Food Fight (17 page)

A week passed in which she hardly set foot out of the flat, she felt so paranoid. Lily stopped her from going to the supermarket wearing a borrowed headscarf and a pair of sunglasses.

“Are you deliberately trying to draw attention to yourself?” she said.

If left to her own devices she wouldn’t even have bothered to roll up the sofa bed. Before Lily got up in the mornings, she would carry some coffee and toast back to bed, and switch on the TV. She feared her presence must be burdensome for her friend, having never intended to stay for so long. She resolved to go to her mother’s as planned, confident that her cover was intact.

“Keep in touch,” Lily said. They embraced quickly and she headed for Waterloo.

She was wheeling her suitcase across the station concourse when she heard a deep American voice from behind her, calling her name. She swung round, and immediately recognised Frank. She was so pleased to see his portly figure that she gave him a spontaneous hug.

“Frank! How lovely to see you. Were you following me?”

“I was just about to catch the train home, and there you were. What about you?”

“Lymington, although I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to stand my mother’s new dog. Have you got time for a quick drink?” She immediately regretted asking.

“Sure. With pleasure. We’ve got some catching up to do.”

He steered her out of the station. It was early enough for them to get a seat in the nearest pub on The Cut, and she ordered a gin and tonic at the bar. Frank had his usual half pint of lager.

“Hey, Susie, it’s just like the old days,” he said. “Tell me about Washington. How’s Obama doing?”

“That’s not fair. Fill me in on the office gossip here.”

Frank told her that Martin and his wife had a new baby, whose name was Sarah. “At last, somebody with a sensible name,” she said.

“Ha! And this from the woman who named her daughter Mimosa!” She grinned.

There had been some changes in the team but nothing major. He didn’t mention who, if anyone, had replaced her, that being the official reason for her redundancy.

“But how did you like Washington? Did you make friends? Have you come back with a lover boy?”

“Certainly not the latter,” she laughed. “I did make a couple of friends, but you know how it is there,” – Frank nodded -“people seem friendly. And they are. To everyone. It’s so superficial. I don’t think I’d ever have close friendships.” She admitted though how much she had appreciated Ellen’s company.

“She’s a diamond,” Frank said.

They sipped their drinks and ordered another round, sitting in companionable silence. Susan relaxed. Finally, she cleared her throat and said, “Look Frank, I’m really sorry about the thing with Mimi.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “It was a bit awkward at the time, but …”

“I presume that you got the whole story from Barney. I didn’t dare tell you, I was so ashamed. I never expected to see my own daughter on television in circumstances like that.”

“I bet. But did you really not know she worked for USAway?” Susan shook her head.

“Honestly, all I knew was that she worked some NGO as an idealistic do-gooder. You don’t know Mimi but I can tell you that if you start grilling her, she either clams up, barks at you or flounces out in a huff. She always has.”

Frank smiled.

“How are June and the kids, anyway?”

“They’re great, thanks. Nothing to report. Just preparing for school after the holidays.”

The talk of his family reminded Frank that he had a train to catch. They’d been in the pub for a nearly an hour.

“Time to go. Can I carry your bag Ma’am?”

They walked slowly, Frank pulling her suitcase. “You know we’re in a fix,” he said. “All this fuss about Project Candy. It’s a damaging leak and it came from someone inside DeKripps. Someone wanted to hurt us big time.”

She hoped he would leave it there. She followed him up the escalator to the concourse. He knew which platform his train usually left from, but she needed to buy a ticket.

They faced each other to say goodbye under the echoing vaults. Looking her straight in the eye, he said flatly, “It was you, wasn’t it?”

Susan said nothing. She was kicking herself for having dropped her guard. Why had she been so trusting of him? She couldn’t lie, but she couldn’t admit it either. There was too much at stake.

What should she do? Apologise? It was too late for that now. She was casting around for an appropriate and convincing answer, when he looked at her again. He wasn’t angry, but deeply sad. Disappointed by her betrayal. Her disloyalty. He’d been her partner in so much. In crime even.

“Goodbye, Susie.” He turned to make his way to the platform. She realised she would never see him again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

She opened the curtains in her mother’s dining room to a hail of flashlights. The front lawn had been trampled by photographers and the rose bushes bent aside. A neighbour walked past, staring at the window where Susan was standing in a flowery dressing gown belonging to her mother. God, she thought, I’m Cherie Blair, remembering the photo of the prime minister’s wife opening the door of Number 10 in a nightie the day after Labour won the election. The reporters shouted her name but she ignored them.

“Mother!” she cried out. “If you’re coming downstairs, make sure you’re dressed. We’ve got a media circus outside.”

She heard the sound of the bath being run, and headed upstairs. She knocked on the door. “Mother, did you hear me? I said there’s a media circus outside!”

“Coming, dear.”

She pulled the curtains closed again, and fumbled for the blinds switch. They came down slowly – too slowly. She ran round the other downstairs rooms to make sure that all the blinds and curtains would protect them from the paparazzi. How had they traced her to Lymington of all places?

