Spin Cycle (2 page)

Rachel’s regular baby-sitter had let her down and her parents had offered to look after Sam, her ten-year-old son. Her father tired easily these days and didn’t like driving home from Crouch End to Chingford late at night, so when they baby-sat they invariably stayed over.

“Plus I’m convinced your mother stays awake listening.”

“Don’t be daft. Why would she listen?”

“Rachel, your father is over seventy. He wears trousers with elasticized waists and shoes that do up with Velcro. His idea of excitement is allowing himself an extra Pepto-Bismol after dinner. If you lived with a man like that, wouldn’t you listen?”

“Maybe,” she said. For a fleeting moment she could see Adam at seventy, soaking his loose change in biological detergent overnight and washing the rubbish before throwing it in the bin.

She put out her arm and squeezed the inside of his thigh. He smiled back at her. A moment later she was trailing her fingers over the outline of his penis.

“That’s nice,” he said softly.

She felt his penis begin to stiffen.

“I do love you, you know,” he said, stroking her head.

“Yeah, me too. And listen, thanks for driving down to see my gig tonight. I really appreciate it.”

“My pleasure . . . Rache, I know I seem a bit tough on you, but it’s only because I worry. I hate to think of you struggling like this. Why won’t you at least let me give you some money?”

“I’ve told you before. Because I want to make a go of the comedy on my own. I refuse to live like some kept woman indulging a fantasy.”

He shrugged. “OK. But when we’re married . . . which reminds me. We really ought to sit down and sort out a wedding date.”

“We will. Soon. I promise.”

“Rache, you’ve been saying that for months.”

“I know. It’s just that I’ve been so taken up with the comedy, I haven’t had a moment to think about it. Look, we’ll talk about it when you get back from South Africa, OK?”

He turned to look at her. “Rache, you do love me, don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” she said, leaning across and kissing his ear.

“Then we’re just wasting time not setting a date. And getting married makes sound practical sense for both of us. I’m nearly thirty-six and I want to get my life sorted. It feels like it’s time. I want to settle down. I want us to have a couple of kids, a nice house round the corner from the practice . . .”

“. . . membership in the synagogue burial society,” she piped up.

“I’m trying to have a serious conversation here. Why won’t you listen?” Adam said, starting to get irritated.

“I will listen.” She smiled a sexy smile. “But later. There’s something I want to do first.”

With that she began unzipping his fly.

“Christ almighty, Rache,” he gasped. “What if somebody sees?”

“Shh,” she whispered as she moved her head down toward his lap. A moment later she was running her tongue over the top of his erection.

Adam whimpered softly and slipped fractionally lower in his seat. Then almost at once she sensed him clenching his buttocks in panic.

“But what if I get so carried away that I crash the car and you end up biting off my knob? Look . . . oh God that feels incredible. . . . Look Rache, just in case this all goes wrong and I end up hemorrhaging, for Chrissake remember to tell the ambulance men I have thin blood. You know how hard it is to stop my nosebleeds ’cause I have trouble clotting . . . fuck you’re good . . . I’ll need FFP, right? And possibly platelets. Have you got that? Fresh. Frozen. Plasma.”

But Rachel wasn’t listening. She took virtually his entire penis in her mouth—just as the Audi entered the Rotherhithe Tunnel.

CHAPTER 2

“No, Coral, listen to me.
Lis
ten. I know it seems unbearable now, but you have to calm down and believe this is just a temporary setback. All of you is beautiful and valuable . . . of course I mean it. Coral, this is me, Faye, your best friend. Would I lie?”

Rachel dropped her shoulder bag on the floor next to the hall coat stand and shook her head. Not only was her mother up past midnight, she was yakking on the phone. She swore that one day the woman’s larynx would seize up. She walked toward the kitchen and the sound of Faye’s voice.

She opened the door. Her mother, mobile phone between her shoulder and chin, was kneeling on the kitchen counter in her lilac candlewick housecoat and a pair of brand-new rubber gloves. A plastic bucket stood beside her. Although she had her back toward her daughter, Rachel could see quite clearly that her mother was cleaning the venetian blind above the sink. A few feet away Rachel’s father, Jack, was standing in his dressing gown stirring hot chocolate mix into mugs of boiling milk.

