The Square (31 page)

“What? Oh. Oh, I just got a bit energetic with the, the loofah.”

“The what?”

“You know, the sponge.”

“Do we have such a thing in the house?”

Jay doesn’t wait for any more. He disappears upstairs.

An hour later, the lasagna is ready. Harriet takes it from the oven, covers it with tin foil, and protecting her hands with two tea towels, carries it carefully over to Tracey and Larry’s house.

“Oh phew. God, this thing is heavy,” she says, as Tracey opens the front door.

“You are a marvel,” says Tracey. Tracey looks no less marvellous herself. Her hair is piled onto her head in a volume of curls. Her makeup is so artfully blended that it seems as if she has nothing on her face but bare beauty. Her manicured hands are perfect. Her stockings shimmer. Her silk dress clings to her.

“That’s a nice dress,” says Harriet, feeling hot and sweaty from the lasagna.

“What, this? Do you know where it came from?”

“No,” says Harriet, not wanting to know.

Tracey leans into her friend.

“Prada. Alan bought it for me,” she whispers.

“God, Tracey,” says Harriet.

“He insisted. Said I deserved it. It arrived yesterday in a box.”

It is a beautiful dress. Harriet watches Tracey walk into the kitchen to sort out the drinks. The navy fabric swings around her body. It is made of heavy, printed silk. High at the front. Low at the back. Half length sleeves. This will just be the first triumph for her, thinks Harriet sourly. This show will be a springboard for Tracey to be on more shows. I know it will. She’ll probably get her own makeup range now. I wonder if she’ll ever remember me, the fat neighbour, who kicked it all off for her.

She sighs. Someone comes past her in the hall. It’s Anya.

Good God, even she’s dolled up to the nines, thinks Harriet.

“Harriet, good evening,” says Anya.

“Oh, hello,” says Harriet. “Are you watching the show tonight too?”

“Of course,” says Anya.

“I thought you were off to Poland. When are you going?”

They can’t wait to see the back of me here, thinks Anya. Even Harriet, whom she knew had a soft spot for her after that incident with the chair.

“Next week. Now, please do go into the lounge and have a drink.”

Lounge. Oh well, she is from Poland, thinks Harriet.

In the living room the chairs are all arranged in a semicircle around the television. Larry is putting small dishes of olives on various tables.

“I know, I know. Don’t say it. Looks like we are to have a seance,” says Larry.

“With Alan Makin as our intermediary between the spirit world and the Square.”

His shoulders shake with mirth.

“Sit down, Harriet. Everyone will be coming in in just a minute. Thank you so much for cooking supper. Tracey is very nervous.”

“She doesn’t look it.”

“That’s all a front,” says Larry confidently.

The door bell rings.

“Excuse me,” says Larry, leaving the room.

“Help yourself to an olive.”

Harriet starts eating, dolefully and mechanically putting olive after olive into her mouth, hardly biting the first before following it with the second.

She is pleased to hear Jay and Brian in the hall, followed by a chatter of other voices from others who have obviously arrived on the doorstep at the same time.

The living room door opens. Jay, Brian, and the Single Mother all come in, followed by Larry and Grace.

“Is Alan Makin himself turning up?” asks Jay jovially, to nobody in particular.

“Of course he is,” says Tracey, coming in behind him with a tray of drinks.

“Bubble, anyone?”

At that precise moment, the door bell rings. Grace looks out of the window.

“It’s Alan!” she says.

Tracey smiles. She feels triumphant to her fingertips.

“Well, go and let him in.”

After a minute or so, Alan strides into the living room.

“Hello, hello everyone,” he announces. He looks around at the room, in which there are only seven people.

“Where’s the crew? Is this it?”

“Oh, no, not at all,” says Tracey quickly as the door bell rings again.

It is the production crew, four or five muscular and monosyllabic men. They enter the living room as one body and stand by the door, shunning all food and drinking Carlsberg out of the can.

Eventually there are about a dozen people in the room as the opening titles of
Makin’s Makeovers
roll on the screen.

Astonishingly, Jane has arrived. She is last to turn up, with George at her side.

“Patrick can’t make it, but I couldn’t miss this for the world,” she announces to the room. She has a lot of makeup on. “George was dying to see it, Tracey.”

