none anywhereelse-clothes, cosmetics, aids to beauty, homoeopathy, workouts, massage, sparkling water, lettuce, vitamin supplements, alternative medicine, astrology and having her fortune told, the images and activities of other celebrities, her mum and dad and her brothers and sisters. Of music she knew very little, of painting, books, opera, ballet, scientific advances, and politics she knew nothing and wasn't interested in them. Taking part in fashion shows, she had visited all the major capitals of the world and seen of them only the studios and changing rooms of designers, the insides of clubs and gyms, the premises of masseurs, and her own face in the mirrors of cosmeticians. But for one lack in her life, she was extremely happy.
From both parents, somewhere in the genes, she had inherited a sunny disposition, a faculty for enjoying simple pleasures,and a kindly nature. People said of her that Nerissa would do anything to help a friend. Almost everything she did she enjoyed. Especially delightful was sitting at her huge dressingtable, a white cotton cape covering her Versace trouser suit,her long hair looped back, making up her face. On the CD player Johnny Cash was singing her favorite song, loved by her because it was her dad's preference over all others, the one about the teenage queen, prettiest girl they'd ever seen, she who loved the boy next door, who worked at the candy store. Nerissa identified with this successful beauty in most respects.
Her dad liked her hair hanging loose, so she left it that way. If only it had been cold, she could have worn her new fake fur that was made to look like Arctic fox. No real fur for her, she loved animals too much. The very thought made her shudder. But no, it had better be something thin and silky. Dropping the cape on the floor, she inadvertently swept off the dressing table the lid of a pot and three earrings. What should she take her parents? She should have bought something but she'd been working out most of the day and hadn't got around to it. Nevermind. Two bottles of champagne came out of the drinks cupboard and a jar of cocktail sticks fell out, scattering everywhere. Next that huge box of chocolates Rodney had given her-he was so sweet but was he crazy, thinking she'd so much as look at a chocolate?
Nerissa left a trail of litter behind her through the house. Even the flowers toppled out of the vases. Magazines tumbled out of the rack, handfuls of tissues spilled onto surfaces and under tables, lamps fell over, glasses broke, and odd bits of jewelry glinted from the carpet pile and the windowsills. Lynette, who came to clean, was so well paid she didn't mind. She went about the house, picking everything up, admiring a ring here, a bottle of scent there, and if she was at home, Nerissa would give it to her.
It was raining, the heavy crashing rain of summer. Nerissa put on her white shiny raincoat over her silk shift and leapt into the car with her champagne and her chocolates, her wet umbrella-white and with a picture of the seafront at Nice on it-slung onto the backseat. She stopped in Holland Park on adouble yellow line to buy flowers for her mum, orchids and arum lilies, roses and funny green things the florist couldn't identify. Luck was with her, as it usually was. All the wardens were indoors watching Casualty on TV: She was going to be late-when wasn't she?- but Dad wouldn't mind. He liked eating closer to nine than eight.
They lived in Acton, in a street of semidetached mock-Tudor houses, theirs with an extra bedroom over the garage. Nerissa and her brothers had grown up there, gone to the local schools, visited the local cinema, and shopped at the localshops. Both of her brothers were older than Nerissa and both were now married. When she started to make a lot of money, she had wanted to buy her parents a house near her own, perhaps a smart cottage in fashionable Pottery Lane, but they would have none of it. They liked Acton. They liked their neighbors and the neighborhood and their big garden. All their friends lived nearby and they were staying put. Besides, her father had made three ponds in his garden, one in the front and two in the back, and filled them with goldfish. Where in Pottery Lane would he be able to have three ponds or even one? And the goldfish were very active tonight, enjoying the rain.
It was her father who answered the door. Nerissa threw her arms around him, then around her mother, presented her gifts. These were, as always, received rapturously. She never touched alcohol, she drank bottled water, but now she accepted with pleasure a large cup of Yorkshire tea. You could get very fed up with water thrust at you wherever you went. Her mum always announced dinner in the same way, and uttered it in an atrocious French accent. Nerissa would have wondered what waswrong if she had deviated from this practice.
She only ate food like this when she went to her parents' house. The rest of the time she picked at grapefruit and Japanese rice crackers at home or green salad in restaurants. It was a miracle, she sometimes thought, that her insides could weather with no ill effects the shock of digesting thick soup, rolls and butter, roast meat and potatoes, batter pudding, and Brussels sprouts. Her mother thought this was her normal diet.
'My daughter can eat as much as she likes,' she told friends.
'She never puts on a scrap of weight.'
When they had reached the apple charlotte and baked Alaska stage of the meal, Nerissa asked her mother about their neighbors. These people were great friends, as close as cousins.
'Fine, I think,' her mother said. 'I haven't seen much of them for a few days. Sheila's got a new job, I do know that--oh, and Bill's got the all-clear from the hospital.'
'That's good. ' Nerissa trod warily. 'And the son? He's stil lliving at home?'
'Darel?' her dad said. 'Such a nice well-mannered boy. He's still at home, but Sheila told me he's buying a flat in Docklands. Time to move on, he says.'
Nerissa was unsure whether this was good news for her or bad. While she was having dinner with her parents, she always hoped Darel Jones would come to the door to beg a couple of teabags or return a borrowed book. He never had, though accordingto her mother, they and the Joneses were always 'in and out of each other's houses.' She thought of him next door, watching television with his parents or maybe out somewhere with another girl. The latter was more likely for a very handsome and charming young man of twenty-eight. She sighed and then smiled to stop her parents noticing.
Guilt seldom troubled Gwendolen. To her mind she led, and had always led, a blameless life of absolute integrity. Entering a tenant's flat in his absence and exploring it seemed to her a landlord's right and if she enjoyed it, so much the better. The only drawback was her need to rest and take deep breaths between flights.
What a lot he drank! An empty gin bottle and one which had contained vodka and four wine bottles had been put into the recycling box since she was last up here. It was evident he didn't eat much at home, the fridge was again nearly empty and smelling of antiseptic. A large leather-bound book lay on the coffee table. Because she could hardly pass a book without opening it, Gwendolen opened this one. Nothing but photographs of a black girl in very short skirts or swimming costumes. Perhaps this was what they meant by pornography; she had never really known.
A copy of the previous day's
Just as she couldn't pass a book without opening it, so Gwendolen found it impossible to see the printed word without reading it. Some of it, that is. Ignoring the fitness machine article, she read the front page, then the next page, managing fairly well but wishing she had her magnifying glass with her. When she reached the births, marriages, and deaths, she laid the paper down and went to the door to listen. He hardly ever came back in the middle of the day, but it was as well to be careful. How tidy everything was! It amused her to think that of the two of them he with his cleanliness and fussy ways would be called an old woman while everyone saw her as cultivated and urbane, more like a man really.
She wasn't much interested in marriages and births, she never had been, but she ran her eye-pushed and strained her eye really-down the deaths column. People no longer had any stamina and many younger than herself died every day. Anderson, Arbuthnot, Beresford, Brewster, Brown, Carstairs-she had once known a Mrs. Carstairs who lived down the road, but it wasn't her, she was called Diana, not Madeleine. Davis, Edwards, Egan, Fitch, Graham, Kureishi. There were three Nolans, very odd that, it wasn't a common name. Palmer, Pritchard, Rawlings, Reeves-Reeves!
How extraordinary and what a coincidence. This was thefirst time she had looked at the Telegraph for months and what should she find but the announcement of his wife's death. For it certainly was his wife.
