The hive, p.20
The Hive, page 20
Rachel watched hungrily as her own glass was filled. Rat-arsed was still an option.
“But so far, St. Ambrose has been all responsibility and precious little power over anything. The church, the governors, the parents, the children…It’s been one long power struggle between me and the lot of them, and I don’t even seem to have put up a fight. I tell you, I was never this biddable as a schoolboy.”
“Excusez-moi. Are you or are you not the Man Who Told Bea She Was Cliquey? I’ve only just come out of my swoon.”
“I’m also the man she squashed flat, if you remember, like a very, very small gnat.”
“Well, I guess you’re still learning…” She raised her drink to him.
“Guess I am.” He clinked his against it. “And yet you, apparently, know it all already—the holder of the key that unlocks the mystery of our existence. Who’d a thought it? You, Mrs. Mason, are the philosopher’s stone.”
“Why, headmaster, thank you.” She shimmied off her sopping blazer and draped it over the back of her chair. Apparently she was no longer planning to cut and run. “I bet you say that to all the mums.”
11 A.M. MORNING BREAK
It was about the most manic morning Heather could ever remember. What with cooking lunch for goodness knows how many people and taking on the business of The Birthday. And running around the house from up to down to make it all presentable. Still, she was on top of it all now—“Make a list and tick everything off as you do it,” as Bea always said. She was actually ahead of herself by about fifteen minutes. Which was why she was having a quick shower in the first place. It was supposed to calm her down, because, although everything was organized, her head was still spinning. Indeed, it was still spinning to such an extent that initially she got her shower confused with her tidying up. And when she first felt it, she thought it was a marble. A marble that had got into the wrong place, and needed tidying up. Tsk, she thought to herself. A marble. How on earth did that get there? And only then did it hit her. It couldn’t be a marble. Because it was in her left breast. And anyway, Maisie didn’t even own any marbles. Heather would have bought her some if she’d wanted any, of course, but she’d just never shown the interest.
Immediately, she regretted having a shower at all. Why she had even thought it would calm her down she did not know. Showers were generally a disappointment, in her experience. In the films, people were always in these huge, clean spaces, with hot hot water beating down all over them, cocooned in luxury. The Carpenters’ shower was nothing like that; partly because Guy had installed it himself, and the door was so flimsy it sort of wobbled all the way through, but also the nozzle thingy was all built up with limescale so the not-very-hot water only came out in a limp trickle. Never very satisfactory, even at the best of times.
Her next thought was to blame Georgie. If Georgie hadn’t simplified the menu for her in her normal bossy Georgie-Martin-knows-best way, then Heather would not have had the time to even think about a shower, let alone get in there and find the, you know—oh God, if only it was a marble. Heather’s immediate instinct, when Bea had picked her for the People’s Lunch Ladder-slash-fortieth, was dim sum. Homemade dim sum. Don’t ask her why—it just popped up, a vision of a vast and varied Oriental spread that would have had them all gasping. And if she’d been making dim sum for up to twenty people right now, well, a shower would be right out of the question. But when she just mentioned it, in passing really, Georgie had grabbed her arm like she was about to jump off a railway bridge, really stuck her nails in—or what was left of them—and plain forbidden her. So now, as decreed by Madam, it was roast chickens with herbs, jacket potatoes, two salads—tomato and green—and a bowl of strawberries. Very simple. And very boring. And even after she’d put her signature twist on it, still simple and boring enough for her to think: I’ve got fifteen minutes. I’ll just nip in the shower…
She was out now, wrapped in a towel, sitting on the edge of the bath and staring at herself in the mirror. Oddly enough, she looked exactly the same as she had ten minutes ago. Perhaps she was paler. Actually, now she was white as a sheet. And when she let her hair out of its scrunchie, she noticed that her hand was trembling. Uncontrollably. But that was all. And right there, right then, she resolved two things. 1: She was not going to be bossed around by Georgie anymore. She’d put up with it for thirty years. Enough was enough. It was time to take a stand. And 2: She was going to get through this lunch as if nothing at all was wrong. She had to. She would be brave. For the People’s Lunch Ladder. And for Bea.
