Michelle wondered if the woman standing on the doorstep of Beech House was wearing a disguise, because she had the oddest costume on. Whoever she was, she appeared to have carefully selected her clothes with the aim of maximizing what a dumpy figure she had. She wore a short white denim jacket and a long white denim skirt that fell to the ground in a series of distinct tiers, each defined by a tufted cotton ruff. The ensemble was completed by a white denim cloche hat, which crushed her abundant black curls down about her kabuki face, and a white denim shoulder bag as shapeless as a cloud.
Under the bulging blue eyes of this stocky apparition Michelle felt highly conscious of her own Tunturi-turned legs, sheathed in silk and knee-high suede; her own piquant face, made tasty with sweet creams and savoury exfoliants. She was about to lie 'Can I help you?' when the funny little woman came straight to the point of everything. 'You must be Michelle.' Her voice was common yet clear and confident. 'I'm Phyllis Vance — Dave's girlfriend.' Michelle was deeply shocked. She had no idea that Phyllis, or any Phyllis-type person, existed. Social acuity had never been Michelle Brodie's thing: she had lived her adult life with her gaze at an upward angle; behind and below her lay Cath, Ron, Dave and what she now perceived as the inner-city slum of her marriage, cobbled alleys full of barefoot kids with rickets, fat boilers like Phyllis hanging out laundry to soil in the smutty air.
Phyllis was not remotely intimidated by Beech House or its mistress. She knew women like Michelle only too well — had she desired it, she might have gone that way herself. Every day in Choufleur she stuffed them full of macerated okra and aubergine. From her steamy kitchen she could hear their clipped tongues snipping at their lettuce as they commiserated with one another about their enslavement to Dr Atkins. The only mystery, so far as Phyllis was concerned, was what conceivable reason — save for sheer, mucky moral turpitude — Michelle could have had for being with Dave Rudman. They had the house to themselves — the sunlit drawing room jaggy with taupe swags and eau-de-Nil ruches. To Phyllis's surprise Michelle told her it all. When the penitent is ready the confessor appears, and Phyllis, in her denim surplice, with her unthreatening mass and risible make-up, made Michelle feel very safely superior. She began by conceding that: 'The letter I wrote to Dave, well, it wasn't … it wasn't about anything much but me really. I couldn't — I didn't…' Then 'snip-snip', she managed to cut away at the sack of lies and out spilled the seedy truth: she had been weak, she had been vain, she had been self-deceiving to begin with — but then a far greater deceiver. 'By the time I could admit to myself the truth that Carl wasn't Dave's at all, well…' The arms race was on, the hateful escalation of elbow-dig and low blow. Now Phyllis understood not only how far down her lover had been — but the extent to which he'd raised himself up. 'He's changed, love,' she explained to Michelle, 'believe me, he has.'
They had a light, bitter lunch of cottage cheese and chicory leaves in the kitchen, and Michelle opened a bottle of Chablis. The view of the tilting garden with its heavy decking levered up incredible news. 'He wrote a book? I can't believe it.' Believe she must, for, as Phyllis explained, despite all the madness surrounding its composition, this was still a true expression of Dave's love for Carl — a love he still felt. 'That's what that idiot was doing in your garden,' said Phyllis, waving a bit of Ryvita. 'He thought he oughta dig it up, get rid of it. He's worried it's gonna be found. Not now — maybe not for ages, but when it is it'll screw Carl up. Apparently' — she shook her head in amazement — 'it's full of the craziest shit.'
By the time Phyllis left for her evening shift in Covent Garden they'd reached an understanding. 'I know this must be very hard for Dave,' Michelle said, 'but Carl still doesn't want to see him. To be — to be honest…' And why the hell not? … 'he doesn't want to see me or Cal either. He — he's got a lot of stuff to work through, and I don't think there's any way we can help him. I don't think he even thinks of any of us as … mummies or daddies.'
Cal Devenish got home in time to hear one end of a telephone conversation. On the other end was a Detective Sergeant based at Rosslyn Hill. 'No,' Michelle was saying with winey emphasis, 'no, we have no wish to press any charges at all — we want them dropped, all dropped.' Cal dropped his briefcase on the hall floor and walked towards his partner. 'No,' she went on, 'none of us is prepared to make witness statements, or appear in court should the CPS decide to prosecute. I don't think I'm making myself clear here — we want the charges dropped, he wasn't trying to steal anything, HE WAS TRYING TO GET IT BACK!'
It had taken ages for them to get over to Basildon from Chipping Ongar, the bus trundling from estate to village as they worked their way across the Essex badlands. Steve didn't seem to mind — but then he didn't seem to have a mind. He'd had another course of ECT in hospital. The shrink had said, 'It might jolt him back to life,' as if the depressed young man were one of Dr Frankenstein's faulty automata. Instead it had jolted him deeper into catatonia.
Now Phyllis's son sat keeled over on the rubber bench, the cotton dag tails of his frayed jeans sopping up the water on the floor. From without came the reverberating yelps of child bathers. 'C'mon,' Dave said, 'I'll help you into your trunks.' He'd chosen a family changing cubicle for this reason. He let down the wall-mounted nappy-changing table so he could lay Steve's clothes in its plastic depression. Steve wasn't entirely catatonic — he uttered sighs and coughed negatives — the bits of conversation that weren't words. Whatever position Dave placed him in he remained there. He was emaciated — his collarbone so pronounced it could have been grasped like a handle — and the presumptuous dreadlocks he'd sported at Heath Hospital were gone, leaving behind a nubby, scarred scalp.
Dave held and even stroked Steve's pitiful thighs, as he coaxed first one foot and then the other into zooty surfer's trunks. Then he led the ill young man through the footbath to the pool area and conducted him down into the chlorine broth. Outside the undulating windows that swam the length of the pool Dave could see a shopping arcade with ordinary life going on in it: pensioners pushed by wheeled baskets, seagulls scrapping over the yellowy rinds of white bread, a young mother struggling with the harness of a baby buggy. Steve fell forward into the migrainous waters, and Dave, panicking, lunged for him and held him up from beneath his belly. Steve's feet kicked out into Dave's nylon crotch, and the first words he'd spoken all morning blurted out: 'I'm swimming!' he spluttered, 'I'm swimming!' Dave Rudman began to cry and for the first time in a decade the tears weren't for himself.
It was a fortnight before Mo finally came back to Dave with an offer: five grand. Although it was almost half what Dave could have got if he had taken the trouble to arrange a private sale, he accepted. He wanted rid of it and he needed the money. Once the lawyer's bills had been paid off there was fuck all left from the sale of his flat. When Dave went down to Bethnal Green to pick up the money, there was the Fairway — a stupid, bulbous creature with a radiator grin. Its engine purred, its bumper nuzzled him, it demanded affection — it wanted another twenty-odd years of creepy, interspecific cuddles. Dave was repelled.
Mo had more bad news: 'Those geezers 'ave bin by again. I told 'em what you said about Finchy, but they weren't 'aving nunnuvit. Said they didn't borrow 'im 'iz money. You pozzitiv you shouldn't be giving 'em summuv this?' Dave shook his head and took the wad of cash. It would give him a few months' respite, and pay for the three of them to take a little holiday, if, that is, Steve was up to it.