sending her regular packages from Amazon. She returned from a trip to the Sudan to find Toni sitting in an armchair methodically tearing the pages into strips.

Thea could no longer avoid the truth. Something dreadful was happening. It was very, very frightening. She loved Toni so much, knew her so well, but it was as though she was becoming another person. Thea was tortured by what she might find on her next visit. Each time there were a few subtle changes. After a lifetime as a demon Scrabble player, Toni announced one night when Thea had yet again beaten her (she could have thrashed her but had deliberately held back) that she was giving up playing. She got in a muddle over her bills and red letters started arriving threatening to cut off the gas.

Thea tried to reassure her with jokes, inventing stories about how forgetful she was too, saying it must be in the genes. She wished she’d taken the situation more seriously and sent her to her GP. That might have bought them at least a few more months. Or it might not have. At the nursing home Thea had talked to a woman, whose mother’s GP had laughed when he heard she was becoming forgetful and said she was just suffering from ‘old age’.

How cosy that phrase sounded as opposed to the grim reality which Toni was facing. Things were becoming dangerous. She would mix up the gas cooker and the fridge. On one visit, Thea found she had singed her eyebrows. She cooked a joint in the oven but forgot to take off the plastic wrapping. She fell down a step she’d forgotten was there and was lucky to escape with only grazes and bruises.

The game was up. Thea couldn’t bear it any more, but equally, she couldn’t bear the thought of giving up her job to be a full-time carer. Rachel and her other friends assured her she wasn’t being selfish, only realistic, but it didn’t make the guilt any easier to bear. Thea had tried various combinations of carers but in the end she’d realized the only way to provide Gran with the level of help she deserved was to put her in the best home she could find, although even on her good salary, she could only just afford the fees.

Today was the first time she’d have seen her grandmother in four months. To stop herself from brooding during the train journey, Thea bought an extra-large bag of Skittles and all the papers. Aggressively, she spread them out over two seats, so no one could invade her space. As London’s jagged edges ebbed, she trawled through them, searching for nuggets that might appeal to Dean. Thea wasn’t at all happy about the new, shorter, more airheady
Seven Thirty News,
not least the fact that foreign travel, which was what she lived for, was going to be severely curtailed. Since that announcement Thea had had severe doubts about staying with the programme. But where else could she go? The other networks were just as bad and she could hardly jack the whole thing in and go travelling – not with Gran’s care fees to pay for.

She’d worry about that later, she thought, as she spotted an item in the
Mail
about a Russian woman who’d just given birth to quintuplets. Thea reached in her bag for her red biro and ringed it as worthy of a follow up. ‘How M&S went from dowdy to dazzling’. Another ring. Hey, they could interview Hannah Creighton, Thea thought, popping an orange Skittle in her mouth, she’d always bored Thea rigid at parties by going on about how superb the Autograph range was.

Thea picked up the
Press
and lead about the
American Idol
scandal. God, she thought she’d left all that behind in New York. She flicked on.

HOW I LOST A HUSBAND BUT REDISCOVERED MY SEX LIFE

Thea was seized by a mixture of outrage that Hannah could be so nasty, and amusement. A tiny bit of her felt guilty about ordering the Viagra. Since Dean’s dinner party, Thea hadn’t spoken to Luke; he seemed pretty studio-bound at the moment, and most days she was out on a story. She couldn’t quite work out her feelings for him. Every time she saw him in the distance, her insides felt as if they’d been given a good going-over by the tumble dryer. Then she remembered his child-bride wife and she felt nothing but cold scorn and fury that she’d wasted so much time on such a feeble excuse for a man.

The train pulled into Godalming station. It was a twenty-minute taxi ride to Greenways. As it bowled up the gravel drive, Thea thought, as she always did, that at least she couldn’t have chosen a prettier place for her grandmother to spend her final years. It was a whitewashed, rambling Edwardian villa. Toni had a room on the ground floor with French doors leading straight out into the pretty gardens.

Not that she knew where she was.

Gritting her teeth, Thea paid the driver and rang the doorbell. A smiling nurse – twenty-something, Polish, like they mostly were – opened it, releasing a smell of overcooked vegetables and bleach, a smell that concealed something much more unpleasant that only hit you occasionally.

‘Good morning.’

‘Good morning. My grandmother, Mrs Fry, is in room twenty-seven.’

‘Of course. Mrs Fry. I bring her breakfast this morning.’

‘Oh yes.’ That thought gladdened Thea. ‘Did she like it?’

The nurse wrinkled her nose. ‘She’s not a breakfast person, I think.’

Alarm bells rang in Thea’s head. Gran had always loved her breakfast. ‘Not today? Or not always?’

‘Not always, I think. Mrs Fry, she not eat much.’ The girl smiled and moved off. ‘Have a nice visit.’

Perturbed, Thea hurried along the corridor with its plastic handrails. It was so peaceful: thick green carpets, prints of flowers on the walls. She pushed open one fire door, then another. Then she heard the screaming.

‘Oh my God, please, no! He’s going to kill me.’