“Dad,” she said, without taking her eyes off her mother, “do you mind telling me what on earth she’s up to at this time of night?”

Jack gave his daughter a “you know your mother” shrug. “So how’d it go tonight?” he asked, giving Rachel a peck on the forehead.

“Not bad,” she told him, taking a Rich Tea out of the biscuit tin and biting into it.

“Sam OK?”

“Good as gold, bless him.” Jack smiled. “Not a peep since he went to bed. You want some hot chocolate?”

Rachel shook her head.

At that moment her father stopped in midstir, clutched his chest and grimaced.

Before Rachel had a chance to react to the clutching and grimacing, Jack let out an enormous belch. Hearing this, Faye immediately swung round. Covering up the mouthpiece, she took the phone off her ear and cocked her head toward her husband.

“He had wheat tonight,” she said to Rachel. “Now he’s paying the price.” She uncovered the mouthpiece and said, “Look, Coral, I’ve got to go, Rachel’s back. I’ll speak to you in the morning. Meanwhile, cheer up and try to get some sleep. Bye. Love to Ivan.”

“Three hours your mother’s been on that mobile,” Jack said as Faye stabbed the off button and maneuvered herself into a sitting position on the counter. “I tell you her head is so full of microwaves, I could use it as a hot water bottle.”

Faye snorted. “Jack,” she said brusquely, “just be quiet and help me down.”

He padded over to the sink, took the bucket of Flash from her and held out his hand.

“That was Coral,” she said to Rachel once she was back on her feet. “Poor soul, her manicurist took one look at the state of her cuticles and told her there was nothing more she could do for her . . . so how did it go tonight? Channel 6 discover you yet? Wait . . . don’t tell me. I already know the answer. Rachel, I beg you. Give up this comedy nonsense. Look, I know you’re funny, Daddy knows you’re funny, so what’s wrong with just making us laugh and going back to a proper job? Show business is a tough world. So few people make it and I worry about you having no money.”

“Mum,” Rachel said, going over to her mother and wrapping an arm round her shoulders, “you have to stop worrying. I admit things get a bit tight occasionally, but I’m doing fine. Honest.” She gave Faye a reassuring peck on the cheek.

Her mother shrugged and turned to Jack for moral support, but he’d disappeared into the living room with the mugs of hot chocolate and half a dozen Rich Tea biscuits in his dressing gown pocket.

“So where
is
Adam?” Faye asked, wiping her forearm across her brow. “I thought he was going to stay over.”

“He’s driving straight back to Manchester,” Rachel replied, swallowing the last of her biscuit.

“But he won’t get home till three in the morning.”

“He’s got to do the VAT tomorrow.”

“And to think I’ve spent hours slaving over a hot Flash bucket. I know how high his standards are.”

Rachel looked round. The pile of washing up she’d left in the sink was gone, the previously overflowing swing bin was empty, her counters were clear and the J-Cloth that had been on the drainer at least two months had been replaced with a new one.

On the one hand, Rachel couldn’t help taking offense that each time Faye came to the flat the first thing she did was sniff the fridge, wince and then reach into her handbag from which she would take a pair of rubber gloves. On the other hand, since Rachel didn’t get much time for housework these days, she was genuinely grateful. She decided there was nothing to gain from pointing out how much Faye’s cleaning irritated her. Her mother would only get upset.

“Oh Mum, I’m sorry,” she said kindly, “I really am. You’ve worked really hard and—”

Rachel broke off in midsentence.

“Mum,” she said with faux casualness, eyeing Faye’s rubber-gloved hand, from which there hung a short white string. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you appear to be holding a water-logged tampon.”

“Yes, I know,” her mother said excitedly. “It’s my own invention. I always use them to clean venetians. You take a Tampax out of its cardboard, damp it and run it along the plastic. Works a treat.”

