As Good As It Gets? Read online

‘Boden?’ I repeat. ‘I didn’t know that.’ Liza has always played down Scarlett’s foray into modelling. It had been over very quickly, as far as I could gather; now I suspect she just didn’t want to seem boastful.

  Liza nods proudly. ‘She still does the occasional job, but only in holiday time and it doesn’t get in the way of her studies at all.’ She smiles at Gloria. ‘She’s studying English and Philosophy …’

  ‘I’m not saying it’s all bad,’ Gloria says reluctantly.

  ‘And the beauty of it is,’ Liza continues, ‘all her friends have bar jobs or are waitressing, and Scarlett hasn’t had to do any of that.’

  A hush fills our over-heated kitchen. ‘I could pay my own way through vet school,’ Rosie remarks.

  ‘Well,’ I say carefully, ‘it sounds like Scarlett’s had a really good experience.’

  Liza nods. ‘Yes, she has. D’you want to see some of her pictures?’ She laughs. ‘Sorry, I’m such an embarrassing mum. She’d hate me for this …’

  ‘Go on,’ I urge her, ‘I’d love to see.’ She fetches her phone from her bag and we all cluster round it. The pictures are from a Boden shoot; sunny and smiley with Scarlett’s corn-coloured hair blowing across her freckled face.

  ‘She looks amazing,’ Rosie exclaims.

  ‘Well, I think so,’ Liza says with a grin.

  She scrolls through pictures of Scarlett scampering through the dunes and balancing, with arms outstretched, on a fallen-down tree. ‘Aren’t they great?’ I enthuse, shooting a quick look at Will.

  He nods, seeing as I do that Scarlett is wearing the least provocative items of clothing known to womankind: a polo neck sweater. Jolly spotty wellies. A duffel coat, for goodness’ sake. Could anything be more wholesome? ‘So it’s really been okay?’ Will asks her. ‘I mean, nothing awful’s happened?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Liza replies. ‘If it had, I’d have put a stop to it. Anyway, it’s not as if she was a timid thirteen-year-old. She was eighteen when she started …’

  ‘Rosie’s only sixteen,’ I remind her.

  ‘Yes, Mum,’ Rosie groans, ‘and in Viking times I’d have at least seven children by now.’

  ‘God forbid,’ Will splutters, and even Gloria emits a wry chuckle.

  I catch her eye as she prods at her cake with a fork. ‘Look, I do understand what you’re saying, Gloria, about the foil dress poking. And I know you’re only concerned. But from what Liza’s said about Scarlett’s experience … well, maybe we shouldn’t just dismiss it.’

  Liza nods. ‘It really improved her confidence and she met some lovely people. Honestly, it’s been an amazing opportunity for her …’

  I smile and turn to Will. ‘I think the final decision should actually rest with Rosie … don’t you, darling?’

  ‘Dad, please,’ Rosie blurts out. ‘I can look after myself. I’m not an idiot …’

  He frowns at me. ‘But I thought we said—’

  ‘We didn’t say anything,’ I cut in, ‘because we haven’t actually found out what it might entail. How about I call the agency on Monday? We can at least all go in for a chat.’

  ‘You mean all of us,’ Rosie asks, aghast, ‘like a family outing?’

  I nod firmly. ‘Absolutely. Well, Ollie could go to a friend’s …’

  Will stares. ‘You mean me? You’re saying I’ve got to come too?’

  ‘Yes. You obviously have concerns so I think it’s important that you’re there, don’t you?’

  ‘Er, I don’t think …’

  ‘You’re coming, Will,’ I say, surprising myself with my bossiness.

  He gives me a look as if he’s about to protest, then busies himself by fetching more wine from the fridge.

  ‘Why, Mum?’ Rosie cries. ‘This’ll be so embarrassing!’

  ‘Because we’re your family and we love you,’ I say brightly, giving Liza a wink across the table as I refill her glass.

  Chapter Four

  I am woken at 7.27 next morning by the whine of a lawnmower. Must be Tricia next door, making a point about how grass should be immaculately shorn, and that her neighbours – especially us, the Bristows at number 27 – are letting the area down. Ours is more your abundant, bursting-with-blooms kind of garden, and all the more beautiful for it.

