Chapter 8

ON SUNDAY morning Gill trotted down to the shop for the newspapers, leaving Jake to enjoy his lie-in and, on the way back, decided to run up the stairs rather than take the lift. It took her a while, opening door after door, to find one leading to the stairs.

On the way back she bumped into a young man, George, who was visiting his great grandmother. She remembered Jake mentioning the old lady Grace who lives on the second floor. When George discovered in conversation that Gill was staying with Jake, he told her that Grace had lived there since 1948, but didn’t get out much any more. He thought she should be able to buy her flat as a sitting tenant, with his financial assistance, at a huge discount. George had a figure in mind that he thought her flat was worth. She was introduced to Grace and had a short chat with this delightful old woman, before making her excuses to get back to Jake’s apartment.

George’s comments about the value of Grace’s flat made Gill think. She accepted that Jake’s father’s life insurance would have paid the outstanding mortgage on the flat, probably bought at a price that 28 years earlier would be many times lower than the current value, but how could a glorified copy boy afford the upkeep, council tax, and property insurance on such a place, without having lodgers in to share the other bedrooms? Maybe he had taken in lodgers in the past and it didn’t work out. Suddenly her phone chirped. It was Jake.

“Hi honey, I was just getting the newspapers.”

“Breakfast is almost ready, where exactly are you?”

“Running up the stairs, between the third and fourth floors.”

“Ah, you’ll be coming to the back door, then, leading to the utility room, where I keep the wellies and heavy coats. I’ll meet you there.”

“OK, honey, see you soon.” She sprinted up the rest of the steps, only to find him already there, wearing an apron and holding the door open.

“Sorry, I stopped to talk to George and Grace,” she puffed as she put one arm around him and kissed him deeply, “you know, Grace tells me she worships you.”

“She’s sweet, isn’t she? Not jealous of Grace are you, because you should know that she changes her mind all the time?”

“I would be if she was thirty years younger, but then you seem to have a thing about older women, sweetheart.”

“A fractionally older woman, singular, sweetheart.”

“Mmm, well, you look so deliciously domesticated, quite a change from the wild man of the hills, and looking so cute I could eat you for breakfast.”

“You may have to if it’s spoilt!” he laughed as they walked from the boot room along the corridor, before steering her into a small rather bare study, with a computer on a desk.

“I haven’t seen this room before,” she noted, remembering her earlier tour.

“No, if I had a butler, this would be his office. Once upon a time that wall was covered in monitors and video recorders.”

“I noticed there were cameras around, I suppose you could see me coming up the stairs rather than ring me?”

“No, not from the kitchen, I couldn’t,” he grinned, “now, put your thumb on there,” he directed, pointing to a red-tinted thumb-sized illuminated panel on a small cube on the desk, while he scooted around to the keyboard, clicked the mouse and tapped some keys on his computer. “Now the other thumb ... that’s fine. Now you can get in through both doors using either thumb and the passwords. Remember the lift code?”

“Yes, 3917.”

“Right, it’s 7193 for the back door you’ve just come through, it’s the same number backwards.”

“Got it!”

She put her arms around him and kissed him again deeply.

“You’re very trusting, considering I’ve only spent a couple of nights here, I might walk off with all your lovely furniture.”

“No, you’ll never get any of it in the lift, that’s why I have the helipad.”

“You never show -” she stopped, seeing the smile on his face and slapped him on the arm. “Ooh, Jake, you’re wicked and I love you.”

“I love you too, now, before this breakfast spoils...”

There was another Sunday ramble with Gertie for Jake and Gill two weeks later, but there were no kids with them that time as Wayne insisted it was his weekend to entertain them and he was determined to have them.

The weekends at her Dad’s mini mansion were sinking into a depressing pattern, Jennifer thought as her father drove them away from her Mum’s house that Friday night. Two weeks ago Dad disappeared into his study, where he would probably would be all this evening, even eating his pizza or Chinese delivery in there alone. Apparently he needed privacy as he had some hush-hush ‘deal on’.

He always had some ‘deal on’.

Then he would be at a football match all Saturday with his drinking mates, lie in bed until noon on Sunday, fall asleep snoring in the armchair watching the football on television and wake up in time only to take them home.

At Mum’s, Clay and she would hear all about what excitement Mum and Jake had got up to at the weekend without them.

In Dad’s car, Jennifer remembered that Clay had summed it up in Mum’s hallway earlier, while they were waiting for Dad to fight his way through the Friday night rush hour traffic to collect them.

“It’s not fair, Mum,” Clay had complained, “Dad’ll be harassed an’ rattled when he gets us. Then we’ll have pizza on Friday, fish and chips for lunch Saturday, an’ Dad’ll bring home a Chinese or Indian after the game. Cheryl will try an’ cook a roast on Sunday but she’s bound to forget something because Mar- er, the baby comes first. You guys go out an’ do stuff weekends, but round Dad’s we do sod-all!”

“Clayton, language!”

“But Mum, we don’t do nothin’ at Dad’s ... an’ the place smells!”

