Pleasant Vices
by
Judy Astley


Judy Astley's first novel, JUST FOR THE SUMMER, was much praised:

"OH, WHAT A FIND!  A LOVELY, FUNNY BOOK.  JUDY ASTLEY'S NAME HAS GONE

INTO THE BACK OF MY DIARY WITH THREE STARS' Sarah Harrison

"A THOROUGHLY ENTERTAINING ROMP BEST ENJOYED WHEN YOU'RE ON A SUN

LOUNGER WITH A GLASS OF PIMM'S TO HAND' Daily Mail

"ASTLEY IS WELL AWARE OF THE ABSURDITIES AND SNOBBERIES OF HER

CHARACTERS' Sunday Times

A SHARP SOCIAL COMEDY .  SAILS ALONG VERY NICELY AND FULFILS ITS

EARLY

PROMISE' John Mortimer, Mail on Sunday

Cover illustration by Peter Ferns

ISBN 0552995657

UK 6. 99 .

CAN$i4.  95 9 "780552" 995658"> Judy Astley was born in Blackburn,
Lancashire, and educated at Twickenham County School for girls.  After
taking a degree in English, she worked at the BBC for a while and then
became a dressmaker and designer for Liberty's followed by several
years as a painter and illustrator.

Pleasant Vices is Judy Astley's second novel.  Her first novel, Just
For The Summer, is also published by Black Swan as are her later
novels, Seven For A Secret and Muddy Waters.  She also writes short
stories for teenage magazines.  She lives in Twickenham and Cornwall
with her songwriter husband and two daughters.

JUST FOR THE SUMMER SEVEN FOR A SECRET MUDDY WATERS

and published by Black Swan

Judy Astley

BLACK SWAN

PLEASANT VICES A BLACK SWAN BOOK : 0 552 99565 7

First publication in Great Britain

PRINTING HISTORY

Black Swan edition published 1995 Black Swan edition reprinted 1995
Black Swan edition reprinted 1997 (twice)

Copyright Judy Astley 1995

The right of Judy Astley to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Condition of Sale This book is sold subject to the condition that it
shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or
otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form
of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and
without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on
the subsequent purchaser.

Set in llpt Linotype Melior by Phoenix Typesetting, Ilkley, West
Yorkshire.

Black Swan Books are published by Transworld Publishers Ltd, 61-63
Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA, in Australia by Transworld Publishers
(Australia) Pty Ltd, 15-25 Helles Avenue, Moorebank, NSW 2170 and in
New Zealand by Transworld Publishers (NZ) Ltd, 3 William Pickering
Drive, Albany, Auckland.

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading,
Berkshire.

For Barbara Forlani and Virginia Astley The gods are just, and of our
pleasant vices Make instruments to plague us.

King Lear William Shakespeare

The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices Make instruments to
plague us.

King Lear William Shakespeare

The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices Make instruments to
plague us.

King Lear William Shakespeare

The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices Make instruments to
plague us.

King Lear William Shakespeare

Chapter One

"Mum, Mum what's oral sex?"  Polly, with big-eyed, ten-year-old
innocence that didn't at all suit her question, was gazing steadily at
Jenny over the breakfast table.  Slowly and sensuously, as if she
already knew perfectly well the answer to her question, the child
licked porridge from her spoon.

It wasn't the best way to start a Monday morning.  The things the
children asked Jenny on Mondays usually concerned the whereabouts of
gym kit, swimsuits, lunch money and shoes.  It was too early in the
morning for it to be a joke, Jenny thought.  The easiest thing, she
knew, would be for her to say, "OK Polly, I give up, what is oral sex?"
and for Polly to give some witty, ludicrous reply, with no more
complication than if she had asked how you could tell if there were
elephants in the fridge.  But Polly was waiting and watching.

Jenny folded her hands round her coffee mug, took a deep breath and
prepared to give her daughter a direct, honest and textbook-correct
answer, just as she had always tried to do with all her children's
enquiries, though the questions about how long it takes for dead
hamster bones to moulder and what exactly were quadratic equations for,
were easy peasy compared to this one.  She and Alan had always agreed
that scrupulous honesty in the family was to be the rule, none of those
slippery evasions of their parents' generation.  None of that "You
don't need to know that, not yet," intended to put you off asking ever
again.  But Alan wasn't there.  He had gone early to the office and an
important audit; he needed to avoid the traffic, he said, and questions
like Polly's probably, Jenny thought crossly.

Just as Jenny was about to waffle her way into an answer, Ben got in
first, his spoon clattering noisily into his Alpen.

"God, Poll, do we have to have this at breakfast?"  Ben, whose face
these days changed colour as often as a traffic light, was going
rapidly into a red for-danger/anger/embarrassment shade.  He slammed
his mug on the table, slopping coffee, scuffed back his chair and
lunged for his school bag.

Jenny could feel a draught all Ben's movements seemed larger than life.
The slightest of his actions caused the lists and bills pinned to the
notice board to flutter nervously.  Biggies, the ginger torn, slid to
safety through the cat-flap.

Well, it's one way of getting Ben out of the house in the mornings,
thought Jenny, getting up and moving automatically to the dresser to
get his week's lunch money from her purse.

"Well what is it?  Me and Harriet need to know!"  Polly persisted,
thumping the table with her spoon, her attention now on her escaping
brother and conscious of having lit an interestingly sparkly fuse.

Ben, crashing clumsily past her chair as he made for the door, leered
down at her, his floppy hair swishing across the top of Polly's head.

"It's when you talk about it, OK?"  he hissed.

"Like when you get French oral classes at school, and you discuss
things, you know?"  He grinned at Polly maliciously, anticipating
gleefully the day she found out he'd lied.  "Bye, see you later, extra
art after school..."  And Ben was gone, slamming noisily out of the
front door as he ran.

The kitchen settled into peace again.  It looked much bigger without
Ben's lanky presence and his dangerously windmilling arms.  Surely,
Jenny thought, at almost seventeen he should have lost that overgrown
baby bird look, and that gawky lack of coordination?

Shouldn't he have grown into his body by now and become man-shaped?

Polly was calmly scraping the last of her porridge from the bowl and
Jenny started dealing with the dishes, the question still hanging in
the air, awkward as a bad smell in church.  Jenny sneaked a wary look
at the girl and wondered if and how she should burden her with the
truth.  Telling her wouldn't be the end of it.  Polly's current
fascination with all things sexual would lead her to ask more, like the
dreaded "Is that what you and Daddy do?"  which Jenny suspected was
slightly beyond even her honesty threshold.

But Polly, brain as skittish as a firefly, had blithely moved on and
was out of the kitchen and half-way up the stairs to the bathroom
before Jenny had decided exactly what to say.  It wasn't her day for
the school run and, as Jenny stacked the dishwasher, she had an
irresistibly cheering vision of Polly climbing into Ceci Caine's Range
Rover and loudly stating that she knew all about what oral sex was.

Jenny could only hope that Ceci, kohl-lined eyes as round as records
and prim mouth pursed up tight like a cat's burn, wouldn't drive
straight up the back of a bus.

Good thing Daisy's already left, Jenny decided.  She wouldn't have
chickened out of sex-educating her little sister, no chance.  She'd
have sat Polly down for a long, informative and alarmingly accurate
lecture, complete with fellatio demonstration using, Jenny knew as she
cleared it from the table, the half-empty bottle of Marks and Spencer's
freshly squeezed mandarin juice.  Jenny quickly shut the bottle safely
away in the fridge, preferring not to speculate on how Daisy, at only
fifteen, came to know so much, so young, and trusting it was all theory
so far and no practice.

It was true that Daisy had left the house unusually early, but she had
not gone to school, not yet.  Sometimes there were more important
things than school.  She and her friend Emma sat in the train heading
in the wrong direction.  They huddled into their vast Oxfam overcoats,
big enough to fit comfortably over their school uniforms.  Daisy's
floppy green velvet that, brim pinned up with a feathered brooch, was a
bit creased from having been squashed among her school books, but as it
was on her head and she couldn't actually see it, she didn't care.

What she could see, gleaming on the grubby floor of the train, were her
treasured Doc Marten boots, three weeks old and almost comfortable.  At
school, they'd have to be carried round all day in her bag, they were
too precious to trust to the cloakroom, but that was a problem for
later.  With only registration and a free study period before 10.  00
a. m. " there was plenty of time for Daisy and Emma to go into town and
have their ears pierced.

"My mum will kill me," Emma said happily as the train sped between
surburban back gardens.

"Mine won't.  Never does," Daisy grumbled.

"I know what she'll say, I know exactly.  She'll smile in that dozy way
she does and say, " Oh darling, how lovely!  " Sometimes, it's like
kicking a beanbag, getting her to disapprove.  She probably wouldn't
even mind if I got nose studs!"

' She'd mind if you got a tongue stud or nipple rings or something
though wouldn't she?  " Emma asked.

"Oh yeah, well that's different.  She'd say that was politically
unsound, not feminist enough.  She's good at pulling that one.  But I
wouldn't do that anyway.  It would hurt.  Imagine them getting caught
on something or someone."

"Well don't worry," Emma consoled her, 'you can come home with me after
school and share my mum telling me off.  She thinks that ear piercing
is only one

small step up from wearing an ankle chain, so you can imagine what
she's going to say.  "

Daisy felt quite envious.  Jenny's a useless mother, she thought.  What
was the point of a parent who absolutely refused ever to get really
cross about any thing you did?  Even if I get caught skipping school
this morning, she thought, fenny will probably agree that I had a
perfectly good reason, be willing to send a note.  Hopeless.  Jenny
could get a first class degree in Understanding Her Children (whether
they wanted her to or not).  I won't treat mine like that, Daisy
decided.  I'll make sure they've got something to rebel against, then
they'll know what's what.

By the end of the line, Daisy's mind was on whether to choose hoop
sleepers or studs, and was therefore not as alert as usual at the
ticket barrier.

"Ticket please, love."  A firm hand restrained her, the rest of the
queue pressing impatiently against her back.  Emma, who had a rail card
was already through the barrier and waiting, closely inspecting a
half-clothed beautiful youth on a poster advertising jeans.

' Er, lost it on the train, sorry," Daisy whispered, hoping the man
would feel sorry for her.  They always had before.  But Daisy in her
Doc Martens no longer looked as sweetly childlike as she had in the
days when she'd first started playing this game.

The ticket collector stared suspiciously into her purple-shadowed eyes.
There were too many trying it on these days.  Daisy blinked hard,
trying to make tears come, but the man had seen it all before.  She was
handed like a parcel to another official.

"Come on, let's get you out of the way," he said with hostility,
leading her firmly towards his office.  A rumble of smug disapproval
rolled from the rest of the held-up queue.  Frantic, Emma hopped up and
down uselessly, not knowing what she should do.

Daisy twisted her arm free from the man as they went into the office,
wondering if she should try to make a run for it.  But she needed to
use that station so often, and then there were the heavy boots and the
huge coat she wouldn't get very far.

"I

think I must have dropped it down onto the line as I got off the train"
she ventured in her most reasonable voice, the one that came over as a
convincing mixture of apology and authority when her mother used it to
get refunds for faulty goods and not be fobbed off with credit notes.
But the official was immune to her middle-class accent and to the
uniform revealed beneath the scruffy coat that showed her to be a pupil
of one of the area's many smart private schools.  Such provocative
signs of privilege made him reach for the phone with sweet
satisfaction.

Oh God, thought Daisy, horribly aware that she had made his day, this
is it.

Jenny liked Mondays, once the children had been persuaded to go off to
school.  Monday held the promise of a fresh new week, the opportunity
every seven days to get it right this time.  This was the only possible
day for starting a new diet, giving up drink, paying bills and getting
to the bottom of the laundry basket.  Somehow, the rest of the week
always managed to wear down Jenny's good intentions and slide away
downhill out of control towards the inevitable chaos of the weekend.

She padded serenely round the kitchen (stylish cherry and maple
fittings with no overdone, over- carved twiddly bits), doing
comfortable housewifely things, alone with Start the Week on the radio
giving her a vague feeling that she was listening to dinner party
conversation without having to worry about choking on fish bones, or
make any scintillating comments herself.  The washing machine and
dishwasher were humming busily.  The floor was drying,

and the swing bin, rinsed out with Flash (though Jenny thought she
could still smell a hint of decaying prawn shell lingering from
Saturday's supper party), was upside down on the Delabole slate work
top Gleaming down at her from the rack above the Aga, Alan's precious
Italian saucepans shone like much-loved family silver.  Other men, she
thought, polished their golf trophies.  Alan's passion was reserved for
his cookware.  Watching him painstakingly cleaning it was like watching
a proud new mother lovingly bathing her baby.  Jenny guiltily eyed her
shamefully tarnished flute in the corner of the conservatory.  She had
no pupils on Mondays, and as she peeled off her rubber gloves she
promised herself a session with both the silver polish and the Poulenc
Sonata later that afternoon.

As Jenny smoothed hand cream into her fingers, she consulted her wall
calendar.  Polly had written in her ballet, tap and jazz dance classes
in thick red felt tip pen, which left little room for the rest of the
family's activities.  But tonight at 7. 3. 0, Jenny read, there was to
be the first Neighbourhood Watch meeting.  Typical idea of Paul
Mathieson, she thought.  Another attempt to rope the residents of the
Close in for an evening of local bonding.  It was always Paul and
Carol, rounding up the inhabitants for the annual bonfire party ("Do
come, such a lovely opportunity for us all to get together ..."  ), the
Christmas Eve bash, or a series of acrid barbecues on damp and dewy
summer evenings that were never quite warm enough.

Sue at the corner house said she suspected him of having Northern
roots.

"It's not in the blood of us Southern suburbanites," she'd said to
Jenny over a subversive coffee.

"We don't socialize collectively, not herded together in street
parties.  People like us would rather get a taxi to the All-Nite
Supermarket than pop next door and borrow a cup of sugar.  There's
always that risk you'll have to look at someone's daughter's wedding
photos."

It wasn't so much the gathering together of the neighbours that
bothered Jenny, it was more the idea of setting up something by which
they were actively encouraged to keep an uncomfortably close eye on
each other.  It was like having an official excuse to peer out of the
windows with a ghoulish sense of duty.  Alan, over the weekend, had
dismissed it all as pointless, on the grounds that any street organized
enough to set up this kind of thing was obviously doing more than
enough peering through its metaphorical net curtains already.  In
Alan's opinion, any baseball-capped teenager who dared to give an
envious second glance to number 28's XR3i was already likely to be
surrounded instantly by a posse of amateur law-enforcers.  Old Mrs.
Fingell across the road at number 21, the only one in the street who
actually had, shame of it, real net curtains to hide behind, must be
tee-heeing with delight at the thought that her snooping would now be
officially endorsed by police and a quorum of Close residents.

With her thoughts on that evening's meeting, Jenny had to remind
herself that she wasn't actually spying when she went through Alan's
pockets before sending his grey suit to the dry cleaners.  It was
really an act of virtue, especially when compared with the possible
alternative of sending a wad of twenty-pound notes to be hand-finished,
or a credit card to have its magnetic strip rendered lifeless.  Jenny
sat on the frilled bed, denting the crisp, white cut-work duvet with
her still- slender hips, and selflessly sorted through a heap of
crinkled Visa slips, fresh from Alan's wool-and-mohair mix pocket.  It
was always the same when he'd been away to a conference, as he had the
week before.  As she sorted the receipts into chargeable expenses and
personal sections, she wondered fondly how an accountant could be so
carelessly inefficient with his

own finances.  Cobblers' children syndrome, she sup posed, like Sue
who had always grumbled that her landscape gardener husband (before the
divorce) could never be bothered to mow the lawn.

The receipt for the flowers was a surprise.  What flowers?  I haven't
had any flowers, not lately, thought Jenny, holding the piece of paper
and wondering why Alan hadn't mentioned them during the weekend.

Surely if he'd sent her an Interflora bouquet from Bournemouth, he'd
have expected to see one of her heavy-handed arrangements on the hall
table.  Quickly she shuffled through the receipts, looking for the one
that corresponded with the Visa slip.  Alan always kept a VAT receipt,
just in case there was something he could claim.  And there it was, a
pale pink order form from a Bournemouth florist, the carbon-smudged
message just readable.  Wonderful tonight, till next time, all love. 
No signature, but Alan's pocket.  Wonderful tonight, to Jenny, sounded
vaguely familiar.  She trawled her memory and scooped out of it a song
of that title by Alan's beloved Eric Clapton.  The words 'wonderful
tonight' were preceded by "My darling you were" An everlasting loyalty
to the music heroes of his youth had always before seemed rather
endearing, touchingly boyish, as if a taste for the rock music of
1968-75 (Beach Boys, Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones et al), was something
most men were expected to grow out of, like reading the Beano, and
train spotting.  This was one of the songs Alan would croon around the
house late at night, drunk, while clearing up after a dinner party.  It
was a signal that he was on the way to feeling like sex.  But this
message: all love?  Who was all this love allocated to?

Jenny sat on the bed, facing the big gilt mirror over the chest of
drawers, the chest she had so lovingly tortoise shelled with a foul
mixture of stainers and vinegar after attending classes in decorative
painting techniques the year before.  The face staring back at her
looked more puzzled than stricken.  She reached out and got hold of the
brass rail at the bed head feeling the need to steady herself, and that
the safe level ground of marital harmony was tipping slightly.

Slowly and reluctantly, her brain allowed in the possibility that her
husband might be having an affair.  It wouldn't be casual sex because,
dangerous as it was these days, that certainly wouldn't rate 45 worth
of flowers not from an accountant anyway, money conscious as they
habitually were.  Such a huge amount of money, too, when Alan had been
worrying lately that the cash flow in the accountancy practice was a
long way from healthy.  Somehow he'd collected too many clients with
diminishing incomes and a reluctance to pay their bills.  And Alan
wasn't the type of man to have an affair, Jenny told herself
sensibly.

But a little voice (sounding like Sue's) was also telling her that
there was no such thing as the type of man who didn't.  Here, maybe,
was a torrid romance with someone he thought of as, if he followed the
words of the song, "Darling', whereas Jenny he tended to address, in
moments of tenderness as " Pudding'.  Someone to whom he sent 45 worth
of flowers, delivery and VAT extra, yet to Jenny he occasionally
brought a limp bunch of tulips, grabbed in a hurry from the van outside
the station, and never quite enough of them to make one of those
generous over-blown arrangements that she admired in The World of
Interiors, but couldn't do.

She inspected herself closely in the mirror.  She was looking for what
Alan saw when he looked at her, not for what she took for granted about
her own face.  She saw a woman who looked less than her age, could
still pass for under forty; a woman who wore slightly too much red
lipstick, as a hangover from her student days when she'd once been
hungry enough to supplement her meagre grant and parental stinginess
with what was politely described as 'escort' work.  A woman who still
thought it wasn't ageing to wear her fairish hair thickly hanging to
shoulder length and who was probably wrong about that, as tying it back
took another five years off and messily piling it up looked so
drop-dead sexy that no-one noticed her age.

Jenny tried to imagine what Alan would think of her now if he was
meeting her for the first time, say at a party.  Had she now become
depressingly house wifey No longer fanciable?  Peering at herself in
the mirror, she searched for any trace of the girl Alan had first met,
the thrilling, lemon-haired flautist, shimmering in black silk in the
orchestra.  Instead she saw a harassed middle-aged mother of three, a
part-time flute teacher with tarnished hair and lines on her face that
she liked to think were from laughing rather than ageing.  What, these
days, was Alan seeing?  Had he met someone fresh, young and perfect,
someone who, newly discovered, still found it more exciting to go to
bed with him than with a gardening magazine?

Jenny wondered if she would ever move from the edge of the bed.  Her
fingers were frozen round the flimsy bits of paper and her eyes, in the
mirror, were dulling with the cloud of unanswered questions.  Who was
this "Darling' who had been 'wonderful'?  And which night?  Age?

Height?  Brainpower?  Surely to God, not another accountant?  And not,
oh please not, that desperate old cliche his secretary?

She forced her reluctant limbs to unfold and walked stiffly down the
stairs like someone recovering from flu, and into the sitting-room,
wondering what was the right thing to do next.  She thought about TV
plays she had seen about this kind of thing, where wives set fire to
their husbands' dearest possessions in a frenzy of furious
resentment.

The immaculate saucepans were reputedly indestructible and anyway
essential it was pointless to smash anything she might need to use
again.  The image of a blazing train set came to mind,

even though Alan, as far as she knew, hadn't touched one since Daisy
was little.  He didn't play golf, so she couldn't test her angry
strength bending a set of priceless clubs, and she used his camera and
hi-fi just as much as he did.  Anyway, maybe it was all a mistake, she
thought hopelessly, feeling that she should at least go through the
motions of giving him the benefit of the doubt before she made a
bonfire with his clothes and his cookery books.

Then the phone rang, and immediately the news of Daisy's arrest pushed
all thoughts of Alan from Jenny's mind.  Clutching the phone, listening
to the police sergeant, she could foresee, in the months ahead.  Daisy
in court, fined, expelled from school and abandoning her GCSEs half-way
through the course.  She asked to speak to Daisy, and through the
window watched Carol Mathieson tripping along the Close with her deter
mined high heels and shiny, stiff Come Dancing hair.  She reminds me of
one of the three Billy Goats Gruff, Jenny thought, watching her
clicking along, trip-trap, trip-trap over the ricketty-racketty wooden
bridge.  Perhaps she'll be eaten by a troll lurking behind number 16's
lime tree.

Carol, seeing Jenny watching her, trotted across the road quickly and
mouthed an eager hello at her over the garden fence.  Jenny, with the
ruins of Daisy's life grasped in the phone in one hand, the wreck of
her marriage among the bundle of receipts in the other, smiled rigidly
while Carol made faces about the meeting.

"You are coming, aren't you?"  she cooed persuasively over the fence.

"I'm just going to make a start on the finger foods!"

Jenny waved limply at her, wishing, not for the first time, that the
local preference for knocked-through rooms and all-exposing windows
didn't leave her feeling that her entire domestic life was simply a
big-screen video, switched on for all to see, like watching opera with
the excluded masses in the rainy piazza at Covent Garden.

When she heard the faint and sorry voice of Daisy saying, "I'm sorry
Mum, I didn't mean to ..."  down the phone, somehow she couldn't stop
thinking about Carol's buffet.  Troll-au-vents.  Daisy heard her mother
giggling down the phone and thought that it was sure to be entirely her
fault that at last the poor old thing had flipped.

Chapter Two

"Whatever were you thinking of?  You get enough money for fares, don't
you?  And why weren't you in school?"  Jenny leaned back on the Aga
rail, arms folded, facing her daughter with enough parental fury to
satisfy even Daisy's high standards.  Polly and Ben had fled quietly up
the stairs to avoid getting caught in any crossfire in the kitchen, and
Polly was taking advantage of the atmosphere of tension to seek comfort
in Ben's room with his Sega Megadrive instead of doing her homework.

It had taken Jenny all afternoon to get round to confronting Daisy.  In
the car on the way home from the station her shocked brain was still
reeling with thoughts of Alan's Bournemouth romance.  Revving angrily
at the traffic lights, she'd suspected she might burst into tears if
she started talking.  Daisy would just have to interpret her lack of
communication as hurt silence.  Daisy had waited patiently to be told
off and had sat quietly in her room all afternoon, finishing some
long-overdue maths.  She had been surprised not to be taken straight to
school, but hadn't dared ask Jenny why she was being brought home
instead, as if her crime was a sort of illness that could be infectious
to the other girls.

Jenny gave the tomato sauce a vigorous stir and turned to face Daisy
again.

"You know what will happen now, don't you?"  she said.

"You'll have to go to court, and you'll probably be let off with a
warning, seeing as it's your first time.  This is the first time isn't
it?  You don't make a habit of cheating British Rail do you?"

"Course not," Daisy mumbled, staring at the pale wooden floor.  It
wasn't entirely a lie, it was the first time she'd been caught.  She
counted the knots in one of the wooden planks, not daring to meet
Jenny's glittering gaze.

"And the worst thing is, you'll have a record.  They'll make social
reports on you.  Social workers might start coming round.  God, I
suppose there's even a chance you'll be put on probation!  It'll be
either that or a caution or nothing at all, the sergeant said.  And it
won't be nothing at all, you can bet," she said, waving the wooden
spoon threateningly.

Jenny watched Daisy scuffing the floor with her foot and wondered if
the thought of probation was actually as shocking to the girl as it was
to her.  Perhaps Daisy was secretly thinking it might add to her status
with her friends at school.  Boys might find it dangerously attractive.
Suppose she was expelled?  Daisy had changed into unfamiliar clothes, a
neat white shirt and a red skirt that was not, for once, from a charity
shop.  She looked as if she was already anticipating her court
appearance, trying to get round Jenny just as she would the magistrates
by being as ordinarily presentable as possible.  She'd even tied her
hair back with a plain black cotton scarf.  Usually her hair, with its
irritating half-grown-out fringe, hung across her face like a lop-sided
wedding veil, and was constantly being scooped back in that Sloaney
gesture common to all girls whose parents paid for their education.

Jenny reached into the fridge and pulled out a pack of tagliatelle.

"Go and call the others, supper's nearly ready.  You can do the
table.

And make sure Polly doesn't forget to wash her hands," Social workers.
Jenny's body went through the motions of preparing the supper, briskly
washing

23lettuce and flinging open cupboards and drawers as if she really was
concentrating on nothing else, while her mind wondered what it would
take to get everything in the family back to normal.  Biggies, unfed
and ravenous, seemed to know better than to complain, and waited
silently on his fur-matted cushion for someone to remember he
existed.

Social workers didn't, Jenny knew, deal with families like hers.  They
existed, helpfully and rightly, for the abandoned, the feckless, the
inept and the inadequate.  Nice middle-class girls, surely, were never
Taken Into Care, that bogeyman threat hung over the inhabitants of the
council estate just the other side of the main road.  Did social
workers have those special labels stuck to their windscreens, like
doctors, she wondered as she drained the pasta, Social Worker on Call7
She could just imagine a neat little Vauxhall Nova parked outside the
house by an efficient woman with a clipboard and a heap of scruffy buff
folders, all the neighbours filing past to read the shaming sign
perched on the dashboard.

"Why's supper so early?"  Ben asked as he and Polly clattered into the
kitchen.

"Mum's going out," Daisy said in a whisper, terrified of attracting any
more attention to herself.  Then she added, "I'll babysit Polly, shall
I Mum?"

Jenny plonked the dish of pasta on the table and looked at Daisy's
extraordinarily humble expression.

"Well you'll be home anyway, so you can hardly call it babysitting.
Don't imagine you'll be allowed out for the foreseeable future, Daisy.
I think you can take it that you're now what you'd call " grounded".
Anyway, Alan should be back before nine."  Jenny stopped in the middle
of the kitchen, salad bowl in hand, gazing unseeing out of the window.
What a lot there was to confront Alan with; perhaps she should make a
list.  She sighed, "God knows what he's going to say."

Daisy slumped miserably in her chair and helped herself to a minuscule
portion of tagliatelle.  Jenny felt infuriated by her air of penitence
Daisy was normally so feisty.  She hadn't said a word in her own
defence about the fare-dodging, although she could usually be relied on
to make a spirited effort at justifying any misdemeanours.  It was
almost as if the girl was acting, practising for a school play audition
for the role of some mousy Victorian governess.

It was an enormous relief to everyone when Jenny and her cloudy mood
left the house to go to the meeting.  Ben opened his bedroom window and
lit a cigarette to go with his chemistry homework.  He sat in his room
up in the attic, wondering if it was time to remove Michelle Pfeiffer
from the wall and install someone else.  He didn't feel the same about
her since Luke at school had come back from Los Angeles after the
summer and bragged that he'd actually met her, really truly spoken to
her.

"She was only this high!"  he'd said, pointing at the middle of his
chest.  He'd made it sound like they'd spent hours together, though it
turned out Luke had merely collided with her for the briefest second in
a restaurant doorway.  It was hard to carry on fancying someone who
might actually have spoken to greasy Luke, even to tell him it didn't
matter that he'd stood on her foot; such an off-putting thought that
she might have wasted one of her sensational smiles on such a creep.
All the same, if Michelle was actually lying on his bed right this
minute, instead of being blu-tacked to his sloping wall .

Jenny strolled slowly up the road towards the Mathieson's house at the
end of the Close, where it sat importantly in central position,
watching over the rest of the inhabitants like the responsible head of
a family, which was rather, she thought, the role the

Mathiesons had taken on for themselves over the past few years.

The Close was a cul-de-sac, jutting like a fat thumb into the Common,
giving the inhabitants a feeling almost of rural isolation.  But across
the main road at the end of the Close the council estate loomed high
and huge.  It was the mysterious hinterland from which all crime and
chaos was generally assumed to originate.  No-one from the Close had
ever been mugged, threatened or harassed by anyone from the estate, but
on dark evenings, mindful of terrifying newspaper reports of no-go
areas and escalating violence, they automatically carried only credit
cards or small amounts of change to the off-licence, and at night
carefully took their in-car entertainment systems into their homes with
them.  When, through its owner's forgetfulness, a car stereo went
missing, there was a man at the pub round the corner who could reliably
supply and fit a replacement Blaupunkt within twenty-four hours.

The houses in the Close were big, sedate Edwardian villas, with attics
Veluxed and occupied by teenagers or au pairs (Croatian was the current
preference, they ate so little out of solidarity with their tragic
compatriots back home, and Fillipinos always came expensively in
pairs).  Limed oak or pastel-sponged kitchens extended into pretty
conservatories, and garages had been converted into freezing, unused,
home offices and games rooms.  The occupants, like a lot of the
population of South West London, were an artistic collection.  Apart
from Alan the accountant, the stately Fiona Pemberton who happened to
be Polly and Daisy's headmistress, and Paul Mathieson, who was
something in software, the Close residents were mostly in TV,
journalism and advertising.  Several cars, all of which languished
unwashed at weekends while their owners shuffled through the worthiest
Sunday papers, displayed the prized badges of media success: BBC
executive car park stickers on their windscreens.

Front gardens were well tended, with not an ugly spotted laurel or dull
privet to be seen, but planted with choisya, philodendron, or a rare
viburnum.  Exotic varieties of clematis trailed around the porches,
tangled with passiflora or cascades of excessively thorny but
wonderfully scented Bourbon roses, all neatly under- mulched with
weed-proof bark chippings.  Standard bay trees stood like sentinels in
ornate, frost-proof earthenware tubs by front doors and were decorated
with oranges and cinnamon sticks at Christmas time.  Fiona Pemberton
had been horrified when hers had been stolen.

Most of the people who lived in the Close had done so for several
years.  They tended to buy the houses after living in smaller versions
of the same thing, having developed a fondness for art nouveau
stained-glass porch doors, generous room sizes and plaster acanthus
cornicing that was hard to paint, imagining that they were on their way
up to something even more impressive.  The ultra-successful moved on to
security-gated splendour on Barnes, Clapham or Wimbledon Commons or, if
they could put up with the problem of parking, to something elegantly
Georgian on Richmond Green.

Only old Mrs.  Fingell's house stood out from the rest, un modernized
shabby, unkempt and rewarded for it by being placed in a cheaper band
for Council Tax payments.  Mrs.  Fingell, in her house that was
unchanged since she had moved in in 1947, had greying net curtains
haphazardly draped across her window, her grandson's rusting Volkswagen
minibus perched for long-overdue repair on crumbling bricks, half in
and half out of the garage, and a collection of dented dustbins that
suggested a family of at least eight.  Cats peed on her straggling
lavender and litter

and cardboard boxes blew in through the gaps in her collapsing
fence.

At 79, she lived alone with her apricot poodle, unaware that
pooper-scoopers had been invented, and her neighbours, who fumed
quietly at the decrepit state of her house and garden, liked to think
that by waving as they passed her window, they were doing their bit to
keep an eye on her.

"You know what the Mathiesons and such are all worried about, don't
you?"  Jenny was startled from her gloom by Sue catching up with her
just outside Mrs.  Fingell's house.

"It's the council estate.  They think only two types of people come out
of there cleaning ladies and criminals!"  Sue's springy red hair bobbed
up and down as she walked, her face, lively with the anticipation of
making fun out of a tedious evening, had a pleased-with-life radiance
that Jenny had forgotten existed.  Sue chuckled, "That's why they want
to set up the Neighbourhood Watch thing, to frighten away the common
criminals and the common people, not to mention how good it is for
insurance premiums, being hand-in-glove with the local police."

The houses they were passing didn't seem to be lacking in burglar
proofing.  At number 5, in spite of protests to the council (a round
robin organized by Paul and Carol Mathieson), Harvey Benstone had even
cut down his prize camellias so as to deprive no-good joint- casers of
a potential lurking place.  Large metal alarm bells hung warningly over
the ornate front doors, and powerful lights flicked on and off all
night as foxes and cats strolled across inaccurately beamed flower
beds.

"Will there be food, do you think?  I'm starving.  Last time I came to
Carol and Paul's I had a McDonald's with the boys first, and then found
I could have saved my money.  I'm relying on Carol for dinner, there's
sod-all in my fridge, 'cept the Martini of course.  I hope I've guessed
right this time," Sue said as she and Jenny arrived at the Mathiesons'
wrought iron gate.

"You have.  I happen to know Carol's had an afternoon of finger-food
preparation!"  Jenny started to giggle.  Sue always cheered her up. She
had an impulse to confide in her about Alan, and about Daisy, but there
wasn't time.  Paul Mathieson opened his front door as the two women
crunched over his gravel.

"We've got a Crime Prevention Officer!"  he said excitedly, as if
announcing that tonight's dinner would be a roast ox.

"He said a gravel led path was just the right thing, nice and noisy.
Puts them off, intruders."  Paul, pleased with himself and eager as a
boy scout, was wearing a multi-coloured sleeveless pullover, hand
knitted with little houses on it.  Jenny recognized it from the Kaffe
Fassett knitting book that she had once bought.  She had felt too
intimidated by the degree of difficulty of the patterns to buy any
wool.  Carol, she saw, had not felt the same.  Carol could also arrange
flowers, she noticed, admiring the display of dahlias, lilies,
carnations and unidentifiable greenery on the mirror-polished table in
the hall, reminding her of the Bournemouth bouquet.  Carol did
everything neatly, even to the extent of producing, eleven years
before, twin boys in one well-organized pregnancy.  That, she had said
at the time, got all that inconvenient childbirth business over and
done with in one go.  They had now been tidied away to boarding school,
courtesy of a trust fund from a dead grandmother.

"Look in there, lovely grub!"  Sue whispered loudly, prodding Jenny in
the back as they went towards the murmur of voices in the lemon-and
white-stippled sitting-room.  Plates of teeny smoked salmon sandwich
wheels, cheesy scones and other savoury bits and pieces sat,
elaborately garnished and forbiddingly cling filmed on Carol's best
lace tablecloth, hovered over longingly by a collection of Close
residents, clutching schooners of sherry.  Then Jenny caught sight of
the policeman, her second that day, sitting importantly on one of
Carol's

mahogany carvers, and whispered back to Sue, "I think you'll have to
wait till the floor show's over; you'll have to make do with a drink
for now."

"No problem!"  said Sue, picking up the two fullest glasses of sherry
from the silver tray.

Polly wasn't sure if it was a knock on the door that she'd heard, so
she assumed someone else would answer it and carried on watching the
television.  Eventually, lured by the sound of male voices in the
kitchen, she crept up to listen at the door.  It wasn't her father, she
realized, and it wasn't just Ben talking to the cat.  She slid in
through the door and sat at the table, unnoticed by the gaggle of
teenage boys gathered together round the kitchen scales.  The boys were
very big, two were wearing expensive puffa jackets and another, who
looked slightly familiar in a pulled-down baseball cap, had a biker's
leather jacket with patches sewn on it.  Ben was looking pale and
nervous, not like when he was with his usual mates.

"What are you doing?  Is it homework?  What are you weighing?"  Polly
asked all her questions at once, before they could throw her out.

"What's she doing here?  You said there wouldn't be anyone ..."  a
gingery boy was staring coldly down at Polly.

She stared back, and gave him her best smile.

"I'm Polly.  I live here," she said.

"What are you doing?  It looks like you're weighing out Oxo cubes.  Is
it homework?  Have you got Home Economics?"

"Polly, get out, would you?  Please?"  Ben looked at her with an
unusual amount of appeal in his voice.

"Well, I was just thinking about making some hot chocolate ..."  she
said slowly, enjoying being infuriating.  The audience of boys,
menacing though their expressions were, didn't bother her.  She was on
home ground, bugging her brother and liking it.  There might be
something in it for her.

Ben broke away from the group, got hold of her wrist and marched her to
the door.

"Just this once Polly, please will you do as I ask?"  he said.

"And what if I do?  What do I get?"  she smiled confidently up at
him.

Ben sighed, but knew the solution.

"If you look under my pillow, there's last month's Playboy.  You can go
up and borrow it if you like.

And then I won't tell the parents if you don't tell the parents, OK?

Deal?  "

"OK, deal!"  Polly squeaked, making for the stairs.  With any luck he'd
forget about the magazine and she could take it to school and show
Harriet.  Together they could try to make sense of the letters page,
and try to find out more about oral sex.  Harriet had said she was sure
there was more to it than just talking.  Polly, magazine in hand,
darted into her room, grabbed her hand mirror and took off her
knickers.  While Ben, in the kitchen, bulk-bought enough cannabis to
supply the lower sixth for a month, Polly lay happily among the soft
toys on her bed comparing her fanny with that of the Playmate of the
month, wondering if her own pudenda would ever be so glamorously
photographed.

Jenny sat on Carol's squeaky beige leather sofa, listening to the
police constable and trying to stay awake.  The room was hot, crammed
with Close residents, and Jenny wished there had been something more
thirst-quenching than sherry to drink.  In the yellow- and-white room,
on the pastry-coloured sofa, Jenny was beginning to get the queasy
feeling that she was inside a lemon meringue pie, baking stickily.  The
high turnout of residents was a surprise.  Even Fiona Pemberton, whose
evenings were usually filled with parents' meetings, school
fund-raising sessions and

curriculum seminars, had turned up.  Jenny didn't much like meeting
Fiona socially.  At the school they were always Mrs.  Collins and Mrs.
Pemberton to each other.  It probably didn't do.  Jenny assumed, for
the headmistress to be seen to be on first-name terms with mere
parents, not at a school as fiercely competitive as Polly's and Daisy's
anyway.

So on home territory, Jenny tended to wait, schoolgirl-like, till she
had been addressed, still half formally, as "Jennifer' and take her cue
from there.  She had always thought that, by the time she got to forty,
she would no longer have that feeling that there was homework she'd
forgotten to do, nor would she be intimidated by headmistresses, but
she now realized it would probably never happen, at least not while she
had children of her own being educated.

The policeman spoke slowly and carefully, repeating points about window
locks and car alarms as if he wasn't sure they were capable of taking
in all the information.  Jenny, who didn't particularly want to meet
the eye of the law again that day, stared at the figured cream carpet
and was amazed to hear Sue's voice breaking in with a question.

"All this advice about security locks and burglar alarms," she said.

"Are the police generally of the opinion that if we choose not to have
these things, then we have only ourselves to blame for a break-in?
Would it be what you'd call " contributory negligence"?"

Jenny stared across at Sue, who had her head tilted at an interested
angle, and a smile of great charm aimed like a crossbow at the
policeman.  Jenny took a closer look at him.  He was undoubtedly
attractive, and Sue was twice-divorced, currently alone with her two
teenage boys, and constantly prowling.  Jenny paid close attention to
his reply, interested for Sue's sake.

"No of course not," the constable said, meeting Sue's smile with an
equally charming one of his own.

"But our opinion is that there are precautions the householder can
take, if he or she so chooses, and it's my job to point these out. Some
of them are even free for example, anyone can make sure they close
their curtains when rooms are lit.  There could be a potential felon
hanging around outside: you think you see a bloke walking his dog a bit
slowly, and what you're really looking at is some thief pricing up the
paintings on the walls."

There was a distinct shuffling in the room.  Most of the residents had
such elaborate and showy arrangements of window drapery, flounced,
fringed and swagged-and-tailed curtains, arranged to fall in artistic
pools of excess fabric on the floor, with bowed and reset ted
tie-backs, that they found it tedious to close their curtains, and
tended to leave their windows prettily exposed day or night.  It hadn't
seemed to matter, with the Close having no casual passersby.

' Shall we have a little break now, and then more questions later
perhaps?  " Carol suggested firmly, already reaching across and tearing
the first strip of cling film from the spinach and ricotta filo
rolls.

"And I'm sure we could all manage another drink .. ," "I'm surprised
she wasn't trampled in the rush," Jenny said to Sue as they collected
plates full of Carol's dainty delicacies.

"Hmm ..."  Sue replied vaguely, gazing past Jenny across to where the
young constable was being cross- examined by Fiona Pemberton.

The rest of the meeting passed briskly.  Leaflets and window-stickers
were issued, and Paul Mathieson was voted the Close co-ordinator.  He
volunteered to take charge of the "Neighbourhood Watch' boards that had
to be fixed to a few lampposts and get in a couple of handymen to put
them up.

Jenny, relieved to be out in the fresh air but dreading going home
alone to face Alan and his adultery, turned

to Sue.

"Coming back with me for a drink?  A proper one this time?"

But Sue had a look of girlish anticipation about her and a big, pleased
grin.

"Not just now, thanks, I'm being taken in for questioning!"  she said,
indicating the constable unlocking his Metro.

"Come to the tennis club tomorrow morning for coffee and I'll tell you
what it's like being grabbed by the fuzz!"  Sue winked lasciviously,
and left Jenny to accompany the infuriatingly slow and mildly tipsy old
Mrs.  Fingell to her front gate.

Alan's grey BMW was parked out in the road instead of in the
driveway.

Another quick getaway in the morning, Jenny assumed, wondering what and
who he was really getting away to and from.  Slowly she unlocked the
front door, reluctant to confront a relationship that, once the
accusing and excusing was done, would now be shifted, changed for ever.
But there, in the warm hallway, Alan was coming towards her arms out
and innocently welcoming.  He looked very big, almost filling the space
between the stairs and the wall.  All that scrumptious food he's always
cooking, she thought, he's getting too bulky to be a good accountant.
Clients with money problems want to see someone lean and mean.

"You look tired, Pudding.  Come and have a drink," he said, pulling her
towards his cosy, familiar body.  Impossible to imagine him calling
someone "Darling'.  Jenny relaxed against him, automatically.  Alan
smelt of home, of family.  Whatever would she say to him?  And when?

"I'm afraid there's a spot of bad news," he said.  Jenny stiffened,
wondering if he was going to get in first.  Tell her he had just packed
a suitcase and that the quick getaway would be for ever, not just the
duration of the next audit.  She looked up at him coldly, waiting.  He
laughed, maddeningly.

"Hey it's not that bad!  Mrs.  McKinley phoned.  She says she's
terribly sorry, but the twins are giving up the flute lessons.  They've
decided to have a go at the violin.  Pity, losing two pupils in one go
like that."

Jenny sighed, and headed for the wine bottle on top of the fridge.

"I've now lost four in a month," she said glumly.

"I'll have to advertise."

"What about Fiona?  Why don't you ask if she needs another music
teacher?  Schools are usually pretty desperate."

Jenny fidgeted around by the sink, still unwilling to look at him
properly.

"Who's been weighing stuff?"  she asked, noticing that the scales were
drying on the draining board.

"Have you or the children been cooking?"

"Well, I had some pasta with the rest of your tomato sauce.  It wasn't
bad, in fact it was pretty delicious.  Did you get those new season
fresh plum tomatoes I told you they'd just got in at the Italian
deli?"

Jenny smiled at him, indulgent of his hobby.

"No, of course I didn't!

We don't all have time to stand around peeling and de seeding
tomatoes!

I opened a tin of them like most people do!  " Good thing, she thought,
as she reassembled the weighing machine, that he hadn't found the empty
Sainsbury's pasta sauce jar guiltily hidden away at the bottom of the
rubbish bin.  It had added a certain piquancy to her own recipe.

She started nervously wiping the draining board.

"Why don't you stop fussing and come and sit down?"  Alan leaned back
in his chair and patted the seat next to him.

"I think we've got something else to talk about."

Jenny felt her stomach tighten again, churning Carol Mathieson's filo
rolls and lukewarm sherry.  He looked so comfortable, so guilt-free
sitting there, a bit like an over-large elf in his baggy old sweater
and with his hair curling at the ends.  Biggies purred contentedly on
his lap.  If h& doesn't tell me this time, Jenny

promised herself, I'm not going to mention it, not ever.  She was
surprised by her decision that was on the side of cowardice.  It was
also, though, on the side of maintaining domestic survival, the
security of her family.  The question of whether or not the family
collapsed into miserable fragments could be all down to her, or could
depend on what Alan said next.  She sat down next to him, picked at the
white azalea plant on the table in front of her and took a long sip of
wine while she waited to see if her marriage was about to come to an
end.

"Daisy told me what happened," Alan said.  The moment passed, and Jenny
joined in the discussion about Daisy's arrest with something like
relief.  Perhaps, if she said nothing, it would all just go away, like
she always thought with the first throat-rasping symptoms of a cold.

In either case, it would be as well to buy a large box of tissues.

Chapter Three

"Well, if he's up to anything there must be some sort of clue," Sue
remarked the next morning.

"Are you two still doing it?  Or is he avoiding sex?  Does he suggest
things like why don't you ever wear purple tasselled knickers or gold
stiletto heels?  He wouldn't be just the same as usual; you'd just
know.  I always did."  Recalling the past deceits of men.  Sue allowed
a flash of gloom to cross her face, and then took a packet of
cigarettes from her bag.

"Let's go and sit on the balcony," she said, tugging at Jenny's
shirt.

"I'm dying for a cig."

The two women took their coffee out onto the tennis club balcony, and
sat looking down at the courts, where women enjoying off-peak
membership and creche facilities were firming their bodies and their
backhands for the approaching spring.

"Sorry, I know it's a bit cold, but I hate it in there," Sue said,
lighting her cigarette.

"They're all blonde.  When I first joined I thought it was a condition
of membership.  No offence," she added, with a quick look at Jenny's
hair.

"That's OK," said Jenny, grinning, "I'm only hanging on to the blonde
ness by what's left of my fingernails these days.  I've just progressed
to that stuff that " Covers All Grey".  And no, honestly, there's
nothing I've noticed about Alan that's different.  He's just the same,
just the usual, comfortable, very much husband-type person.

I feel disloyal," she added guiltily.

"I shouldn't

be talking to you about him like this.  I'd hate it if he did the same
about me.  "

"Probably does," Sue said, inhaling happily.

"We've all got to talk to somebody, otherwise we'd all end up in
therapy, like in America.  I'm going to tell you about what I did with
Constable Barry last night, parked up the lane by the end of the
Common, and I'm not going to feel guilty in the least.  After all, he's
probably in the canteen right this minute telling everyone round the
formica table that the suspect proceeded in a southerly direction till
her mouth made contact with the victim's extended truncheon ..."

"Sue you didn't!  In a police car?"  Jenny felt a vicarious thrill. Sue
seemed to have the sex-life of a free-ranging teenager.  Jenny realized
it was years since she had had sex anywhere but in a comfortable bed,
and it felt like another lifetime since she'd had it with someone other
than Alan.  Perhaps that was what he had realized too .  "Well why not?
There's nobody at home who wants it.  Besides, he bought me three
large ones down at the White Swan, and a prawn sandwich.  It was the
least I could do."

"You make it sound very business-like, bordering on prostitution!"

Jenny said.

Sue laughed.

"Of course it is!  Most sex is prostitution, isn't it?  One or the
other partner repaying a favour.  Perhaps especially the cosy husband
and wife sort.  Even the producer of Woman's Hour thinks that's what
marriage is.  On past experience I think she's probably right."

Jenny changed tack slightly.

"Are you sure you should?  I mean, is it safe these days?"  she asked
quietly as the waitress hovered about, dealing with their coffee
cups.

"What, AIDS, do you mean?  You can use a condom for a blow-job too, you
know, though I think it only matters if your gums bleed a lot.  Anyway
I never did like the taste."

Sue raised her voice slightly for the benefit of the waitress who had
flicked her hair behind her ears in order to listen better as she wiped
the next table.

Jenny giggled and could feel herself blushing.

"Long time since I did that in the back of a car," she said with a
slight sigh.

"Are you sure it's not a long time since you did " that" at all?"  Sue
asked her, with an intensely questioning look.

"That might be part of the problem ..."

"I suppose sex is a bit samey, as it were.  But then if you always do
it with the same person, and you do more or less the same sort of
thing, in the same bed, it's bound to be, isn't it?"

"Well that's probably where the purple tasselled knickers come in,"
said Sue.

"Never mind him being at it with someone else, perhaps that's what you
need a little of who you fancy."

"But I don't fancy, that's the thing."  Jenny gathered her bag and her
jacket together.

"I used to feel quite smug about that, you know.  I used to think, oh
well I did all that stuff, putting it about a bit too much before I got
married, well, we all did then, it was that time, few health worries,
all that.  I used to reason that it was better that way round, than
wondering later what I'd been missing.

Imagine being a virgin when you married.  You'd always want to know , .
No I think my days of doing it in cars are well and truly over.  Just
something to read about in old diaries!  "

"You don't know what you're missing!"

"But that's just it, Sue, I do!"

Ben, Luke and Oliver were taking a cigarette-break during a free study
period.  They sloped along the path behind the tennis club and sprawled
on their

favourite bench under the trees, overlooking the courts.  Ben realized
it was becoming quite a ritual, just checking to see if Carol
Mathieson, with her unexpectedly schoolgirlish legs, was out there
playing.  Oliver didn't usually come with them.  A bit adolescent for
him, sneaking out of school to leer at half-dressed house wives.  He
didn't look as if he needed to, Ben thought.  Oliver had looked 35
since early puberty, his solid, hairy, rugger-playing body overnight
resembling that of a prosperous lawyer somewhere in the prime of
life.

He never had trouble being served in pubs, and on Mondays he bragged
about girls from the High School who couldn't get enough.  In the
showers after games he so intimidated the others by his swarthy
manliness that Ben, for one, felt no girl at a party would ever be
pleading with him for anything more than a light for her cigarette.

"Look at them, just look at them.  Ripe for the picking, like a tree
full of plums," Luke was saying, leaning for ward and inhaling deeply
on his Marlboro.  Ben stared at the women on the nearest court and,
fancying them not at all, still sensed the familiar rising feeling
inside his trousers.  He crossed his gangly legs and wished he didn't
blush so easily.  It was such a giveaway.

"What about that red-haired one?"  Oliver said, taking a sudden keen
interest.

Ben could sense Oliver's sexual antennae tuned in to the woman walking
across the club balcony.

"God, not her, she's one of our neighbours," he told Oliver.

"Married is she?  Not that it matters."

"Divorced," Ben conceded.

"I know her sons ..."

"All the better.  Every woman's dream, that's what we are, when they
get to that age.  Look at this lot; if they've got time for tennis
they've got time for sex.  Only common sense they'd rather educate an
innocent teenage boy than clean the windows.  They think of it as
social work!"

Ben couldn't fault Oliver's logic, but most of the women didn't
attract him.  It was Carol and her firm, gym-mistress burn he wanted to
see.  Even when playing tennis, her hair stayed strictly in place.  He
almost groaned aloud to think of the times he'd watched her running
neatly around the court, with her crisply pleated skirt flashing
sensible plain white knickers.  He would be willing to bet she wore a
dazzling white sports bra too.  He could almost hear her saying
'spotless', a word that always triggered his mother into falling about
with snobbish laughter.  He had no time for all that lacy underwear
stuff, all cutesy frills and come-on-look-don't-touch daintiness.  All
the teasing High School girls wore it, and flimsy though it looked, so
far it had always proved impenetrable.

Jenny left Sue to have her daily run on the gym's hightech machines,
and strolled in weak sunshine across to her car.  The car park was full
of Mercedes Estates, convertible BMWs and Renault Espaces, reflecting
the fact that the club members could afford a lot more than the
astronomical joining fee.  As she unlocked her Golf, she glanced back
at the club.  She could see into the gym, where a line of elegant,
agile women in cutaway leotards ran, with expressions of determination,
on rubber treadmills.  They're just like hamsters on a wheel, Jenny
thought.  All around her was park land, the Common, miles of riverside
towpath, and here were grown-up, sensible people, paying an annual
fortune to do their running in a room.

She got into her car and switched on Woman's Hour, reflecting that she
was getting very cynical.  After all, she knew that no woman in her
right mind would go and run alone on the Common, however much was to be
gained from fresh air and inspiring surroundings.  There was too much
to risk in terms of flashers, rapists,

murderers and muggers.  Funny how it was more or less all right for
dog-walking, though, she thought, pulling out on to the main road and
heading for the shops.  As if being accompanied by a bustling little
Jack Russell, or a loping labrador, was any kind of protection.

Jenny parked outside her local news agents and went inside for a packet
of postcards.  It wasn't a bad place to advertise for pupils everyone
seemed to do their local buying and selling there.  The window was full
of cards, some smartly computer-printed, selling every thing from car
parts and washing-machines to gerbils and baby buggies.  She looked
over the collection, working out what to say, and found herself
counting the number of ways 'accommodation' had been spelt.  Then a
sudden thought occurred to hera thought in the shape of Carol
Mathieson, all-seeing Neighbourhood Watch Kommandant personified.  Did
she really want her advertisement to be that local, so local that
no-one in the Close, unwrapping a wickedly fattening Dime bar outside
the news agents could possibly miss this undignified bid for additional
income?

