The One Plus One

4. Jess

There had always been something a bit different about Tanzie. At a year old she would line up her blocks in rows or organize them into patterns, then pull one or two away, making new shapes. By the time she was two she was obsessed with numbers. Before she even started school she would go through those books you can get full of maths problems and ask questions, like, ‘Why is a one written as “1” and not “2”?’ or tell Jess that multiplication was ‘just another way of doing addition’. At six she could explain the meaning of ‘tessellate’.

Marty didn’t like it. It made him uncomfortable. But then anything that wasn’t ‘normal’ made Marty uncomfortable. It was the thing that made Tanzie happy, just sitting there, ploughing through problems that neither of them could begin to understand. Marty’s mother, on the rare occasions that she visited, used to call her a swot. She would say it like it wasn’t a very nice thing to be.

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘There’s nothing I can do right now.’

‘Wouldn’t it feel weird, her mixing with all the private-school kids?’

‘I don’t know. Yes. But that would be our problem. Not hers.’

‘What if she grows away from you? What if she falls in with a posh lot and gets embarrassed by her background?’

‘What?’

‘I’m just saying. I think you could mess her up. I think she could lose sight of where she comes from.’

Jess looked over at Nathalie, who was driving. ‘She comes from the Shitty Estate of Doom, Nat. As far as that goes, I would be happy if she got early-onset Alzheimer’s.’

Something weird had happened since Jess had told Nathalie about the interview. It was as if she had taken it personally. All morning she had gone on and on about how her children were happy at the local school, about how glad she was that they were ‘normal’, how it didn’t do for a child to be ‘different’.

The truth of it was, Jess thought, that Tanzie had come home from the interview more excited than she had been in months. Her scores had been 100 per cent in maths and 99 per cent in non-verbal reasoning. (She was actually annoyed by the missing one per cent.) Mr Tsvangarai, ringing to tell her, said there might be other sources of funding. Details, he kept calling them, although Jess couldn’t help thinking that people who thought money was a ‘detail’ were the kind who had never really had to worry about it.

‘And you know she’d have to wear that prissy uniform,’ Nathalie said, as they pulled up at Beachfront.

‘She won’t be wearing a prissy uniform,’ Jess responded irritably.

‘Then she’ll get teased for not being like the rest of them.’

‘She won’t be wearing a prissy uniform because she won’t be bloody going. I haven’t got a hope of sending her, Nathalie. Okay?’

Jess got out of the car, slamming the door and walking in ahead of her so that she didn’t have to listen to anything else.

It was only the locals who called Beachfront ‘the holiday park’; the developers called it a ‘destination resort’. Because this was not a holiday park like the Sea Bright caravan park on the top of the hill, a chaotic jumble of wind-battered mobile homes and seasonal lean-to tents: this was a spotless array of architect-designed ‘living spaces’ set among carefully manicured paths and lodges, in tended patches of woodland. There was a sports club, a spa, tennis courts, a huge pool complex, which the locals were not allowed to use after all, a handful of overpriced boutiques and a mini-supermarket so that residents did not have to venture into the scrappier confines of the town.

Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays Benson & Thomas cleaned the two three-bedroomed rental properties that overlooked the clubhouse, then moved on to the newer properties: six glass-fronted modernist houses that stood on the chalk cliff and looked straight out across the sea.

Mr Nicholls kept a spotless Audi in his driveway that they had never once seen move. A woman who said she was his sister came once with two small children and a grey-looking husband (they left the place immaculately clean). Mr Nicholls himself rarely visited, and had never, in the year they’d been doing it, used either the kitchen or the laundry room. Jess made extra cash doing his towels and sheets, laundering and ironing them weekly for guests who never came.

It was a vast house; its slate floors echoed, its living areas were covered with great expanses of sea-grass matting and there was an expensive sound system wired into the walls. The glass frontages gazed out onto the wide blue arc of the horizon. But there were no photographs on the walls, or suggestions of any kind of actual life. Nathalie always said that even when he came it was as if he was camping there. There must have been women – Nathalie once found a lipstick in the bathroom, and last year they had discovered a pair of tiny lacy knickers under the bed (La Perla) and a bikini top – but there was little to suggest anything else about him.

Jess thought of her own house, the narrow, creaking stairs, the peeling wallpaper, and unusually (she rarely thought about clients’ houses in relation to her own – that truly was the way to madness) she felt briefly wistful for all this space. This was a man who’d never had to put a clothes rail on the upstairs landing, or run out of space for bookshelves. This was a man who’d never fretted about how to find a registration fee.

‘He’s here,’ muttered Nathalie.

As they closed the front door, a man’s voice echoed down the corridor, his voice loud, his tone argumentative, as if on the telephone. Nathalie pulled a face at Jess and walked slowly through the hallway.