Mum had looked at Jennifer for confirmation and she’d nodded, adding, “Smells of wet washing, poop, wee and baby-sick, like all the time. I have to help her with the washing and stuff. Mum, there’s mugs and plates, even the breakfast plates still on the table by Friday night, and I don’t think she’s hoovered or dusted the place since they moved in three months ago. I have to clean my shower and toilet before I can use it. I always pack a toilet duck and bleach in my weekend bag, cos I don’t think she uses any.”

“Oh, you poor darlings,” Mum had clucked, “but I remember I had so little time to do anything when both you were babies -” but then Dad was there knocking on the door.

“Aww Dad, I wanted to go on that walk on Sunday,” Clay whined in Dad’s car, “I’ve made a couple of cool friends that I wanted to see again. Clive’s learned these magic tricks and was gonna show me, while Ally’s got his wrist in plaster after he fell out of a tree and he was saving me a space to write my name.”

“I’m sure you’ll be able to go hiking again, your mother seems to, well...”

“Yeah, but Ally’s cast will come off before ... oh never mind.” Clay passed onto sullen silence, knowing to say any more was useless, Dad never listened and, although he changed his mind all the time, it was never to align with what his children wanted or, for that matter, what their mother ever asked for.

Jennifer sat quietly in the car. She rarely spoke in the presence of Dad; she’d learned long ago the futility of that. He’d sneered, ‘what do you know, you’re just a girl!’ too often to believe she would ever been taken seriously by him.

She imagined their arrival at the new Jarvis household and shook her head in silence. This two-car household had a three-car garage and both cars, his Merc and her Mini Clubman (Cheryl needed a four-door for easy access for the baby seat) were left outside on the drive, while the garages were full of unpacked boxes of goodness knew what and furniture that Dad brought with him from the old house. But Cheryl had insisted on new furniture for the new house, so basically he was just keeping junk.

And Clay was right, Jennifer thought. At mealtimes her mother would have made an effort, with maybe some compromise, perhaps steamed fish with micro waved rice and mixed veg, followed by fresh fruit and yoghurt for afters. If it were Jake cooking, it would all have been fresh and perfectly thrown together, because he was an instinctive good cook. Jennifer smiled recalling the times Jake had taken them out to fine dine at least one evening a week in the last month, and the twice he had come round and cooked delicious food at Mum’s, when she had late meetings at the bank. He had just made good with odds and ends he found in the fridge or ingredients that he brought with him.

As Clay had said, Cheryl cooked a roast on Sunday but that was only because Jennifer had looked after their little sod. Baby Martin was three months old and did nothing but cry, crap and vomit. Nothing like Gemma’s twins, who were at least six months older and smiled and gurgled and could talk a couple of words. They laughed when they were tickled and were fascinated by petals and leaves, the look of wonderment on their faces as they discovered their world was a joy to behold. As soon as they stopped at Dad’s house, Jennifer could see something was wrong through the front wiper blades and the rain, the drive was covered in clothes. There were suits and shirts, pants and socks all soaked through. He had even driven over some of the clothes before he stopped the car.

“What the fuck?!” Wayne yelled as he got out of the car and stormed up to the front door. Jennifer and Clay got out of the car, it was raining quite hard at that moment, and the forecast had been for sunshine and only short sharp showers all weekend. No sunshine in the Jarvis household, that was for sure. They could see their Dad was having difficulty with the door, his key wasn’t working. He rang the doorbell and then hammered on the door.

“Cheryl!” he hissed through the letterbox, “what’s going on?”

“Stop banging on the door, arsehole!” came Cheryl’s voice through the letterbox, the kids heard clearly as they were squeezed under the limited space by the front door sheltering from the monsoon rain shower, “you’ll wake Martin, I’ve only just got him down and he’s been a right sod all day, but then I can see where he gets that from!”

“What’s going on Cheryl, sweetheart? My key’s not working.”

“I changed the locks, the locksmith left half hour ago.”

“But why, honey?”

“You know why ... I found your credit card slip in your suit, you arsehole.”

“What slip?”

“For your hotel room on the night you celebrated your promotion!”

“That was to pay for the meal, champagne for the guys, honest, babe, and came home early, I bought you home chocolates and flowers, remember sweetheart?”

“You lying, cheating bastard, and you didn’t use the credit card I knew about, you used a different account, spending money I didn’t even know you had. I saw the statement, Wayne!”

“Oh! You opened my mail, MY mail!?”

“Oh yes! I have been watching the mail for three weeks until I saw the envelope from your other account and I opened it. It was for eight thousand, seven hundred and thirty one pounds and some loose change, and you’d paid the previous balance of nearly five thousand, just like that, in one payment! I checked our bank statement, Wayne, and guess what?”

“I don’t know, honey, what?”

“You know very well, shithead! Your supposed income from your wages into our joint account is a standing order from your other account. No wonder we’ve never got any money to get me nanny help with YOUR baby!”

“But honey, I can explain -”

“This should be good. I read through the statement. I found the entry I was looking for, which confirmed the slip I had found. I also found lots of payments I had no idea about -”

“But -”

“But what, huh? I called the hotel, Wayne, posing as your secretary, querying why the bill was so high and was told it was for a double room. That’s right, wasn’t it? You checked in about three in the afternoon and checked out at quarter to eight that same evening, signed in as Mr and Mrs Jarvis.”