Jenny shoved the postcards into her bag and got back into her car.  She
drove up through to the other side of Putney and found another branch
of the same shop, with the same kind of ads in the window.  No-one
here, she was sure, would recognize her phone number, though it wasn't
too far for pupils to travel to her house.  And it was yet another area
with enough spare money for music lessons.  They were an essential part
of the local kit, along with riding, ballet and the more obscurely
philosophical of the martial arts.

Jenny drove home absent-mindedly, roughly working out how much extra
income she would need to earn to compensate financially for being
husband less It would have to be an awful lot, because an awful lot was
what Alan earned, in spite of recent panic over the business, and what
they as a family spent.

She wondered what the alimony rate would be if the worst happened and
they divorced, Alan going off with Ms Right (mark 2) to raise an
entirely new brood of expensive children.  (Ms Right would be sure to
want them; after enticing men like Alan into their temptingly
uncluttered, child-free lives, they nearly always started drifting in
and out of Mothercare round about their mid-thirties.  ) Lost in
calculations, Jenny almost didn't see the blue-and-white ribbon
stretched across the Close, and very nearly drove through it, like a
sprinter winning the Olympics.

She stopped the car and stared into the Close.  Police cars and vans
were parked at angles so random as to suggest maximum speed and
importance.  The ribbon was the sort they used when they'd found a dead
body.  Whose, Jenny wondered, and where?  She had a sudden vision of
Mrs.  Fingell sprawled among her dustbins, one of Alan's stainless
steel Sabatiers plunged hilt-deep into her back.  Perhaps he couldn't
face any more of her tedious teases as she caught him unloading
Sainsbury bags from the car, all that "Poor Mr.  Collins, is she making
you do the cooking again?  (cackle cackle)," which always drove Alan
demented.

Returning to reality, Jenny realized it was most likely Laura Benstone
at number 5, renting out her house for another episode of The Bill.

She was always doing it, pleading poverty and school fees to pay, and
hardly a fortnight went past without some film crew or other blocking
someone's drive with their catering trucks.  She might have let us
know, Jenny thought, wondering if they really had to take over the
whole street.

Ahead of her she could see a gaggle of policemen walking about in the
road, shepherding a collection of reluctant residents towards the main
road.

A police sergeant approached her, walking heavily and importantly to
her car window.

"Sorry Madam, you can't come in here.  I suggest you park over on

the estate.  We have an Incident.  " He said it proudly;

this had clearly made his day.  In her car, Jenny fled before the Close
residents, collectively, could catch up with her.  But having parked,
she couldn't resist joining them on the patch of grass that separated
the estate flats from the main road, just to find out exactly what was
going on.

"I called them in," Paul Mathieson was saying proudly.

"After Mrs.  Fingell came round and told me.  You can't be too careful.
Not with bombs."  Jenny peered past the group, which consisted of two
young mothers and an au pair with a brood of toddlers, John Jordan the
're sting' actor from number 10, Laura Benstone's husband Harvey, who
was furious at having been interrupted half-way through writing a vital
scene in a TV sitcom (serve him right, thought Jenny, both for the
catering trucks and for cutting down those camellias), Paul Mathieson,
Mrs.  Fingell, and the rarely seen George Pemberton, semi-retired
lawyer husband of Fiona.  From balconies above, Jenny could hear the
chatter of estate residents revelling in a rare visit from the police
that was to the Close and not to themselves.  More accustomed to police
cars chasing suspected joy-riders round their labyrinthine lanes, they
cat-called and gloated delightedly.

The police cars and vans had chosen a crazy place to park if something
really was about to explode, dangerously close to what Jenny took to be
the bomb.  She also noted that the object in question was sitting on
her own garden wall.  Alan had built that wall.  It had been the only
use he'd ever found for his mother's final Christmas present, a
Reader's Digest guide to DIY.  It had been open on the path, like one
of his cookery books, as he carefully measured out sand and cement.

Jenny often thought he'd erected the wall as a monument to his mother,
and at the time had halfexpected him to top it off with a sculpted
angel, and to carve her name and the dates of her birth and death on
it, seeing as she, tidily cremated and secretly scattered at Blenheim
Palace, had no gravestone.

Now it looked as if the police were going to detonate whatever device
it was they'd found perched on it.  Jenny shivered.  What would have
been a playful little breeze in the lush and sheltered gardens of the
Close was, here under the looming blocks of flats, a freezing blast of
tunnelled wind.

"Whatever made you think it was a bomb?"  Jenny asked Paul.

"It's hardly IRA territory is it?  Did you have a close look?"  She
peered past him, squinting against the weak sunlight.  The object on
the wall was hidden in what looked like a Waitrose bag.  Someone, out
of curiosity, must have been peering in to see what it was.

"You wouldn't think Hampstead was IRA territory either," Paul was
saying, 'but they had a bomb there, didn't they, just before Christmas.
" He was smiling smugly, practically wagging a finger at her.

"It's a sort of.  square black thing with wires trailing.  You can't
take chances, not these days."

Down in the sealed-off Close, blue lights on police cars were still
going round and round.  Just showing off, Jenny thought, wishing she
could get home and go to the loo.

It was a very small explosion, what the police always referred to as
'controlled', but enough to wreck the wall.  It fell almost willingly
to the ground, crumbling with a shameful lack of resistance.  Perhaps
Alan had misread the recipe for the mortar after all.  He is going to
be furious, Jenny thought, wondering at the same time if the damage was
covered by house insurance.  Did it count as an act of war, malicious
damage, accident or what?

"Bloody waste of time," George Pemberton rumbled crossly.  Overwhelmed
usually by the presence of his

wife, he was hardly ever heard to speak, and Jenny turned to look at
him.

"I could see it wasn't a sodding bomb," he said.

"The fool wouldn't bloody listen."

"Did you see what it actually was?"  she asked him.  He looked such a
mild sort of man, very beige in a wool shirt and old man's cardigan
with leather buttons, the sort of man who would smoke a pipe and be
good at crosswords, not the sort to have such fury bubbling away
inside.

"Just a teenage thing," he said, his glare, as he looked Jenny up and
down, mutating into something unnervingly close to an ogle.

"One of those things they're always listening to when they walk into
you on the pavement.  Gives them a glazed look.  Yours have them," he
finished, glowering at Jenny accusingly.

The police sergeant came back, walking even more slowly.

"You can all go home now.  Panic over," he said, with a hint of a
smile.

"What about Mrs.  Collins's wall?"  Paul stepped for ward and asked.

"Are you Mr.  Collins?"  the sergeant asked, puffing out his chest like
a sparrow squaring up for a territorial battle.

"No, I'm not.  As a matter of fact I'm the Neighbour hood Watch
co-ordinator," Paul replied, puffing out his hand-knitted chest to
match the sergeant.

A small, knowing smile crossed the face of the policeman.

"So you'll be the one who called us in," he said, looking Paul up and
down as if he was exhibit A. Paul beamed and nodded, proud as a
schoolboy at a prize giving

Confidently, he waited to be congratulated.

But the sergeant's grin was not a friendly one.

"So you'll be the person," he hissed, coming very close to Paul and
adding with the kind of sneer only achievable by a man in uniform, be
he commissionaire or Colonel, "Sorry, I'll rephrase that.  What I mean
is you'll be the complete and utter dickhead who can't tell Semtex
from a Sorry Walkman.  Tell me.  Sir, am I right or am I right?"

There wasn't much scope for fantasy, being an accountant, even one with
so many clients in the music business.  Alan sat behind his impressive,
environmentally hostile teak desk and tried to feel interested in the
table of disheartening figures in front of him.  On his walls in the
cream-and-chrome office hung dusty gold and platinum discs donated by
rock stars in their past prime, with gratitude to their money-minder.
Often, Alan had been given tickets to see bands that he had long known
he should be feeling too old to watch.  He'd tried offering them to
Daisy or Ben, who had scorned these heroes of his youth, pretending, he
thought, that they'd never heard of them.

Jenny never wanted to go either, unless, which was rare, he could
promise her a flute player in the band, or a comfortable seat at the
Albert Hall.  All these things had served as excuses down in
Bournemouth, driving Serena half-way across the county to see one of
his favourite bands.

"I adore these old dinosaur bands," she had said, referring to the fact
that they'd been famous since her babyhood.  Alan couldn't see the
relevance to an extinct creature;

dinosaurs died out, some old rock 'n' rollers, thank God even against
overwhelming odds, never did.

The client in the chair opposite was unhappy, complaining that the
Inland Revenue were claiming his blood and bones as well as what was
left of his now meagre income.  Alan found meetings like this more
depressing than any other, for although his own long- ago fantasies of
stardom remained just that distant unreality here at least was one who
had, at the time, done all the fantasy-fulfilling for him, for him and
his generation.  At nineteen, after three blissful,

girl-pulling, schoolwork-wrecking years in an atrocious part-time band
called Snakepit, Alan had given in both to the nagging of his frantic
parents and the growing knowledge that he was an essentially inept
guitarist, and sold his precious Telecaster.  Sadly he had not, as he
had daydreamed, been telephoned by Mick Jagger begging him to join the
Rolling Stones in place of the dead Brian Jones.  He was nowhere close
to the Jimi Hendrix league when it came to sex appeal.  So, worn down
by a finger-wagging lecture from his headmaster that he had been
undeservedly lucky not to fail his A-levels, Alan had been persuaded
that one day he might want to live somewhere more secure than on a
mattress in the back of a Transit van with a woman who would hang
around for more than a torrid twenty minutes in the Watford Gap car
park, and he had gone off to study accountancy for no worthier reason
than that he was better at maths than anything else.  It had felt like
conceding defeat, abandoning his fantasies and joining the grown-ups,
but at least there were still other, braver people who would do the
rich and famous and badly behaved bit on behalf of him and the rest of
the more cowardly conventional.  Now he sat, comfortable in his
well-worn leather chair, watching one of those whom he had relied on to
fulfill his there-but-for-qualifications-go-I dreams, scratching round
in a column of pencilled figures for the wherewithal to fund his next
telephone bill.

Alan felt depressingly adult.  He studied the lined face of the man
opposite, a drug-ravaged face that looked as if it had lived three
debauched lifetimes, and he felt sorry for him.  Alan didn't like this
feeling, he didn't want to feel pity for a former hero, that wasn't
what heroes were for.  The whole point about them was their in
destructibility They were supposed to be made of different, star-dusted
stuff.

He sighed, promised to sort out the official receiver and, charitably,
did not point out that the lifetime earnings of the average middle
management employee must have been sniffed up the client's nose during
the past ten fame-diminishing years.  There was no point, and it would
make no difference now.  Unfortunately for this client, cocaine was not
tax deductible.

When Jenny eventually got into the house, there were already two
messages on her answer phone both of them from men enquiring about the
flute lessons.  Jenny was pleased that men were taking an interest in
their children's music lessons.  She was too used to pushy mothers,
asking things like why hadn't little Petronella been entered for Grade
3 yet, surely she was more than ready.  Fathers tended to keep out of
the way, occasionally turning up to collect their children from the
lessons, but as often as not hanging around outside in the car boredly
flicking through their AA Book of the Road rather than coming in and
risking a chat about progress and practice.

Jenny was just opening the front door to go and collect Polly from
school when the phone rang again.

"It says flute lessons on your card."  Yet another male voice, this
time sounding like he had a bad cold and was talking through a
handkerchief, mumbled at Jenny.

"That's right," she said brightly.

"Is it for a child?"  Jenny tried to be welcoming, business-like.

"I normally charge 16 per hour, 9 for a half hour ..."

"A child what do you mean, a child?"  the man interrupted, spluttering
down the phone at her.

"Well, I teach all grades of course, complete beginners too ..."  The
phone went dead.

"Oh terrific," she said into it.

"Thanks for wasting my time and making me late."  She flung the phone
down and dashed out to the car, glaring at the ruined wall as she
passed.  It might be a good day for seeing Fiona Pemberton

about teaching flute at the school.  Biggies was sitting in a patch of
sunshine on top of the rubble, washing his back leg.  I wonder how long
it will take Alan to sort that lot out, she thought.  It could end up
like Mrs.  Fingell's garden.  She bent down to stroke Biggies, and
picked up a blown-in Snickers wrapper.

"Pity about your wall!"  Carol trilled at her from the window of her
all-white Peugeot.  Pity about your bloody husband, Jenny felt like
shouting back.

Polly was looking unusually subdued, sitting big-eyed and wary out on
the school steps, watched over protectively by her loyal friend,
Harriet Caine.  Jenny sensed trouble as she struggled to squeeze the
Golf between a Nissan Patrol and a Vauxhall Frontera.

Harriet did the talking.

"Mrs.  Spencer says she would like to see you," she reported quietly to
Jenny, standing guard in front of the guilty-looking Polly.

Jenny gently moved Harriet aside.

"What have you done now, Polly?  You know this is an important time,
with your exams coming.  I hope it isn't anything naughty."

"Depends how you look at it.  Not very naughty.  I don't think so
anyway, but I think maybe Mrs.  Spencer does."

Jenny strode up the steps into the grandiose Victorian building,
wishing she wasn't wearing her oldest jeans and sweatshirt but was one
of those mothers who always dressed as if they were about to go to a
charity lunch.  The building was scruffy, a large converted house
forming the tacked-on junior department of the High School.  Few of the
parents here had ever visited an ordinary modern primary school, but
had they done so they would have realized that no state school would
have tolerated the dingy corridors and lack of space that parents here
were taking out second mortgages to pay for.  What they wanted and got
for their money was to have their little daughters grandly presided
over by the formidable Fiona Pemberton, to learn French from the age of
eight, and to scramble at eleven for the forty or so places reserved
for them in the famously successful senior department of the school.

Ahead of Jenny a gaggle of the velvet headband brigade (pie-crust
collars and cashmere to match) were discussing the forthcoming exams,
which would weed out the no-hopers from those who would make it through
to the senior school and safely on their way to Oxbridge, exams which
would make lifelong enemies out of politely ruthless mothers.  The
crowded corridor, cheerfully lined with splodgy paintings, smelt of
brown rice and chicken, overlaid with the soupy aroma of pre-pubescent
little girls.  The lino floor was scratched and filthy, and Jenny
wondered, if it wasn't in the interests of keeping the place clean, why
the uniform list required the girls to have three pairs of shoes
each.

Jenny took a deep breath and knocked on the open door of Polly's
classroom.  She felt guilty herself, summoned like this to the
teacher's presence.  She should have waited and got some idea about
what Polly had actually done before she rushed in, then she could have
prepared an informed defence.  Mrs.  Spencera brisk young woman with
neatly bobbed, conker-brown hair, was sitting at her desk marking the
day's maths.

"Ah.  Mrs.  Collins," she said, but didn't continue, and Jenny thought,
Oh God, it's so serious, the poor woman doesn't know what to say.

"Ah.

Mrs.  Spencer," was the most tempting reply, which Jenny, wisely,
didn't make.

"Polly tells me you want to see me," she said instead, as evenly as she
could manage.

"Yes.  Mrs.  Collins, I'm afraid I found Polly and her friend looking
at this during the lunch break."  Glancing nervously towards the open
door, Mrs.  Spencer pulled

the Playboy magazine from under the pile of exercise books.  Jenny
could feel her mouth twitching treacherously into a smile and fought to
resist it.  Mrs.  Spencer had put the magazine down and moved her hands
down to her lap, as if not quite liking to touch.  She's only young
really, Jenny thought, early thirties perhaps Where do teachers leave
their sense of humour?  In a staff room locker every morning?  Is it
confiscated by the head teacher and kept in a cupboard till the end of
term?

' She's just a typical little girl with a highly developed sense of
curiosity," Jenny said, getting in quickly with her defence of Polly.

Mrs.  Spencer regarded her coolly.

"There are plenty of things for little girls to feel curious about at
ten, Mrs.  Collins.  Pornography isn't usually one of them."

You've been dying to say that, Jenny thought, you've been rehearsing
that all afternoon.

"She says she found it in your house."  The teacher leaned forward
slightly and stared at Jenny intently and with scarcely-hidden
curiosity.

"Should you have left it lying around do you think?"

Oh no, thought Jenny, she thinks we're regular readers.  She's sitting
there wondering if Alan is trying to perk up a flagging sex life.

Jenny had already realized the magazine must be Ben's (mustn't it? ).

Who but a teenage boy would want to gaze at these glossily sanitized
gynaecological studies?  Who but a teenage boy and blasted Polly.

Jenny felt as defenceless as when she herself had been caught smoking
at her own school.

"I'll have a word with her," she promised, giving in feebly and mindful
of the exams.

"It won't happen again."

Behind Jenny there was a brisk rustle and a slight breeze, and Fiona
Pemberton, looking queenly in some thing floral and silky swept into
the classroom.  Jenny wished that she and the magazine could hide under
the desk.

"Glad to see Daisy is feeling better.  We missed her yesterday.

You do know you're supposed to send a note of course, but as it's you .
Trouble with Polly?  " Fiona suddenly said, her face switching from
all-purpose professional smile to furrowed concern as she caught sight
of the magazine.  She picked it up, thumbing through it with no hint of
the genteel repulsion of Mrs.  Spencer.  Her frown deepened, as her
well-practised brain sorted out what was happening.

"Can't have this you know, Mrs.  Collins.  Corrupting the other girls.
I'd be sorry to see Polly turning into a Bad Influence."

"Just a bit of childish fun, I expect, Mrs.  Pemberton," Jenny said
firmly, standing up both to leave and to feel on more equal terms with
the headmistress.  She'd never liked being loomed over.

"I must get back.  I've got a pupil at 4.30."  Fiona was still flicking
through the magazine and Jenny smiled at her as she walked towards the
door.

"Do keep it if you like," she couldn't resist saying, and then could
have kicked herself.  She could hardly add, after that, "I suppose a
job's out of the question?"

Chapter Four

Daisy was wrong if she imagined, on her return from school, that the
destruction of her Walkman would result in any leniency in her
punishment for fare- dodging.  A girl at school was having a party a
few Saturdays ahead, and Daisy was quietly desperate to go to it.

Everyone else was going.  She put on a desolate, wronged expression and
wandered sighing round the kitchen, toasting a crumpet on the Aga and
waiting for Jenny to feel sorry for her.  The Walkman suddenly became
her most prized possession, now lost for ever together with her new
Senseless Things tape, her absolute un challengeable favourite.  She
put on an expression that she hoped looked like deep mourning.

But, with an end-of-the-day headache from a hopeless Grade 1 pupil
shrilling and stumbling over his scales, and no fruitful response to
her advert, Jenny was adamant.

"No of course you can't go out to parties.  You haven't even missed out
on one single weekend yet.  You skived school and you stole; you can't
expect us to overlook it completely."  Jenny then smiled with some
sympathy.

"Look, it won't be for ever.  But it will be long enough for you to
think about what you've done."  She reached for her jacket, hanging on
the back door.

"Keep an eye on Polly for a bit will you, love," Jenny went on.

"I'm just going round to tell Paul he needn't worry about replacing
your Walkman."

Daisy flipped from feigned misery to real anger, waving her crumpet in
the air and dripping butter onto the floor.

"Oh Mum, that's not fair!  Why should I have to lose out on that
too?"

"Don't jump to conclusions!  I'll get it on the house insurance!  Or
from those trigger-happy police."  And she made her escape, before
Daisy could wear down her resistance.

"Good thing I was home, really.  Anything could have happened," Paul
Mathieson was bragging to Carol as he watched her chopping leeks.  In
the ice-white, germ-free kitchen she chopped fast and firmly; bits did
not fall off the scrubbed board onto the floor, or stick to the knife
in an undisciplined way.  The knife was stainless steel, it wouldn't
dare be otherwise, and the shining blade flashed up and down.  Paul,
flinching, put his hands in his pockets on their way to a gesture of
protection.

"Anything could not have happened, Paul," Carol said, stopping briefly
to point the knife at him.

"There was nothing in that bag but Daisy Collins's Walkman.  I think
that Mr.  Hasty is going to have to volunteer to pay for that, isn't
he?"

"Yes Carol," Paul conceded meekly, wondering if it would be all right
to help himself to the sherry, even though it wasn't quite time yet.

He glanced into the sitting-room at the glass cabinet containing the
decanter.  If it wasn't locked, she wouldn't hear him opening the
door.

But if it was locked he was in trouble, for although the lock was tiny,
it had a distressingly loud mechanism to it that no amount of oiling
could silence.

"Can I tempt you to a teeny drink, my pet?"  Paul said, thinking to
entice her to early alcohol.  He took a hopeful step towards the
cabinet.  A couple of sherries inside Carol, and she might be in the
mood for a bit of conjugal access later on.

"Not until you've fed the cats," she replied sternly, not even looking
up from the chopping.

Paul turned back and dutifully opened the cat food cupboard.  Ming and
Mong, the matched pair of squint- eyed pale Siamese cats yowled at him
from the kitchen floor, plaiting their skinny bodies round his legs.

Greedy little buggers, he thought, why should their dinners get
priority over me and my drink?

He held his breath as he scooped the foul-smelling Whiskas.  The two
food bowls had the word "Pussy' in ornate script painted on them,
bought in humourless innocence by Carol, but which never failed to
bring a silly school boyish smirk to Paul's face.  He bent to put the
dishes on the floor, keeping the evidence of his dirty mind turned away
from Carol, in case she caught him and gave him one of her looks.

The cats, tigerish, hissed at each other over the food and jostled
stupidly for the same bowl, ignoring the other one.  Paul squatted on
the floor to push them apart, getting scratched for his effort, then
sat back on his heels and watched Carol's burn jiggling slightly in its
tight mauve trousers as she vigorously cut carrots.  It was a trim
burn, apple-round and temptingly bite able it seemed to Paul.  He could
see the imprint of her knickers showing through the fabric, and knew
they were the blue lacy ones, cut high and trimmed with jaunty satin
frills round the legs.  Paul, influenced by the cats, bared his teeth
in semblance of a lecherous snarl, just as Carol turned to look at
him.

"What are you doing?"  she demanded, incredulously.

"Er ..."  The doorbell rang, saving Paul from inventing an
explanation.

Rearranging his features into a twisted grin, he scrambled up from the
floor and leapt into the hallway, almost falling through the frosted
glass into the porch in his eagerness to be away from Carol's
interrogation.

"Come in, come in!"  he yelled into Jenny's surprised face.

"Come and have a drink."  He steered Jenny into the sitting-room and
placed her firmly in front of the drinks cabinet, opening it (damn,
unlocked all the time) with a flamboyant flourish and hauling out the
sherry bottle.

"Er, actually have you got something else ... ?"  Jenny was saying, but
found herself holding an engraved schooner, with copper-coloured liquid
being slopped shakily into it.

Carol bustled through from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a
flower-appliqued towel.

"Jenny, Paul is so sorry about Daisy's tape player," she purred, and
then added waspishly, 'aren't you Paul?  " as Paul was looking
resolutely blank.

"Oh yes.  Of course.  Though it was an understandable error.  You never
know these days, crime is all around us, bombs, terrorists, drug
dealers.  It's a war out there," he waffled, swilling down his sherry
and reaching for a refill.

"Top-up Jenny?"

Jenny, who thought it wasn't really very understandable at all and had
barely sipped her sherry, put her hand firmly over the top of the
glass.

"No thanks, really, this is fine."

Carol took over, guiding her to the squeaky sofa.

"Of course you know, Jenny, he's right in one way," she said.

"The increase in crime, especially burglaries in areas like this, well
it's appalling.  I blame all those unemployed boys with nothing better
to do."  She leaned forward eagerly, and then back again, frowning as
she caught Paul's gaze homing in on her cleavage.

"Have you been in that estate up across the main road?  All day long,
absolutely heaving with people, all milling about with nothing to
occupy them.  We're heading for a revolution, that's what I think.
They'll come pouring across that road and ransack nice, law-abiding
places like this, just like Russia."

God, she's mad, thought Jenny.  Stark staring.  Carol would never go
across the main road into the estate, in case she was robbed both of
her values and her valuables.  How could she possibly have a clue what
went

on over there?  But Carol, her spun-sugar hair jerking briskly like a
rooster's crest, was just warming up.

"And the children, not a father present between them!  No role
models.

I thank God we were able to send our boys safely off to a decent prep
school where they can learn what's what.  And there's a lot to be said
you know, for joining the cadet force.  Channels their energies.  "

Into learning how to kill each other, crossed Jenny's mind, but she
said instead, "They could learn what's what here at home, surely, with
both parents present?"  suddenly keen to defend her own version of
family life, 'if all you think they need is a father-figure?  " Carol
gave her a sly look, something conspiratorial, as if what Paul could
teach her sons wasn't likely to be worth knowing.

"You know," Jenny told her, 'the vast majority of crime by young people
is done by boys.  The same lone parents are also bringing up girls too.
So surely it's the messages that are getting across to boys in society
that are damaging, not necessarily their family structure.  "

Carol, for a moment looked stumped, but soon rallied, "Oh well, the
girls, we all know what they're doing don't we?  Getting themselves
pregnant and straight up the housing list, that's what."

In the face of such prejudice, Jenny could only give up.  It was time
to go before Carol progressed to the benefits of bringing back National
Service.

"I must get back, I've got a chicken in the oven," she said, leaving
her sherry glass on the floor beside the sofa and hoping that one of
the snaky cats would knock the dregs out of it onto the cream carpet.
No wonder they had to send the boys away to boarding school, she
thought, the pastel furnishings would never stand up to healthy wear
and tear.  In any normal family, that pallid sofa would have a generous
quota of felt pen marks.

"We haven't paid you for the Walkman," Paul said, pulling his cheque
book out of his pocket.

"How much, about thirty quid?"

"Thirty-five should just about cover it," Jenny answered, wondering why
on earth she'd ever thought of going through all the bother of claiming
on house insurance.

"Though, really I suppose," Paul wavered, 'if it wasn't for Mrs.
Fingell poking about .  "

"If you've got it, I think Daisy would actually prefer cash," Jenny
persisted ruthlessly.

"Oh, right."  Paul slowly counted out the notes.

"Here you are then, and do tell her it was only out of a spirit of
neighbourliness, won't you?"

Alan felt self-conscious in the pub.  It hadn't felt like this in
Dorset, perhaps this time it was because he was still wearing an office
suit.  Serena was buying the drinks.  He watched her queuing at the
bar, her long legs in black lycra, her long body in an oversized cream
silk shirt and embroidered waistcoat.  She didn't look conspicuous
every girl in the place was dressed in some sort of version of what she
had on.  It was Serena's idea of what to wear to the office.  A bit
whacky for accountancy, Alan's partner Bernard had thought, but she was
the most highly qualified of the new young applicants, as well as
Bernard's niece, and as Alan pointed out, they weren't exactly offering
the kind of salary that would run to power-dressing.

Alan felt he still smelt of the office, but worried more that when he
got home he would smell of smoke and pub, and that Jenny would be
needing an explanation.  He worried, too, about Serena and the
flowers;

she hadn't said anything, perhaps his daft romantic gesture had
embarrassed her.  He imagined her giggling about them, heartless and
youthfully brittle with

her flat-mate.  It wasn't likely that she had, in her shared basement
flat, anything suitable to put them in; things like huge, expensive
vases were accumulated by people like himself and Jenny over many years
of organized domesticity.  She'd probably dumped them in a plastic
bucket.  Maybe it was too much, they'd only gone to a casual gig
together after all, not for a night of passion at the Ritz.  It had
been a rare spontaneous gesture, the result of relief at finding, right
there in his own office, someone to share his interest.  It was easy
with his cooking, everyone could eat and appreciate the results and say
all the right things.  But music was a different matter.  At home, it
was only when he was drunkenly playing air-guitar to Free's Alright Now
at the tail end of one of his own parties that he could feel
uninhibited about his tastes.  That they weren't shared by his family
and friends usually became obvious as Ben and Daisy left the room in
over-exaggerated embarrassment ("Oh Dad') and life-long friends started
looking for their coats and car keys.  He'd never, in all truth, shared
Jenny's love for classical music, although years ago the sight of
Jenny, dizzily blonde and slinky, playing her flute in tight black
velvet had attracted him quite madly.  There was still something
sensuous about watching her play; the way she licked her lips and
carefully prepared her soft mouth for the flute.  But Mozart did not
move him, Mick Jagger did.  In polite company, where middle-aged,
middle-class musical taste had settled at the point of unobtrusive Dire
Straits CDs as dinner party background, he hoarded this secret as
guiltily as if he still had a yearning to stand anoraked and
train-spotting on Crewe station.

The pub was pretty sordid, with a brownish swirl- patterned carpet
disguising goodness only knew what kind of stains.  There was a smell
of stale beer and air freshener and the walls and ceilings were murky
with congealed fames from micro-waved chips.  Alan rarely went into
pubs with Jenny; perhaps on holiday in Cornwall looking for a beer and
a sandwich, always to somewhere clean, rural and picturesque with
lavishly planted hanging baskets, where hearty, homemade bread and
organic Stilton would be served.  Outside this one, the traffic roared
past on the North Circular and an ancient greasy roadie in the corner
was sound- testing a microphone, murmuring the usual 'one, two," into
it.  Alan liked that sound, it was like a comforting, long-familiar
mantra.  His suit felt ever more out of place as the bar filled,
everyone else in jeans or leather or cords.  He should have taken a
change of clothes into work with him, he thought, like he had in school
days, hiding his fur-trimmed parka in his bag for travelling home on
the bus and trying to pull girls from the grammar school.  You got
detention if you were caught doing that, he recalled.  He wondered what
the punishment, if Jenny could catch him now, would be.  Serena brought
over the drinks, and the band came on to the tiny stage and started
flicking at their guitars.  Alan looked around the room; he wasn't the
only ageing rocker in the place, which wasn't surprising, seeing as the
band had been in business 25 years.  He caught the eye of a balding
man, about his own age and they exchanged half smiles, acknowledging
each other's long service as rock aficionados.  Was he another refugee
from an over-cultured home, Alan wondered?  Just then the band, the
tweaking and tuning satisfactorily completed, slammed heavily into
their first number and he felt the music, hard as a gut-punch, with
just the same thrill as at his first Yardbirds gig back in 1963.  Back
then, he had suspected that not even sex would come close to this, and,
if pressed thirty years on, would have to acknowledge that he had
suspected right.

Jenny had never had an obscene phone call before.  You certainly
didn't expect it in the middle of supper.  The awfulness of it, she
thought, could only potentially be rivalled by a call from any woman
hoping to get Alan and then pretending she'd got a wrong number.  The
man had been very specific about what he wanted, though how she was
supposed to provide that kind of service down the phone she had no idea
perhaps he, like Polly, also thought oral sex was some kind of
conversation.  Back at the table, Jenny pushed the remains of her
chicken round her plate, bereft of appetite.

"But what did he actually say?"  Polly demanded eagerly, wondering if
oral sex, after all, actually involved talking on the telephone.  This
would be something to tell Harriet, as far away as possible of course
from Mrs.  Spencer and any other schoolteacher busybodies.

"Yeah Mum, what did he say?"  Daisy asked, wishing she had taken the
call.  It was so rarely that she let any one else answer the phone too,
reasoning accurately that most calls were usually for her.

"He wanted, er, well, wanted me to do things.  Offered money too,"
Jenny said, brightening slightly and giving a weak grin.  Perhaps it
would be best to make light of it, especially in front of Polly.  Lucky
that Polly hadn't picked up the phone, she'd have kept the man there
for hours, talking pornography and acquiring new depths of knowledge.

Ben, trying to stay calm and wishing some woman would call him and
offer to pay him for rendering obscene services, reached across and
spooned up too many potatoes from the dish, messily dropping some of
them onto the pine table.

"Isn't that the sort of thing you're supposed to tell your vigilante
group about?"

he asked.

"Won't you have to report the crime to your leader?"

Jenny shuddered at the thought of repeating the details of the call to
Paul.  He'd write them all down, verbatim, and file them away in one of
the folders Carol said he kept neatly shelved in his attic den.  She
could just see him, licking the tip of his biro and saying, "Now can we
just go over that again, make sure I've got it right.  What was it
exactly he wanted you to do?"

"No, because it's no threat to anyone else in the road.  I won't be
telling anyone else.  Definitely not."  Except Sue, she thought
privately, who could be relied on to lighten the sordidness of it.

Then she grinned at him.

"Oh and Ben, don't call them vigilantes, it's only Neighbourhood Watch.
Can you see Paul and Harvey and old Mrs.  Fingell wandering round with
cricket bats, defending the Close and beating up suspected villains?"

"I can," said Daisy, 'especially Mrs.  Fingell, and Carol even more.  I
think she'd like a uniformed man with a barrier across the end of the
Close, letting in no-one but people like her in sequined Italian track
suits oh and perhaps the postman and the John Lewis van.  None of my
friends would get near the place, not ever.  "

"You still haven't told me what he said," Polly grumbled into her
cauliflower.

"If I don't know what a dirty phone call sounds like, how am I going to
know if I ever get one?"

"You'll know, Polly, believe me.  And let's hope it never happens."

Polly hoped for no such thing, and was determined to spend the rest of
the evening hanging around as close to the telephone as she possibly
could, even if it meant missing EastEnders.

Even though it was after midnight when Alan came home.  Jenny was still
awake.  Eager to get on to the

next day and hope it turned out better than this, she had gone off to
bed early, tried to sleep but couldn't.  Daisy's music, essential
accompaniment to homework, was still thump-thumping from her room.

Jenny wondered if it might be better to ask her to turn it up till it
was identifiable, rather than having to lie there trying to guess what
she was playing from the heavy bass rhythm.  Then there were her
thoughts: two odd phone calls in one day, the first one about the flute
lessons, where she and the caller seemed to be talking at bizarre
cross-purposes, and then the blatantly obscene one.  She wondered about
the postcard in the news agent window; perhaps there were per vs out
there who simply wrote down a few numbers at random and gave them a
call, on the off-chance.  Did that happen to the people trying to sell
old sofas, or their wedding dress?  Perhaps her handwriting had looked
too distinctly feminine; next time she'd type her advert.  She had at
least, thank God, not put her name and address on it.

She heard Alan at about 12.  30, pulling up into the driveway, the hand
brake giving its characteristic whine.  Something else that would need
expensive fixing, she thought.  Snug under the duvet with a novel, she
knew she should really go downstairs and talk to Alan, explain about
the demolished wall, tell him about the phone call, and about Polly and
the Playboy magazine.  If it hadn't been for that damned florist's
receipt, she would have looked forward to sharing the day's disasters
with him, lightening the drama by laughing and having a late glass of
wine together while he picked at the cold chicken at the kitchen table.
Jenny lay wide awake, propped up like a glamorous invalid on the big
blue-and white-striped square pillows, wondering where on earth he'd
been till this time, with whom and doing what.  I never used to give it
a thought, she realized, having assumed that when he said he had a
client to audit who could only by seen during the evening, and thirty
miles away, that he would have no reason to be telling anything but the
truth.  Now she could feel herself turning into the kind of wife she
had always loathed, the sort who sniffs the air, cat-like, for
unfamiliar perfumes, inspects jackets for stray other-woman hairs.  She
could hear small noises of Alan creeping about downstairs, obviously
hoping not to disturb anyone.  Every floorboard in the kitchen seemed
to have been reawakened, and Jenny could track his progress by the
creaking as he walked from door to fridge, to the sink, to the table,
and back to the warmth of the Aga.

As sleep wasn't possible and curiosity grew.  Jenny pulled her
dressing-gown from the back of the door, wrapped herself cosily into it
and went downstairs.  Alan was drinking tea, chewing a chicken leg and
looking lonely, she thought, sitting on the wooden rocking chair by the
Aga, Biggies curled up on his lap.  He smelt of pubs, and she tried not
to think who he might have been to one with.  Was it marginally better,
she wondered, than smelling of expensive restaurants?  Or was She the
type (rather like Sue, much as Jenny loved her) who was anyone's for a
half of lager and a bag of pork scratchings?

"You're late; too much work?"  she asked as lightly as she could
manage, switching on the kettle and reaching into the cupboard for a
mug.

"Yeah sorry about that, though I did find time to grab a sandwich and a
pint later on.  This chicken's good," he said, making Jenny immediately
suspicious.  Usually he would comment that just a little more tarragon
would have been a good idea, or irritate her by asking if she'd crushed
the garlic before she'd chopped it.

"You saw the wall?"  she asked.  Alan nodded, looking sorrowful.  Jenny
grinned at him.

"I'm afraid it was our Neighbourhood Watch being over zealous.  Mrs.
Fingell

and Paul thought Daisy's Walkman was a bomb and the police blew it
up.

It was quite dramatic.  I got 35 off Paul for it.  I'm not sure what to
do about the wall.  "

Alan's chicken leg stopped half-way to his mouth and he gave a blast of
incredulous laughter.  Biggies stretched his ginger face up towards the
chicken, in hope.

"You're not serious!  Stupid buggers!  Actually I thought you'd backed
your car into it or something, hardly dared mention it in case you got
all upset."

Jenny leaned on the Aga, cupping her hands round the mug and warming
her back.  Alan was looking tired but affectionate.  Was that guilt, or
was he be coming horribly adept at running two lives?  Earlier in bed,
brooding on the possible depths of his deception she had started him
off having a one-nighter with some stranger at the Bournemouth
conference, and had progressed in the space of thirty seconds to having
him set up in somewhere, say, St.  Albans, with an entire extra
family.

He was still giving her a fond and familiar look.

"You know we could take this tea up to bed, in fact I think we should,
don't you Pudding?"  He got up slowly, nudging the cat gently to the
floor.

"Why Pudding?"  Jenny asked suddenly, switching off the kitchen lights
behind her as they made for the stairs.

"And what sort of Pudding?  A Roux Brothers special, say a difficult
millefeuille aux framboises avec creme fraiche?  A solid sticky toffee
pudding?  Delia Smith's wholesome apple pie?  Or something fiery and
exotic by Marco Pierre White?"

Alan, his hand fondling her bottom as they climbed the stairs,
laughed.

"You've got nothing on under this.  Delicious.  I'd say that makes you
right this minute, a highly appetizing creme brulee.  Sweet, with a
deceptively crisp surface and deliciously creamy inside."  Jenny
giggled quietly.  At the top of the stairs he gently bit the back of
her neck.

"But of course," he went on, "I'll have to taste you and see."

He can't have been doing it this evening, then, Jenny concluded with
relief as she cleaned her teeth, brushed her hair and splashed on some
Diorella, because if he had he'd never have the energy to do it again,
not these days.  She climbed back into bed and Alan wandered around the
bedroom, off to the bathroom and back and shed the trappings of the
day, till all that was left was a pale, slightly flabby, vulnerable
body confidently expecting to sample the pleasure of his wife's.  Alan
got into bed beside Jenny, smiling happily, snuggling up to her like a
guilt-free child and laying a heavy arm across her breasts.  God I hope
he hasn't caught anything dangerous, Jenny thought, feeling suddenly
chilled.  With her highly efficient contraceptive coil she could hardly
ask him to start using condoms without giving a very good reason.  She
wished she'd been quick-witted enough to pretend that along with the
other disasters of the day, the thing had unexpectedly dropped out, but
it was too late now, his hand was rediscovering its familiar
map-references on her body, so, praying silently, Jenny crossed her
fingers and prepared to risk her life.

Chapter Five

"I can't miss Sophie's party, I just can't bear to.  What am I going to
do?"  Daisy, freezing cold on the games field, kicked the goalpost and
thrashed at the grass with her hockey stick, complaining to Emma from
the depths of despair.

Emma tried sympathetically to think of past tactics that, with her
highly exacting parents, had usually worked.

"Have you tried reasoning with them?  Say you've learned your lesson
and swear you'll never do it again?  Have you tried cleaning your room
and promising to keep it all horribly tidy for ever and ever?  That
kind of thing even works with my mother and you know what a stroppy cow
she is."

"No.  No point.  This time they're outraged, they feel " disappointed"
as Mum put it.  She has this " how could you let us down like this"
expression whenever she looks at me, as if she regrets being so
understanding all these years.  She looks really miserable and it can't
be all my fault.  I can't help it if all her pupils suddenly don't like
playing flutes any more."  Daisy gave a deep sigh.

"I'll have to come up with some mega plan by the end of the week.
Perhaps she'll relent and let me stay the night with you, if I swear
we're going to stay in and revise physics."

"Got to be worth a try," said Emma.

"You can't miss a good party, it isn't healthy.  All those boys from
your brother's school are going, so we should be there.  Getting off
with them is good for us, with all our adolescent hormones rushing
about.  I'm sure they'll give up and disappear for ever if we don't
give them something to do.  Hormones I mean, not the boys.  Think of
it, back in the olden days, girls were having babies and amazing
orgasms by our age.  It can't be right to suppress all that."

Emma had a slightly off-the-wall grasp of biology, Daisy felt, but she
probably had vaguely the right idea: if nature made you feel like
mucking about in a sexual way, then who were they to argue with that?

They could leave out the having babies bit of course.  She could try
putting that one to Jenny, that being grounded was getting in the way
of her essential sexual development though on second thoughts perhaps
she couldn't.  Jenny, when Daisy was younger, would occasionally let
slip that she herself had had a wild time in her own youth, and that it
was no bad thing either.  Just lately, though, she had been careful not
to talk about it, as if she rather regretted mentioning it.  Daisy
blamed AIDS.  From up at the far end of the pitch, Emma and Daisy could
hear the rest of the hockey match shrieking its way to a finish.  Daisy
always managed to get picked to play left back for the better team on
games day, along with Emma in goal, both of them perfectly content that
all the squalid, muddy battling for the ball would take place at the
opposite end of the field and they would be left in peace to shiver,
and gossip.

"Where are all the blokes then?"  Emma said, folding over the top of
her games skirt so its hem was up to the bottom of her navy blue school
games knickers.

"There's usually at least six over by the gap in the fence."

Daisy swivelled round to look.

"Not one," she said.

"We must be losing our appeal.  Probably too old.  I expect they turn
up in droves to watch year eight, all

those twelve and thirteen-year-olds, just on the turn.  We're cooked,
finished, and obviously of no interest to the per vs

"No you're wrong," Emma said, suddenly perking up and running her
fingers through her wind-ravaged yellow hair.

"Look, there's that one from Ben's lot, the one who looks more like
someone's dad."

Daisy recognized the description before she actually saw Oliverand
immediately started arranging her long legs in a decorative pose,
leaning, seductively she hoped, against the goalpost with her skirt
'accidentally' hiked up and showing her gym knickers.  They were baggy
and truly horrible, and always referred to as 'bloody bloomers', but
nevertheless, Daisy reasoned, they were knickers, and from what she
heard Ben saying, that was what boys all wanted to have ac cess to,
visually or manually.

Daisy had a soft spot for Oliver; there was an Italian look about him,
very dark and knowing.  Holidaying at Lake Como when she was thirteen,
Daisy had been thrilled by the attention she had attracted from
waiters, cab drivers and strangers in the street a constant stream of
exotic, appreciative noises, hissings through dangerous white teeth,
low, sly whistles, deliciously rude-sounding foreign words, then the
covert squeezes and prods.

"Don't take any notice," Jenny had instructed her appalled that her
baby daughter was already being treated as a sex object.

"Don't meet their eyes and they'll leave you alone."

But Daisy had gazed brazenly into every passing velvet-dark eye, so
different from those of cold, gawky English boys, who blushed to the
roots of their acne if she so much as blinked at them.  Two years
later, on a chill English hockey pitch, Daisy could feel the glint in
Oliver's eyes from a hundred yards and suddenly sensed ice-cream and
sunshine.

"Don't hog it, Ben," Oliver ordered, reaching out his hand.  Ben
inhaled deeply and passed the loosely rolled spliff over to Oliver, who
took a well-practised toke.

"Not bad, this stuff.  Usual supplier?"

he asked Ben.

"Yeah.  But they're putting the price up for next time.  Unless we
order more, that is."

"Don't really need it do we?"  Oliver leaned contentedly on the
fence.

"Not when we can get off on watching totty like your little sister.  I
like a girl who hitches her skirt up instead of down when she knows a
bloke is looking.  It's a very promising sign."

Ben was watching Emma who was jogging up and down on the spot to keep
warm, her games skirt flashing her navy blue underwear at him.  It was
amazing, he thought, how those awful regulation knickers, so
unappealing when left drying stiffly on the laundry room radiator at
home, could actually become quite sexy when they were on a non-family
bottom.

A laugh rumbled from Oliver.

"Another time, we should bring binoculars, pretend we're doing a survey
on the incidence of black-headed gulls in London's open spaces or
something.  A good way of combining A-level biology with, well, A-level
biology."

"I'm spending my life spying on sporty women," Ben muttered.

"I'm getting a taste for it.  God what will I be like when I'm
sixty?"

Emma's legs were even firmer than Carol Mathieson's, but under those
awful knickers he knew there would be a barbed wire fence of
deceptively flimsy frills from Knickerbox.

"By sixty you'll probably have been arrested for it," Oliver concluded,
stubbing out the remains of the joint and making a private bet with
himself that he would personally dispose of Daisy Collins's virginity
before the end of the school year.

* * *

"Do say if you'd rather not, won't you?"  Laura Benstone's pretty,
ski-tanned face was peering anxiously at Jenny round the lilac tree by
the front gate.

Jenny, stiff from thinning out the dead bits of lavender in the hope
that it would last through the coming summer, stood up and tried to
straighten her back.

"Rather not what?"  she asked Laura warily.  Why did Laura always do
this, she wondered, start talking to her as if they'd already had half
the conversation?

"Your house of course!"  Laura said, with a smile as if she was about
to give Jenny a huge present.  Jenny flicked earth from her gardening
gloves and waited, smiling encouragingly.

"The people filming, they can't use mine because I've booked it out for
a fashion catalogue, all stills.  So they said could they possibly use
yours, as it's almost identical?"  Laura looked worried, as if it had
suddenly occurred to her that Jenny might not want two tons of film
equipment and thirty total strangers taking over her home.  But then
she cleverly pulled the plum from the pie: "You do get an awful lot of
money for it," and then she whispered, as if Neighbourhood Watch might
be all-hearing, as well as all-seeing, 'cash, if you prefer.  "

Jenny laughed That not the sort of thing you're supposed to say to the
wife of an accountant!  " she told Laura.

Laura looked momentarily confused and then grinned.

"Could be worse, darling," she replied pertly.

"You could be married to a tax inspector.  Anyway, will you do it?
Pretty please?  I hate to let them down, they might use someone else
next time and then I'd have to go out and get a proper job.  And we are
trying so hard for another baby .  "

Jenny really wished people wouldn't say things like that.  Into her
head rushed an unstoppable vision of Laura and Harvey having frenzied
sex in their kitchen against their vast Bosch Gourmet Food Centre,
magnetic plastic fridge letters clattering to the floor around their
feet like multi-coloured rain.  Jenny fiddled guiltily with her trowel
and tried to concentrate.

Laura, huge eyes staring appealingly out from under her dark fringe,
was looking alarmingly as if she might cry, making Jenny feel
personally responsible for the eventual size of Laura and Harvey's
family.

"OK, OK, I'll do it," Jenny told her.

"Or at least, they can come round and talk about it so I can find out
what's involved.  It'll have to be a stupendous amount of cash if it
means weeks of disruption, though," she warned Laura.

"It won't, I promise.  They only usually take one day.  Oh super,
you're wonderful!"  Laura gushed delightedly.

"I won't forget this, you and Alan must come to dinner."

Well if she couldn't get flute pupils, this would have to do instead,
Jenny thought as she scrubbed earth from under her nails in the
kitchen.  The spectre of a future on half the income with the same
expenses briefly chilled her again.  But just then the phone rang.

Perhaps it will be one of the answer phone parents ringing back at
last, Jenny thought, as she hastily dried her hands.

She liked the man's voice, there was a sense of humour in it.  She
didn't get much of that in the usual music-pupil parents.  Usually they
were too concerned with instrument prices, making sure they got their
full half-hour, and the whereabouts of the nearest Royal Academy
examination centre to waste time with friendly badinage; It would be
nice to teach a grown-up for once too, someone who was learning to play
because they had chosen to.

"Is my being disabled a problem?  Or, sorry, I should say, " physically
challenged" shouldn't I?"

"As long as you can hold a flute, it doesn't make any difference,"
Jenny told him, which for some reason made him laugh.

"How mobile are you?"  she then asked,

wondering if he intended to travel to her house and would need a ramp
for a wheelchair to get over the front doorstep.  There was probably
something in the shed that Alan could rig up.

"Oh, pretty mobile.  It's just the new feet, well you'll see."

Jenny rather hoped she wouldn't, not seeing their relevance to music.

"Have you got your own instrument?"  she then asked, and the cheery man
laughed again.

"Certainly have, love.  Never go anywhere without it!"

"You got him from an advert?  Flute lessons in a shop window?  Are you
mad?  You might as well have put " Friendly fellatio, thirty quid a
blast"!"  This wasn't the response Jenny had expected, when she went to
see Sue to show off about her new pupil.  Sue was in her kitchen,
stirring their lunch Waitrose lentil soup from a carton and looking
over her shoulder at Jenny with an expression of complete
astonishment.

"Are you the only person on the planet who doesn't know what 'flute
lessons' means when it's on a sleazy postcard?"

"It wasn't a sleazy postcard!  And no, I may be ridiculously naive but
I didn't know.  There's obviously a gap in my education," Jenny
retorted from Sue's kitchen table, where she was slicing the Waitrose
garlic bread (also from a carton).  "I put an ad, as I told you, in a
perfectly ordinary news agent window.  I didn't notice any French
lessons, Swedish massage or lists of Miss Whiplashes, anything like
that!"  Then she stopped slicing abruptly, and, knife poised, stared
horrified at Sue.

"Oh God what have I done?"

"Why, what have you done?  Given him your credit card number as
well?"

"Apart from booking him in for a lesson next Thursday at two, I asked
if he'd got his own instrument.  No wonder he laughed."

"Not surprised."  Sue took the soup to the table and giggled happily.

"I expect he said he was incredibly attached to it!"  She gave a
delighted snort, relishing the joke.

Jenny thought she could feel her face going pale.

"Don't laugh, he actually did say something like that.  Whatever is he
going to expect?"

"A blow job of course, and a good one.  What will you charge him?"

Jenny still looked pale, and also determinedly prim.

"For a flute lesson I charge 16 per hour, 9 for half an hour.  I
wouldn't do that to a stranger for any amount," she told Sue archly.
Sue's eyes twinkled, disbelieving.  Not these days, anyway, Jenny added
to herself.  It had been different back in the days when she'd once
found it the only way to keep herself in food and music papers.  For a
couple of weeks, well into an end-of-term overdraft, it had been that
or give up college altogether.  In terms of payment she'd have been
happy, if the clients only knew it, with just the sumptuous meals
they'd provided.  But that had all stopped when she met Alan and he'd
taken pity on her empty fridge.  She'd never told him.  Whatever would
have been the point?

Jenny made a decisive start on her soup, but Sue was waving her spoon
about and had a hard-thinking expression.

"You could charge a lot more than that, and it would only take a few
minutes" she calculated.

Jenny's spoon splashed into her soup.

"No I couldn't not for any price!"

"Bet you would!  Bet you'd do it for 50."  Jenny stared back coolly at
her, but Sue didn't give up.

"OK, but you'd do it for a thousand."

Jenny laughed.

"Oh well, for a thousand, I suppose most people would, unless they were
filthy rich already.

Yes, OK, I'd do it for that.  But I'm not being offered a thousand, I
shouldn't think anyone would be.  And I'm not doing it, I'm not a tart.
"

Sue had a triumphant grin on her face as she ripped apart a slice of
garlic bread.

"Ah, but it's like that old joke isn't it?  If you say you'll do it for
a thousand quid, then we've already established that a tart is what you
are, now we're just haggling about the price!"

Half an hour and the best part of a bottle of wine later, Sue and Jenny
were in the sitting-room, each reclining on a kelim-covered sofa and
clutching mugs of coffee.  Jenny liked the room, it reminded her of the
hippy dens that she and fellow students fashioned for themselves at
university long ago.  The walls were a cosy womb- red, though hung with
vivid, driftwood-framed abstract art rather than the concert posters
she had had, and the floor was swathed in a collection of ancient rugs.
Divorced from her pair of husbands, and with her sons away at a famous
public school, Sue lived, also student like in a state of perpetual
clutter; no-one had ever seen the surface of her desk, so strewn as it
was with letters and documents.  It only needs the smell of
joss-sticks, Jenny thought, and we could be way back then .

Sue broke into her thoughts.

"I mean, it's not as if you've never done it before, what could it
hurt?"

"My dignity, integrity?"  Jenny countered.

"Plus the fact that I'm supposed to be a happily married housewife?"

"Doubly titillating for your customer.  You could dress the part in
floral crimplene, fluffy slippers and a pinny," Sue argued.

"And where did the " happy" come from all of a sudden?  What about Alan
and whatever he's been up to lately?  Can't you think of it as sweet
and lucrative revenge?"

The wine and the warmth from Sue's log fire were making Jenny sleepy.

She looked out of the window across the main road to the ever-lively
estate.  No wonder Sue had a broader outlook on life, because,
compared with staring over the never-changing Close to number 15's neat
festoon blinds, a wider view was literally what Sue had.

