Linda Phillips - Old Dogs, New Tricks

‘Obviously there are other builders here. Ones I knew nothing about. Of course, they don’t show you those on your plans.’

‘No, but –’ Her tone implied that he should have made more enquiries. Heavens, couldn’t he have seen what was going on? ‘Somehow –’ she scrutinised the plots more closely ‘– they don’t exactly look as though different builders put them up. I suppose they are different in little ways, but overall they tend to look much of a muchness. Even ours isn’t all that different from what I remember seeing in the brochure. Where is it now, by the way?’

They were speeding away from the completed properties now, bumping over rutted mud left behind by countless works vehicles. The unmetalled road continued its relentless march across a pot-holed field and Philip followed it, his eyes fastened on the horizon. And now Marjorie realised that the solitary house looming ahead of them was their new home – the only one of that particular phase to have been built.

‘What’s happened to the rest of The Paddock?’ she demanded, bewilderment setting in.

The car had come to a halt on a slab of bare concrete which would be their drive when the work was finished, only at the moment it fell two feet short of the garage and didn’t quite meet the road. Twin panelled doors faced them beneath a grand pointed roof; their cars – Phil had promised her a new one – would be sheltered in a detached property of their own, large enough to house several homeless families. But that, and the adjacent house, were the only buildings around them.

‘This is the first of The Paddock to go up,’ Phil said, patting his pockets to locate the keys to the front door. ‘The builders’ll start work on the rest of them as soon as people put down their names.’

‘You mean, we have no neighbours yet?’ Adopting the attitude of a stranded sailor Marjorie shielded her eyes and squinted at the ‘ticky-tacky’ estate shimmering through the heat haze in the distance. Civilisation lay miles away across a sea of reddish, dried-up mud. ‘How many people have put their names down?’

‘Really, Marjie, I can’t be expected to know everything, can I? Look, I’ve found the keys now. Let’s go inside. I’m sure you’re going to be thrilled when you see this.’

And she was. She had to admit it. She fell in love with the kitchen at first sight; couldn’t wait to unpack her utensils and start cooking something. But Phil, laughing his first real laugh for weeks, took her hand and wouldn’t let her put her head in another cupboard until she had seen everything else. By the time they returned to the kitchen her cheeks were flushed with excitement.

If only he’d thought about the boiler!

‘Oh, Phil …’

He turned from his investigation of the fuse box to find her pale and trembling behind him. Moisture gleamed on her lip. Her complexion resembled candle wax.

She pushed him into the utility room and showed him the white appliance on the wall. ‘It is a gas one, isn’t it?’ Their previous house had been ‘all electric’, which had suited Marjorie just fine. She had managed to overcome her fear of gas sufficiently to enter other buildings where it was installed, but she couldn’t bear the thought of it in her own. The lighting of it, the way it blipped into life, the roar of it under a grill – none of this could she bear to contend with.

‘Oh, Marjie, I meant to warn you.’ But clearly he hadn’t given it a thought. In his efforts to get her to make the move at all it hadn’t even entered his head.

‘How could you?’ she whispered. ‘How could you?’

‘I’m sorry, really I am … don’t look at me as though I’ve done this deliberately. But it’s all new and perfectly safe. Look, we can have special detectors fitted.’ He tried to take her in his arms. ‘What happened to your mother and father – it’ll never happen to us.’

But he knew that that wasn’t the point. Marjorie could do without gas appliances as a constant reminder. So could he as well if he were honest with himself. Marjorie wasn’t the only one still haunted by the event; nor was she the only one to have the occasional nightmare. The whole family still suffered. Naturally it had been worse for Marjorie as she had been the one to find them, but he’d been devastated too. He had known her parents for most of his life and a lovely couple they’d been. Then there had been the two girls, mere youngsters at the time, who couldn’t begin to understand. And his own parents who had lost good friends. And the milkman had been so cut up about it because he thought he should have noticed something, and – well – the list went on and on.

Phil looked up from his morbid musings to glimpse the removal van trundling towards the house across the landscape which, only a few minutes previously, they had been looking down upon from the landing window and jokingly nicknamed the Red Sea. There was nothing more he could say to Marjorie now, or do for her, except suffer a gross black mark for his gaff and get on with the work in hand.

‘Your money,’ Oliver said flatly that evening, watching Jade as she swept aside a Tiffany lamp that had been a ‘must have’ four months ago, but which was now apparently out of favour, and installed the vase in its place.

‘That’s right.’ She darted a chilly glance at him, noticing that he’d already changed for the country club. Leaning against the door frame in his track suit he looked full of pent-up vitality, but hard-faced and narrow-eyed as well.

‘Do you mean you bought this with your salary or with the savings from your modelling work?’ he went on in the tone she’d come to know so well: the tone that was ninety per cent geniality but ten per cent heavy sarcasm. ‘Because the first can’t possibly cover it and the second’s been spent ten times over.’

Jade’s pleasure in her purchase drained away. She flounced into the bedroom and began stripping off her navy suit. ‘Trust you to take the fun out of everything.’

She was well aware that her savings had long since gone. Did Oliver have to keep reminding her? He’d even begun to hint that perhaps she should take up modelling again, do a bit in her spare time to help cover her expensive lifestyle. What spare time? she asked herself, pulling a leisure suit over her bra and pants.

She picked up a brush and ran it down the long shafts of her hair, then clipped back the two front sections of hair with blue combs. Suddenly she looked ten years younger than her twenty-six. Yes, she thought without conceit, checking her reflection in the glass, she could certainly still do some sort of modelling work if she wanted to. But she didn’t want to. She’d had more than enough of all that.

She had begun a career in modelling at eighteen when she left school. It had been entirely her mother’s idea. Her mother had practically pushed her into it because she had always wanted to be a model herself, instead of which she had become pregnant before she left school and had to marry Jade’s father.

Jade had gone along with the idea at first, being attracted by the possibility of making a little money to set her on her feet. Pointless to expect her no-good father to give her a start in life; he’d never had a bean himself. Well, not for long anyway. And perhaps she owed her mother something for the struggle she’d had bringing up Selina and herself; with their father flitting in and out of their lives she’d had a rotten time of it. Dad had drifted in when he needed money to fritter on horses and out again when he’d cadged all he could.

On leaving school Jade hadn’t decided what she wanted to do with her life. It wasn’t modelling, she knew that as soon as her mother suggested it. Modelling, she was inclined to believe, was not all it was cracked up to be. But it would be something to be going on with – just supposing she could actually find someone prepared to take her on …