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

‘We did it in home economics last Thursday, all you need is some double cream and some wine and some –’

‘I don’t like syllabub,’ Linda cut in.

‘It’s dead simple.’

‘I don’t like syllabub,’ Linda said again.

‘You’ve never even tasted it.’

‘I have tasted it.’

‘Haven’t.’

Linda began drying the knife Jessica had used to cut up the pineapple with. ‘Where’s Ferdie?’ she said suddenly.

‘Upstairs.’

‘Upstairs, where?’

‘On my bed.’

‘On your bed?’ Linda yelled, throwing the knife and the tea towel down on the draining board.

‘He needs to see a vet,’ Jessica yelled back. ‘You made him bleed.’

‘I want him off your bed and outside – now!’

‘We can’t put him outside in this – look – there’s a blizzard going on out there.’

Linda’s mind flicked briefly to Joe, who she hoped had the sense to take the new bypass home from Brighton and not the road over the Dyke, then turned back to Jessica, who was crying again and pulling the cuffs of her school jumper over her hands.

‘He’s a bloody dog,’ Linda shouted at her.

‘He’s your bloody dog. Dad bought him for you.’

‘Upstairs. Now. Get upstairs.’

‘I hate you.’

Linda turned away and picked the tea towel up off the draining board. ‘Yeah, well…’

‘And that cheesecake’s disgusting – me and Dad have jokes about that cheesecake.’

She swung round, but Jessica was already out of the room. The clock on the kitchen wall shook as she banged up the stairs and slammed her bedroom door shut.

Linda went to the foot of the stairs. ‘Dad and I,’ she shouted up into the darkness. ‘Dad and I.’

She went back into the kitchen and there was Joe standing in the doorway to the garage.

‘What’s all that about?’

‘I don’t know. You’re late,’ she said, looking at him.

‘I phoned. I was at your mum’s – you know what it’s like: tea, biscuits, amnesia, more tea, more biscuits.’ He paused, but didn’t mention that Belle had been getting her hair cut while he was there. ‘She looked well,’ he said after a while, then walked past Linda into the hallway.

‘Joe? Where’re you going?’

‘Upstairs. See Jess. Change.’

She followed him to the foot of the stairs. ‘When you’ve changed I could do with some help down here. We’ve got people coming tonight.’

Joe stopped, his hand on the banister. ‘I forgot.’

‘You forgot? For Christ’s sake, Joe.’

She went back into the kitchen and opened Jessica’s lunch box, which was lying by the sink, automatically shoving a handful of uneaten crusts and half a packet of crisps into her mouth. The only serving plate she had big enough for the canapés had a crack running across it, but she covered this with some green paper napkins then put cling film over the bowl with the cottage cheese and pineapple in it. From upstairs she heard running water, and a few minutes later Joe came back downstairs in old jeans and a sweatshirt.

‘I thought you might have worn your new polo shirt.’

‘I couldn’t find it.’

‘That’s because it’s still in the bag.’

‘Oh.’

Joe sniffed and disappeared into the garage. He came back with a can of beer.

‘So – who’ve we got coming tonight?’ he asked, watching her open a sachet of Hollandaise sauce.

‘Mick and Dominique – if they show.’

‘Why wouldn’t they?’

‘I went over there a while ago and they weren’t even back from lunch.’

‘Who were they having lunch with?’

‘Each other.’ Linda looked at him then poured the contents of the sachet into a pan of boiling water. ‘They went to Gatwick Manor.’

‘It’s expensive there.’

She looked at him again.

‘So – anyone else coming?’

‘I invited the Niemans – the new people at number twelve.’

‘The Niemans?’

‘Yes, the Niemans, Joe. The double-glazing people two doors up.’

‘The Belgians?’

‘I thought they were Dutch.’

‘It doesn’t matter – they all speak English.’

Linda stopped stirring the sauce. ‘I’m sure they’re Dutch.’

‘Well, why don’t we ask them?’

‘We can’t just ask them. Don’t you dare ask them.’

Joe started drinking the beer.

‘D’you want a glass for that?’

‘Jess seems upset,’ he said, ignoring her. ‘She’s lying on her bed upstairs with Ferd, and Ferd’s bleeding or something. She wouldn’t say what happened.’

‘Has she changed out of her school uniform yet?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You were only just up there.’

‘I didn’t notice.’ He finished the beer. ‘I said Ferd’s bleeding.’

She started to stir the sauce again. ‘Ferdie ate a triple chocolate mousse cake and a Black Forest gateau this afternoon.’