"I did a lot of it in my teens for free I mean," Jenny admitted,
thinking aloud.

"It was to do with being Catholic.  We all knew we couldn't have sex,
that was a sin.  The nuns never mentioned the oral stuff, well they
wouldn't would they?"  Jenny smiled to herself at the very thought.

"As long as we didn't actually go all the way remember when it was
called that?  anything else was fine.  By the time we'd made it into
the sixth form, there were girls who'd seen as many dick-ends as
weekends and could still call themselves virgins."

"Well there you are then," Sue said, as if it was game, set and match
to her.

"And if you use these," she rumbled under the sofa and pulled out a
packet of condoms, 'they're labelled "assorted citrus flavour" , you'll
be able to close your eyes and pretend you're sucking a fruit gum.  "

I'll just have to explain it's just a dreadful mistake, Jenny thought
several days later.  She hadn't been at all organized, not even taking
the man's telephone number.  Even with a real music pupil she should
have done that, in case she had to cancel for some reason.  She should
have taken far more details.  She'd actually booked time to be alone in
her house with an unknown man; he could murder or rape her and she was
every kind of fool for being so casually negligent.  He'd said he was
called David Robbins, though if he was looking for something other than
a music lesson, it wasn't very likely to be his real name.  Jenny had a
cursory look in the phone book, but couldn't bring herself to phone any
of the twenty-seven possible numbers.  What could she say?

"Hello, this is Jenny Collins,

sorry but the service I provide isn't actually fellatio after all'?

Suppose she had to say it to twenty-seven different answering machines?
Would it be worse than saying it to his face, as she would obviously
have to?

Wherever she went, driving Harriet Caine and Polly to school, trailing
round Waitrose, restocking at the garden centre, Jenny searched for
cheerful-looking youngish men in wheelchairs.  The few she saw looked
miserable and ancient, wrapped up in hand-crocheted blankets and pushed
by weary women.  They looked more in need of a square meal than
anything furtively sexual.  She eyed drivers with 'disabled' stickers
on their cars, but couldn't see which bits of their bodies weren't in
full working order.  She even crept up behind a man on crutches outside
the local greengrocer's and started talking wildly about the inflated
price of cauliflowers, just so she could hear his voice.  Jenny thought
she'd recognize the sound of David Robbins's voice anywhere, a slight
Welsh lilt on the edge of breaking into a chuckle.  But the man on
crutches, possibly because his leg hurt, was devoid of humour and
sourly remarked, in an accent that was pompously London SW, that caul
is were always that price in February, hadn't she noticed?

On the day of David's appointed visit.  Jenny could barely think
straight for nerves.  Always quick to take advantage of a lapse in
concentration, Polly complained over breakfast of feeling a bit ill.

"It's like a cold starting," she said, putting on a pained look and
trying to make her voice sound croaky.

"You wouldn't want me to infect the whole class, would you Mum, not
with the entrance exams coming up?"

"What have the exams got to do with it?"  Jenny asked, determinedly
packing Polly's break-time snack for her and shoving it firmly into her
school bag.

Polly had a ready answer.

"All the other mothers would know it was your fault, for sending me to
school ill.  They'd say you'd done it on purpose, because I'd be better
by exam time and their children would all be horribly ill.  And they'd
All Fail!"

"They'd only know it was my fault if you told them," Jenny pointed out,
refusing to be threatened.  Polly was trying not to grin, relishing her
attempt at blackmail.

"She's only putting it on.  She's always doing it.  Spends half the day
up in the nurse's room pretending she's got a headache," said Daisy,
wishing she'd been that resourceful at Polly's age.  In five years'
time, she could foresee, Polly would never get caught doing something
as mundane as fare-dodging.  She'd be more likely to get away with
hijacking the entire train.

Polly pulled a face at Daisy.

"It's true," she bragged loudly, "I do get headaches.  Sister Hamilton
says I'll have to have a brain scan if I go on like this."  She passed
a dramatic hand across her brow and fluttered her eyelids.  Jenny and
Daisy laughed.

"That was Sister Hamilton's idea of a threat," Daisy said.

"Poor woman doesn't know Polly very well, or she'd realize all that
special attention would be just what she would love."

Eventually Polly gave up, trailed reluctantly out to Ceci Caine's car
and Jenny had the house to herself.  All she could do now was pray that
Polly wasn't really ill enough to be sent home from school.

Hardheartedly, but excusing herself on the grounds of protecting her
child from something worse, she switched on the telephone answering
machine so that if the school nurse called to demand that Polly be
collected and brought home, she could pretend to be out.

Pretending to be out, or actually going out were options that crossed
her mind more than once that morning as she did fervent house-cleaning
in an attempt to take her mind off David Robbins.  She phoned

Sue.

"I can't face him, not even to tell him there's a mistake.  Why don't
you come round and tell him for me?"  she pleaded.

"Not a chance.  I think you should go ahead and do it.  Think of the
money, think of the naughtiness of it, God knows you've behaved
yourself well enough over the years, you deserve a bit of fun."

"If you think it's such fun, why don't you come and do it instead?

After all, he won't know.  "

"Sorry, got a bikini wax booked up at the Club.  Anyway, there's just
an outside chance he really wants to learn to play the flute, and then
what would I do?  I got chucked out of recorder class at nine!"  Sue
argued, laughing down the phone.

"Either do it, or tell him you can't.

I bet you haven't even taken that card out of the news agent window yet
have you?  That should tell you whether you want to or not .  "

At lunch time, Jenny was on her way out of the house to do exactly that
when the phone rang.  With the front door open, she hovered in the
hallway, bag and car keys in hand, letting the machine do the
answering, but listening in case Polly had developed genuine pneumonia
during the morning and had been rushed to hospital.

"Alan, it's Serena," she heard.

"Look, sorry to ring you at home but I can't make Thursday night.  Do
you think we could do it next week instead?  I hope you haven't already
got the tickets ..."

The voice was young, breathy and eager.  Jenny froze.  So darling' had
a name, she was reality, flesh and blood and voice.  She was being
taken somewhere by some one else's husband, somewhere that required
tickets:

theatre?  a concert?  So Alan was besotted enough to arrange
something.

It was usually Jenny who did all this Alan seemed to think that turning
up at the right place in more or less suitable clothes was an adequate
contribution to their social life.  Now he was showing himself capable
of organizing one of his own, 'playing away' Jenny had heard hearty
rugby types calling it.

"Hope I'm not too early."  Jenny, through heart- pounding misery, heard
a voice by the door.

"I didn't expect this place to be so easy to find."

With a choice of doing her explaining right there on the doorstep,
with, just yards from her front gate, Carol Mathieson bossily
supervising the erection of Neighbourhood Watch placards to one of the
Close's three street lamps, or foolishly inviting the stranger into her
home.  Jenny instantly opted for danger.  David Robbins, firmly
supported by a pair of sturdy crutches, lumbered into her kitchen and
heaved himself into the rocking chair.  He didn't, Jenny noticed
heart-sin kingly have a flute with him.

"Tea or coffee?"  Jenny asked, resorting to the safety of social graces
while she decided what to do.

"Tea would be nice," he said, giving her an odd, attractive smile.  He
looked, she thought, as if he was beginning to think he might be the
one who had to come up with an explanation for a mistake.  And no
wonder, she realized, filling the kettle and bustling around in a
domestic sort of way.  How often do people visit tarts in cosy,
affluent suburban homes, children's paintings on the walls, cat on the
window ledge and homework abandoned on the kitchen table?  Then she
remembered Cynthia Payne and the luncheon voucher parties in
Streatham.

"I parked round the corner and staggered up the road.  Never know which
to do really," he said, grinning at Jenny.

"Can't work out which one draws less attention, not with these."  He
prodded at his legs.

"If you don't mind me asking, what happened?"  she asked.

"And do you want sugar in this?"  I can't believe this is happening,
she thought.

It's like one of those near-death things, I feel like I'm watching
myself from the ceiling.  He was a good-looking man.  Sue would be
kicking herself if she saw him, not one she'd imagine

having any trouble attracting women.  What was he doing here?

"Accident with a train.  I did think of telling people it was a
Falklands land mine or frostbite from guiding Ranulph Fiennes across
Antarctica, but the truth tends to come out."  David Robbins stirred
his tea thoughtfully and looked at Jenny.

"Wife went off after that.

We're in the last stage of divorcing now.  At first she made jokes
about me being permanently legless, but it was all a front.  I think
there was someone else anyway.  "

"You live round here, do you?"  Jenny asked tentatively, nervous that
she might come across him some time in the Waitrose car park.

"Cardiff.  But no-one fits limbs like they do at Roehampton.  They made
my new feet.  I feel like Douglas Bader.  Now and then I come up for a
spot of adjustment, and for this sort of thing.  Suits me right now not
to look for anyone long-term."  He gave her a shyish grin and Jenny
could feel a blush.  She wanted to ask him why he thought he had to pay
for sex, but was afraid to cross over from the safety of small talk.

There was a silence, broken only by the busy sounds outside of Carol
and her workmen, scrabbling busily about with ladders and hammers.

"You haven't done this before have you?"  David Robbins said softly. He
was looking slightly past Jenny to where her flute was in its usual
place in the conservatory.

"But you know what it's all about.  It's not music."

"No, it's not music," Jenny agreed, knowing this was the moment to
explain the mistake.

In the end it was quite easy.  It wasn't music, and Sue had been right,
it was much more profitable.  Jenny had forgotten how exhilarating
feeling truly, secretly wicked could be.  In plenty of time to collect
Polly from school and rush her on to a ballet class, she spent twenty
minutes in the shower washing away any lingering feelings of guilt,
counted her money and stashed it, together with the rest of the citrus
flavoured condoms, in a rhine stoned evening bag at the back of her
underwear drawer.  Must remember for next time, she thought, to welling
her wet hair, the lime flavour isn't up to much.

Chapter Six

Jenny spent several days hugging her shameful secret to herself, hardly
daring to leave the house in case she blurted it out to someone in the
street.  She felt that if she allowed herself out, let loose in public,
she would be sure to be accosted by someone doing a survey, and would
confess, when asked, her new occupation.

"I fellate strange men for money," she could hear herself announcing
loudly to a bored student with a clipboard trying to sell insurance in
a crowded shopping precinct.  To keep herself under some sort of
control she stayed home and fed the family on long-stored, unlabelled
casseroles from the freeze rand when the cat food ran out she
extravagantly opened a can of best dolphin-friendly tuna for the
delighted Biggies.

From the safety of her window she watched Paul Mathieson looking
proudly up at the Neighbourhood Watch sign on the street lamp outside
his house, and gleefully she thought, here's one crime you haven't
spotted yet, right under your nose.  How ecstatically horrified Carol
would be, too.  A few months ago she had walked down the Close with
them as Jenny was taking Polly to one of her disco classes ("Makeup
already at your age dear?"  Carol had commented, eyeing Polly's
dazzlingly lurid lycra outfit set off by Barbie- pink lipstick) when a
teenager from the estate had crossed the road in front of them wheeling
frothily- frilled twins in an absolute Rolls-Royce of a pram.

"Three guesses how she paid for that," she had sniffed, shocking
Jenny.

"Can't guess, you'll have to tell me!"  Polly had piped up, earning
one of Carol's Looks.

"Her mother, hire purchase, or borrowed?"  Jenny had suggested,
refusing to play.

Jenny expected a suitable feeling of guilt to creep up on her in time,
as she imagined it should, but every time it threatened, she thought of
Alan and how effortlessly he was running his new romance alongside his
wife and family.  His was the greater betrayal, Jenny concluded, for
she wasn't involved with anyone, merely propping up the faltering
family finances.  Every now and then the name "Serena' popped
menacingly into her head, with its connotations of home-counties
nice-girl, someone clean, placid, undemanding and un challenging The
thought of her rival left Jenny with a compulsion to work at being
defiantly the opposite. She hadn't mentioned the message on the answer
phone to Alan.  If challenged (and how likely was that?) she would
simply shrug and tell him it must have got lost or forgotten or
something.  Daisy tended to monopolize the phone and its accoutrements,
considering them by rights her personal property, so Alan would not be
too surprised.

"Can't you just imagine what she's like?"  Jenny asked Sue days later,
reluctantly emerging from the house to meet her for Polly's tennis
lesson and after-school tea at the club.

"I bet she's thirtyish, thinnish, dimmish, and wears co-ordinating
shades of beige.  And I bet she's got a blue-rinsed widowed
dragon-mother in Surrey who plays bridge in the afternoons."

Serena the name had an unquestionable, middleclass self-certainty to
it, like Fiona and Arabella, Melissa and Camilla.  They were names of
posh girls recalled from Jenny's childhood, girls in fiction, or from
the intriguing boarding school hidden away behind trees on the hill
near her home.  Her own friends at the grammar school had had names
like

Christine, Wendy and Sandra, with at least three other Jennifers.  It
was galling to think that the name Serena still could make her feel
socially inferior, when it was Serena, not her, who seemed to be
prepared to have an affair with a married man.  On the other hand,
Jenny then grudgingly reasoned, it was a Jennifer, not a Serena, who
was sitting here on the tennis club balcony, having spent a suburban
afternoon working as a prostitute.

Sue, who was far less interested in Alan's love life than in Jenny's
professional one, did her best to be consoling.

"Well if she's really that dreadful, he won't be interested for long,
you can guarantee.

It's just one of those symptoms of the male menopause, something young
and pretty and impressionable.  Men just like to check they've still
got the old pulling power.  Once he's feeling reassured that he has,
it'll be all over.  "

"Yes, I know.  I just have to wait it out and he'll be back to lolling
sleepily in front of the fire all evening like an ageing labrador.

What I'm afraid of is that I won't like him at all by then, for having
felt he had to do it, and it will all be too late," Jenny said with a
sigh.

"Why can't he be like other men and just go in for buying purple shoes,
or fast cars?  The male menoPorsche, it should be called, seeing as
that's what they start wanting in their forties."

"Well don't worry, it doesn't last.  Now tell me all about the
customer!"  Sue said with indecent impatience.

"I got a good look at him, he parked outside my house.  Utterly
gorgeous, I thought.  I'd have done it for nothing.  Is he coming back
for more?  Will he get to be a regular?  And if he does, will you
introduce me?"

Jenny squirmed, and wished she was safely alone in Waitrose, or doing a
shift in the school library, anywhere but here with Sue and her
vicarious fascination.  She really was worse than Polly for wanting to
know intimate and lurid details.  Polly at least was safely out of
earshot, having her first outdoor tennis lesson of the year down on the
court below with five other ten-year-olds.  She should just tell Sue
nothing had happened, that she really was too much of a prissy little
housewife to consider prostitution as a viable career option.  But
whenever she thought of David Robbins and what she had done, a
distressingly uncontrollable smile spread across her face, along with
the certainty that she was blushing.  In an attempt to keep her face
straight, she looked down at the women and the children's class on the
tennis courts, all dressed in similar regulation little white outfits,
with the latest Air-Wear tennis shoes, none of them the sort to
challenge the club rules by breaking the dress code.  A bunch of
Serenas, all of them, she thought, opting to tell the truth, and be
damned.

"It was good fun.  Just like being young and free again," she said
decisively, giving Sue a smile of pleased radiance.

"Extremely free," she added, feeling the happy blush coming on white
was too dazzling a colour for tennis, she thought, reaching down into
her bag for a disguise of sunglasses.  Something else was dazzling her,
too, little flashes of sunlight as if someone was using a mirror to
catch the light and was shining it in her direction.  Perhaps a magpie
in a tree with a stolen piece of jewellery, she wondered, maybe the
dinky kind of slim gold bangle she imagined a Serena would wear.

Carol was dusting Paul's attic study, spraying jets of polish and
rubbing firmly at the veneered surfaces.  Mrs.  MacNee did the rest of
the house, but Carol always told her firmly that Paul wouldn't have
anyone touch his study, no-one but her.  She didn't trust anyone not to
peek into the box containing his sacred Masonic kit, or go
investigating the files relating to his honorary

treasury of the sailing club, or poke about among the drying prints
hanging in his darkroom.  Radio Two trilled beside her as she worked,
and every now and then she glanced out of the high window to check who
was coming and going in the Close below.  Paul's telescope, with which
he studied the movements of the planets, kept getting in her way as she
polished and tidied, banging her on the shoulder and prodding her neck
as she moved briskly round the room, sorting Paul's crisp new
Neighbourhood Watch files (one for each household) into street-number
order on the new Ikea shelving unit.  She took a quick look into the
one marked "Number 14, Collins', found no entries yet, and wondered if
she should' make a note of the rather attractive hobbling man who had
called on Jenny several days before.  Perhaps he was just reading a
meter or something, she decided, Paul's Parker pen poised in her
hand.

Or perhaps he was from the insurance company, calling about the ruined
wall.  She rather hoped he'd call on her next time too, she thought, as
she wrote blond handsome visitor (male early 40s?  ), purpose unknown,
1. 45 p. m. on 21st' in the folder.  She filed it away with the rest
and looked down into the road.  Mrs.  Fingell was putting a
newspaper-wrapped parcel into one of her many dustbins.  Whatever was
in that, Carol wondered, knowing in reality that it was probably
nothing more sinister than potato peelings.

That was the trouble with taking on responsibility for the
neighbourhood, it made you exceptionally suspicious about other
people's behaviour.  But then, she reasoned, someone had to be, crime
figures were rising all the time, and some people weren't even
bothering to report domestic burglaries any more, as the police were so
unlikely to catch the culprits.  Every night, police sirens wailed past
the end of the Close, heading for some thieving villain gone to earth
in the depths of the estate.  Every week she scanned the local paper,
counting up the number of charges brought against the crooks who lived
so near, propping up her firm belief that a whole criminal culture was
born and not made.  Reading, she gave a little sigh of grateful relief
every time she saw the words 'remanded in custody'.  That was what they
deserved.  She didn't for a moment believe what Jenny had once told
her, that many people, innocent or not, spent home-destroying months in
remand centres simply because, unlike perhaps multi-million pound
fraudsters, they had no owner-occupier families who could promise bail
money She and Paul, wondering if they were right to trust their burglar
locks, lay awake and watchful in the noisy nights, picturing the
sordid, syringe-littered stairways, the graffitied walls, certain that
chaos and riot were only a half-brick's throw away.

Carol finished her dusting and filing, and adjusted Paul's telescope.

By standing on an upturned box, she managed to focus it, not as it
usually was on the heavens, but on houses and gardens around and below
her.  Heady with authority, she inspected all the gardens within range,
noting the appalling weeds in Sue Kennedy's, practically a jungle, she
thought, clicking her tongue with disgust, making a mental note to have
a little word at the next opportunity.  Then, with some adjustment she
could, she found, focus right into the Collins's conservatory and after
only the smallest hesitation, with self-righteous delicacy she focused
right out again, over beyond the edge of the council estate -towards
the river and, to her surprise, on to the tennis club balcony.  So
that's what they do in the afternoons, she thought primly, watching
Jenny and Sue giggling together over cups of coffee.  Sue was smoking
too, which, Carol thought, rather defeated the point of expensive
membership of a health club.  I do wish I could hear what they're
saying, she thought, with fervent curiosity.

"Why are we going to Laura and Harvey's?  We've never been there
before, and they haven't been here, so they don't owe us."  Dressing
for dinner on a Thursday night, Alan was reluctant to go.  He very much
preferred being the one who did the cooking.  Other people's cooking,
unless it was a sanctified, Michelin-starred chef, was unlikely to be
up to his own standard.  He tried hard, but he couldn't enjoy an
under-spiced stew masquerading as Daube de Boeuf, or soy-drenched
Anglo-Thai messes adapted according to availability of ingredients,
from a selection of currently fashionable cookbooks.

You'd bloody well want to go if sodding Serena asked you to, Jenny
hissed at him from the safety of the bathroom, and then said, "It's
because of the film people; I agreed we'd talk to them, remember?  It's
just Laura being grateful."

"I just hope she's grateful enough to know I can't face any chi-chi
attempts at squid in its own ink.  No-one gets it right, they always
cook it till it's the texture of car tyres," Alan grumbled.

"You're very hard to cook for, you realize that don't you?  Soon no-one
will invite us to eat with them at all," Jenny said, emerging from the
bathroom to rummage in the wardrobe for her black silk skirt.  She
wondered whether to combine it with her comfy chenille sweater or her
translucent cream shirt, and if it was worth making an effort to look
good at all, with Alan in such a mood.  She tied her hair back with a
yellow scarf and immediately, with her angular jawline ex posed, felt
about ten years younger.

"You put people off- they're afraid of your ludicrously high standards.
It's like asking bloody Escoffier round for supper.  I think Laura's
very brave."

"You said she was very grateful.  So she should be, these film people
mean we'll be mucking up our tax returns.  Once you start admitting to
that kind of freelance operation going on in the house, they'll never
be off our backs.  Every year they'll bung in an estimated assessment,
you'll see."

Jenny zipped up her skirt" and pulled the chenille sweater out of the
drawer, opting for comfort over glamour, seeing as Alan was giving no
sign that he was the slightest bit interested in what she looked
like.

Time was, she recalled, he'd have fondled her gently as he fastened her
zip for her, or commented on the transparency of the shirt.

Instead he was looking grumpy, searching through a drawer for
cufflinks.

"Is there somewhere else you'd rather be?"  Jenny suddenly asked
bravely, challenging him in the mirror, hairbrush in her hand.

"I

mean, if you'd rather not come out with me, please do say.  We're not
chained together, I can go on my own.  " Here's your chance, she
thought, take it or forever leave it.  Alan left it.

"No, no I'll come.  It's been a tough week, that's all, and the next
one looks like being no better.  Accountants' bills seem to come last
on everyone's priority list."  He smiled, and ruffled Jenny's newly
brushed hair.

"Sorry, Pudding.  I'll stop complaining and I'll do my best to be
sociable, and anyway I want to know about these film people, and how
much they're going to be messing up my kitchen."

"I'm sure they won't mind if you load your entire batt erie de cuisine
into crates and get Harrods to take it into storage."  Jenny smiled
sympathetically at him.

"Just try to think of the money; even after tax it could be a whole
term's school fees."

"What I am thinking," Alan confessed with a sly grin, 'is that if we do
have to go out for dinner at least Laura and Harvey are within
staggering distance of home and we can drink as much as we like.  "

Laura and Harvey lived in one of the prettiest houses

in the Close.  It was the same, structurally, as Jenny and Alan's but
maintained, like a model always ready for the photographer, in the most
pristine condition.  Looking at the fresh clean paintwork, Jenny
wondered if it was really true that film companies who found something
lacking in the decor of their chosen locations, actually did repaint at
their own expense.  Thinking about her flaking front door, she hoped
they did.  It would also be a good persuasion point for Alan.

The Benstone's front garden, with the camellias gone, was rather
exposed, but the front windows and porch were charmingly trailed with
clematis in spring followed by tiny, delicately scented pink roses in
the summer.  Tubs of topiaried box-hedge stood squarely each side of
the front doorstep, under planted with white anemones, which would be
followed later by Cambridge blue trailing lobelia.  Miraculously slug
free delphiniums and foxgloves grew in front of the sitting-room
windows, giving the impression in the early summer of a cottage garden
of Gertrude Jekyll- style opulence.  The feeling of effortless
extravagance continued inside the house, with generous swathes of crisp
Designers' Guild chintz at the windows, polished blond wood floors, and
a pair of elfin daughters appealingly dressed in multi-coloured layers
of exorbitantly priced Oilily clothes.

Jenny, trailing the reluctant Alan, rang the Benstone's doorbell, and
was welcomed in by Harvey wearing a limp and faded rugby club
sweatshirt, which didn't at all go with the elegance of his
surroundings.

"Do come in!"  he bellowed at them, waving a half-full glass of wine.

"Lovely to see you!"  and then towards the kitchen he yelled, "Emily,
keep hold ofPushka!"  Laura, spring-fresh in Monsoon voile, drifted
gracefully out of the kitchen, closing the door on a small daughter
clutching a struggling tabby cat, and the usual pantomime of air-kisses
followed.

Laura took Jenny and Alan into the sitting-room and started pouring
glasses of wine.

"Do sit down.  Sorry one of the sofas is missing, we had a Mothercare
shoot in here yesterday and it had to look like a playroom.  You should
have seen it, rocking horses and blu-tacked bunny pictures everywhere!
Fiona and George Pemberton should be here any minute.  Did I mention
that they were coming too?"

"No, actually you didn't," Jenny said, her social smile congealing,
dreading facing Fiona for an evening of light entertainment.  Which of
them would get drunk enough to mention the incident of Polly and the
Playboy magazine she wondered, hoping it would be Fiona and not Alan,
who, when she had told him about it, had found the tale boyishly
amusing.

"I did think of asking Sue from the end house, make it a real
neighbours' evening.  But we couldn't think of a suitable man."

' Sue can usually dredge one up all by herself, given ten minutes
notice or so," Alan said.

"Not that they're essential of course, even numbers," Laura said
doubtfully, glancing towards her dining room and her carefully balanced
table arrangements.

A few moments later, Fiona made her usual majestic entrance, followed
by a rather droopy-looking George.

"Sorry we're late, " Fiona boomed, sidestepping Harvey's attempt to
kiss her by thrusting her jacket at him, "George fell asleep watching
the golf.  He's no good at late nights, likes to have a little nap
first."  George smiled placidly enough, but Jenny noticed him take a
vicious kick at a stray piece of Lego.

"Well actually," Laura went and stood next to Harvey, linking her arm
through his and smiling winsomely, 'we can't have too late a night, if
none of you mind.  " She gave a little giggle and peeked out from under
her fringe.

"I'm ovulating, you see."

Harvey, pink to the edge of his greying moustache,

disentangled his arm and busied himself with the drinks tray.

"Her and the bloody cat," he said, clinking ice.

"Have to keep her shut in, or she'll get herself up the duff with the
nearest torn.  Spends all day yowling and rolling around," he said,
with an embarrassed at tempt at a laugh.  The entire group froze,
collectively imagining the elegant Laura, not the cat, rolling on the
Afghan kelim and howling out of the window in a frenzy of sexual
longing.

"Probably something to do with the moon," Jenny contributed at last,
glancing across at Fiona and thinking surely a headmistress could be
relied on to find a subject to change to.

"Women in one house do tend to synchronize.  Perhaps it even extends to
cats."  Alan, she noticed, was downing his drink rather fast, staring
fixedly beyond the group and through the open door towards the
dining-room.  She followed his gaze and together they watched as, on
the immaculately laid table, all shining silver, polished glass and
artlessly casual flower arrangements, the said cat was slyly picking
its delicate way towards the butter dish, and finding it, was then
licking rapturously.

"Trying for a boy," Laura, clutching a glass of mineral water,
confessed coyly.

"I do think men like to have a son, really, deep down, don't they?"

"Can't think why.  Not much sense in men, really," Fiona argued.

"I

spend all my time teaching girls that they can achieve anything that
they want without're lying on men.  "

Laura gave a small laugh.

"But not making babies they can't!"  she said.  Fiona gave her a cool
grin.

"It's only a matter of time ..."

she said with foreboding, looking sideways at George, who was studying
Laura's maple-wood bookshelves full of fat blockbusters.

"Shall we eat?  Just a simple peasanty meal tonight, I bet you haven't
tried tapenade, sort of squashed olive thing, I made it to go with the
lamb ..."  Harvey was confiding to Alan as he led him towards the
dining table.  Jenny crossed her fingers and willed Alan not to mention
that this was the third dose of highly fashionable tapenade he'd been
treated to in six weeks, none of which so far had measured up to his
own version.  She also prayed he wouldn't start wittering on about the
lamb rare breeds were his current passion, and he was quite likely to
baffle poor, well-meaning Harvey with questions about whether the sheep
was a Soay or a Shetland, when it was most probably shamefully
anonymous.

Jenny had a close look at the butter dish as she sat down the butter
along one side looked suspiciously serrated, presumably the pattern of
the cat's tongue, and it was now too late and totally impossible to
mention it.  She tried not to think about what else might have gone on,
cat-wise, while they were cooking in the kitchen.

'. And the poor little sod's fanny, all swollen up and bloody.

Randy little animal keeps licking it, and rolling around on her back.

Moggy masturbation I suppose.  " Harvey, well into the pudding and
heading for a state of drunkenness that wouldn't help his chances of
procreation that night, was clutching the struggling tabby cat on his
lap as he ate the strawberry tart.  Any moment now, Alan thought with
nausea, Harvey would raise the cat's tail and show them its genitals,
right there across the table.  The cat escaped to the floor and Alan
flinched as Harvey finger-fed dollops of sumptuous home-made ice-cream
to it as it padded round his chair and Jenny tried not to link thoughts
of blood with the raspberry could is on her plate.  George was keeping
up a constant chortling rumble, as if he couldn't believe his luck,
coming out for a neighbourly supper and stumbling on such a madhouse.

"And how is your music coming along?"  Fiona asked

Jenny, rather as if she was talking to one of her fourth formers.

Jenny, nevertheless, appreciated Fiona's effort to switch the topic
from the Benstone family's collective fecundity.

"Well I've lost a few pupils just lately.  I'm in the process of
finding some more."  This was the moment to ask about teaching at the
school, while she had Fiona captive in a state of dinner-party good
manners.  She hesitated, knowing that if she was going to get a job at
the High School, Fiona would have to be given a moment to come up with
the idea herself, but the pause was scuppered by Alan.

"Need another flute teacher at your school, Fiona?  Recorder and
piccolo chucked in free, so to speak?"  he chipped in clumsily.  Jenny
lashed out at him furiously with her foot and connected instead with
something soft and yielding.  There was a bitter yowl from under the
table.

"There she goes again!  I can get my whole next episode of Keep It In
The Family out of that cat!"  Harvey yelled delightedly, poking about
under the table to retrieve his anguished pet.

Fiona glared around the table, her gaze coming to rest on Alan, seeing
as Harvey's head was under the tablecloth.  With her full command of
grandeur she answered him.

"I'm afraid we have our full quotient of peripatetic staff, just at the
present," she said.  Jenny smirked and bit her lip so as not to giggle.
She could just imagine Alan later that night, mincing about the bedroom
stark naked, putting on Fiona's air of majestic pomposity and quoting
her words.

"Very Bronte-esque, your daughters' names: Emily and Charlotte," George
suddenly said to Laura.

"If you do get a son, will you be calling him Branwell to match?"

"Absolutely not," Harvey answered for his wife.

"Wasn't he a drunk?"

"Certainly was.  Probably felt in awe of the over achieving women folk
in his family," George said, winking at Jenny and helping himself to a
large portion of Brie.

"Names are so important," Fiona chimed in.

"At school I come across some sadly unsuitable choices.  Parents should
be far more careful and think ahead.  Take Grace, well that's asking
for trouble.  The ones we get are invariably vast and clumsy creatures
and honestly, I mean, can you see a Talullah for example, taking up
quantum physics, and being taken seriously at it?"

No, Jenny thought suddenly with pain, you need a name like bloody
Serena for that kind of thing.

"I always think your girls have such pretty names," Fiona went on,
turning to Jenny.

"Polly and Daisy- they always remind me of Victorian parlour maids She
gave a tinkling little laugh, and Alan said to Jenny with a grin, "
Well there go our daughters' chances of a Nobel Prize for biochemistry.
Doomed from the font.  "

The party broke up when Laura, having served coffee very quickly after
the cheese, became clearly fidgety.  Any moment now, Jenny thought, she
will be checking her temperature and going to splash on some more
Giorgio.  Fascinated, they all watched as Laura gazed lovingly into
Harvey's unfocused eyes and crooned, "I don't think you should drink
any more, darling."

Bit late, Jenny thought, obeying the signals, and gathering her
thoughts and her handbag together.  George, amused and bloody-minded,
sat back in his chair and started chatting amiably about half-hardy
annuals, until Fiona stood up and stated briskly to him, "Time to go,
it's getting late.  Charming meal, you two, you must come to us
soon."

Alan repeated a similar version of the same words and suddenly the four
of them were on the doorstep.  Jenny, just about to turn off towards
her own house, suddenly felt George's hand on her arm.  Looking up

quickly she caught George grinning slyly at her.

"You could try advertising your flute lessons," he said quietly.

"Though you know what you might get instead of pupils don't you?"  He
had a very cunning look in his eyes.

"Yes I know exactly what I might get," Jenny told him quietly, and then
added recklessly, 'and it pays a hell of a lot better than bloody
music.  "

Chapter Seven

"They won't be back till at least eleven," Ben promised Daisy.

"You've got plenty of time to try getting out and back in again.  You
don't actually have to go anywhere."

"I might as well, once I'm out.  I'll go and see Emma for an hour.  I
don't intend to risk my life and then waste the effort."  Daisy pulled
on a pair of ancient and terminally uncool trainers, hoping no-one out
in the dark would recognize her in them.  The Doc Martens wouldn't do
at all, not for climbing out of her window down via the conservatory
roof to the back garden.  They were much too heavy and inflexible.  On
the night of Sophie's party, she'd have to change into them at
Emma's.

Even getting over the back fence would be difficult, with the
mouldering compost heap, the honeysuckle threaded through with lethal
blackberry thorns and the gate double-locked against intruders from the
Common.

"You look just like a burglar.  Where are you going?"  Polly, her face
peering with intense curiosity round Daisy's bedroom door, couldn't
bear to miss out if something was going on.

"You're not going out, are you Daisy?"  she said with thrilled
relish.

"You're still grounded!

You're not allowedV "I'm not going out Polly, not exactly," said Daisy,
wondering what kind of a bribe it would take to get round Polly.

"No, she's not going out," Ben joined in quickly.

"She's just, er, just practising forum the Duke of

Edinburgh award.  She has to learn how to do some climbing, that's
all.

It's called an initiative test.  " Polly looked disbelieving, so Ben
tried appealing to her sense of conspiracy.

"Only don't tell Mum, because Daisy's trying to make up for being bad
by doing this as a surprise.  Think how pleased they'll be when Daisy
gets a medal."

Polly's expression was of deep calculation.

"No-one gets a medal for being able to climb out of a window," she
said, with a knowing look.

Then she conceded, "I'll think about it.  A Snickers bar would help,"
she said eventually.

"I'll pick one up at the shop on the estate," Daisy promised, opening
her window.

"Now don't forget, Polly, it's a surprise.  OK?"

It looked an awfully long way down, really.  Much further than it
looked from down below.  It had seemed such a good idea when she and
Emma had discussed it at school.  Now it seemed ludicrously Famous
Fiveish, scrambling down the drainpipe dressed in camouflage black, to
escape the villainous captors.  Except that in this case the captors
were her terminally insensitive parents.  It would be more of a giggle
if Ben would do it with her, but he had refused, saying that two of
them would make too much noise, and besides, when he went to Sophie's
party he intended to go the easy way, out through the front door.  With
immense care, Daisy put a foot over the windowsill and felt around in
the dark for a foothold on the ridge pole of the conservatory.

"You OK?"  Ben called from the safety of her bed.

Daisy glared at him.

"Seeing as I've still got most of me inside the room, yes Ben, I'm OK
so far, thanks for asking," she retorted with sarcasm.

"You should try this, it isn't that easy."  It was all right for him,
she thought, lying there all limp and gangly like an abandoned string
puppet.  He was so long, he could probably step straight out of the
window down to the ground, though he'd probably manage to knock out
every pane of glass from the conservatory on the way.

"You should try paying your train fares, then you wouldn't have to try
this either!"  he snapped back.

"I'm on your side, remember."  And mine, he admitted to himself,
knowing for certain that if Daisy made it to Sophie's party the next
weekend, her desirable friend Emma would be sure to be there too.

Holding on to the loo window ledge and levering herself carefully
across the conservatory roof, Daisy jumped down to the ground by way of
the upturned pile of flower pots on the garden table.  For a few
moments she stood leaning against the wall, shaking with nerves and
fear.  It would be all right next time, she knew.  It was only that
first attempt that would unnerve her.  Next time, she'd be down from
her window as lithely as Biggies.

Daisy now wanted, really, to go back into the house lie around on the
sofa for the evening and watch TV, but bravado, and the need to appease
Polly, made her stride off up the road towards the shop on the corner
of the estate.  She felt more than slightly silly, dressed all in black
and with her face streaked with charcoal from the barbecue kit.  She
was sure that anyone who saw her would think she was some kid playing
Let's Join The SAS.  But Ben had insisted, saying that she must
minimize her chances of being seen, especially with the Neighbourhood
Watch on constant alert.

She phoned Emma from the payphone on the corner and was quite relieved
to discover she was out.  It was nearly ten already, and if the parents
got sudden food-poisoning at the Benstone's, or had a row with Harvey
about the overall dismal quality of the British sitcom, they could be
home any time now.  Daisy hung around in the shadows outside the estate
news agent until she was sure there were no hostile

crowds of rag ga boys inside who could mistake her, in her black
disguise, for a Goth and beat her up, bought the Snickers bar and
strode back down the Close, keeping tight in against the hedges and
overhanging trees.  As she climbed up to the roof of the conservatory
again, using the terrace bench as a step-ladder, she started to
relax.

This is quite easy, she thought, just so long as the parents assume I'm
in my room doing homework, I could get away with this.

She'll never believe me, Paul thought to himself as he peered down from
the attic, eyes screwed up against the dark.  She'll accuse me of
crying Wolf, especially after last time, with the bomb that wasn't a
bomb.  Only his terror of Carol's scorn kept Paul from rushing straight
to the telephone and dialling 999.  And perhaps she was right, it might
be as well to double-check.

He squinted down into the Close again, wishing his telescope and his
multi-lensed Nikon camera had the wonderful kind of night vision that
made such brilliant TV programmes about badger-watching.  Then, when
the police asked him to inspect a line-up of potential felons, he would
be able to astound them with his unswervingly precise identification,
or even an amazingly sharp photo.  He would put together a Photo-fit
picture that would have the villain skulking in his home, terrified to
go out.  He could just imagine it, the local police chief emerging from
the courtroom and congratulating him personally: "We dream of witnesses
as observant as you, Sir."  There would be something in the local
paper; he might be described as a community leader.  Excited now, Paul
made a note of the time in the file for number 14 (Collins).  He then
had another look down into the Close.  The dark figure was still there,
struggling a bit, halfway up the Collins's conservatory and heading for
one of their bedroom windows.  And Jenny and Alan, he knew, were at
the Benstones, he'd watched them go earlier.  Their poor defenceless
children, alone in that house, at the mercy of a ruthless cat burglar.
It was no good, even if he had to drag Carol up to the loft so show her
and so waste precious time, he would have to get the police.  Wasn't
that what Neighbourhood Watch was all about?

The police car, blue light whirling and making eerie shadows on the
trees, passed Alan and Jenny as they walked up the Close towards
home.

"Hope it's not old Mrs.  Fingell," Alan commented.

"Poor old thing, all alone with that smelly orange dog, anything could
happen."  Jenny hoped it wasn't her, too.  Like everyone else in the
Close, she put a generous amount in the annual Help the Aged envelope,
and had once shovelled snow off Mrs.  Fingell's path (leaving it
treacherously icy), but when it came to real helping, on a day-to-day
shopping-and-mopping basis, they all quailed before the rank seediness
of Mrs.  Fingell's existence.  The Close residents who actually
ventured inside number 21 tended to be those who, out of curiosity, or
a desire to reconstruct original decorative features, wanted to see
what their own houses had looked like in the days before modernization.
Awestruck, they had all reported a magnificent claw-footed bath,
original but crumbling cornices and an odour of pre-war squalor that
quite took the breath away.  Everyone who had been in Mrs.  Fingell's
kitchen agreed that the council should provide her with at least a Home
Help.

Jenny and Alan arrived at their gate at the same time as the police car
which screeched to a halt beside them.  Suddenly a far more appalling
scenario than an injured Mrs.  Fingell sprang to Jenny's mind.

Suppose David Robbins had really been an undercover vice squad
member?

Was she about to be arrested for keeping a disorderly house as the
quaint old-fashioned charge called it?  Or, as was more likely (the
wearing of two

false feet being quite an extreme disguise for even a plain-clothes
cop) had he discovered that he could get services such as Jenny had
provided for a quarter of the price and twice the expertise in King's
Cross, and grassed on her in a fit of outraged consumer pique?  Jenny
felt prickles of perspiration and her heartbeat rocketed up to danger
level.

"Report of attempted burglary," a bearded police man said, pushing past
them and up their path.

"Got a key?"  he asked, as Jenny and Alan stood on the path unmoving
and puzzled.

"Yes, of course, but there are three people in there.  Or at least
there should be," Jenny told him, shaky with relief but suddenly
fearful that only vulnerable little Polly might be in the house, alone
facing a ruthless team of professional robbers, Ben and Daisy having
callously abandoned her for the sake of some unmissable teenage
jollies.

"We got someone round the back, they won't get away," the policeman
said with commendable confidence as Alan opened the front door.

"What's the matter, what's Daisy done now?"  Polly in her Mickey Mouse
pyjamas hovered at the bottom of the stairs, riveted by the sight of
the policeman.

"Why?"  the policeman asked her, speedily picking up on a possible line
of enquiry.

"What has Daisy done before?"

"Nothing!"  Polly lied, spinning out the word into at least six
emphatic syllables.  She clutched her biggest Snoopy, looking
suspiciously like, Jenny thought, an innocent little girl who was
over-acting the part of, well, an innocent little girl and determinedly
justifying 70 per term spent on Extra Drama.  She was also standing
firmly on the bottom step, blocking any possible progress up the
stairs.

The policeman asked her questions about what she might have heard, and
Alan asked her where Ben and Daisy were.

"Oh they're upstairs doing some homework," Polly said.

"Have been most of the evening," and then she added, 'except when they
watched telly," as if she had realized she was going too far.

"What's wrong?  What's happening?"  Daisy and Ben appeared together at
the top of the stairs.

"Come down a minute," Alan called.

"The police think we've got burglars."

"Do I have to?"  Daisy hissed, "I'm doing a face-pack!"

"No-one out there, Mick."  Another, younger, policeman emerged from the
garden.

"A

pot with a plant in it knocked over, though.  Bloke probably saw a cat
clambering about.  Sorry you've all been disturbed.  We'll go and have
a word with the informant.  "

"Can you tell me who it is?"  Alan asked.

"Not really Sir, we're not supposed to ..."

"We don't need to ask," Jenny put in crossly.

"Bloody Paul Mathieson, I'd bet anything.  Our over-enthusiastic
Neighbourhood Watch co-ordinator," she explained to the police.

"Can't be too careful though, can you?"  the bearded policeman said.

"That's the kind of thing he says," Alan told him, glumly.

"You've gone and done it again haven't you?"  Carol, pummelling Estee
Lauder Night Repair into her face, sat at her flounced dressing table
and glared at Paul via the mirror.  She wore a lilac chiffon scarf to
protect her hair from the cream, and her eyelids were puffy from
over-zealous application of make-up remover.  Around her shoulders
frothed an ocean of pink organdie frills.

She looks like an alien, Paul thought.  If she suddenly took it into
her head to go walking on the Common in the night, she'd be reported to
the Parapsychology people and they'd be flocking from all over to get a
look

at her, trying to log a sighting in a book, like twitchers after a
lesser spotted albatross.

"No, I haven't done it again," he said wearily, sitting on the
boudoir-blue, ribbon-threaded duvet and risking another telling off.

"I really did see someone climbing into the Collins's house.  Whoever
it was must have hidden in the airing cupboard or something and sneaked
away.  At least they won't have had a chance to take anything; it will
be all they could do to make an escape."

He was still quite proud of himself really, and hurt that Carol didn't
share the feeling.  If only the police had caught the intruder, then
things would be different.

"My hero," she would call him, and there'd be none of this messing
about with face creams at bedtime either.

"I hope you're going to keep this Neighbourhood Watch business under
control next weekend when the twins are home," Carol warned him.

"I

don't want them making a nuisance of themselves in the Close, and you
know what you're like with a New Interest.  "

Paul made a private decision to show the boys his files and make up a
rota for them to keep watch with the telescope.  Perhaps they could all
go out together and photograph everyone's garden furniture too much of
it was being stolen all over London, he'd read in the papers.  He ought
to check out the iffy merchandise at car boot sales too, which might be
fun with the boys.  She didn't have to take over everything, after all,
did she?  It was always Carol who, in the holidays, took them for their
swimming lessons, to riding and to karate.  She said it was because it
clashed with his working hours.  This would be something the boys and
he could all get involved in together, something just for them, a Boys'
Own adventure.

Alan, with a mild but bearable hangover, said a brief goodbye and left
early for work the next morning,

which left Jenny to deal with a letter from the police about Daisy.

"You can go down to the police station for an official Caution, it says
here, but that means you have to be prepared to admit you did it.

Otherwise I suppose we'll all have to endure some sort of court
hearing.  "

"Not much doubt which you'd prefer," Daisy mumbled rudely through a
mouthful of Crunchy Nut Cornflakes.  Ben nudged her, warningly, and
Daisy slopped milk on the table.

"Stop it you two, you're like a pair of babies!"  Jenny said to them.

"Obviously it would be more convenient to get it all over and done
with, and you ore guilty, aren't you Daisy?  They don't actually
believe you really just lost your ticket, and it's impossible to
prove."

"Didn't think it was up to me to prove I'm innocent.  We're always
being told that the great British justice system works the other way
round.  And they can't prove I didn't pay," Daisy said, pertly.

"They found you without a ticket.  Case over!"  Jenny snapped.

"Either way, you'll have a criminal record, we'll just go down to the
police station and then afterwards we can forget all about it."

"God, do you have to come?  Can't Emma come instead?"  Daisy asked,
horrified that she might have to be marched along, flanked by parents,
like a small child.  They would probably make her wear sensible
shoes.

"Don't push it, Dais," Ben muttered, looking sideways at Jenny's
increasingly furious face.  She never used to be like that, he thought
suddenly, she used to be all sort of benevolent and understanding.

Perhaps it was her age.

"While we're all here, and talking of crime," Jenny said, leaning
forward and stirring her tea thoughtfully, "Does anyone want to tell me
anything about last night?  About why the police thought we might have
burglars?"

"Wasn't the police thinking it," Ben cut in.

"It must have been Paul Mathieson again."

"Yes but why?  Even Paul must have had some sort of reason.  I'd like
to hear what it was that he saw."  Jenny sipped her tea and waited
patiently.

Daisy gulped down the last of her cereal and pushed back her chair.

"Going to be late ..."  she said, getting up and glancing warningly
across at Polly sitting at the table, still with her
aren't-I-a-good-girl expression.  She looked so puffed up with
smugness, Daisy thought, she might burst any moment, scattering little
nuggets of truth all over the table like spilled Rice Krispies.

"It was probably just Biggies, trying to get in Daisy's window.  Wasn't
it Daisy?"  Ben said, taking his bowl to the dishwasher so as not to
have to show his reddening face and qua key hands to Jenny.  She could
always spot lying a mile away.

"I heard him, all the way from my room, he was miaowing and miaowing,"
Polly contributed dramatically, eager to join in with the conspiracy.

Daisy glared at her over-acting sister, but had to continue, "Yeah,
that's right.  I leaned out of my window to call him in off the
conservatory roof.  Paul must have seen me."

While Jenny was pondering how Paul could have mistaken a small old
ginger cat for a full-sized human, Polly chipped in with an interesting
thought.

"Why was he looking, do you think?"  she suddenly asked.

Why indeed?  thought Jenny.

Serena was wearing an old leather biker jacket.  Not a soft and subtle
designer version, but a genuine, heavy- duty zipped and studded one,
with the leather worn to greying scuffed patches and bits of the
sleeve-fringe curling up with age.  She wore it, Alan noticed, with a

thin cream silk skirt, an endearing contrast of toughness and
vulnerability.  He wondered if that kind of jacket would suit Jenny and
decided it wouldn't.  It shouldn't really suit Serena either, he
realized; at work, she should be putting across the serious-accountant
image.  But at the photocopier she passed close by him, and he caught a
hint of the leather-smells of the past, of dangerous Rockers and their
greasy hair and engine oil, of the warlike threat on the Brighton
beaches, of his group of scootered Mods, preening and flaunting in
their slick mohair suits.  From outside in the hectic London streets,
he thought he could hear seagulls, and The Who.

"Sorry about the other day."  Serena's soft voice melted into Alan's
thoughts.

"I had to stay on at home and take care of Mummy's flu.

She's been getting rather frail and cancelling her golf just lately.

OK for next week, though.  Joe Walsh is at the Mean Fiddler.  What do
you think?  "

What did he think?  He thought that right now he wanted to push her
roughly against the photocopier and ravish her.  Somehow, enticingly,
there was about being with Serena the secret of regaining lost youth.

Alan was starting to need to be closer and closer to her as if to
inhale the magic scent.  As middle-aged women put their trust in ever
more expensive cosmetics, so Alan put his into absorbing Serena, and
while she was prepared to spend some spare social time with him, he
wallowed in the glorious feeling that, just a touch and a breath away,
was the elixir of eternal youth.  He no longer would have agreed with
the wish to die before he got old, now he wanted not to get old before
he died, and it was nothing to do with how many years he lived.

Of course it would be all right for next week.  Alan put out a
tentative hand to stroke Serena's leather- clad shoulder, but she slid
away, un noticing into her

office.  Should he touch her at work, though, Alan wondered.  Should
he touch her at all?  Did this count as having an affair when all they
did was spend the odd evening drinking beer and watching ancient rock
'n' rollers in seedy pubs and clubs?  So far, Alan had convinced
himself that all was innocent, simply because he assumed an affair was
not a matter for guilt until he climbed into a woman's bed and body.
But what, he thought, with a twinge of something that surely wasn't
guilt, would Jenny call it?

"Of course I'll never do it again.  That was a kind of accidental one
off.  Events just took over," Jenny said to Sue in the changing room
after a fast game of tennis.

"It was rather like being twenty again, back in the days when sex was
so easy, simpler and more fun to end the evening in bed with someone
who'd just bought you dinner than to find a reason why you shouldn't."
She looked up quickly from loading her tennis shoes into her bag;
anyone could be in the loo cubicles, ears flapping.

"Did you do it because you were angry with Alan, do you think?"  Sue
asked her.

"Probably.  And you know, I've realized I'm not really, apart from
flute-teaching, not really employable.  I have no skills.  Half the
orchestras that existed when I was playing have been made redundant, so
I can't go back to that.  Most of the musicians I worked with are now
unemployed."

"You could do a course in something?"

"I could.  And if Alan and I really do separate, I'll obviously have
to.  He's an accountant, with years of practice at making sure
estranged wives don't get more than their due.  I just suddenly feel so
vulnerable, not being able to earn some money.  Not for anything, not
yet anyway, just running-away money, like Jessica Mitford.  Though the
way Alan's work is going, it's going to be needed to keep the kids in
school.  The idea that he might have someone else makes me realize how
dependent I am on him financially.  It's hateful.

We've just slipped into it.  Women like me don't work as prostitutes,
not really," she said, thankful that she was pulling her sweater over
her head at that moment.

Sue made a disappointed face at her.

"Well you know what I think about that: one way or another we all do if
we're married.  And I seem to manage to be quite a lot like one even
now I'm not!  Hey ho, no such thing as a free lunch ... I' The two
women walked out to the car park together.  As Jenny unlocked her car
she said to Sue, " You know, I can't imagine Alan going off and renting
sex, but really, you wonder don't you?  No-one knows what any of them
get up to when we're not there.  I mean, I'm still getting some very
odd calls, so who are all these men who phone?  Do you think they've
got lovely wives and sweet broods of children at home?  " She felt
suddenly anxious for these unsuspecting families, as if she was
personally responsible for tempting their husbands.

Sue said, rather sadly, "With both my husbands I always used to imagine
the absolute worst.  I was rarely disappointed by being wrong.

There's probably many a generous, kind woman just like you, or men too,
of course, out there providing the kind of thing blokes got used to in
their pre-wife days, maybe something quirky they got a taste for at
boarding school or whatever.  It's probably what keeps some marriages
together in the end, having somewhere nice and anonymous to sneak to
for a spot of harmless spanking and wan king or whatever Matron's
speciality with the Upper Fourths in the dorm used to be.  "

"Social services, with a difference ..."  Jenny giggled.

"Thank God I'm in the private sector," she said laughing,

ill

'at least I can say yes or no.  And from now on it's decidedly no! "

At home, the phone rang twice.  The first sounded unpleasantly sleazy
and Jenny hung up, telling him firmly that he'd got the wrong number.

It was definitely time to advertise somewhere safer than a shop window,
she thought.  The second caller was a bit worrying .  a vaguely
familiar man's voice simply said, "Oh good, I was checking you were in.
I'll be round," and then hung up abruptly.  Jenny looked at the clock:
almost time for Polly to be dropped off at the gate.  The doorbell rang
and Jenny went to open the door, a welcoming smile on her face ready
for her daughter.  But on the doorstep stood George Pemberton, slightly
smarter than usual in a tweedy jacket with the buttons wrongly fastened
as if from hurry and nerves, and clutching a bunch of tight- budded
pink roses, the sort that needed an aspirin in their water if they're
ever going to open properly.

"Oh hello George," Jenny said, the smile fading a little.

"I was expecting Polly."

