Pillow Talk

Petra is starting to feel tired and irritable. I just want a normal cup of tea and a sensible chat.

‘Yoo-hoo!’ It’s Tinks, suddenly appearing from inside the house.

‘I thought you’d buggered off!’ Melinda says and the two women fall about laughing.

Petra bites her lip, not sure if she’d like to swear, cry or just yell.

‘I have to go, Mum,’ she says. ‘Rob has tickets for – a thing.’

‘You’ve only just arrived,’ her mother protests.

‘Actually, I arrived two hours ago,’ Petra says, ‘but you weren’t here.’

‘Oh come now, darling,’ her mother says abruptly, ‘you can hardly blame me for going for a stroll on a beautiful day like today. It’s April! Flip-flop time! Goodness me, you Londoners, you youngsters, you’re always in an insane rush, obsessing with schedules and timetables. Anyway, you can’t go just yet, I need to collect some eggs for you.’

As Petra headed home, with the eggs and also the milk that her mother would not allow in her fridge, she thought about the period when her mother was slightly more staid and her father a little less dowdy. She must have been about eight or nine. But what was clearer than recollections of how they looked at that stage, what was more vivid than memories of family outings to the zoo back then, or those supper-times with Ambrosia Creamed Rice for pudding, was that this was precisely the period when Petra had first started sleepwalking.

Chapter Eight

Petra had made much of not going into work the following day. She curled up under the duvet in Rob’s bed that Monday morning and tried to entice him to stay with her.

‘Play hooky?’ she asked playfully.

‘Why?’ he said.

‘Don’t go into work,’ she said.

‘Why not?’ he said.

‘Stay right here and play with me!’ Petra said. Rob hadn’t asked why she wasn’t going into work. ‘I feel a bit low,’ she told him, as if he had, ‘after the weekend. My parents. You know. It’s difficult.’ Rob didn’t ask why specifically.

He sat on the edge of his bed and traced the pinky beige aureole of her nipple thoughtfully, as if weighing up the merits and consequences of her offer to stay at home, but then he tweaked her nose between his fingers and slapped her buttocks as if she was a puppy. ‘I have to go to work,’ he told her, ‘and you should too. It’s not healthy to play hooky.’ And with that, he swept back the duvet and flicked cold water at Petra from the glass beside the bed. She giggled and shrieked and writhed about the bed.

‘I’m working late tonight,’ Rob told her, ignoring her nakedness which quite hurt her feelings. ‘And I’m away overnight tomorrow. I’ll give you a call later in the week.’

‘It’s your birthday on Friday,’ Petra said.

‘Whoopee doo,’ said Rob.

‘You can’t wake up alone on your birthday,’ Petra said, though she remembered she’d done precisely that last December.

‘You girls and bloody birthdays,’ Rob said under his breath, procrastinating over which tie to wear.

‘You realize you need never come back to an empty bed after a long hard day’s work,’ Petra said, making much of her coy expression though her heart was thudding as she let slip what was on the tip of her tongue. ‘That is – if we lived together.’

Rob looked at her blankly. ‘Those are the times when I need my space the most,’ he said.

She cringed, not at the bluntness of his response but at what suddenly seemed the misfired audacity of her proposal. She sat herself up and fiddled with winding her watch. Rob’s expression softened. ‘We’ll go out Friday night and you can celebrate my birthday for me in whichever way you choose,’ he said. He ran her hair through his fingers. ‘It’s a bit soon, for me, to be talking about cohabiting and whatever.’

Petra nodded. ‘Sorry,’ she said.

‘You’ve got keys, haven’t you – remember to double-lock when you go.’

Petra cursed modern technology for its failings. Emails and text messaging and phone calls were all very well for shrinking the world in an amicable web of global communication but the truth was that her oldest, closest friend lived abroad and though the phone was marvellous in making a mockery of vast oceans and time zones, what Petra wanted most just then was simply a cappuccino in Lucy’s actual company. Feeling a little sorry for herself, she made one from the coffee machine in Rob’s kitchen. Sitting at his breakfast bar, calculating the time differences with Hong Kong, she decided to send a help!

text message. If she was lucky, Lucy would be back from the school run.

She waited; toyed with the idea of phoning too but decided against it – her mobile phone bill was large enough and realistically this wasn’t an emergency, it was just her feeling a little down. She finished her coffee. Her phone remained blank. She took a shower. Still there was no reply. There wasn’t anything worth watching on daytime TV. And there was no food in Rob’s fridge. Just champagne, which irritated her. He’s a bit of a cliché, my boyfriend, she thought and wondered fleetingly how much else would get on her nerves if they did move in together. There now seemed little point in playing hooky; Rob had gone into work and her best friend was apparently oblivious to her cry for help. There was nothing to do but leave Rob’s flat and head for Hatton Garden.