‘He did?’ Joe started to laugh. ‘Is pudding gone then?’

She felt him behind her. ‘Dessert – it’s dessert gone.’

‘So why don’t you make one of your steamed puddings?’ he said softly. ‘What about one of them treacle ones?’

‘I can’t give the Niemans steamed pudding.’

‘I love your treacle puddings. Best thing, they are.’ She felt his hair brushing her ear. ‘I’ll do the custard,’ he said.

‘Custard?’ Gravity gave her a short sharp pull. ‘We’ve got gazpacho for starters, Joe. After the gazpacho, we’ve got salmon en croute with Hollandaise sauce. Do you really think the Niemans are going to want to finish with treacle pudding? And custard? Why don’t we just throw a brick at them while we’re at it.’

‘I like treacle pudding.’

‘We’ve got mandarin cheesecake,’ she said.

‘But I bloody hate mandarin cheesecake.’

‘What’s wrong with everyone tonight?’

Joe disappeared into the garage again.

Linda stopped stirring to watch some lumps the size of Atlantic icebergs forming in the sauce. ‘Joe,’ she called into the garage. ‘Are you coming back in? Joe?’

Silence.

‘I could do with some company in here. It’s been a long day.’

Silence.

‘You know sometimes I wish I was a bloody schizophrenic – at least I’d have my other self to talk to.’

Joe appeared in the garage doorway, a second can of beer in his hand.

‘So what d’you want to talk about?’

She watched him drinking his beer, one hand in his trouser pocket, and one bare foot on the kitchen step. She didn’t know. ‘Aren’t you cold? You should go and put some socks and shoes on.’

‘I’m going into the garden.’

‘You can’t go out like that.’

He picked up some rubber clogs Linda had ordered from the back of a Sunday Times supplement, which was the only part of the paper she read.

Pouring the sauce down the sink, she watched through the window and falling snow as he went into the shed and came out with a deckchair, planting it in the snow next to where the fishpond was just about still visible. He had his back to the house and his feet in their rubber clogs stretched out over the frozen pond. What was he thinking?

She made a second batch of Hollandaise sauce then laid the table before going upstairs to shower. Jessica’s bedroom door was shut but the music had been turned down. She would have gone in – to make sure Jessica had changed and Ferdie hadn’t marked the bed – but she was afraid. Were other women afraid of their daughters?

So instead she showered, put on the new dress she’d bought at Debenhams the other weekend, where they’d also bought Joe’s polo shirt, then went into Jessica’s bedroom, wearing heels and fully made up. Jessica was lying on the bed with Ferdie stretched out beside her. She was still in her school uniform.

Over the summer they’d painted and refurnished Jessica’s room so that it was better suited to the needs of a fifteen-year-old girl taking A Levels three years early. That was at least four months ago and it still smelt of freshly unpacked MDF. The new furniture was dwarfed by a black and white CND poster Jessica had insisted on putting back up, alongside an even larger floor-to-ceiling poster of Snoopy. Without ever knowing why, Snoopy had always depressed Linda – even now, when she was on the antidepressants that came with the Slimshake starter pack to help overcome any emotional instability likely to be encountered switching to a liquids-only diet. On the wall above the stereo, the Advent calendar Jessica was still adamant about buying had nine open doors. Linda looked through the black sugar-paper snowflakes stuck to the bedroom window, down at the garden. Joe was still out there, and beyond him was the oak tree, which she’d started to feel inexplicably threatened by since Wayne Spalding’s visit that afternoon. She drew the curtains then turned to face the bed again.

‘Jessica?’

Jessica didn’t move.

On the pinboard above the desk there was a photograph of Jessica aged eight on the beach at Brighton, with Belle. They were both smiling. The photograph next to it was of an even younger Jessica on Joe’s shoulders; her hair was almost covering her face and she was yelling something at the camera. There was a river and castle behind them, in the distance. Linda tried to remember where they might have been that day, but couldn’t. She remembered the sandals Jessica was wearing – and the dress – but she couldn’t remember the day. Above the photographs were a series of images she’d first noticed a week ago when she came into the room to dust, and that she’d since asked Jessica to take down – of a captured Iranian soldier with ropes attached to his wrists and ankles, spread-eagled in the dust, about to be quartered by Iraqi-driven Jeeps. Jessica had to explain all that to her – and that American Indians used to torture prisoners in the same way, using horses. Why had Jessica told her this? Did she expect her to have an opinion on it or was she just giving her some sort of chance? Jessica’s German teacher had torn the pictures out of Das Spiegel for her. ‘She knows this is the kind of thing I’m into,’ Jessica had said – implying that she, Linda, didn’t.

