Do You Want to Know a Secret? Read online

  DAD: ‘It’s nothing but a money pit, there’s damp downstairs and I’d swear I see a bit of dry rot, and you know the maintenance on an old house is constant, a bit like the Golden Gate Bridge, you start work on one end and by the time you finish, it’s time to go back and start all over again blah, blah, blah etc., etc. . . .

  Dad, I should tell you, fancies himself as a great handyman, on account of a power drill we got him one Christmas, and even though he spent ages swaggering around the house with a very authoritative-looking tool belt strapped to his waist, all he really ended up doing was putting a load of Swiss cheese holes in my mother’s good IKEA occasional table. Poor Mum, every bank holiday weekend she has to put up with him strutting around, dismantling her hostess trolley and magazine stands to illustrate how badly they’re made. (‘Held together with glue, do you see? Total crap.’) Then abandoning everything and leaving a big mess all over the living-room floor the minute a Cup Final match comes on.

  I do not know how my parents haven’t divorced, I really don’t.

  MIDDLE BROTHER: ‘Should have gone for a cool penthouse somewhere in town instead, Vick, guys love that, plus you’ll never get the old-lady smell out of that house. And is that actual stippling on the ceilings?’

  MY INCREDIBLY CONDESCENDING SISTER-IN-LAW, A WOMAN WHO’D MAKE A STEPFORD WIFE LOOK LIKE WAYNETTA SLOB: ‘It’s so . . . what’s the word? Oh I know, cosy.’

  Which, by the way, we all know right well is code for ‘small’. You know, just like when you say a guy is ‘distinguished’, it’s actually a euphemism for ‘really old and I wouldn’t go near him in a sugar rush’. Then to add insult to injury, when I did eventually move in she said, ‘I LOVE coming around to visit you, Vicky. It’s just like camping out. And I can totally sympathize. When we had the builders in a few years ago, my masseuse said she never saw me retain such tension in my shoulders. Never get a conservatory, sweetheart, it’s soooo not worth the hassle.’

  Even Barbara had a go. She came to a viewing with me and grudgingly said, ‘Buy it if you want, but you’ll never get a man to move in here with you. For God’s sake, the outside is painted pink. Pink, as a colour, is a very well-known man-repeller. That’s a fact. Bit like a single woman with a cat. Guys tend to think you’re a total weirdo.’

  See what I mean? I ignored the lot of them and bought it anyway, all swept up in the romance of owning a house with beautiful period features, bay windows, a cast-iron fireplace in the bedroom, and a lovely, bright downstairs kitchen with actual coving on the ceiling. ‘Listen to you, your trouble is you’ve seen too many Merchant Ivory movies and now you fancy yourself as Helena Bonham Carter in a tight corset, clutching your pearls, looking out the sash window,’ Laura quips at me every time I enthuse about how lovely it WILL be in about two hundred years’ time, when my builder, probably the single most useless individual in the northern hemisphere, eventually gets around to finishing the job. ‘You’ll end up selling, mark my words.’

  I’m too bloody stubborn, and I’ve shelled out far too much cash at this point to swallow my pride and admit that she might actually be right. Instead, I’ve schooled myself to look on the whole renovation project as a lesson on the triumph of optimism over bitter experience – with such absolute force of will that if I could only apply the same attitude to my love life, sure I’d be laughing.

  Honestly, every time I come home it’s like there’s a fresh disaster waiting for me with the builder, who is now a full six months behind schedule. He was to be finished at Christmas, it’s now well after Easter, and I’m still living in a building site; dust everywhere, all my stuff in boxes, and only a travel kettle in the kitchen to make the odd cuppa tea with, which I have to drink out of plastic cups because I’ve no way of washing anything.

  I’m not making this up: the other night I came in to find my beautiful original wooden floor in what WILL be my elegant sitting room (trust me, even just saying it is an act of faith) completely and utterly destroyed. Builder-from-hell was supposed to sand it down for me, nice and evenly, then varnish it in a lovely dark, shiny teak; like the kind of floor you’d expect to see Fred Astaire swirling Ginger Rogers around on in a thirties black-and-white movie, at least that was my humble little vision. What I actually ended up with was the whole thing covered in lumps and bumps, not unlike the cellulite on my thighs, except all sealed in with varnish.

