He followed the cameraman out into the relatively fresh air of Brent Park industrial area and they leaned on the hood of his four by four, which saw its only action in the car park at Sainsbury’s rather than the rugged terrain that God and Mitsubishi had intended.
Ed closed his eyes and pretended he was somewhere else. Somewhere hot and tropical with swaying palms and rolling surf, somewhere that didn’t smell of engine oil and spent fast-food cartons. “I was that far away from stardom, Trev.” He indicated a metaphorical inch with his fingers. “That far.”
“Don’t give me the Harrison Ford routine again, Edward. You usually save that for when you’re drunk.”
“He was nothing before Raiders of the Lost Ark. That film made him what he is today. It could have done the same for me.”
“It’s made you into a boring old fart. Ciggie?”
“I haven’t had one for four years—you know that. And I’m not about to start now. Just blow the smoke in my direction, I’ll inhale.”
Trevor obliged, filtering a stream of Benson & Hedges toxins through tight lips. Ed widened his nostrils and snorted deeply.
“I don’t know what more you want,” Trevor nagged him. “You run a very successful corporate video company. You have a great staff. A great wife. Great kids, if you like that sort of thing.”
“I have spent two days in a warehouse trying to get fantastic camera angles on a woman drilling a hole in a piece of wood.” Ed sighed. Heavily. “I was the man who blew up the plane at the end of Raiders. Did I tell you about the time Harrison and I were in a bar in Morocco and he said…”
“Yes. Yes. A thousand times, yes. I know about the time the camel nearly bit him on the arse. I know about the effect that having sand permanently down his underpants had on him. I know about what a great bloke he was because he always remembered Ali’s name. I have worked with you for five years. Long enough to have heard all your Harrison Ford stories several times. And they’re great. They really are. But not today, Ed. Not today. Let me finish this cancer stick and we’ll get on with Miss Driller Killer showing the old folks down at B&Q how to get the best from their DIY.”
“I gave it all up for Ali, you know.”
“You didn’t. You gave it up because, like the rest of us, you were fed up with the insecurity. The fear of being only as good as your last explosion, the trailing halfway round the world for a few months’ work only to be forgotten at the bottom of a very long line of credits; the nights spent propping up seedy bars in dubious Third World countries with the likes of Harrison Ford and living on diarrhea pills when you’d rather be at home on your own comfy little sofa watching repeats of Frasier…with a nice cup of tea.”
Ed huffed in an unconvinced kind of way.
“There are an awful lot of extremely talented people out there, Edward, chasing a tiny handful of jobs. Be grateful that you had the big time and can now settle for cozy suburbia on a fat executive salary. Life could be worse.” Trevor took the last drag of his cigarette.
“Can I grind the butt out for you, mate?”
“My pleasure.” Reverently, Trevor handed the glowing butt to Ed, who kissed it to his lips with a quivering sigh.
“I still miss it desperately. It doesn’t get any easier even when you’ve given it up.”
“Are we talking about films or cigarettes now?”
“Maybe both.” Ed dropped the cigarette to the floor and ground it out with his heel.
Trevor gazed across the weed-ridden expanse of car park. “Did I say life could be worse?”
“You did.”
“I’m bloody psychic,” he sighed. “It’s the Ogre.”
Ed looked up. Orla O’Brien was out of her BMW and heading toward them. She already looked tetchy and she didn’t even know what a cock-up they were making of the nonperforming Performing Power Tools demonstration video. And, being blessed with an ultra-feminist heart, she’d probably go ballistic when she saw the blonde in the bikini.
Orla had been put in place by the owner of the company as a management consultant. Her remit was to downsize, upsize, modernize, rationalize, digitalize and all sorts of other “izes” that were bound to arouse suspicion and engender hatred in the work force. She had been with them for a month, and everyone loathed her except Ed, who for some chivalrous and inexplicable reason found her merely misunderstood. Despite her leanings, Orla wore tight skirts and filmy blouses and her hair piled on top of her head as if she were an extra in Pride and Prejudice. Wispy ringlets of jet-black hair escaped when she shook her head, which she did often. Ed thought it was supposed to make her look stern and unapproachable, but it didn’t. It made her look sensual.