‘Jessica,’ she said again, resisting the urge to pick up the can of Impulse body spray on the corner of the desk and shake it to see if it was being used. She watched her daughter roll onto her back, one arm resting protectively over Ferdie’s flank. ‘I told you to get changed.’

Jessica rolled back onto her side again and watched Ferdie blinking at her, wondering if he was trying to send her a message in Morse or something. Was it possible to blink in Morse? Probably – with either dedication or desperation.

Not wanting to push it any further, Linda went downstairs and arranged some Ritz crackers on the serving plate then took the cottage cheese and pineapple out of the fridge and started spooning it onto them in bite-size dollops. Joe was still in the garden, sitting on the deckchair by the frozen fishpond. Maybe he’d fallen asleep. Was it possible to fall asleep in a shirt and rubber clogs when it was minus five degrees Celsius? Didn’t people die if they fell asleep in the snow? Then she started laughing, thinking how funny it would be if she was in here putting cottage cheese and pineapple on Ritz crackers while Joe was out there dying.

Joe, hearing laughter, looked up and turned towards the kitchen window.

The Niemans arrived at seven forty, before the Saunders, which meant that even though there were two Niemans to two Palmers, Linda felt outnumbered. They arrived in coats, hats, scarves and gloves, looking like identical (European) twins with their matching spectacles and matching haircuts.

Joe had forgotten to close the door to the downstairs loo and the smell of bleach was hanging heavily between them as they all stood awkwardly in the hallway.

‘I’m sorry we’re late,’ Daphne said. ‘Winke was in Brighton today.’

‘Brighton?’ Linda echoed, excited. ‘Joe was in Brighton today as well.’

Winke gave Joe a slow, almost suspicious look, but didn’t say anything.

‘What were you doing in Brighton?’ Daphne asked sharply.

Joe had a brief but strong memory of Belle’s hairdresser stood in front of him with a pair of scissors in her hand, and forgot to reply.

‘He was at the Britannia Kitchens roadshow – at the Brighton Centre,’ Linda said. She waited for some sort of reaction to this, but there wasn’t any. ‘Quantum Kitchens – our company – had a stand.’

‘I wasn’t at the Britannia Kitchens roadshow,’ Winke said at last.

‘So.’ Linda laughed. ‘The coats, Joe?’

‘What? Oh, right.’

Daphne handed her coat to Joe and they all watched as he tried to get it onto the hallstand, which was already full.

As Daphne’s coat fell onto the floor for a third time, Linda said, ‘Upstairs maybe, Joe?’

‘Upstairs, where?’

‘The bed,’ she said awkwardly.

‘Nice coat,’ Joe said as he took Winke’s from him.

‘Thank you. Wait a moment, please.’ He pulled a spectacle case out of his coat pocket, waving it briefly in the air. ‘I might need these. My reading glasses.’

Linda tried not to panic. What had Winke anticipated doing that would require his reading glasses?

Joe disappeared upstairs with the coats while Linda stood smiling enthusiastically at Daphne and Winke, unable to believe that Littlehaven’s renowned entrepreneur was here in her hallway. She tried not to stare at Daphne’s grey knitted dress, which reached nearly to her ankles and looked like it was made of cashmere. Her jewellery was large, tribal; the sort of jewellery Linda would never have conceived of buying.

‘You have a nice hallway,’ Winke said, leaning towards her.

She was immediately suspicious. Was he laughing at her? ‘Well, I suppose they’re all the same. The hallways. In these houses, I mean.’

Daphne shook her head. ‘No, actually.’

‘So,’ Joe said, coming back downstairs, ‘what can I get you people to drink?’

‘I’ll just take a mineral water, please,’ Daphne said.

‘Do you have whisky?’ Winke asked.

Joe nodded.

‘Let me help you,’ Daphne said, sliding into the kitchen after him.

‘Would you like to come through?’ Linda led Winke into the lounge.

In spite of viewing No. 8 Pollards Close three times before buying it, it wasn’t until they moved in that Linda realised the lounge wasn’t wide enough to fit two sofas in facing each other, which meant that they had to go side by side, with the armchair near the patio doors. The effect, when both sofas were occupied, wasn’t unlike a row of seating at the theatre. Only there was no stage. Opposite the sofas there was a coffee table with a fish tank on top, and a TV cabinet. Winke and Linda sat on the sofa opposite the fish tank.

