Our House

by Cathy Woodman

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

There's no place like this home... Single mum of twins, Sadie Keith thought she'd lost her 'wow factor' until gorgeous builder Gareth sets his sights on her, but can he build her dream home and be her dream man? Our House is Cathy Woodman's honest and hilarious novel, perfect for fans of Carole Matthews and Lucy Diamond. 'A cast of diverse characters that grow on you. For a vet, Woodman knows a lot about human nature' - Nottingham Evening Post Sadie Keith doesn't have it all, but she's proud of what she's got: two gorgeous children, a challenging career as a magic operative (that's a clown to you and me) and a cleavage that has, so far, pluckily resisted the forces of age, twin babies and gravity. When Sadie goes to bed (alone) she dreams about two things - a night of passion before she forgets what it feels like, and making enough money to hang up her red nose for good. So when she sees a dilapidated house on the market, Sadie has a brainwave. Why not buy the property, do it up and sell it on? If the people on the telly can do it, so can she. All she needs is a builder. With his tight jeans, tanned torso and tools at the ready, Gareth Bryant seems the perfect choice. What's more, he's wild about Sadie. But as the money runs out, the rain runs in and the kids run riot, Sadie wonders if she's fallen for the wrong kind of cowboy. What readers are saying about Our House : ' Excellent story teller - makes you laugh out loud too' 'Absolutely loved it. Very easy to read and hard to put down '

Release date: April 26, 2012

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 423

Sample

I, Sadie Keith, have many desirable properties, as well as a few less attractive ones that I’d rather keep quiet about. (Did I say quiet? I don’t do quiet.)

If, as my best friend Helen has suggested, I should find myself putting a Lonely Hearts ad in the Surrey Comet or South London Press, I would describe myself as being generously, rather than elegantly proportioned, and having an open outlook. From the front aspect, I have a great figure for a thirty-nine-years-young mother of twins i.e. curvy in all the right places. It’s not so impressive side on – my belly and bum stick out like counterbalances. My hair is a bit of a thatch in the mornings before I’ve washed it. It’s auburn, and shoulder-length, with a softly feathered fringe and sides.

Unique Selling Point? My eyes, which are blue-grey and ringed with long, dark lashes. The Wow Factor? My boobs, which I make the most of by wearing scoop-neck tops.

There’s no scoop-neck top today though. I’m wearing my Saturday-afternoon clothes – a red and white striped shirt with a Paisley print bow tie, and a pair of outsized dungarees in sunshine yellow. I made them myself from a pair of old curtains that I bought for 50p in a car-boot sale in Cheam.

I glance down towards my covered assets, very briefly because I’m driving along Coombe Hill, taking advantage of the downhill slope and hoping that the light on the fuel gauge of my aged Peugeot 406 might prove to be an electrical fault. It isn’t, and the car – which is on its second trip around the clock – stutters to a stop in the middle of the road.

‘Oh damn and bother it!’ (Actually, I don’t put it quite like that.) I pump the accelerator, but nothing happens. In front of me, the road clears. Behind, the traffic builds, then slowly overtakes. An ensemble of horns blasts my eardrums. My face grows a little warm. Beads of perspiration start to ooze through layers of theatrical make-up. I grimace into the rearview mirror. My alter ego, Topsy the Clown, grimaces back, the spots of rouge on her cheeks contrasting with the rest of her china-white complexion.

The driver of a black Mercedes that has slewed to a stop close to my rear bumper grimaces too. He gestures for me to drive on. I shrug my shoulders. I can’t go anywhere, and even if I could, I wouldn’t now that he is giving me a furious, two-fingered salute with one hand and leaning on his hooter with the other.

‘I’m stuck,’ I mouth, saluting him back, at which there’s an unnerving crunch of crumpling metal and plastic, and I am jerked forwards. I think I knock my forehead on the windscreen. I’m not sure. I am just relieved that Lorna and Sam, my eight-year-old twins, are with Dan, my ex-husband, today and not in the car with me.