She reached for her mascara wand—she would jolly well paint on a happy face—and heard her phone beep. It was a text back from Bea, in response to the “Happy Birthday” one she’d sent earlier: “Thank U lovely! Feeling so spoiled ☺!!!! Good luck with the lunch. Cld you pick up kidz for me 2day? Be with you by 6, 4 sure!! Love u loads!!”
12:30 P.M. LUNCH BREAK
Drinks
Georgie was just parking when she saw Rachel coming round the corner. “Thank God for that,” she threw over her shoulder to Hamish in his car seat. “We will at least have one human being to talk to. But I promise you, baby, it’s in, scoff and out again as fast as we can manage it.” She turned off the ignition and jumped down onto the grass verge.
“Hi, Georgie. Hi, my scrumptious plumptious one.” Rachel was already at the rear car door, detaching Hamish and burying her face in his neck. “Well this is a pleasant surprise. It’s not like you to be arsed to turn out for this sort of thing, is it?”
“Humph. How very dare you? When all one ever does, all day long, is One’s Bit?” Georgie grabbed her bag and locked her car and together they walked down Heather’s little drive. “I thought I’d better just check that menus didn’t get switched at the last minute. That we’re not going to find ourselves at the mercy of Heather Blumenthal.” She mimed a quick vomit into the lavender border. “Anyway, I had to come so that I could pin you down. Enough with the idle chitchat. Now. How did it go last night?”
Then the front door opened, and there was Melissa.
“Hi!” said Rachel, far too loudly, as she threw Hamish back to his mother. “How great that you’re here.”
“Thank heavens you’re here too.” Melissa stepped back to let them through.
“Why do you say it like that? Don’t tell me it’s just The Clique?”
Georgie went straight through while Rachel brushed her feet repeatedly on the doormat. Heather was practically OCD when it came to housework, known to hoover not just before and after social occasions but often while they were in full swing—or as full-swing as they ever got chez Carpenter. Georgie saw it as her moral encumbrance to always pig things up a bit round there whenever she got the chance. It felt that little bit healthier for all concerned.
“Quite the reverse.” Melissa dropped her voice as they headed back towards the kitchen. “No clique at all. It really is the People’s Lunch, or will be if we can only get a few more people…”
“Oh yeah, course,” Georgie stopped and said over her shoulder. “They’ve all gone on their stupid sodding spa day.”
“Is that where they are?” Melissa leaned forward and shut the kitchen door quickly before Georgie could get through it. “And you knew?” Melissa sounded surprised.
“Oh yes. They only invited me along, that’s all. Can you believe it? I mean how rude do I have to be to the bloody woman? Am I never to be left alone? Apparently not. It’s all ‘Geor-gie’”—her Sharon-slash-Jasmine voice sounded exactly the same as her Katie Price voice, she realized, but so what? She was a busy woman, it would just have to do—“‘we’re going on a spa day for Bea’s fortieth. Treatments in the morning and bubbly in the Jacuzzi. Wanna come?’ I mean, I ask you…The sheer bloody cheek of it. Excuse me, but do I look like I’d want to go on a spa day?” She spat the phrase with contempt. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so insulted in my—”
She stopped. Rachel, her eyes wide, her hands on her face, had obviously got there before her.
“Oh…shit.”
“You didn’t tell Heather they were going out for the day? Did you not know she was planning this big party?” Melissa didn’t seem at all judgmental, just genuinely baffled at the turn of events. Still, Georgie thought it safer to head straight for the defensive.
“Well, now I think of it, there might have been a bit of prattling on…”
“Rachel?”
“Um, well, I think she might’ve mentioned it…”
“But look, Melissa, thing is, I’ve known her for donkey’s years, and there’s always been the prattling on. You can’t listen to all of it, else you’d go stark staring…”
“You do need a sort of filter…” explained Rachel.
“Yeah, a filter. Like on your computer. Against, you know, whatchamacallit…”
“Spam,” finished Rachel.
