Sarah May - The Rise and Fall of a Domestic Diva

Kate tried to say it more calmly, ‘Get-back-in-the-car-now.’

Findlay still didn’t move so she crouched down in front of him, beside the wheel arch, and grabbed hold of his arm, which was difficult to find inside the Spiderman suit’s foam musculature.

Ros was staring at her. Kate saw her glance at the stain on the lapel of her suit jacket as well. ‘Everything okay?’

‘Fine…fine. Just work. Work stress,’ Kate said, folding herself up rapidly and getting into the car they were defaulting on. ‘See you later.’

‘Eight o’clock,’ Ros reminded her.

Kate nodded, started up the engine, put the car into gear and pulled away, trying to ignore Findlay who was yelling at her to do up his straps. Her phone started to ring. It was Ros.

Ros?

Looking in her rear-view mirror, she watched Ros put her mobile away and swerve off the pavement onto the road in pursuit of the car.

Despite all precautions, Ros must have somehow seen the Pampers extra-value pack in the boot after all—and now she wanted to lecture Kate on disposable nappies and the death of the world.

Kate accelerated.

At the crossroads the Audi hit a red light and she seriously thought about jumping it, then panicked and ended up slamming on the brakes at the last moment. Findlay thudded into the back of her seat and screamed something sanctimonious about Kate not strapping him in and how he was going to die one day. ‘So—die,’ she yelled, wrenching up the handbrake and getting out of the car as Ros, shaking, came to a halt beside her.

‘Okay—so they were out of Moltex Öko at the chemist’s, and I was in a rush. I grabbed the first thing to hand and…it wasn’t Moltex Öko because they were out,’ she said.

‘Flo,’ Ros grunted, out of breath and still shaking.

‘Flo?’

‘Flo—she’s back there—on the pavement. You left Flo in her car seat on the pavement.’ Ros fell over her handlebars, sweating and gasping. ‘I tried phoning you.’ Toby stared out, expressionless, through the child-carrier’s PVC window.

Kate peered around the interior of the car. The passenger seat where she usually put Flo’s car seat was empty.

The light changed to green and the cars behind were leaning on their horns as drivers pulled angrily on their steering wheels and tried to circumnavigate the parked Audi and the woman on the bike, inadvertently digesting the slogan on the back of her T-shirt: You deserve to be happy .

Kate stared blankly at Ros for another ten seconds before getting into her car, executing a three-point turn into oncoming traffic and driving back down the road to the patch of pavement outside Village Montessori where she’d left Flo.

By the time they finally got back to Prendergast Road, it was after two and Kate couldn’t get the door open because Margery had put the chain across.

‘Margery!’ she yelled.

Further down the street, the Down’s syndrome boy at No. 8—David—was in his front garden, smiling happily as he hugged the loquat tree growing there. The next minute, he started to sing—a series of loud, prolonged wails that started to make Kate panic.

‘Margery,’ she yelled again.

‘Who is it?’

‘Kate. Margery—come on, it’s starting to rain again.’

The chain was taken off and the front door opened to reveal Margery standing in the hallway with Robert’s old hockey stick raised above her head.

Findlay ran past her without comment.

‘I heard someone at the door—wasn’t sure who it was,’ Margery said, without lowering the stick.

‘It’s us.’ Kate stared at her. ‘I work half-days Thursdays—I told you.’

Tripping over the same recycling bag in the hallway that she’d tripped over earlier, she navigated the unmoving Margery and reached the kitchen, where she was confronted with a row of pies.

‘Once I got started, I couldn’t stop,’ Margery said behind her, the hockey stick still in her hands. ‘He’s got corned beef and onion, cheese and onion and potato to choose from,’ she carried on more to herself than Kate. She’d been keeping up a steady patter of conversation with herself most of the morning since Martina left.

‘Potato pie?’

Margery nodded.

Her eyes bouncing off the mound of carbohydrates, Kate said, ‘Can you keep an eye on Flo for me while I go up and change?’

‘Off out again?’

‘I thought I might go up to the allotments.’ She paused, and with an effort added, ‘Why don’t you come with us?’

‘It’s raining.’

Kate glanced out through the kitchen window but didn’t say anything.

‘You don’t want to take them up there in this weather. Findlay won’t want to go,’ Margery insisted, raising her voice so that Findlay who was playing in the lounge would hear.

‘What are you talking about me?’ he called out. ‘Where won’t I want to go?’

‘The allotments,’ Margery shouted back.

‘I don’t want to go to the allotments,’ Findlay moaned.

Margery’s eyes skittered triumphantly over Kate as Findlay appeared in the kitchen doorway, his shoulders pushed forward and his arms hanging loose—a posture he often assumed to denote despair.

‘Half an hour, that’s all—I need you to help me dig.’

‘Digging stinks.’

‘Findlay…’

‘I don’t want to go—my suit’ll get wet like it did last time then it won’t fit.’

‘He can stay here with me,’ Margery put in.

‘Yes, yes,’ Findlay started to shout, gripping onto the doorframe and using it to jump up and down.

‘Findlay, calm down—if you stay here there won’t be any TV.’

The last time she’d left Findlay with Margery for an afternoon they had watched a documentary on the Milwaukee cannibal.

Findlay stopped jumping.

‘He can help me with my Tom Jones jigsaw.’

Findlay remained silent, considering this, as Flo started to cry.

‘What’s wrong with her?’ Margery said, irritably.

‘Hungry. Could you heat her up a bottle?’

Margery grunted something Kate chose to ignore as she made her way upstairs, running the rest of the day’s schedule through her head. She couldn’t stay up at the allotments for more than an hour—she had to leave herself time to pick Arthur up from nursery, take him and Findlay swimming then get back to make the tortilla. Pausing at the top of the stairs, she made another mental note to phone Robert and remind him to pick the boys up, before disappearing into the bathroom and swallowing 400 mg of Nurofen.

She took a quick shower in the Philippe Starck shower room they’d remortgaged the house for—along with the Philippe Starck en-suite—before it finally dawned on her that nobody they knew would know the fixtures and fittings were Philippe Starck…unless she told them.

On the way to the bedroom she stuck her head over the banister as the microwave she’d finally capitulated to—which Margery had brought in triumph at Christmas when Flo was barely two months old—let out a resounding bling. The constant bling, bling, bling of the microwave had become one of the signature tunes of Margery’s brief Christmas reign at No. 22 Prendergast Road. The entire Christmas, in fact, had been a nonstop triumph for Margery, who found her usually challenging daughter-in-law captive in a postnatal world where sleep deprivation and hormone imbalance sent her careering between vegetative trances and hysterical ranting. For the first time in their relationship, Margery had been able to control Kate. Robert no longer knew how to and, anyway, needed all the help he could get when he realised that the two weeks’ paternity leave granted him by the government wasn’t nearly long enough to construct the illusion that the Hunter family was a happy, thriving unit.