Nothing new that I can see.
I am going to go up and get dressed in a minute.
In a minute, I will.
* * *
1 p.m.
* * *
I need help – badly.
I am used to acrimony after the Seaborne affair, but I’m not used to this.
I’m frightened. I have a feeling someone nearby really wants to damage me, and they are becoming more insidious. Relentless, even.
Or am I just like Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre – a madwoman?
At least Marlena answers me promptly now; her text suggests a new bakery place on Charlotte Street.
I thread through the back streets from Euston to a café that sells gluten-free cake and smoothies made of something called maca, where everyone looks studiously cool: the girls all with shaggy, two-tiered coloured hair, the young men all with self-conscious beards.
Marlena’s on the phone; she raises a hand in greeting. ‘Yeah, cool, got it. I don’t like this bloke at all. I think he’s lying, but the police don’t seem bothered.’ She agrees to talk later before hanging up.
‘Hi, you.’ She grins at me, and I think how glad I always am to see my little sister, pain in the arse that she is sometimes.
Marlena eschews the good stuff, of course, when we order; her one concession to the ‘clean eating’ fad the wholemeal bagel she chooses, along with black coffee. I plump for scrambled egg.
‘So. What’s up?’ She pours sugar in her coffee. Real sugar from sachets in her bag, not the agave syrup they’ve put hopefully on the tables. ‘Sleeping okay now?’
I stir my almond and kumquat drink dubiously and glance at her.
‘Bit better, yes. It’s just – I don’t seem to fully relax on my own in that big house.’
‘Why are you on your own?’ She frowns. ‘I thought there were bloody loads of you there? It’s like Snow White and the seven dwarves, you and your entourage.’
‘Hardly.’ I am struggling to admit my perfect marriage is less than that. I have a big fear that she’ll just say, I told you so. ‘Matthew’s away for a few days…’
‘Where’s he gone?’
I feel like a soldier dodging incoming flak as she fires questions at me. ‘He’s taken the kids away for Easter,’ I say, and my voice changes, I know it does – despite my best attempt at control.
‘Oh.’ She frowns. ‘Didn’t you want to go?’
‘No, it’s not that exactly…’ I hesitate. Shall I mention my suspicions about Kaye being in Belgium too?
‘What then?’
I feel the tears spring now, much to my annoyance. It’ll only wind Marlena up; crying’s a sign of weakness in her book. ‘He thought they needed some time alone. Since Scarlett found about – you know what.’
‘About you, you mean?’
‘Yeah. About me.’
‘So you have told him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, Jean.’ And she reaches over, placing her hand on mine in such a rare act of warmth that I’m shocked. Her nails are black and glittery and chewed to the quick as usual. They remind me of Scarlett’s. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I’m sure it’ll be okay,’ I say bravely – but I wish I was sure.
‘Well stepfamilies are never straightforward. We both knew that, didn’t we?’
‘Yeah, I suppose.’ I sigh. ‘It’s definitely tougher than I’d anticipated.’ What an idiot, I want to say, what an idiot I was. I believed I could bring it all together neatly – and just look what’s happened. It’s everything but neat. The Brady Bunch? Ha. It’s a complete and utter bloody mess, and if I think about it too hard, it makes me want to howl.
‘How are you anyway?’ I change the subject. ‘You look tired too.’
She still looks good though. My little sister – the newshound.
‘Still atoning for professional misconduct,’ she says tersely. ‘It’s taking a while. A lifetime maybe.’
‘Well…’ I try to summon a platitude.
‘I really fucked it up. Big style.’
‘Yeah,’ I agree, ‘you did.’
‘Yeah, I did. Cheers for that.’ She toasts me with a rueful coffee cup. The pouty French waitress slops down my scrambled eggs and kale, more interested in making eyes at the cool cats on the table behind, and Marlena and I grin at each other. ‘Silly cow,’ Marlena mouths.
We are different, Marlena and I, poles apart – but we both get it. We came from the same place, one few others will ever understand. Only Frankie maybe – though I’ve tried to protect him. We are different to the circles we move in; we’ve done well – and then we’ve both fallen from great heights. Now we are attempting to climb up again.
‘I guess phone hacking was never gonna pay the rent, was it?’ I say, peering dubiously at the undercooked egg. Give me a greasy spoon any day of the week. I don’t belong in London any more. I am the wrong side of cool, the wrong side of forty. And I’m looking over my shoulder every second now.