The spy in the cupboard under the stairs

The chief thing to remember in lockdown is that everybody is doing their best and that what seems like deliberately frustrating behaviour on the part of somebody else may be the only way they have of coping. My boss Bella is coping with post-St Barts quarantine by insisting on Zoom calls four times a day. My neighbour Brenda is coping with the ongoing uncertainty by trying to police everyone else on the street. Yesterday, she came into my front garden with her litter-picker and picked up a ready-meal container that a fox had liberated from my bin overnight. I was going to get round to it, I assured her as she started sweeping my front step. I must be kind about it. I am, after all, coping by indulging in hour long Blob Opera sessions and Sainsbury’s Belgian chocolate choux buns.

This morning, I got a text from Gideon – Gids – my ex-husband. We’ve been divorced for 10 years now and he’s remarried, but we’re still friends. I’ve met his second wife on a number of occasions. Every time I see her I want to kiss her because I no longer have to worry whether that mole on the back of his calf is new or if that unusual stool indicates some fatal bowel irregularity. That job went with the house.

So I was very worried indeed when I received a message saying, “Need to talk. Please call.”

Need to talk? He must be getting another divorce, I decided. I spent half an hour crafting a response, plumping for, “I’m so sad to hear that, both for you and for Melanie. I’m probably not the best person for you to talk to right now but I hope it all goes well!”

Friendly but off-putting. He responded instantly, “What are you on about?”

I caved and called.

“Are you alone?” he asked.

“Apart from my Russian flatmate.”

“Russian?” He sounded alarmed.

“She’s a hamster. Bella’s. I was looking after her.  She escaped and has taken up residence under the fridge.”

“She might chew through a wire and start a fire.”

“Thanks.” That hadn’t crossed my mind but now I pictured the fridge catching light in the middle of the night and me dying alone in my bed. Perhaps it was time to get the Dyson out and put an end to Minky’s great adventure after all. I googled “hamster wire house fire” while Gids took himself and his mobile into the cupboard under the stairs.

“I’ve applied to join MI5,” he said.

“The things people do in lockdown. I took up knitting and buggered a tendon in my shoulder.”

“I’m serious, Trudy.  I’m only allowed to tell one other person about my application.”

“Then why haven’t you told Melanie?”

“She would not be happy. She wants me to take early retirement so we can open a B and B in Dorset.” Gideon is an actuary.

“Sounds nice.”

“I have more to offer my country than a fried breakfast, Trudes.”

I didn’t point out that in ten years of marriage I had never known him make breakfast.

“Over Christmas I watched Spectre…” he elaborated.

That’s the difference between men and women.  When women watch a Bond film, they come away filled with self-loathing because they don’t have a thigh gap like Pussy Galore. When men watch a Bond film, they come away thinking “This spy lark looks like a piece of cake. I’ll join the secret service.”

“Just a minute, Melanie.  I’m looking for the shoe polish,” Gids said suddenly. “I think she bought it.”

“Excellent deflection,” I said. “Worthy of a spy. But you should go. I think Melanie would be more upset to discover you’re hiding under the stairs to talk to your ex-wife than that you’re planning to be the next 007.”

“Don’t tell anyone.”

As soon as Gids rang off, I WhatsApped my best friend Liz. Then I felt bad about it. Joining MI5 was just Gids’ way of coping with lockdown. Possibly healthier than cream cakes and Blob Opera. I googled the MI5 website and took the “Are You MI5 Ready?” test and a couple of their quizzes. I definitely wasn’t MI5 ready, but it was hard to believe that Gids would be either. I completely fluffed the Mobile Surveillance challenge by failing to notice anything relevant. Gids once failed to notice I’d had a Brazilian. I suppose that’s why we’re no longer married.

But Gids was right that I needed to work much harder at trapping Minky. She was costing me a fortune in hamster feed and scented candles to cover the smell. I did not want her to cost me my home. It would be simple enough to catch her in the way one catches a mouse – with a trap – but I couldn’t do that to her. Fact was the sound of Minky’s nightly peregrinations as I settled down to watch Netflix had become a comfort to me.

The doorbell rang. It was Glenn with another padded envelope from Caroline, my goddaughter, the aspiring Tory MP.  This time it was copy of a document she’d sent to Grant Shapps regarding a timetable for easing travel restrictions, specifically asking for an exclusive Easter holiday corridor so that girls from her school could go to and from Splügen on their annual ski trip without quarantining on return. “Travel broadens the mind,” she reminded him. “Furthermore, we are this country’s future trade negotiators and entrepreneurs and the friendships we make on the slopes may one day be worth millions to the United Kingdom in trade deals.”

“How’s your day going?” Glenn asked.

“My ex-husband just told me he’s joining MI5.”

Glenn snorted. “The things you hear on a mail round.”

“I’m not supposed to tell anybody.”

Glenn tipped the front of his baseball cap. “Understood.”

“What aren’t you supposed to tell anybody?” Brenda materialised at my front gate like Fenella from Chorlton and The Wheelies.

“I could tell you but I’d have to kill you,” I said. Glenn failed to hold in a snigger.

“Well, if you want to be like that.”

Brenda jabbed at a face mask that had blown through my gate and come to rest just inside my front wall.

“If everyone would only do their bit,” she muttered. Both Glenn and I looked suitably told off.

“I’d better get on. See you tomorrow, Moneypenny,” said Glenn with a wink.

Was he flirting?