"Oh.  Sorry," he said, 'does that mean you haven't got time?  "

"Time?"  she said, trying to get her brain to interpret what he was
saying.  Vaguely, she recalled what they had said to each other as they
left the Benstone's dinner party.  Good grief, she thought, suppressing
an urge to giggle, surely he wasn't thinking .  oh surely not, not
George.

George was through the porch and into the hall way.

"Fiona isn't very keen on " music".  Tone deaf in fact you could say,"
he told Jenny, with an unfamiliar lopsided grin that was well on its
way to being a leer.

"So I thought I'd get my flute lessons some where off the premises, so
to speak."  George started fumbling in his trousers and Jenny,
appalled, thought he was already undoing his flies, there in the
hallway, where anyone could see in through the open door.  Thankfully,
she suddenly saw that what he was exposing was only a wad of notes.

"Fifty quid shall we say?  Cash do you?"  he asked expectantly.

Chapter Eight

"No, George, cash certainly won't " do me"!"  Jenny said firmly,
watching with a twinge of sympathy as George Pemberton's face took on a
childlike expression of acute disappointment.  At least he didn't ask
if she took Visa.  Her face felt twitchy, as she very much wanted to
laugh, but she stopped herself.  He looked quite forlorn, standing
dejectedly in her hall, his bunch of roses and handful of banknotes now
a pair of embarrassments.

"But I thought ... you said the other night ..."  George began.

"And it isn't at all unusual you know," he continued, regaining
confidence as Jenny had neither slapped his face nor threatened him
with the Vice Squad.

"You read about it all the time, women making a bit on the side by
having a bit on the side," he gave a watery grin.

"You're reading the wrong newspapers then," Jenny told him briskly,
appalled at the idea of mixing business with neighbours.

"Now, why don't you come into the kitchen for tea and flapjacks.  Polly
will be home in a minute."  Thank goodness, she thought, leading
George, now mild as a spaniel, into the kitchen, she hadn't had
crumpets in the bread bin- she could imagine his rising hopes (and not
just hopes) if she'd offered him those.

"You won't mention this to Fiona?"  he said, with an expression of
panic.

Jenny laughed.

"I wouldn't dare!  Polly was caught reading Playboy at school, I'm in
enough trouble already for being a terrible parent!"  At that moment,
Polly came crashing in through the back door, pulling Harriet Caine and
her reluctant mother Ceci into the house after her.

"Mum, Mum, me and Harriet want to go to Laser Leisure on Saturday and
Harriet's mum says it's only all right if you say it is."  She then
added in an intense stage whisper and a covert glance at Ceci, "She
thinks it might be violent.  It's not.  Tell her," Polly insisted,
pulling persuasively at Jenny.

Ceci Caine's elegant Ferrari-red nails pushed back her mane of streaked
blonde hair and she grimaced apologetically at Jenny.

"Sorry and all that," she said in a rich, purring voice and smiling at
George with polite interest.

"I'd never heard of, what is it Polly?  Laser Leisure?"  She had
another quick look at George, parked in the rocking chair, his bunch of
pink roses still on his lap, and her smudgy black-rimmed eyes widened
questioningly.  If he was Polly's grandfather, surely she should be
introduced?  Jenny picked up on both Ceci's curiosity and the sub-text
of what she was saying; what she had clearly meant was, "Is Laser
Leisure common?"

"I'll take them on Saturday afternoon if you like, Ceci.  Polly's been
before, as part of a birthday treat.  It's not as dreadful as it
sounds."  Ceci looked only slightly reassured, wondering if she should
trust the judgement of a woman who entertained unknown, rose-toting men
in her kitchen.  But at least she would be getting Harriet off her
hands for half a day.  She smiled, giving in graciously.

"Oh, well all right then, thanks awfully.  Come on Harriet darling,
time to go," she said, and gave a mock despairing look over her
shoulder to George.

"So much to do," she gushed.

"Suzuki violin tonight, ballet tomorrow.  Byeeee!"

"Pity it's not flute as well, Mum," Polly said,

wondering why her mother and George both went an interesting shade of
pink as she said it.

"You keep losing all your pupils, don't you?"

On Friday evening, travelling home from their prep school on a weekend
exeat, the Mathiesons' twin sons received their usual list of domestic
instructions.  The boys didn't listen, as the list never varied.  They
called it the 'not' list, as it consisted entirely of things they were
not to do.  It covered such things as not playing football in the
flower beds, not going to the Common or (God forbid) the estate, not
shouting from one end of the house to the other, not forgetting to wash
their hands (before and after just about any activity) and not teasing
the cats.  Carol was still in full flow as they arrived at the house
and the boys climbed out of the pristine Peugeot and stood mutely,
waiting for her to run out of orders, shuffling their feet and kicking
at the gravel outside the front door.

"And no eating cereal in the lounge," she said, waving the door key at
them in a slightly threatening way.

"You can watch TV after breakfast, not during it."  She unlocked the
door, but still wouldn't let them past her into the house.

"And feet, of course," she added, looking down despairingly at the two
pairs of grubby and fast-growing feet on the doormat.

"Your slippers are right here, ready for you behind the door, so you
can change out of those shoes."

Sebastian, older of the two by ten authority-giving minutes, groaned.

"Oh Mum, I can't wear those old bunny slippers!  I'll get my trainers
out.  I mean, suppose somebody comes?"

There was a smirk and a smutty snort from Marcus.  Sebastian nudged him
into silence and Carol looked at them, puzzled.

"You can't wear those," she said, with a dismissive little laugh.

"Your tennis shoes must be kept for tennis, as usual!

I've booked a lesson for you both tomorrow morning up at the Club.

You'll like that.  " It sounded like a command, so the boys didn't feel
they needed to reply.  They changed, reluctantly and silently, into
their despised furry animal slippers and then, collecting their bags,
padded softly upstairs to reclaim their much-loved, but over-clean
bedrooms.

"By the way, boys," Carol called, breaking her own rule and shouting up
the stairs to them, "Polly's mummy says she will take you out tomorrow
afternoon, with Polly and her little friend Harriet.

Something called Laser Leisure, she said.  Now don't complain about it
being educational on your weekend off.  A bit of extra science will do
you no harm at all!  "

"Laser Leisure!  Grrr-eat!"

"Brrrill!"  the boys yelled as loud as they dared, in the safety of
Sebastian's room, bouncing high and delightedly on the bed, firing
imaginary laser beams at each other in a manner that would have had
Carol hauling them downstairs for an hour's compulsory piano
practice.

' Hope Polly's mum doesn't tell her what Laser Leisure really is,"
Marcus said at last, looking worried."  Course she won't.  She knows
we'd never be allowed out with her again.  And she needs us for playing
with Polly in the holidays," Sebastian told him.

"And we need Polly, too," Marcus said ruefully, only too aware that one
of the.  worst things about being sent away to school was a lack of
local friendships for casual weekend and holiday play.  He sighed, and
looked longingly out of his window towards the estate at the end of the
road.  How he envied those roaming gangs of kids, allowed out on the
streets for football and fun, all strolling daily to the nearest school
and with a vast choice of partners in crime (sometimes literally) only
a block away.

"You're so lucky, you've got each other," Carol was always saying to
the twins.  But they weren't

convinced.  They knew they were missing out.  They'd give up all the
dubious privileges of their smart and isolated school to be able to
wander along in a shambling gang to the local comprehensive, their
shirts hanging out of their trousers, breakfasting on chocolate bars,
an illicit Coke and experimental cigarette in their hands.  They
dreamed of joshing and pushing at bus stops (annoying old ladies),
lounging against shop windows (annoying shopkeepers), and play-fighting
all over the dusty pavements (annoying pedestrians).  At their
disciplined, over-organized boarding school there was very little
opportunity, apart from covert and cowardly attempts at bullying, to be
anything other than depressingly Good.

Saturday mornings usually followed a comfortable pattern for Alan.  He
got up early, showered, had a quick but futile glance at the crossword,
enticed by the once-a-week chance to win a decent bottle of whisky, and
then took to the shops.  Saturdays were for cooking, for stock-brewing,
squid-disembowelling, meat-marinading, lobster-murdering- whatever took
his fancy with which to delight Jenny and frequently a collection of
dinner guests.

This Saturday, Alan was going out, but not to the thrillingly-scented
food shops of his choice.  Small neighbourly comments along the lines
of how long it took to rebuild Coventry after the war made it quite
clear that it was time to mend his bombed wall, and he was heading with
enormous reluctance towards a vast branch of B&Q, hoping that, amongst
its huge range of stock, he would recognize the right ingredients with
which to salvage his only attempt at building.

He posted a Rolling Stones tape into the car player and turned the
volume up loud.  The sun was shining and he tried but failed to capture
mood of optimism to go with the exalting music.  He would far rather
be in his beloved fish shop, poking at the scallops or weighing up the
possibilities for a bouillabaisse, or perhaps considering a simple,
barbecued fennel-stuffed, Pernod-drenched sea bass.  The fishmonger was
among a row of small, friendly, specialist shops, prettily painted in a
tree-lined road near the station.  On Saturday mornings, Alan looked
forward to meeting like-minded men, unashamedly carrying vast French
shopping baskets full of clumps of fresh coriander and discussing
exotic cheeses and the advantages of Xeres vinegar over balsamic.

Instead, he miserably turned the BMW off the dismal dual carriage way
somewhere beneath the M4 fly over and joined the DIY brigade collecting
the components for a constructive weekend.

In the car park, Alan sat for a while in the car, listening to the end
of Satisfaction and drumming rhythmically on the steering wheel.  He
could see whole families visiting the warehouse, which was as huge as a
Heathrow hangar, in search of mysterious (to Alan) slabs of
pine-cladding, brass-effect door knobs, pastel-coloured lavatory seats,
Georgian-style window frames and flat-pack wardrobes.  Some customers,
he thought, awe struck, were probably buying entire fitted bedrooms or
kitchens, which they, unlike Alan, could probably actually fit all by
themselves.  Overcome by the enormity of the task ahead, he wondered if
he should simply finish the job the police had so carelessly started
and destroy the rest of.  the wall, getting a man in from the garden
centre to replace it with a pretty little white picket fence like the
one the Benstone's had, or some good, solid larch-lap that would stop
the litter being blown in.

Eventually, no longer able to put off the moment, Alan collected a
trolley that was easily big enough to accommodate the raw material for
half a house,

and launched himself into the store.  He had to ask the way to the
bricks and when he found them realized he should not have expected to
find the same old, carefully reclaimed Edwardian-stock bricks he had
originally used.  Should have gone to the architectural salvage place,
he thought, too late and frankly not interested enough, choosing
something spanking new and having an approximate guess at the right
colour.  Perhaps no-one would notice the difference.

The back of the car now felt strangely heavy, reminding him of summer
holidays, lumbering towards a French gite, overloaded with luggage,
sundry heaps of sports gear, Polly's surf-board and Jenny's usual box
of holiday books.  Could do with a break, he thought, absent-mindedly
driving on to the M4 and then missing his turning back towards home.

He joined the flow of cars heading towards Hammersmith, and when he got
there, instead of going back across the bridge towards home, drove on
towards Kensington, thinking at first vaguely, then more positively,
about Serena.  He now knew where she lived.  After an evening of Joe
Walsh's seductive, relaxed, country rock on Thursday night she had
allowed Alan to drive her home instead of striding off in her usual
independent fashion towards the nearest tube.  He'd spent the evening
sweatily preparing to persuade her, too, as she lived only a few miles
from him and there they both were, miles out in north London.  In the
end, though, she'd been quite happy to jump into his car, the fringes
on her leather jacket swinging as Alan nervously lurched round corners,
desperately trying to keep his hand from stroking her slim, lycra
thigh.

It was no longer possible to pretend his interest in her was less than
carnal.  He'd put Sympathy/or the Devil on the cassette player and
managed, for once, to keep himself from singing along with it.  Outside
Serena's flat, he had switched off the car engine, waiting without
breathing, to be invited in for coffee and whatever else the night and
Serena might offer.  He'd felt weak with longing for her supple body as
she turned to open the car door, and the leather of the jacket had
squeaked faintly.  Just at the moment when she turned to smile a sweet
goodbye at him, Alan had noticed a basement door open and a dumpy,
blonde, spike- haired figure ran up the steps and stood silhouetted
against the light.  She looked, he had thought at the time, like an
irate wife, arms folded firmly into the
'where-have-you-been-till-this-time' position.  Guiltily he had thought
of Jenny, who had never been that sort of wife and had never failed to
trust him, and reluctantly he'd surrendered Serena to her fuming flat
mate Another opportunity lost, he thought, feeling old and that time
and chances were both expiring fast.

The car swung heavily into Serena's street and Alan could hear a clunk
as the bag of ready-mix cement fell over onto the bricks in the car
boot.  He stopped the car opposite Serena's flat, switched off the
engine and then wished he hadn't chosen a spot so close.  He also
wondered if he ought to get out and check that the cement bag hadn't
split.  He knew that there were also a couple of old bottles of mineral
water rolling around in the boot, and had a vision of the bricks and
cement and water building themselves into a haphazard wall of their
own.  A woman, not Serena, emerged from the basement of the building
opposite and terrified him into restarting the engine.  Was that the
small, cross woman from the other night, he wondered, risking a quick
glance.  Attracted by the sound of the car, she glared across at him
and Alan, panic-stricken, pulled away sharply, finding that his hands
on the wheel were trembling as he turned back towards the centre of
Hammersmith and the bridge across the Thames, to home and safety.

At that moment, Serena was talking to Jenny on the telephone.

"Sorry, Alan is out at the moment," Jenny was saying, icy' cool and
almost secretarial.  From the conservatory she could hear
eleven-year-old Georgina Smythe and her flute murdering Gliick's Dance
of the Blessed Spirits, and wondered why it wasn't pupils as hopeless
as this one who chose to give up learning the instrument.

"Awful of me to bother you I know, only I think I left my scarf in
Alan's car the other night.  I'd hate to lose it, you see it's a super
Chanel one I borrowed from Mummy."  Serena's silky, rather child-like
voice continued.  Jenny promised to look for the scarf, privately
thinking what an appropriate weapon it would be for strangling her
husband.  Was this, she thought, returning to supervise Georgina's
lesson, a heavy hint from Serena that an affair was definitely going
on?  Or was it a double bluff, as in the affair was on but Serena was
pretending everything was innocent by being so up-front about it?

Either way it got Jenny hopping mad.  She picked up her own flute to
show Georgina how the piece should be played, but with shaking, furious
fingers managed to play almost as badly as the child.

"We'll both practise it for next week," she said, giving up the attempt
and trying to make a joke of it.

"Perhaps one of us will get it right by then."

"Have you ever been before?"  Polly was asking Sebastian and Marcus in
the car on the way to Laser Leisure.

"No, but just about everyone at school has.  We've been dying to,"
Sebastian told her eagerly.

Polly gave a lordly grin to the boys and Harriet, relishing her
superior status as an experienced Laser- shooter.  She looked forward
to leading the ensuing battle, and to being the overall winner at the
end of the afternoon.

The twins looked a bit nervous, thought Jenny, smiling in the driving
mirror at them.  And well they might, she realized, knowing that it
wasn't fear of the game that worried them, but the fear of what Carol
would say if she knew where they were really going.  Unbeknown to their
mother, the only scientific enlightenment the boys were going to get
was from the flash of the ultra-violet as teams of hyper-excited
children zapped each other with laser beams, recording the hit-score on
responders strapped to their bodies.  Good exercise was the only
possible redeeming feature she would be able to find to appease Carol,
Jenny decided, even though Carol thought exercise could only be done
under conditions of rule-bound sport outside, in good fresh air.  At
least Carol believed firmly in competition, she thought, turning into
the Laser Leisure car park, and perhaps one of the twins would win.

Alan was well into rebuilding the wall by the time Jenny and the
children got home.  As she turned into the driveway, Jenny's car wheels
whizzed up dust and grit which fell, irritatingly, into Alan's mortar,
as carefully mixed and prepared as a delicate Hollandaise.  In the
blast of air from the car, the Reader's Digest DIY guide fell from its
propped-up position on the heap of bricks and landed in Alan's bucket
of water, rendering him furious and dripping.  Marcus, who was
interested in anything that looked messy, clambered out of the car and
came to inspect Alan's progress and see if he could join in.

"The bricks are a different colour," he pointed out.

"I'm hoping no-one will notice," Alan replied, slapping another trowel
full of mortar on the wall.

"Well Marcus noticed," Polly said smartly, watching her father turn
interestingly brick-coloured himself.

Alan gritted his teeth.

"Why don't you kids go into the house and get something to eat?"  he
said, his eye on Harriet, who was inspecting her shoes after walking
into a cementy puddle.

"We had lunch.  We had McDonald's," Sebastian said with great pride.

Poor kids, thought Alan suddenly, Carol and Paul probably make the
twins avert their eyes from hamburger bars.  Probably think they'll
catch something nasty in there, like an undesirable accent.

Jenny called the children in and then, seeing the state of their shoes
from treading in the wall debris, promptly sent them outside again,
round to the back of the house to play in the garden.  She stood in the
doorway watching Alan stirring the cement and decided that, from her
point of view, it was not the ideal moment to mention Serena's phone
call.  When she did tell him, she wanted him to have nowhere to look
but straight at her, no possibility of shifty guilt being diverted into
concentrating on lining up the next brick.

"Let's go out on to the Common!"  Polly yelled, dashing off and making
for the back gate.  Sebastian and Marcus hesitated, looked at each
other and at the sprinting bodies of Harriet and Polly far down the
garden, and followed.

"She'd better not find out," Sebastian warned, thinking of his
tyrannical moth eras he and Marcus jogged nervously down the path after
the two girls towards the open gate and the forbidden Common.

"She won't find out from me," Marcus retorted.

"But she won't like my shoes."  As he ran he looked down at his feet,
where a thin crust of cement was dulling the highly polished leather.

"It's her own fault, she should have let us wear our trainers.  Anyway,
she won't blame you, she'll blame Polly's dad for making such a mess.

He's got that stuff all over the pavement.  It's worse than dog.  "

Out of the garden on to the Common the boys stopped, and, like puppies,
stood sniffing the unfamiliar air.  There were smells of bracken and
blossom, and damp, oozy grass.  Padding after some unsuspecting prey,
one of the Mathiesons* Siamese cats, enviably free from parental rules,
stalked through clumps of early bluebells.

"We're over here!"  called Polly's voice from behind a hawthorn bush.

"Come and find us!"  added Harriet in a taunting singsong.

Sebastian and Marcus took a swift look round to make sure there wasn't
a marauding parent in sight, and leapt into the dense shrubbery.

Harriet pounced out from behind the hawthorn and grabbed Marcus,
twisting his arm.

"You're Marcus.  I can tell because you're wearing the red sweatshirt.
What happens when you haven't got any clothes on?

How do people tell the difference between you then?  " Marcus, unused
to fending off girls and somehow sure he'-d heard that you shouldn't
have to, stayed passive as Harriet wrestled him to the floor and sat on
his chest.

"That's the whole point, stupid.  We're identical," Sebastian told her
smugly.

"You can't tell."  He kept a wary distance from Polly and grinned at
Harriet, sitting down and pulling at dandelion heads.

"Seb's hair is a bit longer," Harriet judged, inspecting them both
closely.

"And I think he might have more freckles."

"I'm a roundhead.  Seb's not," Marcus, in a slightly strangled voice
gasped from his position as Harriet's cushion.  She had her legs apart
and across him, crushing him solidly, the rivets on the back of her
jeans digging into an exposed piece of flesh under his sweatshirt.  His
back would be all grass-stained, he thought, desperate to be allowed to
his feet.

"What's a roundhead?"  Polly asked.

"Do you mean

like Cavaliers and Oliver Cromwell and history?  "

"Being a roundhead doesn't make you look different," Harriet said
scornfully.

"Not in this century anyway," she added grandly with all the authority
of a recent school project.

"Oh yes it does!"  Marcus protested, suddenly catching sight, too late,
of warning signals from his brother.

Sebastian groaned.

"Shut it Marc!"  he yelled, as he felt Polly watching him blush.  Her
inevitable next remark was, as he knew it would be, "OK show us then!
Which bit of you is it that is a roundhead?"

The two boys were silent.  It hadn't occurred to Marcus that there were
people on the planet who didn't know his school's terms for circumcised
and uncircumcised cocks.  He and Sebastian looked at each other and the
two little girls waited.  Their silence told Polly exactly which bit
she needed to see.  She was perfectly used to seeing Alan casually and
uninterestingly naked around the house, though not Ben these days, who
scuttled rapidly from bedroom to bathroom, with his bathrobe belt
tightly knotted, just in case.  Polly's curiosity was on full alert.
She knew what a penis looked like, and was haughtily scornful of girls
at school who dared admit they didn't but she had never come across the
possibility that some penises were different from others.  In the
interests of research she knew it was crucial to find out how. Suddenly
Polly leapt on Marcus and started tugging at his tracksuit bottoms.

"Gerroff!"  roared Marcus, wriggling desperately under the bulk of
Harriet.

Sebastian hurled himself on top of the heap and the four of them fought
intensely for a moment in a tangle.

"If you show us, we'll show you something interesting really, truly
interesting," Polly coaxed, sitting up and pulling dandelion seeds from
her hair.

"So interesting you'll be able to show off to all the boys at your
school about it."

Sebastian, from the safety of the far side of an oak sapling, thought
about the bits of girls he hadn't yet seen, that probably no-one at
school had seen, and wouldn't they all be jealous if that was what
Polly was promising.  Harriet was giving her a doubtful look, as if she
wasn't sure she was prepared to go along with this.  Sebastian didn't
really mind showing his willy, his mum and Matron at school looked at
it all the time, just to see if the end was getting tight like Marcus's
had and would have to be trimmed.

"OK what will you show us?"  he asked, prepared to bargain.

"Well," Polly said slowly, 'have you ever seen .  " she looked across
at Harriet, making sure she could count on her joining in.  The two
boys leaned forward, eagerly, and Polly asked in a loud, excited
whisper, " Have you ever seen a dead body?  "

Marcus gasped, Seb looked sceptical and Harriet stared intently at
Polly, wondering which way to play it.  She rather thought, on balance,
she'd prefer to show the boys her fanny than have to go with them and
look at a corpse.

"Yeah.  I know where there's one, really near, near where you're
sitting now!"  Polly continued, her eyes blazing with dramatic
importance.

"And it's only me that knows, so you have to do what I say if you want
to see it."

Marcus felt prickly with fear.  He didn't at all want to see anyone
dead, but 'even more he didn't want Polly to know this.  There was a
moment of silence, while decisions were made.

"OK," Sebastian said simply, standing up and lowering his trousers.

"Come on Marcus, get it out."

Reluctantly, but with a sigh of inevitability, Marcus stood up and
fumbled with his trousers.  He wondered if Polly would touch it, and if
it would go up at all.  He reminded himself how envious the boys in his
form

would be when he told them.  He hoped he could rely on Seb to
exaggerate a good bit, make it all sound infinitely ruder than the
cool, silent, clinical inspection that Polly and Harriet were now
making.

After a few minutes, Sebastian shoved Harriet, who was peering
horrendously closely, back into the grass and hurriedly re-dressed
himself.

"That's enough.  Now let's see this dead person," he demanded.

"Oh, I didn't say it was a person, did I?  I'm sure I didn't ..."

Polly said, sneaking away towards the garden fences and giving the boys
a sly look.

Harriet, relieved, caught on, and giggled.

"No, she didn't say it was a person, she never said thatV she told the
boys contemptuously, skipping towards Polly and safety.

"I will show you a body though.  There's a bit of old rabbit that a fox
left" Polly called, laughing over her shoulder.  It's round this corner
. and she disappeared at a run behind a clump of black thorn. Sebastian
and Marcus dashed after the girls, hellbent on revenge.  From out of
sight there came a blood-curdling duet of screams.

"They're putting it on," Marcus said.

"You just wait till we get you!"

he yelled.

"Yeah, we'll get their knickers, they deserve it," Sebastian said,
hurling himself painfully through the blackthorn.  Then he stopped, and
looked at what had made the girls scream.  Harriet had her hand over
her mouth, looking as if she might be sick.  Polly's eyes were wild
with terror.  The four of them stood and gazed at the stretched-out,
gape-mouthed, twisted body of old Mrs.  Fingell.

Chapter Nine

"Mugged," was Paul Mathieson's immediate and authoritative verdict,
although Mrs.  Fingell showed no obvious sign of injury.  Paul, Carol,
Jenny, Sue and the four children stood around the still and solid body
like a silent gathering at a wake.  Harvey and Laura Benstone were
picking their careful way across the damp grass towards the group,
respectfully shushing their oblivious little girls who whooped and
shrieked in the unaccustomed freedom of the great open space.  Sue's
dog, an aged and bad-tempered Airedale, whined and tugged at its lead,
furious at having its daily snuffle through the rabbit warrens
interrupted, and irreverently eager to take curious sniffs at the
body.

"Alan's phoning the police, and an ambulance," Jenny whispered,
shivering and rather frightened in the presence of the corpse.

"Not much use, getting an ambulance," Paul commented bluntly.

"The police will bring their own mortuary van.  Of course not yet,
seeing as it's murder ..."  he said, "proud of his extensive
knowledge.

Bloody know-all, Jenny thought, moving closer to Sue and sliding her
arm through hers for warmth and comfort.

"Are we sure she's dead?"  Sue suddenly asked.

"I mean, should we do the kiss of life or something?"  There was a
distinct rustling of the grass as feet were guiltily shuffled.  No-one
was actually prepared to touch Mrs.  Fingell and check for signs of
breathing and pulse.  Even

when alive, she had carried a certain aroma of decay.

"Oh God, I feel awfully faint," Laura Benstone squeaked feebly,
pressing a limp hand to her forehead.

"We'll go home, darling.  Take the girls away from this.  They really
shouldn't see," Harvey said eagerly, pulling at Laura's arm.  Then he
turned to the others, feeling he should apologize for shameful
curiosity.

"We only came in case there was anything we could do .. " he murmured.
Jenny felt Sue's body twitch slightly, and realized she was, typically,
trying not to giggle.

"We could take her dog perhaps?"

Harvey continued, desperate to be useful, and bumbling off after Mrs.
Fingell's scuttling little orange poodle which was happily sniffing
around the base of an oak tree.

"They'll have to cordon off this part of the Common," Paul was saying,
gazing around.

"One of those little tents they'll have, too, to cover the body.  We
shouldn't really be here, you know, trampling on Evidence."  Jenny was
watching Paul's face, which was vibrant with excitement and
importance.

"As your Neighbourhood Watch representative," he started to say
pompously, getting well into his stride, "I feel I should recommend
that you all return to your homes and wait to be summoned for evidence.
I'll have to wait here, naturally.  The police will no doubt wish to
interview you all in due course" He was interrupted by a loud sniff
from Carol, who, to Jenny's amazement, was actually crying.

"Oh what is happening to the world?"  Carol suddenly wailed
dramatically, putting a protective arm round the shoulder of each of
her highly embarrassed twins.

"A poor old lady can't even walk her pet on the Common without being
mugged and murdered by a bunch of louts from the estate!"  She looked
up, as if appealing for a response from the heavens.

Sue covered her face with her hand and shook helplessly, and Paul
smiled across with unctuous sympathy, not realizing she was hiding an
attack of the giggles.  Jenny nudged her to stop, feeling a sinful and
inappropriate smile creeping over her own face.  Some people, she
recalled, do have this nervous reaction to terrible things, an
outrageous and uncontrollable desire to laugh.

The police arrived, swarming across the Common in a number large enough
to satisfy Paul.  He strode off to meet them, proudly confident that
this time, at last, he had something that wasn't a waste of their
time.

"Shouldn't we cover her up?"  he heard the voice of Polly saying as he
came level with the now-familiar police sergeant.  An angry yowl of
protest and series of shocked screams followed, and Paul and the police
rushed to the little group.  Sue was now laughing openly, clutching
Jenny for support.  Carol's tears had halted abruptly and she was now
staring with silent fury at Mrs.  Fingell, who was thrashing around
beneath Jenny's Barbour.

"Where's the corpse?"  the police sergeant asked Paul.

"She was dead ... I Really, a minute ago .. he babbled.

"Dead drunk more like," said a young constable, winking at Sue.  He
bent down to take a closer look at Mrs.  Fingell and she rolled on to
her side, revealing an empty sherry bottle.

' Thought it was getting a bit uncomfortable," she said, grasping the
bottle and hurling it into the shrubbery.

"One less for the bin," she said, cackling wickedly.

"Anyone here going to walk this lady home?"  the sergeant said looking
round.  Carol's mouth was pursed up tight with disapproval, though at
Paul, Polly or Mrs.  Fingell, Jenny couldn't be sure.

"We'll take her," said Sue, bending to pick up one of Mrs.  Fingell's
skinny arms and guide her to her feet.

"Come on, love," she said.

"We'll make you a cup of tea."

"Bugger tea," Mrs.  Fingell retorted, scrambling to her feet and
squinting through the trees to check the angle of the sun.

"Looks to me more like time for a gin."

Jenny and Sue each took one of the old lady's arms and escorted her
carefully back into the Close, followed at a safe distance by a trail
of dogs, neighbours and children.  Polly marched ahead, one hand on her
hip, the other twirling a stick, pretending she was leading the Putney
Shangri-la Majorettes.  Alan was still sitting on the pavement,
smoothing off the last of the mortar as the small procession drew level
with him.

"Oh.  Glad to see you're all right," he said rather fatuously, grinning
up at Mrs.  Fingell.

"Oh don't you worry about her, she's all right," Carol said grimly, and
then looked at the wall closely, taking comfort from what she saw.

"Did you realize those new bricks aren't quite the right colour?"  she
asked Alan sweetly.

"I'll put the kettle on," Jenny volunteered as she and Sue tugged a
happily swaying Mrs.  Fingell into her sitting-room, and parked her on
the sofa.

"I think gin would probably really finish her off."

"Good idea," Sue agreed.

"Anyway, I fancy tea even if she doesn't."

"No need to talk about me as if I'm not here," Mrs.  Fingell grumbled,
shifting her bloomered thighs up onto the tatty sofa and settling
comfortably into the cushions.

"They all do that, my daughter-in-law, her kids, the people from the
Welfare"

"Sorry," Sue said.

"Now, are you hungry?  Can we get you something to eat?"

Jenny, searching in the kitchen for tea and milk, made a face at Sue
through the open door.  The cupboards, like Mother Hubbard's, were
almost bare.

"I'll go down to the shop for you if you like," Sue volunteered.

"No need.  My son's coming later.  Taking me over to his place for
supper.  One thing that wife of his can do is cook."  Then Mrs. 
Fingell sniggered.

"About all she's good for, certainly no good for the other.

Even walks with her knees glued together.  "

Jenny, still bustling in the kitchen, heard her and laughed, wondering
why it always seemed so outrageous when old people showed evidence of a
filthy mind.  After all, she couldn't imagine either herself or Sue
suddenly becoming all prim and proper the minute they got to bus-pass
age.

"Here's tea," she said, bringing the tray and putting it on a dusty
little table next to an equally dusty ancient grand piano.

"I found some biscuits, too."  The small, smelly dog, returned by
Harvey, whined to be fed and Sue took him off to the kitchen where she
found a stained tin opener and a can of Chum.  Jenny poured tea and had
a quick, fascinated stare around the room.  The curtains had a very
1960s pattern of bold brown and orange flowers, the sort that were now
only seen in run-down hospital out-patient departments.  The carpet had
obviously been a good one in its long-ago day, and was grass green,
with darker patches that might indicate the incontinence of the orange
dog (or Mrs.  Fingell, Jenny wondered squeamishly).  On the
beigey-yellow wall over the bleak fireplace hung a vast flag, an
American Southern Cross.  Looking round at the piano, Jenny also
noticed a large, silver-framed collection of black-and-white photos,
about twenty of them, which on close inspection were all of cheerful
young men in US army uniform.

"Looking at my boys are you?"  Mrs.  Fingell said fondly, turning a
little on the sofa.

"Yes.  Who are they?  Friends of yours?  Relations?"

Mrs.  Fingell chuckled.

"You could call them relations.  Of the carnal sort.  One of them is my
Lance's dad."

Sue joined Jenny, and together they peered at the photos.

"Oh, that's interesting, which one?"  Sue asked.  Mrs.  Fingell gave a
delighted snort in her tea.

"Goodness love, how would I know?  Could have been any one of them.  Or
one or two others, who didn't have a photo on them at the time.  I did
like to collect the photos."  She sighed, remembering.

Sue and Jenny looked at each other, wondering if they'd heard right.

"But surely ..."  Sue began, and then stopped.  Deciding which of two
or possibly even three men could be your child's father was just about
an understandable quandary, but which of a possible twenty or more .

"Shocked you have I?"  Mrs.  Fingell, pleased with herself, looked at
Sue.

"You young things don't know the half of it.  How do you think we all
got by in the war?  Did you think rationing and all that was really
done on a fair shares basis?"  She pulled herself up on the sofa and
reached over for her tea, dunking a custard cream biscuit messily into
it.

"My family was bombed out of the East End.  By rights I should have
gone into a prefab, and then if I was lucky by now I might be stuck on
the top floor of one of those prison blocks on the estate.  But you
don't just think, you know for sure, that you might as well live as if
there's no tomorrow, and you'll do anything.  Just for you and yours.

Everyone did.  All that love thy neighbour stuff, I never saw much of
that.  It was dog eat dog.  And people eat dog, I even saw that.  " She
leaned forward, a look of bitter recollection on her face.

"Do you know, my aunt actually cooked a piece of cocker spaniel she
found in a bombed terrace.  When you've seen your family down to that,
it's no hardship to trade a quick shag for a pound of sausages, I can
tell you."

"The wages of sin, this house," Sue said to Jenny later as they
carefully closed Mrs.  Fingell's rickety front gate.

"I wonder when she retired?"  Jenny mused, looking at the rotting
window frames and the ramshackle garden.

"Puts my little venture into humble perspective doesn't it?"  she went
on.

"There was me dabbling in a spot of paid naughtiness, just so I could
go on having life's little trimmings if Alan decides to take off, and
down the road all the time is a woman who took to prostitution just to
survive."

"Well she could have got another kind of job after the war," Sue
reasoned.

"Though with tar ting you can choose your own hours and take time off
if your kid's ill.  I wonder if she was ever actually married, or if
she just calls herself " Mrs" like cooks always used to."

"" Imagine," said Jenny, 'what the Mathiesons would say if they knew.

Not just one, but two houses of ill-repute in one small suburban
cul-de-sac!  "

Alan was lying on the sofa.  As she walked up the path, Jenny could see
him through the sitting-room window, feet up, beer in hand and his eyes
half-closed.  He looked as if he intended to stay there all night,
slumped and exhausted from his efforts with the wall.  Jenny went into
the house, and was immediately pounced on by Daisy rushing down the
stairs pursued by Ben, who tripped and missed the last couple of steps,
landing in an untidy heap at Jenny's feet.

"Hey, slow down!"  she said, pulling Ben upright.

"What's the panic?"

"She's got my headphones," Ben said, reaching across to grab them from
Daisy's hand.

"Well you're going out, you won't be needing them."

"I need them while I get ready!"  he snapped at Daisy.  Jenny felt that
at their age she shouldn't have to be refereeing, and marched straight
on into the kitchen

where she banged about looking for things for supper, wishing she
couldn't still hear every word of the din.

"No you don't," Daisy snarled, 'you'll get toothpaste or something all
over them.  And what's that poovy pong?  " she added, wrinkling her
nose.

"Aftershave," Ben told her, blushing and making for the stairs.

"After what?  Do me a favour!"  she snorted.

"She's only jealous because she can't go out."  Ben leaned over the
banisters and loudly appealed to Jenny for support.

"I don't want to know.  Just carry on arguing amongst yourselves!"  she
shouted.

No wonder Alan is looking elsewhere she thought, finding enough
ingredients for a Salade Nigoise.  He must be lying on that sofa right
now wishing he was somewhere quiet and peaceful, with someone quiet and
peaceful.  As she boiled eggs and chopped tomatoes she imagined Serena
in a pale and tranquil apartment, surrounded by the trappings of a
grownups-only life, tasteful and delicate sculptures, intricate, un
chipped glass ornaments, creamy, unmarked silk cushions.

She thought of a high, wide bed, perhaps of elegant blond wood, hung
with drapes of sheer silk that ten-year-olds hadn't wound themselves in
to giggle and hide from their scruffy friends.  A bed piled with
Floris-scented white antique lace cushions that a teenager hadn't
flumped carelessly into as a handy nest from which to watch Neighbours
or monopolize the phone.  Jenny sighed and whipped up a fast salad
dressing, knowing it wouldn't be as good as Alan's, but reluctant to
play the useless wife and disturb him.  Serena wouldn't have any
problem with curdling walnut oil, Jenny concluded, whisking the
dressing more in hope than expectation.  Viciously she tore some leaves
from the nearest of the four basil plants lined up on the window
ledge.

Blinded by love, Alan would probably be thrilled to be served ready
made Paul Newman stuff-in-a-bottle by the object of his desires.

Ben suspected he'd overdone the aftershave.  If you can smell it
yourself, he thought, it's probably too much, even if the stuff is
right under your own nose.  There was supposed to be just a hint, just
enough for Emma to scent appreciatively as she nuzzled close to his
neck.  There wasn't supposed to be enough to make her eyes water.  He
started to feel hot at the thought of Emma as he trudged down the Close
on his way to Oliver's house.  He didn't want to get sweaty, and his
armpits were safely stiff with a triple spraying of Right Guard, but
the picture that kept creeping into his mind of her adjusting her games
skirt and showing off her thighs was quite irresistible.  He could feel
the stirrings of an erection even as he walked, and wished it would go
away.  He tried instead to concentrate on the other.  feeling he always
got on the way to Oliver's, a certain amount of stark terror, as
Oliver, with a full scholarship to their expensive school and a council
grant for his uniform, lived right in the middle of the estate, as
overlooked by tower blocks as was the Close.  His house had four
bedrooms, and his family was large six children run on chaotically
anarchic lines by ex-hippy parents, a dedicated mother who educated
three of her younger children herself at home and a session guitar
player who was using his increasing bouts of unemployment to take over
more and more of the surprisingly large back garden for organic
vegetables.  The fence, to stave off residents who were too idle to get
as far as the greengrocer on the edge of the estate, was of coiled
barbed wire like a military base.

As Ben walked, his right hand was clutched tightly

round the cling filmed three ounce stash of dope in his pocket.  He
couldn't afford to be mugged for that, or there'd be no profits for him
and Oliver to share.  Crossing the main road in front of Sue Kennedy's
house, he took a deep breath and entered the estate, treading carefully
round the mountainous heaps of dog shit from the estate's enormous and
free-ranging population ofDobermanns and German shepherds.  Ben wished
he could borrow Sue's grouchy Airedale, just to get him safely across
the open space ahead, where teams of circling boys with heavy-duty
mountain bikes, state-of-the-art trainers, bandanas and backward-facing
baseball caps eyed him with interest and suspicion.

"You going to Mick's?"  one of the boys called out.

Startled, Ben looked round to check it was really him the boy was
talking to.

"Yeah you, you look like one of his brother's mates."  The boys were
cycling closer to him now, starting to weave slowly and ex pertly round
him, just close enough to intimidate.  It was impossible, with the
spotted, drug-runner style bandanas covering the lower halves of their
faces, to see their expressions.  His hand on the stash in his pocket
grew hotter and he wondered if the stuff would melt.

"Yeah, I'm going to Mick's," he answered, as casually as he could
manage.  The kids were no more than Polly's age, he reminded himself,
wondering if the Right Guard was going to last out the evening.

"Well tell him we've been waiting for him and we're getting pissed
off," another of the boys said.

"OK, I'll tell him," Ben replied, walking across the last bit of the
square and wondering if they'd grab him as soon as he got to the
deserted narrow passageway by Oliver's house.

"Cheers," the boys yelled, and cycled off across the square again.  I'm
getting like Carol Mathieson, terrified of anyone who isn't exactly the
same tribe as me, Ben thought, angrily correcting his politics from
the safety of hindsight.

"Going out' for Ben and his friends mostly involved finding somewhere
to gather where the maximum number of girls could be found.  All places
of teenage entertainment had been closed down either by people fearful
for their furnishings, or those chasing fatter profits.  Even on the
estate they were banned after 7 p.m. from the community centre, which
was taken over for bingo sessions.  The two local discotheques charged
2.50 for a bottle of mild Mexican lager (including slice of lime) and
wouldn't allow in anyone under 25, or in jeans, trainers or leather.

In the town, the police patrolled in pairs, separating groups of bored
teenagers looking for fun from nervous proprietors of hamburger bars,
where occasional knifings took place between groups whose sole
difference was the chosen shape of their trousers.

Ben and Oliver, each now also equipped with a night's supply of booze,
headed for the river towpath, beside the bridge, watching carefully to
see if they were being followed by hostile rag gas or goths.  Both were
aware that their hair was the unmistakable public school style floppy,
and over-long at the front, and their clothes, despite a fashionable
hint of unkempt- ness about them, were too clean.

"Do you think she'll be there?"  Ben asked Oliver for about the
fourteenth time, as the group of kids on the green next to the bridge
came into sight.

"She might, she might not," Oliver said, unhelpfully.  His attitude, it
seemed to Ben, was rather casual: if one girl wasn't available, any
other would probably do.  The group by the bridge consisted of about
fifteen teenagers with nowhere better to go.  There was a homogeneity
about them, the girls being a giggling, confident bunch mostly from
Daisy's school, and the boys a brash, showing-off contingent from
Ben's.  By some form of

consensus this was where they all knew to congregate, in the absence
of a party or any other firm venue.  A couple of dawdling policemen
hung over the bridge parapet, just checking that no-one was yet about
to fall drunkenly in the rive rand being snobbish enough to think that
from this group, at any rate, no real drugs or knife trouble could be
expected.

"No Daisy then?"  Oliver checked with Ben, before he could feel free to
aim his one-night affections at a small, curvy fair-haired girl called
Lucy.

"No.  Not for a while.  Except that she's got a plan to sneak out on
the night of Sophie's birthday party, even if she dies in the attempt,
she says."

"Well as you know, ideally I'd like to save my self for her till then,"
Oliver said, grinning past Ben towards the foxy little face of Lucy.

"But you know how it is, got to get the practice in ..."  He shrugged,
and left Ben to go and offer a swig from his cider bottle to the
giggling Lucy.

Emma arrived with Sophie about ten minutes later.  Ben, who had been
feeling pretty big-time, having sold all his stash except a bit for
himself, suddenly wished he had Daisy there so he could be artlessly
chatting to her and Emma could join them.  Now, with only himself to
rely on, he felt overheated again as he watched her picking her way
down the grassy slope.  She was wearing a floaty, translucent flowered
long shirt over black leggings.  As she came closer, Ben could see
through the frail fabric that she wore a cropped black top that left a
tantalising strip of naked flesh round her middle.  It's about a hand's
width, he caught himself thinking, feeling that his own hands were
becoming flopping, uncontrollable lettuces on the end of his ape-like
arms.  The evening was fairly cold, Emma had obviously chosen fashion
over comfort and would be needing to be kept warm later.  Ben could
hardly wait.

Carol and Paul took the twins to an early showing of fungle Book at
the Odeon.

"It's important we give them something to take their mind of this
afternoon's events," Carol told Paul after the fiasco on the Common.

Paul had been hoping to start some bowling practice with the boys in
the garden, ready for the summer.  He looked forward to sitting in the
sun outside the school pavilion, proudly watching them star in the
first eleven, and had vague fantasies of a queue of leading public
schools offering sports scholarships to the twins, renowned throughout
the English prep school world as, perhaps, 'those marvelous Mathieson
boys', regardless of their efforts in Common Entrance a year or so
ahead.  Half-lost in a dream, he flexed his bowling arm and caught
sight of himself in the hall mirror, looking strangely twisted and odd.
Reflected behind him was one of the Siamese cats, sitting complacently
on the table next to Carol's militarily precise arrangement of
scentless carnations.  Strange that the cat was allowed to shed its fur
over any surface it chose, whereas he, a grown-up human, could only
expect a hail of abuse if he so much as left a stray hair in the
shower.  He looked closer at his reflection and ran his fingers
carefully through his hair, checking to see how much of it fell out on
to his hand.  Quite a lot of it did these days.  He had another go at
his bowling position and felt a twinge in his shoulder that hadn't been
there the previous season and hoped he wasn't in for a painful and
expensive spell with the demon chiropractor up at the Club.

"So we are going out then?"  Carol did not wait for the inevitable
gesture of agreement, and was already reaching into the cloakroom for
her coat.

"Something undemanding and light.  I think they ought to laugh."

You can't laugh to order, thought Paul, rubbing his shoulder blade.

You had to be fit to be a policeman, Ben reflected as he ran, wondering
if his rugby training would be up to enabling him to escape.

It was all Luke's fault, trying to make a greedy profit, selling on the
ounce of dope he'd scored off Ben and Oliver to a bloke they didn't
know.

"Raggas know when they're being ripped off," Oliver had warned him, and
this had proved to be horribly true.

"What's this garbage cut with?"  the boy wearing the world's hugest
trainers had demanded, sniffing suspiciously at the wodge of dope.

"Nothing, stupid," Luke had replied riskily and somehow, magically,
about ten of the boy's mates had appeared from the towpath beyond the
arch of the bridge, their oversized clothes giving them an alarming
illusion of bulk.

"Run!"  Oliver had yelled, unnecessarily, as he and Ben and the others
in their group took off up to the top of the bridge and across into the
Saturday night crowd in the town.  Police, alerted on the way by the
sudden frantic flurry of movement, joined in the chase.

Ben seized his chance, the moment and Emma, dragging her into an
alleyway at the side of the Odeon.  Looking back briefly over his
shoulder, he could see one of the rag ga boys hesitating on the corner
back at the main road, his baseball cap clutched in his hand for better
running power.  Fearful that the boy was about to spot him, Ben pulled
Emma into a doorway and started kissing her thoroughly.  As she broke
away to protest, he put a restraining finger to her soft lips and
glanced over her shoulder.

"It's only till they've gone.  They'll think we're just another
couple," he explained, wondering if he'd get away with that one.
Thankful that he could put his heavy breathing down to the exertion of
running, Ben started kissing her again, thrilled that she was now
enthusiastically joining in.  Suddenly, just as Ben was edging his
thumb under her cropped tee-shirt, a door opened next to them and a
family of cinema-goers rushed out.  A young boy was noisily sick on the
pavement.

"You should have told us you'd already had junk food for lunch!"  Ben
heard the outraged voice of Carol bleating at Sebastian.  Paul was
standing around, shifting from one leg to the other, worrying in case
Carol ordered him to clear up the pavement, the way she would have done
if Sebastian had been a dog.  Ben peeked over Emma's shoulder, watching
Carol bend to wipe the face of her son, her pale pink leggings
stretching taut over her bottom.  For a moment, in the dark, she gave
the impression of being naked below the waist and Ben felt a familiar
lurch in his already over-stimulated grpin.  He sighed deeply into
Emma's patchouli-scented hair.  So many women, he thought, so little
time.

It had been a tedious evening.  Jenny had found nothing to interest her
on TV, had finished the crossword and couldn't face straining her eyes
doing needlepoint in the lamplight.  Daisy made sure everyone knew she
resented being still grounded, flouncing around the house, sighing and
unsettled, ostentatiously writing her diary on the sofa and glaring at
her parents as if thinking up new and vitriolic ways to describe their
cruel treatment of her.  Alan had drunk most of a bottle of priceless
claret and fallen into a deep and unattractive stupor.  Jenny wished
she'd taken Polly to see Jungle Book, even though they'd both seen it
before.  Eventually she decided sleep was the only interesting

prospect, and on her way to the stairs opened the front door for the
miaowing Biggies.

"You've got a perfectly good cat-flap in the kitchen," she told him,
bending to give his velvet-soft marmalade ears a rub.  Looking out into
the chill night, she noticed Alan's car parked too near the front door.
It reminded her of the conversation with Serena about the scarf.

In the confusion of the afternoon, the 'murder' of Mrs.  Fingell and
the bickering of her children, Jenny had forgotten her plan to confront
Alan about the phone call.  She stepped out into the cool air and
opened the driver's door and looked in both glove compartments, finding
only a map book, a hotel guide and a torch that didn't work.

She flicked through the guide, wondering if she was looking for little
intimate country inns, marked perhaps with a damning asterisk, but
there was nothing.  The scarf was in the back of the car, just under
the edge of the front passenger seat.  Jenny picked it up and held it
by a hand-hemmed corner with the tips of her fingers, as fastidiously
as if she'd come across a used condom.  In the warm sitting-room Alan,
sprawled plumply on the sofa, was starting to snore.  Impatiently Jenny
shook him and held out the scarf.

"A friend of yours, Serena I think she said, called, wanting her scarf
back.  She left it in your car."  Jenny let go of the scarf and it
floated delicately past Alan's face and draped itself across his chest.
Grunting his way out of a doze he picked it up, then dropped it
abruptly on the carpet as if terrified of leaving incriminating
fingerprints on it.

"Whose did you say it was?"  he blustered, rubbing his sleepy eyes.

Jenny watched him calmly, trying to be objective about whether he was
reacting guiltily or not.  She was too tired to tell.  There was a
brief and thoughtful silence.

"Oh right!  Serena!"  Alan suddenly stated, as if he'd not quite worked
out who she was.

"Hardly special enough to recall', was the message he seemed to be
trying to convey- how many women was he used to chauffeuring around?

He reminded Jenny of Polly when confronted with something mysteriously
broken: "Oh that plate!  Oh now I remember!"

"Yes.  I gave her a lift home from work the other night."  He got up
quickly, too quickly and staggered slightly.  What did that mean? Jenny
wondered, low blood pressure or lack of concentration?  He was picking
up empty glasses from the coffee table, not looking at Jenny. The scarf
lay like a pool of something colourful and spilt that no-one wanted to
clear up.

"Ah.  You work with her, do you?"  Jenny asked, casually conversational
as she fluffed up the cushions on the sofa, almost as unwilling as Alan
to have honest eye contact.  Alan yawned and stretched languidly.

"She's a trainee, Bernard's niece.  Shameless nepotism, don't you
think?"  Alan grinned brightly at her, picked up the glasses and the
empty wine bottle and took them to the kitchen.  So Serena was simply a
mere junior colleague.

"I'll put it back in the car, then you won't forget it," Jenny called
to him as she picked up the soft silk square.  She went quickly out to
the car and shoved it onto the front seat, then went back into the
downstairs cloakroom to wash the scent of Serena off her hands, rubbing
and rubbing at them like Lady Macbeth.  Two things bothered her more
than slightly, in fact they made her heart beat with alarming
heaviness.  The first was why had the scarf been in the back of the
car?  Would it be charitable or naive to pretend it fell from the back
of Serena's sleek pony-tail (if indeed she had one), silkily and
unnoticed as Serena travelled innocently in the front seat?  Or would
it be more realistic to assume that Alan and Serena had been
frolicking, teenager-style, in the back of the car, parked, like

Sue did, in one of the many lanes on the Common?

The other thing which crossed Jenny's mind was a simple matter of
mathematics.  If Alan was intending eventually to keep Serena in Chanel
accessories, there would be precious little income left over to support
his family.

Chapter Ten

Alan knew he was in trouble; he'd known all night, ever since just
after he'd cleaned his teeth and started automatically packing his
wash-bag and realized he'd completely forgotten to tell Jenny about the
audit in Leicestershire, and that he'd be staying away from home for
two nights.  It had been a very edgy Sunday, too.  Polly had refused to
eat the beef he'd so painstakingly cooked, simply because he had
reassured his family that he was protecting them from mad cow disease
by announcing that this particular joint was from a herd of guaranteed
BSE-free Red Polls.

"Now look what you've done," Daisy had grumbled at him as Polly burst
into immediate anguished tears out of solidarity with the cattle that
shared her name.

"Th the poor, poor things!"  she had wailed, pushing the succulent
slices of beef messily off the edge of her plate.

It wasn't his fault he forgot the audit either, Alan thought.  With all
that business over Mrs.  Fingell on Saturday, and the rebuilding of the
wall (and had anyone been appreciative?  congratulatory?  grateful?  )
things that mattered had slid from his mind like roof tiles in a
gale.

The office hadn't yet said who they were sending with him.  He hardly
dared think about that.  Jenny didn't usually fuss.  She'd always joked
that his absence gave her an opportunity to have a quick couple of days
dieting and to do all those woman-things like root-retouching and
pussy-waxing or whatever it was they were supposed to pretend they
never actually did.

She'd never been the kind of wife who minded about having to be alone
at home, and in fact had always scorned the ones who did.  Carol
Mathieson used to complain she was too nervous to sleep at all unless
Paul was in the house, though she hadn't been heard to say this lately,
since George Pemberton, drunk at a Christmas drinks party, had sidled
up and quietly offered his services as night watchman.  This time,
though, Jenny had looked at Alan as if he was planning a permanent
absence from home life, or sneaking off to Brazil for a dozen years,
perhaps with the takings, meagre as they were at the moment, from the
office bank account.

"Why didn't you tell me?"  Jenny had said.

"A bit sudden isn't it?"  as if he was sliding off on the spur of the
moment to get up to no good.

