Chapter 4
Once I’d got through the door, I divested myself of outer garments and headed for the kitchen, the toaster and the kettle.
By the time I’d made my way into the front room, munching a pile of toast and jam, I was beginning to warm up.
Fliss, Katy and Clare were all there, the latter two wrapped in duvets, glued to an episode of Dynasty while sharing a jar of peanut butter.
‘Having a sleepover?’ I asked the two of them.
‘We live here,’ Katy said. ‘How can we be having a sleepover?’ Her eyes never left the screen. ‘Fallon Carrington’s a bitch,’ she added, pinching my toast and taking a huge bite. ‘Where’ve you been? You’ve missed the first bit.’
‘Library. With Frank,’ I added. For some reason, I didn’t want to go into who’d given me a lift home.
‘Swot,’ Clare said without any malice.
‘I want to get one of the placements in the summer,’ I said, yawning. I suddenly felt shattered. ‘Fliss, why the hell are you dressed like you’re about to take on Martina Navratilova at Wimbledon?’
‘Squash, not tennis.’ Fliss tutted. ‘What do you think?’
‘About what? Aren’t you cold sitting in a skimpy white vest and tennis skirt? It’s as cold in here as it is outside.’
‘She’s discovered the man she’s after is an ace squash player.’ Clare laughed. ‘God, she’s obsessed with him.’
‘Oh?’
‘So,’ Fliss enthused, ‘once you’d run up the steps like a frightened rabbit after you’d seen him in all his glorious manhood, he came to find you in the kitchen.
I was there instead and obviously had a good chat with him.
The reason he was in the bath in the middle of the morning wasn’t because he was an idle sod and had only just got out of his pit.
No!’ Here Fliss’s eyes gleamed, presumably picturing the fit, glowing body of Theo Mandeville.
‘He’d been training, playing squash, but the showers down at the sports place on the main campus weren’t working.
Probably frozen pipes. I bet most blokes would have just sprayed a bit of the old Brut under their armpits and in their bits and pieces, pulled on their jeans and off to lectures.
But, you see, Theo Mandeville is upmarket. ’
‘Or he was on for a promise,’ Clare said, her teeth and tongue working through a mouthful of peanut butter.
‘What, at nine in the morning?’ I asked.
‘Hey, he can have the pick of any woman,’ Fliss said stoutly. ‘I bet there was some girl somewhere waiting for him in her early-morning bed.’
‘If that’s the case, why didn’t he use her shower then?’ I asked. ‘I mean, why come back to his halls?’
‘I told him I was big into squash,’ Fliss went on, ignoring my question. ‘That I’d been playing for years.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ I said, staring. Here was something else I didn’t know about Felicity Sutherland.
‘Anna,’ Katy chortled, ‘Fliss thinks a racquet is the noise you make at a party when you’ve downed too much cider.’
‘Irrelevant,’ Fliss said. ‘He’ll see me in this little white skirt – anybody got any Coppertone? – and that will be that. He’ll look no further.’
‘Baby oil and iodine,’ Katy put in. ‘Best for a tan.’
‘Don’t you have to have a beach and hot sun for that?’ Fliss asked doubtfully.
‘So, you’re just going to turn up at the squash courts dressed like that?’ I asked. ‘And then what? Who are you going to play with?’
‘I’ll just say I’m there alone to practise my back hand…’
‘Drop ball or fake shot.’ Katy shook her head. ‘Do a bit more research, Fliss,’ she added, ‘or you’ll come over as a right tosser.’
‘Come on, Katy, take me through a few more moves,’ Fliss cajoled. ‘What have you done with your bat?’
‘Bat? Oh, for fuck’s sake, Fliss. Shift yourself, I can’t see Blake Carrington.’ She peered round Fliss who was doing some sort of arm movement with an imaginary squash racquet.
‘Isn’t he a bit old for you?’ I asked, nodding towards the telly.
‘I think I quite like older men,’ Clare mused. ‘I don’t seem to be having much success with anyone here. Maybe I should up my game and try a different generation.’
By the time Friday came round and with it another morning of cleaning, I was rapidly going off the whole idea.
I’d so much coursework to be doing, as well as revamping my CV and searching for contacts to whom I could send an application for my year out, hopefully in Westminster.
So, when I woke at 5 a.m., with the start of a headache accompanied by flashing lights, I knew I was in for a migraine.
I’d not had an attack since sixth form when I was revising for A-levels but I knew the signs.
I also knew that setting off with Fliss up to Bodington Hall was the last thing I should be doing and, after downing a couple of paracetamol, I propped myself up on my pillows and tried to get back to sleep.
