The Rise and Fall of the Queen of Suburbia: A Black-Hearted Soap Opera

She led Wayne Spalding through the garage and he held the door open for her as they went into the back garden.

‘You’ve got a lot of snow here,’ he said.

‘Hasn’t everyone?’ Linda smiled, and walked into the middle of the garden, trying not to notice the trail of dog turds dotted across it. ‘There she is. The bane of my life.’

Wayne Spalding turned his flat stare to a four-hundred-year-old Turkey oak. Half the tree overhung the back fence of No. 8 Pollards Close, its lower branches disappearing into the snow piled on the lawn.

‘You should see it in autumn.’ Linda crossed the snow with Wayne following her like a prospective buyer, his basket-weave grey loafers sinking twenty centimetres deep. ‘The leaves make me really frantic. Really, really frantic.’ The idea of a rogue tree was gaining momentum with her; it helped keep her mind off the fact that the Niemans were coming to dinner that night; that Joe hadn’t called yet; that Jessica was in her first ever detention; and that there were still no lights on in the Saunders’ house. ‘The leaves get – just – everywhere. All round here. Everywhere. My husband,’ she sighed, ‘well, he’s a busy man and it would take him all weekend – all of an entire weekend in something like October, November – to clear this lawn.’ She faded out, less sure. Wayne Spalding was still staring flatly, his bovine gaze on the spot where the lowest branches disappeared into snow like they were about to start growing downwards into the lawn. Linda felt a sudden panic. The tree had intentions. It wanted to ruin things for her.

‘You see what I mean?’ she said, pointing to the branches. She glanced at the dandruff in Wayne’s hair. ‘The council should be doing something about it.’

‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ Wayne said, without turning round. He walked over to the fence at the end of the garden where some honeysuckle had been dying ever since Linda planted it two summers ago. ‘It’s nearly four hundred years old. Healthy,’ he said, looking up into the tree then reaching out for a lower branch and running his hand along its underside.

The garden at No. 8 was the same as all the other gardens on the executive side of Pollards Close: approximately one hundred and forty-four squares of turf that had grown into 144m2 of lawn infested with a strain of clover that not even Flymos were able to eradicate (Linda was convinced the clover was Irish), and bald patches where paddling pools stood during photogenic summers. The whole thing was framed with puddles of buddleia, lilac, viburnum and hebe. The gardens arrived on the back of contractors’ trucks and were left pretty much as they were delivered. The world in which people who moved there found themselves was too new for them to contemplate changing.

Wayne Spalding counted the paces between the spot where the branch touched the lawn and the house. He walked past Linda, his flat eyes on the patio doors.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Just checking something.’ He paused, watching the TV through the double glazing. ‘Anyone in there? Anyone watching that?’

‘My dog, Ferdinand. He likes TV.’

‘You’ve got the TV on for your dog?’

‘He’s a dachshund.’

He turned and stared at Linda for a moment then walked back up the lawn, counting his paces again. ‘Waste of electricity.’

Linda didn’t say anything. She wanted to, but couldn’t think of anything, so she put her hands in her coat pockets instead.

‘You’ve got a lot of space between the house and the tree. A lot of space,’ he said to her, adding, ‘This is a big garden’ – making it sound like excess rather than achievement.

Linda began to get the feeling that her time was being wasted. ‘So what are you saying?’

‘I mean, even if there was a storm and the tree got hit by lightning – even if that happened and we determined that the tree would fall into your garden and not into the field, even then –’

‘Even then, what?’

‘Well, it wouldn’t hit the house.’

‘Hit the house?’ Linda shouted. ‘I was just talking about leaves.’

Wayne stared at her.

‘So I’d have four hundred years’ worth of oak lying across my lawn, but it wouldn’t hit the house? What then?’

‘You’d have to call a tree surgeon.’

‘And how much would that cost?’

‘Look,’ Wayne moved his hands slowly up and down, pressing the thick, cold air downwards with his palms. ‘Look,’ he said again, louder, as if Linda was already hysterical and not just showing signs of it, ‘I’ve done the risk assessment.’

‘You’ve done it? That’s it? That’s your risk assessment?’

‘That’s my risk assessment, and I can safely say that there is no risk. That tree poses no threat to your property, none whatsoever – not even in the event of an act of God.’