  By late May, as everything started to grow like crazy, Tricia blinked at our explosion of flowers and remarked, ‘Startling colour combo, in my opinion! But each to their own …’ Damn cheek. In fact, I far prefer Will’s approach. Tricia and Gerald’s petunias and marigolds have been planted at regular intervals (10 cm), and their lawn – a perfect rectangle with edges neatly clipped – looks like an IKEA rug.

  I slip out of bed, peer through the window and see that it’s not Tricia who’s toiling away out there, but Will. Immediately, it’s apparent that this isn’t just ordinary grass cutting. It’s sulky-mowing, undertaken to make a point. On and on he goes, striding back and forth without pausing to pick up stones or admire his blooms, as he usually does. Our ancient petrol mower drones away like a vexed insect.

  It doesn’t seem a terribly birthdayish thing to do. Maybe he’s miffed because I didn’t hear him get up, and have therefore failed to festoon him with gifts and birthday kisses. Unlikely, though. Will isn’t the kind of man who expects – or even enjoys – a fuss being made. It’s more probable that he’s making a point about something. Yes, that’s it: the energetic mowing is probably due to being railroaded yesterday into agreeing to visit the model agency. Or maybe it’s not that. Perhaps he’s reached the tipping point of his gardening, foraging, cake-baking life, and this is his final attack on our little plot before he starts a new job. Maybe he has a new job, and is planning to surprise me. How ironic that would be, after his mother going on about the prison service and police force last night.

  I pull on my dressing gown and venture out onto the landing. ‘Rosie?’ I call through her closed bedroom door.

  Silence.

  ‘Ro, are you awake?’ I push it open, momentarily calmed by a lingering scent. Although strewn with knickers and tights and Kit Kat wrappers, her room at least smells good, unlike the rest of the house. With its hint of vanilla candles and jasmine body spray, it has a sweet, heady atmosphere all of its own.

  She emits a low moan from her bed. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘It’s Dad’s birthday, that’s what time it is. Did you manage to get anything together?’

  ‘Ohhhh … I forgot.’

  ‘Didn’t you make him a card?’

  Her sleepy face emerges from the duvet. ‘No, sorry. Haven’t you got something in reserve?’

  I hear Will coming in from the garden and pottering about downstairs. ‘What d’you mean, in reserve?’

  ‘Like, in your gift drawer or something?’ Ah, the magic, bottomless gift drawer: a treasure trove of stale lavender hand lotions and long-forgotten boxes of Milk Tray, no doubt fuzzed with white bloom.

  ‘No, Rosie, I don’t.’

  ‘But you always have something …’

  ‘Well, yes, there’s that brown satin nightie Auntie Sally gave me last Christmas but I’m not sure Dad’ll go for that.’ Sally is Will’s younger sister, and adored by their mother, despite deigning to visit roughly three times a year; she only lives in the Cotswolds, for goodness’ sake. ‘Anyway, he won’t expect a present. Just a card’ll do fine …’

  ‘Could you sneak out and buy one for me?’ She picks a fleck of sleep from her left eye.

  ‘No,’ I retort. ‘Why should it be my job? Come on – you need to do something.’ She closes her eyes again as if exhausted by our brief exchange. Sometimes I’m driven to distraction by the inertness of teenagers. As a child, Rosie would be up with the lark, poking at my face as I lay in bed, demanding to finger paint or lash a pile of sticks together with rope to make a raft, which she would then proceed to ‘sail’ across our garden. These days, if it weren’t for school, she would spend her days cocooned in duvet, jabbing at her phone or flipping idly through a book.


  I turn to leave, stepping over a scattering of nail polishes and battered old shoes, and enter Ollie’s room, which smells of stale bedding and socks. It’s crammed with the artefacts he’s collected over the years (prime exhibits include a preserved crocodile head, donated by Liza when she’d been to the Natural History Museum in New York, and an abandoned wasps’ nest we found in the attic). ‘Wake up, Ollie,’ I command, looming over him. ‘It’s Dad’s birthday.’

  ‘Oh, er, yeah …’

  ‘You need to draw him a card. Quick! Come on, get up. Where are your pens?’

  ‘Mum.’ Ollie sits up slowly. ‘He doesn’t care about stuff like that.’

  Actually, this year, I think he will. He needs to know we love him, that he still has a role here beyond chief gardener and cook, and that today of all days is about him. Of course, I don’t tell Ollie that. ‘I just think he’ll appreciate it if you make an effort, love.’

  ‘But I’m no good at drawing.’ His hair is jutting up at all angles and there’s a pillow crease on his cheek.