‘Cleaners,’ she called. He did not respond, but he must have heard.

The argument continued the whole time it took to clean the kitchen (he had used one mug, and the bin held two empty takeaway cartons). There was broken glass in the corner by the fridge, small green splinters, as if someone had picked up the larger pieces but couldn’t be bothered with the rest. And there was wine up the walls. Jess washed them down carefully. The place smelt like a brewery. And he was still arguing. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, as his door was partially closed and too far away, but even muffled and at a distance his frustration was evident. She and Nathalie worked in silence, speaking in murmurs, trying to pretend they couldn’t hear.

When they had finished the kitchen Nathalie moved on to the living room and Jess headed down the hall. She did the downstairs loo, then the dining room, with its untouched bleached oak table and perfectly matched chairs. She dusted the picture frames with a soft cloth, tilting the odd one a centimetre or two to show they’d been done. Outside on the decking sat an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s with one glass; she picked them up and brought them inside.

While she washed up, she thought about Nicky, who had returned from school the previous day with a cut ear, the knees of his trousers scuffed with dirt. He shrugged off any attempt to talk about it. His preferred life now consisted of people on the other side of a screen; boys Jess had never met and never would, boys he called SK8RBOI and TERM-N-ATOR who shot and disembowelled each other for fun. Who could blame him? His real life seemed to be the actual war zone.

She thought about Tanzie, and how she’d looked while talking to that maths teacher. Ever since the interview Jess had lain awake, doing calculations in her head, adding and subtracting in a way that would have made Tanzie laugh. The scholarship would not leave her head. It had lodged in there like toothache, and Jess worried away at it, trying every possible way to build financial mountains out of molehills. She sold her belongings. She ran through mental lists of every single person she might be able to borrow money from and who wouldn’t mind if it took time to pay it back. She considered the most likely, and the most unlikely people – her mother, her aunt Nell in Dorset, the retired teacher she used to clean for who always said he could see that Tanzie was a bright girl – but while she might have been able to beg fifty pounds here and there, there was nobody who would lend ten times that much. Nobody she knew even had it.

The only people likely to offer Jess money were the sharks who circled the estate with their hidden four-figure interest rates. She had seen neighbours who had borrowed from friendly reps who turned gimlet-eyed, hanging over them like financial vultures. And again and again she came back to Marty’s words. Was McArthur’s comp really so bad? Some children did well there. There was no reason why Tanzie shouldn’t be one of them, if she kept out of the way of the troublemakers.

The hard truth of it was there like a brick wall. Jess was going to have to tell her daughter that she couldn’t make it add up. Jess Thomas, the woman who always found a way through, who spent her life telling the two of them that it would All Work Out, couldn’t make it work out.

She finished the dining room in which no dining had ever taken place, and observed with some distant part of her that the loud talking had stopped. Mr Nicholls must finally be off the phone. She hauled the vacuum cleaner down the hallway, wincing as it bumped against her shin, and knocked on the door to see if he wanted his office cleaned. There was silence, and as she knocked again he yelled suddenly, ‘Yes, I’m well aware of that, Sidney. You’ve said so fifteen times, but it doesn’t mean –’

It was too late: she had pushed the door half open. Jess began to apologize, but with barely a glance the man held up a palm, like she was some kind of a dog – stay – then leaned forwards and slammed the door in her face. The sound reverberated around the house.

Jess stood there, shocked into immobility, her skin prickling with embarrassment.

‘I told you,’ Nathalie said, as she scrubbed furiously at the guest bathroom a few minutes later. ‘Those private schools don’t teach them any manners.’

Forty minutes later they were finished. Jess gathered Mr Nicholls’s immaculate white towels and sheets into her holdall, stuffing them in with more force than was strictly necessary. She walked downstairs and placed the bag next to the cleaning crate in the hall. Nathalie was polishing the doorknobs. It was one of her things. She couldn’t bear fingerprints on taps or doorknobs. Sometimes it took them ten minutes to leave an address.

‘Mr Nicholls, we’re going now.’

He was standing in the kitchen, just staring out through the window at the sea, one hand on the top of his head like he’d forgotten it was there. He had dark hair and was wearing those glasses that are supposed to be trendy but just make you look like you’ve dressed up as Woody Allen. He wore a suit like a twelve-year-old forced to go to a christening.

‘Mr Nicholls.’

He shook his head slightly, then sighed and walked down the hallway. ‘Right,’ he said distractedly. He kept glancing down at the screen of his mobile phone. ‘Thanks.’

They waited.

‘Um, we’d like our money, please.’

Nathalie finished polishing, and folded her cloth, unfolding it and folding it again. She hated money conversations.

