As Good As It Gets? Read online

  Rosie emits a dry laugh. ‘Yeah, like the summer holidays. That’s what I’m doing over the next few months. I’ve nothing planned at all. We’re not even going away, are we, Mum?’

  ‘We might,’ I say defensively.

  ‘Well, this is exactly the age we like them to start,’ Laurie cuts in, delving into her tan leather bag for a business card which she presses into my palm. ‘Some join us even younger, but of course they’re always chaperoned on castings and jobs … Okay if I take a quick picture, Rosie?’

  ‘Er, sure,’ she replies with a shy smile. Don’t ask me, then. I’m only her mother.

  I squint at the card as Laurie takes the shot with her phone. She seems genuine; it says Laurie Piper, Head Booker, Face Models, not Creepy Weirdo Who Prowls Around Shops Where Teenagers Go. The agency is in Long Acre in Covent Garden, not some godforsaken suburb I’ve barely heard of. In fact, with her cool grey eyes and pronounced cheekbones, Laurie has the air of an ex-model herself. ‘That’s beautiful,’ she enthuses, studying the image on her phone. ‘Such a fresh, pretty face.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Rosie says, blushing. Oddly enough, whenever I tell my daughter how lovely she is, she fixes me with a rather beleaguered, you’re-only-saying-that sort of look.

  ‘So,’ Laurie goes on, ‘perhaps you’d both like to think it over? Give me a call and pop into the agency sometime for a chat. You can meet the team and we’ll explain how everything works …’

  ‘Okay,’ Rosie says brightly.

  ‘I’m really not sure,’ I tell Laurie, irritated now that she doesn’t seem to have listened to a word I’ve said. ‘Next year’s really important for Rosie. She needs good grades in her A-levels because she’s hoping to do a veterinary degree …’

  ‘Huh?’ Laurie says distractedly.

  ‘Rosie wants to be a vet,’ I explain.

  ‘Mum, it’s fine!’ Rosie throws me a pleading look.

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ Laurie says. ‘We can always work around school …’ What the hell does that mean? ‘… And we nurture our girls. We’re like a surrogate family really …’

  She doesn’t need a surrogate family!

  ‘Anyway,’ Laurie adds, turning back to my daughter as if I’ve conveniently melted into the shiny white floor, ‘lovely to meet you. Do think it over, won’t you?’

  Rosie grins. ‘I definitely will.’

  ‘Bye then.’ We watch her striding towards the escalator.

  ‘God, Mum,’ Rosie breathes. ‘I can’t believe you did that.’

  ‘Did what?’

  ‘Went on about me wanting to be a vet!’

  I frown, prickling with hurt. ‘I didn’t go on. I just mentioned it. You’ve been saying for years that that’s what you want to do. She can’t just expect you to drop all your plans—’

  ‘She doesn’t. Weren’t you listening? She said they work around school.’ She lets out an exasperated gasp as we step onto the escalator. ‘I can’t understand why you’re not happy for me.’

  Oh, for crying out loud. ‘I am. Of course I am. You’re lovely and you’d make an amazing model. But I just think, I don’t know …’ I scrabble for the right words. ‘I didn’t think it’d be your kind of thing.’

  She blinks at me. ‘Why not?’ How can I put this – that I can’t imagine my bright, sparky daughter fitting into a vacuous, appearance-obsessed world? Maybe that’s unfair, and the truth is that I just don’t want her to do it, because it’s scary and unknown and, actually, I’d prefer things to stay the way they are. ‘You think I want to be huddled over my books all my life,’ Rosie mutters.

  ‘No, I’m not saying that. But you’ve got loads going on, love. I don’t see how modelling will fit into all of that.’

  We fall into silence as we leave the shop. I glance at Rosie, feeling guilty for dampening her excitement. ‘I just think it’d be fun,’ she murmurs finally.

  ‘I’m sure it would be,’ I say.

  She musters a small smile. ‘Sorry for being snappy.’

  ‘It’s okay. And I don’t want to be a killjoy, you know. It’s just, I didn’t realise agency people worked that way …’

  ‘You mean scouting girls?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, Kate Moss was scouted,’ she says, taking a couple of carrier bags from me without even being asked. ‘That’s how they find new models.’

  ‘What, by prowling around shops?’