  ‘You are, but it doesn’t matter. Just find some card and write happy birthday in wiggly type.’

  He snorts. ‘That’s not very original.’

  ‘Well, I’ll leave you to think of something better. I’m off for a shower.’

  I sluice myself quickly and, when I emerge, I spot two bras drying on the radiator. Rosie’s is a wisp of duck-egg blue Top Shop lace. Mine is the sturdy black contraption for hoisting porpoises. Maybe I should start jogging, like Tricia does – run off some of those Archie’s Hand-Cooked Potato Chips I keep ramming into my face. Maybe then Will would be more inclined to ravage me on a Sunday morning instead of attacking the lawn.

  With this thought in mind, I shun my usual weekend attire of old jeans and a T-shirt and wriggle into my favourite dress: black with spriggy red flowers, figure-hugging but stretchy and therefore pretty forgiving. Rather than creating the singular kochwurst-boob, it cleverly creates just enough cleavage without triggering bilious looks from the kids. Effortlessly foxy is the look I’m aiming for, not desperate middle-aged woman who hasn’t had sex for fourteen weeks. Then – although I only wear make-up for work these days – I apply a quick slick of BB cream, some mascara and a dab of sheer, berry-coloured lipstick.

  ‘Shall I run out and buy him a box of After Eights?’ Ollie asks, ambling into my bedroom.

  ‘Um, no.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He hates them.’

  Ollie frowns. ‘Celebrations then?’

  ‘No, darling, he’d rather have nothing than a box of panic-bought chocolates from Londis—’

  ‘Why?’ He looks baffled.

  I consider how to explain this. ‘It’s not really about the thing, Ollie. It’s about the planning and thought that’s gone into it – the effort.’

  ‘It’d be quite an effort to go out to the shop,’ he reasons, ‘when really, I’d rather stay here.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Ollie. You know what I mean. Presents do matter, you know.’

  He exhales through his nostrils. ‘What did Dad get you last birthday?’

  ‘Er …’ I clear my throat. ‘We decided not to do presents last year. We had the house repointed instead.’ And now I’m recalling Tricia, at first admiring the handiwork and then, when I let slip that the lovingly applied mortar was my actual present, chuckling, ‘Oh, poor you! Well, you’re being very stoical about it, I have to say. Gerald bought me a day of treatments at Henley Grange. But I suppose your place did need urgent attention …’

  ‘You know how it is,’ I replied brightly. ‘Priorities and all that. No point in having lovely smooth pores if your house falls down.’

  Having instructed Ollie to create an artistic masterpiece, I find Will in the kitchen and give him a hug. ‘Happy birthday, darling.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Everything okay?’ I ask, stepping away.

  ‘Sure.’ He’s still retaining a trace of the grumpiness he’d displayed while mowing, and I sense my patience fraying. Birthdays didn’t used to involve frenetic mowing at dawn. In fact, practical tasks of any nature would be banned for the day. There’d be cheap champagne at breakfast, plus smoked salmon, scrambled eggs and lots and lots of kisses. Sex, too, once the kids had been dispatched to school. We’d had a tradition of always taking the day off on our birthdays.

  ‘Feel okay about turning forty-one?’ I ask brightly.

  ‘’Course I do,’ Will says, adding, ‘you look lovely today.’

  ‘Thanks. So do you.’ It’s true; his light tan brings out the azure of his eyes, and his strong, lean legs and taut stomach and bottom all add up to a physique a man of thirty would envy.

  He smiles wryly. ‘Reckon gardening leave suits me, then?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘I really do.’ And, tempting though it is to ask, ‘Any news, though? About interviews, I mean?’, I force myself not to, because at forty-one he is surely capable of sorting out his own life. Anyway, I reflect, calling the kids downstairs and gathering everyone together in the living room, perhaps I was wrong about the angry-mowing. Maybe he was just feeling energetic.

  He seems genuinely delighted with the kids’ hastily-drawn cards and my pile of presents. ‘This is too much,’ he exclaims, examining the turntable and speakers which I hauled around that godforsaken mall. ‘Thank you, darling.’ He examines the fragrance and soft blue sweater. ‘But … isn’t this the one Mum gave me?’

  ‘I bought you an identical one,’ I say, laughing. ‘Gloria and I obviously have the same taste.’

  He grins and kisses the top of my head. ‘Bloody hell. That’s worrying.’

