The Stepmother(7)
Maybe, though, maybe I’d leave telling Jeanie that till tomorrow.
Four
Jeanie
31 December 2014
3 p.m.
* * *
The party is starting in less than four hours. I’m behind already and horribly anxious as I arrive back to find an elderly lady hovering just outside the drive. Our drive, I should say.
Except nothing feels like ‘ours’ to me yet, whatever Matthew says.
The lady ignores my polite beep, refusing to move more than an inch, but eventually I manage to squeeze carefully around her, parking my old car behind the phalanx of shiny, far grander vehicles.
Trying to avoid her eye, I drag Matthew’s dry cleaning out, along with a big box of wine glasses I bought this morning, before my cursed trip to the hairdresser’s.
My hairdo, as my Nan would have called it, is truly awful. I don’t know why I let the girl keep going when I could see the disaster it was becoming – but I just grinned at her manically in the mirror as she turned me into a bouffant Miss Piggy.
Or rather, I do know why I let her carry on. It’s because I didn’t want to upset her. Can’t say boo to a goose me.
And it was because I was distracted.
Whilst the girl cut and curled, I had a cup of tea and scanned a copy of something glossy – maybe it was OK! magazine; I’m not sure. Mid-read about Kylie’s love life, I sensed eyes on me – but it was just a couple glancing at the price list in the window. They walked on.
I finished the magazine and looked for something else to read. I avoided the newspaper rack – I don’t like newspapers any more – but I did catch the Daily Mail’s front-page story – about that girl who’d disappeared from London on Christmas Eve. Apparently they thought she’d quite likely flown to Turkey, planning to travel on to Syria in what they call ‘hijrah’: jihad by emigration.
Then I opened yesterday’s post that I’d stuck in my bag earlier.
At first I thought the hard-backed envelope was a late Christmas card, and I studied my name written in swirly black writing across the front, wondering which friend had tracked me down so soon.
But of course I was wrong.
After I saw what was inside the envelope, I couldn’t move for a bit. The hairdresser’s that had seemed so noisy a moment ago suddenly seemed very quiet, and everyone in my peripheral vision seemed to be moving in slow motion.
I sat staring at the picture. It wasn’t a good picture of me anyway, and it had been doctored with black biro: the artist had had to go over his ‘work’ a few times, by the looks of things, to make the noose really stand out.
The noose around my neck.
When I’d calmed myself a little and put the horrible picture away, I realised what I had to do.
Something I should have done weeks ago. Something I should have done before the wedding.
* * *
Now, on the driveway, all I want is to get inside and make sure the scary caterer’s doing all right on her own before I take Matthew aside.
I need to talk to him quietly and tell him the truth. Before all his smart friends – I imagine they’re smart anyway – before they all turn up and see me for the fraud I am.
Before it all implodes.
But before I reach the front door, the elderly lady, who I recognise now as Miss Turnbull from next door, bears down on me like a Rottweiler on a squirrel in the park.
‘Hello there.’ My jolly smile’s meant to say: please let me go; I’m sorry, but I’m pushed right now. ‘Just dashing inside to see—’
‘I think these are yours.’ The stolid lady is already halfway up the path. She extends a woolly-gloved hand; she’s holding something.
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘The postman must have gotten the house numbers confused.’
Or maybe it’s because Miss Turnbull lives in a bungalow called ‘Heaven’s Gate’, and the postman doesn’t recognise that celestial address as being located in suburban Hertfordshire.
She waves a wodge of envelopes held by an elastic band. My redirected mail. I see the handwriting on the top one.
I don’t want the letters, but I don’t want her to have them either. I stick my hand out as best I can, given I’m holding a box of glasses under one arm and trailing a man’s suit from the other.