‘Wait. Wait. Wait.’ Despite the heavy cold, she could feel angel wings of sweat growing across her back. ‘That’s all there is to it? You walk across my lawn and that’s it? What if … what if we’re out here in the garden in the summer having a barbecue … and the tree falls down? What about that?’

Wayne thought about this, his face going grey now with the cold. ‘The wind would have to be gale force to bring that tree down – why would you be barbecuing in the middle of a storm like that?’

‘Listen, I phoned your department and talked to somebody about leaves, not lightning and … and storms, and oh, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Do not take the Saviour’s name in vain. I won’t have that,’ Wayne said quietly, pointing his thick mitten at her.

‘I’m not having this,’ Linda said after a while. ‘You walk across my lawn … you’ve got no equipment with you or anything, no tape measure or … or machinery. You don’t even have a clipboard. I want a second opinion.’

‘I can put it in writing.’

‘I don’t want your opinion. I want someone more senior.’

‘You want someone older or someone more important?’

Linda swung nervously from side to side not knowing what to say again, and this wasn’t like her. She had to be herself tonight; she had to be wholly herself because the Niemans were coming to dinner.

‘We can’t just go round cutting down all deciduous trees on the estate,’ he said.

‘I don’t follow.’

‘Deciduous means that a tree sheds its leaves in autumn.’

‘I know that,’ Linda snapped.

‘No you didn’t.’

‘I did.’

‘You didn’t. You should be more honest.’

‘I don’t accept this,’ she said loudly, trying to fold her arms, which was difficult with so much fake fur encasing them.

Linda followed Wayne Spalding back across her lawn, through her garage, and onto the road outside her house where he’d parked his car. ‘I really don’t accept this.’

Wayne got into the car and wound his window down. His trousers were wet to the knee. He flipped the sun lenses down over his spectacles again and two discs of tinted glass stared up at her so that she was looking back at herself, twice over.

‘Do you get hot in the summer?’ he asked her suddenly.

She checked to see if there was anybody around who might have heard this: only Mrs Kline, lumbering down the pavement towards them in the tracksuit she’d worn to aerobics that morning. ‘Do you get hot in the summer?’ he asked her again, his voice as flat as his eyes. She stared at his hands, loosely gripping the steering wheel. The oversize mittens were on the seat next to him and the backs of his hands were covered in freckles. She didn’t like freckles on men. Was Wayne Spalding hitting on her?

‘He planted trees to provide shelter from the heat.’

Linda hung back, lost. ‘Who did?’

The streetlights came on, making everything seem much darker.

‘God did – and you should think about that. You should think about that a lot.’ He turned the ignition on. ‘Do you have children?’

‘Just one daughter.’ Why was she telling him this?

‘Then you should think hard about trying not to take the Lord’s name in vain. For your own sake. For the sake of your daughter.’ He looked up at her. ‘I can help you, Mrs Palmer.’

‘I don’t need your help.’

‘People say that. Then things change. People change.’

‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’

She stood on the drive and watched the purple Granada pull away, thinking about phoning the council’s environment department and speaking to Wayne Spalding’s boss – if he had one – before he got back to the office, but she didn’t move.

The Granada disappeared round the corner into Merrifield Drive and the next thing she was aware of was Mrs Kline standing at the top of the drive.

‘Hi,’ Linda waved and turned abruptly towards the garage.

‘I didn’t know you knew the minister.’

She spoke so quietly, Linda half considered pretending she hadn’t heard. There were a couple of gateaux she needed to get out of the chest freezer in the garage for the party that night. ‘Knew who?’

‘The minister,’ Valerie said, more loudly this time, still smiling.

‘What minister?’

‘Minister Spalding. Our minister.’

Valerie Kline waited at the top of the drive.

‘The man in the car?’ Linda called out. ‘The man who was just here?’

Valerie nodded.

Linda hesitated then walked to the top of the drive. Valerie, she noticed, was still wearing sandals. ‘He was from the local council. He came about the tree. You know, the one that hangs over most of our back garden?’

Valerie didn’t know because she’d never been invited to No. 8 and didn’t ever expect to be.

Linda was becoming increasingly unnerved by Valerie Kline’s silent, comprehending nods. ‘We have a huge problem with the leaves. In autumn. A really huge problem.’ Behind her, through the open garage door, she heard Ferdinand whining. ‘So what’s this about a minister?’ she said impatiently.

