‘I take it you’re not going either?’ I asked Peggy, wrapping my dressing gown firmly round my legs. It wasn’t really her thing. Peggy had an aversion to establishment socials, preferring instead her usual corner at the Rose and Crown, where she played backgammon with her cronies.

‘Yes, I thought I would, actually. Tom was sent a double ticket. I might go with him.’

I was astonished. ‘Really? Golly. Square it with Angie first, don’t you think?’

‘No, I didn’t think I would,’ she said calmly, draining her glass. ‘Tom quite wants the surprise element.’

‘Right,’ I said, boggling. Quite bold of Tom to show his face, and even more bold of Peggy to accompany him. ‘That’s very much Angie’s fiefdom,’ I told her nervously. ‘She’ll be queen bee, top table.’

Peggy shrugged. ‘As Tom was for years. And all his friends will be there and he hasn’t seen them for ages. His girls will be going too, don’t forget. They’d love to see him. I’ve talked to Clarissa about it.’

‘Have you? Isn’t she away at school?’

‘Yes, but I’ve got her mobile number. She thinks it’s a good idea.’ She gave me a steady, impenetrable look I couldn’t fathom. ‘Anyway, we’ll see. Haven’t decided yet. Night, Poppy.’ She got briskly to her feet and blew me a kiss. Peggy didn’t do embraces. Didn’t go in for much bodily contact at all, come to think of it. ‘And well done you.’ She smiled down at me. ‘Good decision. Cleaning that oven.’

I smiled. ‘Thanks.’

Peggy left the same way she’d arrived, via the back door. I got to my feet and stood in the open doorway, watching her go down the garden path, from where she’d disappear through the gate, then into the field and around to the front. Suddenly it occurred to me that she might not have run into Tom in town. She might have arranged to meet him, to talk to him. Persuade him to come to the ball, knowing he’d been sent a ticket. For Angie’s sake. She might, in fact, be working some sort of magic. Now that Tatiana had gone, and now that Angie appeared to be softening slightly, was less bitter. Now that both husband and wife had had time apart to think, she might be judging the time was right. Because Peggy was like that. A good judge. Or … was I endowing her with powers she didn’t have? Perceptions that were beyond her? I didn’t think so somehow. Odd, wasn’t it, how some people had that sage-like quality. Did it come with age, I wondered? Or had it always been there? As Peggy’s mauve velvet coat disappeared in a flurry through the garden gate it reminded me of something. I couldn’t think what. Ah yes, an illustration in one of Clemmie’s books. Merlin.

I stood in the open doorway a long time after she’d gone. The ewes grazed quietly now without Shameless, and I loved the way the enormous chestnut tree spread its boughs over them. In summer the huge dark leaves hung like a protective swirling skirt and although they were almost bare now, the branches still seemed to offer shelter. The late climbing rose by the door brushed my cheek, its scent redolent of warmer days, and drizzle dampened my face. In the certain knowledge that my fringe was beyond redemption, I let it fall: let it frizz. I realized, with a start, that I was quite content. Was, in fact, relishing being alone. I smiled up at the chestnut tree and was about to go inside when, suddenly, the French windows next door flew open. Frankie shot her head round.

‘Oh, thank God you’re there. I thought I heard you. We need you right now, Poppy. Jennie has gone completely mental. Can I come in?’

Before I could reply she’d leaped the little wall that divided our gardens and nipped inside my kitchen anyway. From her own house I could hear the sound of voices raised in anger. Then an outraged scream, shouting, and the sound of things being thrown. Something smashed against our party wall. I jumped, clutching Frankie’s wrist.

‘Jesus. What’s going on?’

‘Jennie, right, has completely lost it,’ she told me breathlessly as we listened. ‘She’s convinced it’s not my test, which it bloody isn’t, and she knows it’s not yours or Peggy’s or Angie’s, or even by immaculate conception Mrs B’s, so she’s decided the only logical conclusion is it’s Dad’s. That he’s having an affair, brought someone back here, and she dropped it in the basket.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ I gasped, incredulous.

‘I know, bonkers; but I told you, she’s lost the plot.’

We listened, clutching each other, as Jennie, at full volume, which we knew to be loud enough to penetrate ancient walls, told Dan exactly what she thought of him, followed by what sounded like the toaster being flung across the room. Dan yelped in pain.

‘Shit – you bitch – my ankle!’

‘Shall I go in?’ I breathed.

‘Oh yes, please,’ begged Frankie tearfully. ‘She’s going to kill him, I know she is. I honestly think she might – Oh!’

No doubt also believing this to be true, Dan was even now leaping the garden wall. The next thing we knew, he was in my kitchen, cowering shamelessly behind his neighbour and his daughter, even going so far as to clutch my dressing-gown cord. His wife, however, was only moments behind him: in very hot pursuit, leaping the wall and brandishing a golf club.

‘Jennie, no!’ I screamed, springing forward to seize her wrist as she charged in brandishing the club. As the five iron flailed in the air Mrs Tiger Woods sprang to mind.

‘Let go of me! LET GO OF ME!’ she roared.

‘No, Jennie!’ I flung her arm to the left with a monumental effort, so much so that the club flew from her hand. She cast mad, wistful eyes after it as it hit a framed poster from the Royal Academy on the wall, smashing it. The sound of breaking glass did nothing to deter her, though; in fact it seemed to galvanize her. Her eyes came back to her prey, who was shrinking back down the kitchen, white-faced.