She gives Jay a bright, glassy eyed smile. He bobs his head, and then focuses resolutely on the screen.

Anya quietly slips out of the living room. She’s not too bothered about the show, and she can watch it in her room anyway. But she is very keen to avoid a confrontation with Jane.

Tracey pops up on screen, smiling nervously.

“The pre-sequence sequence, folks,” says Alan.

“I’ll admit it, I had no idea what was in my bank account from day to day,” announces televisual Tracey, walking towards the camera.

“God I sound stupid,” mutters Tracey.

“Yes but your legs look great,” says Larry, nudging her.

“Only 10% of what people say on television actually sinks into the viewer’s mind,” says Grace. “I read that somewhere.”

Alan Makin coughs, loudly.

“Shhh,” says Belle. She looks up at Brian, who winks at her.

“Do we know how many people across the UK are actually watching this?” says George, loudly. Alan does a loud intake of breath.

“Shhh!” hisses Belle.

“About four point five,” says Alan.

“Four point five what?” asks George

“Million,” says Alan.

“Will you all shut up? Sorry Alan, I don’t mean you, but everyone else,” says Tracey.

And so the programme begins.

Alan is perfect, easy, charming and full of solutions. Tracey is surprisingly entertaining, full of endearing problems but only too ready to be guided. Graphics fill the screen showing how her finances got into trouble, but how easily the problems can be solved.

“Yeah, if I start working twenty-seven-hour days,” says Larry in a low voice.

“Dad!” says Belle. “Shut UP.”

“Thought you only counted YouTube as important broadcasting,” whispers Larry.

“Dad!” says Grace.

The door bell rings. Grace looks out of the window.

“Belle, it’s Jas!”

“Who?” says Alan.

“Oh, one of the chavs from the other day,” continues Grace. “He’s been working with Belle and that weird Philip Burrell guy.”

“What?” says Larry, leaping up out of his chair. “Don’t tell me those wacky artists are here.”

Alan glances out of the window.

“No, no. Just one person. Oh yes, that’s Jasper. I remember now, I invited him round. He was very keen to see the show. After the Talent Show he came up. Wants to ask me about getting into television afterwards, you know.”

Larry sits back down. “Well, if anything happens… ”

“Don’t talk rubbish, man. These people just need a chance. I do this sort of thing a lot, you know,” says Alan, adjusting his collar.

“Jasper!” murmurs Larry, astonished. “What sort of name is that for someone from a council estate?”

“Shhhh!” says Belle. “I worked with him all over the Easter holidays. He works for Philip Burrell, you know. Jas. I was at Primary with him. You know. We made the marathon courses.”

The bell rings again.

“Grace, be a dear and let him in.”

After a few moments, Grace heralds the arrival of Jas. He walks in shyly.

“’Lo”

“Jas!” says Belle.

“Alan invited me,” he says.

She smiles warmly at him. He is in her house. Without her even having done anything about it. She remembers how nice he had been to her at Philip’s studio.

“Fantastic. How are the golf holes?”

“Good.”

“Marathon courses?”

“Nah. Magnus thinks we might have ‘saturated the market’ with them,” Jas says. “But Philip’s onto something else now.”

“What?”

“Olympic stadiums. Check them out. I’ve put some shots on Instagram.”

Belle laughs. She is definitely going to kiss him. Screw the Populars and her vow for chastity. Screw being polite and wistful with Brian, too. She can’t be doing with private school boys. She is going to fuck Jas. She knows it. She is going to lose her virginity to him. She will. These thoughts take about three nanoseconds to course through her head. She feels full of exultation.

The group murmurs a welcome. The programme continues to its entirely predictable conclusion.

“So from now on, my working week is sorted,” chirps Tracey from the screen.

“I pay myself every week, I pay into my tax account every week and when the tax bill needs to be paid, ta-dah! The money is already there in my account. Thanks, Alan!” She bounces off screen with a jaunty wave.

Alan’s face fills the screen as he gets into his car and drives away, the financial superhero coming to your street soon to sort out your money woes. The address for his website is frozen on the screen for a few seconds.

Everyone in the room laughs.

Tracey nudges Alan.

“Thanks Alan!”

Alan graciously nods his head, accepts the acknowledgement, relaxes in his chair as the credits roll.

The crew nods sagely as their names briefly appear on the screen. There is a ripple of applause as the last credit, for Makin Productions, flashes up.