All he was doing, he reflected dolefully, sliding quietly out of bed on
Monday morning, was yet another depressing analysis of an
under-employed musician's finances, another attempt to persuade a
client that his rapidly diminishing income would no longer cover a stay
at the Ritz every time he popped into London to buy a shirt or two.
Alan had to go, it was how the ever-increasing bills got paid.  He
didn't want to wake Jenny, but feeling sudden guilty fondness for her
soft and sleeping body curled up warmly into the centre of their bed,
leaned over and kissed her.

"What time is it?"  she mumbled, half-opening her eyes.

"Only 6.30.  You've got ages yet," he whispered, reaching under the
duvet and squeezing her warm thigh, and wishing he could stay longer.

"Oh God!  And it's Monday!"  she exclaimed loudly, sitting bolt upright
and holding her head which was spinning from the abrupt movement.

"Laura's film people, they're doing the stuff in the kitchen today!  I
promised we'd all be out of the way by 7.30!"

Jenny was clambering out of bed, Alan's imminent departure suddenly of
no importance at all.

"I could do without all that today, with Polly's exam as well and
everything."  She grabbed her dressing-gown and hurtled towards the
attic stairs to wake Ben, then whirled in and out of the girls' rooms,
tugging at their duvets, opening curtains, and leaving them in no doubt
that it really was time to get up.  Back in the bedroom, grabbing
leggings and underwear from drawers, she caught sight of Alan
complacently naked in the bathroom, noisily peeing in his favourite
pose, no hands, pelvis thrust forward and his hands occupied with
pulling his hair down over his forehead towards the style he had
favoured in his youth.  He was watching himself in the mirror set into
the tiles behind the loo and cheerily whistling Honky Tonk Women.  I
hate it when he does that, she thought, what does he think he looks
like?  Bet he doesn't do that when Serena's around.  And if he does,
she thought, with a grin and a dash of merry spite, I hope her loo is
carpeted in pale pink the very worst thing to have on the floor when
there's a man of unreliable aim around the place.

"Sodding exams," Polly grumbled in the kitchen, drooping over her Coco
Pops.

"Polly!  Don't say things like that."  Jenny hovered over Polly, who
could eat agonizingly slowly on occasions.

"What, exams?"  Polly asked impudently, opening her eyes wider and
infuriating her mother.

"Poll, not today, please," Jenny said, whizzing round the kitchen with
a damp cloth, inefficiently trying to clear and wipe surfaces while the
others were still eating.  The film people were likely to take one look
round and zoom off up the road to Carol Mathieson's permanently sterile
kitchen.

"I might not do very well," Polly warned, a sly look on her face.

"I

might still be In Shock.  "

"From finding someone having a sleep two days ago?"  Daisy asked her
with weighty sarcasm.

"What do you want Mum to do, send a note?"  She giggled.

"I can just see Mrs.  Pemberton's face ..."

Jenny laughed, picked up Daisy's school bag from under the table and
thrust it at her.

"Here, time you were all out of here.  This kitchen's going to earn its
keep today.  Ben, take another slice of toast with you," she added,
habitually worried that he would soon be the longest, skinniest human
on the planet.

"And don't worry, Polly," she said, scooping the child out of her chair
and hugging her, 'the worst that can happen is that you really don't do
all that brilliantly.  Just as long as you try your hardest.

There are plenty of other schools, and if this one doesn't want to keep
you, it's their loss.  " She gave her a kiss, and sent her off to climb
into Ceci Caine's car.  Polly trailed slowly trying hard to look
pitifully close to tears; when she waved from the gate Jenny for once
wished it was her turn to do the school run.

"I'll collect you this afternoon!"  she shouted suddenly, knowing that
Polly was tweaking deliberately at the heart-strings.

"Tell Cecil"

"They're just coming round the corner!"  Jenny heard Laura's voice
calling out to her as she watched Ceci do a gear-crunching three-point
turn in front of the Mathiesons' house.  Laura trotted up the path,
already, at that ungodly hour, wafting a gentle smell of cosmetics.  No
early morning Hung-on leggings-and-sweatshirts for her, Laura was
already pin-neat in frill-collared blouse, floral needle cord skirt,
pale green tights and principal boy shoes with little gold buckles.  As
Laura had said, they really were just coming round the corner.  What
seemed like a self-important motor cade of four or five rather scruffy
vans and buses, piled into the Close, taking up enough space to annoy
every resident who wasn't being paid for their presence.  A large
silver truck with Picture This!  emblazoned on the side pulled up
across next door's driveway, and Jenny backed nervously into her hall
as she caught sight of Carol Mathieson up at her window, opening her
bedroom curtains.  A gun-metal grey Porsche swung confidently through
Jenny's gates just as she was about to hide behind the door.

"Hi, you must be Jennifer," the driver called to her, switching off the
engine.

"I'm Hugo Hamilton, director on this shoot."

"Hello Hugo."  Laura emerged from behind Jenny as they both went out on
to the drive and she smiled winningly at the attractive, slightly
greying man.

He was seriously good-looking, Jenny decided, and well aware of it,
unfolding himself slowly from the Porsche as if to emphasize that there
wasn't a car built that could truly accommodate his impressive, hulky
body.  As if someone (a wife?  boyfriend?  ) had decided to dress him
up as an archetypal Advertising Man, Hugo was wearing stone washed
jeans (with signs of impressive over-strain round the crotch), a denim
shirt that looked suspiciously ne wish and an expensively distressed
leather jacket.  On his feet were cowboy boots of such extravagance
that if Carol Mathieson were there she would feel obliged to warn him
he could easily be mugged for them if he ventured on to the estate.

Jenny and Hugo shook hands, and then with a grin that showed perfectly
capped teeth and a "Hi darling, how are things?"  Hugo indulged Laura
in a spot of air-kissing.

"Sorry, but I'm afraid you really can't let them park there," Jenny
told Hugo, who looked blankly out of the garden at his company's
truck.

"The neighbours might need to get in and out.  Block this drive by all
means, for now though," she added, worried that he might, after all,
take off and use another location.  In her head, Jenny

had already accounted for Polly's next term at school.

"My lot won't be arriving till 8.30," Laura said, peering with frank
curiosity into the house past Jenny to make sure she had tidied her
kitchen according to instructions and not suddenly repainted it purple
since she'd made the booking.

"My own venture.  Catalogue for next Christmas.  Already!"  Laura
explained to Hugo, glancing at her watch.

"I could really do without it all today," she said, skipping sideways
as vast aluminium cases were hauled into Jenny's porch.

"I think I just might be pregnant!"  she hissed loudly.

"Either that or my period is due right now, right this minute."  A
large bearded man carrying lights made a grimacing face which only
Jenny could see, and bolted back out through the front door, away from
the awfulness of women's talk.  Laura was prodding her left breast,
oblivious to the bustle behind her.

"Because they do hurt, don't they, at either time.  I can't tell.  I'll
have to do a test.  I just can't while the house is full of people."

"Perfect darling, well done as always!"  Hugo was calling to Laura from
inside Jenny's kitchen.  He started, without ceremony, to rearrange
furniture, piling up chairs and shoving the table towards the
conservatory.

"It will fit all right in there, I should think," he said to the
bearded man who was doing intricate things with a silver parasol.

"Would you all like some coffee?"  Jenny thought she should off erat
least.

"No, no you mustn't give them anything!"  Laura immediately reprimanded
her.

"That's what the Katy Katerer truck is out there for.  They provide
everything, but everything.  If you're here," Laura added in a voice
that suggested Jenny should definitely go out and spend the day in the
Tate Gallery, 'they might give you lunch.  "

"Should I not be here then?"  Jenny thought she'd better get it
clear.

"What if there's an emergency, or they need to know about plugs, or the
phone rings?"  (Oh God, she thought, men who might want flute lessons)
"Frankly, Jen, I find it's best not to watch what they do to the
house," then she added quickly, 'though of course once they've gone,
you won't know they've been, so to speak.  It's just at the time .  "

"Table over here I think, Kev," Hugo was saying to the bearded man, who
was single-handedly struggling through the doorway with the top half of
a large round pine table, followed by a scowling blonde girl lugging a
pair of bentwood dining chairs.

"What's wrong with my table?"  Jenny asked Laura.

"Just something to keep the stylists and the props people occupied.

Don't worry about it, and for heaven's sake don't take it personally,"
Laura instructed her.

Jenny watched her kitchen being dismantled around her, thinking
murderous thoughts about Alan, who had once more escaped up a motorway
on the grounds of work, and took herself off to have a peaceful shower
and make herself feel human again.

Emerging from the bathroom wrapped in a towel, deep in thoughts about
what Alan's business trip might really involve, she was startled to see
Sue sitting cross legged on her bed, calmly reading Country Living.

"God, you scared me," Jenny told her.

"I thought you might be one of those film people, trying to take over
my bedroom."  Alarming hangings and crashings and shoutings were
drifting up the stairs.

"I've come to move you out of the house, actually," Sue said.

"You can't possibly stay here with this lot, you'll go mad worrying
about your paintwork.  I thought I'd take you out to lunch and we can
pretend to be Ladies who Shop."

"OK, but I have to be back in time to collect Polly.  It's the day of
the Great Exam."  Jenny pulled a long

pink shirt out of the wardrobe and Sue inspected the cosmetic
collection on top of the chest of drawers.

"Does this stuff actually work?"  she asked, reading the instructions
on the cellulite treatment bottle.  She squeezed a bit out onto the
back of her hand and massaged it in, sniffing at it.

"Does anything?"  Jenny asked, giving her a backward grin in the
mirror.  25 for a spot of fantasy cream.  They saw me coming.  "

"You and a million others.  Let's take it back for a refund," Sue said,
shoving the bottle in her bag.

"Don't be daft!  How can we prove it didn't work?"  Jenny asked her.

"Wait and see," Sue said mischievously, "I've got a plan, but I can't
do it on my own."

"Oh God," Jenny groaned, 'are we going to make trouble?  I've got
enough already with Alan and Daisy and Ben and those people downstairs,
and Polly's exam .  "

"No this is fun, I promise.  You expect justice to be seen to be done,
don't you?  Well you bought something that wasn't any use and I've
thought of a way of getting your money back, that's all," Sue said, in
a deceptively simple way, her eyes twinkling at Jenny.

"And after that we can buy a little treat for old Mrs.  Fingell, and go
and see how she is."

"Anyway, how's business?"  she asked.

"Loads of offers of tasty, sorry should I use that word?  Tasty
clients?"  she giggled.

"No!  Of course not!"  Jenny said, rather wishing she'd never let Sue
know the awful truth.

"I told you that was just a one-off but goodness, we could do with the
money.  Accountancy isn't what it was;

if no-one out there is earning anything, they haven't got any money
that needs accounting, if you see what I mean.  Alan is forever having
to hand their stuff over to the Receiver people.  That's why I'm
renting the kitchen out today.  Loadsa cash.  I'd rather rent the
house out than myself I don't have to worry about it getting diseased,
murdered or blackmailed.  "

Inside the department store, Sue led Jenny firmly through the cosmetics
area to a counter staffed by a nail-filing assistant who took little
notice of browsing customers playing with the test samples.  Sue
produced the plastic cosmetic bottle from her handbag, handed it to
Jenny and prodded her.

"Go on," she said, 'tell her.  "

"Excuse me," Jenny said politely, but loudly enough to get the
attention of three counters-worth of staff.

"This stuff, for cellulite, that it says you just put on and the fat
fades away.  It doesn't work.  So can I have my money back please?"

The assistant, spun-sugar strawberry-blond hair as brittle as candy
floss and her immaculate eye makeup glossy as a Vogue cover, smiled
professionally at Jenny and took the bottle from her.

"Sorry madam," she said, 'but you appear to have used almost all of it.
I can't possibly give you a refund.  "

"You have to use it all to find that out," Sue pointed out.

"It doesn't do what it claims to.  So can my friend now have her money
back please?"

Jenny, fiddling with the eye-shadow testers and making a muddy mess "on
the back of her hand, could hear a slightly menacing tone in Sue's
voice.  The assistant, her smile now as fixed as her lip-gloss, was
trying to be placatory, fully aware that several customers were now
lingering around, sampling perfumes and sensing entertainment.

"I'm afraid these things aren't really quantifiable," the girl said,
savouring the long word as if she'd got it straight from her training
manual.

"We have a policy of not refunding unless there's actually skin
damage."

"Consumer rights.  An item has to be fit for its intended use," Sue
insisted.  And then, to Jenny's horror, Sue turned to her and said
loudly, "Go on, Jen, show the girl your burnI' " Hey, hang on a minute!
" Jenny hissed, watching the gleeful crowd collecting around them.

"Yeah, go on, you show her," encouraged a plump woman pushing a double
buggy.

"I bought that stuff too and it's a rip-off.  I'd like to see someone
getting their money back for once!"

The support of the crowd and the feeling of being in the right were
getting to Jenny.  Sue often made her feel like she was part of some
daft comedy act.  Jenny quickly considered her underwear: quite
respectably pretty, high-cut navy-and-white flowered M & S knickers,
and her thighs weren't that unpresentable, just a bit lumpy .  "OK, why
not?"  she said.  25 of water and fancy chemicals and I should have
legs as smooth as a teenager, but instead .  " Jenny announced to her
audience, slowly raising her skirt, hiking it up at the side teasingly
like the opening seconds of a bawdy nightclub act.

"Da da da, de da da dum," someone starting singing The Stripper quite
loudly and Jenny, enjoying the moment pulled up her skirt higher and
turned round to give the girl behind the counter a good view of her
bottom and the tops of her thighs.  She glanced mockingly over her
shoulder, daring the assistant, whose thickly mascaraed eyes were as
big as bath-spiders, to refuse her request.

Jenny's skirt was up to her hips by now and Sue, like the straight man
in a double act, was prodding at her flesh.

"Look at that!"  she demanded, as everyone stared.

"Lumpy cellulite!  That stuffs a con!"

"Give her the money!"  yelled a voice from the crowd.

"Yeah, go on.  They make a fortune on this!"  came a cry of support.

The assistant hurriedly opened the till and shakily counted out the
notes, handing them, with the fastidious tips of her lacquered nails,
across to Sue.

Jenny, suddenly coming to her senses, lowered her skirt, patted it
decently into place, and felt a blush coming on.

"Thank you," she said, with as much dignity as she could muster and the
little group gave her a round of applause.  Only when she dared look up
and take the money from Sue did she notice that one of the figures now
hurrying away, the only one not laughing delightedly, was Carol
Mathieson.

"Oh good grief, did you see?  That was Carol.  She's everywhere, that
woman.  Now it will be all round the Close."

"Who cares?"  said Sue airily.

"And anyway, isn't the fight for justice one of the Mathiesons'
favourite themes?  And just think," she whispered loudly, 'you got the
price of half a blow-job just for showing your knickers!  "

Carol was still trembling when she got home.  She carefully eased the
white Peugeot past the trucks parked in the Close and parked as near to
her front door as she could.  Quickly she hauled her Marks and Spencer
carrier bags full of economy packs of chicken into the kitchen and
flung them crossly into the depths of the freezer without the thorough
labelling (re date of purchase and intention of use) that they usually
got.  Those two, she thought, Jenny and Sue, they just didn't care how
they behaved.  She felt offended that she, Carol, who had chosen her
home with such care, should have ended up living a stone's throw from
the sort of woman who was prepared to flash her bottom in a respectable
department store just for the sake of a bit of a refund.  If the twins
had been with her, imagine what they'd have thought!  Grownup people
were supposed to have standards, grownup people of a certain background
were supposed

to set standards.  Carol filled up the fridge haphazardly with packs
of dolly-size vegetables, miniature carrots, baby beans and tiny,
embryonic cauliflowers, and then went upstairs to the attic.  The
telescope was already focused on the Tennis Club and there they were,
those two careless, wicked women, giggling on the balcony and tearing
recklessly into great slabs of what looked like garlic bread.  They
were laughing, probably, at their own cleverness, Carol guessed in
outrage.  Well they'd better not behave like that in the Close, she
thought, resolving to have a Little Word.  She swivelled the telescope
round and refocused on Jenny's conservatory.  Whatever they were doing
in her house, those Picture This!  people, it seemed to involve putting
most of Jenny's kitchen furniture into the garden.  What a pity it
wasn't about to rain.

Outside the school it was easy to see which mothers, that day, had
daughters taking the school's own entrance exam.  Smiles were fixed,
there was much hearty laughter and fake dismissal of their own
children's chances of success.  Jenny, climbing out of her Golf, heard
one mother boasting that her daughter, in the car that morning, had
completely forgotten her entire six times table.  Another was saying
that she had spent the whole evening before working out how to do Venn
diagrams and was still none the wiser, her child having had no clue
either.  It was immoral, really, putting these girls through such a
distressing selection process, Jenny considered, taking her place
anxiously at the foot of the school steps.  Ceci Caine, too eager to
hear what Harriet's day had been like to let Jenny drive her home, came
and stood next to her.

"You know, it's not right is it?"  Jenny said, glad to have someone to
hear her thoughts.

"The school willingly took on all these little girls at the age of
four, not knowing which would turn out to be the infant prodigy and
which, as they put it so tactfully in school reports, the late
developer.  It's as if they've reached judgement day, where only those
who'll be absolutely no effort to teach will get to stay on."

Ceci looked wary, as if Jenny had confessed to sympathy with the wrong
political party.

"Yes, but surely you want Polly to go through school with girls who can
match her ability, don't you?  It's so much more stretching."

Jenny saw Polly elongated, pulled like elastic between her family and
the stringent academic requirements of Fiona Pemberton.  All those
dance classes Polly loved so much, would she have time for them in the
senior department, where homework was supposed to take God-given
priority?  To Ceci she said, "I'm not sure.  I mean they've all been OK
together this far, haven't they?  And anyway, maybe Polly is one of
those who won't be staying."

"Oh surely not ..."  Ceci murmured automatically, bored with the ritual
comforting that had been going on for weeks among all those mothers who
had doubts.

"Mum, Mum!  It was really hard!"  Polly came shrieking out of the main
doors and hurtled down the steps.  Jenny hugged Polly, relieved that
she did not look too concerned by the difficulty of the exam.  How
worried should anyone of ten have to be?

On the way home, Polly wheedled for chocolate eclairs and a banana milk
shake, taking full advantage of Jenny's sympathetic mood.

"Well, I'll buy some eclairs, but I think I'd really like to go home
and see what they're doing to the house.  Apparently it's an ad for
breakfast cereal."

"Perhaps I can be in it," Polly said eagerly, pulling down the vanity
mirror in the car and making actressy faces into it.

"I'd really love to, more than anything!"

Jenny was touched by the child's shiny-eyed enthusiasm.

"OK, let's forget the cakes and go and see what's happening."

Since that morning, the population of trucks and vans had increased as
Laura Benstone's drive now also overflowed with vehicles.  How many
people does it take to photograph one Christmas gift catalogue, Jenny
wondered, quickly telling her brain not even to think about it as she
started adding up the stylists, props people, designers, directors and
multitude of hangers-on that could well be leaning against Laura's
limed-oak kitchen units at any one moment, fingers artistically curled
round coffee mugs.

The scene in Jenny's own house bordered more on the chaotic than the
creative.  Somewhere offstage, probably in the conservatory, there was
shouting.  Hugo strode about in the hall crossly, his expensively cut
hair was up on end from frantic runnings-through with the fingers,
exposing thinning patches of scalp, his mobile phone poking rudely from
the waistband of his jeans.  A greeny-pale, ginger-haired girl of about
Polly's age was sitting on the stairs looking tearful, and being
inadequately comforted by her worried- looking mother, who listlessly
patted her child on the shoulder and whispered unheeded encouragement
to her.

"Everything all right?"  Jenny called brightly to no-one in particular
as she hung up her jacket, well aware that everything was obviously far
from all right and hoping someone would tell her what was going on.
Ominous bucket-clankings came from the kitchen and Polly dashed in to
have a look.

"Ugh puke!  Someone threw up!"  she yelled, backing out again.

"Sorry about that.  Don't worry, Belinda's mopping."  Hugo smiled wanly
at Jenny, who wanted to get past him into her kitchen.  With practised
skill he blocked the doorway and treated her to one of his less
convincing smiles.

"Spot of trouble with our little star," he hissed viciously, glaring
towards the unhappy child on the stairs.

"It seems milk products don't agree with her terribly well."

The child's mother, sensing criticism, glared back.

"That much milk wouldn't agree with anyone.  My Gemma may be sensitive,
but she is a professional.  You should have got all you needed in less
than five takes."

"If she could have done all I needed in less than five then obviously I
would have done," Hugo snarled back.

"Now I'm stuck with the set, the product, the crew and no actor.  What
am I supposed to do now?"  He bellowed into the kitchen, "Kev!  Call
Castakid would you?  Get me another brat!"

Polly slid out of the kitchen doorway, and smiled winsomely up at
Hugo.

"You've got me, if you want me.  I'm not allergic to anything, and I
could live on breakfast cereals," she purred, willing him to see her as
a perfect solution.  Hugo looked Polly up and down with hostile
speculation and her smile widened into her version of a cute-kid
grin.

Hugo made a speedy executive decision.

"Get the Carmens out, Belinda!"  he yelled into the kitchen.

"I've found us another little star!"

"Wait a minute," Polly said, turning suddenly business-like, possibly
at -the thought of having her hair curled.

"How much do I get paid?"

Chapter Eleven

"A hundred pounds!  You're getting a hundred pounds just for gobbling
down a bit' of breakfast!"  Daisy was appalled and trembling with
envy.

By the time she got home from school (late because of gym club, she
claimed) the house looked boringly like home again.  Daisy would have
liked to give Hugo Hamilton the opportunity to see and discover her;

perhaps he'd have been captivated by her excellent high cheekbones and
long, slender legs.  Instead, she was faced with Polly swarming around
the kitchen being maddeningly big-time.  Daisy stamped about crossly,
chucking her school bag onto the rocking chair and kicking at the books
that came tumbling out.

"Well I deserved it," Polly retorted, tossing her head carelessly so
that her unfamiliar mane of tubular curls bounced.

"After all, everyone I know will see me on television, looking like
this!"  she made a mock- mortified face and ran her fingers through the
curls, secretly enjoying the springy texture and glancing sideways into
the mirror to see if she really did resemble the tousled temptress she
imagined herself to be.  She pouted at her reflection and gathered the
curls up onto the top of her head.  If she started a career now as a
child model and actress, she'd be well used to it by the time she was
old enough for the real stuff.  How impressed they'd be when she turned
up for sessions and stripped off to pose with no fuss about anything
but hiding a slightly bored yawn .  "You know you look like bloody
Shirley Temple!"

Daisy said rudely.

"I wish I'd been here.  They'd have had to use me then."

"Oh no they wouldn't have, you're much too old.  And spotty."  Polly
made a sensible dash for the door and escaped just as Daisy was taking
aim with a heavy maths textbook.

Jenny was vaguely listening to all this from the depths of the fridge
as she searched for something to give them all for supper and felt
rather proud of Polly.  The ginger child's mother, outraged that Polly
had so easily taken over her daughter's job, had complained that her
darling Gemma had been picked out of 200 at the initial audition and
had trailed into town for three recalls before the final decision had
been made.  Perhaps Polly, who had got it right for the exasperated
Hugo in just two takes, really was a natural.  Gemma's mother had
confided that Gemma paid all her own school fees out of her modelling
and acting earnings, thus financing herself at a well known stage
school which would otherwise have been beyond the family's means.

As she slowly grated some cheese.  Jenny wondered how much it would
cost to have a basic portfolio of photos done so that Polly could be
enrolled at Castakid and join the family work force.  At Daisy's age
she had been starting a Saturday job, sweeping up in a hairdressing
salon.

She would never make the children pay for their own-schooling, of
course, but it would help if Polly's constant demands for dancing
lessons and Megadrive games could be met from some of her own
efforts.

It might teach at least one of their greedy, all-consuming children the
value of money.

Daisy was sulking up in her bedroom.  She had had a dreadful day.  Emma
and Sophie had a secret and had been exchanging sly giggly grins.

She'd tried to interest them in her forthcoming trip to the police
station, and confided, in a bid for attention, her dread of being

trailed along with a full set of parents to the depths of the
Interview Room where she would have to come up with a promise to be
law-abiding for ever and ever.  The glamour-value of her crime,
however, had now diminished, and whatever it was that Emma had done at
the weekend, and that Sophie knew Emma had done, overshadowed poor
Daisy.  Daisy blamed her parents.  She shouldn't still be grounded. She
was getting left out of things and would need to be more extreme to get
people to notice her.  Her parents would only have themselves to blame
if she turned to more serious crime.

She gazed miserably out of her window and up the Close towards the
Mathiesons' house.  Someone was in their attic, Paul probably, she
thought.  Carol had once mentioned that he had an office up there.

She'd said it in a grand sort of way, as if Paul was so much in demand
he had to have work-premises wherever he was.  Daisy thought he didn't
look much as if he was working, more as if he, too, was gazing out of
the window.  Knowing Carol, Daisy thought, poor old Paul was probably
grounded as well.

Absentmindedly stir-frying vegetables, Jenny looked around the kitchen
to see if there was any damage.  The peach-and-cream-dragged paint on
the skirting was very scratched, but she couldn't honestly remember
whether or not it had been like that for years.  That was one of the
pluses of fancy paint finishes, they did very usefully blur imperfect
textures and unevenness rather as expensive foundation was supposed to
do for skin.  Ben shuffled into the kitchen, shoving the door open
heavily so that it crashed against the wall next to it.

"Ben, please take care, there's a dent in the wall where you keep
banging that door.  The paint keeps flaking off around it."

"Sorry," he mumbled and grinned at Jenny, pushing his hair away from
his forehead and revealing eyes that, unusually, for him, had a lively
twinkle.

"What's got into you Ben?  And who were you phoning?"  Daisy, back in
the kitchen and ever- suspicious, caught sight of his expression on her
way to the cutlery drawer in the dresser.

"How did you know I was?"  Ben taunted her, grin widening
involuntarily.

"Heard the one in here go ping, that's how.  And Polly is singing The
Good Ship Lollipop in the loo, so it couldn't be her."

Ben's smile was now accompanied by the kind of light blush that would
have been becoming in a small child.  Daisy slammed knives and forks on
to the table, which made them spin wildly, so that they settled facing
all the wrong way.  The blush was the same kind Emma had had all day.

So was the smirk.

Jenny smiled broadly at the vegetables as she stir- fried them,
thinking hey-ho another cheery supper of stimulating conversation and
repartee coming up.  She had read in a magazine somewhere that the act
of arranging your face into a smile stimulated happy- triggers in the
brain, so that you really did feel better.  She tried it out, waiting
to feel good and for the sound of background hostilities to fade to
insignificance.

"What are you grinning like that for?"  Ben asked, catching sight of
her manic face.

"Yeah, you look like someone's told you a joke you don't really get,"
Daisy added, looking at Jenny as if she suspected her of major
craziness.

"Oh and by the way, there was this note, it fell off the top of the
fridge when Ben wafted into the kitchen."

Jenny handed over the stir-frying to Daisy and looked at the tatty
scrap of paper.  Man phoned, called Robbins, says is Friday at 2 OK for
extra flute lesson, told him probably yes, 'cos he said he'd been
before.  Oh and he said could his friend come at 1. 30.  Love
Belinda.

She read it twice more, as if the note would suddenly

reveal David Robbins's phone number so she could ring him back and say
no, he certainly couldn't come and neither could his friend.  Whatever
did they think she was?  She knew exactly what they thought she was.  A
feeling of panic flickered in her stomach.  She could say no when the
men arrived, or she could relax and earn herself an unexpected hundred
pounds for a few minutes' effort.  On balance she'd much rather, she
thought, as she drained the rice, and wondered about mint-flavoured
condoms, earn it like Polly, for eating breakfast cereal.

Alan tried hard to pretend he had asked for Serena to'be sent to join
him as an essential part of her training, just as the trip to
Bournemouth had been.  He could feel how near she was, just the other
side of the wall.  He put his hand flat against the gently flowered
wallpaper, next to the antiqued brass light switch.  The hotel was the
sort that described itself as 'country house' in style, which meant
that the room dividing was of the thin, block board sort, making little
more than expensively frilled and flounced cubicles out of stately old
bedchambers.  Serena could be just inches away, perhaps lying on her
bed, shoes off, skirt rumpled, flicking through one of those raunchy
magazines for women, the sort they had to put on the top shelf.  Or
perhaps she was doing the Financial Times crossword.  She was fearfully
clever, really knew her stuff, much more so than Alan, he had to admit.
Because of this he wondered, an hour later, when he was pouring her a
very large vodka and tonic in his room, if she'd seen right through his
look of concern as he casually called her in to go over a couple of
worrying points in the client's list of tax claims.

"I'm afraid I've got it all laid out on the desk in here."  Alan smiled
apologetically at her, ushering her, like a fly towards a web, into his
room.

"So I hope you don't mind ..."  Serena was giving him an oddly amused
look, as if thinking it was typical of men of his age to think a girl
would only normally go into a man's hotel room in order to make immoral
use of the bed.  As if in defiance, she sat pertly on the edge of the
bed, crossing her legs and allowing her skirt, which had buttons all
the way down the front, only half of which were fastened, to fall away
each side.

"Sorry there's no lemon," he said, clumsily tumbling ice into Serena's
drink.

"No problem," she said, her voice now coming from right next to him,
suddenly, not from the bed.  She stood by the desk, her eyes roving
confidently over the columns of figures in front other.  Alan took a
large, loud sip of his drink and slid his trembling hand along her arm
to her shoulder, wondering in which direction he should go next.

"He should have waited till March to buy the car, that was mistake
number one."  Serena pointed a clean, square-cut nail half-way down the
page, insultingly oblivious to Alan's touch.  He had, literally, made
no impact.  She probably thought he was leaning on her while he looked
at the figures.  His hand ached to move to the soft warm place at the
back of her neck, to untie the velvet bow that held her hair back.  He
dared himself to reach for the end of the ribbon, and then the phone
rang.

Someone was with him.  Jenny sensed it before he spoke, something in
the hesitation and the way he breathed shakily.

"Hi, Alan?  Are you all right?"  she asked, wishing she hadn't phoned.
What you don't know can't hurt you, wasn't that how the old saying
went?  What about the things you suspect, but don't know for sure?
Jenny thought they were the things, perhaps, self-inflicted though they
might be, that hurt you most of all.  Alan chatted suddenly, about the
journey, about the hotel and its shortcomings, gabbling in a jocular
way that was unlike him.

"And

it's three quid for a shot of mini-bar vodka!  " he heard himself
exclaiming, and then wished he hadn't with Serena there next to him,
probably thinking now that her stingy boss grudged her a drink.

Jenny heard a soft laugh, the chink of ice, lots of it, not just one
drink's worth and knew for sure that Serena was with him.  She had to
ask.

"Who have you got there with you?"  she said as casually as she could
manage.

"Oh, just a colleague, going over some of tomorrow's work, you know how
it is," Alan said, 'all go.  "

If it had been a male colleague, he'd have mentioned him by name.

It was dead, definitely dead, stiffening even one of its front paws was
sticking out, making it look as if the cat had keeled over in mid-prod
at a mouse.  Paul was tempted to go into the house and tell Carol that
this time he had, really had, found a corpse, make her come out and
look.  He didn't think she'd find it very funny.  Someone would have to
go round and tell the Collins family, though.  He thought it should be
Carol, really, women having the gentle touch when it came to things
like that.  Polly might be there, and be terribly upset.  It was
probably her cat.  Carol came out on to the patio at that moment, to
water the hanging baskets she had been planting for the summer.  Just
now they were naked mounds of green polythene, cut-up bin liner,
stabbed with holes and stuffed with seedlings of lobelia, begonias,
primulas and a riskily early geranium or two.

"A riot of colour, they'll be by June," Carol declared, stepping back
slightly as she poured water, so it wouldn't spill on her beige suede
shoes.

"The Collins's cat is dead," Paul said, failing to admire Carol's
efforts.

"It's down there, under the lilac.  Old age by the look of it, there's
no sign of a fight."  He pointed vaguely down the garden, as if
showing Carol where she could find it.  Not looking up, she continued
ministering to her plants, trying not to recall Jenny in that shop,
showing her fancy underwear.

She frowned.

"Nasty great ginger thing.  Do you know I caught him spraying,
spraying, mind you, our dianthus.  The Mrs.  Sinkins, I think it was. I
didn't think cats did that, once they'd been neutered."

"One of us will have to go and tell them," Paul hinted.

"Yes.  They can come and collect it.  After all, it might have had a
disease," Carol said, wrinkling her nose.

"How dead is it, exactly?"

She wondered how dead it would have to be before Ming and Mong started
showing an unhealthy interest, perhaps even dragging the smelly thing
up to the house and attempting to force it through the cat-flap, like
they had with the run-over pigeon last summer.  She shuddered.  She'd
also seen how far an untidy fox could scatter a dead rabbit.

"Better get them to remove it now, Paul, then it won't attract vermin
in the night."

It was an order, no doubt about it.  Was there ever doubt, Paul
wondered, obediently trotting through the house on his way to break the
sad news to the Collins family.  He didn't want to take the dead cat
with him, they'd all be having supper and the last thing they'd want to
see would be a Sainsbury's bag containing their beloved pet being
dumped on their back door step, Jenny was playing her flute when Paul
arrived.  She looked very graceful, he thought, with her long eyelashes
shadowing her cheek as she concentrated intently on the rippling music.
He tapped lightly, reluctant to disturb her and she saw him hesitantly
pushing his head sideways around the conservatory door.  She felt cross
with him for his apologetic interruption, his awkward self-effacing
posture as he slid his torso into the room, making a grotesque attempt
at

being inconspicuous.  Having just achieved escape from her worries,
deep into the music, she was abruptly dragged back into hearing the
washing-up squabbles in the kitchen again as the children messily
cleared up.

"I'm the bearer of bad news I'm afraid, Jenny," Paul began formally,
wondering if he should advise her to sit down in case of shock.  Not
that she'd shown much shock when Mrs.  Fingell had been 'dead'.  But
then Mrs.  Fingell hadn't shared her hearth and home for the past ten
years or so.  Jenny watched him shuffling his feet and looking past her
out of the window.

"What's happened Paul?  Are you going to tell me?"  Jenny reminded him
gesturing him to sit on the window seat.  He looked quite shaky, she
thought, starting to worry.  Perhaps Carol was ill, or one of the
twins.

"I'm so sorry, but your ginger cat has passed away in our garden.

Natural causes by the look of him.  I didn't like to bring him with me,
because of your children, well, you know .  " Paul had delivered his
bad news, all in a rush, and without the vicarish tones of comfort he
had rehearsed in the Close on his way.

Jenny put her flute back in its stand.  Poor cat, she thought.  Poor
old orange thing, old Biggies.

"I could bring it round tomorrow, if you want to bury it in the
garden," he volunteered quickly, not wanting to give her the chance to
start crying.  He wouldn't know what to do if she did, Carol never
needed much in the way of comforting, so he hadn't really had the
practice.

"Thanks Paul, but do you mind if I collect him from you in the
morning?"  Jenny said softly, sinking on to the window seat next to
him.

"I'll bury him under the strawberry patch.  He used to love lying there
on hot days.  I'd rather Polly at least was at school while I do it.
She was very fond of that cat."  Jenny felt a quiver in her voice, at
which Paul got up quickly and bolted for the door.

"Must go, Carol's cooking something.  Sorry and all that," he called
over his shoulder as he shot down the steps.  Jenny followed him out
through the door and picked weeds out of the terrace pots.  Biggies had
been Alan's cat.  Would everything that linked him to the family
gradually disappear, strands unravelling all over the place, till he
was cut free like a drifting boat?  True, he hadn't given up on his
wall, had rebuilt it with as much care as he could be expected to spare
for that kind of thing.  But they both associated the wall with his
mother, the last person, probably the only one, who had loved him
totally, unconditionally.  Jenny had never thought it such a good
thing, really, that kind of obsessive mother-love, the sort that makes
sons the world over think that, however appallingly, however downright
evilly they behaved, there'd always be that one person who still loved
them and would forgive them everything.  No wonder wars, in spite of
civilization, still went on.  She hoped she didn't inflict that kind of
devotion on Ben; she also hoped that, as a man, he'd be able to cope
without it.

It was getting dark.  Jenny was anxious that the little pile of foliage
she'd collected really was all weeds, not Alan's precious rocket
seedlings, which she should have brought indoors for the night.  She
picked up the pot and brought it in to the conservatory, placing it
tenderly on its usual shelf.  Fixing a fine rose-spray head to the
watering can, she then went, not to the kitchen tap, but down the
twilit garden to the water-butt by the shed and filled the can with the
foul-smelling, but nourishing rainwater, the better to encourage the
little plants.  She couldn't do anything about the cat, and already she
missed him trotting along beside her as she walked back up the garden;
but there was still hope for Alan's plants.

By morning, Jenny still hadn't found the moment to tell the children
about the death of Biggies.  She

was exhausted from a restless night spent half-waking and wondering
what Alan was up to in his executive queen-size double bed.  She, in
the lethargic dawn, had imagined him somehow inspired with rejuvenating
vigour, uninhibitedly cavorting with Serena through the night,
overjoyed that he hadn't felt that good in years.  Too far into sleep
to drag herself awake and so choose something else to think about,
Jenny had a bizarre vision of the occupants of the room next to Alan's
tapping furiously on the interconnecting wall and demanding some peace
and quiet.

Thankful when it was at last morning and her worst rambling thoughts
could be put to the back of her mind to sleep, like Dracula in his
coffin, Jenny got up early and automatically paced through the morning
rituals.  Still thrilled with her performance, and oblivious to
domestic atmosphere, Polly went off to school eagerly, running to Ceci
Caine's car joyously free of exam worries, and absolutely bursting with
her new-found stardom.  Jenny had kissed her goodbye and felt slight
trepidation that, by the end of the day, Polly could be coming home
wailing dramatically (as befit a newly qualified actress) that
everyone- the whole school hated her and she had no friends, not one,
all because she'd made them so envious.  Eventually, only Ben was left,
lolloping round slowly, collecting his school stuff together from every
corner of the house.

"You'll be late, won't you Ben?  Or have you got a free morning?" Jenny
said, hoping he had, and wondering if he would collect and deal with
the cat for her.

"S'OK, I can get the next bus.  No leftover homework to finish in the
common room."  He didn't look at all shifty for once, as he so often
did when letting his work drift, so Jenny realized it must be true.  It
seemed unfair to reward such virtue with bad news about Biggies, but
there was little choice.

"You know when Paul came round last night?"  she started saying, before
feeling unexpected tears creep up again.  Suddenly Ben was hugging her,
and it felt so good to be comforted that she simply gave herself up to
the misery and wept.

"It's the cat, he's dead!"  she howled, crying for Biggies and her
disintegrating marriage.

"I know," Ben said, tenderly stroking her shoulder.

"I overheard Paul, but I didn't want to say anything that close to
Polly's bedtime.  You know what her imagination's like.  I thought
she'd wander round all night in the dark looking for cat-spirits out on
the roof."

Jenny laughed damply at his so-accurate summing up of Polly's
inclinations and Ben, with a newly grown-up sense of the practical, and
the hope of seeing Carol Mathieson, collected a bin liner from the
dresser drawer.

"I'll go and collect him.  Double biology can wait."

Jenny blew her nose and wiped her eyes, and decided suddenly that she
should be doing this herself, not automatically foisting on Ben the
role of Alanreplacement for all the more repugnant domestic jobs.

That was the other thing that mothers did, she realized, allocating
gruesome tasks to the nearest male, everything from hauling out the
garbage to unblocking the drains.  Perhaps that was what you exchanged
all that unconditional love for.  She took the bin liner from Ben.  If
things like burying dead pets were what lone mothers had to get used
to, she might as well start putting in the practice.

"No, really, it's OK, you go to school, I'll deal with Biggies," she
said firmly, giving him a small but fond push in the direction of his
school bag.

He gave in, feeling, however, that he should have insisted, and
wondering why his father wasn't there to tell him whether he should
have or not.  On his

way down the Close he looked back at the Mathiesons' house.  No-one
seemed to be home.  The white Peugeot wasn't in the drive, and on his
way to the bus stop, Ben came to the conclusion (also a newly grownup
one) that collecting a dead cat from her garden would not have been the
most erotic type of encounter he could hope to have with Carol.

When Jenny rang the Mathiesons' doorbell no-one answered, so she
prowled around the front of the house, wondering which was the best way
to get through to the back.  She didn't want to go home cat less and
therefore have to rely on Paul to bring it round and have him fuss
about the right depth for the grave.  She wouldn't put it past him to
recite the ashes to ashes bit as if it was a real fimeral, or tell her
there were government statistics concerning the proportion of sadistic
children who enjoyed torturing cats.  The clean, smear- free windows of
the Mathieson house stared blankly at Jenny as she tried the high
wrought-iron gate through to the back garden.  She should have known
better than to imagine it could be left carelessly unlocked.

Undeterred, Jenny dragged from its place on guard by the front door,
one of the pair of stone pigs, whose necks and ears, in summer, would
be cutely twined with climbing nasturtium.  It weighed enough,
therefore she decided it had to be strong enough to be stood on.  Or
perhaps it wasn't real stone, she then reasoned when, levering herself
up to the precarious top of the gate, the snout dropped off.  She'd
have to sneak back later with super-glue.  The cat was still under the
lilac where Paul had found it, though decently covered, like a TV
corpse, with an old cot-sheet.  Jenny felt suddenly squeamish about
picking up the little body, and tried to tell herself it was only
Biggies under there and she'd picked him up a million times in his ten
years.

"Pity you didn't really have nine lives," she murmured to him as she
used the edges of the sheet to scoop him into the bin liner, not
looking at him too closely, preferring to remember him as a skittish
young cat when the whole family had collected him from the RSPCA animal
shelter, leaping four-square and wide-eyed into the air at every
startling leaf-flicker, every thunderous clunk of a cupboard door.

Jenny hauled her sad bundle back up the garden towards the gate,
surprised by how heavy Biggies, in death, was.  She used the freshly
painted, white ironwork garden table to stand on to climb back onto the
gate, and sat on top of it for a few moments, wondering how she was
going to jump down holding the bag.  There was no question, somehow, of
flinging Biggies to the ground ahead of her as would be sensible.  She
had the ridiculous idea it might hurt him, or otherwise be
disrespectful.  Eventually gathering courage and simply jumping down
the eight feet, she cursed as her foot caught the ear of the stone pig
and it, too, snapped off.

"Shit," she muttered, picking up the ear and the snout and laying them
neatly by the front door, ready for sticking later.  Jenny heaved the
bag over her shoulder and lugged Biggies home to be buried, looking for
all the world like a burglar with a bag of swag.  No- one stopped to
question her, no-one seemed to notice that she had climbed into the
Mathiesons' garden, or that she had vandalized their pig.  So much for
bloody Neighbourhood Watch, she thought.

Chapter Twelve

"I'd have brought him round for you myself, if you'd only waited till
lunchtime."  Paul was reproaching Jenny for having collected the cat
herself.  He stood watching her arms folded, face sulky, as she filled
in the little grave in her garden.  He looked disappointed, Jenny
thought, though whether it was because he'd been deprived of a job that
suited his position as street watchman or because she'd proved capable
of breaking into his carefully fortressed back garden, she couldn't
really tell.  Perhaps it was because of the stone pig.

"I'm sorry about the snout and the ear," Jenny told him as she patted
the earth flat over the cat and smoothed it gently, as if making a soft
bed for him.

"I'll come round later and fix them back on for you;

will that be OK?  Or shall I get Alan to do it when he gets back?  "
That should get a reaction, Jenny thought, sneaking a teasing smile
towards Paul, the threat of Alan let loose for more DIY.

But Paul wasn't listening.

"Are you sure it's deep enough?"  he asked, as she knew he would, hands
on hips and staring at Jenny's spadework.

"I mean, if you're going to carry on growing your strawberries here?"

He looked doubtful, as if strawberries would be somehow cat-tainted.

Perhaps he'd thought they'd be bright ginger and furry.

She laughed.

"Think of it as good old-fashioned humus!  The stuff you pay a fortune
for down at the garden centre."  Paul frowned thoughtfully, considering
the lack of vegetative matter in Biggies, albeit that he was 100 per
cent organic, and Jenny couldn't resist teasing him some more.

"A pity we don't recycle people like this too," she said, raking a
mouse-shaped pattern over Biggies's grave.

"Oh well, with people there are certain regulations," Paul said
pompously, safely on home ground, talking about rules.

"After all, you can't just plant them anywhere, can you?  I mean, where
would it end?"

Jenny leaned thoughtfully on her spade and considered the miles and
miles of cemetery dismally sprawled across the outskirts of London.

"The only good thing about cemeteries is that they are open spaces.

Pity to keep it all just for the dead, though.  I'm sure I'd rather be
buried over there under the cherry tree than lost in those anonymous
miles over at Mortlake or Putney Vale.  I can't see it would be any
less healthy.  " She picked up a large stone and hurled it at the
hedge.

"Did you know you can get cardboard coffins, completely biodegradable?"
she said to Paul.

"They come in a flat pack, like kitchen cupboards.  We could do our own
funerals.  Quite legal."

Paul looked worried, all furrowed around the brow, as if he had
suddenly formed the suspicion that several generations of uncertified
and uncoffined Collinses might already be quietly rotting under the
suddenly suspiciously lush flower beds.  What was going through his
head, she wondered.  Was it the thought of his beloved police force,
blue shirt sleeves rolled up, digging rows of muddy trenches in her
garden to see what was lurking down there?  Biggies safely buried, she
let Paul take the spade from her and watched him put it away in the
shed, hiding her smile as she caught him glancing round at its contents
as if checking for proper bags of garden-centre compost.

Perhaps he half-expected, she thought, to find her own concoction, a
sort of John Innes Number 5, Alan's-dead-mother mixture.  It gave a
whole new interpretation to 'bone-meal'.

While Jenny was clearing up Biggies's food and water dishes and
putting them into the dishwasher, Mrs.  Fingell rapped on the kitchen
window.

"You got the men in for something?"  she asked, hauling herself across
the doorstep and sniffing round the kitchen as if for the aroma of
paint and carpentry.

"No, why?  What men?"  Jenny asked her.  Still bending over the
dishwasher, she filled up the appropriate plastic compartment with
Rinse-Aid, checked the filter and poured in some salt.

"Why do gadgets that are supposed to save you time need so much
attention?"  she muttered, as she topped it all off with the washing
liquid and switched it on.

Mrs.  Fingell had come into the kitchen, plonked herself down heavily
in the rocking chair and was toasting her thick-stockinged toes on the
Aga.  She looks very comfortable, Jenny thought, flattered suddenly
that this woman was making herself thoroughly at home.  It wasn't that
kind of place, really, the Close, where people were encouraged to make
themselves feel snug in a room that wasn't theirs.

"Just that there's been a good few of them in and out of here lately,
that's all," Mrs.  Fingell went on, her sharp eyes inspecting the
kitchen calendar.  Jenny felt chilled.  So Neighbourhood Watch was
effective after all.  Mrs.  Fingell could only have seen Mr.  Robbins
and George Pemberton (plus roses) and the film crew, but Jenny felt as
guilty as if she'd been caught in suspenders and a basque loitering in
her doorway under a scarlet lamp.

"Just been getting a few quotes for this and that," she lied, wondering
why she bothered, taking refuge by the sink and filling the kettle. She
fiddled with the taps, taking too long.

"Polly's getting a bit old for her wallpaper all those pink ponies. Are
you keeping notes for Paul Mathieson or something?"  she asked,
brazenly turning to face Mrs.  Fingell with a challenging grin.  After
all, what business was it of hers, especially hers, who she
entertained, when and for how long?

"Not going in the supermarket direction this morning are you by any
chance?"  Mrs.  Fingell suddenly switched topics and shifted her
awkward weight in the creaking rocking chair.

"Only if you are, I wouldn't mind coming with you."

It wasn't a suggestion or a request, simply an order.  There was
nothing sinister, Jenny reasoned to herself, about an old lady wanting
a bit of help getting her groceries.  It only felt like a spot of
blackmail because her conscience wasn't as clear as it should be.  A
mocking chant from childhood, "We saw you, we saw you', hung between
the two of them, unsung in the room.  Jenny felt cornered but fairly
safe.  Mrs.  Fingell couldn't possibly know what had gone on that day
when the conservatory blinds were down, and certainly, considering her
own past, she couldn't possibly be passing judgement.  Jenny told
herself all this as she searched obediently under a pile of junk mail
for her car keys.

"I do need one or two things," she said to Mrs.  Fingell.

"We could get something to eat in their coffee shop too, if you
like."

The old lady grinned with satisfaction at the prospect of the outing
and hauled herself out of the chair.  She waddled with surprising speed
back to the door.

"Come on then love, or the dog will be waiting for his walk," she said.
Jenny, grabbing under the sink for her collection of used carrier
bags," gave her a sharp look.

"It's all right, I can manage to trot him round the common by myself,"
Mrs.  Fingell called out, mockingly.

This is the sort of thing Carol Mathieson should catch sight of me
doing, Jenny thought as she gently helped Mrs.  Fingell into the front
seat of the Golf, not showing my backside to a shop-load of
customers.

Not that Carol's opinion mattered, she considered, wondering if
Neighbourhood Watch was intended to make people feel more paranoid than
secure.

Hesitating by the store entrance with her trolley, Mrs.  Fingell
looked as if she was half-hoping that Jenny would be prepared to
supervise her shopping and do the reaching up to high shelves and
delving into freezer cabinets for her while she pointed regally to
biscuits and bananas.  Jenny wasn't playing this game she'd seen how
agile the old woman could be, and determinedly she reached for a
trolley of her own and launched Mrs.  Fingell into the first aisle.

"I'll see you by the check-out and then if there's time we might go to
the coffee shop," she told her and then relented.

"Make a note of anything you can't reach and I'll come back and get it
down for you.

Or you could ask someone else, staff or whatever," she added.

"Been shopping here since the day it opened.  I'll manage," Mrs.
Fingell called over her shoulder as she marched off towards the
cigarette counter.

"Shop till you drop' was the phrase going through Jenny's head as she
piled food into her trolley.  It must be fun to be one of those people
who could apply that phrase to the whole-day excursion type of
shopping, the clothes-and-shoes type.  Instead, she wondered if you
could die of supermarket shopping, the dismal blank that paralysed her
head whenever she tried to recall what the family usually ate, which
breakfast cereal to choose, just how greyish recycled lavatory paper
could acceptably be.  Even on the days when she went in, highly
organized and efficient with a list, there would come a madness-point,
something perhaps to do with the too-low, threatening ceiling, at which
the slyly manipulative vendors would win, and she would start randomly
hurling into her trolley bargain multi buys and special offers of
syrupy orange squash, pungent floor cleaners and irresistible, ready
cooked chicken dishes that would end up welded to the iceberg at the
back of the freezer.  I must be the ideal customer profile, Jenny
sometimes thought, detachedly lucid even at these out-of-control
moments, so easily swayed, so easily by the second aisle losing track
of sweet reason.

Jenny furiously fumbled the loading of carrier bags to keep pace with
the speedy check-out girl, wondering how she could possibly have chosen
ten cans of cat food when they no longer had a cat, when she heard the
breathy excitement of Laura Benstone's voice behind her.

"It was positive!  Isn't it thrilling?  Due in time for Bonfire Night,
just!"  the voice gushed, and Jenny mustered enough social grace to
look up and say congratulations.  A brief and smiling glance at Laura
took in that she looked pretty as a baby herself, in a bonny-blue
mohair sweater cutely oversized and with her dark, feathery fringe
caught up on the tops of her eyebrows.

"We haven't told the girls yet;

we thought, you know, they'd want it now.  You know what children are
like, just can't wait!  "

Jenny triumphantly stuffed the last bag of carrots into a bag just as
the stolid check-out girl rang up the total.  She wondered if, this job
was a sort of race for her too, each time trying to outrun the customer
so that she could sit and pick at her nails while the fumble fingered
or the terminally slow laboriously stowed their unwieldy purchases. She
vaguely recognized the girl, taken back suddenly by the big placid face
to infant school days when she (with Ben in tow) and this girl's chirpy
young mother had discussed reading schemes and sports kit.

"Ninety-six pounds fifty please," the bored voice stated and Jenny
fished around in her purse for her Switch card.

"Ninety-six quid!  Bloody hell, whose army are you feeding?"  Mrs.
Fingell, followed by a droopy youth carrying her pair of immaculately
packed bags, appeared in front of Jenny, tempting her to reply, "The

entire USA, 1944?  " Instead, an ugly squawk of rejection came from
the till.

"Sorry madam, this card won't take," the checkout girl said, yawning
widely and gazing expectantly at Jenny for an alternative means of
payment.  It was too late, now, to call on past shared times, remind
her that she and Ben had started school together.  How unfair it would
be too, to talk about Ben's A-level courses when Jenny knew for a
suddenly recalled fact that the girl's brother (only months older than
Daisy) was spending the rest of his teen years in a young offenders'
institute for the apparently incurable theft of fast cars.

"Oh dear!"  breathed Laura behind her adding "How frightful!"  as if
she had heard of nothing more tragic in her life.

"I'll have to give you a cheque then," Jenny said, rummaging through
the debris in her bag and wishing she didn't keep every receipt she was
ever given.  Something to do with being an accountant's wife, she
thought.  The girl, however, knew the rules of the job.

"Only if you've got another cheque guarantee card," she said, handing
back Jenny's useless Switch card.

