Goodness, Grace and Me Read online

  ‘I thought David was charming, but I wouldn’t trust him as far as our house. Amanda, well of course I have the advantage over you on this one, seeing I’ve known her for years. You do know who she is don’t you?’

  ‘What do you mean, ‘who she is’?’ Nick, still in self-congratulatory mode, merely opened one eye as he stretched his six-foot frame even further into the car seat.

  ‘Your Mandy,’ I hissed, ‘is Amanda. You know, Amanda, my brother John’s Amanda?’

  ‘Amanda as in ‘never mention that woman’s name in my hearing ever again’?’ Nick’s eyes, both now fully open, were in perfect synchronisation with his dropped jaw.

  ‘The very same,’ I said grimly as I finally exited the Henderson’s protracted driveway and turned on to the meandering country lane down which their house was hidden.

  ‘Phew.’ Rendered speechless for a full thirty seconds, this was the only word Nick could come up with to break the silence in the car. ‘But what about the house? What did you think of that?’ he gabbled in a valiant attempt to get Team Henderson back in the good books.

  What could I say except the truth, that it was the most divine house I had ever seen.

  ‘And that’s what I want for you – for us, the kids.’ Nick looked almost fierce. ‘If Pennine Clothing Company hadn’t gone pear-shaped when it did, we’d have moved on and be in a house like that by now.’

  ‘But it did,’ I said gently. ‘And we’ve survived haven’t we? We live in a beautiful house of our own. A bit in need of a general makeover I grant you but, for heaven’s sake, Nick, we really shouldn’t be complaining about the house we’ve got.’ Compared to the tiny council house I’d grown up in it really was a palace. And I loved it.

  Nick sat up and banged the car door with his fist. Golly, he was getting het up.

  ‘Hat, I don’t want you to have to share your house with my mother.’ Well, he had a point there. Losing my study and playroom to incorporate a granny flat for Nick’s mother Sylvia after my father-in-law died hadn’t been my idea of fun either. It had been a question of having Sylvia move in with us and share the mortgage or downsize to a much smaller place.

  ‘I don’t want you to have to teach those horrible children when you should be, well, when you should be spending your days having lunch out and shopping.’

  ‘Hey, steady on,’ I protested. ‘What century are you living in? I happen to quite like my job.’ Well, some of the time anyway.

  ‘Harriet, I don’t want you to have to work if you don’t want to. But at the moment we just can’t survive without your wage as well as mine.’

  Nick had hit the nail squarely on its head.

  ‘Exactly!’ I said as calmly as I could. ‘We can’t survive without your wage. So how can you think about throwing it all in at Wells Trading and risking everything by joining up with someone you know nothing about?’

  Nick was genuinely puzzled. ‘I know lots about David Henderson. He has brilliant business acumen – made an absolute fortune. Mind you, I don’t imagine he suffers fools gladly – you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of him. You should be very impressed he’s interested in what I might be able to do for him.’

  We’d stopped at a red light, so I turned to Nick and said, ‘The man next to me at dinner seemed to know all about David Henderson’s business deals. Gave me the impression it was all a bit shady and you should watch your back.’ I’d unconsciously lowered my voice.

  Nick laughed. ‘God, Harriet, you are so bloody melodramatic.’

  Melodramatic? Moi? We’d soon see who was being melodramatic when he was being fed to the fishes.

  ‘What are you so worried about?’ Nick’s question echoed that of Grace from the night before. Myself and Grace, my best friend and confidante, had shared every moment of celebration as well as despair since we’d met on the first day at grammar school over twenty-five years earlier. Last night I’d poured out all my anxieties about Nick’s restlessness to her over a bottle of wine in my kitchen. Nick now yawned widely, running his hands through his hair before nudging me. ‘And you’re speeding, by the way.’