  Ollie and Rosie edge away at the sight of us expressing affection, as if the next step may be some enthusiastic snogging (unlikely). ‘Look, Mum,’ Rosie remarks, poised at the front window, ‘people are moving in over the road.’ I join her to watch several powerful-looking men unloading furniture from a removal van. There’s a woman, too – skinny and bird-like in tight black jeans and a faded denim jacket, with a torrent of wavy auburn hair cascading down her back. A tall, rangy teenage boy appears to be watching the proceedings with interest, without offering to help.

  Actually, I decide, this family looks interesting. Our corner of East London has a villagey feel; well-scrubbed women march around in Breton tops and boot-cut jeans, ferrying photogenic children to and from numerous activities. Some local mums fill their entire lives with bake sales and ensuring our little community runs precisely as it should. While I’m happy here, occasionally I find our neighbourhood a little too well behaved. The one time I took Ollie to a music workshop as a toddler, I was politely asked by a statuesque blonde to ‘please remove that beaker he’s holding – we don’t want other children seeing it’. It was only Ribena, not Scotch.

  Now the woman and removal men are all standing around and chatting in the bright sunshine. ‘Shall we go out and say hi?’ I suggest.

  ‘No,’ Will exclaims, followed by a derisive laugh. ‘God, Charlotte.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Mum, no!’ Rosie cries. ‘You can’t just march over there. You don’t know them.’

  ‘I wouldn’t march. I’d just walk normally …’

  ‘What would you say?’ she demands.

  I smirk. ‘How about, “Hello”? I find that’s usually a good way to start things off.’ Outside, the woman tosses back her head and laughs long and hard at something one of the men has said.

  ‘Mum’s so nosy,’ Ollie sniggers to his dad.

  ‘Yeah, she’s turned into a curtain-twitcher,’ Will agrees, which prickles me; we’re all standing here, peering out, after all.

  ‘Well,’ I announce, ‘I’m going out to welcome them. C’mon, Will, let’s be neighbourly.’

  ‘You can’t!’ Rosie cries. But I’m already making for the door, with Rosie shouting, ‘Dad, stop her!’ and actually grabbing at my arm, as if I were naked and about to ruin her young life.

  Chapter Five

  The woman a
nd boy are chatting companionably at their front door. As we approach, I realise her trousers aren’t in fact jeans, but black leather. How very racy.

  ‘This is a bit embarrassing,’ Will mutters.

  ‘No it’s not. It’s just a nice thing to do,’ I whisper back, rearranging my face into a wide smile. ‘Hello,’ I say brightly. ‘We live across the road. Just thought we’d come over and say hi.’

  ‘Oh, hi,’ the woman says, seeming genuinely pleased. ‘Lovely to meet you.’

  ‘I’m Charlotte and this is my husband Will …’

  ‘I’m Sabrina,’ the woman says, ‘and my husband …’ She turns to the open front door and yells: ‘Tommy? Come outside! Our new neighbours are here …’

  A tall, broad-chested man in a faded black Rolling Stones T-shirt and jeans a tad on the tight side emerges and greets us warmly. While Sabrina is tiny and astonishingly pretty – early forties at a guess – Tommy is a hulking bear of a man, perhaps heading for fifty, with clippered greying hair and a bone-crushing handshake. ‘Great to meet you both. Lovely area this is.’ He has the kind of deep, gravelly voice that’s perfect for relating dirty jokes.

  ‘It really is,’ I agree, glancing at the boy who’s now perched on the low front wall, lighting a roll-up. ‘That’s our son Zach,’ Sabrina adds with an eye roll. ‘Helping enormously as you can tell.’

  We all laugh, and I can’t help being transfixed by the way he’s puffing nonchalantly in full view of his parents. He can’t be much older than Rosie. Will would have a heart attack if he ever saw her with a ciggie in her mouth. ‘D’you have to smoke that out here?’ Tommy growls, which Zach chooses to ignore.

  ‘Er, are you going to be starting at Harrington High, Zach?’ I ask him.

  He shakes his head. ‘Nah.’

  ‘Oh, are you going to St Jude’s?’

  Another head shake, causing his mop of black hair to flop into his dark, guarded eyes. ‘I’m not at school.’

  ‘He left last year,’ Sabrina explains. ‘Wants to pursue music …’

  ‘Are you going to music college?’ I ask, sensing Will shooting me a sharp look.