  She laughs. ‘Laurie wasn’t prowling, Mum. You’re so suspicious! She was really nice.’

  ‘Yes, she did seem nice, but, you know … we’ll have to see.’ As we make our way out of the mall, I try to figure out how to put her off modelling without spoiling what was clearly a thrilling encounter for her. The truth is, what’s so lovely about Rosie is that there’s so much more to her than the way she looks. She excels at school, even in the subjects she struggles with, because she works hard. Yes, she can be rather spiky at times, but isn’t that part of being a sixteen-year-old girl?

  As we drive home, I try to imagine her dad’s reaction to today’s encounter. Will’s handsome, strong-jawed face shimmers into my mind, and it’s not awash with delight. He’s very protective, and I know he regards the fashion industry as a load of fluff and nonsense. Rosie’s too smart for all that, he’ll decide. He was pretty taken aback when she started to fill the bathroom with a baffling array of skincare and hair products. ‘She’s just a normal teenage girl,’ I explained.

  Plus, while he may have been persuadable at one time, Will has become rather grumpy of late. I can guess why; he is stressed about our precarious finances. Until January, he was employed by Greenspace Heritage, a charity which protects wildlife and its habitats within the M25. Unfortunately, the new Director’s views were at odds with Will’s. While my husband felt it was all about encouraging the public to enjoy London’s hidden wildernesses – i.e., to get messy and have fun – the boss believed they should focus on negotiating corporate deals to bring in huge injections of cash. And so Will was ‘let go’ from the job he’d loved, and which had consumed him for the past decade.

  ‘Something’ll come up,’ he keeps saying, which is having the opposite effect of reassuring me. I’ve become conscious of treading carefully around him – of picking my moment before asking anything even faintly controversial. For instance, while I know he’s applying for jobs, are any interviews likely to happen in the near future – i.e., at some point this year? I can’t help worrying that his redundancy pay-off must have all but run out by now. ‘There’s enough in the joint account isn’t there?’ he asked tersely, last time I raised it. Yes, there was, just about – thanks to my full-time job. However, we both know I don’t earn enough to keep the four of us long-term.

  In fact, occasionally I wonder if it’s not Will’s redundancy, but something far scarier that’s driving us apart: that, quite simply, he’s stopped fancying me. I caught him glancing at me the other night as I undressed for bed, and he didn’t look as if he were about to explode with desire. By the time I’d pulled off my bra – a sturdy black number capable of hoisting two porpoises to safety from an oil-slicked sea – he was already feigning sleep.

  I lay awake for ages, studying the back of his head. Do we still love each other? I wondered, not for the first time. Or are we only together for the kids, or because we’re too old or scared to break up and start all over again? It’s not that I expect full-on passion all the time, not when we’ve been married for thirteen years. But, more and more often these days, I find myself wondering, is this as good as it gets?

  I glance at Rosie as we make our slow journey home through the outer reaches of East London. ‘You do remember it’s Dad’s birthday tomorrow?’ I prompt her.

  ‘God, yes.’ She pulls a horrified face.

  ‘You haven’t bought him anything?’

  ‘Sorry, Mum. I was going to today, but after we’d met Laurie it went right out of my mind …’ First whiff of modelling stardom and she forgets her dad’s birthday. Not good.
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br />   ‘Could you make him a card, at least?’

  ‘Yeah, of course,’ she replies, pausing before adding, ‘D’you think they’ll take me on?’

  So she really wants to do this. ‘Let’s see what happens. Maybe it’s best not to get too excited about it.’

  ‘Why not?’ she exclaims. ‘It is exciting, Mum! Why are you being so negative?’

  ‘I’m not, Rosie. We just need to think about what it might mean for you. And of course,’ I add, trying to sound as if it’s no big deal at all, ‘we’ll have to talk it over with Dad.’

  Chapter Two

  We arrive home to find Ollie, who’s eleven, poring over his laptop at the kitchen table. ‘This is so cool, Mum,’ he announces without shifting his gaze from the screen.

  ‘Lovely. Anyway, hello, hon. Had a good afternoon?’

  ‘You didn’t even look!’ I glance over his shoulder – he’s studying a rather professional-looking microscope, with numerous levers and knobs – then stash the bags containing Will’s presents out of sight in the cupboard under the stairs.