  ‘Do you like it, love?’ he asked me cheerily, seeing the ‘slapped mullet’ look on my face. ‘It’s all the go in these old houses. Gives a kind of “antique” effect. No extra charge for it now, don’t worry.’

  Anyway, for better or for worse, my house/building site it is. Barbara’s flat is sadly out of the question as she shares with another ‘resting’ actress, so there’s never any hope of peace or privacy. Now, I love her flat and I love going around there, it’s kind of like a flashback to student days: pizza boxes and empty wine bottles everywhere, with Barbara usually wandering around the place still in her nightie at three in the afternoon watching Oprah. Great fun, but our Laura, hygiene fascist that she is, the woman who famously never goes anywhere without Parazone wipes in her bag, reckons she can only ever drink alcohol there, so it’ll kill whatever germs are floating around the glasses. And it’s not really fair for us to land on Laura either, mainly because, God love her, she’ll always jump at any chance she can to escape for a night. It’s rare, believe me, as she can never get babysitters, and, as she says herself, it’s hardly surprising. Any child-minder in their right mind would demand payment in gold bullion to take responsibility for her precious angels. In fact, Laura reckons pretty much every seventeen-year-old in the area has her blacklisted by now.

  Right then, deep breath, here we go.

  Project ‘let’s all try to get what we want out of life for a change’.

  No, hate it, too self-helpy. (Please understand I just love attaching names and titles to things; it kind of comes with my job.)

  Oh, I know . . .

  ‘The law of attraction in action.’

  No, too rhymey.

  Butterflies . . . something about butterflies . . .

  Yes, got it.

  For better or for worse, I’m calling us the Butterfly Club.

  Now all we have to figure out is how in God’s name we’re going to completely and utterly do a three-sixty on each other’s lives. Within one year.

  Gulp.

  Chapter Four

  The Butterfly’s first meeting. April.

  LAURA ARRIVES BANG on the dot of eight, and I’m not a bit surprised as this is a woman whose punctuality is the stuff of legend. For God’s sake, even all four of her kids arrived promptly on their due dates – but as Barbara pointed out at the time, they were probably all too scared of her not to. (Unpunctuality is considered the ultimate war crime chez Laura, and the corresponding punishment is reserved only for the boldest of the bold: NO TELLY.)

  Anyway, born mammy/candidate for canonization that she is, she arrives bringing a full bag of limes for the margaritas, plus a cocktail shaker, plus crisps and dips and other assorted yummy things. As usual, she’s thought of everything. Honestly, if I were a fella, I’d marry her in the morning. No question.

  ‘I knew you and Barbara wouldn’t have bothered to eat today,’ she says, as we air-kiss in my filthy, dusty hallway, which WILL be lovely when it’s finished. (Trust me, the more I keep repeating this like a mantra, the more I actually start to believe it myself.)

  ‘Angel from on high,’ I say, leading her inside and down the bockity, narrow, uneven staircase to the kitchen, stepping over boxes of tiles and grouting as we go.

  ‘Dearest, please understand I mean no rudeness by this question,’ she says. ‘But what has your builder actually achieved since I was last here? If you don’t mind me saying, the place, if possible, actually looks worse.’

  ‘Well, emm . . . my new fridge arrived,’ I say, a bit defensively, pointing to it, palm outstretched, a bit like a game-show hostess. ‘And I do have electricity
. And the loo now flushes properly and all.’

  God, I sound just like my granny when she used to tell us about the happiest day of her life. It wasn’t her wedding day, or even when her kids and grandkids were born, no: it was the day she got her first indoor toilet installed. In 1952.

  Laura opens the fridge, sees that the builder has stuffed it full of his own things: Jaffa Cakes, bagels, full fat butter and, for some bizarre reason, last Thursday’s Daily Star, conveniently opened at the racing page.

  She pulls out an ancient jar of peanut butter and shoots me one of her knowing glares. Put it this way, if you were a crime lord handcuffed in the dock and she looked at the court jury like that, you’d know instantly that you were a goner.

  ‘Is there a section in The Guinness Book of Records for the longest time an unopened jar of peanut butter has been kept for no apparent reason?’

  ‘I know, I know . . .’