The enraged driver appears at my window. He beats his fist against the glass which I wind down quickly to avoid any further damage that I can ill afford.

He’s young, charmless and vaguely familiar.

‘This isn’t a bloody car park,’ he begins in a condescending tone which has a similar effect on my temper as water on a chip-pan fire.

‘I never claimed it was, smart arse,’ I interrupt.

‘What did you call me?’ His face colours up and the veins on his forehead start to bulge.

‘Look what you’ve done to my car!’ Slightly dazed, I climb out, angling the hoop that supports my dungarees at the waist so I can get through the door.

‘That isn’t a car. It’s more like spare parts for Scrapheap Challenge. It shouldn’t be on the effing road, and neither should you, dressed like that and distracting other drivers!’

‘I pay my Road Tax. I have as much right to be on the road as you.’ I’ve lost it. I’m squawking like a manic jackdaw. ‘More right! Your driving’s rubbish!’

‘Don’t blame me. You’re the hazard. I didn’t drive into you. You rolled back into me!’

‘How could I? I’m facing downhill.’

The driver hesitates very briefly, but long enough for me to know that I’m in the right. He doesn’t like it. He steps up very close until the front of his jacket is touching the edge of my hoop, and stares. My heart pounds. He’s going to hit me, or worse. What if he has a knife tucked in his pocket? Or a gun? Warily, I keep my eyes fixed on his, but suddenly, he’s not looking at me any more.

I follow his gaze to where a white pick-up van has pulled up on the opposite side of the road, mounting the verge and leaving a trail of crushed daffodils behind it. I say it’s white, but it’s better described as biscuit beige, the grime on its panels patterned with slashes of last week’s rain and crude lettering made by a fingertip: CLEAN ME and DRIVEN BY A DIRTY BASTARD. Underneath these, in green print, are the words BRYANT BUILDERS FOR ALL YOUR – word smudged out – REQUIREMENTS.

Sunlight reflects from the windscreen, so I can’t see the driver’s face as he opens his door. I see his feet before anything else – big feet encased in muddy boots. My first thought is to recall what Helen says about men with big feet. My second is to ask myself why on earth he has got a chain padlocked to his left ankle? My third, as long legs emerge, sheathed in smart, dark-grey trousers, is to wonder why he is wearing boots and a chain with what looks like half a morning suit? This guy is also wearing a bow tie, shirt and waistcoat, but no jacket.

He slams the door then strolls across the road, stopping the traffic by his mere presence. He walks very straight, with his thumbs in his trouser pockets and forefingers pointing towards his groin. My heart skips a beat, then two. This is exactly the kind of man I would advertise for, if Helen should ever persuade me.

‘Can I help?’ he says, addressing me. He’s about six foot tall, and more than a head taller than I am. His eyes are blue-green, the colour of the sea. He has a healthy tan, and short brown hair, run through with wax. He reminds me of good times, of skimming pebbles on the beach, of sunbathing at the base of rugged cliffs on a long, hot summer day. ‘Well?’

‘No, thanks. This young gentleman –’ (I’m being ironic here) ‘– is just about to give me his insurance details.’ The young gentleman in question starts to open his mouth, but before he can get a word in edgeways, I continue, ‘And get down on his knees with a grovelling apology for ramming my car.’

‘I bloody well am not.’

My have-a-go hero muscles in and starts fingering the back of the road-rage driver’s collar. I was angry before, but this irritates me beyond all measure. I am dealing with this. I don’t need any help, thank you. I especially don’t need assistance from a man. I never have needed a man – although, yes, I am prepared to admit that after a year on my own, I’m beginning to miss having a man around. I miss that feeling you get when you drift out of sleep the morning after the night before and find your lover’s hand sliding between your thighs. I miss making love naked in the rain – well, the possibility of it, at least. (Dan, my ex-husband, was never quite brave enough to go through with my fantasy.) What I don’t miss is the macho posturing, even if it does work like magic in situations such as this.

‘It was an accident,’ the road-rage driver blusters. ‘My foot slipped on the accelerator.’