  Ollie shares his dad’s passion for science and nature – triggered, I suspect, by the sweetly entitled ‘field trips’ Will used to take the kids on, from which they’d return all excited and mud-splattered and present me with larvae and bugs. Sometimes he’d take them off camping for a couple of days. While Ollie still ventures out with him occasionally, Rosie hasn’t pulled on her waders for several years now. Maybe, I reflect, Will feels redundant in more ways than one.

  I wave at him through the kitchen window. He grins from our back garden – his arms are laden with bits of shrub – and motions that he won’t be a minute. ‘I’d love this for my birthday,’ Ollie muses, still peering at the screen.

  ‘We’ll see, love. But it’s not until December and Dad’s is tomorrow, okay? So it’s slightly more urgent. Hope you’ve remembered.’

  ‘Oh! Yeah, yeah,’ he says blithely as Will strides in, dispenses a quick kiss on my cheek and says, ‘I’ll just get cleaned up. Did you have a good time at the shops?’ Without waiting for an answer he bounds upstairs.

  Rosie, who’d wandered off to see her rabbit, emerges from the utility room with him snuggled in her arms. Sixteen she may be, and the proud owner of a Babyliss hot brush, yet she still adores her pet. Guinness is getting on a bit now, and Rosie insisted we took him to the vet (I suspect she wanted an excuse to nosy about at the surgery) for a bunny MOT. Being unable to find anything wrong with him, the vet suggested that perhaps he shouldn’t spend all his time outdoors, for which he charged a £45 consultation fee. And so Guinness now ‘divides his time’ between a luxury hutch and adjoining run in the garden, and a large hay-filled box in our utility room.

  ‘Where’s Dad?’ Rosie asks, stroking back Guinness’s ears.

  ‘Having a shower,’ I reply. ‘He’s been gardening all day.’

  ‘Can’t wait to tell him!’ Her eyes are shining, her cheeks flushed with excitement.

  ‘Tell him what?’ Ollie mutters, zooming in for a closer look at the microscope.

  ‘I was scouted today.’

  ‘What?’ Ollie turns to face her. ‘By a model agency, you mean?’ Christ, even he is familiar with the term.

  ‘Yeah,’ Rosie says with a grin.

  ‘Like, they reckon you could be on the cover of magazines and stuff?’

  ‘Yes, Ollie.’

  ‘You, with your funny little sticky-up nose?’ He jumps up from his seat and mimics a supermodel strut across the kitchen. With a gasp of irritation, and with Guinness still clutched to her chest, Rosie stomps up to her room.

  ‘What’s up with her?’ Ollie asks.

  ‘Oh, she’s just excited and thinks you’re not taking it seriously.’

  He pushes back choppy dark hair from his grey-blue eyes. ‘But Rosie’s not interested in modelling. It’s a crap job, Mum. They’re a load of bitchy anorexics—’

  ‘You can’t say that,’ I retort, still amazed that he has any awareness of the business at all. ‘You don’t know anything about it. Neither do I …’

  ‘Who’s a bitchy anorexic?’ Will strolls into the kitchen, all fresh and smelling delicious from his shower.

  ‘No one,’ I say quickly.

  ‘Dad, look at this,’ Ollie pipes up, beckoning him over to the laptop. Will peers at the microscope.

  ‘Yeah, that looks great. That’s pretty serious kit.’

  ‘… It’s got incident and transmitted illumination,’ Ollie explains, ‘and look how powerful that eyepiece is …’

  I watch them, flipping from one image to the next, whilst attempting to communicate silently to Ollie that he mustn’t blurt out anything about Rosie being scouted today. That modelling thing, I urge him, please do not speak of it until I can be sure that Dad’s in the right sort of mood. In fact, I’m pretty certain he’ll view modelling as completely wrong and ridiculous for his beloved Rosie. Whenever I explain to anyone that Will isn’t her biological dad – she was eighteen months old when we met – I quickly point out that he is her dad in every other possible way. He’s been a brilliant father to her. Some women go for charm or money or incredible prowess in bed. I realised I’d fallen madly in love with Will Bristow when he appeared at my flat with the wooden toy garage he’d built for Rosie, complete with an actual working lift, for her collection of toy cars.