"S'no good for anything else once it's been stopped."  She pursed her
lips and waited, staring out towards the delicatessen counter, not
unhappy to be held up.

Jenny started to wonder if the girl was getting some kind of sweet
revenge.  The infants' school on the edge of the estate had been one of
those that the middle classes describe as 'excellent, wonderful start,
fascinating mix of people' until the children reached eight, at which
point they abandoned it (and the fascinating people) in droves and took
off for their long-awaited places at the choicest prep schools.

Faintly aware of a queue build-up and an atmosphere of niggling
impatience, she stopped rifling through her bag.

"Well it's the only card I brought with me actually," she tried the
confident smile, and the reassuring tone.

"There's sure to have been a mistake anyway, and I've got plenty of
identification if you'll just take my cheque."  She started laying out
a selection of documents like a deck of cards:

child benefit book, driving licence, tennis club membership card.

"Not allowed, sorry," said the girl, unimpressed.  Jenny wondered if
she had recognized her, noticed the name of the cards, but there was no
flicker of interest in the large blank face.

"Oh but surely ..."  started Laura in support.

"Look, I shop here all the time.  Isn't there a manager or someone I
could talk to, explain the situation?  Obviously I can't just abandon
ninety-six pounds' worth of shopping, simply because of bureaucracy and
a silly mistake by the bank," Jenny said, adding, threat-like, 'and
some poor person would have to put it all back on the shelves.  "

She felt that if she had to walk out now without her trolley-load of
stuff, she would never be able to face shopping again.  Salvation, in
the form of a smartly suited man with a clipboard, strolled up and the
situation was explained.

"One of your most regular customers," Jenny heard herself saying, not
exactly grovelling, but feeling pulled between that and an assertion of
some heartfelt right to leave the shop with the goods she wanted.

She won;

it was easy, what with her manner and her accent and her tennis club
membership number and address scrawled on the back of her cheque.

"You was bloody lucky there," Mrs.  Fingell told her as they walked
back to the car.

"Why?  My cheque won't bounce, and they can't expect me to have that
much cash on me, I might get mugged.  I suppose I could have gone home
and picked up another of our cheque cards."

"Oh no, you couldn't have," Laura, still with them, said.

"Not if there's any dairy stuff.  They can't let it out of the store if
it's been off the shelf for more than

about thirty minutes.  In case you get food poisoning and sue.  "

"It could bounce though, couldn't it.  It's only because you're posh.

They got no idea really," Mrs.  Fingell, infuriating Jenny,
persisted.

"Strictly speaking, you just walked out then without paying.  Catch
them taking that sort of chance with people like me.  Or people from
the estate," the old lady snorted.  Jenny heaved all the bags into the
boot of the car and slammed it shut.  Mrs.  Fingell waited to have the
car door opened for her, still ranting on.

"When it isn't your sort of people, when it's people like me and the
estate, it's called something quite different.  It's called
shoplifting."

"Hang on, are we talking about the same Ben?  My brother Ben?  You
snogged Ben?"  Daisy's voice rose, and girls in the nearby lunch queue
were staring with interest.  Emma looked shirty, playing with her
mashed potato, but couldn't hide her grin.  Daisy put her fork down and
considered her lunch finished (school ravioli, too disgusting to eat
anyway).  Sophie was sitting next to Emma, smiling her confirmation
that the awful tale was really, actually true: Emma was now going out
with Daisy's brother.

"But he's my brother'.  How gross!"  she exclaimed.

"How could you?"  and then, getting her priorities sorted, added, "And
why didn't you tell me before?"

"Because I knew you'd react like this," Emma replied.

"I know it must be hard to think of brothers as humans, but if you took
a distant, real-life look at him, say when he's with his mates, sort of
mixed up in a group of them, he's actually not at all bad looking.  And
he can snog," she said with undisguised lust.  Daisy shuddered.  She
couldn't even begin to contemplate her brother doing all that stuff
with anyone, let alone her best friend.  Somehow it was, well,
indecent.  The smell of school lunch and schoolgirls was making her
feel queasy.

"Anyway, what he told me, the important bit," Emma went on, hoping to
get Daisy back into a better mood, 'was that his friend Oliver really
fancies you.

He's going to be at Sophie's party on Saturday, isn't he Sophe?  " she
said, appealing for help from Sophie who had made a start on her
treacle pudding, the dramatic revelation safely over.

"Oh, yeah.  Oliver's coming, definitely," she confirmed.

"So you've got to find a way of getting there, Dais.  He was asking
about you last weekend too."  Just in time she stopped herself adding,
'before he got off with Lucy.  "

Daisy wandered back to the counter and picked out the greenest apple.

The hall was shrill with girlish voices that maddened her ears.  She
longed for the day when she could leave, desperate to escape after her
GCSEs, and take her A-levels at the sixth form college.  She knew all
the statistics, her parents and their friends quoted them like some
written-in-stone biblical text, all about how girls do so much better
in a girls-only school.

"Without the distractions," they always added euphemistically, meaning
boys.  How much they didn't know, Daisy thought.  After all, what did
they think the girls at school talked about and thought about every
waking moment they were together?  Boys distracted you whether they
were actually there in person or hot.

Though she had to admit that it was probably easier in a physics class
not to be in a school like the one Ben said Oliver's brothers went to,
where they gob bed on the floor all the time and called girls slags
every time they asked or answered a question.  But then if she and Ben
were at the same school, maybe she wouldn't see him as belonging to
some kind of separate species with no right to be of any romantic
interest to her closest friends.  She comforted herself with
remembering the

wicked warmth that shone from Oliver's dark eyes as he'd watched her
on the hockey field.

"Sorry Emma," Daisy said, sliding back into her seat and trying out a
smile "It's just a bit of a shock.  No wonder Ben's been going round
with such a huge grin on his face the last couple of days."

"Not just his grin that's been huge, I should think," Sophie tittered,
with a lascivious smirk.

"Oh please, spare me that," Daisy groaned, pushed beyond her limit.

She needed time to get used to the idea of Ben, awkward,
flailing-limbed, blushing Ben, as an object of desire.  Probably, she
thought, a lifetime.

"It's a bit short notice I know," Carol was saying to Jenny on the
Collins's doorstep.

"And I'm sorry.  But we thought it was time for a quick meeting, just
to recap, as it were.  Do try and come."  Jenny floundered for an
excuse and couldn't find one.  She thought of inventing an emergency
pre-exam pupil, but couldn't trust the Mathiesons not to organize a
keeping-watch rota for the entire evening to check her story, take
photos and then challenge her later.

"Your friend Sue is coming," Carol persuaded, tightening her lips
automatically at the thought of Sue's capacity for
sherry-consumption.

"Can't you just send a newsletter round?"  Jenny suggested, wondering
suddenly why there hadn't been a daily report, published to almost
professional standard on Paul's attic computer.

"Oh no, that wouldn't do.  We need the personal input, and suggestions
from the floor," Carol insisted.  She licked the end of her pencil
(which was tied with lavender ribbon to the top of her clipboard) and
ticked off Jenny's name on her list.

"I'll put you down for a yes then," she stated, and was half-way to the
gate, clacking busily on her little heels, before Jenny could argue.
As she shut the front door, surprised not to have been issued with a
secret password for the evening's meeting, she heard next door's gate
(resting actor) open, and felt sympathy for her unseen neighbour.

"I'll come with you tonight if you like," Ben announced casually,
sauntering down the stairs.

"Not much homework, and it's something to do."

Jenny looked at him, suspiciously.

"It won't be any fun, only the neighbours.  Won't you be bored?"  She
imagined Ben, fed up and growing more and more horizontal, slumped in
one of Carol's armchairs.  He'd pick at the fringing on a cushion, and
probably unravel it.  Carol would frown and hiss at him and he'd be
miles away, dreaming and fidgeting .  "No, 's' OK, I'll just come and
see what it's like," he mumbled, ambling back up the stairs.

"Do you think it's something we've done?  It's like being back at
school, summoned to see the Head," Sue whispered to Jenny as they
gathered in the Mathiesons' sitting-room later.

"And where is everybody?"

It wasn't as good a turn-out as the first meeting had been, Jenny had
to admit.  Fiona Pemberton had apparently sent a note of apology,
pleading a parents' evening.  She hadn't mentioned George, who was now
sitting on the arm of Carol's leather sofa smiling furtively across at
Jenny and softly patting the cushion next to him in an inviting way
that made her want to sit anywhere but there.  Mrs.  Fingell was there
too, smiling her witchy, knowing smile at no-one in particular from the
cosiest armchair by the drinks cabinet.  The resting actor and some BBC
wives were gathered by the French windows, chatting about the best way
to prune rambling roses, so far drink less and wondering what to do
with their hands.  A power-dressed young couple looked repeatedly at
their watches.  Jenny waved to Mrs.  Fingell and smiled a greeting to
the actor, then

said to Sue, "Novelty's worn off.  There's not really anything new to
hear.  Everyone's got their window stickers and fitted their burglar
locks.  Probably can't think what else they're supposed to do.  I
certainly can't."

"Oh look," said Sue with interest, peering out of the window.

"Here comes Harvey and no Laura.  Perhaps he'd like to come for a drink
after."

"Sue, you can't, not Harvey," Jenny warned.

"Too close to home, and Laura's pregnant again."  She pulled her firmly
away from the lace-frilled window and they both sat down, as close to
the door as they could for a possible quick getaway.  A smell of
freshly cooked sausage rolls wafted temptingly from the kitchen.

"Listen, if you're talking close to home," Sue retaliated, pointing
past Jenny towards the hallway, "Check out your Ben, then tell me, hand
on heart that he always, but a Iways volunteers to help in the
kitchen," Jenny got up, crept to the open door and looked.  Through
Carol's kitchen door she could see the highly unusual sight of Ben
loading glasses on to a tray.  Carol was close to him, murmuring
instructions, and Ben, when he turned to face them, looked quite
flushed.  The glasses tinkled dangerously as he carried them
extra-carefully into the sitting-room and managed to put the tray on
the coffee table without Carol's entire crystal collection sliding to
the floor.

"Drink everyone?"  Paul said,!  waving the sherry bottle.

"And then we'll start."

Everyone sat, attentive as a schoolroom, waiting for Paul to put them
in the picture.  Ben lounged on the floor in a corner from which he had
an uninterrupted view across to the tan sofa on which Carol was
sitting.  Hoping his mother (or worse, Sue) wouldn't notice, he stared
blissfully at Carol, whose skirt was pulled tightly across her thighs
so he could gaze up towards a glimpsed triangular pennant of white
underwear.  He hoped, quite desperately, that no-one would ask him to
go and fetch something from the kitchen.  He didn't think he'd be able
to walk.

"Now the problem is," Paul was saying, pacing about the room
importantly and waving his orange Neighbourhood Watch brochure, 'that
no-one is doing any reporting in.  " There was a collective sighing and
shuffling.  Harvey reached across to the table and helped himself to a
pair of sausage rolls, and Mrs.  Fingell could be heard noisily
crunching nuts.  No-one wanted to spend the evening being told off.

"The Close has been full of strangers for the past few weeks, what with
film crews and all."  Everyone looked at Harvey, most with sympathy.

"And various cars have been parked here that we all know don't belong
to any residents."

"What exactly are we supposed to do about that, though, Paul?"  Jenny
chipped in, eager for him to get to the point.

"Surely it isn't anyone's business who we all choose to have visiting
us?"

"Well, the point is to be alert."  Paul whirled round and pointed his
brochure at her menacingly.

"Take down car numbers, check who goes into which house, and whether
they come out again and maybe try another door.  That kind of thing.
They could be burglars, checking for regularly absent householders."

' Or they could be Jehovah's Witnesses," Harvey added as he reached
across to the table and casually topped up his drink.

"Or bailiffs," Sue said passing her glass across so he could refill
that too.

Jenny felt twitchy, uncomfortable, as if every aspect of her personal
life was under constant scrutiny.  It was horribly like being a
teenager again, with her mother checking and snooping on her every
move, and marauding schoolmistresses stalking the town every lunchtime
for out-of-bounds sixth formers illicitly meeting their boyfriends.

"Actually," she said, decisively, "I think I'm going to opt out, if
you don't mind.  I find the idea that every visitor to my house is
going to have their description and car number logged, like some kind
of police state, horribly intrusive, just not on.  On balance I think
I'd rather be burgled."

The too," Mrs.  Fingell added, emphatically banging her walking stick
on the carpet.  Hostility gathered, as the group clung to the remains
of its privacy.

"But what does it matter if you've got nothing to hide?"  Carol peered
savagely into Jenny's face, as if any second she would try to gouge out
a deadly secret.  Jenny flattened herself against the back of the
chair, alarmed.

"Oh, now come on, everyone.  No-one wants to spy, just to look after
each other.  It's caring, not snooping."  Paul tried his best to pacify
them, waving his arms around in his version of an all-embracing
manner.

"It's horrendous," Jenny persisted, slightly diverted by the fact that
Ben was going dreadfully pink.  Surely he agreed with her?  This time
it couldn't be that she embarrassed him.  She got up and groped for her
handbag down the side of the chair.  Perhaps she should employ Paul and
Carol as private detectives, get them to check up on Alan and what he
was up to that would keep their minds off non-existent crime in the
Close.

"Er, sit down for one more minute, please Jenny."  Paul took hold of
her arm and pushed her gently back down into the chair.

"It's not just car numbers and things.  What I mean is that people
aren't noticing when things are unusual.  Like when you climbed over
our gate to get the cat."

Sue giggled and snorted.

"Like Burglar Bill.  Swag and all," she laughed.

"Exactly like Burglar Bill.  That's it; Carol stated, leaning forward
and jabbing an accusing finger at Jenny.

"And nobody noticed.  Not a single one.  No-one in the entire street
.."  The finger was shaking with fury now as it roamed the room,
accusing them one and all.  The BBC wives stared guiltily at the
carpet.

"No-one reported her climbing over the gate and back again, blatantly
with a sack."  She leaned back on the chair again, her skirt tucked up
even further from the excitement, much to Ben's delight.

"Carol," Jenny said gently, as if to someone close to the edge of
madness, "Carol, that's because it was only me.  If anyone did see me
they probably wondered what I was up to, felt a bit curious, but they
know me.  I'm not worth a crime report.  And I've apologized about the
broken pig."

"But you could have been anyone!  Someone from the estate!"  Carol
wailed.

"But I wasn't!  I was me!  And the people on the estate do more nicking
from each other than from anyone else!  Why do you think half those
doors up there are boarded up?  Don't you ever read the papers?  Oh
this is ridiculous.  I'm going home to watch telly."  Once again Jenny
got up to leave; Sue greedily swigged the last of her sherry and got up
to join her.  Carol was looking daggers, and irresistibly Jenny jibed
her some more, announcing to the room in general, "I'm going just
across the road, Carol.  Don't feel you need to watch or take notes."

Outside in the Close, Sue and Jenny took gulps of free, fresh air.

"Is it just me, or is Carol getting control- crazy?"  Jenny asked.

"And what was all that about " if you've got nothing to hide".  What
was that supposed to mean?"

"No idea," Sue said, yawning.

"What I'd like to know, though, and call me a nosy-cow neighbour if you
like, but why is your Ben still in there?"

Chapter Thirteen

Alan drove home very fast from Leicestershire, relieved, somehow, that
he hadn't been able to persuade Serena to accept a lift home and that
she'd insisted on going back to London alone, by train.  She told him
she'd got a book she was dying to finish, apologizing for being
anti-social and hoping that he didn't mind.  No he didn't mind.  He'd
rather be alone with his thoughts and his music than have to make a
hundred and fifty miles' worth of conversation.  He'd be sure to end up
relating cosy anecdotes about the family, turning himself inevitably
into some humdrum avuncular figure who would come over as lovable but
not libidinous.  He hadn't tried too hard to entice her into his car,
conscious as he was of having been far too cowardly to seduce her.

He'd failed even to make a wholehearted attempt to, counting too much
on her to realize what he was getting at and somehow join in as he
clumsily skirted round her body and plied her with vodka.  The very
small consolation was that as nothing had happened in reality (everyone
dreams don't they?  he reasoned, fantasy life doesn't count) he didn't
yet have to feel guilty, and could at least go home still just about
able to look Jenny in the eye.

As he sped down the M1, Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven was playing
on the car radio, whisking Alan immediately back to his first meeting
with Jenny.  Enthralled by her playing in the college Mozart concert,
to which he'd reluctantly accompanied a dull cousin, he had been amazed
when Jenny had agreed to have dinner with him.  He'd felt as foolish
as a backstage hanger-on, callously ditching the cousin and sidling
round to the stage door, not even knowing what name to ask for.  Back
at his flat, and hardly even able to believe his luck that Jenny had
agreed to go there with him, he'd put his precious new Led Zeppelin
album on the record player and then cravenly apologized for his musical
taste; but from the shelf next to his chaotic desk Jenny had picked up
his old school recorder and played the haunting opening bars of
Stairway to Heaven.  They'd been in bed by the guitar solo.  He'd been
incredulous at his success, by how easy it had all been.  Now, an
attempt at seduction, even the thought of an attempted seduction, left
Alan with dry-throated, heart-pounding terror.  He tried to put it down
to lack of practice, adrenalin and the adventure of the chase.  It felt
dangerous, life-threatening, and the compulsion to see it through was
like a death wish  It was probably horrendously bad for his blood
pressure, and he hated the feeling that he had actually reached the age
where he had to consider his health.  When media doctors wrote of
mid-life stresses, they meant him.  It was too depressing.  Did getting
older mean spending the rest of his life with a careful lack of
over-excitement?  And somewhere deep inside was a suspicion, though
nothing to do with the pain and potential disaster from being found
out, that the ludicrous biological urge to do all that sexual fiddling
about with a new person's body might just not be worth it.  He was
setting himself up, surely, on the day he managed to make his lust
known to Serena, for pitiless rejection and toe-curling humiliation.

And if he succeeded what would be his reward?  Only sex, nothing
different, and as the saying went, he could get all that at home.  But,
he reasoned, muttering to himself as he turned at last on to the M25,
what about rejuvenation?  He was feeling old, greying, thinning and

losing what small measure of charm and attraction he had clung to, and
which had for years buoyed up his school boyish lack of confidence.  If
Serena could make him feel better about all that, then that really
would be something he couldn't get at home.

It was just as well Alan was late getting back, Jenny thought at 1:30,
wishing the man David Robbins had sent had got himself thoroughly lost.
Why, she wondered as the doorbell rang, do people manage to be so
punctual, so capable of finding the right address on time when it's for
something illicit.  She could hardly begin to count the number of
people who turned up late for dinner at the house, all flustered and
apologizing that they'd taken a wrong turning after Putney Bridge, or
ventured accidentally into the estate, as if she and Alan lived in the
back end of nowhere and the A-Z was written in Sanskrit.

To the immaculately pin-striped businessman now standing expectantly on
her doorstep Jenny said firmly, "I won't pretend you've got the wrong
address, but I just don't do that sort of thing any more."  There was
some apologetic murmuring from the disappointed client, and then from
the road, the approaching click-clack of Carol Mathieson's unmistakable
shoes.

She stopped and peered with frank curiosity at Jenny's visitor and,
with no introduction forthcoming, said, "I forgot to say last night, I
was so sorry about your poor pussy!  What a shame!"

"Oh good grief, what a thing to come out with," Jenny muttered under
her breath, smiling as steadily as she could manage at both Carol and
the pinstriped client.  Jenny realized she was still wearing her yellow
rubber gloves from wiping down the kitchen cupboards, and suddenly
thought the man might suspect, especially after Carol's bizarre
comment, that she was lying, and that she'd got a customer for more
bizarre practices already inside, perhaps tied naked to a chair prior
to being beaten with the floor mop.

If she'd ever thought she might be tempted to continue earning cash
from servicing men, the Neighbourhood Watch meeting the night before
had killed all such ambitions stone dead.  There had to be less risky
ways of making a living, ones that didn't have the neighbours writing
down doubtful car numbers and making you lie about having the
decorators in.  There must also be ways that didn't involve cheating on
Alan, too.  The possibility that he was up to something was so painful
to her that she didn't want to risk having him feel that way as a
result of her behaviour.  He could hardly be expected to think that,
just because she had done it for money, it didn't count as
infidelity.

If Alan left, there was minicab driving, or mail-order delivery, any
old job till some full-time teaching could be found.

When David Robbins arrived half-an-hour later, Jenny, started her
speech while he was still half way up the path.

"I'm sorry," she told him, "I really can't go on doing this."  She
laughed at his mock crestfallen expression.

"I'm retiring to a life of virtue.  You'll just have to make an effort
and go and join a dating agency or something."

"Oh, don't you worry, footloose and fancy free, that's me.  Footless,
anyway.  Actually I just called to say thanks but I've met someone," he
said with a happy grin, making Jenny feel she'd been over hasty and
made herself look rather silly.  She then wondered about offering him a
cup of tea, but could foresee conversational complications.  What on
earth would they talk about?  So, supported now by only a pair of
sticks, David walked on his new plastic feet back towards the corner,
round which he had been so careful to park.  No chance of Paul
Mathieson logging that particular number at

least, Jenny thought, feeling, as she closed the door and prepared to
be a scrupulously honest wife again, that she was saying goodbye to a
friend.  Full of good intentions, she spent the next hour running off
copies of her CV on Daisy's computer and sending them out on spec to
all the local schools.  Somewhere out there, she reasoned, there must
be the chance of a proper job.

When Jenny returned from collecting Polly (and Harriet, back with them
for supper) from school, Alan was home and in charge of his beloved
kitchen once again.  The rich aroma of the Madeira sauce that he was
gently reducing on top of the Aga wafted out welcomingly and filled the
hallway.  The smell of enjoyment-cooking, as opposed to the more
tedious necessity-cooking so thrilled Jenny's taste-buds, she had to
suppress a greedy groan as she and the girls tumbled into the house.

"Ooh yummee," she said, following the smell into the kitchen, 'that
smells just so scrumptious!  "

Alan was settled comfortably in the rocking chair, pots and pans
gleaming around him, full of vegetables and herbs, ready to go.  He
looked solid, happy, pleased to be back, the newspaper open at the
football page and the cat purring on his lap.  Jenny leant forward to
kiss Alan and then jumped back in horror.

"Biggies!  What's he doing here?"  she exclaimed, clap ping a startled
hand to her mouth.

"Oh thanks, Jen, so good to know you're pleased to see me!"  Alan said,
grinning accusingly at her.

"But Biggies is dead!"  Polly stated baldly.

"That's a ghost!"

Jenny wanted to smack her, suddenly; after all, he'd been Alan's cat,
and the awful news could have been broken to him more carefully than
that.  She had thought it too cruel to tell him over the phone, even as
a punishment for nesting cosily in a smart hotel with slinky Serena.

Except that Biggies, (unmistakably Biggies) ecstatically purring and
rubbing his great big head against his favourite person, was clearly
very much alive.

"He's dead.  You buried him, Mum.  Didn't you?"  Polly went on, looking
hard at Jenny for a sign that she might be going mad and have made the
whole thing up.

"I buried something.  I was waiting till you got back to tell you,"
Jenny said doubtfully to Alan, eyeing Biggies suspiciously as she went
to hang her coat up by the back door.  She kept looking at him, as if
any minute he was going to turn back into a damp and earthy corpse, and
she peered at the floor for muddy footprints (and possibly the old cot
sheet in which he'd been draped) leading from the cat-flap.

Harriet hadn't budged from the kitchen doorway, but stood gawping with
her amazed mouth dropped wide open.

Polly patted the very grubby cat on the head.

"You'll have to be renamed Jesus," she announced importantly.  "Cos
it's the third day, isn't it, and you've risen again."

Jenny and Alan looked at each other and burst into incredulous
laughter.

"Well I can't think where he's been, must have been locked in an oily
garage somewhere.  He's absolutely filthy.  I didn't even think to
check the other cat's collar.  I couldn't bring myself to see if it
even had one," Jenny was saying.

"Some other poor person out there must be missing their pet."

Polly, looking like she'd had a brilliant idea, suddenly grabbed
Harriet, and, bored with the subject of dead and alive cats, the two
girls scrambled out of the room and thundered up the stairs.

It felt strange to have Alan back at home.  Jenny had spent so much of
the previous night vividly picturing him in flagrante that she found
his familiar, daytime self rather odd, as if it was something of a
disguise.  At any moment she expected him to shove the cat

to the floor, put down his drink and start the end-of- marriage
announcement.  She had a tight, tense feeling inside, and was finding
it hard to breathe in the warm kitchen.

"Just going to get something from the car," she told him, needing a
moment to get used to how unchanged, how ordinary he was.

Out by the BMW, Jenny was tempted to open the door and sniff the air
for girlish perfume.  There was nothing on the seats, no giveaway
glossy magazines, no abandoned lipstick.  The back window had acquired
a new sticker proclaiming No to Terminal Five.  Half the cars in the
Close had them (as well as ones about aircraft noise), even though most
of the residents expected to be able to rush out and catch a plane at
any old time to dash off for business meetings in far countries.  That
way the tax-free (legitimate business expense) travel could accumulate
enough air miles to take their families on lovely foreign holidays.
They were forever complaining about the crush at the airport, and Jenny
thought they should be delighted to get a new Terminal building.

She looked in her car for something she could have gone to fetch and
saw Polly's French dictionary on the back seat.  Just as she unlocked
the door, there was a splintering crash of breaking glass from across
the road.  She wandered into the Close and dutifully strolled across to
look.

Harvey Benstone came sprinting out from number 5, mindful of his
neighbourly responsibilities.

"It's the Pembertons' house I think," he said, catching up with
Jenny.

"Probably kids from the estate after the video and stuff so they can
buy drugs.  Bit bloody much in broad daylight."  He was so puffed up
with the certainty of being right that Jenny could only admire the way
this seemed to make him totally oblivious to the possible danger of
being beaten senseless by several large, strong teenage thugs.  But
when they got to the Pembertons' garden, behind their pair of lilac
trees was only the contorted figure of George trying to climb in
through the hall window.

"Bloody woman didn't leave the key," he huffed at them, bright pink
with wasted effort.  Jenny left him and Harvey to sort out a way of
getting in and trailed back to her own house.  At least it was
something to tell Alan.

"Are you sure this is going to work?"  Daisy asked Emma, up in the
bathroom.

"And why aren't you having yours done?"  Very carefully, nervous that
it might dissolve the floor tiles, Daisy opened the bottle of hydrogen
peroxide, sniffed it cautiously and winced.

"It smells dangerous."

Emma took the bottle and sniffed too.

"No, it smells effective," she pronounced.

"I'm not doing mine because I'm already blonde.  And blondes have more
fun, isn't that what they say?  I've been thinking for a while that
you're a bit, well a bit mousy, hair wise This'll be good."

"Well at least Mum won't mind, being the way she is.  Though I don't
know, can't be as sure of her as I used to be," Daisy said, laying out
the collection of equipment on the bathroom shelf.  She opened the
precious pot of Atlantic blue dye and sniffed at that too.

"As long as it's only the ends, at least I can cut them off if it looks
dreadful.

Yeah," she said, perking up and finding enthusiasm, 'come on, let's do
it!"  Daisy perched on the side of the bath and Emma separated her hair
into about thirty small sections and applied peroxide (using one of
Alan's pastry brushes) to the end inch of about fifteen of them.

"It's like doing someone's roots, but in reverse.  You'll look like
you've got the ends of a load of

blue-tipped paintbrushes dangling from your head," she said, grinning
at Daisy in the mirror.

"Gee thanks, can't wait," Daisy told her doubtfully.

"I hope I can trust you with this."

"Trust me with your brother, don't you?"  Emma teased, looking over her
shoulder towards the door in case Ben had crept up the stairs and was
listening.

"Don't start.  You promised.  I need time for getting used to that,"
Daisy warned her.

Emma secured all the peroxided bits of hair in strips of Bacofoil and
put tiny elastic bands (stolen from her sister's orthodontic kit) round
them.

"We'll finish the colouring bit after supper," she told her.

"Your hair will take a while to bleach out."  She heard a set of
footsteps thumping on the stairs to the attic, and the sound of a door
closing firmly.

"I think your brother's home," she said, abandoning Daisy's hair and
fluffing out her own in front of the mirror.

"Got any lipstick?"

Over supper Jenny told the family about George Pemberton smashing his
own window.  They all laughed in the right places, but she still felt
odd, as if everything she said had to be rehearsed first mentally to
filter out anything that might trigger Alan into telling her something
she didn't want to know.  It was easier to talk to the children.

"What are you doing to your hair?"  she asked Daisy with interest,
watching the silver-papered strands dangling dangerously over the
potato dish.

"I don't suppose, whatever it is, that Fiona Pemberton is going to
approve," she giggled, earning herself a dose of Daisy's scorn.  In her
opinion it wasn't part of the function of parents to join in the
antagonizing of headmistresses.

"My mum would never let me do mine blue.  You're so lucky, Daisy," Emma
said with a wistful sigh.

"Blue?  Those bits under there are going to be blue?  Good God!"  Alan
said, disbelievingly.  Ben said nothing, ate little and sneaked
blushing glances at Emma, to whom, in the past, before Saturday's
electrifying physical contact, he had never had any trouble finding
something to say.  Jenny, with a mother's perception, noticed, felt
maternally tremulous for him, and had to bite her tongue not to
comment.  For once the thought of youthful romance didn't make her eyes
want to fill with envious tears.  What was there to envy?  All that
tension, embarrassment, uncertainty and some hopeless fumbling if you
were very, very lucky.

"I thought we might go out tomorrow night," Alan said to Jenny, pouring
her a third glass of wine.  She was looking flushed and bright and
rather jumpy.  Time he took her out somewhere special.

"Just the two of us, a place I read about in The Sunday Times last
weekend.  You can babysit Polly, can't you Daisy, and we'll make that
the last weekend of your being grounded."  He waited for her to look
pleased, let-off and forgiven at-last, but she and Emma were staring at
him, still and shell-shocked, as if he'd just informed them that he was
a serial killer and they were next.

"What's wrong?"  Jenny asked Daisy.

"Won't you be happy to get your freedom back?  I don't even mind paying
you for tomorrow, either."

Polly was staring backwards and forwards at the two girls, wondering
what was going on, and piecing together some remembered bits of
knowledge that seemed to start with the sight of Daisy climbing out of
her bedroom window.  She nudged Harriet and said, "Mind if we skip
pudding?  We're just going out in the garden for a bit."

"But it's dark now.  Whatever do you want to go out there for?"  Alan
asked her.

"Oh nothing, just looking around.  We'll take a torch," she told him,
busily not looking at him, but grabbing

Harriet's barely-finished plate and making unusually quickly for the
dishwasher.  She scuttled about the kitchen, pulling Harriet after her,
grabbing Wellingtons and coats and hissing "Hurry up!"  at her
friend.

"Wanted to get out of clearing the table I expect," Jenny said as she
piled up plates, and for once she was prepared to be indulgent.

"Just leave them for tonight," she told Daisy and Ben, "I'll do them. I
expect you've got things you want to be doing."

On behalf of Ben and Emma, Daisy blushed furiously at Jenny's
heavy-handed tact, and snarling ungraciously, dragged Emma towards the
stairs so that her hair-dyeing could be finished.

"Now what have I said?"  Jenny asked Alan.

"No idea, thought you were doing them a favour actually.  Now about
dinner tomorrow night ..."  he was saying, closing in for a hug.

Jenny was just wondering if he'd notice how tense her body was when the
phone rang.

"Bugger," he said, kissing Jenny's ear and reaching across to take the
call.

"Bugger," he said again as he hung up a few minutes later.

"What's up?  Work problems?"  she asked.  He looked nervous, she
thought, shifty even, though she tried not to think it.  It was all too
exhausting, trying not to interpret every one of his gestures and
expressions.  No-one should have to do that much scrutiny, or be
subjected to it.

"Tomorrow night.  Dinner's on, if you want to come, but not just the
two of us I'm afraid.  Senior partner thinks we should get together
before Monday and have a chat about the financial situation.  Suggested
dinner out at some place out near Watford.  More convenient for him
than us, but then he's paying."

"Dinner on the company won't help its cash flow," Jenny commented.

"Why can't you just have a meeting early on Monday at the office?"

"Walls have ears.  Some of them electronic," he said mysteriously,
making Jenny think for a moment that the place must be bugged, like an
old Eastern Bloc embassy.

"All those fancy phone systems and computer stuff.  Not to mention the
cleaning lady who knows what's going on before the rest of us do.  And
she's about as good at keeping secrets as a tabloid journalist."  He
looked morose, his good-intention family feelings slipping away.  Who
else would be at the dinner, he wondered?

Not Serena, he prayed- though she was Bernard's niece and it was a
possibility.

As if Jenny was reading his mind she asked casually, "And who else is
going to be there?  Bernard's wife, Monica, isn't it?  Any others from
the staff?"  she wasn't looking at him, folding the tea towel with more
care than she ever had before, draping it carefully over the Aga rail
as if it was a precious cashmere sweater.

"Don't know.  Sorry, I didn't think to ask," Alan said, stacking
glasses into the dishwasher, wondering if he was imagining any other
questions unasked and unanswered between them.

"Anyway, you like Monica, don't you?  I'm sure it won't be so bad.
Sorry, though, I did intend it to be just the two of us, but you know
what work has been like lately."

Jenny did know, all those awful bank statements.  She also knew that
Bernard's wife Monica, a matronly and energetic chairwoman (no man,
person, or simply 'chair' titles for her) of- her local Townswomen's
Guild, would exhaust her within half-an-hour with an intimidating list
of her latest Good Works and charity events.  She would have to spend
the entire evening being impressed.

"Got any candles?"  Polly and Harriet burst excitedly in through the
back door, gasping plumes of cool, fresh air.

"Yes, cupboard under the stairs.  Take the power- cut supply," Jenny
told them, watching them scatter

mud flakes all over the wooden floor, and not particularly caring. She
rinsed out the sink and went about inventing a couple of sponsored runs
and a charity bike ride with which to do her equal share of impressing,
and made up her mind to have quite a lot of anaesthetizing alcohol.

"Now what are they up to?"  Paul was asking himself up in the attic.

Carol wanted to watch a video of Oklahoma!  the version recently
produced by the local operatic society, so he felt banished from the
sitting- room and was taking refuge with his telescope.  He'd given the
All-Clear to the rest of the garden that he could see, and it seemed to
be all quiet, too, up at the Tennis Club and on as much as he could see
of the estate.  But the Collins's back garden was full of the kind of
torchlight activity that only usually went with Bonfire Night.

There was a flickering circle of what looked suspiciously like
candlelight too.  If only he could see what they were up to, and who
was actually up to it.  He opened the window and let in an unwelcome
blast of chill air.  He listened carefully, head sideways like a
budgie, ear cocked for clues.  There was traffic roaring from the main
road and some loud car-music from the estate as usual (he sometimes
thought that a fast car was considered a viable party venue for those
people), but not much else.  He was startled by a cat or a fox bashing
at one of Mrs.  Fingell's many dustbins and hit his head on the window
catch trying to crane further out.  Suddenly the still air was filled
with blood-curdling shrieks of terror.  The torchlight in the Collins's
garden was waving chaotically up and down and racing for their back
door.  Most of the candlelight went out, kicked over in the rush
probably, he imagined.  Whatever Satanic rites that unruly family had
been practising,

it served them right, felt Paul, they'd obviously called up evil
spirits and frightened themselves half to death.  He took the relevant
file down from the shelf and filled in yet another entry for number 14.
Theirs was the fattest and most frustrating file he'd got, stuffed with
dates and dealings but nothing more positive than a sure as hell hunch
that something was going on.

Alan thought the phrase 'bats out of hell' didn't seem inappropriate as
the two girls came like whirlwinds crashing in through the back door.

"Polly!  Tell me!  What's happened, who's out there?"  Jenny tried to
peel the shrieking, clinging child from her neck.  Harriet looked
calmer but was alarmingly sick-looking and grizzling woefully.

"Come on girls," Alan entreated them gently, 'tell us what happened out
there.  " He went and stood by the back door, peering out into the
bleak darkness for some sort of clue.  One or two of the candles still
fluttered unreliably in the dark and he thought, but couldn't be sure,
that some of the garden tools were littered across the lawn.

"I'll go and have a look," he told Jenny, sounding more brave than he
felt.

Their screams had been truly blood-freezing.

"I think they've seen something.  Or someone," Jenny whispered,
gathering the pair of trembling children into her arms.

"He's in there!  He wasn't supposed to be!"  Polly whimpered, and Jenny
felt the back of her neck tingle.  Someone in the garden?  Daring to
spy, or chasing her child?  Maybe there was a point to Neighbourhood
Watch after all, unless, and she felt slightly sick, there was a
Neighbour out there, doing some off-the-records unofficial Watching.

"Daisy!  Take care of Polly a moment will you?"  she yelled up the
stairs.

"And ask Ben to come down too

please!  " Sensing emergency in her voice.  Daisy, Emma and Ben
clattered immediately down the stairs, Daisy swearing slightly and
dripping blue hair dye onto a pink towel.  Leaving Daisy and Emma to
comfort the sobbing Polly and quaking Harriet, Ben, Alan and Jenny set
off into the garden with torches and collective courage.

"Can't see anything.  What did they say it was?"  Ben asked.  Jenny got
hold of Alan's hand, preparing herself against the moment when the mad
axe man leapt out of the viburnum.  The shed door banged open in a
sharp breeze and Jenny gasped.

"Oh God, look what they've been doing!"  she said suddenly, shining her
torch on to the vegetable patch.  Spades had been abandoned on the
ground next to the strawberry bed and heaps of earth were dug out and
piled loosely around.  She giggled, slightly hysterically.

"The little ghouls have been digging up that poor cat!"

"Looks like they found him, and spooked themselves to bits," Alan said,
shining his torch into the hole and pulling a rather sickened face.

"Or what's left of him anyway.  You go in and take care of them, and
we'll fill this in again before the foxes get him."  In what was left
of the candlelight, Alan looked cold and shivery and Jenny, once again,
thought of the unfairness of women foisting the awful jobs on to men.

"No, Ben can go, I'll help you," she said softly, picking up a spade.

"After all," she told him grinning, "I'm the one who's had practice at
this lately!"

"Too late now, I suppose, to check if this cat had an identification
disc?"  he said, looking closely at Jenny and willing her to agree that
it was.

Jenny hesitated; if she'd truly started to hate him, she could insist
he dug up the cat and had a look.  She hoped she'd never loathe him
that much.

"Definitely too late," she told him, shovelling resolutely and fast.

"You're so stupid Polly!  Why did you do it?"  Daisy and Emma doing
their reluctant bit to take care of the little girls, had made them
rush back up to the bathroom with them so that Daisy's blue hair dye
wouldn't be ruined.  Harriet and Polly sat forlornly on the landing
being shouted at.

"AND I've got to babysit you tomorrow.

That's not fair.  You'd better do everything, and I mean everything,
that I tell you.  "

She started hissing furiously at Emma, Polly craned her neck to hear
what she said over the noise of the shower.

"What am I going to do now?  It's wrecked, completely wrecked my
brilliant plan!  I'm trapped with little Miss Macabre here, with the
best party of the whole year happening without me just a mile away!"

Oklahoma!  was still blaring away downstairs; Paul could hear it two
flights away.  If the twins had the TV on that loud Carol would have
had something to say.  He could just picture her now, down there on the
sofa, feet up and the paper in the box of All Gold crackling as she
reached in blindly for one chocolate after another.  Sporty people, he
could see down the telescope, were leaving the Tennis Club.  It was
getting late, and even from this far away he could hear car doors being
thoughtlessly slammed.  A Range Rover glided smoothly into the Close
and cruised along towards him.  As the lights from the house mingled
with the headlights on the car he could see the driver as she
inconsiderately reversed into his drive to turn back down the Close.

It was the big blonde woman with hair like tiger stripes, who was
always doing that usually in the morning when she picked up Polly.  One
day he'd be down there in the hall and catch her at it, crunching
carelessly across the pavement right on to his gravel.  Where was she
going?

Focusing on the Collins's garden once more, he could see shadowy
figures shuffling about, bending and

moving and looking ridiculously (for the time of night) as if they
were gardening.  Two of them, Paul counted, and watched them digging
and working together.  If it was anywhere but in the Close, he'd have
suspected they were burying a body.  Perhaps Jenny hadn't been joking
about do-it-yourself funerals after all, though he was sure even she,
odd as she was, wouldn't hold a burial without the proper sort of
ceremony (drinks, bits to eat, flowers) that went with it.  It was far
more likely she'd been up to the Garden Centre and bought some shrub
that would flourish best if planted out on a waxing moon.

"What are they up to?"  he asked the night air, his eyes sore from the
strain of peering.  Now they looked like they were doing something
romantic, all wrapped round each other.  Had to be the teenagers, he
thought, turning to get the Collins file down again and put the Range
Rover woman into it.  Grown-ups never do things like that.

Chapter Fourteen

"If you want coffee or tea, I hope you don't mind helping yourself.

I'm a bit stuck, as you can see," Jenny said to Sue who came strolling
in through the back door.  Jenny, on that Saturday morning, was aware
that she looked perfectly ridiculous, perched at the kitchen table
listening to Loose Ends and reading the paper with each elbow squished
into half a scooped-out lemon.  She had a million and one other weekend
things to do, starting with the clearing up of the ruined strawberry
bed and the planting out of a batch of campanulas.  Lazily she settled
her arms deeper into the lemons.

"The things we do to be beautiful.

Can't possibly be seen out with crumpled elbows," she sighed, thanking
her stars that Alan, in spite of knowing he was dining out that night,
had been unable to resist going out for his usual social round of food
shopping.

"Why don't you just wear something with long sleeves?"  Sue suggested
with simple logic, settling herself opposite Jenny and stealing half
the newspaper.

"I thought of that, but I've got that lovely black velvet thing with
the short, tight sleeves, not too short that they show the flabby arm
tops but somehow thin-making.  Why on earth do elbows go?"  Jenny asked
her.

"I can see that chins and burns will drop and expand with use and age,
but how worn-out and ancient-looking can an elbow get?

What does it do for heaven's sake?  "

"I can think of some men whose elbows must be just about corrugated
with overuse," Sue muttered darkly.

"The ones I've tended to know, anyway.  And talking of men ..."  she
flung the paper down hard for dramatic emphasis, 'guess what?  "

Jenny looked suspiciously at the vibrant, I-know-a- secret face, and
groaned at her friend.

"Oh not again Sue," she laughed.

"Don't tell me you've met another Mr.  Wrong!"

"No.  Well yes!"  Sue was beaming like a love struck teenager.

"Only he's Mr.  Right, this time I'm sure of it."

"Sue, you're always sure of it, every single time!"  Jenny laughed and
shifted and dislodged the left lemon, sending it skidding to the
floor.

"Bloody thing."  She peered round at the back of her arm.

"Look at this, it's as pink and rough as a ninety-year-old char lady
kneecap.  Do you think lemons are really any use?"

"Can't tell you.  All the magazines say so, though.  Like cucumber for
puffy eyelids.  You could lie around all day looking like a glass of
Pimms and see if it makes any difference."

"I'm beginning to suspect it's just that lemons are the right shape to
fit elbows, just as cucumbers are the right shape for eyes, and avocado
is the right texture for mashing up and slapping on your face.

We should probably have it all the other way round for it to work.  "

"No, you're way off the mark."  Sue scrabbled in her bag for a
cigarette.

"You're supposed to have a go at all these natural remedies, the ones
they dig out every six months or so for the makeover pages, and then
after you've made a horrible mess and your nails are full of pith and
pips, and you smell like a leftover salad, you can't wait to rush out
and spend a fortune on the kind of cosmetics that simply melt into your
grateful skin."

"Not me.  Not after that cellulite stuff.  I'm permanently cynical
about it all now.  I'd like to claim I'm no longer a cosmetics victim,
but if that were true I wouldn't be sitting here doing this.  It's
getting harder and harder to know what I should wear, too.  I wish
there was some way of being absolutely sure what I look good in, so I
wouldn't make expensive mistakes," said Jenny.

"Well don't ask a man, whatever you do," Sue advised.

"Last one I asked what I looked best in said " A darkened room".  I
divorced him.

Well I had to, after that, didn't I?  "

Jenny started giggling, glad that she wasn't also wearing a face pack
that would now be cracked like an old plate.

"Anyway, tell me about Him, who is he, where did you meet him, and what
makes him different from the rest of your collection?"

Sue took her time inhaling and thinking, and said, "Well, he's
certainly different, not local, just someone I met by chance."  She
waited, avoiding Jenny's questioning eye and staring at the pots of
herbs on the window-sill, as if deciding how much she should be
revealing.  Jenny was just considering this unusual reticence when
Daisy walked in.

"God, Mum, what are you doing?"  she said, slouching into the kitchen
in Jenny's cream satin dressing-gown and making straight for the
kettle.

"Good morning Sue, how nice to see you.  Isn't that how it goes?"  Sue
reminded her.

"Sorry Sue.  How are you?"  Daisy conceded.

"I'm extremely fine thanks, and I quite like your blue bits of hair,
but not an awful lot," Sue replied.  Jenny drew a sharp intake of
breath, waiting for Daisy to stamp out of the room or say something
fearsomely rude.

"T'isn't permanent, it's just for a, era laugh for a while," she said
instead.

What's she up to?  was Jenny's immediate thought.  The predicted
reaction should have been for Daisy to scowl and snarl, 'well sorree'
with as much heavy

sarcasm as she could dredge up and then stamp around the kitchen,
pointedly making a drink only for herself.  From the activity around
the cupboards and the fluttering of tea bags all over the floor it
rather looked like Daisy was making a rare pot of tea for the whole
household.  I hope she's not going to ask me a favour, Jenny thought
warily, trying to guess what it might be.  Money?  A friend to sleep
over?  Both of those could probably be accommodated, just so long as it
wasn't the loan of tonight's black dress.  But then, she reminded
herself, Daisy wasn't going anywhere that night.

It wasn't any use thinking of appealing to Ben.  He wouldn't be able to
come up with a solution.  He was going to Sophie's party whatever
happened, he and Emma, playing at sick-making cosy couples.  Daisy took
her tea back up to her room and wondered how she could iron her dark
blue dress with the gold stars on it without arousing suspicion.

"You never iron anything!  What's going on?"  would be the instant
reaction of her mother, who, with her trouble-seeking radar, would
suspect the worst and get Securicor in to guard her for the night.  Or
worse still, stay in and keep watch herself.  One teeny crime, one tiny
mistake, and Jenny was turned instantly into the kind of mother that
everyone else at school had.  It just wasn't fair.  Daisy collected
together her new Senseless Things tape, a couple of joss sticks in a
wine bottle and her Happy Hippy bath gel and went into the bathroom to
make a start on the day-long process of getting ready to go out.  She
prayed it would not be for nothing.

Alan was in heaven, oblivious to life's cares, drooling over the
Provolone and Dolcelatte on the cheese counter at the Italian deli in
the same entranced way the

other men were doing over the soft-porn video display round the corner
at Rentavid.  Like them, he was in no mood to be interrupted, and
visibly leapt when Paul Mathieson tapped him on the shoulder.

"You been sent out shopping too?"  Paul asked him in a sheepish bid for
sympathy.  He was clutching a two-tone leatherette shopping bag,
holding it in front of him as if determined not to learn the easiest
way of carrying it.

Alan felt immediate antagonism, and fought down the feeling that this
was perfectly reasonable after all, Paul was just being friendly.

"No, I enjoy it.  Something of a hobby really," he confessed.

"Very restful, cooking," he added, gazing back at the display of
buffalo Mozzarella, 'though I don't suppose Jen would agree, when she's
dashing around trying to feed the kids between picking them up and
dropping them off at all their various after-school activities.  "

Paul could think of no reply.  Cooking was something Carol did with
vigour and adeptness but no real sign of delight.  Offhand he couldn't
think of anything she did do with delight, unless he counted petting
those skinny cats.  Relaxing was not a word he would have applied to
the atmosphere in their kitchen when Carol chopped, mixed, sliced and
stirred.  He thought of the sheer brutality with which she broke and
beat eggs, the awe-inspiring violence of her dough-kneading.

"Just look at that Parmesan,"

"Alan was murmuring.

"D'you know that here they sprinkle it between the layers of fresh
lasagne before it's packed ready to sell?"

"Well, no, I didn't.  Doesn't it go all over the floor when you unwrap
it?"  Paul asked, thinking of Carol's outraged face when confronted
with an unexpected mess.

"Yes, of course, but who cares?  It's well worth it!"  Alan told him,
turning to the pasta cabinet and picking up a couple of packs of the
stuff.  He shoved some into

Paul's hand.

"Try some!"  he said expansively.

"Or what about the cuttlefish tagliatelle?"

Paul looked disbelievingly at the jet black pasta, which seemed even
worse than the blue Smarties that Marcus was so fond of.  He thought
he'd wait till Alan left, sneak the lasagne back on to the shelf and
collect a pack of their usual dried version from the supermarket.

Meanwhile, there was something he was aching to know, the reason for
which he'd entered this terrifying shop.

"What was going on in your back garden last night?"  he said, then
tittered nervously in case the reply was something too honestly
sensual.

"Looked like a witchcraft meeting the Close Coven perhaps!"  An alarmed
feeling was creeping up inside his head that he might have got it
accidentally correct.  They might put a curse on him.  He'd never quite
stopped half-believing that people could be changed into frogs, which
was probably why he never could stand up to Carol.  He stared around
the shop, waiting for Alan to laugh it off, pretending he was studying
the jars of sun-dried tomatoes and wondering why they hadn't removed
the cloudy bottles of Podere vinegar from the shelves; surely it was
looking slightly off?

"How on earth could you see into my back garden?"  Alan asked him with
quiet menace.

"And for what reason would you be looking?"

"Oh well, it was just the noise and the lights flickering you know,
could have been burglars, anything, kids got in from the estate, you
know ... Happened to be in the attic ..."  he bluffed lamely, guarding
his chest with the shopping bag, aware that the shop had gone very
silent and several customers in the shop were openly listening.

Most of them were men, large men acing ones.  He felt suddenly like an
unwelcome intrude ran epicure ally-challenged gatecrasher in this haunt
of gourmets.  It would be ages till he was served, priority customers
being Italian speakers or, like Alan, friends of the owner.  He'd be
much happier in Sainsbury's, in the single basket, cash-only queue.  He
smirked nervously.

"Just taking a neighbourly interest."  Alan, grinning coolly, hit him
none too playfully on the head with a large olive-stuffed ciabatta
loaf.

"Well don't," he told Paul.

The doorbell rang just as Jenny was coming down the stairs.

"You can stay up till 10, just for once, but no later," she called back
up to Polly, as she glanced into the hall mirror.  Her hair, which had
taken thirty-five minutes to pile up, was collapsing already, but with
the deep and gooey red lipstick and plenty of mascara (eye- care by
Estee Lauder this time, not the greengrocer), she looked and felt quite
gorgeously tarty.

"George!"  she exclaimed, surprised to see him standing rather
shamefacedly on the doormat.

"Fiona sent you over to borrow a cup of sugar?"

"No.  I've come to see you," he said, staring intently at the rather
low front of her tight black velvet dress.  Jenny put a protective hand
towards her cleavage.

The?  Oh look George, I've told you before.  It's no.  And it'll be no
next time you ask too, just to save you the trouble," she hissed
firmly, pulling the door behind her a little so no-one could hear, then
realizing she had enclosed the two of them into the dusty intimacy of
the porch.  She could smell over-wintering geraniums and George's
pungent anticipatory aftershave.

"Oh look, I do make an effort," he pleaded like a schoolboy excusing
inadequate homework.

"I try them all, from King's Cross knee-tremblers to colonic
irrigation.  All I want ..."

"You sound like a walking health hazard.  I know exactly what you
want," Jenny told him, glad that she was wearing high heeled shoes and
had the authority of being slightly taller than him, 'and I'm sorry,
but you're

not getting it from me and that's that!  " Her harsh treatment of him
was having the wrong effect, she realized, he was now looking
positively lascivious.  Another minute and he would be drooling on the
doormat.

"You look wonderful.  Edible," he told her breathily, looking her up
and down and licking his lips.  Jenny shuddered, though mostly at the
thought that he must at one time have said things like that to the
formidable Fiona.  She wondered how Fiona had reacted.  With
commendably firm discipline, she imagined, for which George had
probably married her.

"Look George," she said, changing over to reasoning sweetness, 'we're
just going out for the evening.  Alan and I. You'll have to go away.
"

Jenny opened the front door a bit wider, trying to frighten him off,
and the hall light exaggerated the hangdog pallor of George's mournful
face.  It looked as worn out and hopeless as his corduroy jacket.  Then
the sound of Alan on the stairs startled them both and George muttered
a quick goodbye and shambled off to the gate.  Poor old soul, Jenny
thought, making a halfhearted effort to salvage her hair in front of
the hall mirror.  The world seemed full of men like him.  She couldn't
take them on- if she wanted to get more actively involved in charity
work than running the local Help the Aged collection, she could think
of much worthier causes.

"What did he want?"  Alan asked, checking his tie in the mirror.

"Just my body," Jenny told him with a cheeky wink as she went back
upstairs to say goodnight to Polly.

"Long way to go for dinner with people we wouldn't really choose to go
out with," Alan said apologetically in the car.

