‘Someone at the door?’ repeats Emma. Crunch crunch. ‘Who could that be, I wonder? What do they want?’
‘Well, if I could get off the telephone,’ snaps Maude, ‘I might be able to find out. It’s probably the postman.’
‘Hmm…Perhaps,’ murmurs Emma deliberately. Crunch. ‘Or perhaps it’s a little man from Eritrea, Maude. Come to pick up a suitcase full of funny passports?’
A long silence then. Maude almost drops the telephone. For a moment she tries to persuade herself she’s not heard right. Except she has. And she can feel Emma Rankin’s sharp little sensors pulsating down the line, so strong and hot they make her ear burn. ‘The – er,’ begins Maude. She tries a laugh but it doesn’t quite work. ‘A suitcase full? Of what? What are you talking about, Emma?’
‘…Oh, ignore me, Maude,’ coos Emma, starting on another radish. ‘…Only I do wish I could persuade you to come to dinner tonight. Jean Baptiste Mersaud will be there…’
Jean Baptiste? thinks Maude. Did Jean Baptiste tell her? But he doesn’t even know! At least not for sure. Besides, he would never –
Maude’s head is beginning to throb. ‘I had no idea you and Jean Baptiste were on having-dinner terms,’ she says carefully.
‘I’m on “having-dinner terms” with anyone,’ Emma giggles, ‘who looks like Jean Baptiste. Actually, he’s building the girls a little hacienda playhouse, down by the pool. It’s going to be beautiful.’
‘Gosh…How lovely. Is it –’
‘In fact, Maude, I’m on “having-dinner terms” with anybody, so long as they’re interesting. Even little Eritrean chappies, if they happen to be at a loose end. Bring them all along!’ She gurgles with laughter. ‘But seriously, Maude, are you certain you can’t come? Because if it’s a problem with babysitting –’
‘It’s not a problem with babysitting –’
‘Well then!’ Emma says. She giggles again. And waits. ‘Have I hit the bull’s eye?’ she asks merrily, after Maude fails to come up with anything else. ‘Do you really have a little Eritrean chappie staying with you tonight, Maude? It’s too strange!’
‘Don’t be so silly,’ Maude snaps. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Well then. Come to dinner, Maude. Please. And I promise not to misbehave. I shan’t address a word to your husband. And I shan’t mention Eritreans even once. I’ll talk about nothing but vegetables all night.’
‘…Look…’ Maude hesitates. She can’t leave things like this or Emma will be talking about their ‘funny passports’ to everyone; anyone who’ll listen. It’ll be on the national news by tomorrow night. ‘…I’ll double-check with Heck. All right? I’ll call you back later. But I’ve got to go now.’ It’s taken all Maude’s self-control not to have hung up already. ‘Goodbye,’ she shouts. ‘Goodbye Emma!’ And she slams down the telephone so hard it cracks.
Silence. Except for her pulse thumping in her ears. She glances towards the front door. Mayor Bertinard in still there in his car, engine running, peering out of his window. She waves and smiles, starts making her way towards him. Suddenly his head jerks in shock, as if he’s seeing her for the first time, and before Maude can get anywhere close to him, he accelerates quickly away down the lane.
So. It’s not a simple matter at the best of times, leading an innocent life of crime. Obstacles tend to crop up everywhere and often where you least expect them. For example, babysitting. Every time Maude and Horatio go out they have to leave a stranger with free run of the house. They have to be sure they’ve left all evidence of their life as superheroes meticulously locked away. Which is an effort, for a disorganised couple with young children, at the end of a long day. Maude and Horatio only ever employ one girl to do the job, a po-faced sixteen-year-old named Simone, the daughter of a neighbouring farmer, who is unable to speak a word of English and who is only really interested in watching television. They chose her for that reason: it would take a fire, or a bomb perhaps, to get her to venture beyond the TV room, let alone to wander the house poking her nose into matters that very strictly didn’t concern her. Nevertheless, the Haunts don’t like to take unnecessary risks. And the effort of checking over the entire house, checking the bins, unplugging the telephones, locking up the COOP (with or without the sliding bookshelf) – and then, after all that, of making slow, polite conversation with an excruciatingly shy, non-responsive, TV-addicted sixteen-year-old demi-crétine – tends to put them off ever wanting to go out at all.
Tonight, however, they’ve been alarmed enough by Emma’s comments to have got it all together. They have called Simone, who is now in the telly room, watching the French version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Tiffany is in bed, reading Pride and Prejudice, and Superman is tucked up beside her, calculating simple fractions in his head. Maude and Horatio are in their bathroom changing for Emma’s dinner, and both are feeling extremely tense. Nothing about the evening ahead is going to be simple.
As it happens, Horatio Haunt may be one of the few attractive men in the region who has yet to have managed a roll with Emma Rankin in her famously large, soft, comfortable, four-poster, white-muslin-draped bed. Which is mostly due, or so Maude believes, to the fact she’s been careful never to leave Horatio and Emma Rankin on their own, or never for long enough, anyway. Emma’s appetites are voracious, and notoriously so.
Tonight Horatio has put on his linen suit and he looks handsome, sun-kissed, lean and intelligent, Maude notices regretfully. She watches him rummage around in the bathroom cupboard, looking for the aftershave she gave him for Christmas which he so rarely bothers to put on. ‘And please,’ she says, trying to make it sound airy and careless – as only Emma Rankin truly can – ‘don’t make a prat of yourself tonight, Heck, my darling. Try not to dribble when she talks to you.’
‘What’re you talking about?’ he asks indignantly, his nose in the cupboard. ‘Maudie, angel, please. We’ve talked about this so much…By the way, have you seen my aftershave?’
‘She’s got Semtex tits, you know,’ Maude reminds him.
‘Semtex?’
‘They’re not natural, if that’s what you think…Anyway, David’s going to be there. So you’d better behave yourself.’
Horatio turns around, quite irritated. ‘Oh come on,’ he says, ‘this is pathetic. This is –’ He pauses, looks at her more closely. ‘You look lovely, Maudie. You look – Have you done something to your hair?’
Maude smiles at him. ‘I washed it,’ she says. In fact she’s done a great deal more than that. She’s been sneaking off at intervals throughout the afternoon, surreptitiously beautifying herself – shaving her legs, plucking her eyebrows, ironing her hair. This afternoon, as soon as Horatio returned, she dashed off into St Clara under the pretext of going to the supermarket, and bought herself a pale grey silky skirt and a sheer grey T-shirt, which she’s wearing now, with a new pair of unusually high (for Maude) silver sandals. And she does look lovely – sun-kissed and lean and intelligent – and sexy, actually, in a preppy kind of a way. Maude,