  My stomach churned as my foot hit the brake and I recalled, once more, the horror of the unexpected collapse of Nick’s company two years ago. ‘I’m worried about you giving up your job, investing any money we don’t actually have in a business which could, I’m sorry, Nick, which could fail again.’ I knew my voice was getting louder, could feel myself becoming agitated. It was the stuff of my nightmares. I took a deep breath, trying to talk to Nick logically and calmly, wanting him to see my point of view. ‘And when it did fail, finding ourselves without a roof over our heads, the kids unable to go to their schools any more, and me having to work at Stanhope Junior until I’m eighty. And there’s your mother. Where would she go if we had to downsize? You can’t make a granny flat out of the two-up, two-down that we’d have to move to if we couldn’t pay the mortgage on our place every month.’ It all came out in a rush. I was tired and I was frightened and I didn’t want to discuss this anymore.

  Particularly since Amanda Goodners seemed to be a big part of the equation.

  My immediate thought on entering the darkened sitting room was that a very pink pig had somehow found its way in and was gyrating wildly on our Persian rug. My second was, how would I ever be able to look Margaret Walker in the eye at school on Monday knowing that sixteen-year-old Jennifer had been having sex on my Persian rug under the pretext of babysitting my daughter? Some sixth sense must have told the owner of the buttocks that they were under shocked scrutiny, for they came to a sudden standstill. The grandfather clock in the far corner of the room, a wedding present from a great-aunt of Nick’s, had stopped at nine forty-five, presumably aiding and abetting Jennifer and the boy – boyfriend? – in their illicit romp.

  I honestly didn’t know what stance to take. Should I act the Victorian guardian, telling them to get out and never darken my door again? Or should I be all matey matey, asking if the Earth had moved for both of them and offering them a post-jump cigarette? I did neither. I told Jennifer I was going into the kitchen to make a cup of tea and suggested they both get dressed.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Nick, returning from upstairs where he’d been checking on India and finding some cash to give to Jennifer, caught sight of my face as I filled the kettle at the tap.

  ‘Sex in the sitting room,’ I muttered hoarsely, nodding in the direction from where I’d just come.

  ‘What, this minute? I’m game, you little hussy, but don’t you have to take the babysitter home first?’ Nick started nuzzling the back of my neck, and I had to bat him off.

  ‘The babysitter has been having sex in the sitting room,’ I hissed.

  ‘The babysitter? Who with?’ Nick looked round in genuine astonishment, as if any number of sexual partners were about to manifest themselves in our kitchen. I began to giggle.

  ‘Shhh!’ I whispered. ‘I’m going to have to go back in there and sort them out. Make the tea will you?’

  Jennifer, looking very pale, was sitting alone on the sofa with her coat buttoned up to the neck. She looked very young and vulnerable. Of the boy there was no sight.

  ‘Is he your boyfriend, Jennifer? Does your mum know you’re sleeping with him?’

  ‘Oh God, no! She’d kill me. You won’t tell her will you? She doesn’t think I’m seeing him any more – she can’t stand him. Thinks he isn’t good enough for me because he left school last summer instead of doing A levels, and hasn’t got a job yet.’

  ‘Where is he now?’ I asked. ‘Has he left you to face the music by yourself? That’s not very brave of him, is it?’

  ‘He doesn’t live very far from here. He’s gone home. Look, Mrs Westmoreland, I’m really sorry about this. I know I should have asked you if James could come round, but I didn’t want Mum to know I was still seeing him. He literally only came round an hour ago. I didn’t realise it was as late as this.’

  Obviously. ‘Listen Jennifer, you’re so young.
I mean I know it’s nothing to do with me, but are you practising safe sex? Are you using contraception?’

  Jennifer blushed. ‘This was the first time we did it tonight. James didn’t have anything on him, but he said it would be alright because he’d wrap it in food wrap.’ She looked apologetic as she said ‘I hope you don’t mind, but we found some in your kitchen.’

  Food wrap? He’d actually wrapped his dick in food wrap? For one awful moment I had a vision of his willy basting in tinfoil like a barbecued sausage, until I realised she must mean cling film.

  She was almost in tears now as she stuttered, in a rush, ‘I mean, I’ve never really seen a ... you know a condom. I was in hospital having my in-growing toenail seen to when they did that thing with a condom on a banana in Sex Education at school, but James said cling film was just as good as one.’

  Holy Moses. And we think that kids today are sophisticated? ‘Come on, Jennifer, let’s get you home.’

