Sarah May - The Rise and Fall of the Queen of Suburbia - A Black-Hearted Soap Opera

‘Like …’

‘Like – what d’you call a one-legged horse?’

‘I don’t know, what d’you call a one-legged horse?’

‘A unicycle,’ Stephanie said, still bouncing. ‘And – what d’you call a one-legged cow?’

‘I don’t know, what d’you call a one-legged cow?’

‘A unicycle. And – what d’you call a one-legged pig?’

‘A unicycle?’

‘Noooo.’

‘Why not?’

‘Just because. I haven’t thought of a joke for a one-legged pig yet.’

‘But why can’t a one-legged pig just be a unicycle like a one-legged horse and a one-legged cow?’

‘Mick,’ Dominique interceded.

Stephanie jumped off the bed and went running back to her room.

Dominique followed her.

‘Don’t worry,’ her daughter said from under the duvet, ‘I’m asleep.’

A china toadstool with a china mouse family inside illuminated the room with a dull red light.

‘Steph – you can’t sleep in that hat.’ She paused. ‘We’ll get an appointment at the hairdresser’s tomorrow morning – first thing.’ Dominique waited a few minutes. ‘Night,’ she said from the doorway.

‘Ssh, I’m asleep.’

When she got back to the bedroom, Mick was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling.

Taking her dressing gown off, she got into bed next to him.

‘What’s this?’ Dominique said, as something sharp dug into her left ear.

‘I was looking at it tonight.’

She picked up the wooden gazelle from the pillow and put it on her bedside table. ‘This is Linda’s, Mick.’

‘I got attached to it.’

‘You stole it?’

‘I put it in my pocket – they won’t notice.’

They lay there not talking and neither of them made a move to turn out the light.

‘I didn’t realise Laker was going bust,’ she said after a while.

Mick rolled over and looked at her, but didn’t say anything.

‘They’re going to make you redundant, aren’t they?’

‘Maybe – I’m over forty anyway, Dom.’

‘That’s what lunch was about.’

‘That’s not what lunch was about.’

‘How soon?’

‘I don’t know – nobody knows – I’ve probably got another month.’

‘Another month? When were you going to tell me?’

‘There’s nothing to worry about, Dom – the terms of the package we’re starting to discuss are very generous.’

‘You’re not going to look for another job as a pilot?’

‘We should go away,’ he said.

She didn’t say anything.

‘We should. We should go away.’

‘Where would we go?’

‘New Zealand.’

‘And what would we do in New Zealand?’

Mick raised himself up on his elbow. ‘We’d have a vineyard.’

‘A vineyard?’

‘I’d call it Dominique’s , and even though it would take a few years to set up and those first few years would be tight – difficult – after that we wouldn’t look back – award-winning wines – a huge export business – the girls helping – acres of land.’

‘My God, Mick.’

‘What?’

‘You’ve been thinking about this?’

‘I’ve been thinking.’

‘But – why? I mean, New Zealand – why?’

‘Space. You. The girls. You.’

‘But, New Zealand, Mick. D’you know what you’re talking about? Do you know what it is you’re actually saying?’

‘No. But think about it.’

‘It’s the other side of the world.’

‘So we’d take our world with us – Delta and Steph. What would be left behind?’

She shook her head hard. ‘But – you fly, Mick. That’s what you do. You fly.’

Mick stared hard at her then slumped back onto the pillow, deflated. ‘I fly.’

‘You love flying.’

‘I love flying.’

‘And you don’t know the first thing about growing grapes.’

Mick sat up again and smiled.

Why did he see this as a positive thing?

‘I know, but I’m learning. I bought shares in a vineyard.’

‘You did what?’ Dominique sat up now as well.

‘And I thought we could go and visit – maybe at Easter-time. We could rent a villa for a fortnight or something over Delta and Steph’s Easter holidays.’

‘You bought shares in a vineyard, Mick?’ Dominique was trying to think and not to think all at the same time.

He passed his hand lazily over her breasts as he sank back onto the pillow and fell quickly asleep, leaving her alone with the night, and the vineyard in New Zealand.

8

Above the sound of Pink Floyd, Linda heard the flush of the downstairs loo and stood watching herself in the mirror as she held her breath and waited to see if Joe was going to turn off the music and come upstairs to bed. She’d already been down to see him once and she didn’t want to have to go down again. The music carried on. She watched herself exhale then pick up a cleansing pad from the pack by the sink and start to wipe off her make-up, rubbing at her cheeks, eyes and mouth much harder than she needed to.

She spent a long time doing everything in the bathroom – even giving her nails a brush and polish before going through to the bedroom. Then she sat on the end of the bed and listened to Pink Floyd coming up through fitted carpet. Forty minutes must have passed since she’d been downstairs and asked Joe if he was coming up and he’d mouthed the words ‘five minutes’ at her.

She got up from the bed and went downstairs.

Joe was on the sofa, watching TV with the sound off. He didn’t look up.

‘What are you watching?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘How can you hear it?’

‘Subtitles.’

‘What?’ She moved closer to the TV.

He pointed to the screen where there was a band of black with words across it. ‘Subtitles.’

‘The people look Japanese. In the film. They look like Japs, Joe.’

‘Yeah.’

The fact that they were Japanese made her feel like she had a case – that and the fact that it was past midnight.

‘So – you’re coming to bed soon?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You are?’

‘No – I mean, I don’t know.’

‘Right.’ She stood there staring at the screen for another minute. ‘I’ll be upstairs.’ She stopped again by the lounge door, picking up the ends of her dressing-gown belt and letting them slip through her fingers. ‘I thought it went well tonight.’

‘Tonight?’ he said, thinking about this. Then, ‘Oh, tonight. Yeah.’

Back upstairs, she stood at the end of the bed, breathing hard, then took off her dressing gown and put a T-shirt on instead. She climbed onto the exercise bike and after a couple of minutes flicked straight to gradient . At some point the music went off and she thought she heard Joe climbing the stairs, but he didn’t come into the bedroom. She was so angry that she’d been cycling uphill for five minutes now without realising it, and her heart was starting to let out a strange metallic click.

Joe knocked three times then went in. At first he thought Jessica was asleep, but after a while she opened her eyes and took off the headphones.

‘I was nearly asleep.’

‘You should be. It’s one a.m.’

She leant over and turned off the stereo, trying not to disturb Ferdinand, who had his head on her stomach. ‘How was the film?’

‘I don’t know. Everyone died, apart from this one man at the end who was crawling around in the grass. Then he died too.’ He sighed and went over to pull the curtains shut.

‘They’re already shut, Dad.’

‘There was a gap.’

‘Does it matter? There’s nothing out there but fields and trees.’

‘Well, they’re shut now.’ He looked down at the desk. ‘Homework?’

‘No – just something I’m working on.’