Lottie Phillips - The Little Cottage in the Country

‘No!’ Anna said, fearing this might be the first step in her daughter losing her childhood. She watched in horror as Antonia pushed the waxy lipstick against her mouth and drew a long line across her cheek, her forehead and back down to her mouth. Freddie laughed and grabbed the lipstick off his sister and roughly slathered the lipstick over his lips and nose. ‘Oh bugger.’ Now her son was experimenting with make-up. Joy.

‘Diane,’ she said crossly, ‘they’re five.’ She gave her a sidelong look. ‘Five.’

‘Yeah, well, they need to learn sometime, don’t they?’ She nodded, taking the stub of lipstick off Freddie. ‘They’re both naturals.’

‘Freddie is a boy.’ Anna turned the car into the Waitrose car park. ‘And now I have children who look like a Harley Street doctor has marked them up for cosmetic surgery.’ She pulled into a space and turned off the engine, before swivelling round in order to get a better look. ‘Oh bloody hell.’

‘Oh, buggy hell,’ Antonia said, clearly having decided her mother swearing wasn’t so bad after all. Anna knew it: lipstick had been a catalyst to puberty.

‘You’re going to have stay here with the children,’ she said to Diane. ‘We can’t go around the supermarket looking like… like this.’

Freddie sliced the air like a ninja. She didn’t have the heart to tell him he was about as far from inconspicuous as a little-boy ninja could possibly be.

Diane nodded. ‘Fine. I’ll tell the children about the latest celebrity I had to make up.’

‘OK. Good.’ Anna grabbed her bag out of the footwell under Freddie’s feet and got out of the car. ‘Who was it, by the way?’ She stood and bent in. ‘Who was the celebrity?’

‘Only Marilyn Manson!’ Diane said delightedly.

Now having second thoughts, Anna was about to suggest that Diane go round the supermarket alone, when Diane pushed a wad of twenties into her hand.

‘Where did you get this money?’ Anna stared at the two hundred-odd pounds in disbelief. ‘Have you robbed a bank?’

‘Have I robbed a bank?’ Diane threw her head back, laughing. ‘Kids, she thinks Auntie Dee-Dee would rob a bank.’

‘No, seriously, have you?’

‘Darling, if I’d robbed a bank, I’d be halfway to the Canary Islands by now, not kipping at my friend’s ramshackle cottage in Twee-ville.’

‘OK, so where? Have you taken out all your savings?’

‘Nope.’ She smiled. ‘Turns out Alice Cooper loved the bat I painted on his left cheek and the fangs I drew on with the kohl, so he found out my address and thanked me personally… Sent me a cheque emblazoned with a chicken. How cute is that?’

‘Cute,’ Anna said drily.

Diane shrugged. ‘Hence, Manson knocking on my counter, so to speak.’ She flung her arms out. ‘Darlings, turns out I am a big hit among the lords of the heavy metal.’ She grinned conspiratorially at Anna. ‘So, when I got your call last night, I figured I’d follow my bestie to Wiltshire and, if it worked and we ended up living together, I’d set up my own business in a shed or something and cater to the heavy metal stars of the shires.’

Anna suppressed a giggle. ‘What you really mean is you’ve been sent by Barry to take photos of me in the countryside and this was an advance?’

‘Yeah,’ she said, sucking her cheeks in in defeat. Then, a moment later, her energy returned and she said, ‘But Alice was telling me he owns a mansion up the road from you and Manson said he lives in Gloucestershire. I mean, seriously, it’ll be big. And what about Osborne? Isn’t his wife British? And, I mean, I’ll do either sex, so to speak. It’s going to be huge.’ She nodded her head defiantly. ‘Epic, in fact.’

Anna closed the car door and walked off, smiling. Diane, the girl who had never been out of London, was in for a shock, she thought, walking past a dozen Jack Russells tied up at the entrance to Waitrose and joining the throng of tweed and wax jackets. She grabbed a trolley and kept her head down, suddenly feeling very out of place in her scruffy denim jacket and I’M NOT SMALL, JUST FUN SIZE long-sleeve T-shirt. She made a mental note to visit Joules.

She started to fill the trolley with fruit and salad, feeling increasingly virtuous and like Mother Earth, until she reached the cake and sweet aisles, whereupon the thin layer of five-a-days was soon covered in Freddie’s favourite biscuits, Antonia’s Gummy Bears and her cake. Diane loved crisps so she picked up a buy-one-get-one-free multipack (she thought it uneconomical not to) and stocked up on spaghetti hoops and ketchup.

She was so busy debating the merits of Waitrose’s own alphabet spaghetti versus Heinz’s, she didn’t notice him until he was almost on top of her.

‘I’m a sucker for them.’

She turned quickly and found herself face to face with Richard. Blushing, she wondered why he had to find her in this aisle, whereas, in a Hollywood film, she would probably have been demurely selecting caviar or a rabbit’s leg. Not bloody alphabet spaghetti.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Yeah, me too.’ Lame, she thought. ‘What brings you here?’ She looked down and noticed the bacon and eggs in his hand. ‘Come to woo another woman?’

Oh bugger, did she actually say that out loud?

He smiled. ‘My mother wanted them. You had the food out of the farm shop, but mother doesn’t think anything that hasn’t been through a factory and has Waitrose stamped across the top can be hygienic.’

‘Oh.’ She smiled. ‘Well, we’re awfully grateful.’ She pushed her hand through her hair and leant her weight against the store shelf. ‘It was…’ She opened her mouth and tried to reproduce the same vowel sounds as Richard. ‘It was raaaaahlllly good of you.’

He laughed and winked. ‘You’re very welcome. Hope you can come to the farm sooner rather than later.’

She nodded, her smile quickly fading at the sight of Diane and the twins searching the aisle for her, their faces still covered in lipstick. Worse still, Diane had drawn the previously mentioned Alice Cooper fangs on herself. Oh bugger, thought Anna, she needed to hide. She bent her knees, angling her body behind Richard’s.

‘Everything OK?’ he asked, bemused.

As Diane and the twins marched towards her, she dived headfirst into the pulses. ‘Just remembered I need some kidney beans…’

‘Right.’ He crouched down. ‘Shall I get them for you?’ He handed her the tin at the front.

Anna spotted Diane, feet away, out the corner of her eye. ‘I only like the ones from the back. You know, in case they’ve been tampered with.’ She laughed hysterically and he obligingly shrugged and made his way to the back of the shelf. Anna took the opportunity to catch Diane’s eye and shoo her away, but as Diane neared, she ignored her (Anna had forgotten she was as blind as a bat, but, through vanity, refused to wear glasses), and she mistakenly swatted Richard’s face with her hand as he rose to a standing position.

It was too late.

‘God, sorry,’ Anna said to Richard, shooting Diane evils. ‘Are you OK?’ She flicked her hand. ‘Hand twitch.’

‘Mummy…’ Freddie indicated his sister. ‘Toni just wet her pants.’

Anna righted herself. ‘Why?’

‘Auntie Dee-Dee played the drink water till you wet yourself game.’

Diane hadn’t stopped staring at Richard and offered her hand as if she were the lady of a manor. ‘Diane. How lovely to meet you.’

‘Richard. And I love your costume,’ Richard said kindly. ‘In fact, I love all of your costumes.’

‘Oh this…’ Diane was about to lurch into an explanation but Anna cut her short.

‘Yes, they’re practising for Halloween,’ Anna said, a smile plastered on her face.