“That’s it.” Georgie nodded. “Exactly. Heather does talk a lot of spam…”
They were all three huddled together now, at the bottom of Heather’s stairs. It had all the hallmarks of a medical briefing in a hospital corridor: the doctor, the loved ones, the horribly wounded patient behind the closed door.
“I got here a bit early,” Melissa whispered, the handle still firmly in her grip. “We just had time to take down the banners and the balloons and hide the cake. I just don’t see how the misunderstanding could have happened. How can someone throw a birthday party by mistake? Heather is trying to be brave, but she does seem to be—well—quite unnaturally upset about it all. Almost traumatized. Could there be something else bothering her, do you know?”
“Nah. This is just normal. Believe me, unnaturally upset is her default position. Get used to it. Heather is a teacup, life is a storm.”
“I see. A teacup,” repeated Melissa, “which talks spam.”
“Precisely.” Georgie always appreciated it when people got her—not everyone did. That was a very nice little summing up indeed. She was starting to like the cut of this Melissa’s jib.
“OK.” Melissa finally opened the door, cocked her head in the direction of the kitchen. “You can go through now.”
Main Course
Free-range corn-fed chicken roasted with garlic and thyme, jacket potatoes, green and red salads
Preparation time: almost nothing. Worst luck
“I was asked, of course…” Clover was clutching her plate to her large chest as they queued for the buffet in Heather’s dining room, “but Damian was seeing the ed psych this morning, and you know how long you have to wait to get a slot.”
Nope, thought Rachel.
“And anyway, the children just have to come first. That’s my philosophy. So I said to Bea and the girls”—here Clover raised her voice significantly, spraying the sound around, pressure-hosing it into all ears—“‘THAT’S SO SWEET OF YOU TO INCLUDE ME IN BEA’S BIRTHDAY SPA TREAT BUT VERY SADLY I AM GOING TO HAVE TO TURN DOWN YOUR KIND INVITATION.’”
Rachel checked the room. Well done. It seems everyone heard that in here. And the kitchen. And probably the other end of the High Street.
“And then of course serves me right I had the most frustrating morning because Damian suddenly just like that went down with this head cold that’s going around. I mean sod’s law it had to be a head cold. Chop his leg off and he can do a page of level five maths blindfold, but with a head cold, well, just not himself. How’s Poppy doing at maths?”
“Fine, I think. I mean, I haven’t actually chopped her leg off yet.” Rachel slapped her own wrist, raised her eyes ceilingwards. “Been that busy…”
Clover blustered on. Almost as if she wasn’t even listening. Almost as if she didn’t actually care about Poppy’s maths, or her leg.
“And I did want it official, on a bit of paper, that he is exceptional because I think it just helps when you’re dealing with schools…”
Rachel ducked out of the queue again. She’d rather starve to death than get stuck eating with that old baggage. She wandered past the lounge—like the dining room, too crowded to go into. Hamish and a few other toddlers were in the sunroom on the back, curled up in front of a DVD. The whole house was suddenly heaving. Bizarre as it may seem, Heather, of all people, appeared to have pulled off a significant social success. Rachel poked her head into the kitchen, where the hostess-with-the-mostest was standing alone at the sink, vacant, ashen, like a zombie, and pulled it out again, irritated.
She caught sight of Georgie through the sliding doors, out on the patio, cigarette in hand: a forlorn sight, smoking on her own like that—a lone swan on a winter’s day, pining for its mate. Its Benson & Hedges–smoking mate. She misses Jo, thought Rachel with a tug. We all do, in our various ways. Certainly nothing’s the same without her. Rachel slid open the door and slipped out into the bleak air.
“Coming to join me?”
“Only if you can guarantee a Clover-free environment.”
“I can. She’s an antismoking nutter.”
“Give us one, then, to ward off the evil.” She bent into the flame as Georgie lit it for her. “How’s Jo doing? She does know we’re thinking about her, doesn’t she?”
“Yeah. She just can’t face anyone at the moment. I’m still picking the boys up for her every morning, which means I can keep an eye. I think it’s hell; how can it not be? But she’s back at work—she had to—and they’ve given her day shifts now, which is something.”
“Is she getting any help?”