  I was bushed, and desperately wanted my bed. Thank God it was Saturday in the morning.

  As we drove back, almost in the direction we’d come from an hour earlier, Jennifer huddled lower and lower into her seat until she was almost in a foetal position.

  ‘Will you tell my mum about this, Mrs Westmoreland?’ she asked from the depths of her coat.

  ‘Jennifer, it really is nothing to do with me.’

  Apart from losing your virginity to an apparent waster, while using less than satisfactory contraception, in my house I wanted to add. Losing one’s virginity is hardly the best sex one ever has; losing it to a roll of Sainsbury’s cling film can’t have ranked high on experiences to be repeated in a hurry.

  ‘Jennifer, can I just ask you one very personal question?’ I wanted to put my mind at rest about any possible pregnancy.

  She nodded bleakly.

  ‘When was your last period?’

  ‘Um, a couple of weeks ago. But I don’t think he actually, you know, came.’ I could sense her blushes without actually seeing them. ‘You arrived home before that,’ she added.

  Well, Halleluiah and thank The Lord for small mercies.

  I dropped Jennifer off, noting that an upstairs light was still on in what was presumably her mother’s bedroom. I hoped Margaret wouldn’t quiz the girl about her babysitting until the morning by which time Jennifer would have had time to compose herself or could avoid her mother by staying in bed until lunchtime.

  It was almost one-thirty by the time I drove through Netherfields, a residential area just out of Midhope town centre. I made the decision to cut through a narrow street of tall Georgian houses many of which, although retaining much of their former glory of long-gone halcyon days, were now living a second, interim life as upmarket apartments. The black taxi cab that I’d followed for the last half a mile or so drew up outside one of the more elegant houses, forcing me to stop while the two occupants alighted and the man paid the driver. As they turned towards me, I saw that the man was Dan, Grace’s husband, and the Titian-haired beauty with him was not, by any stretch of the imagination, my best friend.

  Chapter 3

  Being an inveterate list writer, I had usually compartmentalised Saturday on to an A4-sized sheet of paper long before Ulysses, next door’s mentally defective cockerel, woke us with his discordant, strident rasp. The morning following the Hendersons’ dinner party, having no paper to hand, I mentally organised the day ahead as follows:

  Go see Dad re my new garden.

  Have sex

  Ring Grace!!!!!!!!!!!!

  I didn’t seem to be able to get any further than number three because the thought of ringing Grace after what I’d seen last night obscured all other thoughts. Why didn’t I just leave Grace alone and hear what she had to say at school on Monday? If there was a problem, she’d ring me before then. When I’d seen her at school on Friday she’d been fine. No hint that Dan might be up to anything. She had mentioned that Dan was away and would be back on Saturday. More than likely he’d returned to Midhope earlier than anticipated, and had been in the process of dropping a work colleague off before heading for home and Grace. All these arguments were going through my head as I lay beside Nick, unable to get back to sleep. I looked at my watch. It was only seven o’clock. I considered waking Nick with a little morning delight and, in the process, being able to cross number two off my list, but I could hear India on the prowl and knew that within minutes she would launch herself squarely between the two of us.

  For the next hour or so, while I went through mundane but necessary Saturday morning chores, my heart did little flips as I considered, and reconsidered what to do re Grace. This was my best friend, and I didn’t want to be humping around illicit knowledge about her husband. By nine o’clock I was dialling her number. On the pretext of telling her about last night’s dinner with Amanda I hoped to catch her still in bed, or doing whatever childless women do on a Saturday morning. When no reply was forthcoming, I tried her mobile. I was just about to give up when someone, or possibly something answered. Heavy breathing, very reminiscent of that which had accompanied the request for my knicker colour one morning at two o’clock many years ago, was all I could make out at first. Then Grace’s voice pleading, ‘Enough, for God’s sake, Max, enough.’

  Max? Who the hell was Max? Had Grace found out about Dan last night, and was already endorsing her revenge with a new, and obviously very active, lover?

  ‘Grace?’ I asked. ‘Is that you?’

  ‘Who’s that? Max, enough I said. Really, enough now, I’m on the phone.’

  ‘Where are you, and who the hell is Max?’