  ‘Vicky, only say the word and you can move in with me any time. Now my house may not exactly be the Ritz Carlton, but if you could endure my darling cherubs, we’d love to have you. At least it would be hygienic.’

  ‘Honey, I really appreciate the offer, but at least this way I can keep an eye on Bob the Builder and . . .’

  I’m saved from having to make further excuses by the doorbell and Laura’s phone ringing simultaneously. Not that I don’t appreciate her lovely offer, but I absolutely know that if I had to live under the same roof as her kids for a prolonged period of time, I’d end up either: a) an alcoholic; or b) on eight milligrams of Valium a day.

  Note to self: never in my most drunken moment ever reveal to Laura that, while I love her kids and on a one-to-one basis am well able for them, the four together can be a bit . . . well, let’s just say challenging.

  I leave her to her call and race upstairs to let Barbara in.

  ‘Hey, hon, how was your date?’ I say as we hug, and I lead her inside. I’m really delighted she’s here. Barbara’s probably the one person I’m never ashamed of the state of my house in front of. Mainly because her flat is, if anything, worse.

  ‘Eughh, not a keeper,’ says Barbara, ‘not by the longest of long shots. You should have seen him. The eyes were so cold and dead, it was like sharing a bowl of pasta with Nosferatu.’

  ‘Sure as hell beats what I did last night, i.e., worked. Came home. Tried to figure out what the hell Useless Builder had done all day. Slept.’

  ‘Exactly what I’m here to sort out. Where’s Laura?’

  ‘In my elegantly appointed kitchen, probably Parazone-wiping my borrowed patio furniture by now.’

  ‘You got furniture? Way to go.’

  ‘On loan from my mother. Has to be back tomorrow. God love her, she didn’t want me to be entirely mortified at the state of the place in front of you pair.’

  ‘Don’t suppose by any chance Laura brought food?’

  ‘Tonnes. Dips, crisps, the whole carb-heavy works.’

  ‘Cool, I’m starving. Sex always makes me hungry.’

  ‘Barbara, I thought you didn’t even like him?’

  ‘I didn’t say I liked him, I just fancy him. Completely different thing. God, you’ve so much to learn from me in such a short space of time.’

  We head into the kitchen where poor old Laura is deep in mid-conversation/row with one of the kids, while (I was right) simultaneously Parazone-wiping down the patio table and neatly rearranging the chairs around it, as if you’re supposed to have garden furniture indoors. Even though she’s holding the phone at ear’s-length, we can hear everything and it’s not pretty.

  ‘Emily, your brother is very sensitive and you are NOT to tell him that you can’t heal animals, you just prefer to witness their suffering instead. You know perfectly well that he’s very attached to that gerbil, and you’re to go in there and apologize to him right now. Yes, well, when you’re a mother, you can be mean too. No, that’s not true, I AM glad you’re alive. Right, that’s it, I’m hanging up now, tell Granny she can referee the next row . . . ooops, sorry you had to overhear that, ladies,’ she says, snapping her phone shut and looking very hassled, as she gives Barbara a big bear-hug.

  Poor old Laura, her kids really do come with two volumes: loud and deafening.

  ‘Trouble at mill?’ asks Barbara sympathetically.

  ‘Oh, don’t let’s even go there, it could take all night. Barbara dearest, what in God’s name are you wearing, did you really come out in public dressed like that?’

  ‘Haven’t been home since last night.’

  ‘I thought you’d a date last night.’

  ‘Well, what can I say? It was a good date. Apart from the eejit I was with, that is. In fact I’ve just done the walk of shame from his apartment . . .’

  ‘And this is what you wore?’

  Laura’s now picking bits of stray fluff off Barbara’s jacket, grooming her like female gorillas do when they’ve chosen a mate. I saw that on National Geographic once and made a silent vow never EVER to even attempt to ‘tidy up’ a bloke, just in case he runs a mile. At my stage of life, I’m taking no chances. Plus it’s sort of evolved into a phrase Barbara and I use to describe the way really, scarily possessive women behave around their blokes: ‘dust-fleckers’.

  ‘Yeah, why, what’s wrong with it?’

  ‘Nothing, only just that it looks like the kind of fabric they use on the space shuttle to prevent it from burning up on re-entry.’

  Now, granted, it might sound a bit stinging, but then that’s our Laura for you. Always the barrister, ready with a rapier riposte.