“And now,
Family Guy
,” says the continuity announcer.

“Oh pleeese Dad,” says Grace. “Can we watch
Family Guy
now?”

“Are you stark staring mad?” says Larry. “We are having a party to celebrate your mum’s programme. That does not involve sitting around watching
Family Guy.”

He snaps the television off.

“Only because it features a man like you,” mutters Belle, getting up out of her chair and going to stand next to Jas.

“Hey,” says Jas. “Your mum looked great.”

“Mmm,” says Belle noncommittally. “Tell you what. Shall we go upstairs? We can watch Netflix on my laptop.”

Jas looks torn. Forget Netflix, he’s not stupid. But Alan Makin and his promise of a chat is downstairs. He looks at Belle.

“Quickly,” she whispers, touching his hand. That does it. Alan Makin can wait. He is going to take this girl’s clothes off in her bedroom in the Square, from whose windows he can just about see his own flat.

“Excuse me,” says Tracey loudly, as she walks past them with a tray.

“I shall replenish these, I think,” she announces to nobody in particular. “Then we can all have Harriet’s delicious lasagna.”

As Belle and Jas walk upstairs, Tracey clicks down to the kitchen in her very high heels. A strand of hair has come adrift from its pin. It snakes softly down the back of her neck. She kicks open the kitchen door, walks in and puts the tray heavily down on the table. The programme is over. She must face the lasagna.

Someone comes into the kichen behind her. It’s Alan.

“I honestly feel as if nothing nice is ever going to happen again,” says Tracey, as the phone starts ringing.

“Rubbish,” says Alan. “Listen to that. That is people ringing to tell you how great you were on the show. You were!”

“But it’s been, oh I don’t know, it’s been… ” she looks wildly around the four walls of her kitchen, all so carefully styled. The very fact of her expensive kitchen’s existence used to give her so much delight. Now it seems pathetic, inadequate.

“Don’t worry,” says Alan. “You’ll go on to do other things. And now with all your finances in great shape,” he jokes.

“I suppose so,” she says, dolefully, rinsing the glasses under the tap. Her notion of a quick exit from Alan Makin suddenly seems rather undesirable.

“What about… us?”

Alan puts a perfectly manicured hand onto the island. She looks at his nail varnish. It looks totally wrong in her kitchen.

“Tracey, you know. You are a lovely woman. You’ve been great. You are great. You were great on the show. You were also great for me, very very helpful. In key areas. And physically, wow.”

He chucks her under the chin.

She looks up at him, choked by the almost parental gesture, forgetting about her wish for a civilised, neat ending, forgetting about her independence, wanting to continue being wanted by a celebrity. “And?”

“And all the other stuff. Wonderful. You are a wonderful woman,” he repeats. “But look at what you have here. It’s…” he spreads his hands wide.

Tracey looks at him. She suspects he has said this kind of thing before. She thinks of his glorious solitude in his designer flat. Lubetkin. The Munchkin.

She’s grateful, in a way, for Alan’s manner, but she would rather that she had instigated it, not him. She thinks he is thinking she is emotionally devastated rather than disappointed, and this irritates her.

“It’s domesticated bliss, is what it is,” she says sourly. “With lasagna for twenty people.”

“Tracey. Come on. Tell you what, let’s not finish on this sort of note. Are you free tomorrow?”

She looks up at him, hopefully. Anything not to completely leave the charmed world of production, the fantasy of the perfectly constructed and scripted television show, the notion that life too could be like this, if only one worked just a little bit harder.

“Yes. I am.”

“Good. Come with me to London Zoo. I’m taking the Munchkin to his new home.”

“What?”

He shrugs. “It’s time. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow. Ten o’clock. I’ll pick you up.”

They walk upstairs, back to the sitting room. Jane and George have gone. Everyone else, including Anya, is sitting around drinking beer and watching
Family Guy.
Grace is sitting on her hands, grinning with triumph. Belle and Jas are conspicuous by their absence.

Chapter Thirty-Three Tracey

Tracey stretches her body in bed, contemplates the slumbering hillock beside her. Fifteen years. For fifteen years she has shared a bed with this one person. She contemplates the next fifteen years. Without any variation, she thinks. Apart from possibly the hillock growing larger.