‘Shall I call the police?’ the pick-up driver asks me.

‘Look – I’ll give you my name, address and the name of my firm’s insurance company,’ the road-rage driver concedes. ‘I’ve paper and a pen in my car.’ He fetches them, scribbles the details down on a scrap of paper and hands it over to me with a business card. Presley & Partners Estate Agency. He doesn’t recognise me, but I recall now where I’ve seen him before.

Last summer, when he came to value our house, he made disparaging comments about it, suggesting calling in the House Doctor to deal with our clutter – Dan and I were living separate lives by this time. He also criticised the colour of the bathroom suite, which is Air Force blue in case you’re wondering. I could gloat and tell him how we sold it through another agent at the full asking price within a couple of weeks of putting it on the market, but I’m already running late so I let him go.

The Mercedes squeezes between my car and the pick-up, then shoots off at high speed with its tyres screaming. A removal lorry tries the same manoeuvre, but can’t quite make it. There’s a lot more waving and hooting.

‘I think we’d better get you off the road, don’t you?’ the pick-up driver suggests.

‘I thought you’d gone,’ I say sharply.

‘I can’t leave you like this, can I?’ he says, waving towards my car.

‘I can manage,’ I protest. ‘I don’t need any more help, thank you.’

‘Forgive me,’ he says, ‘but I thought you’d broken down.’ He speaks with an accent like mine, more South London than Surrey, but the resemblance ends there. His voice has the gravelled edge of mortar being poured out of a mixer like the one on the back of his pick-up.

‘I haven’t broken down exactly. I’ve just run out of diesel.’

‘Same difference, isn’t it? Your car’s blocking the road. There’ll be gridlock soon, thanks to you.’

‘I can handle it,’ I insist.

He raises one eyebrow. That’s all it takes for me to realise that I have to admit defeat.

‘Okay,’ I say grudgingly, ‘you could give me a push.’

‘Go on then, hop in and release the handbrake,’ he says with a grin. ‘I’ll see if I can bump you up onto the pavement.’

It isn’t that easy, and my car ends up in front of a pair of gates at the entrance to one of the grand houses on Coombe Hill. It’s called Haze on the Hill – either the owners made their fortune in air fresheners, or it’s a reference to the traffic fumes from the A3.

I put the handbrake back on, get out again and move round to the boot as the traffic files past. My hero is hanging around beside me. I can smell the sharp citrus scent of soap or shower-gel. I can’t help staring at him. He’s cleanshaven, his neck lacerated with fresh nicks from a razor. The ridge of his nose is misshapen – I guess he’s broken it at some time – but this makes him no less perfect.

‘Thanks,’ I say belatedly.

‘Is there anything else I can do for you?’

‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’ I’m in denial. What I’d really like him to do for me has much more to do with my body than with my car. It’s been well over a year since Dan and I separated, and I haven’t had anything more intimate than verbal intercourse with a member of the opposite sex for at least two. I had assumed that my internal workings had rusted through, but I realise now that all it would take is a quick servicing to get them going again.

‘I can drive you down to the garage to pick up some diesel.’

‘No time, I’m afraid. I’m on my way to a party,’ I explain, opening the boot where I keep my boxes of props, too proud to admit that I haven’t got any money to buy diesel with. In fact, I’m completely brassic, thanks to Dan. ‘If I run like Kelly Holmes with the wind behind me, I might just make it.’

The corners of the pick-up driver’s eyes crease as he breaks into a grin.

‘I thought you might be running away from the circus.’

‘Me?’ I say, puzzled.

‘The clown outfit?’

In all the excitement I’d completely forgotten my state of dress. I whip off my red foam nose and stuff it into my pocket. I hang on to the curly, multi-coloured wig because I’m unsure what condition my own hair is in underneath it.

‘I prefer to call myself a self-employed magic operative,’ I say, more stiffly than I intend since I’m smarting at being such an idiot as to imagine that this gorgeous man is chatting to me because he finds me physically attractive!

‘A self-employed what?’