"I don't mind, it's just good to be out, and the food there is
supposed to be miraculous," said Jenny.

"I'm beginning to feel I'm living in a goldfish bowl in the Close, with
Paul and Carol and their obsession with watching everyone.  It's
getting beyond a joke.  I feel like writing up a list for them of
exactly what I do in one particular day everything including the times
I go to the loo and what junk mail the postman brought.  Perhaps they'd
get the hint then."

"No they wouldn't.  Paul thinks we've taken up witchcraft.  He told me
in the deli, he was watching the candles in our garden last night and
thinks we were calling up the devil."

"Makes me want to hold naked rituals out there and mix up spells in a
cauldron," she laughed.

"We could invite him to join.  I bet Carol would jump at the chance.
There's sure to be something interestingly repressed and seething under
her M & S body shaper

"She'd make a good Head Witch," Alan agreed, nodding solemnly.

"Very good at keeping order.  Dominatrix type."

Must remember to suggest her to George Pemberton, thought Jenny, next
time he comes round wanting to buy some sexual services.  Perhaps
they'd suit each other nicely.

At the traffic lights, Alan reached into the door pocket for a suitable
tape.  He came across the Beach Boys, but rejected it, remembering how
irritated Jenny used to get with his out-of-tune attempts to join in
with the irresistible harmonies.  It was all right for her with her
perfect pitch.  All the same, ooh-oohing his way through Good
Vibrations was something best kept for the privacy of lone motorway
journeys. Rummaging about, he finally found a dusty old Fleetwood Mac
album, the first cassette tape he'd ever bought after finally conceding
that the 8-track car stereo was, like Betamax, unlikely to have a
future.

"You used to look a bit like the singer, Stevie Nicks

was it?  " he said to Jenny as they cruised through Wealdstone High
Street.

"Remember?"

"Do I ever!"  she said, wrinkling her nose.

"Perilous platform boots and hanky-point floaty skirts.  Not bad, those
skirts.  I should have kept one.  Daisy would probably have worn it."

"This week isn't it?  Her appointment with the Chief Constable.  Do you
have to get her out of school early?"

"No thank goodness, so there's no need for Fiona Pemberton to know
anything about it.  Though she probably does; the staff must have heard
the girls gossiping to each other about it."  Jenny felt uneasy,
thinking about Daisy's brush with the law.  Perhaps these things really
were genetic.  She wished she could ask Alan to take time out from the
office to go instead.  It was worse for her than going to the
dentist.

Many years ago, she had been arrested on the one time she had called at
the escort agency to collect her commission and tell them she wouldn't
be working for them again, and the police had chosen that moment for a
raid.  The thought of the long-ago detective leering and sneering into
her face with a mixture of disgust and lecherous curiosity still gave
her a nauseous shiver.

"We could have you up for being a common prostitute," he'd
threatened.

"Must turn some of them on, a bit of posh.  Prostitute you may be,
common you're not."  Jenny shuddered at the memory and turned up the
car heating.

"I think you over-estimate staff-room loyalty," Alan tried to be
reassuring, 'if you think they'd report what they heard to the
headmistress.  I'm sure she'll be the last one to hear.  And it won't
be the worst thing that's ever happened at the school; I heard a
thirteen-year-old got pregnant a couple of years back, and they're
always dropping out of the sixth form because of drugs, and being
passed on to those extortionate crammers in Kensington.  "

The restaurant was a famous one, written about in countless weekend
newspapers.  Foodwriters liked going there; it was far enough from
their office to necessitate taking an entire day out just to go and do
their report.  Glowing references to its meals were overlaid with more
than a hint of incredulous journalistic wonder that such culinary skill
could be found beyond the boundary of the M25.  They wrote things like
Well worth driving out of London for, as if the whole world resided in
SW3.  Alan tended to read out the more irritating quotes over breakfast
on Sunday mornings.

"Listen to this Jen: " Rather a clever little terrine de
bouillabaisse".  What exactly's that supposed to mean?  Patronizing
bastard," he would grumble across the toast and Jenny would murmur a
soothing "Mmmm' in agreement from deep in the Books section.

The restaurant sounded full when Jenny and Alan walked in, but it was,
in fact, more than half empty, only noisy with the strident sound of
regular customers braying greetings to each other and loudly ensuring
that everyone in the place knew that the head waiter had remembered
which tables they preferred.

"So clever of you, Henry, to remember about Barbara's contact lenses
and the air conditioning," Jenny overheard.  Turning her attention away
from the un pretty sight of a portly weekend executive school boyishly
rubbing his stomach and exclaiming "Yum yum!"  as he read the menu at
the bar, she had a quick look at the decor.  Someone had been reading
the right magazines: no dated, over-chintzed floral frills here, just
plain, straight-hung calico curtains tied to simple iron poles, pale
cream walls lightly over washed with burnt sienna, and on the floor,
sea grass carpeting, which must be hazardous to high heels on less than
sober customers.

Even the stylish Laura Benstone had refused to have it in her house on
the grounds that if the children were sick on it, it would be a bugger
to clean up.

Bernard and his wife Monica, a chunky, comfort able couple in late
middle-age, with matching hair cut short and striped in shades of grey,
were already at a round table, which was laid for six.  There was also
one younger woman that Jenny did not know, though it took just the
briefest heart stopping second to realize that this elegant girl with
sleek, nut-brown hair tied back with a purple scarf and wearing a dusty
pink silk jacket that could almost be Armani could only be Bernard's
niece Serena.

"Frankie's just gone off to the loo, won't be a sec," Serena said as
the introductions were being made.  Jenny sat down and fiddled with her
napkin, glanced at Serena's overloaded handful of heavy rings, and
wondered why it had never occurred to her that Serena might even be
married.  What kind of evening was it going to be, making dinner-party
conversation with the woman she suspected of dallying with Alan?  Did
her own husband, if that's what he was, this Frankie, have the same
painful suspicions?  She resolved to take safe and childlike refuge in
appreciating the food.

At too many dinners the deliciously extravagant flavours eluded her in
the tension of meeting new people, keeping the chat going and simply
getting through an evening.  Sometimes, late at night, on journeys when
Alan was raving over the supremacy of one sauce or another, she could
hardly recall a thing she'd tasted.  She looked across the table at him
sitting between Monica and Serena.  She noticed that he seemed
positively exuberant, beaming broadly and already calling a waiter to
order drinks.  Perhaps, she thought venomously, he was excited by the
juxtaposition of wife and mistress.  Surely he couldn't have known
about this?

"Always a bit nerve-wracking, going out to eat with an expert such as
yourself," Jenny heard Bernard confessing to Alan, 'so I thought, just
to be on the safe side and make sure everything's up to scratch, I'd
bring this along.  " Jenny watched a flicker of incredulous dismay pass
across Alan's face and looked at the tatty, torn-edged scrap of pale
blue newsprint that Bernard had fished out of his pocket.

"It's an old Restaurant Watch notice from The Sunday Times," he
explained to those who didn't know.

"You put it on the table so the waiters know that you expect only the
very best service.  Knew you'd appreciate that."  Jenny knew that Alan,
who thought such a thing the height of insulting rudeness, did not, and
was feeling grudging sympathy for him as the last guest slid into the
seat next to her.

"Hello, I'm Frankie," Jenny heard, and turned to look at Serena's
friend, who was fair-haired, stocky and thirty-something.
Interestingly, the friend was also female.

It was Emma in Daisy's bathroom who came up with the solution to the
big problem.

"We'll take Polly to-the party with us.  Simple.  We'll be back before
your parents, they've gone absolutely miles away and they'll never ever
know," she declared optimistically.

"We can't," was Daisy's immediate reaction.

"Polly will tell.  Besides, I don't want to go to a party towing my
baby sister along.  Whatever kind of twit will I look?"  In spite of
her doubts she was still getting ready.  There had to be a way, some
last-minute salvation.

She'd wondered if she dared ask Mrs.  Fingell to babysit, but hadn't
enough left of her allowance to pay her with.  Besides, Daisy could
hardly ask her not to mention it to Jenny.  If she did, Mrs.  Fingell
might not only refuse to come, but might tell Jenny anyway.  It just
wasn't worth the risk of asking her.  Daisy would get out somehow
though, with or without Polly.  The dress with the stars on was neatly
ironed, she'd found a pair of black tights that only had one ladder in
them, and now she was

carefully sticking on a pair of rainbow-coloured false eyelashes.

"Do these look stupid?"  she asked, blinking hard at Emma's reflection
in the bathroom mirror.

"No they look great.  Hurry up, we've only got to fix Polly and then we
can go; it's gone eight already."

She's dying to get at Ben, thought Daisy, appalled that she was about
to spend the evening at the same party as him, and no doubt have to
watch him snogging her best friend.  Taking Polly looked like being the
only possible thing to do.

"How much fun am I going to have with Poll watching my every move?" she
moaned, wondering how Oliver would ever get the chance to pounce on
her.

"Well at least you'll be there you won't be missing it, that's what
matters.  She'll probably fall asleep under a table or something.  Stop
worrying and let's go and persuade her to come.  Will we need to bribe
her?"

"Threaten maybe.  She likes to watch Casualty on Saturdays, counts how
many patients get rushed into Crash and never come out alive.  Nearly
all of them, she says."  Daisy fluffed out her hair so that the desired
amount dangled over her left eye.  The blue ends looked just the right
shade against the dress.  She couldn't waste all this effort.

Polly knew something was going on, and one way or another was planning
on profiting from it.  Daisy wasn't spending hours getting ready for a
quiet evening in, that was for sure.  She was just dialling Harriet's
number to consult with her on suitable blackmail charges when Daisy and
Emma marched importantly into the sitting- room and switched off the
television.

"Hey, I'm watching that!"  she shouted at them.

Daisy took the telephone from her and replaced the receiver, then took
her hand and led her to the sofa.  Polly felt nervous, Daisy was being
quite gentle with her, which left her unsure how to react.  Daisy being
stroppy and demanding, she could deal with she was used to that. Daisy
and Emma sat each side of her on the sofa, and Polly waited for the
worst, possibly a thorough beating-up.

"Polly, how would you like to go out to a really good party?  With us,"
Emma asked, smiling sweetly at her as if she was offering her a
treat.

"Yes.  But it has to be a secret.  You mustn't tell the parents," Daisy
added.

Polly pretended to consider for a long moment, trying not to smirk.

They thought she wouldn't want to go, that she'd need persuading.  How
stupid of them.  She slowly curled her legs up underneath her to look
more settled for the night.

"But it's Casualty.  I always watch that."

Defiantly, she folded her arms, wondering how far she could go with
making Daisy furious.

Daisy bit her lip.

"We'll set the video.  You've got to come Poll, I can't leave you here
on your own."

"No, you can't do that," Polly agreed.

"What do I get if I come?

You've got to make it something really good, because you wouldn't want
to be grounded again would you?  " she said slyly, her big eyes staring
innocently at Daisy's multi-coloured eyelashes.

But Daisy had looked at the clock and knew her options had expired.

She wanted to leave, and leave now.  Her patience evaporated and she
grabbed Polly by the hair.

"You're coming with us Polly, and you're going to be really good and do
just what I tell you, and you're never going to mention this to anyone,
not ever or ... or ..."

"Or what?"  Polly held her breath.

Daisy grinned, frighteningly.

"Or, you know that mouldy cat that you and Harriet half-dug up last
night?"

"Ye ... es ... ?"  Polly mumbled.

Emma, one step ahead, smiled equally maliciously.

Daisy was still grinning.

"Well I saw a film once, and there was a very silly man in it who told
tales when

he shouldn't have and one morning when he woke up there was a horse's
head in bed with him, all horrible and bleeding.  In your case you
could end up sharing your bed with that putrid pussycat.  Imagine that.
"

"Yeah, that's right."  Emma slid closer to Polly and whispered in her
ear.  Polly could smell her musky perfume.

"You wouldn't like that, would you Polly?  I know I wouldn't."

Chapter Fifteen

If he'd known that Serena was coming, Alan would have thought of some
excuse, a previous engagement that was impossible to miss.  He could
understand that for some men, the sort more used to playing jaway
fixtures', the thought of sharing a dinner table with both a wife and a
focus of lust was overwhelmingly thrilling, a real kick to the old and
flagging virility, but for him it was heartstoppingly hazardous.

Suppose he got drunk and said something really stupid, like calling the
wrong one "Pudding'?  Adultery, even the planning stages of it,
obviously didn't come naturally to him.  He was a shambling amateur at
it.  Who were those men who, ran sleek-stockinged mistresses and dared
to book smart hotel rooms by the hour for conscience- free afternoon
sex?  Both women were looking equally desirable, Jenny with her
lion-coloured hair, already starting to look sexily dishevelled in her
low-cut black velvet dress, and Serena in silky pink, the jacket not
quite covering something lacy and black underneath that looked
enticingly like underwear.  Jenny's body was known, familiar.  Serena
had the advantage here of being the more tempting through being
untried.

Guilt gripped Alan's intestines and made him peevish, blocking off his
appetite.  He'd been really looking forward to going out with Jenny,
liberated from all guilt-inducing fantasies for once in a way that
reminded him of taking well-earned time off work.  He liked his wife;

much better than that, he loved her.  What he felt for Serena was
completely separate, and

the two women had no business facing each other and exercising their
social graces across a restaurant table.  If he'd known, he could have
conjured up a wedding anniversary, or a godchild's birthday treat, or a
suddenly dead Irish aunt with a compulsory three-day wake in Kilburn,
and simply taken Jenny out to Riva in Barnes as he'd planned.

He wished he was there now, watching the men admiring Jenny and looking
forward to linguine with crayfish in a deliciously creamy tomato sauce.
It would all have been so conveniently close to home, too, not two
counties away out there in God-forsaken pony club territory, with
something that may or may not be Vivaldi giggling shrilly from
sub-standard speakers.  Bernard really should have left discussing the
office finances till Monday, it surely couldn't be that much of a
crisis, Alan thought as he sat sulkily crumbling his bread roll
(freshly baked on the premises, the menu promised) and wondering if he
dared to risk the garrulousness that came with even the smallest amount
of alcohol.

He thought he recognized Frankie as the woman waiting on the pavement
the night he had driven Serena home.  She'd definitely been that sort
of squarish shape, though he hadn't seen enough of her to notice the
pretty, feathery haircut, or the huge green eyes.  Serena introduced
her at the table as simply, "My friend Frankie; we share the Hat."  He
had been under the impression that Serena had bought her flat herself,
so Frankie must be a lodger brought in to help with the mortgage.

Typically sweet of Serena not to mention that, thought Alan.  He
flinched nervously in his seat as, next to him, she swished one silky
leg across the other under the table, terrified that he would
unconsciously (who was he kidding?  ) find his thigh drawn towards hers
under cover of the tablecloth and that Jenny, all-seeing and
all-knowing, would see and know all.

Sandwiched between Bernard and Frankie, Jenny wondered, rather
cattily, why the lovely Serena was man less on a Saturday night.
Perhaps she had an absent husband; a fiance in the Navy would rather
suit her, she thought, somebody who looked good in a uniform, doing
something important defending the Gulf on the Ark Royal.  She looked
like the well put-together Surrey sort who would have no trouble with
Officers' formal dinners, or telling a Captain from a Commodore at
thirty paces.  She had a plummy little ex-deb voice, just falling short
of being gushing as she asked Jenny about her family.

"And has Polly recovered from her exams?"  she enquired politely,
making Jenny feel immediate and unreasoning resentment that Alan must
have discussed his family with her.  Instead of sensibly imagining them
over coffee in the office or whiling away the journey to a client's
audit, she instantly pictured the two of them indulging in cosy chats
among crisp linen pillows on Serena's bed, making languorous after-sex
conversation, with Alan recounting amusing little tales of disordered
family life.  Jenny tried not to seethe, tried to control her wandering
imagination.  It was only one evening, it could and would be got
through.

Bernard, Serena and Alan had the advantage of knowing what they had met
to discuss.

"We'll just get the boring stuff out of the way quickly and then we can
get on with enjoying ourselves," Bernard announced jovially, as if
pleasure in the dinner could be put on hold and resurrected at will.

"Just got to sort out whether we've actually got work premises to
return to on Monday or not."  He laughed as if, deep down, it was quite
unthinkable that the firm could really be in dire trouble, as if this
never really happened to people like him.

Jenny, for one, felt dismissed from the discussion across the table,
and after ordering food from a waiter

who quite rightly curled a scornful and amused lip at the shameful
Restaurant Watch slip, knew she was relegated to making conversation
with Frankie and Monica.  Her brain cut out momentarily while she
pondered whether she should have ordered the sea bass instead of lamb,
and returned seconds later to find Monica comfortably launched into
listing her weekly timetable.

"And on Tuesdays and Thursdays it's Meals on Wheels, then Fridays I do
the hospital run."  She did a girlish giggle and confided, "They call
it the After Eighties clinic, a bit like the mints, because that's the
minimum age for our old dears.  The charge-nurse calls them the Still
With Us brigade, because that's what everyone says to them; " Still
with us are you dear?  ", you know, everyone from the ambulance men to
the consultant.  Naughty really, I know," she laughed cosily, her
necklace with dangling fruit-drop beads cheerfully bouncing at her
throat.

"Rather patronizing, don't you think?"  Frankie's icy voice chipped in
as she leaned forward earnestly.

"Just because people are old, surely that's no reason to treat them as
if they've no more intelligence than domestic pets?"  Jenny turned to
Monica, who looked slightly puzzled, as if she wasn't sure she'd heard
properly.  Frankie had a coldly serious look on her face, her pale pink
mouth tight with righteousness.  Jenny felt sorry for Monica, who,
naive and well-meaning soul that she was, had no streak of artful wit
with which to defend herself.

"Are you in social services by any chance?"  Jenny asked Frankie with
an innocent note of interested enquiry.

"Physiotherapy.  I work with stroke survivors.  We don't call them
victims any more, of course," Frankie answered.

"It's a matter of positive attitudes."

"It must be enormously rewarding, helping the poor old things regain
their faculties."  Monica had recovered and smiled eagerly, making a
misplaced bid for Frankie's good opinion.  Frankie glowered at her. Not
over-rewarding for the patients.  Jenny thought, having their
broken-nerved limbs coaxed back to useful life by a therapist who
thought it was a political crime to call someone 'love', however
carefully respectful they were being while they were not doing it.

From across the table small hints of disastrous financial insolvency
were making their way to Jenny's ears.  Just the odd word, like
'bailiffs', and 'receivers and 'liquidity factor'.  The situation at
the office sounded even worse than Alan had been telling her: more
clients than ever not paying up.  The overheard snatches told her that,
unless the firm came up with the annual office -rent, plus inevitable
extortionate increase by Monday lunchtime, eviction would surely
follow.  No wonder Bernard couldn't wait another forty-eight hours to
discuss it with Alan.  What kind of accountancy practice goes broke?

Jenny wondered.  She listened to them discussing the hiring of
motorbike couriers to dash round picking up as much money as indebted
clients could pay to prop up the bank balance, and felt very much like
she was having the final, over-lavish banquet aboard the Titanic.  The
waiter hovered, dawdled with the wine and listened, with a superior
smirk on his face, which broadened as he caught on to the prospect of
this collection of punters not being capable of paying their bill.

Alan and Bernard and Serena pored over a pocket calculator so tiny that
they could hardly read the figures, and Jenny heard Alan complain that
it was useless, it was solar powered and running down.  You'd think,
she mused to herself, that a bunch of chartered accountants could
either run to a proper state-of-the-art computer notebook, or be able
to do the old-fashioned adding-up thing with a bit of paper and a
pencil.

"We're late," Daisy said, sprinting down the road and dragging Polly
after her.  It wasn't easy running in the boots, and her little toe on
her left foot was already rubbing.  By the end of the evening it would
be raw.

"We're not.  Parties are always dead boring at the beginning; nobody's
there and nobody's drunk!"  Emma shouted breathlessly, trying to keep
up with her and having to stop and gather up her layers of ancient
jumble-sale skirts.  They were at the far end of Sophie's street, and
could hear the music.  Boys were loitering in the road, swigging from
cans of beer which would later be kicked into hedges, and working
themselves up to being offensively noisy.  One of them called out to
Daisy, jeering, "What's that?  Your kid?"

"Kid sister," Emma called back.

"Shut up, Em!"  Daisy hissed at her furiously.

"I don't want the world to know.  I'm going to dump her as soon as I
get inside."  She pulled crossly at Polly's hot little paw to hurry her
up.  She'd wanted to get there early, before some other girl, one of
the slaggy, done-it-all sixth-formers probably, moved in to get off
with Oliver.  He'd think by now that she wasn't coming.

Sophie had obliging and accommodating parents who had agreed that it
would be nice for her to have a birthday party.  Like all similar
parents in the neighbourhood they considered it scandalous that there
was nowhere for teenagers to go at night that didn't involve either
breaking the law (pubs, clubs) or breaking the environment (the
riverside, the Common).  At least with parties they knew they were
safely at someone's house, not risking a knifing hanging around in
town, and if the party was at their own house they didn't even have to
argue over who stayed sober enough to drive out into the 1 a. m. cold,
police-patrolled Saturday night air to collect their child.  So,
refusing to go out and leave Sophie alone to cope with gatecrashers
and trouble, they trailed upstairs to camp unseen in the unused and
underheated au-pair suite in the attic, with an ancient television and
an Indian take away turned up the volume and assured each other that
everything would be fine.

The guests were all nice children, from good schools, who had been
taught a healthy respect for alcohol.  They didn't fear drugs.  Sophie
had told them that only thick young kids sniffed glue, and had rather
snootily laughed off the idea of Ecstasy 'only people who go to raves
and wear orange lycra take Es," she'd sniffed scornfully.  If Sophie
did run into any problems they would be safely there to deal with it,
and if not, well they'd promised their anxious daughter that they
wouldn't interfere, wouldn't terminally humiliate her by so much as
showing their faces.  The noises drifting up the stairs were what the
optimistic parents hoped to hear; well-cared-for teenagers having a
good time, laughing, a bit of squealing, lots of music (Jimi Hendrix
they smiled knowingly to each other, does anything change?), but no
glass breaking, no screams, no roaring of boys indulging in
excess-testosterone aggression.  They settled themselves comfortably in
the ancient pine wood and corduroy Habitat chairs, long abandoned from
the first sitting-room they'd ever furnished together and looked
forward to watching, uninterrupted, a gloomy French film on BBC2.

Oliver and Ben were in the kitchen leaning against the fridge when
Daisy walked in to get herself a drink.  She completely ignored them
both and simply helped herself to a bottle of K cider from the supply
on the draining board along with, as an afterthought, a can of Coke for
Polly, then left the room again.

"There you are," Oliver bragged to Ben, 'told you she likes me.  Lucky
I came prepared," he said, leering and tapping the top pocket of his
denim jacket.  Ben took a swig from his beer bottle and thought he
preferred

23i

not to know about Oliver's contraceptive supply if it was going to be
used on his sister, though it might come in useful if he got
astoundingly, beyond-belief lucky with Emma.  When, he wondered, would
he be like Oliver and feel able to amble into any old petrol station
and casually pick up a packet of Mates as if it was quite the natural
thing to buy along with a Crunchie bar?  When, please God, he thought,
taking another large swig, would he need to?

Polly sat cross-legged underneath the desk in Sophie's bedroom and
quickly finished her Coke.  She knew she'd made an absolutely
unbreakable promise to keep well out of the way and not be a nuisance,
but surely she wasn't expected to sit there all night?  She sat very
still, thumbing casually through Sophie's diary and listened carefully
as two boys sat on the bed and smoked a sweet-smelling joint,
discussing how much Ben had been charging for it and whether they could
get it cheaper from one of the dealers down on the estate.  After
they'd left the room she uncurled herself and wandered to the top of
the stairs.  Down below her through clouds of cigarette smoke, she
could see that the house was now pretty well full.  No-one would notice
if she went down and found somewhere more interesting to be.  She crept
down and snaked her way through the mass of people.  From a chair
safely hidden behind a large frondy plant in the sitting-room, Polly
could see Daisy being closely talked to by a boy with very dark hair
and the kind of eyes that don't leave your face when they're talking.

Daisy was smiling up at him, gazing intently back and looking, Polly
thought, quite horribly soppy.  He was probably telling her enormous
lies about how wonderful she was.  If he was, Daisy would believe every
single word, so they'd probably be snogging soon and that would be
something to report to Harriet.  Polly was thirsty again but didn't
want Daisy to catch her, so she looked around and found a bottle on
the window ledge just behind her.  It didn't seem to be anyone's,
nobody pounced on her crossly when she picked it up and sniffed at it.
It wasn't Coke, but it would do.

Ben was successfully squashed up against Emma in a corner of the
dining-room.  It wasn't dark enough for doing anything adventurous to
her body, and there were too many people all squawking noisily around
them and banging into them.  The air was swirling and heady with
cannabis fumes.  The obvious thing would be to entice her up to one of
the bedrooms.  He felt his hands getting clammy at the thought, but
he'd had a few courage-gathering drinks and could only ask, it was now
or never.

"Shall we go somewhere quieter?"  he whispered into her hair, despising
himself for his corniness.  He held his breath and waited for her to
laugh in his face and tell him to drop dead.

"OK," she whispered back unexpectedly.  Perhaps she hadn't realized
what he meant.  He took her hand and led her to the stairs, where an
embarrassing number of sniggering people watched them go up together.

Just at the bit where the stairs curved, Ben happened to glance back
and into the sitting- room.  What was Polly drinking from that bottle
he wondered?  She was Daisy's responsibility though, he decided,
absolutely not his, not at a moment like this.  It crossed his mind
then that back in the kitchen just forty-five minutes ago, he-should
have thought to borrow a condom from Oliver.  There really was just the
most wonderful outside chance he might need one.

"So, are we so completely broke that we'll have to go without dessert?"
Monica enquired cheerfully as Bernard snapped shut the calculator and
started pouring more wine.

"Frankly, yes," he said, though his face had an amused

and unconvincing look, as if he didn't really expect to be believed.

Monica seemed to take that to mean "Frankly, no' and continued to
butter her bread roll thickly, but Alan was looking quite pale, and
Jenny felt mildly aggrieved that the situation at work was obviously so
much worse than he had been admitting, as if she was just a fluffy
little wife who needed to be protected from such knowledge.  Alan could
be out of work and searching for a job this time next week, and he'd
still be telling her not to worry about it.  A serious career of her
own should have been taken up a long time ago, not just dabbling in a
spot of teaching from home as a kind of frill with which to add
decorative extras to their family life.  She prayed briefly that the
sending out of her CVs would be fruitful.  Just as the waiter put
before her a plate of lobster ravioli, her stomach contracted at the
thought of even more years of Polly's school fees.  She didn't need a
calculator to tell her that she and Alan were going to need (at current
prices, and the fees went up annually) at least 33,600 to educate their
third child, and that wasn't available from Social Security, so she
added another quick prayer for Polly's exam results to yield a
scholarship.

'. Well I suppose we'll have to draw straws for who has to give up
their company car, ha ha ha!  " Bernard was saying.  Jenny watched Alan
grin fawningly and felt annoyed.  Was Bernard so close to retirement
that he actually no longer cared?  He must have some treble- protected
multi-bonus pension scheme he was dying to get his hands on, she
thought, but what about the rest of them?

"Bought Monica a little runabout, such a good wheeze, we use it all the
time," he said.

"Classic car," Monica murmured through a mouthful of salmon ravioli.

"Oh yes?  I've got one, an MG Midget; restored it myself!"  Frankie
told her proudly.  Jenny could just imagine Frankie, all square in
mechanic's overalls, hauling herself under a car with a big bag of
spanners.

"Got her a Morris Traveller.  Nothing fancy, moss in the joins and a
spot of woodworm, but the insurance is a dream."  Bernard leaned across
eagerly.

"Do it up and it's worth a fortune.  I should know," Frankie said.

"Ah, but that's the thing!"  Bernard announced triumphantly.

"You qualify for Classic Car insurance, and if you do less than five
thousand miles ..."

"But whoever does?"  Jenny asked.

Bernard looked round furtively and took a quick sip of wine before
confiding, "If you do less than five thousand, the insurance is
absolutely down to peanuts.  You simply disconnect the clock Now isn't
that a good old piece of accountancy advice for you?  Free too!"

"It sucks," said Frankie, in honest disgust.  Jenny thought about the
dingy used car lot at the back of the estate where the residents traded
beaten-up Fiestas for beaten-up Escorts.  Notices on each windscreen
denied responsibility for the mileage on the cars' clocks, and Ministry
of Transport officials checked it over on a regular basis, along with
the police.  The place seemed to be under constantly changing
management.  Eventually nice, trustworthy Monica would sell her
priceless Morris.  The ad would say something along the lines of
'careful lady owner, exceptionally low mileage' and her word would not
be doubted.

There was a bit of a silence after that.  Jenny watched Serena applying
pate to a tiny square of toast, her long, pink-polished, fingernails
holding it delicately as if the harsh little crumbs might chip at her
nail varnish.  Jenny imagined those hands caressing her husband,
wondered if even in the deepest thrashings of passion she handled Alan
with such daintiness, fearful of damaging her manicure.

"And what do you do?"  came a polite, social question from Frankie to
Jenny.

"I teach flute when I can get the pupils," Jenny told her.

"At the moment I'm getting the impression that music lessons are among
the little extras that get cut back when times are hard," she sighed.

"It's the same in schools, sadly, the state ones can't afford the
outside staff, and parents struggling to pay school fees can't afford
lessons as well, so only the children of the super-rich are learning to
play anything."

"Must be getting like back in the historic days when music was purely
an accomplishment for affluent young women," Monica chipped in.

Frankie retorted sharply," Unless you were a man and were allowed to
turn yourself into a genius composer.  I always wondered why girls who
showed prodigious talents like Mozart's were never encouraged too, then
we might have some female composers of real sub stance as well.

There must have been some surely.  "

"Too busy putting in the necessary hours of embroidery and
poetry-reciting I expect, preparing to catch a husband," Jenny replied
and then laughed.

"Plus, if any parent, governess or tutor could get a boy to sit still
for more than ten minutes and get engrossed in one activity, they were
probably only too happy to encourage them to stay there and get on with
it.  I know I would be!"

From across the table Serena leaned across and speared a slice of lemon
from Frankie's plate.  She sat sucking at it without wincing, listening
to them laughing.

"That's what it was all about though, wasn't it?"  she said suddenly,
"Learning to entertain a husband.  It isn't much different now, really,
there are still women out there can you believe it?  who live off their
husbands!  Can you imagine not earning one's own living?  Otherwise
it's just prostitution!"

Jenny looked at her for signs of irony, but there was nothing but the
expectation of approval on Serena's smiling, porcelain face.  Monica
was shuffling her napkin around and frowning.

"There are other important things beside earning a living in the
financial sense.  A husband's income can be shared with his wife for
more than just sex," Jenny said.

Monica beamed agreement, saying, "Well yes, absolutely.  There's
children for one thing, and charity work once they're grown up.  I'd
have thought you feminists would value child-rearing as a valid
occupation."

Jenny thought for a minute and said, "Also, it could be considered
socially responsible to stay out of the job market if you don't really
need two incomes.  The most important thing there, surely, is that it's
not just women who should be allowed that choice.  Although not many
families these days can exist on one income."

Alan was watching her, she could feel his gaze and his attention on
her.  Frankie reached across her with a forkful of monkfish and
Serena's cherry mouth opened to bite it.

"Mmmm.  Adore it," she murmured silkily.  Frankie smiled lovingly at
her friend and Jenny felt she'd been violently clouted by a sudden
recognition.  Frankie and Serena shared a lot more than just an
apartment.  Oh poor Alan, she thought, he clearly had absolutely no
idea.

Polly was getting to like cider, even though it tasted a bit sour at
first.  It left a lovely sharp appley flavour in her mouth and made her
feel happy, like when she was allowed champagne on family birthdays.

Daisy and Oliver were somewhere in the blurry distance, interestingly
entwined on a sofa.  She'd tried creeping up and listening to what they
said, to see if they were discussing sex, but Daisy had told her to sod
off and go and find somewhere to sleep.  Polly actually was quite tired
now, but back on her chair when she closed her eyes the room seemed to
lurch over her

head, as if she was forever swooping backwards to the top of the big
wheel at the fair.  The music was too loud, and there was a constant
buzzing of voices, pierced sometimes by the kind of shriek that
wrenched her all the way back from the edge of sleep.  She decided that
perhaps she should go and find a quiet bed to lie on just for a little
while, and crept up the stairs past a mass of gabbling girls who were
talking about the best age for losing virginity.  Polly knew she must
be unbelievably tired;

she didn't feel any real urge to hang around and listen to them like
she normally would, but just continued up, holding carefully onto the
banisters as the fairground feeling whirled along with her even when
she was walking around.

"Ben!"  she called into Sophie's bedroom, 'are you in there?  I'm
tired!

Is it nearly time to go home?  " No-one answered, so she tip-toed
across the dark room to the bed, climbing onto it and looking forward
to nestling into a pile of coats that people had left there.

"Polly!  Will you get off!"  Polly thudded heavily on to the floor and
looked up at Ben and Emma, their blurry faces close together, peering
down at her from the bed.  They should have said they were there,
hiding under the coats, why didn't they?

"Oh God, she's completely pissed!  Where's Daisy?"  Ben demanded
grabbing Polly's wrists.

"Dunno.  With some bloke downstairs," Polly slurred back at him.

Emma switched on a bedside light and Polly's curiosity flickered
briefly alive again as she noticed her fumbling about under her shirt
and refastening her black lacy bra.  That would be something else to
tell Harriet, was her last waking thought.

"Should we get Sophie's parents, do you think?"  Downstairs, Ben
watched a furious Daisy unwrap herself from Oliver on the sofa. Oliver
grinned lazily up at him and winked.

"Don't be stupid, Sophie would kill us.  And then they might tell our
parents too," Daisy growled at him.

"We'll just have to take her home and put her to bed."

"I don't think she can walk," Emma pointed out, looking to where Polly
sat propped against the stairs, her head lolling like an old rag-doll's
on her chest.

"Then Ben will have to carry her," Daisy snapped.  She bit her lip and
tried to think quickly about how much money she had with her.  A taxi
would be the best thing, especially as her poor toe hurt more than
ever, though a driver might refuse to take Polly in that state.

Suppose she was sick all over the cab?  And maybe it was illegal for
Polly to be that drunk, he might tell someone and there might be police
trouble again.  And it was nearly midnight, so they'd get charged
more.

"We'll all go.  Shouldn't be too difficult if Ben and I support her."

Oliver took charge, in the hope that he would earn enough gratitude
from Daisy to take him right on to fourth base next time they got
together, or even on to a home run.  There wasn't a lot of progress to
be made anyway, lying on a very public sofa with people falling,
dancing and yelling all around them, though the signs had been
extremely promising.

Daisy, Oliver, Emma and Ben tried to look casual and unobtrusive as
they walked Polly down the road towards home, terrified that marauding
police with nothing better to do at midnight would stop and ask what
they were up to.  Ben and Oliver took an arm each, and Polly's
uncoordinated feet hardly needed to touch the pavement.  Her tousled
head flopped up and down and she moaned quietly and constantly.  By the
time they got to the end of the Close, Daisy was limping painfully, her
little toe now rubbed down to

what felt like the bone.  She was sure it was bleeding all over the
inside of her lovely boot, and that her foot was sliding around in a
puddle.

"You should have asked Sophie for a plaster," Emma told her, holding
her arm and helping her to walk.

"I know, I know.  Hang on a sec, I'll take them off.  I can't stand it
any more, and I'll do better without them," she said, plonking herself
down onto the kerb.  So when Carol and Paul Mathieson drove the Peugeot
carefully and soberly round the corner by Sue's house they immediately
came across the sight of Daisy sprawled on the pavement inspecting her
foot, Polly slumped against the fence leaning on Ben, and Oliver and
Emma sharing the lighting of a cigarette.

"Are you all right?  Is there anything we can do?"  Carol asked
politely, looking at Daisy's exposed foot.

Polly stiffened suddenly and sat up.

"I feel really sick," she wailed.

Ben looked at Daisy, and they both looked at Carol, all telepathically
agreeing that they couldn't even think of taking Polly home in that
state, whatever the consequences.

Chapter Sixteen

Paul was astounded.  If he wasn't absolutely certain that she'd only
had one small sherry in the interval, he'd have thought Carol was quite
paralytic.  Taking all these people into the house at this time of
night!  Whatever was she thinking of?

Carol was being briskly practical, even in her silk frock.  The child
was clearly very drunk, and the teenagers didn't seem to have a clue
what to do with her.  They just skulked against the wall and draped
themselves uselessly over the banisters.  And they were so big.

"It might be better if she is actually sick," Carol told Daisy.

"That way, she might not feel so dreadful tomorrow, and at least some
of the alcohol will be safely out of her.  It's really quite dangerous
for her to be in this state."  Daisy and Ben stared, ashamed, at the
hall rug.

Carol bustled Polly into the downstairs cloakroom and propped her up
against the sink.

"Paul, go and get a large glass of warm water will you?"

No 'please', he noted sorrowfully, automatically going to the kitchen
to do as he was told.  She'd been in such a good mood too, after
Charley's Aunt, chatting away in the car and hinting that it would be
nice to be home, in the warm.  To their warm bed was where he'd planned
to take her next, till they'd come across this rabble in the road.

"Are you going to give her salt water?"  Emma asked Carol, trying to
take an intelligent interest.

"Definitely not!  That could kill her, the salt gets through to the
kidneys before you know it and she

could die of dehydration.  Don't ever make that mistake," Carol told
her.  Emma moved closer to Daisy for comfort, and they went and sat on
the stairs together, Daisy rubbing her bleeding toe and hoping it
wouldn't drip on the beige carpet.  She put her hands over her ears as
Polly started vomiting noisily.

"Won't your parents be home by now?"  Paul asked Ben.

"Wouldn't it be best if your own mother took care of her?"

Where had they taken her, he wanted to ask, they all smelt of a sordid
party, the wafts of stale cigarette smoke and alcohol that were coming
from them all.  Surely they could have taken better care of Polly than
this?  Daisy was definitely off Marcus and Sebastian's babysitting
list.

"Don't be silly, Paul," came Carol's voice.

"They don't want Alan and Jenny to know about this.  There's no need
for them to.  After all, I don't think this is likely to happen again,
is it?"  She put her head round the cloakroom door, pink fluffy towel
in hand and gave Daisy a surprisingly conspiratorial grin.

Ben was shocked.  Carol had always seemed so prissy, so rule-bound.  He
wasn't sure he liked her like this.  He'd been waiting for her to start
the telling-off.  He liked to rely on her unchanging staid ness the
certain knowledge that there was a 100 per cent guaranteed no chance at
all of seducing her (or better still, of her seducing him).  That way
the impossible fantasies stayed exciting.

She needs the boys home more often, Paul thought as he watched Carol
fondly and tenderly stroking Polly's damp hair away from her unfocused
eyes and flushed face.  Something to take care of that isn't just me
and those bloody cats.  He sighed and went up the stairs, wondering if
it was worthwhile switching on the electric blanket; Carol only liked
sex in a pre-warmed bed, otherwise she shivered and found it
impossible to loosen up, and complained that her feet stuck out of the
duvet edges and got cold.  He passed the bedroom door and went on up to
his attic.  He might not be allowed actually to tell Alan and Jenny
about their dreadful children, but it couldn't possibly go unreported
in the files.  It was an Incident, it had Happened.  He took down the
yellow folder (number 14, Collins) and sat down at his tidy desk,
sorrowfully conceding that this was the only kind of entry he was
likely to be making that night.

Outside the restaurant, Jenny handed Alan the car keys and he gave them
straight back.

"Look," she said quietly, unlocking the car and giving final goodbye
smiles to Bernard and Monica who were loading themselves into their
ancient Morris Traveller, "I don't want to have a silly argument in the
car park, with everyone standing around saying goodbye, but I really
think I'm too much over the limit to do the driving."  Alan slid into
the passenger seat, saying, "Wj should have sorted it out earlier.  I
thought we had and that it was your turn.  I'm over the limit too, and
if I lose my licence, well ..."

"Are you saying that it's less important if I get banned for a year
than if it's you?"  Jenny argued, thinking of all the school runs that
could no longer be done, the Sainsbury's bags that would have to be
lugged home on the bus with all the tartan-trolley old age pensioners,
the impossible last-minute pleadings from Daisy and Ben, "Please Mum, I
said I'd meet Emma at 5 and it's gone that already."  Who else was
there to do all that?  And did any of them really matter?  Other people
got by.

"No, it's not that, I'm terribly tired, though," Alan said feebly,
leaning his head against the cool, misted

side window.

"And anyway, you're a better driver than me."

"Flattery," she growled.

"OK, I'll drive, but I'm not happy and it'll take ages.  You'll have to
talk to me, keep me awake."

Jenny swung the car out into the unlit road and tried to see beyond the
headlights just where the road went.  Alan, already half-asleep,
grunted, and she reconciled herself to a long journey in which she had
to drive and talk to herself.

"Funny, isn't it," she said to Alan's inert body.

"People like us do this all the time, think they're just about OK, and
take the risk anyway.  Kids from the estate nick cars and drive around
in them and the police treat them as if they're handling a murder
weapon Which they are.  But then so are we.  We get fines and a ban for
a while and they get Care and detention centres.  It only really hits
us in the insurance premiums in the long run, but they are probably
made permanently unemployable."

"Mmm," Alan murmured, not really listening.  He was still thinking
about Serena being whisked away from the restaurant in Frankie's
immaculately renovated MG.  If he'd taken Serena out in something
sporty like that, instead of the sensible BMW, perhaps she'd have
admired him as a bit more dynamic, more thrusting.  All the years he'd
despised the sort of men who bought cars as sexual power symbols,
assuming they were making up for inadequacy, but perhaps, now that he
was middle-aged and lacking any other visible sexual totems, he could
concede that they had a point.

Jenny drove carefully, though not so slowly as to draw unwelcome
attention to the car.  At every turn she expected to be chased by a
flashing blue light.  Alan snored gently beside her, dreaming, she
imagined, of pretty, slender bailiffs with sleek, dark hair tied up in
silk scarves.  She glanced at him, wondering how a man who could so
ably support his family (so far) could prove to be this dense about a
woman.  Love may be blind, as they say, but infatuation must also be
incredibly short-sighted.  Poor Alan, she thought, would it eventually
be any consolation when he found Serena did not fancy him to know that
she didn't fancy anyone else who happened to be male either?  At least
that way he wouldn't take the rejection personally, which was a shame,
Jenny thought, rallying a spot of malice.  Being snubbed was the very
least a potentially cheating husband deserved.

Slumped un prettily beside her, Alan twitched occasionally, like a
sleeping cat, and she marvelled at the way he could simply cut out,
like a torch, once he had made sure someone else was doing the worrying
for him.  As she passed the estate and pulled in to the Close just
after 1:30, Jenny saw a light in her attic go out.  Ben, she assumed,
home from the party he'd been going to and reading on into the night.
She hoped he'd had a good time.

"Daisy, I'll collect you from school and we'll go straight to the
police station from there," Jenny said over breakfast on Monday.

"And Polly, are you sure you feel all right now?"

Jenny put her hand on the child's forehead, but there was no sign of a
fever.  There hadn't been yesterday either, which had been surprising,
for Polly had spent the whole day lying on her bed with the curtains
closed, cuddling her old panda and saying that she felt too sick to
eat.

Alan had said he smelled cigarettes on her hair and thought that Daisy,
bored with babysitting on Saturday night, had let Polly have a go at
smoking.

"Good thing it's made her feel so ill," he'd decided.

"She won't want to try it again."  Jenny wasn't so sure

he was right in either assumption, and annoyed poor suffering Polly by
making her move her head up and down every hour or so, checking in case
what she had actually got was the dreaded meningitis.  Daisy had spent
the day skilfully avoiding both parents, doing unusual amounts of
homework in the sanctuary of her room, and going out to Emma's for
lunch.  But on Monday morning, Polly was looking pale but bette rand
the mysterious illness wasn't going to stop her going back to school.

"I don't mind if you have a day off," Jenny told her.

"You might be sickening for something."

"Just sickening, more likely," Ben said.

"Perhaps there's something going round.  Daisy, are you all right? It's
so warm in here you can't possibly need that scarf."

Polly ignored Ben's comment but was adamant that she had to go back
there was a maths test that she couldn't miss.  Daisy, unloading the
dishwasher, her neck swaddled in one of Jenny's favourite cashmere
scarves, snorted in disbelief.

"You want to go back for a tesfi Are you mad?"

Polly gave Daisy a very intense look and said slowly, "Not/just for the
test.  I need to see Harriet."  Daisy went pink and pulled the scarf a
bit tighter.

"Do I have to go and see the police in my school uniform Mum?"  she
asked.

"Can't I come home and change first?"

"No, sorry, they said 4 o'clock, and it's the only way not to be
late.

And besides," she added with a look that left Daisy easily guessing
what was coming, 'it's a good idea to look like a person who is
normally quite responsible, as if this was just a one-off behaviour
lapse.  If you dress in your usual stuff, complete with boots, they'll
think you're a born troublemaker and that this is just the first of
many times they'll be seeing you."

"OK, OK," Daisy said, sighing mournfully.

"I'll make sure they think I'm Miss Goody-Goody of the year.  Just so
long as you all get off my case."

Jenny went to hug he rand Daisy, rather stiffly, submitted to being
touched.

"It's only that they don't have a lot of imagination.  And people tend
to be snobs: they'll recognize that uniform and expect you to be
law-abiding," Jenny told her.

"If you go along looking like a rebel and a problem, they won't see
beyond that.  They don't have the time and they don't know you like we
do.  Present them with a nice-girl image and they'll leave you alone.
It's easy."  Daisy nodded and went to get her school bag.  Perhaps it
wouldn't be such a bad day, perhaps she'd see Oliver during the lunch
break.  Then she could show him the marks he'd made on her neck and ask
him to be a little bit more careful next time.

Polly couldn't say much in the car.  Jenny was listening to Today and
concentrating on the traffic, but Polly knew better than to start
telling Harriet about Saturday night.  Mothers always knew when there
was something interesting to tune in to, and not just in terms of
radios.  Harriet easily got the message that there was some information
worth waiting for from the way Polly was pulling faces and whispering
cryptic hints to her.  At school, the moment they were out of the car
Harriet pounced.

"What have you done, why are you making important faces at me?"

"Wait till we're inside," Polly said, hoping to collect a wider
audience on the way in.  She grabbed Harriet and pulled her into the
school building, where they weren't really allowed to be till the first
bell had gone.  She hesitated at the door, looking round slowly and
furtively, and thus making sure that six or seven of her more alert
classmates had seen her and become interested enough to follow, then
arranged herself

above them on the staircase in the central hallway, where she could
both tell all, and keep an eye open for the approach of teachers.

Fiona Pemberton, up on the staff room landing, wasn't surprised to look
down and see Polly Collins holding court on the staircase.  The child
had no trouble collecting an audience and had been a real star in the
Christmas pantomime all that dancing probably, she thought, though if
the child was to continue into the senior department she would have to
stop taking time off school for ballet exams.  There was already quite
enough showing-off in that family;

Daisy's blue hair had already been noticed, and the executive staff
room decision made to ignore it.  Polly's exam results had been
unexceptional, a vivid imagination had been shown in her English essay
(title: Rabbit Robs The Riverbank), but her maths had been dismal.  The
letters offering places had already gone out, but Polly was on the
Borderline and Siblings List, and decisions as to the last-minute
offers were to be made that day.  They tried to include little sisters,
however dense, where possible.  Fiona lingered by her office door, in
practised headmistressy silence, pretending she was only casually
overhearing what Polly said.

"So by about midnight I was really drunk!"  Polly was saying.

"Totally pissed!  It was really good.  And when I was in the bedroom I
breathed in loads of dope, so I was well out of it..."  Fiona gasped,
clutching the sheaf of exam papers to her thudding bosom.  She peered
over the banister rail, just to double check she was hearing the right
person.

It seemed hardly credible.

"Did you see any sex?"  Harriet was demanding eagerly.  Fiona held her
breath and waited in dread for the reply.

"Not exactly.  Though Daisy's friend Emma was under the coats with Ben,
and her bra was undone in the dark," came a slightly disappointed voice
which soon cheered up again as she then proclaimed loudly, "But there
was loads of the oral sort!"  Fiona fled swiftly back into her office,
collapsed with shock into her Parker-Knoll recliner and therefore
missed Polly going on to say with enormous authority, "Cos really you
know, mostly they just talk about it."  The audience was enthralled,
just as Polly had intended them to be.  Her headmistress, however, who
had thought that in her fifteen years of running the school she could
no longer be surprised by what she saw and heard, was now quaking by
the telephone, barking an abrupt message to her secretary, demanding an
immediate call to the Collins parents, requesting them to make an
appointment as soon as possible to come into school and see her about
Polly's future.

Just enough money had been raised to bail out the firm for the next
quarter.  The rent on the building was now astronomical, as if the
recession had never happened.

"Cuts will have to be made' was the catch phrase echoing round the
building, and staff looked at each other shiftily, calculating who
would be the first to be asked to leave as an economy measure.  One of
the measures, reflected Alan, should perhaps be a move away from the
prestigious Wl address to a cheaper post code.  Surely the clients
would appreciate their accountants making the kind of money-saving
measures that they were always being ordered to make?  He put this to
Serena during a break between client meetings.

"What do you think?"  he asked, as he dealt with the coffee machine in
his office.

"Do you think they'd leave us in droves just because of a move, say,
from Mayfair to Mortlake?"

To his dismay, Serena's face crumpled into misery.

"It won't make any difference to me where you all go," she sniffed
tearfully, fumbling in her pocket for

a tissue.

"I was the last in, so I'll be first out.  And I haven't even finished
my training."  The sniffing crescendoed into sobs and Alan, as he would
for any woman, he justified later, went automatically to comfort her.
He wrapped his arms round her trembling body and held her close to him,
patting her gently, and softly muttering the appropriate soothing
words.  He could feel bones as Serena's sobbing ribcage rose and fell
under his hands.  A small sly devil in his head made him quickly check
the door way for anyone looking, before stroking her more urgently. She
smelled of hyacinths, and he inhaled the heady perfume blissfully,
nuzzling close to her neck.  Romantically inclined, he would ideally
have chosen a better venue than his dusty office, with its tired cream
walls badly in need of fresh paint, and neglected, yellowing Yucca
plant, for Serena to fall weeping into his arms.  Blake's hotel would
have been good: dark and expensively sensuous, or perhaps a patch of
ancient English woodland on an icy-bright, golden autumnal day.
Meanwhile, Serena was still crying, so he crushed her closer to him,
feeling all the length of her long slim body pressed against him.  He
no longer cared who saw them and he sighed ecstatically as his hand
travelled down her back and slid up again, under her loose silk shirt
till he encountered warm bare flesh.

"What the hell are you doing?"  she barked at him, somehow, suddenly,
half-way across the room.

"You were touching me!  Groping me!  How dare you!"

Alan stood awkwardly, backed up nervously against the wall between two
framed gold discs, not knowing what to do with his hands.

"Er, sorry .  " he mumbled limply, "I thought ... it's just that I
thought .. " He didn't know what he thought, not really.  He'd thought
she fancied him, but now it seemed so unlikely, so ridiculous that he
couldn't even begin to tell her that.

"You thought7 No you didn't, you just assumed.  You assumed that
because I'd gone out to a couple of pubs with you that I was willing to
leap into bed.  I'm not.  I don't leap into bed with men at all,
actually."

"Sorry," Alan mumbled inadequately, trying to work out what she'd
meant.

Sereria glared at him, recovering and considering and then said slowly,
"Sexual harassment, that's what it is.  When I have to leave here, if I
do, it's going to be with an awful lot of compensation for this!"  She
was almost spitting the words at him.  Alan was recovering his balance,
and something told him that she'd more than slightly over-reacted,
hadn't she?  Or was she right?  Was sexual harassment a criminal or
civil offence?  Why had he never bothered reading about such cases in
the papers, as if they could never involve him?  Serena slammed the
door hard as she stalked out of the room and as he shivered in the
resulting draught, he wondered who she'd gone to tell first, her uncle
Bernard, or the entire office full of younger staff where her desk was.
Either way, Alan was in major trouble.  He sat at his desk and hid his
mortified face in his hands.  He could still smell Serena's perfume,
and wished he could shoo it out of the room and out of his life.  Jenny
would find out now, and hate him.  And nothing had happened.  Nothing
ever happened.  There was going to be all this trouble, for absolutely
lousy rotten bugger-all.  He wished he'd never gone into accountancy
after all.  If things like this could happen, what was the point of
ever having relinquished his daydreams and gone like a good, careful
boy for what he'd counted on as the safe option?

He reached into the rubbish bin for his discarded copy of Accountancy
Age and disconsolately started looking for a new job.

* * *

Up at the Tennis Club, Sue and Jenny finished their free sample Step
Aeorobics (low impact) class and went to treat themselves to a gossipy
fifteen minutes in the Jacuzzi before conscientiously tackling a
ten-length swim.  The club was crowded with women concentrating hard on
the serious business of making the best of themselves, dutifully toning
their bodies in order to keep their husbands and lovers interested and
to continue fitting into a size 12.  The gym was humming with expensive
machinery, and the thwacking sound could be heard of tennis enthusiasts
over on the indoor courts, practising their fiery backhands against a
ball-machine, or, in a couple of lucky cases, the well-muscled club
professionals.  Less athletically inclined women were queuing to
discover disappointingly that the "French' option in the beauty salon
was merely a way of applying nail polish.

