‘That’s no surprise. Look at it this way. Many women would kill to be in that position. Actually, I want to whisk you off to Claire Manor for a couple of days’ pampering. The treat’s on me, so you’ll have to listen to my problems and you might forget yours.’
I reached over and touched her elbow. ‘You are lovely. It would be…’ Then I heard myself say, ‘But it’s a bit soon for me to leave the twins. I don’t think I could do it to them.’
Steel crept into Gisela’s limpid, sympathetic gaze. Yes, you can, Minty.’
I tried another, perfectly truthful, tack: ‘I can’t afford it, Gisela.’
‘I’ve already said I’m paying.’
‘I can’t take any more time off work, not one second. Paradox are waiting for an excuse to offload me now that I’m a liability.’
‘Is that true?’
I thought of Chris Sharp and his ambitions. ‘I think so. Or, rather, I don’t wish to give them an opportunity to prove it.’
‘Of course. I see that absolutely. We’ll go at a weekend.’
As the car slid to a halt in front of the restaurant, she turned to me. ‘You’re looking bad, Minty. Pale and sad. That isn’t good for Paradox. You must give yourself two days off. It’s the least you can do.’ She took my hand and patted it. Deal?’
‘I’ll have to see if Eve can cover, and all that. I can’t just say yes like…’ Like the old days.
There was a tiny flicker of impatience. ‘Well, I won’t take no for an answer.’
That night when I got ready for bed, I forced myself to conduct a mirror session. The eyes and hair it reflected lacked lustre. Most of all, my eyes bothered me. They were lifeless.
19
I planned my assault on Barry carefully. The La Hacienda nightclub was two flights of steps underground and sparing on lights. Barry had taken Chris, Deb, Gabrielle, Syriol and me there to celebrate the green light for Pointe of Departure. Chris and Deb lounged on a sofa and Syriol was dancing solo in the gloom on a small square of dance-floor. Iggy Pop was deafening. Barry sucked at a bottle of Bacardi Breezer (half sugar).
I took a swig of tequila and the salt burnt my lips. ‘Barry,’ I shouted, ‘can I leave early a week on Friday? There’s no meeting or anything – I’ve checked.’
He removed the bottle from his mouth and shouted back, ‘Why?’
I edged closer and put my lips to his ear, hoping he wouldn’t get the wrong idea. ‘Weekend away.’
‘Must you?’ he yelled.
I glanced round. The strobe light on the dance-floor had turned Syriol a peculiar colour. On an adjacent sofa, a couple were eating each other. Deb was gazing into Chris’s eyes, but his were fixed on Syriol. The gloom and the noise were uncomfortable and I felt old.
‘Yes I must,’ I said. ‘But I’ll be back first thing on Monday morning for the meeting with Ed.’
‘Mind you are,’ he said. ‘We have to keep pushing to show that we mean business.’
Eve was also agreeable. She was briefed and bribed with double pay, the meals planned. I rang Paige and begged her to act as back-up. Still smarting from our previous conversation, she was not forthcoming. ‘Only in an emergency,’ she said. ‘Jackson has maths coaching on Saturday mornings, and Lara has ballet all day. Sunday we’re at my mother’s.’
The edifice of care was thus constructed. No expedition to the moon could have been planned in more detaiclass="underline" meals, clothes, money. No contingencies could have been so closely considered.
I explained to the twins that I was going away for two days and two nights to a place where they made you pretty, and my promise to take them to see the dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum when I returned was written in blood.
But I was making a bad fist of it. Lucas jumped up and down on the spot. ‘Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me!’
Patiently, I explained that Eve would look after them, and it was not for long. I listened to myself spell out – soothing and placatory – that I would be away Friday and Saturday and be back to kiss them goodnight on Sunday.
‘But you’re pretty already, Mummy.’ Felix reached for Blanky.
He had succeeded in pricking my conscience and I said, more crossly than I intended, ‘I need a little rest, Felix. It’s hard work looking after you two. Did you know that?’
Felix and Lucas took a simultaneous step back, exchanged some form of extra-terrestrial communication and, without a word, filed out of the room.
‘Twins,’ I called, ‘please come back.’
They climbed the stairs, still ominously silent, and went into their bedroom. The door banged. An object was dragged across the floor and thumped against it. I went up to investigate. ‘Felix, let me in! Lucas!’ I rattled at the door. No answer.
I dropped to one knee, applied an eye to the keyhole and saw the back of the painted chair wedged against the door. ‘Felix, Lucas…’ I wished I sounded more certain, more like a parent in control.
For all the response I got, I might as well have been in outer space. The twins were out of sight but there were cautious flurries of movement. The carpet pile pressed into my knee and my toes cramped, as they always did in that position.
In that position I was a fool. In that position the twins had the upper hand.
As I got to my feet, a piece of paper shot under the door: ‘Go away, Mumy’ in green crayon.
I leant against the wall, and crumpled slowly, wearily, to a sitting position. The misspelt ‘Mumy’ was clear, accusatory and reproaching. It cut like a knife.
This was usually the moment when I demanded, ‘Nathan, will you please sort this one out. The twins are naughty/revolting/obstinate/crying…’ Looking back, I had issued the challenge to him more often than I cared to admit now. And, imperfectly concealing his pleasure at my SOS for a firefighter, Nathan would slouch into the fray: ‘You all need your heads knocking together. Just be firm.’ He had been fond of saying ‘Take no nonsense. Let them know who’s leader of the pack.’ Occasionally, I teased him for being pompous and – sometimes – I cried because I couldn’t get the hang of family life. Here was the continuing conundrum. How on earth had an intelligent, capable woman like me got into such a muddle?
I looked up, fully expecting to hear Nathan’s tread on the stairs, the hand on my shoulder, his voice in my ear. Then I heard myself murmur aloud, ‘Nathan will never have really grey hair.’
But all that lay in the past.
Go away, Mumy.
At Claire Manor, I resorted to a sleeping pill and woke in an unfamiliar bed artfully draped in muslin à la Polonaise. Across the room, the curtains fell expensively to the floor and the cushion on the chair sported antique-style tassels.
It was the kind of room that was featured in magazines. It exuded discreet affluence and comfort, an exemplar of the bargain struck between fantasy and reality. No one could, or would, ever live in it.
Luxuriously and beautifully run as it was, Claire Manor was not an innocent place. In fact, its raison d’être was knowingness. In the bathrooms there was a battery of potions and creams, which guests were invited to secrete in their luggage. If we used them, they wooed enticingly, dewy skin and renewed collagen were ours. They posed an interesting dilemma. There was no chance that they could deliver what they promised, but if the situation was left to Nature there was absolutely no chance of achieving them either. A selection of books ranged on a shelf – The Insightful Soul, Ten Steps to a Beautiful Body, Yoga for the Spirit and Managing Ourselves - added to the cool, considered conspiracy.
Across the corridor, which was covered with deep-pile carpet, Gisela occupied a room identical to mine – except that it was larger, had a complimentary fruit bowl and the bathroom was draped with more towels.