‘I thought the management company paid you.’

‘They haven’t paid us in three weeks. And there’s never anyone in the office. If you want us to continue we need to be up to date.’

He scrabbled around in his pockets, pulled out a wallet. ‘Right. What do I owe you?’

‘Thirty times three weeks. And three weeks of laundry.’

He looked up, one eyebrow raised.

‘We left a message on your phone, last week.’

He shook his head, as if he couldn’t be expected to remember such things. ‘How much is that?’

‘One hundred and thirty-five all together.’

He flicked through the notes. ‘I don’t have that much cash. Look, I’ll give you sixty and get them to send you a cheque for the rest. Okay?’

On another occasion Jess would have said yes. On another occasion she would have let it go. It wasn’t as if he was going to rip them off, after all. But she was suddenly sick of wealthy people who never paid on time, who assumed that because seventy-five pounds was nothing to them it must be nothing to her too. She was sick of clients who thought she meant so little that they could slam a door in her face without so much as an apology.

‘No,’ she said, and her voice was oddly clear. ‘I need the money now, please.’

He met her eye for the first time. Behind her Nathalie rubbed manically at a doorknob. ‘I have bills that need paying. And the people who send them won’t let me put off paying week after week.’

She couldn’t get it out of her head: the flat dismissal of his palm, the way he had just slammed the door in her face.

He frowned at her, as if she was being particularly difficult. It made her dislike him even more. She wondered, for a moment, whether to tell him to stick his stupid job. But there were some principles you couldn’t afford.

‘I’ll have to look upstairs,’ he said, disappearing. They stood in uncomfortable silence as they heard drawers being shut emphatically, the clash of hangers in a wardrobe. Finally he came back with a handful of notes.

He peeled some off without looking at Jess and handed them over. She was about to say something – something about how he didn’t have to behave like an utter dickhead, about how life went that little bit more smoothly when people treated each other like human beings, something that would no doubt make Nathalie rub half the door handle away with anxiety. She didn’t care. Even the way he handed out the money suggested he was giving her something she wasn’t quite entitled to. But just as she opened her mouth to speak his phone rang. Without a word Mr Nicholls spun away from her and was striding down the hallway to answer it.

‘What’s that in Norman’s basket?’

‘Nothing.’

Jess was unpacking the groceries, hauling items out of the bags with one eye on the clock. She had a three-hour shift at the Feathers and just over an hour to make tea and get changed. She shoved two cans to the back of the shelves, hiding them behind the cereal packets. She was sick of the supermarket’s cheery ‘value’ label. It was as if every time she opened the cupboard someone was yelling at her, ‘HEY! YOU’RE POOR!’

Nicky stooped, and tugged at the piece of fabric, so that the dog reluctantly got to his feet. ‘It’s a white towel. Jess, it’s an expensive one. Norman’s got hair all over it. And dribble.’ He held it up between two fingers.

‘I’m going to wash it later.’ She didn’t look at him.

‘Is it Dad’s?’

‘No, it is not your dad’s.’

‘I don’t understand –’

‘It’s just making me feel better, okay? Can you put that stuff over there in the freezer?’

He slouched against the kitchen units, peering out into the front garden. In the breeze the clothes dryer whirled around, the pegged cleaning cloths flying out like pennants above the potted geraniums and the bicycle Jess had painted a glittery pink that peeled off like clumps of nail varnish.

‘Shona Bryant was taking the mickey out of Tanzie at the bus stop. Because of her clothes.’

‘What about her clothes?’ Jess turned to Nicky, a can of tinned tomatoes in her hand.

‘Because you make them.’

‘How does she know I make them?’

‘She asked Tanzie where they came from and Tanzie just told her. You know what she’s like.’

‘But she likes what I make. I mean – she’s happy in them.’

‘Shona Bryant’s the one who said our house was weird because we had too many books.’

‘Shona Bryant’s an idiot.’

He leant down to stroke Norman. ‘Oh. And we got a reminder from the electric company.’

Jess let out a small sigh. ‘How much?’

He walked over to the pile of papers on the sideboard and flicked through. ‘Comes to more than two hundred altogether.’

She took out a packet of cereal. ‘I’ll sort it.’

Nicky opened the fridge door. ‘You should sell the car.’

‘I can’t sell it. It’s your dad’s only asset.’

‘But he could be using it to earn money. And then he could pay you some.’

Sometimes Jess wasn’t entirely sure why she kept defending him. ‘There isn’t anywhere safe to keep it at his mum’s. Anyway. He’ll sort it out when he’s back on his feet. Now, go on upstairs. I’ve got someone coming.’ She could see her walking up the back path.