‘Magic operative.’ I’ve learned that giving your occupation as ‘clown’ when trying to obtain quotes for car insurance is financial suicide.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Topsy.’

The man frowns.

I give him my best smile. ‘I’m also known as Sadie.’

The man reaches out and takes my hand. ‘I’m Gareth,’ he says. ‘Gareth Bryant.’

Tremors of lust and longing judder up my spine. I take in the broad shoulders, and the chain that’s wound four times around his ankle, secured with a padlock.

‘Are you on the run?’ I ask, wondering if I’m speaking to an escaped convict. He does have a hint of wickedness around the eyes.

‘I’m on my way to start a life sentence, in a manner of speaking,’ he says, still clinging to my hand as if I am all that stands between him and Alcatraz. A gust of wind whisks a swirl of cherry blossom from the tree beside us. It settles like pink confetti in his hair. ‘I’m getting married.’ He drops my hand.

‘That’s wonderful,’ I say flatly, thinking, Congratulations, Sadie. You’ve found the perfect man without having to place an ad in the paper, and he’s marrying someone else.

‘I hope all the fuss is worth it, the diets and the dress fittings,’ he goes on.

‘I can’t quite see you in a dress,’ I joke, to try and lighten the situation. It works, temporarily. He flashes me a heartstopping smile then returns to unburdening himself.

I don’t know what it is about me that makes people want to reveal their innermost thoughts. I am reminded of the plumber who broke down over a weeping tap in my kitchen and confided that his wife had told him she was bored with being married to him. She kicked him out, refused him access to his two children, changed the locks and screwed him for as much money as she could get. She did let him take the dog, a blind and incontinent poodle, as a kind of souvenir. He really couldn’t see what he’d done wrong, but maybe that was the problem – what he had failed to do. Not only did he fail to repair his marriage, he failed to mend my tap as well.

‘She wants me to wear this bloody awful tie.’ Gareth tugs at the insipid, salmon-pink bow which scrunches into a knot as tight as the knot of disappointment that has formed in my belly. I watch him fiddle with it for a moment.

‘Let me try.’ I angle my hoop so I can step up close to him and reach my hands up to the base of his neck.

‘I spent half of last night chained naked to a lamppost. I could have died from exposure,’ he continues as I pick at the knot, ‘and my best man’s stolen my shoes.’

‘What strange friends you have.’

‘They belong to the Rugby Club,’ he says, as if this explains everything – his physique at least.

‘I suppose you can be grateful that they didn’t stick you on the overnight train to Edinburgh.’ I pause. ‘Keep still, will you?’

‘I can’t. You’re tickling me.’ He grins again, then adds softly, ‘I think you’re enjoying this.’

‘You can think what you like.’ I let my fingers linger a little longer than necessary once I’ve unfastened the knot in the tie, absorbing the heat and texture of the skin beneath his chin. I take a step back. ‘There you go – you’re undone.’

‘Hey, I couldn’t borrow your boots, could I?’ he says. I hesitate, looking down at the outsize Doc Martens that I bought from one of the charity shops on New Malden High Street, and sprayed silver.

‘You could, but—’

‘They’re big, but not big enough,’ Gareth finishes for me. ‘She’ll kill me, you realise, when I turn up looking like this.’

I take it that he’s referring to his bride.

‘I don’t think she’ll have anything to complain about. You look pretty good to me.’ I pause. ‘Apart from the chain maybe, and the mud.’ I watch him kick his boots one at a time against the high redbrick wall that blocks the view of Haze on the Hill from envious eyes like mine.

‘Better?’ he says.

‘No. If you want to know what I think—’

‘You’re going to tell me anyway,’ he interrupts.

‘You’re having last-minute premarital jitters. Everyone I’ve ever met has been overwhelmed by nerves on their big day.’

‘Are you married?’ Gareth asks.

‘Divorced.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. Marrying Dan was the greatest mistake of my life. I realise that now.’

Gareth’s lips form an O. Very sensual. Incredibly sexy. ‘So you think I’m doing the wrong thing?’