‘BASTARD!’ she screamed. As Dan turned and fled she pushed me out of the way, but as she ran past I managed to swing and grab her jumper. I held on tight as Frankie, with great resourcefulness, rugby-tackled her ankles and brought her down. A terrific struggle ensued, with Dan, I noticed, not helping in the least; he watched, petrified, peeping out from behind the doorway into the hall, as Frankie and I pinned his wife to the floor.

‘Let me up! LET ME UP!’ she insisted hotly.

Relenting only a fraction, we tentatively allowed her to at least struggle to a sitting position against the wall, where we crouched beside her like jailers, Frankie holding tight to one arm, me to the other.

‘In my bed,’ she was spluttering, ‘some tart, while my children slept!’

‘Jennie, don’t be ridiculous!’ I yelled. ‘You’re out of your mind!’

‘You’ve gone properly weird,’ gasped Frankie.

‘He wouldn’t, Jennie, he just wouldn’t!’ I urged. Dan shook his head vehemently, in helpless agreement, but knowing better, perhaps, than to utter. Out of the corner of my eye I could see my other neighbour, Mrs Harper, at the far end of her back garden, peering around the pyracantha on the party wall, possibly even standing on a flower pot.

‘Oh yes, he would!’ Jennie seethed, mad eyes leaping out of their sockets, her face crimson with rage. ‘That’s just it, he bloody would! He is not the man you think he is, Poppy, not harmless lovable Dan, can’t help getting into scrapes, poor lamb. He would do that and I know he did it because I found a black lacy bra UNDER MY BED!’

‘It’s mine!’ wailed Frankie, distressed. ‘I told you it’s new. I tried it on in your room because you’ve got the best mirror – I must have left it there!’

‘You lie!’ she spat, her head spinning round to her daughter like something out of The Exorcist. ‘I wash your underwear constantly, young lady, and you possess nothing of that nature. You lie to protect him! You both lie!’

‘No!’ Frankie cried, tears springing to her eyes as, at that moment, her younger brother and sister materialized in their back garden. Jamie and Hannah were even now climbing over the garden wall in their pyjamas. Jamie helped Hannah down. They crept, terrified, into my kitchen. If anything would stop my hugely maternal friend in her tracks, it was this: the sight of her two frightened, vulnerable children, little faces bewildered, Hannah still clutching her teddy, dragged from their beds by the screaming. But Jennie was too far gone. Her tether, which, as we know, some would dispute her ever having been in possession of, had well and truly snapped. Despite her jailers she struggled to her feet and balled her fists.

‘WELL, WHOSE IS IT, THEN?’ she bellowed as we held her arms tight, her face a strange purple colour. ‘The sodding test? If it’s not yours, and it’s not your father’s and it’s not Poppy’s or Peggy’s or Angie’s, WHO THE HELL DOES IT BELONG TO?’ she screamed.

There was a silence. It seemed to me the entire village held its collective breath.

‘It’s mine,’ came a voice to our left.

We swung around as one. Twelve-year-old Jamie, not thirteen until the winter, in his M&S jim-jams, getting taller by the minute but still very much snub-nosed and freckled, still very much a child, gazed back at us. Two spots of colour were high in his cheeks and I saw him swallow. A gasp went up from the assembled company. Jennie, still in a half nelson of sorts, still in some sort of custody, went limp in our hands. She let out an anguished cry, the sound of an animal in pain. Then she bowed her head and slipped slowly down the wall on her bottom, to the floor.




28

‘Yours?’ spluttered Frankie, since their mother seemed incapable of speech.

‘Yes, it’s mine. OK?’

Jennie moaned in agony again, but not so piercingly this time: it was more the cry of a defeated fighter at the very end of their strength, very much on the ropes. Dan, however, seemed imbued with a new kind of strength. He hot-footed it from one end of the kitchen to the other, and since he was no longer in imminent danger of losing his own life, he stepped over his prostrate wife to endanger his son’s. He towered over Jamie.

‘You got someone pregnant?’ he hissed, aghast.

‘No, of course not. I was testing Leila, cos I thought she might be. I think she is.’

A profound silence followed this announcement. No eyes strayed from the small boy in checked pyjamas.

‘Leila?’ his mother finally whispered, dumbfounded.

‘Yes. She was getting all fat and bosomy, like you did with Hannah, and anyway I saw her doing it with another dog. So when I saw her having a wee in the garden, I took your test and stuck it in the puddle. I had to run back upstairs to check the instructions on the packet, and then I just chucked it in the bin. I was going to tell you, only I knew how cross you’d be with her.’ His face was very pale now under his freckles.

His mother shut her eyes. ‘Oh, thank the Lord,’ she breathed. ‘Thank the Lord.’

‘You’re pleased?’ Jamie blinked. ‘I thought you’d be, like, mental. Get her to have an abortion or something.’

‘Oh, I might still do that, but – Oh no, I am so pleased, darling!’ Jennie struggled to her feet and staggered across the kitchen to take her astonished son’s face in both hands. She kissed his forehead with a resounding smack, then both his cheeks equally roundly. ‘So so pleased it’s not your father, but even more relieved it’s not you!’

‘Me!’ he gasped, but she’d already squashed him in a face-altering embrace to her breast; so much so that his mouth became a figure of eight, denying speech.

Dan, meanwhile, once his initial relief had passed, was rapidly engaged in regarding his wife with contempt. He folded his arms in an attitude of haughty disdain. His lip curled. He hadn’t stalked off, mind, as some husbands might, in high dudgeon; had remained stoically by his wife’s side. Whatever else one said about Dan, he saw these things through. But then again, such moments of lofty moral altitude were few and far between in his married life; he wouldn’t want to miss out on them, would he? Who knows how long it might be until another came along?