Cristina Odone - The Dilemmas of Harriet Carew

Oh, for the blissful ‘who gives a toss’ shrug of state schools, where parents sport pierced belly buttons, tattoos and shabby jeans without worrying about what little Leo’s mum will whisper to little Max’s mum. It’s almost worth putting up with the thirty-five-to-one child-to-teacher ratio, the twelve-year-old boys with knives and the twelve-year-old girls with child, the bullying, the swearing, and the terrible exam results.

I’m still crouched under the counter, determined not to be spotted by Leo’s mum. I’m at an awkward angle, hunched over, feeling the strain in my waist, and wonder how long I can hold this position. Sunglasses, that’s what I need. I’ll look odd – but anonymous. I fumble in my bag, sifting feverishly through keys, purse, loose change, sweet wrappers, a sticky half-eaten lolly and plasters.

‘The new car – I like it! Brava !’ Mario comes to my chair. I turn my head to look up at him, sleek and Latin and twirling a comb in his hand. Mario frowns. ‘I need you to come up from down there.’

I smile apologetically and just then, Hurrah!, my fingers make out the sunglasses and I triumphantly slip them on. Only to realize, as I sit up, that these are Maisie’s pink plastic star sunglasses, bought at Lyme Regis for a pound last July.

‘Hmmm … this pink –’ Mario shakes his head in the mirror ‘– it is not you.’

I leave Mario and the ghastly Griffin mum, marginally soothed by hair that is now more tabby than tiger. It’s three thirty. Just enough time to get to Charlotte’s and then Foot Locker. I head past the common; it’s been a wet summer, and the grass stretches as thick and green as a carefully tended lawn. The sky is a deep blue and the air sparkles.

But I feel the usual September melancholy: summer has ended, school looms. I shall take up once again the routine of chaotic breakfasts, school-gate encounters, office admin, hovering over homework and making supper.

Despite the daily check-up telephone calls from Cecily Carew, the maddening way the electricity meter ran out just as I curled up in bed with my Plum Sykes, and the boys’ breaking the springs on their beds, Lyme Regis suddenly seems a little corner of paradise. I miss the constant exposure to the children, the way all three, bronzed and bursting with loud energy, run in and out of the cottage and garden; I miss watching Guy scamper about with them, and take out his work only at sundown. In Lyme Regis, even school fees seem a manageable wave we can easily surf.

I turn into Charlotte’s crescent. Leafy and elegantly lined with white Georgian houses, road bumps protecting the stillness, this is a choice bit of Clapham. It’s south, and we’re north – and that works out at about £200,000 difference. Charlotte wants her drill back: ours burnt out as we tried to rehang the Carew medals in Guy’s study. Guy keeps them above the fireplace, in a glass-fronted mahogany box, pinned against blue velvet: a century’s worth of Cecils, Claudes, Berties, Reggies and Hectors honoured with enamel and ribbon. There are medals from India and Africa, an early Distinguished Flying Cross and, in pride of place, Great-Uncle Claude’s Victoria Cross.

Virtute non verbis : ‘Deeds not words’, the family motto, is carved into the wooden box, reproaching Guy as, seated at his desk, he wrestles with his prose. His worries about deadlines and narrative flow and realistic pictures seem pedestrian in comparison to his ancestors’ gritty valour as they survived malaria, starvation, rationing, and mustard gas. Or so he keeps telling me.

Charlotte lets out a wolf-whistle as I pull up. My best friend stands on the doorstep of her immaculately painted white stucco house. ‘Guy must have finally written his bestseller.’

‘Only hired for the weekend,’ I say, ignoring her put-down. Charlotte has never quite believed in Guy’s talent.

When I started going out with him, Guy was twenty-one and Lonely Hunter , a comic account of an African safari (featuring a hungry cheetah, a Masai warrior and two repulsive white British hunters) was a bestseller. He was much fêted and, to my eyes, grand and glamorous. I suspect that Charlotte, at Bristol with me, was a bit envious of my new boyfriend – a published author, at Cambridge and even profiled in Tatler . In our unspoken rivalry, he gave me the edge.

When we married, I was convinced that Lonely Hunter would be the first of a string of great successes. My future would be as Guy’s muse, inspiring the genius in his quest for the perfect travel tome. My life would be spent riding side by side with him across the Kalahari and over the Himalayas, the two of us braving perilous, intoxicating adventures.

This has not been the case, quite. Instead of trekking across the desert, a song on our lips and hair blowing in the wind, Guy and I can barely move under the burden of school fees, mortgage repayments, utility bills, taxes and those unforeseen ‘extras’ private schools lob at you like hand-grenades: uniforms, school trips, music lessons, birthday presents and, God forbid, extra tutoring.

‘It’s very nice.’ Charlotte’s eyes are still on our hired car. ‘Jack tried out that model before getting the Porsche.’

If we could afford a car at all I’d be happy, I think; but I say instead, ‘When we grow up, we’ll be fund managers, too.’

‘Well, you have all the fun: or at least Guy does, with all that travelling …’

I hand over the drill. I notice she is in her matching pink DKNY tracksuit and remember that on Saturdays she has her Pilates and tums&bums back to back. As opposed to Fridays, when she has her session with the Ashtanga yoga instructor; or Wednesdays, when it’s the personal trainer … I always hold in my stomach when we’re together.

‘Last weekend of summer.’ Charlotte deadheads a rose by her front steps.

‘I know,’ I sigh. ‘The Griffin starts on Monday already … Hello, school-fee headaches.’

Charlotte shakes her head. ‘If God had meant for your children to go to Eton, Harrow or Wolsingham, he would have married you off to an investment banker.’

Or at least to a man who doesn’t believe in the Carew Gospel: that it is a parent’s duty to send every male child to a top prep school, and then to Wolsingham, ‘their’ big school, and in this way ensure that they imbibe the virtues of courage and discipline and hard work, together with an excellent education, that will stand them in good stead in the challenges ahead.

‘There are plenty of good schools that cost less than the Griffin and Wolsingham,’ I plead with Guy.

‘The Griffin feeds into Wolsingham, and Wolsingham is part of the Carew tradition, Harry.’

‘So was the army, but you broke with that tradition.’

‘I know – and my father has only now started talking to me again.’

Jack is a successful hedge-fund manager, so it makes perfect sense for Marcus and Miles to move from St Christopher’s C of E primary school to Hampton House, a prep school that rivals the Griffin in its access to the big three – Eton, Harrow and Wolsingham.

But for us … Guy and I wake up at night worrying about the latest school bill. We lie there at three in the morning and outline different scenarios: Guy will develop a lucrative sideline writing coffee-table books about far-away places; I shall forget about my yearning to be the perfect stay-at-home mum and work full time at HAC; the children will learn to go up chimneys.

‘Coffee?’

I’m tempted, as always with Charlotte. I can glimpse the neat and gleaming kitchen, miraculously exempt from the scuff marks and greasy paws of unruly children, not to mention the ever-floating hair of an overly affectionate mutt. I can smell the chocolatey aroma of real coffee as opposed to the instant we keep on hand. And I can hear the soft strains of Classic FM uninterrupted by a screeching toddler or rowing boys. Charlotte has three children, who almost match mine in age, and yet her life shows none of the dents, scratches and handprints that cover my own. Amazing what a difference money makes.