* * * * *

Faye looked round the kitchen, smiled a satisfied smile and took off her rubber gloves. Almost at once she put them back on. She’d spied a significant buildup of green gloop round Rachel’s washing-up bottle nozzle. Having rinsed it to her satisfaction and taken off the rubber gloves once more, she suggested they join Jack in the living room. As they walked in he was sitting up in the sofa bed reading
You and the Continental Drift
.

“I tell you,” Jack said, looking at them over Faye’s reading glasses, which had gold filigree arms and which he always borrowed because he could never find his own, “it says here the whole of Europe is on the move. The entire continent. Believe me, it won’t be long before Chingford ends up in the Caribbean.”

“So what are you saying?” Faye said, picking up her hot chocolate from the coffee table and sitting down at the end of the sofa bed. “That I shouldn’t bother buying a winter coat this year?”

The two women burst out laughing.

By way of reply Jack gave an involuntary belch, put Faye’s glasses back on the end of his nose and returned to his book.

Rachel perched herself on the end of the bed next to her mother. It was then that she noticed the large mock-leather wedding invitation catalog lying on the floor next to the bed.

“Mum,” she said, doing her best to keep her tone light. “What’s this?” She picked up the catalog and opened it.

“You can see what it is,” Faye said quietly. “The chap at the printers said I could hang on to it overnight. I thought maybe we could look through it together tomorrow. . . .”

“I dunno,” Rachel said, shaking her head and giving a half laugh. “What am I going to do with you?”

“But, Rachel, Adam won’t wait forever, you know. Please, darling, why can’t you set a date?”

Faye then launched into her usual ten-minute lecture about what a lovely boy Adam was, how much he loved Rachel and how thirty-four-year-old divorced mothers didn’t get too many offers of marriage.

“Plus he’s well-off. You and Sam would want for nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

“I know,” Rachel said gently. “But I’ve just been so busy trying to get my career off the ground. I just haven’t had time to think about weddings.”

“But you had a career. A wonderful career. You were earning good money.”

“Oh Mum, the money thing isn’t important. . . .”

“Rachel . . . darling . . . of course it’s important. Look at you in this tiny, scruffy flat. How can you say it’s not important? I mean, what about this room? Bare floorboards. You can’t even afford to put down carpet.”

“How many more times? They’re not bare, they’re stripped. Stripped is fashionable, not a sign of poverty.”

Faye shrugged. “If you say so. But why don’t you at least let us give you the money to take out that monstrosity over there?”

She was nodding at the Victorian fireplace.

“Mum,” Rachel gasped. “How can you call a white marble fireplace a monstrosity? It’s exquisite. You know full well it was one of the reasons I bought the flat.”

“But it’s so old-fashioned. It reminds me of my grandmother’s house in East Ham. Rachel, you’ve got central heating. You don’t need a fireplace. Of course, I blame your father. . . .”

She turned to Jack, who had dozed off with
You and the Continental Drift
lying across his chest. “When you said you wanted to do English at university instead of something useful like estate management, he should have put his foot down. . . .”

Rachel was too tired to get into an argument. She stood up. “Let’s leave it for now,” she said with a yawn. “Anyway, Adam and I have agreed to discuss wedding dates when he gets back from South Africa.”

“You have?” Faye said, beaming. “That’s wonderful. Let’s see, it’s November now. A spring wedding would be nice. Mind you the weather’s never reliable. July might be better. Then again people start going on holiday . . .”

“OK, fine, whatever. I’ll think about it. Look, I really must get to bed. Let’s talk in the morning.”

Faye nodded. “You know,” she said, kindly reaching up and taking her daughter’s hand in hers, “your father and I have been married nearly forty years. I know we have our ups and downs, but I really do think being married is wonderful.”

“Mum,” Rachel said with a chuckle, “you think Chingford’s wonderful.”

Just then Sam appeared in the doorway in his old
Toy Story
pajamas that were two sizes too small for him. His dark hair looked like a family of mice had been nesting in it and his face was red and creased down one side.

“Darling,” Faye said. “I thought you were sound asleep.”