And she was American, which didn’t help. She was brisk, efficient and didn’t understand most of their jokes, and when she did she complained about them being sexist, which they invariably were. Her sense of humor bypass didn’t allow her to click into the more usual response of the other women in the office, which was to riposte with an equally risible comment or throw a missile at the offending person—paper clip, elastic band, Kit Kat wrapper (used) or plastic cup (preferably empty, though not essential). Orla thrived on punctuality and schedules and forecasts, and Wavelength Films had existed happily for several profitable years on a sublime blend of chaos, camaraderie and sheer goodwill. They had a loyal if disorganized staff, and there was an unwritten rule that when the shit was about to hit the fan no one ducked—they all closed their mouths and faced it together head-on. It worked. Sometimes well, sometimes less well, and it didn’t fit into Orla’s brief at all. And she said so, frequently, in a seriously kick-ass sexy accent.
“She is scarier than Cruella De Vil,” Trevor muttered.
“She’s okay,” Ed said and, without realizing it, crossed his arms defensively across his chest.
Orla stopped in front of them.
“How’s it going?” she asked without preamble.
“Great,” Ed replied with an easy smile.
“I thought I’d stop by for the last hour—if that’s okay with you. There are some things I want to go through.” Ed noticed her bulging briefcase with something approaching resignation. “Maybe we can go for a drink when you’re done?” She looked from Ed to Trevor and back.
“Count me out,” Trevor said and pushed himself away from the car. “I’m going home to watch 101 Dalmations on video.” He sauntered back toward the warehouse with all the alacrity of a man who knows he’s about to meet his maker.
Orla wrinkled her nose crossly. “Is that another one of these jokes that I don’t get?”
“Search me,” Ed said, suppressing the smile that threatened to curl his lips.
“What about you?”
“I can’t be late, I’m going out tonight.”
“With your wife?”
“With my brother.”
“Oh.”
“What about tomorrow after shooting?”
Orla’s chin lifted. “I have a date tomorrow night.”
“Oh.”
“I can do this without your help,” she said, and shrugged her shoulders with such indifference that it created an unexpected and empty little hole in Ed Kingston’s heart. There was a time when he had felt truly needed. Now Ali didn’t need him, the children didn’t need him and even management consultants didn’t need him.
Orla marched off after Trevor, her heels clicking resolutely on the concrete. Ed, wishing he had something else to grind into the floor with his foot, followed meekly, hoping beyond hope that someone might have found a drill that drilled.
CHAPTER 3
“Good day today, darling?” At my question, Ed glances up from Broadcast magazine and forces a smile. He looks tired and frazzled and in need of more sustenance than ready-made lasagna will offer.
“Yes. Fine. You?”
“Yes.”
“Hurray, chicken nuggets! Chicken nuggets! Chicken nuggets!” I do wonder about my children sometimes. This is my youngest, Elliott. He of the chicken-nugget addiction. He i
s bobbing about at the table with a faintly insane glint in his eye for one so young. Before the plate has hit the table, it is already an inch deep in tomato ketchup. I once dreamed of going to the Pru Leith School of Food and Wine to train as a trendy chef. How soon we forget our ambitions when faced with the relentless onslaught of daily life. I put a sprig of coriander on the side of Elliott’s plate in an attempt to assuage my guilt. It doesn’t work. For me or for Elliott, who whips it off as quick as a flash lest it poison him, and fills the vacant space with more ketchup.
