Bright Girls

“What time do you call this? Haven’t you got an exam tomorrow?” Dad said, handing over a tenner. Education, education, education, even in extremity.

“Not till the afternoon,” she replied, not bothering to stifle a yawn. She went back out to pay the driver, but at the sight of the police car he had executed a smart three-point turn and driven off. Another man with something to hide evidently

“He’s probably got no tax disc and no insurance,” Dad muttered, shaking his head over this fresh example of the general lawlessness of society.

Once they’d taken my statement and looked the place over, there wasn’t much more the police could do, so they departed, advising us to be vigilant and report anything suspicious. Dad did another check of all the locks on the downstairs windows, and set the burglar alarm for the first time in living memory before we all went up to bed. Rachel and I sat up talking in her room till after one. She seemed a bit put out to have missed the evening’s drama, which was all it was to her, safely out of it. Even my own experience seemed slightly unreal, now that the threat had passed. I wondered if my sense of terror, so authentic at the time, hadn’t been exaggerated, unnecessary

Rachel was quick to pour cold water on Dad’s theory “Oh, he would say that. He’s got a total bee in his bonnet about Animal Rights protesters since he’s been in this new job. Before that it was Pro-Lifers. Next week it’ll be, I don’t know, Buddhists. It was probably just some regular perv trying to see if he can get a glimpse of a woman undressing.”

“Well, I don’t know,” I said, not wanting to be disloyal to Dad, and not especially comforted by the idea of having been spied on by a “regular” perv, whatever that was.

“It’ll be all right anyway,” said Rachel, her eyes shiny with drunken confidence. “You probably scared him off with your singing. He won’t be back.”

I was quite comfortable there on Rachel’s beanbag and didn’t particularly want to go off to my own room, but I was too proud to ask, and besides, she had an exam the next day and needed to sleep, so I said goodnight and left her. But I couldn’t seem to settle in bed: I felt too hyper-alert, and all the usual sighs and creaks and taps from the sleeping house sounded strangely loud and menacing.

Ten The Handyman (#ulink_a0806a5f-0c49-555b-b4d4-308ff188f753)

As I soon discovered, there was more to Auntie Jackie’s business than mending seams and removing tyre tracks from taffeta. It wasn’t like a normal shop, where customers could stroll in off the street and browse. From the outside, 29 Cliff Street looked like any other house in the terrace, except perhaps slightly shabbier. There was no signage, apart from a business card pinned above the (non-working) doorbell, and no shop window to tempt passers-by In fact, the front room blinds were kept closed at all times to prevent the hard southern sunlight bleaching the outermost edges of the dresses as they hung on their rails. If you didn’t already know what was inside, you would never guess.

Ballgown hire, Auntie Jackie explained when I remarked on this, was not something done on impulse. One did not go out to buy a loaf of bread and suddenly think, Oh, to hell with it, I’ll get a strapless Valentino gown with a three-metre train for the weekend instead. People generally had plenty of advance warning, by way of printed invitations, that they were going to be requiring formal evening wear, in which case their first resort would be the Yellow Pages. Viewings and fittings were by appointment only one client at a time, except in the case of a mother and daughter, or pair of friends attending the same event, who wanted to ensure there was no duplication.

This system meant that Auntie Jackie didn’t need to man the shop all day, every day, but could fit her off-site business into those blocks of time when no clients were due. Odd hours in between bookings were spent doing repairs, alterations and paperwork, but a “free” day might involve a visit to an auction or trade fair to buy fresh stock. She was always on the lookout for new additions to her collection, and was not above scouring the small ads in Exchange & Mart or picking a dress up from a charity shop if it was in perfect condition, though she was careful to trawl much further afield than Brighton for bargains. It would be worse than embarrassing to be caught trying to flog a customer her own cast-offs.

Auntie Jackie soon had me trained up in the business of taking phone messages while she was out, and booking appointments in her diary This item, an A4-sized leather volume, was now broken-spined with dislocated boards front and back. Held together with elastic bands, it was crammed with loose scraps of paper – apparently containing information vital to the smooth running of her business – which would all come slithering out on to the floor every time it was opened. It was her Bible, she told me, and the one possession she would re-enter a burning building to retrieve. “Everything else is insured,” she said, with a surprising lack of sentiment.

Other duties that could be safely delegated to me were making tea for clients and taking in the dry-cleaning when the laundry van made its weekly delivery. In the areas requiring practical skill I was no help whatsoever. Auntie Jackie herself was an accomplished seamstress and was appalled at my ignorance of this basic household art.

“Didn’t you do needlework at school?” she demanded on one occasion when she came across me trying to mend the fallen hem of my skirt with double-sided Sellotape.

“No. We did textiles. There wasn’t much actual sewing.”

“Well, what did you do in textiles?”

“We made a slipper out of felt.”

“Just the one?”

“Yes.” This omission had bothered me at the time and I had always intended to make its partner, but by the time I’d finished the first one, my feet had gone up a size and it hardly seemed worth it. The lone slipper had ended up as a cosy bed for my mobile phone so it wasn’t totally wasted.

“Good grief So you don’t know how to read a dress pattern?”