  ‘Oh, Hattie? Is that you? I’m out on Thornfield Hill with Max.’

  ‘Max who?’ I demanded. I could hear the wind intent on stripping the first leaves from the trees up on Thornfield Hill, a godforsaken place very near to Grace’s house.

  ‘Max, next door’s new dog. He’s a rescue Dalmatian, and between you and me he’s really too much of a handful for Beryl and Stan. I offered to take him out to run off some of his energy, but to be quite honest it’s me that’s knackered. He’s still as fresh as a daisy. Bloody dog, come here! Come here! Right, I’ve got him now. What are you up to, ringing so early on a Saturday morning?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, postponing the moment when I would have to ask about Dan. ‘I just wanted to tell you whose house we were at last night.’

  ‘And? Whose? Anyone I know?’ I could hear Grace’s breathing begin to slow down as she readied herself for gossip.

  ‘Amanda Goodners’ and her husband.’

  ‘Ohmigodno! Not Amanda Goodners! You actually had dinner with ‘Little Miss Goodness’? What does she look like? Is she fat and ugly? Did she remember you? Did she ask about me? Did you ask her if she was still giving blow jobs down by the cut?’ Grace started giggling.

  For someone who two minutes ago was breathless, her recovery rate was spectacular. Must be all those hours she put in at the gym.

  ‘Grace, she’s as gorgeous as ever. Their house is to die for – I nearly did when I saw it – and yes, she did ask about you. In fact, there’s some Midhope Grammar reunion in a couple of weeks. She wants us both to go.’

  ‘You must be joking. You can count me out. I’m not going to any reunion. Best day of my life when I left that nunnery. And the last person I want to see after all these years is Amanda Goodners.’

  ‘I’ll talk to you later about it.’ I was disappointed; thought Grace would have enjoyed the prospect of a trip down memory lane. ‘So what are you up to the rest of the day?’

  ‘Well, as soon as I’ve taken this animal back home,’ she panted with the effort of holding Max, ‘I’m going to get ready for Dan coming home – going to make myself really gorgeous to make up for being so bloody awful about this baby business. And, Hattie, I’ve had such a good idea.’ Grace’s voice rose in excitement and, before I could ask her what it was, she went on, ‘We’re going to adopt. It’s about time I got on with life. If we can’t have babies of our own, well then
we’ll just have to have someone else’s. I’m going to tell Dan as soon as he gets home. You know, wine, lovely meal, the full works and then hit him with it.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, the sudden vision of Dan with the gorgeous redhead reducing me to monosyllables.

  Immediately on the defensive, Grace snapped, ‘Oh, I suppose you’re going to be like everyone else when it comes to adoption? You know, my cousin’s friend adopted a baby last year and it hasn’t turned out to be a drug-taking delinquent.’

  ‘A drug-taking delinquent? At six months old?’

  Ignoring my last question, Grace tutted and said, ‘Well, whenever I’ve broached the subject of adoption with anyone, particularly my mother, they all look horrified and regale me with tales of adopted children who have gone off the rails and brought heartache to their new families.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ I countered furiously. ‘I know lots of adopted children who have grown into fine, upstanding members of the community!’

  ‘You do?’ asked Grace eagerly. ‘Who?’

  ‘Well, there’s um, there’s …’ I tailed off. I couldn’t for the life of me think of anyone I knew who’d been adopted. ‘I know. Mrs. Bealby, our geography teacher at

  Midhope Grammar. She was adopted as a child. I remember her telling us, for some reason, in one of her lessons.’

  Even over the phone I could imagine Grace’s face. ‘Big-bottomed Brenda Bealby! A fine upstanding member of the community? She was a sadist – and as mad as a hatter. She once made me trace every single map of the world out of those great big atlases we used to have. Blimey, Hat, can’t you come up with anyone better than Brenda Bealby?’

  I couldn’t.

  ‘Well, I think adoption is a great idea,’ I lied. ‘So is Dan back home now?’ I forced the question, hyperventilating a little as I tried to keep my voice normal.

  ‘No, he phoned me last night from his hotel in London. Said he’d be back home this afternoon sometime. Seeing to a few things this morning before he sets off.’