A tiny woman in a pink, sprigged nightie was standing in a doorway, weeping hysterically in the arms of a young man with dark hair and bushy eyebrows.

‘Take him away, take him away, he’s come to kill me.’

‘Mum, it’s OK. Mum, it’s me. Jake. Your son.’

Thea quickened her pace as she walked past, trying not to look. But she couldn’t help noticing the woman seemed to have some sort of food matted in her hair. She averted her eyes. Funny how she’d coped with meeting victims of bomb blasts, famine and war but the inmates of Greenways freaked her out far more, even the ones who still had their marbles but were just frail. This was partly because her own grandmother was one of them, partly because every visit brought with it the unpalatable reminder that this was likely to be her destiny too.

She was not going to feel sorry for herself, she told herself furiously as she knocked on the door of room twenty-seven with its little nameplate: Mrs Fry. There was no reply, but then there wasn’t usually, so Thea pushed it open, heart in her mouth as to what she might find.

What a relief. Gran was sitting in her armchair by the French doors, staring into space. She was wearing a green polyester skirt and a white blouse, quite unlike the jeans and fleeces she used to favour – Greenways had asked Thea to buy clothes for her that washed easily and were simple for a carer to put on. She appeared much the same as last time, but thinner, definitely thinner. Wasn’t she eating?

She didn’t look round.

‘Hello, Gran. It’s me, Thea.’

Silence.

Thea kissed her. ‘Hi, Gran. It’s Thea. I’ve brought you some flowers.’

Gran’s eyes flickered. ‘Flowers. Oh, how nice.’ She buried her nose in them. ‘Lovely. Lilies: my favourite.’

Even though they were roses, Thea’s heart expanded. It was going to be OK. They were going to have a good visit, where they looked at old photos and perhaps had a gentle stroll round the lawns. ‘They’re nice, aren’t they, Gran?’

‘Beautiful. Thank you.’ She smiled at Thea. ‘How have you been, my darling?’

‘I’ve been really well. Got back from America a couple of weeks ago. I’m sorry I didn’t come and see you before, but I’ve been very busy.’

Gran nodded sagely. ‘Always busy. Working?’

‘Yes, working. I’ve had another promotion to senior producer.’ She turned to look at the black-and-white photo of a young, skinny laughing man. ‘I wish my dad was here so I could tell him. I bet you do too.’

‘How’s that Luke?’

Thea’s heart lurched. Apart from Rachel, her grandmother was the only person she ever confided in because she was fairly sure she wouldn’t remember a thing. But obviously she’d been wrong.

‘Luke’s all right. He’s married that young model I told you about. They’ve got a baby. It’s a bit weird. I thought I was over him, but then I saw him at a party and… I’m not,’ she admitted finally. ‘I still love him. I can’t help it. I know it’s pathetic to be obsessed with a married man, I know I’m on a hiding to nothing, but he’s just so handsome and clever and brave and—’

Suddenly Toni’s face changed. ‘I asked my mother to come. Who are you?’

Oh shit. ‘I’m Thea. Your granddaughter. You know me.’ She kept her voice soft and low.

‘No. No. You’re not my granddaughter. I don’t have a granddaughter.’

‘Yes, you do. Sometimes you forget about me, but I
am
your granddaughter.’

Gran shook her head violently. ‘Where’s mother? And Maria? I want to see them. Are they coming?’

Maria was Thea’s great aunt. ‘Your mother’s been dead for thirty years, and Maria lives in Spain. She’ll come and see you next time she’s over, though.’

Toni started to cry, not loud hysterical tears like you sometimes got, but soft sobs. They were just as bad.

‘Go away. I don’t know you. Go away.’

‘But Gran…’

There was a knock on the door. ‘Is everything all right?’ It was Corinne, the home’s manager.

‘We’re fine,’ Thea trilled.

‘Tell her to leave. I want my mother.
I want my mother
.’

Corinne opened the door, her usual faintly disapproving expression in place. ‘All right, Toni,’ she said gently. ‘Don’t worry, sweetheart, it’s your granddaughter.’

‘I don’t have a granddaughter! Tell this woman to go.’

Corinne winked at Thea. ‘Playing up a bit today,’ she whispered. ‘If I were you, I’d skedaddle. She’ll have appreciated your coming.’

‘Do you think so?’ Thea asked, eager for reassurance, standing up.

‘Oh yes. I’m sure the dears know on some level you’re there.’ She went over and patted Toni on the shoulder. ‘Now, don’t worry, love, your granddaughter’s off now. But she’ll be back soon, won’t you?’

‘Of course,’ Thea said with a forced jollity she didn’t feel in the slightest. Gran continued to weep softly. ‘I can’t just leave her like this,’ she said, panicked.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll get one of the girls to check on her,’ Corinne said. ‘Now, I’m glad I caught you, Thea. I’d just like you to come into my office for a moment, because I need to talk to you about fees. I’m afraid we’ve had no choice but to put them up again and I wanted to give you plenty of warning.’