Linda had been preoccupied by thoughts of the Niemans for as long as she could remember. She had watched their comings and goings from behind the lounge blinds for so long, and the virtual Niemans had become so familiar, that it struck her now as odd – how unfamiliar the real ones were. Total strangers, in fact.

They heard laughter from the kitchen.

‘Your fish is dead,’ Winke said.

Linda sprang up and went over to the tank, peering through Perspex and algae to see if anything was moving in there. She could just make out bubbles coming from the statue of a diver standing over an open treasure chest. Maybe that was the fish. Maybe? What else was it going to be – the diver?

‘I think it’s breathing,’ she said, tapping on the side of the tank.

‘Fish don’t breathe.’

‘Yes, I read that somewhere,’ she said, trying to keep her voice level.

The reflection of Winke on the side of the tank didn’t look convinced.

‘Maybe you should clean the tank.’ He folded his hands on his lap. ‘Or buy a filter.’

‘I know, I know,’ Linda said, keeping it light. ‘I’m terrible. Jessica’s always telling me to clean out the tank, but I just get so busy the day runs away with me, then it’s time for that first glass of wine and everything just goes down the chute.’

Winke didn’t react to this, he just sat there with his hands in his lap.

Linda was thinking, simultaneously, fuck the fish and thank God for the fish. If it wasn’t for the dead or dying fish they’d both be sat there listening to Daphne and Joe laughing in the kitchen. And how long did it take Joe to ask Daphne if she minded tap water because they didn’t have Perrier, and to pour Winke a whisky? Did he realise that she was alone in here with Winke trying to find some common ground.

‘Is the fish your daughter’s?’ he said, after what seemed like ages.

‘Sort of.’ She tapped the Perspex again, smiling vaguely. Her tapping produced small shockwaves across the surface of the water; waves that pulled the fish out from behind the diver, on its side. There were clumps of white stuff that looked like cotton wool bulging from its body, and she might have cared more if the creature wasn’t so genderless. She hoped Winke couldn’t see as she started tapping on the other side of the tank, trying to send out waves that would pull the fish back behind the diver. She didn’t have the stamina to face the fish’s death right then, and once Winke knew it was definitely dead he might expect some kind of reaction on her part: like grief or resuscitation or burial even, and she hadn’t prepared gazpacho and salmon with Hollandaise sauce just so that the Niemans and the Saunders (if they ever stopped fucking in order to show up) could stand out in a blizzard and bury a fish.

The fish had a spasm.

‘Do fish dream?’ she asked Winke hopefully.

Winke didn’t answer. A sudden thought occurred to her – maybe Winke was vegetarian. Did vegetarians eat fish?

Then, after a while he said, ‘It’s a terrible thing when a child’s pet dies. When anybody’s pet dies, but especially a child’s. They have a connection to animals we just don’t understand, don’t you think?’

‘Jessica’s fifteen.’

‘I hope, for Jessica’s sake, the fish lives.’

‘So do I.’ Linda wondered how much longer she was expected to carry on kneeling in front of the tank waiting for the fish to either live or die.

‘What’s its name?’

That was enough. Linda couldn’t do the fish any longer – she’d done the fish. After dinner they’d either stay in the dining room for coffee or make sure, if they did come in here, that Winke was put on the sofa opposite the TV cabinet.

‘Valerie,’ she said off the top of her head, because she’d been thinking how like Mrs Kline Winke was. In fact, they could almost be related. She could see quite clearly, without making her mind stretch at all, Winke dressed as Mrs Kline and Mrs Kline dressed as Winke.

‘So,’ Winke said, nodding, ‘the fish is a she.’

‘What?’ Linda was by the door, trying to exit so that she could get Winke his whisky. She needed Winke to drink his whisky.

‘The fish – Valerie. Valerie’s a she.’

Linda looked at him closely, suddenly suspicious again. Was he laughing at her?

‘Unless you mean Valéry, which is a masculine name in both France and Russia.’

What was he doing bringing France and Russia into her lounge?

There was the doorbell.

‘Excuse me.’ She went into the hallway. ‘Joe! Winke needs his whisky. Joe?’

She opened the front door. Mick kissed her first, then Dominique.

‘Where d’you want us?’ Mick asked, tripping up over the step.

The hallway smelt suddenly of alcohol.