She found her phone and sent a text message warning Mimi to stay at home. She had only just hit send when she received the reply. “Daily Monitor – coming down”, was all it said.

Mimi was telling her to read the paper and was on her way, she guessed. Her mother didn’t have a computer so her only Internet connection was on her phone. The Monitor headline blared: “The Widow Whistle-blower”.

She was starting to feel physically sick, but followed the link. What dirt had they dug up on her?

“The marketing executive who has exposed alleged malpractice at the food giant DeKripps is a red-haired widow who haunted Washington bars by night looking for men and dated online under the nickname Peek-a-boo, according to former colleagues.”

She reached for the kitchen chair and sat down. She forced herself to read the whole article over two pages, dotted with photos of her taken from the Internet. One was from her Facebook profile, taken a few years ago by Serge, her frizzy locks flying in the wind as she posed on the sloping red rocks of Perros-Guirec against an emerald sea. The other looked like a group photo taken at a party – surely not Frank’s garden party one summer in Cobham? Her face was circled in red as though she were a bulls-eye.

Finally, of course, there was a picture of Mimi, apparently taken from her NGO website, nose stud and all. The story recalled her fateful trip to Washington the previous year, and even quoted ‘former colleagues’ – the same ones? - who suggested that mother and daughter might have been working together on the DeKripps exposé. She was relieved that there was no mention of Serge, apart from a cursory reference to her ‘dead French husband.’

Her mother came down carrying Nellie and found Susan with her head in her hands. “My dear girl, what on earth is the matter? Who are all these scruffy people outside and what’s going on?”

She gave Susan a long hug which brought tears to her eyes.

“This is so awful, I don’t know where to start. I’m the scarlet woman from DeKripps and now the whole world knows about it.”

“Give me that,” said her mother, already in full battledress makeup and wearing a light blue summer frock and high heeled shoes. She’d obviously noticed the cameras. She set Nellie down gently in front of a bowl of dog food before taking the phone and wincing. “I don’t know how you can read anything on this thing.”

After a few minutes, she put the phone down, shaking her head in disbelief. “But darling, is this true? Or is it all made up? Are you really Peek-a-boo? It certainly doesn’t sound like you.”

“Yes, it’s all too true, that’s the trouble! It’s exaggerated, but basically, it’s true.”

“You mean you picked up men in bars while you were in Washington?”

“Look, mother, I picked up one man in a bar, as you describe it, and had sex for the first time nearly two years after Serge’s death. And unfortunately I told a colleague from work about it, when I believed she was my friend. Now look what’s happened. This is exactly like Mark said.”

“What is? Who’s Mark?” The whole story was making no sense to her mother. How could turning the tables on DeKripps cause the world’s media to be trampling her Queen Elizabeth roses?

“Mark Palin. The lawyer who helped Mimi when she misbehaved in Washington last year. He told me that DeKripps would come after me, firing with all barrels, if they found out I was the source of the leak about Project Candy.”

Her mother sat down at the table while she digested the news. This was clearly too much information at once.

“Mimi’s on her way down now. She’ll want to know everything too. Why don’t we just wait until she gets here, and I’ll tell you both the whole soap opera. It’ll be too long and confusing otherwise.”

“That sounds like a good idea, dear. Now, let me make you some coffee.”

“I don’t want any. I don’t think I could eat or drink anything.”

“But look at you. You must eat. Keep your strength up. You can hardly stand.”

“I’ve never been so humiliated in my whole life.”

“But may I ask you one more question?” She nodded. “What will they write in part two tomorrow?”

“What do you mean?” Susan hadn’t noticed that at the end of the article, the Daily Monitor promised a second day of revelations.

What else could there possibly be to tell? She needed to talk to Mark. Maybe they could obtain an injunction against the Monitor and prevent publication. Without thinking of the time, she picked up the phone and dialled his number. It went straight to voicemail.

“I’m going back to bed, mother. Can you let me know when Mimi comes with the paper, and I’ll get dressed then.”

“Of course, dear.”

“And don’t open the door to anyone else.”

About an hour later, there was a hubbub outside. Susan, who was lying prostrate on the bed, heard a man’s voice shouting, “Bitch”. Mimi must have arrived. But what could she have done?

She ran downstairs to open the door discreetly, accompanied by Nellie who was yapping violently. A young woman who resembled her daughter was pushing a stroller along the drive. She was dressed from head to foot in black, dyed black hair framing her pale face. She was wearing black lipstick and black nail varnish. Susan could see the ‘daughter of Dracula’ headlines already.

“Oi, turn round this way, Miss,” one of them yelled.

There was some sort of commotion among the photographers. Susan noticed people climbing up on step ladders with heavy zoom lenses, while others tried to push them aside. As Mimi reached the door, one group with furry microphones broke away from the rose bushes and stood at the end of the drive.

“What did you do to that poor guy to upset him like that?” She beckoned at Mimi so she could get inside.