My other son, Thomas, is twelve and a parent’s dream. He doesn’t yet have acne, his trainers don’t smell and he likes to read. Harry Potter, what else? Thomas probably hates chicken nuggets but would be too polite to mention it and would eat them anyway. He is considered intelligent, chatty and sociable, and I do hope he doesn’t grow out of it. My third and eldest child is Tanya, and she once was intelligent, chatty and sociable and now she’s a teenager. A girl-woman of fifteen and don’t we all know it. We are all waiting for her to grace us with her presence at the table while our convenience food grows steadily colder. She’s heavily into Trance music. Now don’t ask me what that is; I did once and got tutted at. I think it’s because it’s so monotonous and repetitive that it makes her go into a trance. All it does is make me want to bite my own ears off. Sod painkillers, you could have babies with it, it’s so numbing to all the senses. Tanya has the permanently glazed look of the terminally bored and only perks up to the point of silliness when Enrique Iglesias appears on telly. (Nicky to me.) She wears skirts that aren’t anywhere near long enough and shoes that will ruin her feet, but I’ve given up moaning.
Tanya graces us with her presence, and I bite back the urge to ask her whether or not she has washed her hands. At fifteen, I guess she is old enough to decide whether she can eat with grubby digits.
“Not chicken nuggets again.” I have tried lasagna with her, honestly I have, but she complains about that too.
They all swoop on their food like vultures, which I should be grateful for. But I’m not. Even though it hasn’t taken a great deal of effort, someone should say thank you somewhere. Actually, Ed has headed for the glass of wine option first.
“I’m playing squash with Neil tonight,” he mutters as he tackles his pasta. I doubt it, faced with this lack of enthusiasm. Neil is Ed’s younger brother. He’s handsome in a laddish way, a sort of thinking woman’s crumpet and reluctant heartthrob. Neil is softer and smilier than Ed, but then he hasn’t got three children and a wife to nag him. He seems so lovely, but he must be emotionally crippled in some way because, although he has loads, he can never keep a girlfriend. Ed and Neil arrange to play squash every week. One in three weeks they actually do play squash. The rest of the time they go to the pub and talk about how unfit and old and hard done by they feel now that they don’t get the time to play squash regularly.
“Jemma’s coming over,” I say, and no one looks the slightest bit interested. Jemma’s my baby sister, and they all adore her in their own low-key, offhand way. They do.
“That’s nice,” Ed manages.
We are going to get drunk on a bottle of cheap Chardonnay and discuss the genital inadequacy of the last three men she’s dated, as we often do. She is still searching for someone who’s hung like a stallion rather than My Little Pony. And then we might possibly laugh like hyenas at an old episode of Friends. Sometimes, it seems that I get all my excitement filtered down through Jemma’s sex life. Which, I have to say, is going through a bit of a lean patch at the moment. Much like my own.
Ed and I never get time for a bonk. And if you saw the size of my ironing pile, you wouldn’t even need to ask why. We fall into bed every night just grateful to have survived another day. It’s not the best recipe for getting mushy, is it? But, hey, don’t 99.9 percent of the population live like that? I can’t believe we are the same people who used to make love for hours and then lie in bed entwined, watching the shapes the clouds made as they wandered past our window. Naturally, that was pre-Pampers life.
“Did you all have a good day at school?” I ask those responsible for ruining my sex life.
“No,” Tanya says.
“It was fine,” Thomas says. “Thank you.”
“Great.” Elliott has not yet learned that enthusiasm is uncool and is still at a nursery prep-school place down the road that costs us a small fortune each month but is worth it because he will grow into a balanced, confident and self-sufficient member of society. Or so we tell ourselves every time we nearly faint when we get the bill. “We had to be trees.” A look of confusion darkens his face. “Or was it elephants?”
I wonder if excessive consumption of chicken nuggets can cause long-term brain damage and our fee-paying will all be in vain.
There is the synchronized clattering of forks, and I can sense the dishwasher bracing itself. I have eaten my lasagna without even tasting it, something for which I should probably be eternally grateful.
“What are you doing tonight?” I ask next.
“Nothing,” they all say.
I tell you, we could have a parade of the Moscow State Circus, the entire lineup of Steps and half the Arsenal football team in here every night, and what would my children say had happened? “Nothing.”
“Well, go and do it quietly,” I say.
The children evacuate the table without asking and disappear. I had every intention of bringing them up better than this. Really, I did.
I squeeze Ed’s hand. “You look tired.”
“I’m knackered. I’m not sure if I feel like squash tonight. I think it might be better if we just go for a drink. I’ll see what sort of mood Neil’s in.”
