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

‘How are you, Linda?’

Delta always called her Linda – never Mrs Palmer – and even though the smile was frank, for the second time that day Linda got the feeling she was being laughed at. ‘I don’t suppose your mum’s in, is she?’

‘Nope.’ Delta shook her head, then trod in the puddle of melted orange pop. ‘Shit – what’s this?’

‘I think it might be Stephanie’s ice-pop.’

Delta looked down. ‘Shit.’ She hooked her feet up one after the other and wiped them on the end of the kimono.

‘So – your mum’s not in?’

‘Sandra dropped Steph off after school – Mum and Dad were having lunch or something.’

‘Lunch? It’s nearly five p.m.’

‘Shit,’ Delta said again, still trying to wipe her feet.

A bedroom window opened and Stephanie hung her head out. ‘Delta, you promised you’d do my whole head.’

‘Just coming, Steph. Don’t touch the machine, it’s hot.’

‘You promised.’

‘And I’m coming.’

Linda caught Delta looking at her fur coat and her Wellingtons. She forgot she still had Wellingtons on. She straightened up.

‘Did your mum get her Ice Man delivery this week?’

‘What – the freezer stuff? I guess she did.’

‘And do you know if she got the triple chocolate mousse cake and Black Forest gateau? They’re difficult to describe – there was a centre spread in –’

‘I don’t do catalogues,’ Delta said.

‘No, of course not. Neither do I, really, but the Ice Man one …’

‘Have you got your mother-in-law to dinner tonight or something?’

‘My mother-in-law?’

Didn’t everybody know they had the Niemans coming tonight? And didn’t Delta know that mother-in-law jokes were for women who had them?

‘I mean,’ Delta said, dragging the words out, impatient at Linda for not getting it, ‘that freezer stuff isn’t something you give to people – it’s something you inflict on them. Have you read the back of the packet? Have you read what’s in that stuff?’

Linda read the front of the box where it gave you the maximum freezer storage time and – if it was microwaveable – how many minutes it took to defrost. ‘But does your mother still get the Ice Man?’ she said, coming back to her original point.

‘I guess it’s what Steph’s been eating all week. I mean, it’s Friday and she’s climbing the walls. She’s toxic. I’m probably toxic as well, but it’s too late, and Mum can cook, that’s what really pisses me off.’

Linda tried to be offended that Delta was swearing in front of her, but she was too busy worrying about Dominique and the Ice Man, and the fact that Delta’s nipples were pushing their way through the branches printed on the kimono because of the cold.

‘We have people round and she’s doing soufflé.’

‘She does soufflé?’

‘That’s what I mean. She only cooks for dinner parties.’ Delta paused. ‘So … d’you want me to go and look in the freezer and see if she’s got a triple mousse … mousse … what was it?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘What’s it for anyway?’

‘It doesn’t matter. Honestly.’

‘You sure?’

‘Honestly.’ Linda turned and sniffed the air. ‘What’s that?’

Stephanie skated up the hallway, screaming.

‘Steph? Oh shit, Steph. I told you to wait.’

‘You told me it was hot,’ Stephanie cried, clumps of burnt hair falling onto the shoulders of her cardigan.

‘Where’s the crimper now? Is it still on?’

‘I dropped it on the carpet,’ Stephanie sniffed.

The girls disappeared indoors and, turning away from the smell of burnt hair, Linda crossed back over the road to No. 8, temporarily caught in the headlights of a car. She stopped at the top of the drive thinking it might be Joe, but it wasn’t. It looked like Dominique’s green Triumph. Without waiting to find out, she went back indoors, took the Wellingtons off then went into the kitchen to attack the collection of cookery books she and Joe had been given as newlyweds. She left the cordon bleu one where it was because it had never been opened, and grabbed Good Housekeeping’s Quick Guide to Dinner Parties that she often used the beef bourguignon recipe from. Turning to Contents, she saw that there was a whole chapter on soufflés. A whole chapter, and no pictures – apart from a series of diagrams showing you how to prepare the soufflé dish. A hot soufflé had to make an impressive entrance at the end of the meal and TIMING IS CRUCIAL.

After reading the page through three times she finally digested the fact that soufflés had to be prepared in advance but served immediately . ‘Finishing Touches’ had a section to themselves. And what was everybody else doing while she was standing there making her way through ‘Finishing Touches’? Who was preventing Joe from roaming freely through his repertoire of flatulence jokes, then his record collection, and putting Pink Floyd on? Who was taking care of all that? How did Dominique Saunders manage to serve immediately. Come to think of it – had they ever eaten soufflé at No. 4? Linda couldn’t remember. The times Dominique must have served soufflé were the times she and Joe weren’t there – the dinner parties she and Joe weren’t invited to – and how many of those had there been?

She slammed the book shut. Who were these people? TIMING IS CRUCIAL. What did they know about her life? SERVE IMMEDIATELY. They didn’t know anything about the early years of her marriage and the house on Whateley Road; or what she and Joe had been through.

Whimpering with the effort of trying not to cry, she pushed Good Housekeeping’s Quick Guide into the bin, then went into the garage, the cement floor freezing the soles of her feet in their thin socks.

She pulled up the freezer lid and saw the box with the picture of the mandarin cheesecake on it.

‘Jessica!’ she shouted up into the house when she was back in the kitchen.

A bedroom door opened and she heard music, then feet on the stairs.

‘What’s wrong with your face?’ she said as her daughter walked in.

‘Ferdie’s bleeding.’

‘You’ve been crying?’

‘Ferdie’s bleeding, Mum.’ Then Jessica saw the dog’s water bowl on the floor by Linda’s feet and started crying again.

Linda stared at her. She hardly ever cried herself and didn’t know what to do when other people did – especially when those other people were her own daughter. She’d never picked Jessica up when she was small and started crying – grief left its marks on the shoulders of jumpers and blouses, and some of them were dry clean only. So now they stood in the kitchen and did what they usually did: Jessica sobbed and Linda stood staring at her, and after a while she got the mandarin cheesecake out of its box and put it on the cake stand to defrost.

‘I told you to go and change,’ Linda said, her back turned.

Jessica sniffed.

‘Did you clean the lounge carpet?’

‘Yes.’ Jessica sniffed again.

‘There’s a pineapple over there in the fruit bowl – why don’t you cut it up and mix it with some cottage cheese?’

Linda watched her daughter move round the kitchen in silence and start to deftly slice up the pineapple, still sniffing.

‘Ferdie ate all the desserts I’d organised for tonight. All of them.’ Linda paused.

Jessica didn’t say anything. She put the mixing bowl with the cottage cheese and pineapple chunks in to one side.

‘Then he sicked them up.’ She stared at her daughter’s back in its school pullover.

‘D’you want me to make dessert for tonight?’ Jessica said, turning round at last.

‘I’ve got dessert for tonight. I sorted it.’