“Oh, I just spat at him,” she said. “He deserved it, the prat.”

“So, can we unpick this?” Susan asked. “I just want to be clear in my own mind how they got all this stuff for the article.”

The three women were in the sitting room behind the drawn curtains. Mimi had refused the leather chair – veganism
oblige
- and was cross-legged on the sofa. Nellie was in her basket, and Meadow on the floor beside the dog, playing with a moist baby toy chewed beyond recognition by the Yorkie. Four generations of Perkins together for the first time.

Susan, leaning forward in the leather armchair and speaking almost in a whisper in case the microphones outside caught the sound, spent two hours telling her family the full story of her downfall at DeKripps.

The narrative began with Mimi’s visit to Washington and ended with her last conversation with Frank. From time to time, one or the other would ask a question. Mimi, who finally seemed aware of her share of responsibility, was holding Susan’s hand in an odd sign of contrition.

Neither Susan nor her mother had dared say anything to Mimi about her fashion transformation. After all, they’d put up with dreadlocks when she was a teenager. And the goth look had been all the rage at Sussex. Her mother had made one remark, however, when she brought her in.

“Do you have to stomp around in those boots inside, sweetie? It’s high summer you know.”

Mimi had removed her platforms to reveal black nail varnish on the big toe poking through a hole in her tights. Later, Susan’s mother asked how Mimi could take parenting seriously while dressed so outrageously. Susan had stuck up for her, saying that as far as she was concerned, she was showing signs of being an excellent parent. She was more worried that she seemed to have returned to strict veganism so soon after the birth.

Slowly it began to dawn on her that she might have been responsible for leading the media to her mother’s door. Mimi was looking at her strangely when she finished telling them about Frank at Waterloo station.

“Wait, you told him you were coming here,” she said.

“Yes. He knows about Lymington.” She stopped. It was Frank! What a naïve fool she had been.

“I’m sorry. Of course I made a huge mistake.”

It wouldn’t have been hard to locate all the Perkins in Lymington once they had a name and a place, and her mother’s number was in the directory. She connected the rest of the dots. Barney knew all about Peek-a-boo. And Ellen must have spilled the beans about her one night stand at the Merchant. Under pressure from Barney, no doubt. But still her friend had betrayed her.

“But why didn’t you confide in Ellen? Why didn’t you tell her about Barney making a pass at you?”

“I was embarrassed. If I was going to tell her, I should have told her straight away. And then the scene at the Merchant happened, and I felt so ashamed. I think she would have misunderstood. In fact, come to think about it, she might have thought I brought it on myself. So I guess that’s why I kept it to myself.”

She looked at the others for reassurance.

“It’s obvious that you should have blown the whistle on DeKripps long ago,” said Mimi. “Using a genetically modified microorganism on genetically modified crops to get people hooked on chocolates. Honestly! It gives death by chocolate a whole new meaning.”

Nobody laughed. Mimi paused, then said: “Do you know what this reminds me of?” Susan and her mother looked at her warily. “Iraq. Group think! That’s why it’s so hard to break out and challenge prevailing opinion, particularly in a corporate context.”

As Susan struggled to see the connection between DeKripps and the Iraq war, the phone rang. Her mother picked it up.

“Hello, 290 3941. Yes, good afternoon. Just a moment please.” She handed the receiver to Susan. It was the lawyer from Smithson and Hopkins. Susan had left a message for the woman who’d helped with her redundancy payment, explaining her plight and inquiring about the possibility of obtaining a gag order against the Monitor.

“Do you know what they are going to print tomorrow?” the lawyer, Laura Melrose, asked.

“No I don’t, but judging by today’s paper, they must think they can get away with murder. I can only expect something extremely damaging to me and my reputation.” Susan had to acknowledge that the story in today’s paper was broadly true.

The lawyer explained that succeeding with an injunction before publication would be extremely unlikely, given the fundamental freedom of the press. She suggested that Susan waited to see what was printed. It was already clear that the paper had not attempted to get in touch with her before going to press, to at least enable her to give her side of the story. That would be taken into consideration if she decided to take subsequent action.

“Also, I’m afraid that if you do try to obtain a temporary injunction, there is a risk that the paper will get even more excited and advertise the story as the one you tried to ban.”

“I understand. In the meantime, would you be able to contact Mark Palin in Washington via your internal system? I need to talk to him urgently but I’m worried about talking on an open phone line. If you could ask him to let me know a time he’ll be available today I can ring him from a public phone box, assuming I can find one in working order here.”

She hung up. What would the next morning’s papers say? She contemplated her family gloomily in the darkened room.

Her mother stood up. “Well, there’s only one thing to do in a situation like this.” She went into the kitchen and came back with a shopping bag in which to carry Nellie.

“I’m going to Waitrose for a bottle of gin.”

She put on a silk headscarf and a light jacket, and from behind a crack in the curtains Mimi and Susan watched her wave politely to the rabble of journalists as she marched down the drive.