‘Good weekend?’ Eric asked.

‘Ish,’ Petra said with a shrug.

‘Rob?’ Eric asked, expectantly.

‘Parents,’ Petra said.

‘How’s Mother Hen?’ Kitty teased, but carefully.

‘Barking mad,’ said Petra.

‘Does her hair still look like alfalfa?’ Kitty asked, because she loved this previous description of Petra’s.

It raised a smile. Petra nodded. ‘You’ll have to visit with me one day, Kitty,’ she said.

‘Your mother would love that,’ Kitty said. ‘One look at me and her hens will be laying eggs for their life.’

‘The thing is, my mother would love that,’ said Petra.

‘Did Rob chauffeur you about?’ Eric asked.

‘Well, he would’ve,’ Petra said, ‘but he had loads of work to do.’ Though she’d said it airily, there was uncharitable silence from her workmates. ‘It’s his birthday on Friday.’ Gina, Kitty and Eric nodded but returned to their work. ‘I’m going to surprise him,’ Petra said, ‘but I don’t know how just yet.’ Quietly, she paused to consider how hard she worked at choreographing this relationship without truly knowing whether Rob was much good at dancing to her tune. Their musical tastes were another thing that actually (along with a taste for champagne) they did not share.

Petra sketched. Recently she’d spent a lot of her studio time sketching. Sketching or doing out-work for Charlton. Though he had a selection of her pieces for sale, realistically, until funds came in, she couldn’t really justify purchasing the gold or the gems for her new designs. In fact, she just couldn’t afford it at the moment. She had a tab at Bellore, the suppliers to the trade, but Petra didn’t like letting that run too high. For the time being, she would just have to be content making up her designs in copper or steel wire for future pieces in precious metal. Perhaps if Charlton or one of her private clients liked them, they’d commission the real thing. But Petra wasn’t a saleswoman and the thought of contacting a previous client with a direct pitch for business appalled her.

‘I’ll do it for you,’ Eric had offered.

‘But they spent one thousand pounds on that crocheted gold necklace with the aquamarine only six months ago.’

‘So you suggest matching earrings,’ Eric had shrugged.

‘I don’t know, Eric,’ Petra had said. ‘It seems a bit mercenary.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Petra,’ Eric said. ‘It’s your bloody job, woman.’

‘Don’t swear at her,’ Kitty growled from the background.

‘My friend Sophia is turning forty this year,’ Gina said helpfully. ‘I could ask her hubby if he wanted to splash out on a gorgeous Petra Flint something-or-other. They’ve got buckets of cash and a penchant for the finer things in life.’

‘But surely you should be pushing him to splash out on a gorgeous Gina Fanshaw-Smythe?’ Petra said.

‘My stuff is way too chunky and vulgar for Sophia,’ Gina had replied ingenuously. ‘She’s very refined, is Sophia. Your style is perfect.’

As Petra sketched that Monday morning, working on curlicues and arabesques and serpentines, she recalled Gina’s compliment and it gave her a boost. Perhaps if she showed Gina a couple of her designs it would prompt her to mention Sophia again and maybe this time Petra might just say, Oh, OK then, if you think her husband might like to see my work, by all means show him. She worked again on an idea that had been nestling in her mind and her sketchbook for some time. She took coloured pencils and slicked mentions of gold over her soft pencil lines. Then she took a blue pencil and a violet one and worked the hues over each other. The design was for a necklace. Fine rose-gold belcher from the back of the neck slinking just over the trapezius where it then met an undulating line of solid rose gold sitting sinuously along the clavicle. From the centre of this, a gemstone. Tanzanite. Something sizeable, 4 carat or so. Balanced by two smaller tanzanites, a carat each, uniting the junctions between the gold chain and the solid gold.

She stood up, stretched, looked out of the window to the hubbub of Leather Lane. It’s busy this morning, for a Monday morning, she thought until Eric suddenly announced, ‘Lunchtime!’ and she looked at her watch and marvelled how the hours had rattled by while she had been so silently absorbed in her work. She felt quite triumphant, stimulated, productive. And very hungry. Gina was still engrossed in hammering a silver bangle and Kitty appeared to have left the studio. Petra decided to leave her sketchbook open and accompany Eric to the sandwich shop.