‘Definitely.’ Me and my big mouth. ‘Er, possibly,’ I backtrack. ‘It’s my turn to apologise. I have a bit of a downer on marriage at the moment, but that’s just me. I’m sure you and your wife will be very happy. Me and Dan were for a while, quite a long while. Listen, I shouldn’t have said what I did. I don’t know anything about you, or your fiancée. Most marriages work out really well.’ And I think of my mother putting on a brave face each time she learned of one of Dad’s many affairs until his public fling with her best friend drove her to divorce. Of Annette my sister and her husband Sean, fixated on trying to make a baby. Of my friend Helen, always on the lookout to make sure her husband Michael doesn’t run off with a younger model – which is what he did when he left his first wife for her.

‘You don’t look convinced,’ Gareth says quietly.

‘It isn’t all bad. There are some advantages to being married.’

‘Give me one, then.’

I gaze into the boot of my car and pick up the collapsible wand that has fallen out of one of the boxes. I give it a little shake to straighten it out, and drop it back in alongside the magic colouring book.

‘Go on. You can’t, can you?’

‘I’m thinking. How about . . .’ I pause for a moment, glancing down at Gareth’s great, muddy boots. I can’t quite bring myself to mention sex. It’s a funny thing, but when you have sex available on tap, you find you’re not really bothered about whether you have any or not, but when you don’t, it becomes quite an attractive proposition. Forget the panting and the sticky bits. It’s being so close and in love with another human being that does it for me.

‘When two people are head over heels in love, marriage can strengthen the bond between them,’ I begin. ‘You do love your fiancée?’

Gareth frowns as if he hasn’t considered this question before. ‘Yeah, I suppose I must do,’ he sighs. ‘When I proposed, it seemed like a good idea at the time. I’m almost forty, and all my friends have settled down.’

‘You shouldn’t get married just because you feel left out,’ I comment.

‘It’s too late to analyse my motives now. I have to go through with it. I gave my word.’

‘What time is the wedding?’

Gareth glances at his watch and swears. ‘In five minutes.’

‘You’d better go. You might just make it, although it is usually the bride who’s late, not the groom.’

‘I’ll have to break with convention.’

I wonder if perhaps, rather than breaking with convention, Gareth would be better off breaking his word, but for once I keep my mouth firmly shut. Somewhere, not far away, some poor bride, surrounded by a clutch of bridesmaids in flouncy, salmon-pink dresses, is waiting for the man she wants to spend the rest of her life with to turn up.

‘Thanks again.’ I watch Gareth stride across the road to his pick-up. ‘Good luck!’ I yell over the sound of the traffic, but I don’t really mean it. Secretly I hope that Gareth’s new wife’s bouquet wilts and her veil slips. I hope that the wedding charms, the naff silver-coated plastic horseshoes and ribbons, fall apart in her hands, and that she receives twenty identical toasters and no kettle. I hope that Gareth drops her at the threshold of their marital home.

You see, I do have bad points. An inability to finish what I started. A tendency not to look before I leap. I’m not good with money and, as Dan used to keep telling me, I can’t stop myself acting like a jealous cow.

As I stand watching Gareth drive away and out of my life, the pick-up disappearing in several puffs of black smoke from its exhaust, a song comes to mind. ‘Tears of a Clown’ by The Beat from way back when I was about thirteen, when I spent hours pogo-dancing in front of a mirror in my bedroom, and tried to pierce the skin on the back of my right hand with a safety pin, sterilised in vodka. I still bear the scar.

I’m gasping for a cup of tea, I have no diesel, and no money until Topsy has magicked her way through her next performance.

Afraid that the owners of Haze on the Hill might have my car clamped or towed away while I’m at the party, I find a pen in the glove compartment and scribble on the back of a school newsletter about nit control, DOCTOR ON CALL, and place it on the dashboard. I unload my two boxes overflowing with props from the back of the car. My boots are not conducive to running, so I walk, reassuring myself that it is all downhill from here to the venue, a house in a new development tucked away on the site of an old warehouse on the other side of the A3.

