-.’
‘So—what?’ Kate managed to say cheerfully back, pretending not to understand while knowing exactly what was coming next, exactly what question she was going to be asked.
Here it was—in Ros’s clear, ecstatic diction: ‘Did—Findlay—get—in?’
The letter was crackling in the pocket of Kate’s suit jacket just above her heart -, as if it was about to start talking. With an effort, she managed a slow up and down nod and the sort of smile somebody recovering from a minor stroke might produce.
Ros couldn’t quite work out what was going on.
Kate, who had never seen Ros’s eyes darken with doubt before, saw them darken now, and had a sudden apocalyptic vision of just how lonely her future in the postcode would be if she were ever excommunicated from the PRC. She would become Jessica—and nobody wanted to become Jessica. Suddenly terrified, she threw the arm that wasn’t holding Flo up into the air and screamed an evangelical, ‘YESSSS!’, walking for no reason whatsoever into Ros’s arms.
The next minute the two women were hugging and Ros was the first to pull away. This unexpected physical contact with a woman she didn’t even particularly like provoked an unexpected, almost uncontrollable urge in Kate to cry, and to counteract this she started mumbling, ‘I can’t tell you how…how…’
‘…relieved,’ Ros put in, letting out one of her light-hearted laughs.
‘Relieved—that’s it—I am about the whole St Anthony’s thing.’
‘And now you’ve got Findlay in, getting Flo in won’t be such a hassle.’
‘Exactly,’ Kate said heavily, while thinking, who the fuck’s Flo? Then remembering, and patting her on the back, hoping this wouldn’t make her posit anymore.
‘So—everybody’s in,’ Ros said.
Apart from me, Kate thought, staring at her. ‘Everybody?’
‘Evie, Harriet, me, you…everybody in the PRC.’
‘What about Jessica?’ Kate asked.
Ros’s pause suggested that this question wasn’t strictly necessary given that Jessica wasn’t a fully acknowledged member of the PRC, but she showed magnanimity by shrugging and responding with, ‘I can’t get hold of her.’
‘Me neither,’ Kate lied.
A strobe-like frown flickered over Ros’s face, then she was smiling again because life really was unbelievably good—apart from when you had to run past people in mobility aids. Although, in her darker moments, she had to admit that the thought of the cripple’s eyes on her honed body as she streaked past, fully functioning legs pounding, did thrill her.
‘You wouldn’t mind keeping an eye on the bike for a minute, would you? Just while I nip in and get Tobes—saves me locking it up. Bless you,’ she said, squeezing Kate’s arm and jogging past her through the security gates and into Village Montessori.
Kate put Flo, in her car seat, down on the pavement next to the railings and got Findlay into the car, pushing on a nursery CD whose tracks she now heard in her sleep. Satisfied that Findlay’s head was bobbing in time to the music, and that his laughter wasn’t hysterical, merely effusive overflow from some complex childhood game, she scanned the contents of the Sainsbury’s Organic Bag bulging out of Ros’s bicycle basket, and had just managed to uncover a tub of natural cherries and a bar of Valrhona chocolate, some luxury Jersey cream and a gluten-free swiss roll, when Findlay’s window whirred down and Findlay called out, ‘That’s not yours.’
‘I know that, Findlay—I wasn’t looking in it, I was looking after it,’ Kate explained as Findlay swung his head out the window. ‘There’s a difference.’
Findlay grinned, nonplussed.
What did that grin mean? Was Findlay being ironic?
‘My bike’s got four wheels,’ he said.
‘Four?’ she said, uninterested, but relieved he’d changed the subject. Her mind swung back to the natural cherries and gluten-free swiss roll…she was sure there’d been something heavy at the bottom of the bag as well—potatoes? Keeping her eyes on Findlay, she gave them a quick squeeze. Definitely potatoes. Was Ros making tortilla for the PRC that night as well?
Kate had, she realised—staring into the abyss of perfectly honed merchandise in Ros’s bicycle basket—set her heart on tortilla for the PRC that night, and making something else instead just wasn’t an option at this stage. She had eggs in the fridge—in fact eggs were about all she had.
Findlay was saying, ‘Soon it’s only going to have two.’
‘Two what?’ Kate asked, preoccupied.
Findlay was staring at her and there was a baby whimpering somewhere nearby. ‘Wheels,’ he said after a pause, still staring.
Did she have time to get up to the allotment this afternoon? If Ros was making tortilla as well, wouldn’t home-grown potatoes give her tortilla the edge? Kate let out a sharp, involuntary chuckle: a home-grown tortilla.
Behind her, the nursery security gate clanged shut, the sound searing through her cranium as her entire head continued to pulsate with migraine.
‘Thanks for that,’ Ros called out, and was soon strapping Toby and Lola into the child-carrier attached to the back of her bike.
Toby sat staring blankly through the PVC window at Findlay—who was still hanging out of the car—as if he’d never seen him before. Kate thought Toby Granger might be autistic, but even if he was—or ever turned out to be—Ros would somehow manage to turn her son’s autism to her advantage. As Ros always pointed out, whenever she had an audience—even a non-paying audience: everything you do, right down to whether you decide to pick up that piece of litter on the pavement or just walk on past, defines you. So why, with a maxim like that, didn’t Ros look more exhausted—surely there were only so many definitive moments one person could sustain in the course of a lifetime, let alone on a daily basis.
‘Harriet wants us there by eight tonight,’ Ros said, as she tucked in the ends of the Sainsbury’s bag that Kate had undone and forgotten to push back down again. ‘A Labour councillor’s meant to be turning up.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘To talk to us about getting speed bumps on Prendergast Road. It was Evie’s idea.’ She paused, adjusting the Sainsbury’s bag again. ‘You know Evie’s been campaigning for speed bumps? I mean—I’m thrilled about the speed bumps, it’s just the focus of tonight’s meeting has to be the street party: it’s less than two months away now.’
‘My digger,’ Findlay started to yell, ‘I want my digger.’
The digger was in the boot of the car and Kate was about to get it when she remembered that the Pampers extra-value pack she’d picked up in the chemist that morning on the way to work was also in the Audi’s boot. Members of the PRC didn’t do Pampers or Huggies, and they never did supermarket own brand. They bought Tushies, Nature or the German Umweltfreundlich brand, Moltex Öko, which looked as though they’d been made by