  ‘I know she’s not old enough for it really,’ he said apologetically, ‘but I had some wood kicking about and got a bit carried away …’ Sure, my heart had already been flipped by his wide, bright smile, his deep blue eyes and lean, delicious body. But it was that lift, that you wound up and down with a tiny handle, which made me realise that this kind, rather shy man, who cared about plants and the dwindling red squirrel population, could quite possibly be the love of my life.

  Will glances up from the laptop. ‘What were you saying about bitchy anorexics?’

  ‘Oh, nothing, hon. We’ll talk about it later.’ I throw Ollie a don’t-say-anything look, then delve into a carrier bag and thrust him a present – the mini silver Maglite torch he’s been after.

  ‘Aw, great! Thanks, Mum!’

  I smile, watching him admire its powerful beam. He is less enthusiastic about his other gift, and merely flings it over a chair. ‘Ollie,’ I prompt him, ‘could you admire your new sweatshirt, please? It’s for school. You said you needed one and I actually went into Hollister for that, because Maria said they do the nicest ones for boys and you complained that the last ones were thin and cheap-looking.’ I blink at him, awaiting gratitude. ‘I could have just gone to BHS,’ I add.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ he mutters.

  ‘D’you realise it’s completely dark in Hollister?’ I continue. ‘It’s like venturing down towards the earth’s core. They should issue miners’ helmets with lamps on for us ordinary people who don’t have special night vision …’

  Ollie smirks. ‘It’s meant to be dark, Mum.’

  ‘Yes, I realise that. If I’d bought your torch before I went in, then I wouldn’t have been stumbling about, treading on people’s feet. Also, I can’t believe the looks policy they have in there. I mean, all the staff look like models …’ Damn, the M-word pops out before I can stop it.

  Ollie turns to Will. ‘Guess what, Dad …’

  Please, do not speak of it …

  ‘What?’ Will asks.

  ‘Rosie’s gonna be a model!’

  Oh, bloody hell …

  Will frowns at me. ‘Huh? What’s going on?’

  I grab his hand and smile broadly. ‘Nothing, darling. Nothing’s going on. Well, not much. Come and show me what you’ve been doing in the garden and I’ll tell you all about it.’

  It worries me, as we step out into the warm July afternoon, this occasional tendency I have of addressing Will as if he were about eight years old. It started after his redundancy, and I’m only trying to be supportive and kind. However, I fear it can come out sounding as if I might try to check his hair for a nit infestation, or arran
ge his pizza toppings to make a face.

  Will seems more relaxed as we sit side by side on our worn wooden bench in the late afternoon sunshine. We bought this place – a redbrick terrace in dire need of an upgrade – when Ollie was a toddler, figuring that two children with limitless energy really needed a lawn to run about on. What we’d failed to realise was that if you own a garden, you actually have to garden it. But we’d had our hands full with the children and our jobs, and the previous owners’ immaculate borders soon ran amok, much to the consternation of Gerald and Tricia next door.

  ‘It’s fine,’ I’d say, whenever one of them peered over the fence and asked what our ‘plans’ for it were. ‘You don’t want precious plants with kids running about. We far prefer it like this.’ I talked as if it were an actual lifestyle choice, and not sheer neglect, that had made our garden that way. It grew even more jungly – with Tricia making the occasional barbed comment that we might ‘get someone in to, you know, give you a hand’ – until Will found himself with acres of time to tackle it. And when he’s not gardening, he’s out on his bike, foraging for wild food in the leafy pockets of East London; we’ve had elderflower, sorrel and armfuls of watercress. He’s turned into quite the hunter-gatherer, and it suits him. He looks like the kind of man who, should you find yourself trapped on a mountain in a freak storm, would be capable of knocking up a sturdy shelter from a couple of sticks and a bread wrapper and cook a hearty meal out of some lichen.

  ‘So,’ Will says now, shielding his eyes from the sun, ‘what’s this about modelling?’

  ‘Oh, a woman from an agency spotted Rosie in Forever 21 and said she has potential. It’s not a big deal …’

  ‘Forever 21?’ Such places don’t feature on Will’s radar.

  ‘Clothes shop the size of Belgium. I wouldn’t recommend going in without a ration pack and some kind of paper trail to help you find your way back out …’

  ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I hope you told her where to get off.’

  I look at him, momentarily lost for words. ‘Of course I didn’t. D’you honestly think I’d speak to anyone like that?’