‘In there.’ She tried to guide them into the lounge, but Daphne was waving at them from a bar stool in the kitchen, food in her mouth.

Linda moved over to the breakfast bar. What was Daphne eating? How could Daphne be eating when nothing had been served yet?

Joe and Mick nodded at each other.

There were about five canapés left on the serving dish and a pile of pineapple on the paper napkin she’d lined the plate with. She watched Daphne take the fifth remaining canapé, pick the pineapple off and push the cracker into her mouth.

‘So – you found the canapés,’ Linda said.

‘You know Joe,’ Mick said, ‘you’ve got to lock him up.’ He stretched past Daphne and grabbed remaining canapés numbers four and three. There were two left. Linda tried to laugh, but couldn’t.

‘I hope you don’t mind, but I’m allergic to pineapple,’ Daphne said.

‘Maybe somebody wants to offer Dominique a canapé,’ Linda said, looking at Joe. ‘And Winke’s still waiting for his whisky.’

‘Poor Winke,’ Daphne said, smiling and watching Joe pour the whisky.

‘What can I get you two?’ Joe asked the Saunders.

‘No more wine,’ Dominique said.

‘Two glasses of red wine it is then,’ Mick said, pulling the other bar stool up next to Daphne.

‘We’ve been talking about beer,’ Joe told them.

‘Belgian beer,’ Daphne said proudly. ‘I’m going to send Winke home to fetch some Belgian beer.’

‘Please. Don’t. Really. You don’t have to,’ Linda pleaded.

‘Joe must taste some Belgian beer,’ Daphne said, banging her hand down on the breakfast bar with each word.

Linda handed Mick and Dominique their wine then went to take Winke his whisky.

Winke was kneeling in front of the fish tank with his reading glasses on and his face pressed up against the Perspex.

‘Your whisky.’

‘It is very strange, but I smell something like vomit here – and your fish is definitely dead,’ he said, shaking his head.

‘Maybe,’ Linda conceded.

‘Maybe? Definitely.’

‘Winke,’ Daphne said from the doorway. ‘Winke, I want you to go home and fetch some Belgian beer.’

Winke got slowly to his feet, his eyes still on the tank.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said to Linda, ‘we’ll sort this out when I get back.’

Linda, who was still holding his whisky, tried to nod as mournfully as she could, and sighed.

The front door shut and Daphne disappeared back into the kitchen, her tribal jewellery clinking as she moved.

Linda put the whisky down on the coffee table and stared into the tank. The fish was lying on its side just by the diver’s feet. It made the diver look guilty.

She turned the dimmer switch by the door so that the lighting level in the room went down, and hoped that a combination of flashing tree lights, low overhead lighting and algae would make it difficult for Winke to pick up where he left off.

Five minutes later the doorbell rang and she went to answer it. The porch light illuminated Winke, a crate of Belgian beer, and a younger, slimmer, taller version of Winke with blond blow-dried hair.

‘Paul carried the beer for me,’ he said, stepping back into the house and leaving his son and the beer on the doorstep.

‘Everyone’s in the kitchen,’ Linda said. ‘Straight ahead. Just there.’ She put her hands on Winke’s back and pushed him in the direction of the kitchen.

Paul was stamping his feet loudly on the doormat. ‘Mind if I come in?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

She stood to one side and watched as the Niemans’ son carried the beer into the kitchen, treading snow laced with mud from the soles of his shoes into the hallway carpet, which was beige. Resisting the urge to get down on her hands and knees and start removing the stains, she followed Paul into the kitchen.

The crate, which had been put on the dining-room table, was being unpacked by Daphne. The cutlery and fantailed napkins were pushed to one side, and two of the candles had fallen over.

‘Linda – we need glasses here,’ Daphne called out.

Linda squeezed past Mick, who was staring at the wooden gazelle he’d just picked up from the sideboard, and got to the cupboard where she kept her glasses. She made a show of moving around some tumblers and a couple of Jessica’s old baby beakers. ‘No beer glasses,’ she said, hoping it sounded as though they’d once had some.

‘Any cognac glasses?’ Daphne persisted.

‘I’ve got these.’ Linda held up a couple of tumblers.

‘Make it wine glasses. The bigger the better.’

‘Joe,’ Linda said, ‘we need glasses from the drinks cabinet.’

Joe unlocked the door in the sideboard behind him.

‘These’ll do,’ Daphne said, pushing past Mick who was still contemplating the gazelle, and taking the glasses out of Joe’s hands.