Georgie flicked her ash in the flower bed. “Your Melissa. She’s going round three evenings a week, apparently. Counseling all of them, for nothing. Jo says she’s just been completely amazing. And it’s all been cooked up by your headmaster.”
Rachel felt a flush of pleasure. “He’s not my headmaster.”
“Really?” Georgie bent down while she stubbed her cigarette out on the side of a plastic urn. “Isn’t he?” She pulled herself up to her below-average height and pinned Rachel down with her clear blue eyes. “Come on. Cough up. What happened last night?” She leaned in with a naughty, Year 7 sort of grin. “Didja snog him?”
“Oh, Georgie…”
“Hiiiiiii! Mind if I join you?”
“Oh. Hello, Bubba. Course not.”
“Sorry. Smokers only,” butted in Georgie. “You don’t smoke.”
“I do, actually—on the sly. And you can’t get near the food in there, so I need something to stave off the after-workout appetite. Funny. I wasn’t even going to come. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m just determined to lower the old profile this term, duck right down beneath les parapets. And to be honest I was starting to wonder if anyone even liked me. I know, so silly, I don’t mean my really lovely proper friends like you two—just, you know, the absolutely teeming masses, but then Melissa called and said she really needed me here ’cause nobody had turned up, and of course I dropped everything—well, I didn’t really have anything to drop at that actual, precise moment but I would’ve anyway ’cause I just adore Melissa, I don’t know if you know her at all but she is quite fabulous, I am totally en-slaved—and anyway I was just so touched. They need me, I thought, they like me. I’ve got nothing on until I take Milo to the ed psych and that’s not till two-thirty. Anyway, so I get here and you can barely get in Heather’s little door. Sweet, these houses, aren’t they? So snug. I’ve never been in one before.”
Dessert
Strawberries doused in balsamic vinegar and tossed in passion-fruit purée; double cream with crème de menthe
Preparation time: a bit of fiddling about with the purée, thank goodness, so that stretched it out a bit and delayed the inevitable
The queue for dessert was snaking out of the dining room, down the hall and up to the front door. Sod that for a lark, thought Georgie. “Sorry, excuse me, thanks, if I can just get through…” She traveled up it, sideways. This was her paramedic-in-a-crowd act: polite, professional, firm, it worked every time. They all pressed to one side to let her pass and within seconds she was at the table, piling fruit and cream into a bowl and heaping chocolates onto a plate. Why did anyone ever stand in line? It was a good question to which she had never found a satisfactory answer. She sighed. The human psyche was a wondrous thing, and not without its mysteries.
She darted up the stairs, kicked open the door to the spare room and slammed it behind her. Scoffing in front of everyone wasn’t quite on, even she could see that. This would do nicely—might even have a nap straight after. She had just kicked off her shoes and curled up on the bed when the door burst open again.
“Oh. Thank God. It’s only you. Not the pudding police.”
“No,” said Rachel, coming in. “But I’ve half a mind to call them. Budge up.” She kicked off her shoes and sighed as she sank onto the bed. “Can you remind me, in my second incarnation, to come back as an educational psychologist?”
“I’ll make a note.” She still clutched her bowl in tight. “You’re not actually expecting me to share any, I hope?”
“Aw, go on.” Rachel laid her head on Georgie’s shoulder. “I’ll tell you everything about last night…”
“Hang on, I said I was interested, not sharing-my-pudding interested…” She reluctantly held out the bowl. “Come on then: snog or no snog?”
“Of course no snog. Really, George…”
Georgie wrenched it back again. “No snog, no strawberry.” She took a mouthful and spat it out in horror. “What the hell has she done to this? That woman’s got cooking Tourette’s.”
“Honestly. It’s nothing. We just had to have this dinner, that’s all. And now we’re working on this pain-in-the-neck time line that he’s taking a bit too seriously. But he did walk me home. And it was raining, and we sort of huddled under his umbrella.”
“She just can’t look at a nice simple ingredient and not bugger about with it. This isn’t a recipe, it’s an act of violence. Why does she always have to try and turn everything into something it isn’t?”
