Chapter One
It was the start of the bank holiday weekend and the air was abuzz with Lexi and Hamish Warrington’s summer party. Music was already drifting over the street to announce the lavish annual event.
The weather was steaming. Clouds had been holding in the heat like a pressure cooker for days. Everyone with their own theory on when it might break, whispering about who was using their hose even though there was a ban. On Thursday’s bin night all the blue recycling crates up the street were full of Dyson fan boxes and paddling pool packaging.
Across the road at number nine Cedar Lane, Julia Fletcher was busy icing fifty-five vanilla cupcakes, baked at Lexi Warrington’s behest, before the party started. There was white frosting and white sugar stars everywhere to fit with this year’s white-hot theme. Last year it had been unicorns. Lexi had dyed her hair like a rainbow and worn a tail which Julia, who had moved in last autumn, only knew because she’d found the picture on Instagram.
The party was all anyone had been talking about for months. Lexi had sent a save the date to the Cedar Lane WhatsApp group in mid-January when there was still frost on the pavements: Guys, so sick of this weather!! Only thing keeping me sane is SUMMER PARTY–yay!! Lxxx Everyone marking it in the diary months in advance so the date wouldn’t be double-booked.
Now the party was due to start in half an hour and Julia was nowhere near ready. There was icing everywhere. The crappy oven had burnt half the cakes and under-baked the other half. There was a wasp buzzing furiously against the window. Inside the house it was like an oven. The red-brick Victorian houses on Lexi’s side of the street kept naturally cool, whereas the pebble-dashed post-war terraced houses on Julia’s side were built with walls as thin as bible pages so they heated up like furnaces in the summer and turned to ice in winter.
Julia’s husband, Charlie, strolled casually into the kitchen. ‘God, I love a bank holiday,’ he sighed, the relief of the extra day off lifting his whole being as if at all other times he wore the job he hated heavy on his shoulders. He’d been for a cycle already that morning and changed out of his sweaty cycling kit into an old pair of turquoise shorts and a green T-shirt. ‘Does Lexi know you’ve gone to this much effort?’ he asked, watching Julia frantically trying to finish the cakes.
Julia looked up, pushing her hair out her eyes with the back of her hand, she was not in the mood for chat. The mid-morning almost tropical heat was making the frosting curdle. ‘Try this,’ she said, handing him one of the cupcakes that had caught in the oven. ‘Can you tell it’s burnt?’
Charlie examined the little cake, then popped it into his mouth whole. ‘Nice,’ he said, voice muffled with cake, nodding with approval.
Julia wasn’t so sure and took a bite of one herself. It definitely tasted burnt, but there wasn’t time to do anything about it now. If she covered them with enough silver balls and sugared white stars, hopefully no one would notice.
Charlie might very well be shaking his head at Julia’s clear distress re the cakes, but the thing about Lexi Warrington was that she made you want to impress her. She was Queen Bee of the road with the perfect house and the perfect children – little blonde twin girls. Everyone loved Lexi. She had a buoyancy. A story to tell for every situation, an emoji reply for every one of the hundred Instagram comments she receives, an effortlessly understated outfit for every barbecue or Cedar Lane WhatsApp group drinks.
Since moving in, Lexi had taken Julia under her wing – inviting her round for a coffee and to do yoga in the living room, including her in the cocktail nights with the girls – and because of that, Julia didn’t mind doing things for her, like making the cakes or, as was Lexi’s current bugbear, helping campaign against the new Sainsbury’s planned for development at the end of the street: Julia, you’re in marketing aren’t you? Could you knock up a good template letter of complaint for the whole street to use? Thanks, sweetie! L xxx
Julia wasn’t stupid, she knew that in some ways Lexi was using her – she made you feel special so you’d do things for her – but it didn’t matter. That was the thing about Lexi, there was something magnetic about her, something powerful. She made you want to do things for her.
Charlie had gone over to the window to let the wasp out and was now standing by the kitchen table that was stacked high with paint charts, decorating catalogues and tile samples, leafing through the mess to find something. ‘Do we need all this stuff?’ he asked, gesturing to the decorating paraphernalia.
Julia shook her head. ‘I have no idea. Probably not.’ Renovations on their property had somewhat stalled recently with the depletion of their bank balance.
Charlie said, ‘Do you know where my seed catalogue is?’ nosing his way through the stack.
Julia looked over at him in disbelief. How could Charlie be thinking about seeds when they were about to head out to the party of the year? She checked the time on the oven clock. ‘Oh God, it starts soon. Shit, I haven’t even got changed. You’ve got to get changed.’
‘I am changed,’ Charlie said without looking up. ‘I think my tomatoes might have blight,’ he mused, nudging paint charts out of the way with his finger to find the seed catalogue, ‘but I’m pretty sure I ordered Mountain Magic which are blight-resistant.’
Julia paused her icing, wondering if she could somehow subtly ask him to please not talk solely about his vegetable patch while they were at the party, but she knew if she did that then she’d offend him because it was his current pride and joy and they’d have a row. But really, no one wanted to talk about tomatoes. Especially no one at Lexi and Hamish’s.
She iced the last cupcake. ‘Charlie, you can’t go wearing that,’ she said, gesturing to his turquoise and green colour combination. ‘It’s a white-hot theme. You need to wear white. Haven’t you got a white shirt?’
‘I hate white shirts. I look stupid in white,’ he said, ‘like I’m going to school.’
‘You don’t,’ Julia replied. He did. But she didn’t want him to stand out in his green T-shirt. She wanted them to blend seamlessly in. Julia had been immersed in Lexi’s all-consuming outfit planning for weeks and as a result had found herself panic scrolling for outfits during work meetings, shopping in her lunch break and scouring Pinterest for good hair ideas, all especially for today.
She looked over at Charlie, trying to ignore the mess on the table and the cracked bare plaster wall behind him. ‘You must have a white T-shirt, surely? Don’t you have a polo shirt?’
‘It’s really old.’ Charlie came over to the kitchen counter, picking an apple from the fruit bowl and taking a bite. ‘This is fine,’ he said, pulling at his T-shirt. ‘Honestly, I just want to relax this weekend.’
Julia sprinkled tiny white sugar stars all over the cakes. ‘Please, Charlie, please go and put the polo shirt on. For me.’
Charlie sighed. ‘OK, fine, whatever.’ Munching on his apple, he skulked out of the room.
‘And you need your swimming trunks!’ Julia called after him. ‘They’ve hired a hot tub.’
From the hallway Charlie shouted back, ‘There is absolutely no way I am taking my top off at this party.’