LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER THREE

      The weekend whizzed past with the whole family resolutely doing their own things. Jess spent most of Saturday in her room revising, then Abby dropped her off at Steph’s to get ready for their friend’s party. Abby had given permission for Jess to stay the night at Steph’s, and she couldn’t very well argue when Steph’s mother phoned on Sunday to say the family were going out to lunch and they’d love to have Jess along.

      Tom was caught up in rehearsals for the school drama group’s play all day Saturday and didn’t get home until late. On Sunday, he told Abby he’d have to spend the entire day marking homework, and he positioned himself at the kitchen table, his papers spread in front of him and a solemn look on his face. Feeling strangely abandoned, Abby retired to the living room with the papers and ended up dozing off in front of the television, only waking up later that evening when Jess slammed the front door.

      ‘How was the party?’ Abby asked eagerly, coming into the hall to greet her.

      Jess shot her mother an irritated expression. ‘Boring,’ she said. Well, it had been boring. There were guys there, ones Jess didn’t know, but they hadn’t shown the slightest interest in talking to her. Steph had been a huge hit, though, which made Jess feel even more humiliated. She and Steph had done everything together since they were five, and now Steph seemed to be effortlessly admitted to this wonderful grown-up club, while Jess was outside looking in, like a kid with her nose pressed up against the sweet-shop window. Still, there was no point telling her mother that. Abby wouldn’t understand.

      ‘I’m going to my room,’ she said, and stomped upstairs, leaving her mother in the hallway feeling miserable.

      Monday rolled round and Abby woke up when Tom placed her morning cup of tea beside her alarm clock. It was his sole domestic gesture, but even after seventeen years he still did it.

      ‘It’s a quarter past seven,’ he said shortly.

      Comatose with sleep after a restless night, Abby groaned and thought about lying there for just five more minutes. But no, that would be fatal. She hauled herself up and took a sip of scalding hot tea. She preferred her liquids boiling and Tom was one of the few people who made tea the precise way she liked it. He was a morning person, and by the time Abby made it downstairs, he’d have made his toast, perked coffee and read half the newspaper. Once Jess had made people laugh by saying the reason they had such a happy family life was because Mum was a lunchtime person, she was a nighttime person and with Tom on the alert from six a.m., the three of them never met up. She didn’t say that any more.

      Abby took another sip of tea and reached for the television remote. She loved breakfast TV but knew it was as dangerous as having just an extra five minutes in bed. Each TV segment ended with a teaser for something far more interesting, and it was so easy to lie there and plan to get up when the bit about spring fashion was over. Or the bit about Cajun cooking or, oh look, holidays in Austria, that’s interesting…

      She hauled herself out of bed and shuffled into the bathroom to brush her teeth. A woolly-haired woman with puffy eyes, tired skin and a pale mouth that seemed to have disappeared into her face stared back at her. Without her make-up, her new copper streaks gave her the look of Bobo the clown.

      She badly needed a stint at Sally’s salon.

      Both Jess and Tom looked surprised when Abby arrived downstairs twenty minutes later, fully made up and wearing one of her best jumpers, a caramel angora polo neck, over her jeans.

      ‘I didn’t think you had a job this morning,’ was Tom’s only comment as he buttered his final piece of toast.

      Abby shot him a glare but he’d retreated behind his newspaper.

      ‘Thought you said you were working from home today,’ Jess added.

      ‘I am,’ said Abby, smiling at her daughter brightly. ‘But that’s no reason not to look good. It’s too easy to sink into dressing sloppily around the house when you’re working from home.’

      She hauled out the blender and began rooting around in the freezer for fruit for a smoothie.

      ‘It’s stupid dressing up for home, a complete waste of time,’ said Tom absently, his eyes still on his newspaper.

      ‘What if someone calls at the house? I don’t want to look a mess,’ Abby replied.

      ‘Why bother dressing up on the off chance that someone calls in?’ Tom asked. ‘You always look OK.’

      Abby’s hand stopped reaching for the raspberries, her fingers as frozen as the fruit within her grasp. OK? She always looked OK? Why did that sentence have the ring of death about it? Why did Tom’s tone of voice mirror his professional one? ‘Your son’s work is fine, Mrs X, not thrilling but OK.’

      Abby didn’t want to look OK. She wanted to look bloody drop-dead gorgeous like that blonde bimbo who had been drooling over Tom at the Beech party. She wrenched a bag of raspberries out and slammed them on the worktop. Had her husband always been this insensitive or had it happened recently?

      When Tom and Jess were gone, Abby spent an hour tidying the house and putting on washing. Then she sat down at the big cream desk in her study and leafed through her appointments diary. She had two diaries now: the official one Katya, her assistant, kept, which was a large suede-bound book; and her own smaller, floral version, in which she scribbled notes to herself on things she had to do and remember, like what to take to tomorrow’s meeting at Beech with the new executive producer, a hotshot who would also be heading the company’s new commissions division.

      Katya worked only two days a week when Abby wasn’t busy and three when she was. As a young mother with two small children, this arrangement suited her. When Abby was filming, Katya could be on call to help her and deal with phone calls, fan letters and new commissions. When Abby wasn’t filming, Katya could work from her own house and pick up Abby’s calls.

      Today, Katya was at home while Abby was supposed to be working flat out on ideas for a talk at the Ideal House exhibition in three months’ time. But for once, Abby’s lively mind failed her. Usually, she could go into anyone’s home and

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