By now Rachel had gotten up and walked over to him.

“You OK, love?” she asked.

“Yeah. I was just thirsty.” He held out a glass of water that he’d clearly just got from the kitchen.

“Come on. I’ll take you back to bed.”

“Night, darling,” Faye said.

Rachel, now holding the glass of water, and Sam walked down the hall back to Sam’s room.

“Mum,” Sam said as she pulled the duvet over him. “What’s ape suzette?”

Rachel smiled and sat down on the bed. “I think you mean crêpes suzette. It’s a French dessert made with pancakes and booze.”

He nodded slowly. “Oh right. It’s not made of monkey then?”

Rachel laughed. “No. Definitely not. So where did you hear about crêpes suzette?”

“Oh, it was just something I overheard Grandma say to Granddad . . . they were talking about weddings or something.”

Rachel frowned a brief, suspicious frown.

“It’s a funny idea, though,” she said, “animal desserts. You could have . . . ooh I dunno . . . profitermoles. . . .”

Sam started to giggle.

“And . . . mice pudding,” she went on, “. . . meringue-utan. Oh, and what about crème camel?”

By now Sam was laughing his head off. “You’re really funny, Mum,” he said.

“Am I?” she said softly, beaming with pleasure.

He nodded.

She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.

“Night, night,” she said, switching off the bedside light.

“Night . . . Mum?”

“What is it?” she said.

“How’s about low-bat yogurt?”

* * * * *

Rachel lay in bed, hands behind her head, staring up at the ceiling. Her mother was right. Adam was a good catch. He was successful, well-off, good-looking. He also thought the world of Sam. Whenever Adam came to stay at the flat he bought presents for him. Last time it had been fifty quid’s worth of rare Pokémon cards he’d ordered off the Internet. And he had a point when he said they had both reached an age when they should be thinking about settling down. Although she had no intention of giving up the comedy, Rachel was in no doubt that pretty soon she would want another baby, or even two.

So what, she thought, that Adam tidied the bed when she got up in the night for a pee? He was just a bit uptight, that’s all. And so what that he was comedically illiterate and found silly schoolboy gags about Japanese accents funnier than her stuff? It didn’t mean he couldn’t change—that she couldn’t change him. She would just have to work on him slowly. The important thing was that in his own, deeply conventional, impeccably tidy way Adam loved her and she loved him. What was more, his conservatism and caution provided the perfect counterbalance to her quixotic idealism. He kept her grounded, which was precisely what she needed.

Of course it wasn’t the electrifying, mind-altering grand passion she’d known when she met Joe, her ex-husband, Sam’s father. It was a more sedate, grown-up kind of love based on mutual understanding, care and respect.

* * * * *

One of the first things that had struck Rachel about Adam was his kindness. They’d met at a dental hospital two years ago, just after she’d started out as a stand-up. She’d gone in to have a couple of obstinate, intermittently painful wisdom teeth removed. Teeth aside, she was also feeling pain of an emotional kind.

Rachel had been going through a particularly barren patch, romance-wise. She’d had a string of hapless blind dates with self-important prats. The only upside was that each had provided her with an excellent source of comedy material. None more so than the American tax attorney she’d met the night before she went into the hospital, who had spent the whole of their three-hour dinner talking about himself.

It didn’t help that Rachel had misheard him when he’d told her what he did for a living and had spent the first half hour thinking he was in taxidermy. Having almost reached the end of her tether with this egocentric jerk, she said, “You can ask me questions, you know. I really don’t mind.”

“OK,” he said, leaning back in his chair, “what do you think of me? ’Cause I reckon I’m just your type.”

“No, mate,” she’d retorted. “Your type’s inflatable.” Then she got up and walked out.

* * * * *

She’d just about come round from the anesthetic when her mother burst into the room pushing an empty wheelchair.

“Rachel, there’s this gorgeous Jewish doctor,” she exclaimed, catching her breath about as easily as a teenager in the presence of Brad Pitt, “I’ve just seen in the corridor. God, talk about a dreamboat. You have to meet him.”