“No.” As of last week, I could only think of dress patterns as potential bedding material for mice.

“Or put in a zip? Or set in sleeves?”

I shook my head sorrowfully It really is no fun when grown-ups do this sort of thing.

“God. And I went to a rotten school too. I wasn’t one of the bright girls like you. But at least they did teach me to sew I made all the curtains in this house myself,” she said complacently. “Fully lined.”

“But do you know how to set up a website?” I asked. That shut her up. “Or do spreadsheets? Or set up a database using Access?” I was bluffing a bit here, as I’d actually missed most of the Access module because of my clarinet lessons, and never bothered to catch up with the work.

“Point taken,” she said. And then I could almost hear her businesswoman’s brain whirring into action. “Tell you what. If you’re an IT whiz, Robyn, maybe you could teach me how to use Access, and get all my accounts and stuff on to the computer.”

“Er…well…I wouldn’t call myself a whiz,” I said, outmanoeuvred.

“And in return I could teach you to use a sewing machine.” She burst out laughing at my expression, which must have been one of deepest horror, and I started to laugh too. Somehow Auntie Jackie’s nagging, unlike Dad’s, had no power to annoy. Maybe it was because it was all for show: she was too easy-going to lose any sleep over my failings and, in any case, lacked a parent’s proper anxiety The conversation ended with her promising to take me along on her next day trip to acquire new stock. These jaunts around the south east – which apparently involved regular stops for refreshment at pubs and coffee shops – had been impossible lately as the car was still at the panel beaters, following her collision outside Asda, but as soon as it was repaired she was keen to get back out on the road.

Rachel would have to miss out as for the last week she had been gainfully employed by the tattoo and piercings parlour. The receptionist who had taken her number during that dispiriting day of job-hunting had been the only person to ring back with an offer of work. Rachel’s gratitude was short-lived when she realised it entailed walking around the precincts all day foisting ten per cent off vouchers on to reluctant shoppers. Commission only, so she couldn’t even cheat and dump a pile in the bin, but had to make a conscious effort to approach, smiling, those people most likely to indulge in self-mutilation. “It’s only one step up from begging,” she moaned at the end of her first day “I might as well be selling The Big Issue.”

“You didn’t think you’d be doing the actual tattoos, did you?” Auntie Jackie asked.

“Well, no. But I thought I’d be indoors at least.” Since Rachel’s notions of the world of work were, like mine, taken mostly from Ugly Betty, reality was bound to be a little disappointing. I was surprised she’d stuck it for five whole days, but then Frankie’s unmissable party was looming and she needed money for her fare to Oxford. To cheer her up I offered to come and meet her for lunch – my treat – but she grew evasive and finally admitted that she was in the habit of having lunch with Adam during his break from work at the leisure centre. “But you can come too if you want,” she said, without much enthusiasm.

“No, it’s all right,” I said, deflated. “I just thought if you were on your own and bored.”

“Meet me for coffee in the morning instead,” she suggested, now that I was the one who needed cheering up. “I usually have a cappuccino and a muffin about half ten.”

“I thought you didn’t like Adam much anyway.”

“I don’t like him much. He’s OK to talk to as long as he doesn’t get started on computers. Plus, who else is there at the moment?”

Despite their unfortunate start, I knew Adam was keen on her because he often dropped in to Auntie Jackie’s on some minor errand for his granny, and ended up staying all evening, sitting at the kitchen table watching TV with the rest of us, or dropping hints about a return tennis match, which Rachel would deliberately fail to pick up. The thing is, I actually quite like tennis and I much prefer playing against someone better, even if it means losing, but he never asked me.

Adam wasn’t the only dropper-in at number 29. One morning, when Rachel was at work, I shuffled sleepily into the kitchen in my Mad Cow pyjamas to get a glass of water and nearly tripped over the protruding legs of a man who appeared to be trying to crawl into the cupboard under the sink. Before I could react, he had backed out, and I realised that it was the policeman who had brought Auntie Jackie home on the day we had first arrived. He was holding a shovel on the end of which was a very stiff rat.

“Here we are,” he said, slightly red-faced from his exertions in the cupboard, and then started when he saw me. “Oh. Hello.”

“Hello,” I said, thinking, Wow! Is there nothing the police round here won’t do?

Auntie Jackie appeared at the back door, carrying a garden refuse sack. “Oh, well done, you’ve got him,” she said, averting her face as she held the bag open to receive the dead rat – its mouth frozen open in a pinched snarl to reveal tiny curved teeth, its front claws held up as if in shock.

“You’ve got a gap around the waste pipe,” the policeman said, as the corpse was unceremoniously bagged and dumped in the wheelie bin outside the back door. “That’s where he got in. I’ll come back and fill that in for you some time.”

“Oh, would you?” said Auntie Jackie rapturously “You are wonderful.”

She turned to me, blushing faintly “This is Dave, by the way He’s my special friend and handyman and general saviour.”

“Ah,” I said. That explained a lot. I can be very dim sometimes.

“This is my niece, Robyn,” she said to Dave. And then, in an unforgivable attempt to pass the burden of embarrassment on to someone else, added, “Isn’t she gorgeous?”