I was awakened, a couple of hours later, by Fliss, standing next to my bed, staring down at me.
‘You OK? You look awful.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Why are you sleeping sitting up?’
‘Migraine.’
‘Oh, it’ll be just a headache. Cleaning a few toilets will soon get rid of that.’
I opened my eyes fully, almost blinded by Fliss’s oversized white mohair sweater.
‘Jesus.’ I shaded my eyes against the brightness and the overhead light Fliss now switched on, exhorting me to get up. ‘You’re going cleaning, not entering Miss World. Not that I’d let you.’
‘Let me what?’ Fliss bent slightly, fluffing up her hair in my mirror, pouting her pink lipsticked mouth.
‘Enter Miss World,’ I said, my eyes still closed against the morning.
‘It’s a prime example of the objectification of women, reducing them to their physical appearance while judging them like cattle…
’ I trailed off, wincing, Fliss’s liberal spraying of Opium perfume making me want to throw up.
‘Fliss, I’m not coming with you. I’ve got flashing lights and the most awful pain in my head.
And I’ve not got any of the medication my GP gave me.
’ I felt truly awful. ‘See if Katy or Clare will go with you – it’s only a few more days. ’
‘What will I tell Yvonne?’
‘The truth.’
‘Migraine?’ Fliss snorted in derision. ‘Most made up excuse after “I’m going to the dentist…”’
She broke off as I retched and dashed to the loo.
‘OK, OK, you’ve made your point,’ Fliss called through the bathroom door. ‘Go back to bed and stay there.’
That was the end of my career as a cleaner.
Fliss, together with Clare – roped in somewhat unwillingly, but with the lure of a tenner at the end of it – managed another couple of days each up at Bodington Hall before Yvonne gave them notice, telling them she’d now found proper cleaners to take over.
I think she’d been surprised how hard working and thorough Fliss had been and how she’d turned up dressed to the nines after that first day I’d accompanied her.
Clare reported back that, despite Fliss finding any excuse to make her way into Theo Mandeville’s kitchen – ‘Did I leave my mop here?’ ‘Where’s that bottle of Jiff?
’ – the two of them had only once seen the tail end of him, and dressed in squash whites.
‘Jeez,’ Clare enthused on her return from doing duty as a char, ‘I see what Fliss means. Worth cleaning a few bogs and bathrooms to get a glimpse of those legs. The man is divine.’
Meanwhile, I was doing everything I could to find that placement in Westminster but nothing was coming my way.
As Dad had warned me, I’d no contacts with anyone in London who might see their way to shoehorn me in somewhere.
‘How about a year working with the top man?’ he’d asked when I’d rung home one evening, fed up and depressed at my lack of success.
Other people on my course were already fixed up, and time was running out.
‘The top man?’
‘At NUM headquarters,’ Dad said, hopefully. ‘Here in Rothersley. And then you come back and live with us while you work your year out.’ I knew Dad missed me being at home. ‘I put out some feelers for you, kochanie?’
But I didn’t want to go back home. I wanted to go to London. To Westminster. Be at the centre of it all. ‘All right, Dad,’ I said to appease him, ‘see if there’s anything doing there. Thanks.’
The following day, Jilly, a girl on my course who I’d never really had much to do with, was telling Dave Gill, our lecturer, she’d been successful in securing a placement in the Westminster office of Brian Sykes, a Yorkshire Labour MP.
I felt a flash of envy, but knew I had to congratulate her.
No point my being dog in the manger about it even though I reckoned I’d have been a much better choice.
Especially when she confessed the Labour Party wasn’t really her bag – she’d always voted Conservative.
‘You’ve not got anything yet then?’ Jilly asked, her success obviously rendering her sympathetic to my own lack of it.
‘Nope.’ I tried to smile.
‘Listen,’ she said, slightly embarrassed as I continued to stand there, looking hopeful that by my proximity to her success, some of it might come my own way.
‘I can let you have Brian’s contact details.
He’s married to my mum’s cousin’s friend’s friend…
’ She laughed. ‘I think that’s what it is anyway.
You could try as well? Might be nice to have someone there I know.
Although…’ She looked even more embarrassed.
‘I’m not sure I’m as… as… you know… radical as you. ’
‘Oh, don’t let that bother you,’ I gushed, desperate for the key, any key, that might open the holy grail of a placement. ‘That’s so kind of you. If you could let me know how to get in touch?’
‘Erm, yes, I think that’ll be OK.’ Jilly suddenly appeared doubtful.
She reached for her bag, peering into and rifling through its contents of books and folders.
‘Hmm, don’t seem to have it here with me.
Oh, I know, it’s in my badminton bag in the locker at the sports hall. I can let you have it next week.’