Valerie stopped nodding, suddenly. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot he worked for the council as well – the environment department, isn’t it?’

‘So – he’s Minister Spalding?’

Valerie started nodding again. ‘At the Free Church. We hold a service up at the school on Sunday mornings, and I thought …’ she batted her hand quickly in front of her face, ‘… anyway, it doesn’t matter.’

Linda thought of Wayne Spalding as he’d been dressed today. ‘The Free Church? What’s that then – evangelical or something?’

‘It’s non-denominational, that’s why it’s called the Free Church.’

Linda couldn’t be certain, but wondered if Valerie might be laughing at her. ‘And Minister Spalding,’ she said hurriedly, ‘does he do that healing stuff?’

‘The healing stuff? He does the laying on of hands. Faith healing.’

‘What – like making cripples walk? Blind men see? Cancer disappear? Infertile women pregnant?’ She forgot, too late, that Mrs Kline’s son was adopted. ‘That kind of stuff?’

‘Sometimes,’ Valerie said, quietly.

It was starting to snow again.

‘He does that? What – like – miracles?’

Valerie shrugged.

Linda couldn’t shake the impression that Valerie was laughing at her, and it didn’t seem right that they should be standing here talking about miracles in the middle of a snowstorm.

‘I should go, we’ve got people coming to dinner tonight,’ she said.

‘Well … give my regards to your husband, and to Jessica,’ Mrs Kline replied, disappearing into the snow in her tracksuit and sandals.

Linda went into the garage and lifted the lid of the chest freezer, on the brink of remembering what it was she needed to get out for dinner that night when she heard the phone ring. She dropped the lid, letting it bang shut.

‘Where are you?’

‘Brighton,’ Joe said.

‘Still? It’s nearly quarter to four. I thought you said you were leaving at three?’

‘It took longer to pack away the stall than I thought – then I called in to see your mum.’

‘My mum?’

‘Just a cup of tea. I’m leaving now.’

‘Well, if it’s of any interest to you, I’m going out of my mind over here,’ Linda exploded. ‘There’s a blizzard you’re probably going to get stuck in if you stay there any longer drinking tea; Jessica – who’s meant to be coming home to help me – is in detention because of something nuclear; and this man from the council came round to talk about the tree, you know – the tree – and I thought we would just talk about the leaves, but he didn’t want to talk about the leaves, he came to do a risk assessment – with no warning or anything – and then when he got into his car to go, some end-of-the-line Granada – he had freckles, Joe, all over his hands – he started talking to me about God – the man from the council – and Mrs Kline says he’s a minister or something, and …’ She stopped suddenly.

‘Linda?’ Joe prompted her.

‘Gateaux.’

‘What?’

‘The freezer. Triple chocolate mousse cake and Black Forest gateau – that’s what I was looking for in the freezer.’

Down the line from Littlehaven to Brighton, faster than the speed of light, came a profound sigh of relief.

Tired, Joe Palmer had made a deal with Steve, his business manager. If Steve agreed to oversee packing up the two showroom kitchens and stand into the van, Quantum would pay for him to stay in the Metropole that night and he could drive the van back to Littlehaven on Saturday morning.

‘I could do that,’ Steve had said, off-hand but sincere at the same time. Neither of these were qualities Joe liked on their own, but Steve managed to run them simultaneously and it had always made Joe trust his business manager.

He’d left the Brighton Centre, where Britannia Kitchens roadshow had been running for the past three days, and crossed the road onto the promenade. As he walked it had started snowing again and the headlights of late-afternoon traffic picked people out, making them look more interesting than they did in daylight. Above and beyond the traffic was an uneven December night, and the sea, which he couldn’t see but knew was there. Something that was true of a lot of things in life, he supposed. He’d heard it dragging itself backwards and forwards across the pebbles on the beach, distant and impartial.

The pier had been open, sending out its multi-layered stench of fish and chips, waffles, candyfloss and donuts: smells he found less easy to stomach the older he got. He’d thought about the penny slot machines in the amusement arcade, but it was too cold and anyway he’d promised to drop in on Belle, Linda’s mum.

The Pavilion Hotel on the corner opposite the entrance to the pier hadn’t drawn its curtains yet and passers-by were treated to a panorama of geriatric diners eating in sync. Foreign waiters stood poised against green fleur-de-lys wallpaper as the diners stared out the window, past the SAGA TOURS coach, looking for someone or something they might recognise.