When they returned, Kitty and Gina were poring over Petra’s designs.

‘It’s stunning,’ Kitty said. ‘Classic but contemporary, delicate but strong.’

Petra looked at Gina expectantly. ‘You’re a clever bunny,’ Gina said. And Petra said, Do you think so, thank you, thanks a lot. But she couldn’t bring herself to mention Sophia’s fabulously rich husband.

‘Don’t let Charlton see it,’ Eric said. ‘He’ll copy it, the sod.’

‘That wouldn’t be your tanzanite, would it?’ Gina asked.

Eric looked at Petra’s drawing. ‘Her tanzanite is twice the size.’ He squinted at the sketch. ‘Three times the size.’

‘Bring it in again one day,’ Gina said, ‘so we can all have a jolly good ogle.’

Petra hadn’t been home since before the weekend. She’d gone directly from Watford and later Kent to Rob’s place and stayed over both nights. She’d rented her flat for just under two years. Recently she had renewed the lease. She’d asked Rob’s advice a couple of months ago, hoping that he’d say, Move in with me, babe. But his advice had been solidly financial. He pointed out that she couldn’t afford the down payment for a suitable flat in an area she liked and, with it still being a seller’s market, she may as well continue to rent for the time being.

Her flat was small and fairly sweet. The lounge could take a gate-leg table and three folding chairs as well as a sofa; it also had a fireplace with coal-effect fire and alcoves with shelving to either side, stripped floors and sash windows. The bedroom accommodated a double bed and the narrow church pew which Petra had bought as a student and had taken from bedroom to bedroom ever since. As there was only a small cupboard and a very narrow chest of drawers, the pew’s surface was invaluable. The bathroom had no window, just a noisy Vent-Axia but, bizarrely for the lack of space, a bidet too. Her upstairs neighbours were the landlords and they were a friendly if heavy-footed family.

Today, she came home to a note from them saying, ‘There’s a leak!!! We’ve had it fixed. Hope nothing of yours is affected??? Insurance will cover if so!!’ Petra looked around the sitting room and suddenly noticed the yellowed bulge at the far end of the ceiling and the beige fingers of damp clawing their way down the wall; her paperbacks on the shelf directly beneath were puffed swollen and soggy but they appeared to be the only casualty. In fact, Petra found herself more distressed by the state of her fridge – that her milk had gone off and that the KitKats she thought she still had were not there. She was going to slump down to sulk, then she thought she’d stomp off to the corner shop, but then she noticed the flashing of her answerphone.

‘It’s me! I’ve just done the school run! Where are you? Phone me and I’ll call you straight back.’

It was Lucy. Or, rather, it had been Lucy, phoning from Hong Kong. Hours and hours ago. It was now gone six and over the seas and far away Lucy would be fast asleep. In fact, it was already Tuesday for her. If Petra waited until eleven, she’d catch Lucy at breakfast.

The conversation started as it always did: with brief marvelling at the clarity of the phone line and how much time had passed since they last spoke.

‘I miss you,’ Petra said. ‘What are you having for breakfast?’

‘Fruit salad,’ Lucy laughed. ‘Miss you too. I did phone yesterday. What’s up?’

‘Well, I feel OK now – because I had a productive day at the studio. But I woke up feeling crap – because I used up my weekend visiting my parents.’

‘It’s not Christmas,’ Lucy said.

‘I know.’

‘I thought we’d decided you’d only visit at Christmas?’

‘I know. I don’t know why I did it, really.’

‘How were they?’

Petra paused. ‘They’re both always so preoccupied. I just feel inconsequential.’

‘You are far from it,’ Lucy said, almost sternly.

‘Thank you,’ Petra said. She paused because she wanted Lucy to continue.

‘You’re the strongest person I know,’ Lucy said. ‘All your achievements are your own. God, it’s not as if your parents gave you a leg-up, a foot in the door or even a pat on the back. You’ve always managed to stride out by yourself. And look at your success.’ She said it with triumph. ‘Does that help?’ she added.

‘Ish,’ said Petra.

‘Don’t let them upset you,’ Lucy said, ‘because of course they don’t mean to. They’re not bad people – they’re just, well, crap parents.’

Petra paused.

‘You don’t really need them,’ Lucy said.

‘But sometimes I want them,’ Petra said.

‘Everyone needs a sense of family,’ Lucy said, ‘in every sense of the word. You don’t quite have that and that’s tough. How are you sleeping?’