Although the house is only mock-Georgian, its honey-gold stucco reflects the afternoon sunshine, making it look like something out of Jane Austen. I almost expect Colin Firth to wander around the corner past the wisteria to greet me. I stagger up the drive between low hedges of box that appear to have been trimmed with nail scissors, and stop to catch my breath by the front door. For the first time before a party, I have butterflies dancing in my belly. I put it down to Gareth with the sea-green eyes . . .

I knock. The door flies open and I am faced with a wall of small children, all girls, jumping up and down and squealing with excitement.

‘It’s Topsy. Topsy, Topsy, Topsy!’

A tall slim woman in her early thirties pushes her way through. No Colin then . . .

‘Mrs Oaten, I presume?’ I say, taking in the bob of shiny ash-blonde hair and the slightly crumpled white linen suit. With her snub nose, flat chest and stomach, she looks as if someone’s taken an iron to her, and run out of steam for smoothing out her trousers.

‘That’s right. Are you the children’s entertainer?’ she asks primly.

‘No, I’ve come to read your meter,’ I joke.

Mrs Oaten exhales a quiet hiss of disapproval.

‘I’m Topsy.’ I hug the boxes tight, at which the flower on my lapel shoots a slug of water straight at her face. Mrs Oaten tries to take this generously, with a moue tighter than a cat’s bottom, while the girls shriek with laughter.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, so sorry. I have a hankie somewhere.’ I rummage through my pockets with one hand and pull something out – a blue hankie with white spots which is knotted to a green one which is knotted to a red one . . . The girls keep laughing, but Mrs Oaten is not amused.

‘Do come in,’ she says, unsmiling.

It might sound a risky thing to do to your customers, but I always like to do this – it gives the kids a laugh, puts them on my side, and provides a useful test of the level of humour that will be appreciated by the audience. There’s no point using double entendres in this house. Mrs Oaten won’t get them.

‘Which one of you is the birthday girl?’ I ask as I step inside the hall.

‘My daughter Katya, who is in the playroom,’ Mrs Oaten says. ‘Come this way.’

‘Katya’s in a strop,’ pipes up one of the girls.

I find that I am to perform in the playroom, a room three times the size of my living room at home, that can easily accommodate me, my props and an audience of twenty-five, or twenty-four since Katya, the birthday girl, makes it perfectly clear that she’s not in the mood for a party.

‘I don’t want to be four,’ she wails, ‘and I don’t want you here,’ she adds, pointing at me.

At first I wonder if it’s because she’d prefer the act that someone has set up locally in competition with mine. Theirs is in the style of Harry Potter. Mine is more Grimaldi, but without the acrobatics. I don’t do acrobatics. (I do wonder sometimes if my act is getting a little tired. Helen would make a great straight man to my Topsy, but she won’t contemplate it. ‘Don’t make me laugh,’ she says whenever I suggest it.)

While Katya stamps her feet on the lilac and pink floor, and wipes her nose on the batwing sleeve of a blue velvet dress, her mother tells me that Katya is upset because she no longer wants a clown for her party, but a disco like the one her friend Amber had for hers. At first I wish Katya had had a disco too, but gradually, with the help of the magic colouring book and wand, I win her round.

I sit myself on the folding Director’s chair that I always bring with me, and weave tales of magic and mystery, taking the girls to other worlds where anything can happen, where I don’t have to entertain boisterous children hyped up with food colourings and fizzy drinks, and where I fall in love with a handsome and eligible prince.

It goes better than I expected. I fail to conjure myself up a prince, but Katya falls in love with Ricky, a streak of stripy fur with glass eyes that passes for a racoon, and at the end of the performance, she cries because she doesn’t want Topsy to leave. I beg a cup of tea from a grudging Mrs Oaten and make Katya an animal from a modelling balloon in an attempt to console her. They are all variations on the dog. She chooses a rabbit, which is a dog with big ears and a bobble for a tail.