  ‘Mix me a margarita, and while you’re at it, pour out a large saucer of milk for the dust-flecker here,’ Barbara says to me, as I’m busy squirting lime juice into the cocktail shaker.

  I keep my head down and wisely elect to stay well out of this one. Like I said, time and experience have taught me this is always the best course of action whenever this pair start having one of their legendary ding-dongs. The great thing about Barbara, though, is that she never takes offence and is virtually unembarrassable, so Laura’s harping on at her tends to go right over her head. Besides, harping on is just a natural extension of Laura’s innate mammy gene.

  ‘Was I dust-flecking?’ asks Laura, surprised.

  ‘Most definitely.’

  ‘Sorry, dearest, it’s an involuntary action with me at this stage,’ she says, putting crisps into neat little bowls that she’s brought. ‘It’s just that you can look so lovely when you’re dressed . . . how do I put this? A little more upscale and a little less flammable.’

  ‘Right, just for that, we’re starting with Vicky. Ladies, please set your bladders to “off”.’

  ‘Excuse me, did you say starting with me?’ I say, peering over the top of the fridge and simultaneously trying to bash ice cubes out of a tray for the drinks.

  ‘If I could jog your sieve-like memory, this caper was entirely your idea, Vicky, so yeah, you’re up first,’ says Barbara, fishing what looks like a shopping list, scribbled on the back of a gas bill, out of her handbag. ‘No point in raising your eyebrow at me either, honey, I missed an entire repeat episode of Oprah doing this list out for you. I’m taking my project-management role here very seriously, so you might as well just shut up and listen.’

  ‘Good girl,’ says Laura, nodding at her, impressed. ‘You not watching daytime television is always a step in the right direction.’

  ‘Right then,’ Barbara goes on, ignoring her and referring down to her gas bill, sorry, I mean notes. ‘Here’s the way I see it. Oh yeah, and you also have to remember that I’m saying all of this from the standpoint of love.’

  ‘That an Oprah-ism too?’ asks Laura, one eyebrow raised.

  ‘Do you mind? As project manager, I’m officially telling you that if you interrupt once more, I’ll make you go into what WILL be the state-of-the-art jacks, and grout tiles for the rest of the night. You’ll get your turn later. Anyway, I think we all know how much you want to be with someone, Vicky . . .’

&n
bsp; ‘The right person,’ I correct her, slowly pouring the drinks out of the cocktail shaker and into three little picnic-sized plastic beakers. ‘Please, dear God, no more emotionally unavailable messers, commitment-phobes, bores that I’ve nothing in common with and I’m only dating out of my pathological fear of being left alone, eejits, half-wits or, worst of all, most damaging of all, the nice guy, the DSM. You know, the one I actually think could be a runner, a keeper, who, after a few perfectly nice nights out, and a few nice kisses and some nice phone calls etc., drops me like a hot snot. Would you like me to back this up with examples, girls? You’ve only to ask, I’ve about two dozen at my fingertips.’

  And if I sound like I’m ranting, you’ll excuse me. It’s only because this particular, painful subject is something of a well-worn hobby horse at this stage. The girls, thankfully, are well-used to me.

  ‘I certainly do take your point about that lethal species, the nice guy,’ says Laura, emphasizing her words. ‘At least if you know in advance that a man is a complete bastard, then if nothing else, you’re prepared for heartbreak when it inevitably comes. It’s the nice guys that ought to come with a government health warning. Well, I married what I thought was a nice, decent guy, didn’t I? And just look how that turned out for all concerned.’

  ‘So if you can find me a life-partner that fits into the category “none of the above”, I’d be eternally grateful,’ I say. I’m not quite ignoring Laura, but, at the same time I am hoping to avoid getting into a slagging-off-her-soon-to-be-ex-husband marathon, which, let’s face it, could easily go on into the wee small hours. I hate to sound selfish or anything, but we’ve all devoted so much airtime to that particular subject over the years, and it’s most definitely NOT why we’re gathered here tonight.

  ‘OK, Vicky, I’m stopping you right there,’ says Barbara, firmly. Or at least as firmly as it’s possible to sound, given that she’s also stuffing her face with tortilla chips and a dribbly blue-cheese dip. ‘Just look at what you’re attracting!’