Joe had passed the Aquarium where he used to take Jessica when she was small, then carried on up Roedean Road that rose with the cliff. No. 26 still had its stained-glass hotel fanlight: a rising sun with LYNTON HOTEL written underneath. It used to belong to Jim, Linda’s stepfather, and after his death it had been bought by a trust that built sheltered accommodation for the elderly. It was flats now – he didn’t know how many. There were six buzzers by the door and he was sure there had only been four the last time he came.

How could they say the world was getting bigger when all the time they just kept on dividing it up like this. What was it Jessica said? Something about matter being continuous, that you could divide up one piece over and over again and never stop. He didn’t understand what Jessica said half the time – hadn’t understood what she’d been saying, in fact, since she was about nine. But then children, he discovered, were the one thing in life you could love without understanding.

He rang the bell for Flat Three, which used to be the upstairs residents’ lounge, and about four minutes later a young woman in jeans opened the door, a pair of scissors in her hand.

‘Hi,’ he said.

‘Hi.’ She stared at him. ‘Belle said it would be you.’

‘Who’s me?’

‘You’re Joe, aren’t you? Her son-in-law, Joe? There’s a photograph of you on the sideboard upstairs. You on your wedding day,’ she said slowly.

‘Ah.’ Joe didn’t want to think about his wedding day right then, and his prick – which had gone from belonging to Joe Palmer to belonging to a munchkin to belonging to a Lego man – was about to drop off with the cold.

‘Only you’re old now.’

‘Older,’ he corrected her, shoving his way into the hallway. ‘But then that’s only natural.’

The girl nodded, unconvinced, and led the way upstairs past the badly maintained stairlift tracks.

‘I sent Lenny down to get the door. She’s younger than me,’ Belle said as he walked into the flat.

She was sitting in her wheelchair with a Chanel towel wrapped round her shoulders, which Linda had got free with some perfume and given to her mum as a Christmas present. The girl, Lenny, went and stood behind her and carried on cutting Belle’s hair. The toes of her boots were covered in grey curls and a halo of them had formed on the carpet around the chair.

When Joe thought about it later, it was what he remembered most about that afternoon in December: the sound of the scissors and Belle’s grey curls on Lenny’s boots.

‘Don’t mind, do you, Joe?’ Belle asked. ‘We was right in the middle.’

‘You go ahead. Wouldn’t want to get between a woman and her hair.’

He went over to the window, pulling the nets to one side. A seagull on the ledge eyed him and let out a shriek then flew away. In summertime you got a bird’s-eye view of the nudist beach from here.

‘Not such a good view in December, is it?’ Belle said, smiling.

He looked to see if Lenny was smiling as well, but she wasn’t.

The room was lit by the gas fire and a couple of heavily tasselled standard lamps with shawls draped over them. The lack of overhead light combined with net curtains, snow and twilight made it difficult to see anything but shadows in the room, and the flat suddenly felt as though it was waiting for somebody long overdue.

‘Your eyes all right?’ Joe asked Lenny.

She nodded, tucking the scissors into her belt as she started setting fat pink curlers in the old woman’s hair.

‘D’you want tea?’ Belle asked Lenny, her eyes closed. Then, without waiting for an answer, ‘Go and make us some tea, Joe, and don’t forget the biscuits.’ Her eyes opened and followed her son-in-law into the kitchenette in the corner. ‘And you can take your coat off – the flat’s got central heating.’

The light in the kitchenette was orange and unsteady, and speckled with the corpses of flies. It made his eyes hurt. Belle’s cupboards were full and it took him a while to find the tea caddy – the one with elephants on that he remembered from his courting days – behind the rows of sugar, flour and canned fruit and vegetables that she always had in, never having recovered from rationing and the urge to stockpile. The whistling kettle had been replaced by an electric one, and as he plugged it in he wondered when the overhaul had happened and why Lenny, the hairdresser, didn’t like him. Animals and children liked him, which meant that most men and women did as well. Why didn’t the hairdresser? He looked down at his black suit and dark purple tie and thought about her standing in the hallway with the scissors.

