The Rise and Fall of a Domestic Diva. Sarah May

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The Rise and Fall of a Domestic Diva - Sarah  May

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coping with life’s run-of-the-mill ups and downs. The wind knew better, but didn’t have anybody to tell.

      As it brushed past No. 112 (which had featured on TV’s Grand Designs only a fortnight ago), Evie McRae - in the grip of exhaustion-induced insomnia after having scored more than a line of cocaine in her garden office - left the house with her five-month-old daughter, Ingrid, and headed for the 24-hour Sainsbury’s where she did the McRae weekly shop.

      Ingrid was an abnormal baby.

      She slept through the night - often for more than twelvehour stretches - leaving Evie with very little to talk to other women about. So she’d woken Ingrid up - partly because she hated spending time alone and partly in the hope that by 8.00 a.m. she would have the same shadows under her eyes as everybody else she knew - and was now pushing her, screaming, down empty aisles towards the one open checkout.

      At No. 188, Ros Granger woke up in an empty bed. It was only 4.52 a.m. Martin was sleeping on the floor of his office at Curlew & Fokes where they were so stretched on the immigration case that most of the lawyers working on it were only getting a maximum of four hours’ sleep a night. After making sure the alarm was set for 6.30, she buried her face in the pillow that still smelt of him and waited to fall back to sleep. ‘I deserve to be happy,’ she said, through gritted teeth. ‘I do deserve to be happy.’

      At No. 236, Harriet Burgess woke up to eight-week-old Phoebe’s still newborn-sounding screams. She had been dreaming that Miles had grown breasts and was feeding their daughter. Probably because her sister had phoned last night to tell her she’d just found out that prehistoric Irish chieftains used to symbolically breastfeed their entire kingdom - men, women and children. What sort of person knew this kind of thing? What sort of person thought other people wanted to know this kind of thing? Hauling herself out of bed, she went through to Phoebe, the sensory-triggered security camera they’d had installed in the hallway training its lens on her as she plodded past.

      At the top end of Prendergast Road - beyond the crossroads with Whateley Road - Arthur Palmer, aged four and three quarters, woke up screaming. His mother, Jessica Palmer - only half awake - stumbled automatically into his room, tripping over a garage and farmyard, until her hand grasped the foot of Arthur’s bed where Arthur was sitting screaming, still asleep. He was having a night fright, the extremist form of a nightmare.

      Even in the half-light, Jessica could make out the muscles on his neck as his body took the strain of fear. He looked like he did when he was having one of his bad asthma attacks and she grabbed his inhaler off the bookshelves.

      As she sat down next to him on the end of the bed, closer than she wanted to, the screaming stopped.

      Arthur raised his arms weakly - one hand clutching his favourite Transformer, Burke - before sinking untidily back onto the duvet.

      Jessica waited, then yawned and got slowly to her feet, creeping out of the room.

      In the hallway, eyes nearly shut again, she walked into her sixteen-year-old daughter, Ellie.

      ‘Everything okay?’ Ellie asked.

      ‘Oh - everything’s…yeah, it was just Arthur, one of his…one of his…you go back to bed.’

      They eyed each other uneasily and, after a moment’s hesitation, Ellie walked unsteadily back into her room on her spindle legs.

      ‘See you in the morning,’ Jessica called out after her, hoping it sounded natural, then went back to bed herself, thinking she’d fall straight to sleep again; only she didn’t. She rolled around in the big empty bed that seemed to get bigger and emptier every night, then listened to the central heating coming on and - realising that she wasn’t going to get back to sleep until it got dark again in twelve hours’ time - got up.

      Downstairs in the kitchen, she stared at her day, plotted out in blue marker pen on the whiteboard next to the fridge.

      Her neighbour, Kate Hunter, was picking Arthur up from nursery at 4.30 and taking him to Swim School with Findlay then bringing him home, because Jessica had viewings booked throughout the afternoon. She yawned again as the wind changed direction outside and the fan in the kitchen window started to clack unevenly in its broken frame. When would she get round to mending that? Probably never.

      Turning round, she saw the pot of chrysanthemums on the windowsill that she’d bought because she liked the colour pink they’d been in the shop. When she got them home the pink seemed different, and she couldn’t work out why she’d bought them when she’d never liked chrysanthemums anyway. Now they were half dead, the leaves and petals shrivelled.

      She went over to the sink, filled an empty milk carton, and was about to water the plant when she stopped, suddenly pouring the contents of the milk carton back down the sink and lighting a cigarette instead.

      She stood by the windowsill, smoking and staring at the chrysanthemums, not thinking about anything much.

APRIL

       Chapter 1

      When Kate woke up again, an hour later, the edge of her pillow was wet, and for no reason at all her first thought was that Robert had been crying. Only Robert wasn’t even in the bed.

      ‘Robert?’ she called out, anxious.

      ‘Here,’ he mumbled.

      Then she saw him, kneeling on the floor in front of the chest of drawers, the bottom drawer open.

      ‘I didn’t hear you get up.’ She didn’t like to think of Robert awake while she was asleep.

      ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ he said and carried on digging around in the drawer.

      Neither of them mentioned last night’s row; the sun was shining, a new day was beginning, and there just wasn’t room for it.

      ‘You’re wet,’ she observed.

      ‘Yeah—I showered.’

      ‘Already? I didn’t hear the shower.’ Kate carried on watching him.

      Robert scratched at his armpit then stood up suddenly.

      ‘What is it you’re looking for?’

      ‘I don’t know—I’ve forgotten. Christ…’ he added, ambivalently.

      On the other side of the bedroom door they could hear Margery, who was staying with them at the moment while she had her Leicestershire bungalow repainted, irritably attempting to make a pot of tea. Everything about No. 22 Prendergast Road irritated Margery—primarily because she couldn’t believe what Robert and Kate had paid for a terraced house with neighbours on one side who weren’t even white.

      The kettle started shrieking on the hob. The kettle irritated Margery—why didn’t they get an electric one? Even the water coming out through the tap irritated her, and the irritation was so intense that Kate, lying upstairs in bed, could feel it as Robert walked towards her through bars of early morning sunlight.

      ‘I heard someone screaming last night,’

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