en suite bathroom – one of Alex’s many hated expressions – and a dressing room, which was really just a triple set of wardrobes along one wall. Many of the other identical houses in the street had used the smallest bedroom on the first floor as the nursery, but Alex and Juliet can afford to use the larger room, the room which would have been the spare, as the nursery. It isn’t just Ben’s room, it’s her special place. She’s chosen everything in it for Ben and it all looks just so.
The two sash windows facing the street have striped blinds edged with twists of primary colours, and swirly, circus-tent like knobs on the ends of the poles. She remembers agonizing over wallpaper sample books to choose the frieze which marches underneath the picture rail with its Noah’s ark collection of animals, and the Fantasia- style hippopotamuses poised like cartoon ballerinas on circus plinths repeated over and over again across the wallpaper. The seagrass-covered floor is scattered with cheerful rag rugs positioned strategically to make it soft for little feet. She’s even found a sort of toy version of a tiger-skin rug in Peter Jones which goes with the whole scheme just perfectly. Ben had been terrified of it at first, thinking it might eat him all up in the night, but after a week or so he’d calmed down.
Getting the house just right had been Juliet’s major project. On a whim she had emailed a few photographs of the house to the Perfect Property magazine website, and by the time she got the phone call months later, she’d forgotten all about it. The photography crew arrived together with a journalist who oohed and aahed over every perfect period detail and suggested they feature it in the Christmas issue. Juliet had made sure it all took place while Alex was away on business because she could guess what he’d say, and once it was done – well there wouldn’t be much he could do about it. She knew he’d object because he had this thing about strangers being in the house, seeing all their stuff, not knowing who they were. But she didn’t see the harm in a few photographs featuring in a low-circulation magazine. It was September and the magazine crew arrived with a van full of Christmas, even down to crackers, seasonal foliage, walnuts and fairy lights for Juliet’s box lollipop trees. They decorated the tree with all things edible; the sort of things full of poisonous E Numbers that Juliet would never let Ben near in a million years. They had shortbread iced stars, gingerbread men, and those clever little biscuits that had melted boiled sweets set into them so that they looked like they had mini coloured glass windows. They entwined an ivy wreath up the banisters, and the dining table was laid with festive runners and a ludicrous amount of silver tea lights. And they’d even brought a cooked turkey and stuffed bay leaves up its bottom and surrounded it with satsumas and plastic Brussels sprouts. When Ben came home from nursery school it took a lot of explaining, because obviously he then expected a visit from Father Christmas, not least because a giant Christmas stocking was hanging from the drawing-room mantelpiece. Juliet did fret about what kind of psychological effect the whole charade had on Ben. It had taken ages to settle him that night because despite what Juliet said, he was insistent that Santa would visit. In the end she’d got cross and told him that he had to behave better if Santa was to come. Yet another thing to feel guilty about. She’d told Ben not to tell Alex, but as soon as he walked through the door Ben had rushed to him, sobbing, saying that Santa had forgotten him. So then she’d had to explain the whole bloody thing and needless to say he’d been furious. He’d asked her what the hell she thought she was playing at, and so she’d said, ‘What do you mean, playing at?’ and he’d said, ‘Not only traumatizing Ben, but this ghastly thing, this awful exposure of us … what were