‘We’re buying stuff off Aileen Trent?’ Nicky watched her open the gate and close it carefully behind her.

Jess couldn’t hide the way her cheeks coloured. ‘Just this once.’

He stared at her. ‘You said we had no money.’

‘Look, it’s to take Tanzie’s mind off the school thing when I have to tell her.’ Jess had made her decision on the way home. The whole idea was ridiculous. They could barely keep their heads above water as it was. There was no point even trying to entertain it.

He kept staring at her. ‘But Aileen Trent. You said –’

‘And you’re the one who just told me Tanzie was getting bullied because of her clothes. Sometimes, Nicky …’ Jess threw her hands into the air. ‘Sometimes the ends justify the means.’

Nicky’s look lasted longer than she felt entirely comfortable with. And then he went upstairs.

‘So I’ve brought a lovely selection of things for the discerning young lady. You know they all love their designer labels. I took the liberty of bringing a few extra bits, even though you said you weren’t interested.’

Aileen’s ‘shop’ voice was formal, with overly precise diction. It was quite odd, emerging as it did, from someone Jess had seen regularly ejected by force from the King’s Arms. She sat cross-legged on the floor and reached into her black holdall, pulling out a selection of clothes and laying them carefully on the carpet, co-ordinating separates in layers.

‘There’s a Hollister top here. They’re all into Hollister, the girls. Shocking expensive in the shops. I’ve got some more designer stuff in my other bag, although you did say you didn’t require high-end. Oh, and two sugars, if you’re making one.’

Aileen did a weekly round of this end of the estate, her skin waxy, her big black holdall on wheels trundling behind her. She was as much a local fixture as the postman, and as regular. ‘You’ve got to be professional to thrive in business,’ she would observe sagely, pale eyes blinking slowly within her spectral face.

Jess had always issued a firm thanks-but-no-thanks. Nobody on the estate ever talked about where Aileen got her bargains, her knock-down prices with the tags still on, but everyone knew. Jess always told Marty she didn’t like the example it set the kids.

But that was before.

She picked up the layered tops, one stripy, the other a soft rose. She could already see Tanzie in them. ‘How much?’

‘Ten for the top, five for the T-shirt, and twenty for the trainers. You can see from the tag they retail for eighty-five. That’s a serious discount.’

‘I can’t do that much.’

‘Well, as you’re a new client, I can do you an introductory bonus.’ Aileen held up her notebook, squinting at the figures. ‘You take the three items and I’ll let you have the jeans too. For goodwill.’ She smiled, her missing tooth gaping cheerfully. ‘Thirty-five pounds for a whole outfit, including footwear. And this month only I’m throwing in a little bracelet. You won’t get those prices in TK Maxx.’

Jess stared at the perfect clothes laid out on the floor. She wanted to see Tanzie smiling. She wanted her to feel that life held the potential for unexpected happy things, not just a harassed, overworked mother who never had time to spend with her, and an absent father who communicated once a week through a computer screen.

She wanted her to have something to feel good about when she gave her the news.

‘Hold on.’

She walked through to the kitchen, pulled the cocoa tin from the cupboard where she kept the electricity money. She counted out the coins and dropped them into Aileen’s clammy palm before she could think about what she was doing.

‘Pleasure doing business with you,’ Aileen said, folding the remaining clothes and placing them carefully in the bin bag. ‘I’ll be back in two weeks. Anything you want in the meantime, you know where to find me.’

‘I think this will be it, thanks.’

She gave Jess a knowing look. Yeah. They all say that, love.

Nicky didn’t look up from his computer when Jess walked in.

‘Nathalie’s going to bring Tanzie back after maths club. Are you going to be okay here by yourself?’

‘Sure.’

‘No smoking.’

‘Mm.’

‘You going to do some revision?’

‘Sure.’

Sometimes Jess fantasized about the kind of mother she could be if she wasn’t always working. She would bake cakes with the children and let them lick the bowl. She would smile more. She would sit on the sofa and actually talk to them. She would stand over them at the kitchen table while they did their homework, pointing out mistakes and ensuring they got the best possible marks. She would do the things they wanted her to do, instead of always answering:

– Sorry, love, I just have to get the supper on.

– After I’ve put this wash on.

– I’ve got to go, sweetie. Tell me when I get back from my shift.

She gazed at him, his unreadable expression, and she had a weird sense of foreboding. ‘Don’t forget to walk Norman. But don’t go round near the off-licence.’

‘As if.’

‘And don’t spend the whole evening on the computer.’

He had already turned back to the screen.

She hoicked up the back of his jeans. ‘And put your pants away before I can’t help myself and give you the world’s biggest wedgie.’

He turned and she glimpsed his brief smile. As Jess walked out of his room she realized she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen it.