‘Not good,’ Petra said. ‘I’ve been waking up knackered. I think I must be sleepwalking a lot.’

‘How is Rob?’ Lucy asked.

Petra paused. She was acutely aware that she never paused when Eric or Gina or Kitty asked the question. She always jumped to his defence; blowing his trumpet and singing his praises. But with her oldest friend, such exaggeration was pointless. Honesty though, required greater effort. ‘Fine.’

‘Fine?’

‘Ish,’ Petra qualified.

‘I don’t like the sound of “ish”,’ said Lucy, wishing she was in the UK, wishing she knew Rob better because her first impression of him hadn’t painted her a particularly pleasing picture.

‘I’m not quite sure where I stand and I feel I should after ten months,’ Petra said. ‘After all, I’ve made it my mission to ensure that he wants for nothing from me. Sex. Support. Affection. Space.’

‘You give,’ Lucy defined, ‘but what do you get? Does he actually warrant all the effort you bestow?’

‘I wish he’d ask me to be with him – you know, move in, or something,’ Petra said, pointedly ignoring Lucy’s question. ‘I wish he’d just ask. I’d like to feel that he loves me enough to at least ask.’

On the other side of the Pacific, Lucy had closed her eyes and frowned. Love shouldn’t be such an effort. But she didn’t think love was the point – she suspected it was self-esteem. Petra will stick with Rob, Lucy thought, because Petra loathes the thought of splitting up. Petra wants to feel loved regardless of whether the object of her affection is actually worthy of hers.

‘It’s his birthday on Friday,’ Petra said, aware of Lucy’s silence and changing tack because of it. ‘I won’t see him until then. He’s too busy. He says.’

‘Will you be going out to celebrate?’ Lucy asked, her tone light. If she couldn’t physically be there to pick up the pieces, then she couldn’t very well dish out the home truths.

‘Yes. Somewhere in town, I guess. He hasn’t decided. He’s not really into birthdays.’

‘Don’t take that personally,’ Lucy said.

‘I’ve bought him a leather document case. Cost a bomb. And I might let myself into his flat beforehand,’ Petra told her. ‘You know – prepare it for later.’

‘What, balloons and banners?’

‘And rose petals!’ Petra enthused, missing Lucy’s sarcasm.

‘He’s a lucky boy,’ said Lucy and she really meant it.

‘Thanks, Luce,’ Petra said.

‘Call me,’ Lucy said, with a touch of urgency, ‘whenever. Seriously. Any time.’

Chapter Nine

Perhaps Rob’s mobile was on silent. But he’d said he’d be working late, so Petra wondered why on earth she was trying to distract him with phone calls anyway.

‘Oh well,’ she said, ‘may as well go to bed.’ But first she went from room to room, collecting her damaged paperbacks which had been splayed over the radiators all evening to dry. She took them all into the sitting room. In drying, they had fanned themselves out, some almost 360 degrees, like drab versions of Christmas paper lanterns which take form when folded in on themselves. She scouted the room for heavy items to place on them. Some she put into piles, placing chair legs on top. Her Tony Parsons paperbacks she lay side by side underneath the television set and she set her John Irving collection upright, against the skirting board, wedging the sofa against them.

There were still another sixteen paperbacks remaining, fanned out like Elizabethan ruffs, but all the heavy items in the sitting room had been put to good use. Petra checked her mobile. It was still blank. Gathering the books, she took them into her bedroom and laid them in a shambolic pile on the pew while she upturned her mattress and jostled it off the bed frame and up against the wall.

On her bed base, she put Barbara Trapido shoulder to shoulder with Nick Hornby and was just about to add Hilary Mantel to make an interesting threesome when she was distracted. Near the head of the bed and over to one side was a black velvet pouch with a thin gold silken cord. Petra leant across Nick Hornby, nudging Barbara Trapido out of the way as she did so, and took the pouch. She didn’t open it; initially she just brushed the velvet against her cheek, her lips, as she sat cross-legged on the edge of the bed.

After a while, she slipped out the knot in the cord and eased open the neck of the pouch. With a little shake, she tipped out the contents. A white cotton handkerchief wrapped carefully around something hard. As she began, slowly, to unfurl the handkerchief, taking time to trace the embroidered ‘P’, she was about to detour in her mind’s eye back to the John Lewis department store, to shopping with her mother, to the time when her mother bought her this handkerchief, a time when her mother wore glamorous red shoes and didn’t have alfalfa for hair – but Petra pulled herself back from that memory because there was somewhere else she’d rather be. The handkerchief was now open and there, glinting and breathtakingly beautiful, lay Petra’s tanzanite. The size and gloss of a quail’s egg: 39.43 carats of it, beautifully worked into a stunning pear cut with a dazzling array of light-reflecting facets. Internally flawless; brilliantly blue with a seductive wink of violet too.