In the room next door the hairdryer went on, and when he took the tea in neither of the women looked up. Belle still had her eyes closed and he hoped she hadn’t fallen asleep. He put the Coronation tray on the coffee table and walked past the photographs on the sideboard, as alarmed as he always was at how prolific they made his life seem. They were nearly all of him, Linda and Jessica. The only one Belle had of herself was of her and her first husband, Linda’s father, who had drowned in the sea while home on leave at the end of the war. This was the first thing Belle ever told him. Then she said that Eric had never been able to make her laugh while he was alive, but talking about his death always set her off.

There were no photographs of her and Jim, her second husband, or even just of Jim. When he died all the money from the sale of the hotel went to Brighton Cricket Club, who got a new clubhouse and practice wickets built with it.

Joe looked at a photograph of himself as a grown man then looked away. The hairdryer cut out.

Belle’s hand went up to her hair and Lenny unhooked the mirror from the chimney breast.

‘Isn’t it nice? Won’t last, but isn’t it nice?’

‘Won’t last if you keep touching it and messing it up. Here.’ Lenny took a can of spray out of the case on the table and covered Belle’s head in it.

The spray hung heavily in the heated air.

‘You staying for tea?’ Belle asked her.

‘I should go. I’ve got Mrs Jenkins in Flat Four to do, and she’s going out tonight.’

‘Jenkins is always going out,’ Belle grumbled. ‘Probably goes out more than you do, and she’s not “Mrs”. Never got married – whatever she says. Pour her a cup, Joe.’

‘Milk? Sugar?’ he asked.

‘Both,’ Lenny said, packing away the hairdryer, scissors, spray and rollers into the case.

‘How many?’

‘How many what?’

‘Sugars.’

‘Three. Please.’

‘How many sugars’ll you have, Joe, now she’s not here to tell you off?’

He smiled, but didn’t put any in his cup.

‘Go on, just have one.’ Belle turned to Lenny. ‘He used to have sugar with some tea in it when I first knew him. Won’t let you have sugar no more, will she?’

‘Linda’s just looking after me.’

‘That’s what she calls it, is it?’

Joe paused then dropped a spoonful of sugar into his tea. ‘Look what you made me do, Belle.’

Belle smiled, pleased at her son-in-law’s dissent.

Lenny, moving about rhythmically in the corner of the room, didn’t look up.

‘Joe’s been at the Britannia Kitchens roadshow at the Brighton Centre. His company had a stand there.’

Lenny looked up, taking in the suit. ‘That’s what you do, then?’

‘Course it’s what he does, I told you.’

‘What?’ Joe said to Lenny, over Belle’s head.

‘Build kitchens?’

‘He doesn’t build kitchens, he sells them, but that isn’t what Joe does.’ Belle slurped her tea and started on the biscuits. A flake of chocolate melted in the corner of her mouth and ran in a rivulet down one of the wrinkles there. ‘Joe makes money.’

‘I’m a carpenter,’ he cut in. ‘By trade, I’m a carpenter.’ Why did he think this sounded better than making money?

‘Was a carpenter.’ Belle wasn’t having any of it. ‘Now you just make money. Got a whole office full of people working for you. Joe’s got his own company.’

‘I’m a carpenter by trade. My dad was a carpenter.’ If Lenny didn’t look up or say something soon, he thought he was going to explode. ‘I’m from Brighton,’ he yelled. ‘Brighton born and bred.’

Lenny turned her back on him and clicked the clasps on the case shut.

‘Cassidy Street. Right there on Cassidy Street.’ He gestured blindly at the net curtains as if his entire past lay just beyond them.

‘Calm down, Joe,’ Belle said, leaning forward to pour herself another cup of tea and farting. ‘You’ve earned the money. No need to be ashamed of it.’

Lenny drank her tea in one go and at last turned to look at him. ‘What makes you think I’m from Brighton?’

‘I don’t know, I …’

‘You think I’m from Brighton?’

Belle started rattling the biscuit tin. ‘These’ll melt if we don’t eat them. What’d you put them so near the fire for, Joe? Look at this!’ She held up her hands, covered in chocolate, for him to look at. ‘Look at this, Joe. Why’d you get the chocolate ones out? It’s a bloody sauna in here with the gas on and you know what I’m like with the chocolate ones.’ She let out another fart. ‘I’ll sit here and eat them all. Why’d you get these ones out?’

‘I don’t know.’

Belle was disappearing out of earshot.

‘Turn the heating down, Joe. Have a fiddle with the thermostat or something, there’s bloody chocolate everywhere.’