Not Quite Nice Read Free Page A

Imogen, I can’t bear the thought of that endless tube journey up and down from Highgate all the time. Perhaps I’ll sell up the house. It’s way too big for me on my own anyhow. I could buy a flat somewhere round here.’
    Imogen’s smile froze on her prim, perfect face. ‘Why? Why here?’ She took a deep breath and looked Theresa in the eye. ‘Look, Mummy, I hope you don’t think that if you move to Wimbledon we’re all going to look after you in your old age.’
    The shock Theresa felt stunned her to silence. She had only suggested the move to save time, to make things easier, so that perhaps sometimes she could have the children to her home.
    A small commotion took place as Michael, Imogen’s husband, came in, and, with a cursory nod at Theresa, went straight upstairs.
    ‘Better to keep a bit of distance, eh, Mummy?’ Imogen laughed, steering her mother towards the front door. ‘After all we don’t want you spying on us.’
    Spying?
    Theresa had to turn away so that her daughter would not see the flush of embarrassment on her face, nor see the tears gathering in her eyes.
    The front door clunked shut.

CHOCOLATE FUDGE TIFFIN
     
    Ingredients
    1 tablespoon golden syrup
    1 tablespoon soft light brown sugar
    1 tablespoon butter
    1 tablespoon cocoa powder
    A few drops vanilla essence
    Pinch of salt
    Crushed biscuits/cornflakes/muesli/rice crispies etc.
    Raisins
     
    Method
    Put equal amounts (e.g., one tablespoon) of golden syrup, sugar, butter and cocoa powder into a heavy saucepan.
    Add a few drops of vanilla essence and pinch of salt.
    Stir over heat till it melts and bubbles.
    Remove from heat and fold in a cereal of your choice: cornflakes, rice crispies, muesli or crushed biscuits and raisins.
    Put into a buttered tin or dish and place in fridge to chill.
    When cool cut into squares.
    Eat.

2
    The Wednesday after that fateful night of babysitting, Theresa had met up, as arranged, in a hotel bar in Covent Garden with five of her old schoolfriends. She hadn’t seen any of them in about forty years. They all exchanged memories and news of their old classmates and the nuns, laughed and drank a lot of wine.
    ‘Another bottle?’ asked Theresa, as she wiped away tears of laughter after another of Ann’s tales of marital life. Ann had always been the class clown, the girl who, when reprimanded by a nun, always talked back.
    She had just described the expression on her ex-husband’s face the day she caught him in flagrante with one of his patients. ‘If I’d wanted to I could have reported him to the General Dental Council and had him struck off, but my plans for revenge included a decent settlement and if he lost his job that would have been zip. So I simply dangled the threat.’ She waved for a waiter. ‘After the divorce came through I knew continuing my life in that town was unthinkable. My husband had slept with half the population, and the other half was baying for his blood. I didn’t want to live the rest of my life getting sympathetic looks from the greengrocer, the butcher and even the paperboy. So I took the lump sum that the court offered and buggered off to the sun.’
    Theresa sat back and watched the girls – though they were all sixty she found it impossible to think of them as anything but girls. Three of them, Catherine, Louise and Margaret, seemed so cowed and the lines on their faces spoke of struggle and disappointment, while the other two, Ann and Sarah, still had a youthful light about them.
    ‘Are we all divorced then?’ asked Theresa. ‘Traded in for a younger model?’
    Theresa, along with three others, raised her hand.
    ‘And you two are still married?’ Theresa said to Sarah and Catherine.
    ‘I’m widowed,’ Sarah said brightly.
    ‘I’m still married,’ said Catherine, who seemed so brittle and burdened, her inner light dimmed – old.
    Perhaps it was losing her job, but Theresa feared she was on the edge of spiralling down into that same huge air of