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

SARAH MAY

A black-hearted soap opera

This book is dedicated to all parents who dream of bringing their children up in a better world, out of harm’s way … and to all children who dream of escaping and getting in harm’s way. Que Sera Sera .

My overwhelming thanks go to all the extraordinary women who made this book possible, in particular – Katie Espiner at HarperCollins, for her enthusiasm, commitment and understanding of the darker side of life; Clare Alexander at Gillon Aitken Associates for her beyond-the-call-of-duty support, demonic tenacity and unflinching ability to respond to e-mails written in the early hours of the morning, and last but not least … Jennifer Hutchinson and Sarah Weedon, for providing the sort of childcare you can’t pay for.

I would also like to thank my husband for keeping our marriage going during Linda Palmer’s reign of terror … there were more dark days and long nights than I’d ever want to have to account for.

Title Page SARAH MAY Dedication This book is dedicated to all parents who dream of bringing their children up in a better world, out of harm’s way … and to all children who dream of escaping and getting in harm’s way. Que Sera Sera . My overwhelming thanks go to all the extraordinary women who made this book possible, in particular – Katie Espiner at HarperCollins, for her enthusiasm, commitment and understanding of the darker side of life; Clare Alexander at Gillon Aitken Associates for her beyond-the-call-of-duty support, demonic tenacity and unflinching ability to respond to e-mails written in the early hours of the morning, and last but not least … Jennifer Hutchinson and Sarah Weedon, for providing the sort of childcare you can’t pay for. I would also like to thank my husband for keeping our marriage going during Linda Palmer’s reign of terror … there were more dark days and long nights than I’d ever want to have to account for. Prologue PROLOGUE Electoral Roll Littlehaven District 9 December 1983 Eight Sixteen Eight Four Eight Four Eight 23 December 1983 Four Eight Fourteen Eight Four Eight Christmas Eve, 1983 Four Eight Fourteen Ten Four Eight Four Four Four Eight 28 February 1984 Eight Twelve Eight Four Eight Four Eight Four Eight Two Eight 1 March – 11 October 1984 Eight Four Eight Four Two Four Six Eight Ten Twelve Fourteen Sixteen About the Author By The Same Author Copyright About the Publisher

8

It had been snowing in Littlehaven for what seemed like forty days and forty nights, and everyone over four feet tall was tired of having to keep Christmas tree lights on all day long so that flickering neon could counteract a numb and unanimous sense of foreboding. The real world and snow didn’t go.

Then on 9 December, which was a Friday, it stopped.

Inside No. 8 Pollards Close the heating was pumping and the blinds in the master bedroom were still on tilt. Linda Palmer was naked, bent over the open drawer of her vanity unit. When she straightened up, a pair of clean bikini briefs in her hand, she was able to see not only herself, but the reflection of the TV screen and Selina Scott’s face just left of her hips, at pussy-level.

She put the bikinis on and turned the TV off. Since the show’s first airing in January she had done Diana Moran’s workout faithfully every morning, but now they were nearly at the end of the calendar year, her body had clocked up over eighty hours of workout since then and the Green Goddess just didn’t do it for her any more. The Green Goddess was for people who wanted to be like Linda Palmer, so what did she want with the Green Goddess when she already was Linda Palmer.

She turned back to the vanity unit, changed the Barry Manilow cassette in the stereo for a Bruce Springsteen compilation, then climbed onto the mail-order exercise bike she’d had long enough for the rubber stoppers on the legs to leave imprints in the carpet. With the switch on dead flat she started to pedal. If she didn’t do twenty minutes before the aerobics class, sweat formed on the back of her pink and grey striped leotard, and at the end of class Dominique Saunders would ask her if she was okay; tell her she looked tired.

A slow track came on, something about Vietnam, and she switched to gradient . She was just getting into the uphill rhythm when the phoned started to ring. After counting six rings, she flicked the switch from gradient to dead flat to off , and dismounted.

‘Is that you, Joe? Joe?’

‘Hello? Mrs Palmer?’

‘Joe – is that you?’

‘Mrs Palmer?’

The voice sounded foreign, and she didn’t feel like being spoken to by a foreign-sounding voice right then. ‘Who is this?’

‘Mrs Palmer, it’s Mrs Klusczynski.’

‘Who?’

‘Jessica’s advanced physics teacher.’

Linda backed away from the vanity unit, put the phone on the floor and jammed the receiver between her right ear and shoulder. The only word she caught the foreign voice saying was ‘advanced’. ‘Listen, if you’re trying to sell me anything …’

‘It’s Mrs Klusczynski, from Jessica’s school.’

‘… anything at all, I’m just not …’ she stopped herself. A long time ago, she had trained herself to keep the unfamiliar in the background, and this is what she did now. The foreign woman faded out and all she could hear was Bruce, still singing about Vietnam, and she couldn’t work out if he’d actually been or not or whether this even mattered. Maybe she was just missing the point. ‘It’s who?’

‘M-r-s K-l-u-s-c-z-y-n-s-k-i,’ the foreign woman yelled down the phone.

Linda held the receiver away for a moment as forty years of Poland in exile made its way through the barricade of redneck vocals on the stereo. She had a sudden image of a woman who wore cardigans and the sort of slip-on shoes that were more prescription than high-street, emerging from one of the two-bedroom terraces at the top of Pollards Close with her severely epileptic son. ‘Wait. Mrs Klusczynski, top-of-the-Close Mrs Klusczynski?’

‘That’s right. I’m also your daughter’s advanced physics teacher here at school.’

‘Her physics teacher. Right. I knew that. Sorry. I’m with you now.’

Looking at her alarm clock, she saw that there was less than an hour to go before class. The phone line fell in a coil between her breasts as she got back onto the bike. ‘I’m with you now,’ she said again, sideways through the receiver as she started to pedal.