On her bed, she cupped her hand as a cradle for the gem. It felt warm and rock-solidly reassuring to hold while she travelled back seventeen years, back to the day she first heard about tanzanite.

‘Mrs McNeil?’ Petra called through the letter-box. ‘Lillian? Hullo? It’s me, it’s Petra.’

The door opened less than ajar. ‘So it is,’ said Lillian McNeil. ‘Come on in, dear.’ And she opened the door precisely wide enough for Petra to sidle her slim, fifteen-year-old body through sideways.

‘Oh, Mrs McNeil,’ Petra said softly, sadly, raising her hand gently to the bruising around the lady’s right eye. ‘It looks worse today than the day before yesterday.’

Mrs McNeil swept at the air as if her black eye looked far worse than it felt. ‘The good news is they caught the little scamps.’

‘Lock them up and throw the key away,’ Petra said angrily.

‘There was only a few bob in my purse. And my watch was cheap as chips – it just looked fancy. And my eye – well, I fell, you see. That part was just bad luck. They didn’t actually touch me at all.’

‘I’d quite like to swear now.’

‘Absolutely not. Swearing does not become you, Petra Flint.’

‘I’m just so angry.’

‘Let it pass, Petra. If I have – you must.’

‘Well, I bought you something – Walnut Whips. I bought you a packet of milk ones and look, new plain ones too.’

Lillian’s eyes sparkled rather than watered now. ‘You’ll have to help me eat them.’

‘OK! Oh, and I brought you this. I took it out on my library card.’ She handed Mrs McNeil an audio-cassette of Pride and Prejudice. ‘I thought – if your eye was sore. I thought – if you didn’t feel like reading. I know how you love your books.’

‘Bless you, little Miss Flint.’

Petra shrugged off the compliment. ‘Let’s eat the Walnut Whips,’ she said and she let Mrs McNeil choose between the plain and milk chocolate packets. ‘Shall I make tea, too?’

‘No, dear,’ Lillian said, ‘I’ll do that. Young people just don’t have the knack.’

‘We’re not taught properly,’ Petra agreed. ‘Before I met you, I’d never seen loose tea, just bags.’

While Mrs McNeil was pottering and clattering around the kitchenette, Petra browsed the room. She’d been visiting Mrs McNeil for nearly two terms. In fact, the summer holidays had just started, but it didn’t occur to Petra not to visit. It might be the school holidays but it wasn’t as if she was going on a family holiday this year. That in itself would be a contradiction in terms. It couldn’t be much of a holiday if there wasn’t much of a family. And anyway, there was something really nice about visiting out of school hours and not having the time restraints of double maths or netball or pottery at Milton College to rush away for. And, though there had been the unpleasant incident with Mrs McNeil’s bag at the bus stop the previous week, Petra would have visited Mrs McNeil today anyway: she was her companion, not her duty.

That room. That lovely room; walls awash with art of all description, surfaces heaving under the breadth of possessions accrued over decades, even the floor space reduced by that veritable library of diverse tomes. How many times had Petra been in this room? And there was still so much to look at. She loved all the trinkets and keepsakes from a history of visits to a wealth of countries and cultures; the antithesis of just the two statement pieces of Lladro that her parents had bought to embellish the mantelpiece, one of which had gone to Watford with her father. Most of all Petra loved Mrs McNeil’s pictures, some of which were prints, others originals in oil or watercolour or pastel or charcoal; some representative, others abstract, some framed, others tacked up with drawing pins. She was lost in thought, gazing at a vibrant oil painting, when Lillian came in with the tea.

‘Mrs McNeil,’ Petra said slowly, not turning around, still transfixed by the painting, ‘I’ve just got it!’

‘You shouldn’t use the word “got”, you know,’ said Lillian, ‘or “get”. It’s lazy.’

‘I mean, I’ve just figured it out!’ Petra qualified, her eyes still on the painting. Slowly, she turned, her face flushed with excitement. She walked across the room, towards Lillian and went to the watercolour of Kilimanjaro which hung by the front door and which she’d admired on her first visit. ‘This is Mount Kilimanjaro,’ she said, then walked over to the colourful abstract in oils which had so mesmerized her. ‘And this is, too!’