Penny Smith - Summer Holiday

‘Oh, sorry. I was going to phone you. Got sidetracked by a bunch of past-their-sell-by-date flowers. Is there anything sadder than a wilting rose?’

‘Erm. A child with its leg blown off by a landmine?’

‘Oh, make me sound callous, why don’t you? I meant is there a flower sadder than a wilting rose?’

‘A depressed daffodil? A weeping willow? A lethargic lily? A suicidal scarlet pimpernel?’

‘Oh, enough of the aliteration!’ laughed Miranda. ‘And is there truly a scarlet pimpernel? I thought it was an eighteenth-century spy.’

‘That too.’

‘Let me look at my diary. I’m flicking through the pages as we speak. I’m almost sure I haven’t got anything on … fnaw, fnaw …’

‘Naked at four thirty of a Monday afternoon, eh? Who have you got round there, you saucy minx?’ asked Amanda, in a raunchy voice.

‘Ha. No one. But remind me to tell you of a rather naughty prospect which may be coming up. Literally. On Wednesday. Now. Diary. Here it is.’

‘No. You can’t do that. Tell me about the naughty prospect first.’

‘Shan’t. I’ll check my diary, and if I’m seeing you tonight, I’ll give you all the gory details later. And here we are. Nope. Totally free for – oh, look – the rest of my life. That is shabby. Really. Nothing in the diary apart from tea with Mother, and some dreary dinner party at Sally Thurston’s next week.’

‘Why do you say yes?’

‘Habit. She means well. She’s kind.’

‘Kind of boring, you mean,’ said Amanda.

‘You’re right. How do I get out of it, though, when I’m not doing anything else?’

‘Start doing things.’

‘Okay. You can give me this lecture later. What time tonight?’

‘It starts at seven thirty or seven forty-five. How about we meet at six thirty in the restauranty bit of the bar downstairs?’

‘Fine. Are we having dinner or just a vat of wine?’

‘Maybe a light nibble. And you can tell me exactly what kind of light nibbling you’ve been up to.’

The theatre was rammed with people drinking bottles of beer and eating olives. ‘That’s how you can tell we’re in Kensington and Chelsea,’ said Amanda. ‘If we were in Streatham we’d be drinking full-fat Coke with a hot dog.’

‘And in Camden, we’d be having a line of coke and an energy bar,’ said Miranda. ‘It’s all healthy crack chic there now.’

‘It’s not like when we were young, is it?’ Amanda put on an old-crone voice. ‘When Camden was all fields and we had to walk three miles to school.’

‘And you’d get seventeen gobstoppers for a penny and drink dandelion and burdock floats from a passing milkmaid,’ finished Miranda.

‘Oh, yes, I remember it well. Actually, I do remember when Notting Hill was a dodgy area. Now it’s full of bankers and sleek women with fantastic teeth and shiny hair … because they’re worth it.’ Amanda did the L’Oréal advert voice.

‘That’s why I moved there. I fit right in.’

‘Well, you are a yummy mummy, so I actually think that, despite your protestations, you do fit in.’

‘And you’re a yummy mummy, too, so don’t come the raw prawn with me, matey. How are the offspring?’ asked Miranda, scoffing a pickled garlic clove and a piece of cheese.

‘I’ve got serious empty-nest syndrome. It’s okay when I’m at work, but when Peter’s not around, I rattle about in that big house looking for something to do. No feeding of the five thousand. No unloading the dishwasher every night. No sewing on name tags or helping with homework. I miss them, don’t you?’

‘Well, I miss Jack a lot because I haven’t seen him for so bloody long, but Lucy’s still around. A mouthpiece for Nigel half the time, but that’s fine.’

‘Anyway. Enough of that,’ said Amanda, draining her gin and tonic noisily. ‘I’m going to get another of these and then you’re going to fill me in about your date.’

Miranda always used to tell her children to stop wishing their life away when they said they wanted it to hurry up and be their birthday, but she had secretly wished away the days until Wednesday, and finally it had arrived. And even more secretly, as she stretched and wriggled in the cotton sheets and thought about getting up, she was wishing it was this evening. It was ridiculous – she had umpteen things to do, like finding a proper job (Amanda had suggested someone she could call about PR work), going to the bank to see exactly what amount of money she had to spend, and sorting out a man to fix the leak in the shower room.

It was strange how she had started to get calls on her mobile about advice on debt. How did they know? She cleansed her face and smothered on hydrating cream while phoning a plumber recommended by Lydia – she assumed Lucy had not phoned her the other night since there’d been no angry call.

Then she did what she had told her children never to do: she went shopping, knowing that there might not be enough money in the bank to cover it. But, she reasoned, the money would be there in about nine months when the scheme she had invested in came to fruition. And it was looking like 10 to 15 per cent interest at the moment, possibly even higher, according to Lucy. By two o’clock, she was practically dead on her feet, and some unkind mirrors with nasty overhead lighting had made her dread the evening ahead. She could only pray he had early-onset cataracts.

She wondered if Alex was running round his camper van right now, trying things on, polishing his natty dreads – if that was what you did with them – buffing up his feet.

Bugger this for a game of soldiers, she thought, as her breasts almost burst the seams on a red shirt, and went for a sit-down and a bowl of soup at a communal deli – she was definitely the fattest person there. A text pinged through. Lucy: still on the trail of the bloody books. She would have liked to tell Nigel to do his own dirty work, but that would involve a tetchy conversation with him. Not that it would start tetchy …

It was strange to reconcile the toady countenance he now had with the handsome young man he had been when she married him. On really bad days he looked like a bilberry, all swollen and purply. He would be easy to draw in a life class, just a series of massive circles. His attractiveness in every way had disappeared in direct proportion to his wealth. Peculiar how some women out there were prepared to allow such an abundance of flesh to land on them in the bedroom in return for a few baubles. At least she had had an excuse: youth, silliness and lack of ambition. Other men had been available, but she felt she had been unduly influenced by the approbation of her father. Yes, she’d blame it on him.

The leaves on the lime and plane trees lining the roads were barely moving in the sultry weather. Miranda felt hot and leaden as she walked back to the house empty-handed, debating what to eat so that she didn’t look too bloated later. At least it was the sort of day when she didn’t want to eat chocolate – it melted so quickly it reminded her of poo.

Earlier that day, a little orange Volkswagen camper van made its way towards Cirencester, Alex was feeling clammy. His father had insisted he go to see him that morning on a matter of some importance, and Alex assumed it was about his mother, who was periodically threatening to end it all.

He drove up to the gates and got out to tap in the day’s code on the pad. It was his favourite time of year for the garden in front of the house. It was vast, but sectioned off into smaller areas, including a walled garden where hollyhocks and ornamental thistles poked above lamb’s ears and lady’s mantle. By summer, it would be a riot of colour, but now everything was quietly budding.