Neil is always in a good mood. He’s one of life’s shiny, happy people. My sister should snap him up and marry him before someone else does. But she won’t. She says it would be incest. Technically, it wouldn’t, but I can see what she means. Marrying your own brother-in-law could be considered a bit close for comfort, even though it wouldn’t necessarily line you up for genetically challenged offspring. Besides, my sister seems to prefer men who are already married.
There is a deep, growling sound three streets away in the soft underbelly of suburban Richmond and, after I count the statutory twenty seconds, Neil arrives on his motorbike, riding over the remains of my daffodils and spraying gravel to the four corners of the earth. It suits him, this laddish mode of transport, and he insists it isn’t just a toy. He says it is his antidote to driving round London in the beat-up old Citroën estate that he uses because of his work. Neil is a photographer. One who spends more than his fair share of time photographing reluctant schoolchildren rather than the fashion models he so desires. But he’s great at it. He has a natural rapport with kids. Or so he tells us.
“Yo! Bro!” Neil says as he comes in through the back door. I’m grateful that he doesn’t kick it in. He always goes into Terminator mode when he’s on that wretched machine. It’s a Honda something or another—flashy, racy, the sort of bike that makes grown men drool and weep silently for a time when they were young and didn’t have a mortgage or a pension fund. You know the sort. Usually Neil is a very sane and reliable person, but the minute he sits on that thing, his brain cells deplete.
“Hi, Neil.”
He kisses me and punches Ed playfully. “Squash or pub?” he says. Maybe he senses that Ed is stretched too.
“Not in the mood for squash?” Ed queries.
“Nah! Let’s do some damage with the old Amber Nectar.”
“Leave that thing here,” I say, indicating the bike. “Why don’t you stay here tonight? I’ll throw the boys in together. You can have Elliott’s room.”
“Sounds good to me!” He high-fives Ed, and I’m relieved to see my husband laughing.
Ed stands and stretches. He is still a very handsome man, despite a slight sagging in the tummy area due to too much sitting behind a desk. But then, that’s like the pot calling the kettle black. Gravity and multiple childbirth have no
t been kind to my stomach muscles either. He does very well to keep in shape on a limited timescale. Ed is rugged and manly and looks like he ought to play rugby, but he never has. Although, strangely, we met at a rugby club do. Goodness knows what either of us was doing there, and time has, unfortunately, rubbed out that part of our memory banks. Why does it happen like that? Things that you think you’ll never forget are suddenly gone, off into the ether, with little hope of them ever coming back.
Ed has dark brown hair, which he combs and preens within an inch of its life, and it grows like a weed, so apart from the week when he’s just been to the barber’s it always looks like it needs cutting. His voice is sexy and growly and he’d make a great television sports presenter. His eyes are the color of new denim jeans, and he has full red lips and eyebrows that are a bit too heavy and look even worse when he frowns. Which he does now. “What are we waiting for?”
Jemma pops her head round the door. “Not me, I take it.”
“Hello, Jems.” Ed kisses her and gives her a hug.
“Jemma.” Neil pecks her cheek.
“Where are you two off to in such a rush?” she asks them as she kisses me distractedly.
“They’re going to talk about squash, rather than get involved in the sweaty, messy end of it.”
“We’re going to have a tactics meeting. It just so happens we’re going to do it at the Queen’s Head.”
“I might join you later,” Jemma threatens.
“This is man’s talk.” Ed grins. He brushes my cheek with his lips. They feel dry. “See you later.” And they are gone.
Jemma sits on a kitchen stool while I start to tidy up. “God,” she says, wriggling to get comfortable, “when did Neil get so gorgeous?”
“It’s the tight black leather,” I advise. “Does it every time.”
“Oh.”
I find the corkscrew and head for the wineglasses. “Open something decent,” Jemma says. “Raid Ed’s stash for something pre-2000. I’ve had a hell of a day. We always drink stuff that’s only fit to splosh in a Bolognese sauce. I want to get drunk on quality grapes, not plonk. I can’t afford to have a headache tomorrow. I have a shop to run.”