While the caterers – no expense has been spared on this occasion – deliver trestle tables and elaborate sandwiches such as baguettes made into snakes with grapes for eyes, and red pepper tongues, to the playroom, I take Mrs Oaten aside and press an invoice into her hand. She recoils as she reads it, as if I have performed a trick at her expense.

‘That’s rather excessive, isn’t it?’ she queries. Her eyes, which glitter like the diamonds on her finger, are small and mean, and I swear that if I had the power to turn this woman into a frog, I’d do it.

‘That’s what we agreed.’

Mrs Oaten shakes her head slowly. ‘I think it’s absolutely extortionate for a couple of hours of puerile acting and unsophisticated illusions.’

‘I’m a clown. That’s what clowns do,’ I protest, ‘and the children loved it.’

‘I took your number from the advert on the information board at my eldest daughter’s school. I was expecting an educational experience.’

I know the school, the private one where my sister Annette teaches geography. She put the card up for me.

I am gobsmacked, but not for long. ‘If you’d wanted something educational, you should have taken them on a trip to the Natural History Museum.’ I watch Mrs Oaten re-read the invoice.

‘How about giving me a discount?’ she says next. ‘That way, everyone will be happy.’

‘Hang on a mo. I’m not happy!’ I stamp one Doc Marten down on the floor. ‘I don’t do discounts, Mrs Oaten. You might assume that because I’m a clown, you don’t have to take me seriously, but this is my job, my career. It isn’t something I do for fun. I’m a single parent with twins. It’s up to me to pull the rabbit out of the hat, metaphorically speaking, to support them.’ I look down the playroom. Twenty-five faces are looking up at me from their sandwiches with great interest. ‘If you don’t pay me in full, in cash, poor Topsy will have to sell her magic colouring book and give Ricky away to the zoo.’

‘Who, or what, is Ricky?’ interrupts Mrs Oaten.

‘Oh, your silly mummy wasn’t paying attention, was she?’ I aim this at Katya, who is at the head of the nearest table. Katya stands up and places her hands on her hips.

‘Don’t you know, Mummy, that Ricky is Topsy’s racoon,’ she says superiorly.

‘Tell me,’ says Mrs Oaten, trying but failing to join in with the spirit of the party, ‘did you name him after Rikki-Tikki-Tavi?’

I frown.

‘The mongoose from The Jungle Book,’ she continues.

‘It’s Rick-ay,’ I explain, ‘from EastEnders.’ I am unable to suppress a smug smile as Mrs Oaten doesn’t appear to have heard of either Rick-ay or EastEnders. In fact, I am beginning to understand why she wanted an educational experience. Her education is sadly lacking. ‘Anyway, if the zoo won’t take him, I shall have to have him put down.’

‘What’s put down?’ asks Katya, tugging on my hoop.

‘Shh!’ hisses Mrs Oaten, trying to steer me towards the playroom door.

I stand my ground. ‘Topsy will starve to death.’

‘Please pay Topsy, Mummy,’ begs Katya, clinging to her mother’s linen trousers. ‘You have to . . .’

Mrs Oaten gives into a chorus of emotional blackmail. I win, but I have to have my full fee as a cheque, not in cash, which is inconvenient to say the least. I still have no money, and my car’s still stuck halfway up Coombe Hill parked across someone’s drive.

When I return, I pack my props boxes back into the boot and decide to call Helen on my mobile. However, the battery’s flat so I can’t ask her for a loan until the cheque’s been cleared at the bank, and even then the bank will probably want to hang on to it to reduce my overdraft.

There’s only one thing for it. I head on foot to New Malden High Street. New Malden? The newest concepts here, among the rows of commuter-belt houses, are the ubiquitous one-way signs, speed humps and other traffic-calming measures that only serve to agitate the most tranquil driver. Oriental food shops like SeoulPlaza, and MKate Supermarket stand on the High Street alongside Safeway and Tudor Williams, an old-fashioned department store. There’s Pizza Hut, B’Wise, and Shoefayre, and it’s always busy, a fact that I am depending on . . .

Embarrassed? I don’t do embarrassed although I will confess to a prickling heat that is br