PENGUIN BOOKS Mr Almost Right Eleanor Moran is an executive producer for BBC Drama, where her credits include Rome, Hotel Babylon and New Tricks. Her first novel, Stick or Twist, was published to great critical acclaim. This is her second novel. Mr Almost Right ELEANOR MORAN PENGUIN BOOKS PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England www.penguin.com First published 2010 Copyright © Eleanor Moran, 2010 All rights reserved The verses quoted on pp. 345–6 are from ‘Remember’ by Christina Rossetti The moral right of the author has been asserted Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser ISBN: 978-0-14-195735-7 Contents Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-one Acknowledgements For dearest Soph Have you ever tried kissing a man you desire more than anything in the world with a gearstick lodged between the two of you? It’s an evil metallic chaperone, priggishly digging me in the ribs every time I get too close. I greedily reach out to Charles, twisting out of my seat to get closer. He’s slipping his hand inside my shirt now: a heat-seeking missile, desperate for flesh. I force my seat back, determined to grant him easy access. ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep, have you any wool?’ I nearly jump out of my skin at the high-pitched nasal singing that’s erupted from the back. ‘What the hell is that?’ ‘One for the master and one for the dame…’ Charles scrabbles about, desperately searching around the dark recesses of the car. ‘Oh God, Lulu, I’m so sorry. It’s Theo’s sheep. Just hang on.’ I’m ham-fistedly buttoning up my shirt, the spell well and truly broken. Desire a distant memory, all I’m feeling now is slutty and stupid. Meanwhile the sheep’s reaching an unstoppable crescendo. Lucky sheep. ‘And one for the little boy…’ Charles finally shuts it off, but by now I’m unlocking the door. ‘I can’t do this, I really can’t do this.’ He grabs my wrist, awkwardly pulling me towards him. ‘Hey, come back, it’s stopped now.’ ‘I mean it, Charles, this couldn’t be more wrong.’ ‘Darling, I –’ ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep…’ The sheep’s back from the dead, louder and lustier than ever. It’s fighting a rearguard action with the two child car seats, which loom menacingly out of the darkness like twin Alsatians. It’d be bad enough if they belonged to my own children, but of course they don’t. They’re his wife’s. His shadowy, unknowable wife who I’d probably be the best of friends with in a parallel universe – a universe in which I wasn’t her worst nightmare. I know I’m a nice person, I’ve got categorical evidence, so how the hell did I end up here? Please don’t hate me on sight, I’m sure I can explain… Chapter One ‘Chris de Burgh?’ ‘Yes, Alice, Chris de Burgh. It actually suggested I might want to download “Lady In Red”. Am I wrong to feel this affronted by iTunes? I thought being dumped was insulting, but this might be worse.’ ‘You must’ve done something to encourage it though. Led it on. Have you been pigging out on Phil Collins to get through the heartbreak?’ She gives me a crooked smile as she says it, letting me know how aware she is that I’ve been utterly crushed by Steve’s unexpected rejection. Eyes back on the road, Alice expertly spins the enormous white van round a tight corner, simultaneously shaking a Minstrel into her mouth from the bag that’s lying between us. Sometimes it’s hard to believe we’re related, let alone identical twins. If I were in charge of this lumbering vehicle, all our worldly goods would be splayed across the pavement by now. She’s been on the planet eight minutes longer of our thirty-two years, but sometimes it feels more like eight years. She’s the responsible one, the one with the answers. Whereas me, I’m a little bit of a flake. We’re moving out of our poky two-bedder in Hackney and into a little mews house in Barnsbury. It’s going to be a stretch, but Alice has been promoted and I’ve got three months’ work on ‘Last Carriage to Avon’, a soapy period drama for TV. I go wherever Zelda – the stately costume designer I work with – takes me. She’s not been too well recently and I’m worried she hasn’t taken on board how impossibly tight the budget is. Cut-price crinolines aren’t really her thing. Alice’s nifty driving means we’re on the doorstep in double-quick time. The street feels like it could almost be a location for the drama, what with the old- fashioned street lamps and poplar trees that punctuate it. We stand on the pavement taking it in. It’s a world away from the bustling high street we’ve moved from. ‘It’s so quiet!’ says Alice. ‘We’re going to love it,’ I say fervently, suddenly feeling a profound sense of relief that we’ve got out of Brecon Road. I’m hoping that leaving it behind will help me leave Steve behind, and the stinging disappointment will start to ease. We begin to haul our dining table out of the back, knocking over our grandmother’s standard lamp in the process. ‘Sod it!’ says Alice. ‘We definitely need some man muscle.’ ‘Rufus promised he’d come straight after work.’ ‘God, Lulu, you know what he’s like. He’ll start cyber-talking with some troglodyte in Wisconsin about operating systems and totally forget we exist.’ Rufus is our uber-geek half-brother. Tall and gangly, with a long, insistent monobrow, we’re convinced he’s a virgin, even though he’s pushing twenty. The fact that he works in computer gaming, an industry dominated by lovelorn workaholics with testicles, is hardly aiding his prospects. Alice and I are determined to find a woman who’ll appreciate how great he is, but so far we’ve drawn a blank. We’re inelegantly lugging our sofa out of the back of the van when a booming voice rings out behind us. ‘You must be the new tenants.’ Startled, I drop the sofa on my foot. The voice belongs to a tall, crooked pensioner, who’s leaning on a stick. ‘Um, yes,’ I say, trying my best not to swear, despite the agonizing pain that’s shooting through my big toe. ‘Twins, eh. What are your names?’ ‘Alice and Lulu,’ stutters Alice, looking uncharacteristically cowed. ‘Surname?’ he demands. ‘Godwin,’ I squeak, suddenly feeling like it’s our first day in the army. ‘Mm, I see,’ he says, considering us. ‘We’re original residents, bought the house in 1960, brought up four children in it. You’ll find most people in the street have been here for the duration.’ Our eyes swivel involuntarily to the small mews house we’re moving into. Four children? ‘Bunk beds,’ he barks. ‘I’d offer some assistance, but unfortunately my lumbar spine won’t allow it. Anyway, don’t hesitate to knock if there’s anything less physically taxing on the agenda. Mr Simkins, number thirty. We’ll have you round for sherry once you’re settled in.’ With that, he hobbles off, leaving me staring at Alice in mute horror. ‘Oh God, do you think we’ve done the right thing?’ I ask her anxiously, suddenly hit by a wave of guilt. Alice only really agreed to the move because she knew how much I wanted a new start. She loved our ramshackle flat, bang in the middle of the urban sprawl, surrounded by vegetable stalls and artists’ studios. Now we’ll be bankrupts, unable to afford to leave the house, marooned in a sea of octogenarian curtain twitchers. ‘We totally have,’ she reassures me. ‘It’ll be an adventure, a whole new story for the Godwin Twins.’ Our mum used to make up outlandish narratives for us when we were kids, in which we’d travel to exotic destinations and solve