"Well, I'll not be doing that again," Jenny said from the changing
cubicle.

"If I want to get fit jumping about on steps I can always Hoover the
stair carpet more often."  She wondered how imbecilic the class must
have looked to a passing casual observera bunch of too-rich women
hopping up and down on toy-like, primary coloured plastic blocks in
time to music.  No wonder some of those young mothers with over-loaded
prams she saw disappearing into the high-rises on the estate looked so
scrawny: one week of the lift being out of action would shift more
kilos than several hundred pounds' worth of these silly exercises.
Exhausted nevertheless, she peeled off her leotard and squeezed into
her swimsuit, wondering if any of this could at least guarantee that
she wouldn't have to give in and buy a larger size next spring.

The pool was steaming gently, and was hectic with the flailing limbs of
small children as yet too young for either the Froebel or Montessori
nursery schools, all wearing orange arm bands and having swimming
lessons with their eager mothers.

"Come on now Tamsin darling," called one of them in weary exasperation,
'we'll do it together.  Ready?  Now- one, two, three and UNDER!  "
Jenny watched, remembering doing exactly the same with each of her
three, as Tamsin's mother held her nose and bravely ducked under the
water, coming up with a face full of tangled blonde hair, running
mascara and a disappointed frown.  Tamsin, still dry-headed, all of
three years old and sucking her thumb, bobbed up and down at the edge
of the pool, smirked triumphantly at her mother and shouted, " Your
face is all black paint!  "

"Poor thing," Sue said as they padded past towards the Jacuzzi, 'glad
all that's behind me," she said and then added mysteriously, 'and yet,
who knows?  Maybe it isn't."

"What do you mean by that?"  Jenny challenged her as they lowered their
over-stretched bodies into the churning cauldron.  She had a sideways
glance at the only other Jacuzzi occupant, a sun bed-tanned young
mother obliviously reading Hello!  magazine while her eye-make-up
trickled down her cheeks from splashed droplets of water.

"Are you pregnant?"

"Not yet!"  Sue said with a broad grin.

"It's going to be first things first.  I've been dying to tell you. I'm
getting married!"

"Married?"  Jenny squawked.

"God, whatever for?  And whoever to?  The new one?"

"Of course the new one!"  Sue said, languidly stretching out a leg from
under the water to see if it needed waxing again.

"And don't go telling me I've only known him five minutes.  I know all
that.  At my age, our age I should say.  we should be able to tell gold
from goldfish at a glance."

"Odd saying," Jenny said, puzzled.

"When is it to be?"

"Saturday after next, we've got a special licence," Sue told her.

"Like I said, why hang about?  The only reason for delay would be if I
couldn't find a suitable outfit, but I've got a neat little sexy suit
lined up at Whistles, they're altering it for me right now.  Collect it
Monday, marry in it Saturday.  Party at my place in the afternoon.

Whole street welcome.  Simple as that.  "

"Breathtakingly!  He must be pretty wonderful.  Who is he?"  Jenny
demanded.

"And where will you live?  You won't be moving away, will you?"  She
felt suddenly anxious, worried that she was about to lose the only
friend she could rely on both to behave as badly as she did and never
to judge her.

"Ah.  Now there's a thing.  You know him, in fact you could say I met
him through you," Sue said, with a wary grin and suddenly staring with
great and suspiciously guilty interest at the foaming water.

"He parked his car outside my gate, and I just happened to be on my way
out, and, well, there it is."

Jenny could almost hear the cogs in her brain slowly grinding round as
she reluctantly made her way to the truth.

"Oh God.  I don't believe it.  You've nabbed David the Welshman.  No
feet.  But he came to see me the other day!"

"Yeah, well he likes you!"  Sue said blithely.

"I told him it was all right, after all I didn't know at first if it
was going to last."  She looked worried.

"You don't mind, do you?  I mean with you it was only for the money,
wasn't it?"

The copy of Hello!  fluttered and moved interest- ediy, and an
astounded streaky face peered round the edge.  Jenny giggled, and said
deliberately loudly, "No, it's not a problem.  It was purely
business.

I hope you'll be very happy etc.  etc.  I'm just surprised, that's
all.  Well, amazed really.  I didn't think people bothered to get
married any more.  "

"Oh well, deep down, he's very old-fashioned, you know.  Like me," Sue
told her, laughing at her own absurdity.

The two women climbed out of the turbulent Jacuzzi and started the lazy
up-and-down swimming that passed for exercise in the warm pool.

The mothers and toddlers had left, relieved to have successfully filled
the dragging few hours between their au pairs going to English classes
and lunch.  Once she was reassured that Sue wasn't intending to move
house, but instead move David in with her (so handy for the rehab, unit
up at Roehampton), Jenny started to wonder if it was going to be a
problem, having, only yards away up the road, a man on whom she had
actually performed fellatio in exchange for folding money.

They would meet constantly, there would be suppers and barbecues and
Christmas parties and sundry opportunities for all the.  indiscretions
that could be blurted out wherever too much drink was available.  With
any luck, though, David would have similar lurking fears about Jenny,
and they could co-exist in a state of truce, each holding hostage to
their wicked little piece of knowledge, and hope they never came to
bitter territorial wrangles over road-widening, tree-lopping, or Close
residents' planning applications.

"Look at that."  Sue swam alongside Jenny at the shallow end, and
pointed to the Jacuzzi.  The Hello!  woman was still there, but the
magazine was damply abandoned in a puddle beside her.  She lay
stretched out on her front in the steaming bubbles, her head resting on
her folded arms on the poolside, eyes closed and her mouth opened
slightly.  Like a dreaming child, oblivious to all around her, she was
making small

sighing noises, her face busy expressing little bolts of pleasure.

"See that?  You do understand about David don't you Jen?  I don't want
to end up like that, reduced to having lonely sexual experiences in a
public Jacuzzi."

Jenny giggled.

"Oh I don't know," she teased, 'doesn't look all that bad to me.
Perhaps after this swim .  "

Chapter Seventeen

When Jenny collected Daisy from school, it was hard to tell which of
them was the more nervous.  Daisy skulked quickly into the car in case
anyone saw her being ignominiously picked up by her mother and slumped
in the passenger seat, peeling and chewing the skin round her
thumbnail.  Jenny, with the uncomfortable feeling that Big Policeman
already had his eye on her, drove cautiously, stopping for extra long
moments at road junctions, and using her indicators far too early, as
if she was on a driving test.  Daisy still had the scarf wrapped snugly
round her neck, chilled, Jenny assumed, by the idea of having to go and
say her piece to the police.  The blue hair was neatly tucked away
under it, at least, so that was something.  Jenny herself, with her
long-standing dread of being given the once-over by a judgmental
inspector who fancied himself as a domineering TV cop, could still
smell chlorine from the pool.  By the time she and Sue had
breast-stroked their ten lazy lengths, she hadn't had time to rinse it
off her hair, and it gave off reassuring wafts, reminiscent of
purifying disinfectant.

Waiting in the reception area for the impossibly young desk sergeant to
go and find the inspector, Jenny had another look at Daisy to make sure
she was presentable.  It was hot, and the orange plastic chairs were
against a bubbling and gurgling ancient radiator, the huge and curvy
sort that reminded Jenny of infant schools.  The walls were painted
bright, cheery yellow,

as if to counteract the feelings of apprehension and fright that must
pervade the place and its visitors.

"It's baking in here," Jenny complained, waving her hand in front of
her face to make a breeze.

"Daisy you'd better take that scarf off or you'll faint."

"I'm OK, really.  Don't fuss," Daisy said, kicking at the floor and
rocking backwards and forwards nervously.  Jenny got up and wandered
round, reading all the posters on the walls: a big bright cartoon one
reminding children about locking their bikes and getting them
post-coded, a slightly malevolent one about the benefits of
Neighbourhood Watch and another inviting anyone over 5'4" (and
presumably without a criminal record) to do their bit and join the
Specials.  She resolved to suggest it to Paul Mathieson, then perhaps
it would take his mind off trying to root out imaginary criminal
goings-on in the Close.

The noise of Daisy scuffing her feet rhythmically on the floor stopped
suddenly as she got up and started pacing the room.

"Won't be long now," Jenny reassured her.

"I can't think what's keeping them, it's way after four.  Try not to
worry."

"Not worried," Daisy snapped.

"Just can't stand the noise that radiator makes.  It reminds me of
Ben's tummy in the mornings."

Jenny could hear booted feet returning heavily along the corridor.

"Looks like they're ready for you," she said.  Daisy looked hot, and
the thought crossed her mind that the poor girl really might actually
keel over.  They'd just have to put up with the blue hair.  Whatever
did it matter, really?

"Here let me take this," she said helpfully, reaching for the scarf
before Daisy could stop her.

"No!"  Daisy squealed, hands clutching, but it was too late, and Daisy
stood in front of the sergeant and inspector brazenly revealing not
only the blue-tipped hair but also a scarlet string of huge and hectic
love-bites round her otherwise pale, slim neck.

"Oh God," breathed Jenny as Daisy shot her a look of pure venom.

"You'll probably get Life."

What Daisy got was a good telling off for cheating British Rail,
nothing else.  She was to stay out of trouble for ever more, or at
least till she was eighteen, when her record would be destroyed and her
crime deleted from the computers.  ("Oh sure," Daisy had mumbled when
this was explained to her.  ) The inspector wasn't there to inspect her
sex life, and besides there wasn't much he hadn't seen before.  A row
of hickies on a nine-year-old neck would have been something to worry
about, but Daisy was nearly fifteen, and whatever else were teenage
years for if not the chance to go around showing off their over-active
hormones?  Nevertheless, as Daisy slumped out of the police station
with her anxious mother, the inspector felt glad relief that he and his
wife had only produced sons.

"How could you?"  Jenny said to Daisy in the car.

"Whatever do you think you look like?  And who is he and when was it?"
The two avoided looking at each other, Jenny concentrating hard on
driving home as fast as was safely possible, glad that her eyes could
not be drawn to the livid vivid marks of passion on her daughter. Daisy
was more worried about Jenny finding out about Sophie's party than
anything else, and had to invent quickly.

"I'm going out with someone.  Have been for ages," she quickly spat out
her lie.

"Sometimes we see each other in school lunch breaks," She stared out of
the window, disgustedly watching a lone man picking his nose in the
next car.

"He's at school with Ben, one of his friends," she added slyly, making
a bid to get round Jenny on grounds of snobbery.  The boys at Ben's
school were what the Close would collectively consider 'suitable'.

"Goodness, I don't mind who you go out with, or what you do, as long
as you're careful," Jenny told her more gently.

"You know that.  But those marks!  They're so, well, so ..."

"Common?"  Daisy bravely and loudly challenged.

"You don't mind what I do so long as nobody knows?"

This was something uncomfortably like the unpalatable truth, and Jenny
pushed it out of her mind as she squeezed the car through the weary
rush hour traffic and across a snarled-up road junction with faulty
traffic lights.

"Disfiguring, that's the word," Jenny finally came up with.

"And so blatant.  Haven't the staff at school noticed?  Whatever will
they think of you?"

"Don't care.  And no, no-one's noticed.  That's what the scarf's
for."

Well that was something, Jenny thought, at least Daisy knew when to
cover things up.  They were home now and Jenny rushed in to the house
to see if Alan had left any news about the office on the answer phone

There was just the brief message form Fiona Pemberton's secretary,
requesting Jenny and/or Alan to make an appointment about Polly.  The
secretary had an infuriatingly apologetic voice, almost as if she was
afraid she would offend even by so much as breathing down Jenny's
phone.

"It's vis a vis Polly," she'd whispered, adding ludicrously, as if
Jenny would need reminding, "Your daughter.  In form four."

"I'll call them in the morning."  Jenny pressed the off button and then
called to Daisy, "Defrost some of the chicken and do a salad will you
please, Daisy, while I get Polly from Ceci's?  Thanks!"  she added, on
the hopeful assumption that Daisy would have heard her.

At Ceci's there was a festive, celebratory air, as if it was someone's
birthday.  The front door stood wide open and as Jenny walked up the
garden path, pushing her way through the overstocked borders of leggy
lavender, she could see figures running about, crisscrossing the
hallway in a flurry.  Ceci, who was normally to be found being languid
on a sofa while children were chaotic in another room, bounced
excitedly to the doorway to meet Jenny.

"Did you get your letter?"  she asked, her face split by a triumphant
beam, her big round eyes sparkling with triumphant delight.

"What letter?"  Jenny enquired, carefully bypassing the voluptuous
tangle of clematis that was just about to flower around the doorway.

' School!  The results!  Harriet has passed I can't believe it!  "
Jenny smiled, genuinely pleased for Harriet, but well aware that what
Ceci would have really found hard to believe would have been her
daughter's failure.  Jenny hadn't had a letter from school that day.
Did that mean Polly had failed her exam?  They hadn't even considered
what would happen if she did, and it was too late to apply anywhere
else, even the local comprehensive.

"Oh yours will probably arrive tomorrow," Ceci said kindly.

"Just a postal delay I expect."

"I did get a phone call Mrs.  P wants to see me.  Strict orders, via
the answer phone Jenny confided.

Ceci looked slightly miffed.

"Goodness, probably got a scholarship then, that's what it will be.  We
were hoping for one for Harriet, but we'll have to try for the assisted
place scheme instead."  As they walked to the vast, walnut-and-wenge
kitchen through the sumptuously decorated hallway.  Jenny couldn't hide
her amazement.  Ceci's house had at least six bedrooms, plus nanny
flat, there was a lavish swimming pool built into a conservatory
extension, and Ceci's annual tan was given a kick-start every February
in St.  Lucia.

"Assisted place?"  Jenny asked incredulously before she could stop to
think about being polite.

"How on earth could you swing that?"

Ceci smirked guiltily.

"Holiday cottage.  You know the one in Wales?

Told them that Howard has left me and lives there full time.  I'm just
a lone mother, you see," she said with mock tragedy on her face,
'making ends meet on a teeny bit of maintenance ..."

"But that's ..."  Jenny began.

"Not quite terribly 100 per cent honest?  Oh darling, everyone's doing
it!  And I do put an awful lot of effort into charity work."  She
tapped a petulant foot and said sulkily, "Otherwise I'll have to get a
job . "

Yes, you'll have to get a job, Jenny thought, like the rest of us.

Though not quite like me, she amended hurriedly to herself.  She
couldn't quite see Ceci de glossing her lipstick round some paying
customer's penis.

Alan was home early.  As Jenny swung the Golf into the driveway she
could see his BMW was parked neatly in front of the garage.  (No quick
getaways, no getaways any more at all, perhaps?  ) Alan was
concentrating in the kitchen, doing something complicated with red
peppers and fennel.

' Stinky fennel!  Yuck!  " Polly skipped around the room holding her
nose dramatically.

"Can't I have spaghetti hoops?"

"I wonder if Raymond Blanc has this trouble," Alan sighed
dispiritedly.

Jenny was saddened by his disconsolate face.  Polly could usually make
him laugh, however dreadful the day had been.

"What happened at work?

Did you all solve the cash How thing?  " she asked, fetching them both
a rather early Budweiser from the fridge.

"Solved that.  Not for the first time.  Bernard's bloody useless.

Couldn't run a bath, let alone a business," Alan said, peeling his
peppers and avoiding her eyes.

"But there's something else," he glanced at Polly, then rather
shiftily at Jenny and Jenny felt her heart thud and her insides
tighten.  This was going to be it.  The moment she sent Polly off to
watch Neighbours, he would be telling her something she absolutely
wouldn't want to hear.  Surely she'd been right about Serena, hadn't
she?  The love of Serena's life was Frankie, wasn't it?  Not Alan?  She
felt herself crossing her hot, sticky fingers, childlike with nerves.

"Polly, you're about to miss Neighbours," she said with just enough
courage.  Then it was just a matter of waiting and listening.

Alan made his humble confession in the conservatory facing Jenny across
the cane table and a bowl of tulips, which were the colours of rhubarb
and custard.  Jenny picked her flute up from its stand and used her
skirt to polish the mouthpiece, preferring not to watch Alan's face. He
told her flatly what had happened in the office, using the same
downbeat, depressed tones to describe both the financial crisis and his
clumsy pass at Serena.  '. So it looks like there will have to be cuts,
and after the ridiculous, stupid thing I did it also looks like Serena
won't be the one who has to leave.  I think it's the only decent thing
to do, really, don't you?  Sort of honourable resignation?  " This sort
of formal pomposity didn't at all suit Alan, slouching in his tattiest
old rainbow sweater at the table, picking guiltily at the falling tulip
petals.

"Bit late to think about honourable and decent isn't it?"  Jenny said
waspishly.

"Whatever did you think was honourable and decent about cheating on
me?"

Alan sighed and stared into his glass like a miserable old drunk.

"But I didn't.  That's the point."

"No it isn't.  You tried to, and it hurts.  That's the point.  The fact
that you failed dismally has nothing to do with it.  If you'd
succeeded, when, if ever, would you have told me?  And what would have
happened

to us, to the family?  What do you think will happen now?  " Jenny
snapped.

Alan stared at the table, like a caught-out schoolboy, shredding a
fallen petal and choosing his words.

"It was just fantasy, something separate," he said.

"I don't honestly know what I'd have done if she'd responded.  Not very
likely, though, was it?  Be honest."  He looked up and stared at the
blurry outline of himself reflected in the darkening windows and
grinned ruefully, a sad hopeless grin, full of a new awareness of his
own fading attraction.

"Not so very unlikely," Jenny said softly, feeling his need for
consolation and, from long and loving habit, sympathizing.

"You're not that gruesome.  You are a fool though, Alan, did you
honestly have no idea that she was a lesbian?  Didn't you twig at that
restaurant?  Did she say nothing at all about her home life?"

"No, well not really."  Alan fidgeted with his glass, looking
baffled.

"She'd mentioned the flat-mate.  People have them.  How was I to
know?"

"Sexual harassment."  Jenny tried the words aloud.  They sounded
important.  What would a tribunal think?  According to Alan he had made
one fumbled and ill-timed pass in his office, taking a sympathetic hug
too far.  There could be so much more to it than that, but, like any
wife, she could either decide to know only what Alan chose to tell her,
or torture herself with an imagined torrid version of her own.

Jenny wondered what Serena's story would be.  She'd find out for sure
if Serena really did take things further.  The cosy, homey aroma of
Alan's cooking suddenly seemed nauseatingly cloying.

"I'm just going out," she said, getting up so quickly that the tulips
shed their remaining petals.

"Just round to Laura's.  She's got the cheque for when we rented the
kitchen for that breakfast cereal ad."

Already she was half-way out of the back door, gulping desperately
needed fresh air while Alan mopped at the pollen.

"Won't be long .. "

Eventually, given time, Alan's minor transgression would all be
forgiven, Jenny knew, because it was all too understandable, cliched
even.  And if she wanted their life together to continue, the burden of
getting over this would fall on her.  Why were men so predictable?  she
wondered, crossly snapping off twigs of sprouting fuchsia and wisteria
as she walked up the road.  Whenever she read a magazine feature on the
classic things that husbands did at certain stages of their lives, she
tended to dismiss it angrily as stereotyped rubbish.  After all, no-one
was allowed to generalize like that any more about women, were they?

And now here was Alan, having the kind of unimaginatively standard
mid-life crisis that he could have copied from a manual.  Perhaps it
really was all there, the final chapter an appendix in the back of his
DIY book.

"Going somewhere nice?"  Jenny was startled from her.  reflections by
Paul scurrying to catch up, walking beside her.

"Just to Laura and Harvey's," she said, not feeling the need to report
to Paul exactly what her reasons for the visit were, but also feeling
that he expected her to.  She felt conscious of Paul next to her, his
head bent round at a strange angle, like a zoo monkey peering round a
tree -stump, willing her to look at him.  She allowed him a neighbourly
smile, and wearily noted his odd expression, on the edge of wanting to
tell her something, as if he knew something that she didn't know, and
was dying for her to ask him to tell her.  I'm not in the mood for
asking, she thought.

"Carol was saying she hasn't seen you lately," he said at last.

"No, well, busy life, you know," Jenny answered,

glad to have reached Laura's gate.  Paul stood by the gate, reaching
over to unlatch it for her, determinedly gentlemanly, but groping
awkwardly at the hinge side.  She Hicked at the catch and quickly
opened the gate, Paul still beside her hovering awkwardly, as if not
sure whether to unleash his secret or not.  He reminded Jenny of Ben
when he was little, quite unable to stop himself revealing what he had
bought her for her birthday.  Suddenly a loud, roaring groan came from
inside Laura's house.

"Oh God, whatever's that?"  Jenny said, peering, alarmed, at the
lighted window.  Suddenly a naked leg could be seen, kicking high and
fast and disappearing just as quickly.

"Trouble!"  Paul said decisively, sprinting up the path.

"No wait!"  Jenny called, laughing.

"Suppose they're ..."

At the front door, which Paul had unhesitatingly rung, the two of them
heard more oohing and aahing.  There was, Jenny had to admit, no doubt
that this was pain, not pleasure.  Unless they were one and the same to
Harvey, who knew?

"The man said no-one's to come in."  The door had opened and a small
girl in a Liberty smock stood blocking their way, solemnly repeating
what she had been told to say.

"Is Mummy home, Emily?"  Jenny asked the child.

"What do you mean " the man said"?  Which man?"  Paul demanded of the
little girl, who promptly burst into frightened tears.

"Right that's it.  I'm going in.  Could be murder in there," Paul
declared, as if he was ready to storm the gates of hell.

"No Paul, wait," Jenny said, grabbing his arm, but it was too late and
with the groans and roars reaching a crescendo, and the sound of glass
breaking, Paul Hung open the door of the Benstones' sitting-room.

Laura emerged from the kitchen with Charlotte, a smaller version of
Emily, looking calm and serene, just as Jenny and Paul were taking in
the scene on the polished wood floor.  Harvey was lying on the floor on
his front wearing only a pair of Fred Flintstone boxer shorts.  His
gingery-furred legs (which for a moment reminded Jenny of Biggies) were
gathered up behind him and across them, forcing his weight onto
Harvey's shoulders, was a delectably muscled young man in bulging
purple cycling shorts but nothing else, scowling up at them crossly. It
looked to Jenny like torture, and it also looked like the kind of
torture people pay to enjoy, though surely not with the entire family
also at home?

"Er ... sorry to intrude," Paul said, for once quite deflated.

"Emily!"  yelled a blushing Harvey, his eyes rather glazed from
effort.

"What did Jeremy tell you about coming in here?"

"T'ai chi massage," Laura explained simply from behind Jenny.

"Terribly good for his back.  All that sitting around typing does him
no good at all.  Have you come for your cheque?"

Back at home Jenny folded the cheque into her building society book and
did a few additions.  There was enough, she calculated, to keep the
family for maybe a month if Alan was really suddenly unemployed, and
together with savings and a couple of life insurance policies, there
could be enough for Polly and Ben's school fees for the rest of the
year, and perhaps even further.  This was the moment for regretting
that she'd been so insistent that Ben stayed on at his school to take
A-levels, when he'd so much wanted to leave and go to the sixth form
college.  When it was Daisy's turn they'd let her.  How casually she
and Alan had committed themselves to finding the necessary eleven

thousand extra pounds that the two years would cost!  And what would
Ben get at the end of it?  Three good A-levels, exactly the same as he
would have got free at the tertiary college.  She looked out of the
bedroom window, down the Close to where Mrs.  Fingell could be seen
stuffing another of her newspaper-wrapped parcels into her dustbin.  I
must tell her about the bottle bank, Jenny thought.  I don't mind
taking them there in the car for her.  Mrs.  Fingell looked up and
waved to her before disappearing back into the house.  Her sitting-room
light was on, and the curtains open.  Perhaps, Jenny reflected, retired
tarts still liked to spend time sitting at lighted windows, remembering
the bad but busy old days.  She had a sudden rather sad mental picture
of Mrs.  Fingell sitting under a red light with her skirt hitched up
over her support- stockings, squinting at a knitting pattern as she
turned the heel on a lemon boo tee for her latest grandchild.  She must
visit her soon.  Jenny thought, sensing loneliness along the road.

Fiona Pemberton had had years of practice at expelling pupils.  She had
collected quite a wide range of methods, all skilfully based on letting
parents know, as if bestowing some kind of secret privilege, that they
could do far better for their child than educate them at her school.

Alan and Jenny, dressed with the same sort of smartness they would have
adopted if they'd been summoned to attend court, waited in front of
Fiona's desk while she chose her words carefully, very much the
headmistress and not at all the neighbour.  Her office, inconveniently
placed at the top of the school so that visitors arrived panting and
wilting from climbing the two flights of stairs, was positively
sumptuous compared with the tatty squalor of the rest of the building.
Fiona had peaches-and cream-striped wallpapera determinedly feminine
shade of baby pink carpet that no over-nervous first-year would ever
dare be sick on, and a framed array of the best of the sixth form
A-level work.  On shelves stood appealingly lopsided jugs, brightly
painted ceramic plates and several clay cats on loan from the school
pottery room.  Jenny smiled expectantly, waiting to be told that clever
Polly had achieved at least the school drama award, which would give
her free extra speech and drama lessons and a guaranteed starring role
in every school play for the next seven years.  She tried to keep out
of her head the vision of Fiona's husband haggling on her doorstep for
sexual services.

Alan, gloomy about his future and confident only of disaster, was
therefore less shocked than Jenny when Fiona began her well-rehearsed
speech, both arms resting on the desk and her ample bust stacked firmly
on top of her blotter.

'. abilities that would be far better catered for in a more artistic
environment.  " Fiona was saying, her face lengthened into her
well-practised 'this hurts me more than it hurts you' expression.

"Polly will be quite a loss to the school, such a, er, lively pupil."

She stopped to sigh, as if this was on a well-learnt script, and
continued with a decisive "But ..."  just as Jenny was opening her
mouth to protest.

"But it is our responsibility, our duty, to put the child first, even
at the expense of losing one of our more colourful pupils.  That is the
creed upon which this school, and its consequent success, is based."

Alan looked out of the window, watching cars whizzing through amber
traffic lights, and wishing he was in one of them, heading perhaps for
the distant wilds of Scotland, with just Jenny.

Fiona wasn't entirely without scruples, especially when she had to
share the Close with these people, and

had now moved on to the practical suggestions, leaning forward eagerly
to sell her idea to Jenny and Alan.

"Polly will do reasonably well academically wherever she is.  But the
academic field is not where her main interests lie, as I am sure you
know."  She paused to smile, waiting for them to agree that here was a
headmistress who really understood her young charges, before de
livering her chosen solution.

"Have you thought of a school for the performing arts?  I happen to
know the principal at .. and before Jenny could so much as ask a
question she had reached down to scrabble in her desk drawer and handed
over a large and glossy brochure featuring students on the cover
dressed as the rude mechanicals from A Midsummer Night's Dream.

"Well, no, we hadn't thought of it, not at all," Jenny told Fiona,
surprised to find that she still had a voice to use, so dismayed as she
was that they were having this conversation at all, and flicking
obediently through the prospectus.

In what seemed like seconds, Jenny and Alan had been expertly
dismissed, whirled down the staircase by the secretary and were out on
the street wondering what to do with Polly for the next seven years.

"I wonder why Fiona wants Polly out.  Do you think it's because of
Daisy worried that criminal behaviour runs in the family?"  Jenny asked
Alan.

"Possibly, Daisy's a bit wild, maybe.  And Polly's reasonably bright
but no genius.  Perhaps the school is over-subscribed with Oxbridge
hopefuls and there's no room for the good all-rounder."

"Or in Polly's case, the slightly below average all- rounder."

"Anyway, what do you think?"  Jenny asked Alan, watching him glance
through the brochure again as he walked back to the car.

"Do you think it's Polly's sort of thing?  Hours of singing and dancing
and drama and dressing up?  Longer hours than regular school, too?"
She waited for him to prevaricate, to pass the responsibility over to
her as it fell within the domain of home-and-family.  Before, when the
children had been at the school-changing stage, he had left everything
to Jenny, telling her he was sure she would be better at making the
right choices than he was, and so never having to endure the hectic sc
rums of open days.  But then, with a decisiveness that surprised her,
Alan looked up and announced with a broad smile, "I think it's exactly
Polly's sort of thing.  She'll absolutely love it."

Chapter Eighteen

What was it about weddings?  As Sue and David exchanged their
optimistic vows in the clinically pale green register office, Jenny
dabbed at her eyes with a tissue and felt her eyeshadow dissolving.

Daisy hissed a cynical "Oh God, Mum," secretly eager to impress Sue's
younger son home from boarding school, and not wanting her embarrassing
parents drawing the wrong kind of attention to her.  Sue looked
radiant, as a bride should, in cream silk moire, pleased with herself
and everything else.  Her blue-rinsed mother in a lavender and-pink
flowered Queen Mother that, beamed all round at everyone, delighted
with her daughter as if this wedding was Sue's first real one, and the
other two had been merely insignificant trial runs.

Outside in the mellow spring sunshine, the proud old lady roamed
regally, waving an elegant kid-gloved hand at all the guests and
mishearing all the introductions.

"A lady registrar!"  she exclaimed loudly to Fiona Pemberton, perhaps
recognizing equally queenly qualities.

"We haven't come across one of those before, have we Susan dear?"

Sue's new husband David, now successfully down to just one stick, had
no trouble with the register office steps, and posed happily for photos
in the formal garden along with most of the Close residents, Sue's pair
of large sons, and a riotous selection of Welsh supporters who had
arrived noisily by hired coach.  The photographer set up his tripod,
directed grudgingly by Paul Mathieson, who felt that, as owner of the
precious Nikon and subscriber to Amateur Photographer, he should have
been invited to do it.

"You've got to be in these as well, Jen.  Got to have all the
witnesses!"  Sue called as Jenny stuffed her damp hanky back into her
bag.

"In a bit, shove up close together!"  the photographer ordered, and
Jenny found herself squashed against David, smiling apologetically at
him.

"That's a huge favour you did me," he whispered to her as the
photographer bustled about arranging people.  Jenny felt her heart step
up its beat rate and she just knew she was in for a dread lifetime of
neighbourly embarrassment.

"No, I don't mean that!"  he went on, laughing.

"No, I mean if it wasn't for you I wouldn't have met Sue!  Best thing
that ever happened to me, believe it."  His face, when he looked at
Sue, was so unashamedly thrilled that Jenny could feel tears
threatening to choke her again.

No-one had looked at her like that for quite some time.  " Alan had
come pretty close the other night after he'd told her about Serena and
the likelihood of losing his job, gratified, relieved probably that
Jenny hadn't immediately told him to sling his rotten hook.  But that
sort of look, the David to Sue look, you didn't get that after years of
murky marriage; it required some sort of naive and joyful expectation
somewhere.

"Smile everybody!"  the photographer roared above the chat, and Jenny
hoped that on the photos she wouldn't be the one who looked as dewy as
a person with brand new contact lenses.

"Talking to Hugo the other day."  Laura, gliding like a tall-ship in
many layers of expensively mangled butter-coloured silk, approached
Jenny later at the reception which had spilled over into Sue's
garden.

"He says to send love to your Polly and he'll be sending a rough-cut
video of her advert any day now.  She was awfully good, he says.

Everyone adored her.  "

"How sweet of him!"  Jenny replied taking a glass of champagne from the
wobbly tray carried round by Sue's younger son on leave from his famous
public school, (and trailed at an admiring distance by Daisy, who liked
his rarity value).  "Hugo might be interested, actually.

We've decided to send Polly to a school that specializes in the
performing arts.  She's thrilled with the idea, can hardly wait for
audition day.  "

Polly could be seen across the garden, showing off her splits and
cartwheels in her best dress to Sebastian and Marcus, who were enjoying
frequent glimpses of her purple knickers.

Laura's face was arranged in a little questioning pout, her lips
puckered amusedly, and then she smiled broadly as if she'd just
unfathomed a riddle.

"Oh!  I see, for a moment I thought you meant a stage school!"  she
trilled.

"Stage school?  Who on earth is going to a stage school?"  Carol
Mathieson, forgetting to watch her powder blue suede high heels on the
lawn, tripped into their conversation, spilling a fizzing trickle of
champagne down the front of her navy blue sailor jacket.  She waited
expectantly to be told whatever news was going.

"All those lovely long-necked girls from the Royal Ballet school in
Richmond Park," Laura went on dreamily.

"They stand at the bus stop with their hair in neat little buns and
their feet out in third position.  So pretty.  Polly is a lucky
girl."

Carol looked at them both expectantly and Jenny felt ganged-up on.

"She's not going to White Lodge," she announced firmly.

"She is actually going to a stage school.  And before you say anything,
it isn't all hair in ringlets and constant auditioning to be the next
Milky Bar Kid."  I'm sounding defensive, she thought, voicing some of
the prejudices she'd had herself only days ago.  She caught sight of
George Pemberton leering his approval at her from behind a tray of
canapes.  Fiona noticed and tweaked him viciously back to attention,
ordering him to help do the rounds with the food.  Jenny decided it was
time to go and find someone else to talk to.  She was also wondering
where Mrs.  Fingell had gone.  Sue had definitely invited her to the
party, and she'd been there at the ceremony, exuberant in a cherry red
that.

"Sorry, must just dash back home," she said to Laura and Carol, whose
expressions were stuck in astonishment, as if she'd just told them that
Polly had had her name down since birth for the nearest Young
Offenders' Institute.  Jenny retreated.

"Got to go and collect Sue and David's present.  Didn't want to take it
along to the register office with me.  See you later."

She picked her way carefully through the crush round the doorway,
hearing as she went the unmistakable voice of Carol confiding to Laura
'. teaching the pupils to speak frightfully badly, so they can get
parts in EastEnders .  " Just wait till Polly's the jmenile lead in
some up market BBC2 period drama, she thought, or playing Juliet at
13.

One day they'll be showing off that they've known her since she was
this high.

Jenny walked carefully down the road in her favourite going out
but-onlyifthere'ssomewhere-to sit-down shoes.  Could it be true, she
wondered, as she tottered painfully up to the front door, that one's
feet actually grew a bit as one got older?  Surely a size 5 at age 23
was going to be still a size 5 at 42?  She left the front door open,
kicked off the shoes in the hall and, noticing the answer phone
flashing at her, flicked the 'on' button.  The tape was getting mangled
and most of the message was lost, but Jenny heard just enough to catch
the gist ('wondered about whether you felt

up to taking on an entire boys' school ha!  ha!  ").  " Not today
thanks!  "

she said to the machine, and switched it off abruptly.  Hurrying now,
she went into the kitchen to collect the present.  Absorbed both in her
blissfully released toes and in searching the dresser for the gift-wrap
ribbon, she wasn't at first aware that anyone else had come into the
house behind her.

"Thought I'd join you, having a little breather from the hordes," a
familiar voice said from the kitchen door way.  Jenny, startled, swore
with anger as she trapped her hand in the drawer.

"George!  Why are you creeping up on me like that?"  she demanded
crossly.

"You've got a nerve, following me here!"  She actually felt quite
alarmed.  George was already drunk, swaying slightly, and his breath
was gusting heavily.

"Thought while we've got a few minutes alone .. he said, looking her up
and down slowly.  Jenny backed nervously towards the conservatory,
hoping to sidestep him as he followed her in and then make a dash for
the front door.

"Wouldn't take long ..."  George said, with a rather desperate pleading
note in his voice.  He reached for the zip on his trousers, still
keeping his rheumy old spaniel eyes on Jenny's face, hoping for some
sort of expression of surrender.

"Not a chance, George," she said firmly, then watched incredulous as he
brought out from the baggy folds of his ancient special-occasion
trousers a fully erect penis, all raring to go as if, Blue Peter style,
it was one he'd prepared earlier.

' Cooee, only me!  " came the hugely welcome (to Jenny) voice of Mrs.
Fingell from the front door.

"Bugger!  The old witch!"  George said, dashing, dick in hand, to the
seclusion of the conservatory.

"You in here?"  called Mrs.  Fingell as she came bust ling along the
hallway, opening and closing doors as she went.

"I saw the front door open," she said as she reached the kitchen.

"Just popped home to see to the dog."  Then seeing Jenny propped feebly
up against the Aga and looking pale, added, "You all right?  Seen a
ghost?"

"No I'm not really," Jenny confessed shakily.

"I was just in here getting some ribbon for the present and guess who
followed me in?"

Mrs.  Fingell's face broke into a knowing smirk, but before she could
voice her guess, a long, deep groan emanated from the conservatory.

Whether it was a groan of agony or ecstasy was hard to tell, but Jenny,
quailing at what sounded like the results of over- excitement, prayed
she wouldn't have to go in there with a mop.

"Disgusting old man, following me here like that," she said
furiously.

"Stay there and I'll get him out and make him go away."  She strode
angrily into the conservatory about to confront George, grateful to
have Mrs.  Fingell there to give her courage, but George wasn't as she
expected, shamefacedly adjusting his clothing, but was instead lying
half on and half off the sofa, a twisted grin on his face and his eyes
gazing sightlessly at Alan's potted herb collection.  His penis, now at
half-mast, lay pink and obscene against his best-trousered groin.

"Good God," Mrs.  Fingell exclaimed sharply from just behind Jenny,
'he's stone dead!  "

I mustn't panic, Jenny thought, followed by the fervent prayer that
surely this couldn't be happening to her.

"Well, the first thing we'd better do is make him look decent, poor old
bugger," Mrs.  Fingell said, taking over with authority.

Jenny could feel her whole body start to tremble.

"I'm not touching him, not touching that," she said, wondering if this
was what it felt like before you actually fainted.

"Are you sure he's dead?"  she whispered,

though she didn't really need to; there was absolutely no doubt.
"Course he is.  Heart attack I should think, a bit drunk and a lot
over-stimulated.  All he can expect at his age."  Mrs.  Fingell sniffed
disapprovingly, even though George must have been quite a bit younger
than her.  She took off her coat and rolled up the sleeves of her best
cardigan like an old-fashioned hospital matron about to tackle a
challenging enema, and approached George.  Jenny closed her eyes and
shuddered, avoiding the sight of Mrs.  Fingell attempting to tuck
George's penis neatly back into his trousers.

"Damn, he's got it stuck.  No wonder he snuffed it, that zip must have
nipped like a ferret," she said.  Jenny half-opened her eyes and met
the sight of her neighbour rather brutally waggling the piece of pink
flesh and battling with the stuck zip.

"Look at that!  Completely trapped.  Not much we can do about that,
we'll have to leave it.  Or cut it off," she suggested hopefully,
looking at Jenny with a grin of gleeful malevolence.

Jenny started to come to her senses.

"We can't do that, and we can't really leave him here.  Poor old soul,
who'd want to be found looking like that?  And God, imagine what
everyone will think has been going on!"  The warmth flooded back to her
face and she sat down heavily on one of the cane chairs.

"And Fiona!  She wouldn't be able to think anything but the worst!  I
refuse to have anyone believe that I've been having an affair with
George!"  Jenny got up and paced up and down the small room.

"Perhaps we could move him.  In the long run it'll be kinder for
everyone.  It's probably illegal though.  Will you help me?"

she pleaded urgently with Mrs.  Fingell.  "Course I will," Mrs. Fingell
replied, accepting a hand up from the floor and adjusting her
incongruously cheerful scarlet that.

"I know," she said, tapping her temple to help the thought out, 'if we
can get him across the road and leave him behind his lilac tree,
everyone will think he dropped dead having a pee in his own garden.
What do you think of that?  " Mrs.  Fingell looked pleased with
herself, but Jenny could see flaws.

"But why would he have to pee in his garden.  Wouldn't he have a door
key?"

Mrs.  Fingell cackled.

"You know Fiona Pemberton as well as I do dear, George isn't allowed a
key, 'cept in emergencies."

"We'll have to hurry," Jenny said.

"Alan will be round looking for me, it doesn't take long to gift wrap a
set of table linen."  Then she started to realize the impossibility of
the project, her voice rising with panic.

"How on earth can we do this?  Someone's bound to see us!"

"No they're not.  They're all getting pissed at the wedding party and
that's safely up at the end of the road.  I'll get one of the trolleys
from my garden.  Hang on here a sec and get that rug up while you're
waiting.  Be just right to wrap him in."  Mrs.  Fingell, having issued
her orders and taken command, walked back through the hallway, at a far
brisker and stronger pace than usual.  Jenny felt desperate to follow
he rand trailed after her into the hall to find some comfortable shoes.
Cowardly, and horrified at being left alone with the fish-eyed corpse,
she wanted to go and snuggle up against the Aga for comfort, but
instead had to move the cane chairs and table into the far corner of
the conservatory to get at the big cream rug.  She sidled past George,
avoiding his fixed gaze, and then, unable to stand it, she went back to
a drawer in the kitchen and covered his face with a freshly ironed tea
towel depicting various Cornish harbours.

Luckily, Mrs.  Fingell's garden nearly always contained at least one
abandoned supermarket trolley.  Carol Mathieson was always tut-tut ting
about them.  The one she manoeuvred up Jenny's garden path had

a full set of working wheels and was only slightly bent around the
handle.  It would do very well.  Back inside the house, she and Jenny
pulled George down from the sofa and arranged him across the end of the
rug before rolling him up firmly.  Jenny bit her lip to stop herself
feeling sick, and tied string tightly round the ends of the rug to stop
him from sliding out.  The parcel looked like a flaccid and badly
stuffed uncooked pastry Christmas cracker, the sort of thing that only
Delia Smith can make successfully.

"Lucky he isn't very tall.  Or wasn't, I should say," Mrs.  Fingell
puffed as they loaded George onto the trolley.

"Fits nicely."  She stopped for a breather, leaning on the wall and
sighing lustily.

"I

always liked that rug.  "

"It's yours," Jenny told her immediately, grateful that she wouldn't
have to live with it and be reminded of this awful day for ever more.

How she'd explain its absence to Alan didn't even begin to rate as a
problem.  Getting George's cooling corpse unseen across the road did,
however and as the two women guided their heavy, clanking load along
the pavement.  Jenny wished and wished that supermarkets had understood
the need for silent rubber tyres on their trolleys.

"What've you got in there then?  Cleopatra?"  Jenny froze, terrified,
as Paul Mathieson, his vast Nikon suspended importantly round his neck,
stalked down the middle of the road towards them from his own house.

"Yes, that's right, just transporting a body or two," Mrs.  Fingell
told him.  Jenny felt herself gasp involuntarily.  Mrs.  Fingell
winked.

"And where are you going with that great thing?"  she asked Paul,
nodding towards the camera.

"Oh just going to take some impromptu photos at the party.  Official
photographers are all very well for the formal stuff, but you can't
beat the ones taken by a competent friend; more natural," he said,
proudly stroking the lens of his camera.  Then he raised it to his
eye.

"Want me to take one of you two?  Good light out here ..."

"No!"  Jenny yelled, putting her hand up in front of her face
melodramatically, then recollected herself.

"I mean, don't waste it on us here, save it for the party.  We'll be
back there in a few minutes, soon as we've delivered the rug.  Really
good idea about the photos, I'll look forward to seeing them; we all
will," she flattered him, knowing his mind's eye was already looking
ahead to an evening of neighbourly photo-viewing, complete with sherry
and Carol's best finger-buffet.  She prayed he wouldn't offer to lend a
hand with the rug, wouldn't take over hauling it into Mrs.  Fingell's
sitting-room and helpfully insist on unrolling George Pemberton's
mortal remains all over the floor.  Vanity, as Jenny had gambled,
easily got the better of Paul and he eagerly strode off along the Close
back to the party.

"Why ever did you say that about transporting bodies?"  Jenny gasped as
they struggled on to the opposite pavement and along towards the
Pemberton garden.

Mrs.  Fingell sniggered, irreverently.

"I've always found," she said, 'that when things are at their worst, if
you just tell people the absolute truth they will never believe you.
They don't want to.  "

"Well, let's just hope he doesn't look back," Jenny replied, but he
didn't.

The really hard bit, as it turned out, was going back to the party and
acting as if nothing had happened.  Jenny suddenly wished, as she
rejoined the celebrations, stuck a social smile on her face and
delivered the wedding present, that she hadn't panicked and had simply
left George where he had fallen and phoned for an ambulance.  She could
see that the adventure had made Mrs.  Fingell quite jaunty, and dreaded
what truths she might try testing on everyone after a glass or three of
champagne.

"Of course, you know what they say, don't you love," Jenny overheard
her confiding loudly to Carol Mathieson.

"Red that, no drawers!"  Carol was looking in horror at the old lady's
scarlet that and blushing vividly as Mrs.  Fingell winked broadly at
her.

Fiona Pemberton, securely unaware that she was now a widow, had got
Daisy trapped against a fence and was talking to her in strong terms
about her mock GCSEs.  Jenny didn't have to hear every word to know
that some of them consisted of 'important not to slacken off at this
stage' and 'thorough revision now means less ground to cover later. "

Nor did she have any doubts that the accompanying words in Daisy's mind
were any different from' Sod off you old bat, leave me alone.  "

Poor Fiona, Jenny allowed herself to think, surely she'll miss having
the daft old man to boss around?  Or would she celebrate, indulging in
uncharacteristic frivolity, perhaps spending the long Easter holidays
taking an extravagant cruise in the Caribbean and saucily plaguing the
life out of gay young pursers?

No-one had noticed how much Ben had drunk.  He'd lost count, accepting
and losing track of glasses of champagne as trays came round and were
offered.  It was a noisy, busy party and the first one at which he
hadn't, as neither child nor adult, felt hugely out of place.  Usually
when he was dragged along to this sort of thing, he found himself
wishing he was still Polly's age and able to dash off and play daft
games with any other available child.  Adults were stiffly polite to
each other and talked about education, au pairs, houses, the awfulness
of Nassau and the best route to Provence, and any other teenagers
usually skulked in corners as shyly as he did.  This time, though, he
was sparkling, witty even; some of the younger Welsh girls were
laughing with, not at, him.  He put that down to his success with
Emma.

If it wasn't for Polly's abrupt interruption, he'd have definitely,
easily, he felt, got to what Oliver called third base with Emma.  He
felt almost as good as if he actually had, and there'd be other times,
now they were actually seeing each other.

Bravely, buoyed up by the success of a joke-telling session with some
of Sue's new in-laws, Ben stopped in the kitchen to chat to Carol
Mathieson.

"You like jokes?  Here's one," he said to her.  She smiled, because Ben
was a nice boy deep down, she was sure of that.  Come out here and I'll
tell you," he said, emboldened by her smile and by the inflaming fact
that her pearly silk blouse had enough buttons undone to show the edge
of a pristine white, untrimmed, sensible bra.  Carol followed him to
the hallway, prepared to be daring as it was a party, and secretly a
bit flattered that a good-looking teenage boy should seek her out.

Ben propped himself up against the stair-rail and leaned towards
Carol.

"What's the difference between a clitoris and a pub?"  he whispered
intimately into her ear.  His face could feel the air whistle past him
as Carol's shocked head whirled round to face him.

"What did you say?"  she shrieked at him.

"No, don't repeat it!

Please!  " she ordered as Ben opened his mouth to say it again.  He'd
shocked her, he realized, which he had to admit was almost as exciting
as the white bra.

"It's only that men can always find their way to the pub," he finished
feebly, hoping that at least now she'd see the funny side.  She
didn't.

What, he wondered was wrong?  The Welsh girls had laughed like
drains.

He thought drunkenly about the words of the joke, perhaps he'd said it
wrong.  He knew it would come over better from a woman, but the idea of
him telling it was to distance himself from the sort of men who hadn't
a clue about women's anatomy.  Oliver had told him it couldn't fail,
but obviously it could, with knobs on.  He was too drunk for
intellectualizing.  Carol was now tapping her suede foot and waiting
for an apology.  Or was she, he wondered.  If she was

really 100 per cent shocked, surely she'd be in the garden by now,
complaining to Jenny about the appalling way she'd brought up her
eldest child.  Ben moved even closer to her, intending to manipulate
her into the cloakroom.  He pushed gently at the door thinking Carol
could be slid inside the small room before she knew what was happening,
but instead the sudden roar of flushing water could be heard and the
door was abruptly opened from the other side.  Ben cannoned past Carol
into a man who, from his size, was probably a reserve Welsh prop
forward, before ricocheting drunkenly down to rest on the floor, his
head jammed beneath the wash basin and a pink fluffy towel draped over
his hair like Laurence of Arabia.  Hopeless, he thought,
bloody-sodding-uselessstupiddickhead.  He'd give up the pursuit of
older women, he resolved, as he unwound painfully from his undignified
position on the floor.  People were looking and tripping over his great
long feet.  He would stick to Emma from now on, this was obviously a
lesson.  However, staggering up awkwardly from the floor, he caught
sight of Carol in the cloakroom mirror.  She adjusted her hair, put a
finger to the corner of her mouth to remove a lipstick smudge and then
winked naughtily at her own reflection.  When do you ever know the
right stuff about women, he thought, trailing unhappily into Sue's
sitting-room to find a phone and ring Emma for comfort.  " It was time
for Sue and David to leave for their honeymoon in Italy.

Jenny was feeling the effects of both champagne and shock, and knew
that it could only be a short time before someone made the dreadful
discovery of George spreadeagled sadly beneath his lilac tree.  At
least it wasn't raining.  However awful George had been, Jenny could
never have abandoned him under that tree to become pathetically sodden.
Fiona Pemberton was still at the party, getting on extremely well in a
corner with David's Uncle Matthew, who was a headmaster in Cardiff.
Jenny had heard various snatches of their conversation in which they
were comparing National Curriculum problems and the desirability of
bringing back the'll-plus.  She seemed oblivious to the fact that her
husband hadn't returned.  Perhaps she wasn't expecting him, or perhaps
she didn't care.  Either way, perhaps Uncle Matthew would be usefully
available later to provide comfort for the new widow.  Mrs.  Fingell
was dozing in the dining-room, her feet up and her shoes off and her
cherry red that sitting on the table, complementing perfectly a bowl of
scarlet tulips.  I wonder what she's dreaming about, Jenny wondered.

In the garden, Polly sneaked up behind the stone bench and whispered
delicately in the ear of Sean, Sue's younger son, "Just now, when you
put your baseball cap on, I realized I'd seen you recently in our
house.  You were the one in the leather," she told him.

"Why are you whispering?"  he asked her.

"Because," she went on in a mocking sing-song voice, "I know what you
were doing!"

"No you don't," he told her in a way that confirmed to Polly that she
did.

She went on, close enough for him to smell chocolate ice-cream on her
breath, "Measuring out that stuff that they all smoke, and selling it
to Ben.  He sells it at school, I heard about it; everyone knows.  But
they don't know where it comes from.  Only I do, so far."  She held out
her grubby little hand and requested with her most charming smile,
"Only a river."  The boy, digging into his pocket for some of his ill
gotten earnings, sighed and knew he was beaten, just for now.

The wedding guests filled the front driveway and overflowed the
pavement into the road as Sue and David prepared to leave.  Jenny
hugged Sue and wished her luck and Sue threw her bouquet to one of
David's

pretty young cousins while everyone cheered.

"We'll go home now, shall we?"  said Alan, putting a cosy arm round
Jenny and squeezing her gently.  It was getting so near to the moment
she was dreading, the inevitable scream when someone, Fiona most
likely, discovered the body behind the tree.  The Welsh contingent and
some of the boozier neighbours went back into the house, turned up the
music and seemed set to party on till dawn.  But to Jenny, it felt
comforting to be walking home along the Close with her entire family
around her, even with Polly and Daisy trailing behind and squabbling.

"Did you get that message from the school?"  Ben asked her.

"I forgot to tell you old Jeavons was going to call.  Sorry."

"Who is old Jeavons?  Please don't tell me you've been expelled as
well" she said anxiously, easily convinced now that it was always right
to expect the worst.

"No, no, he's head of music.  The other bloke they've got has gone and
got a record deal so they need a new music teacher fast.  They'd got
^our CV."

"Well that's brilliant!  I'll give him a call first thing on Monday,"
Jenny said, just managing to stop herself from saying that thank
goodness at least someone in the house would be employed.  Alan didn't
need that kind of put-down, and in spite of everything, Jenny thought,
didn't deserve it.  Something was going right, at last, she thought,
feeling like smiling for the first time in hours.

Ahead of them, still with his camera bumping heavily against his chest,
Paul Mathieson proudly surveyed his territory.  He walked, slightly
unsteadily, along the middle of the quiet road, occasionally dashing to
the gutter to collect stray litter, or peering over a fence to check
whether a car door was actually locked or not.  Jenny felt her insides
tighten painfully and she

held her breath as Paul caught sight of a Snickers wrapper blown by
the wind just into the Pembertons' lilac-framed gateway.  Any second
now, this would make Paul's day.  Quite soon, less than half-an-hour
away, the Close would be full of flashing blue lights, ambulances,
police, stripey ribbon cordons, a weeping widow needing sherry and
comfort.  The balconies on the estate across the main road would be
lined with gleeful sightseers, and there'd be pictures in the local
(perhaps even the national) papers.  Beside Jenny, Alan watched Paul
and chuckled deeply.

"Look at the silly old sod, he's like the Queen inspecting the
troops.

Can't think why he bothers, nothing sinister ever happens in a place
like this.  "