The Hive by Gill Hornby Page B

love?” Jo was nudging her, but she was too far away. She couldn’t come back yet.
    â€œOwp! We seem to have lost our hostess.”
    â€œLook at her, she’s knackered. Leave her to it.”
    â€œGod, it’s awful. Look at the state of it all.” Georgie knew that voice: that was the ridiculous Blubber person, sounding like she was on some fact-finding mission in a Third World country. “Can they just not afford any help?”
    â€œOh, they’re loaded.” Heather was back downstairs then. So Hamish must have gone off all right. That was good. Georgie could sink a bit farther down now. Down, down…“She just won’t do it. And we just can’t understand why.”
    Can’t we just? thought Georgie. And that’ll be because I’m not mug enough to tell you. She might not know everything about the female condition, she would admit that. But this much she did know: she knew what not to talk about with her fellow woman. And number one on that list was any suggestion, not even the merest hint, of marital or domestic contentment. She knew not to say that her husband still liked to have regular sex with her. She knew never to suggest that she might also rather like having regular sex with him. She wouldn’t let on to a living soul that Kate was on grade-five piano. Or that Sophie had started Dickens. Or that Lucy was great at gym. And she would never, ever in a gazillion years admit to anyone that she had her whole little setup exactly as she liked it.
    â€œHey. Why don’t we have a good clear-up while she’s asleep? There’s only half an hour till pickup. If it doesn’t get done now it’ll still be here at Christmas…”
    She did have an au pair once, and she was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. The whole house was a new pin and there was no need for them to do anything. So they didn’t. The children were either out in the garden or in their rooms and she, Georgie, well…she had all day to do whatever she wanted. And it was as if her whole family had been blown apart—this great, pulsing, vital organism just split into lots of simple, pointless little cells, capable of only the lowest form of existence, never connecting with each other at all.
    â€œBlimey. The dishwasher’s a no-go, that’s for sure…”
    â€œOK. Sleeves-up time. Come on, girls. Clover? Cloth. Catch!”
    So she sacked Whatsername. And, yes, she had been up to her ears ever since. And some people found her housekeeping wanting. She would admit that there were one or two things that she never quite got round to, though ought. But the kids got their chores back. And every evening, they were not just together during supper but before—when one was peeling the potatoes and another laying the table. And after, when Will docked an iPod and they danced around the washing-up. That nightly ninety minutes was the copingstone of their family life. But she wouldn’t let on about that to this lot.
    She heard Clover lumbering to her feet, saying, “It’s my day to pick up the twins and keep them at home until Dave gets back. I’d better slip away.”
    Then the sound of the back door closing, and retreating, stomping steps across the yard. It was Jo who broke the silence: “God, life, eh? First they lose their lovely mum to cancer, then they’ve got to have tea with that miserable old cow.”
    â€œJo. That’s a terrible thing to say.”
    â€œMebbe. But it’s what you’re all thinking…”
    Georgie found the energy to prize open one eyelid. There was Bubba at her sink, having a Petit Trianon moment, holding up that green scourer as Marie Antoinette might a fan. “I haven’t done this for ages! Do you know, it’s rather good fun? ”
    Then someone hit the iPod, and the song they’d had last night—“Dancing in the Moonlight”—started up where it had left off.