Altar Ego (28 page)

‘Aw, man. Quit bein’ so damn English. Nuthin’ fails like success, right? Rotty’s got the Garden booked. Can you imagine what that means to me? I’m an artist, an’ artists are driven.’

‘Yes. In an air-conditioned limo. Julian says Rotterman lodged the obscenity complaint with Scotland Yard.’

‘Julian? When were yer talkin’ to him? An’ what the fuck would he know?’ He parted my thighs brutally.

‘Zack, if you have any feelings for me at all, you’ll leave Rotterman.’

‘You forget. I’m a guy. I ain’t got none!’ he said sarcastically.

‘Some day you’ll go far, Zack … and I hope you stay there,’ I said, and regretted it instantly.

‘Yeah, well, see you around.’ He left me lying there, skirt rucked up around my waist.

Inside the house, laughter and music percolated,
mocking
my misery and Skunk’s death. I rallied my flagging spirits. All Zack needed was more proof.

Across the living room, I saw Rotterman beckon Celestia. She fluttered towards him obediently. They indulged in a little whispered conversation before Celestia padded off to the upstairs bathroom. When I burst in after her she gazed at me with glazed eyes. There was an automatic air of dull perkiness about her. I looked at her beneath the harsh fluorescents; skinny child-legs encased in fishnet tights; red-veined, kohl-rimmed eyes; dirty hair hanging like limp linguine. Detecting a faint reek of vomit, I pushed past her and peered into the sink to see a little bit of regurgitated lettuce and carrot. God, I winced. If you were going to be bulimic, you’d think you’d eat a chocolate pudding first. To be throwing up even this meagre amount seemed pitiful beyond words.

‘Why do you do this to yourself?’ I said quietly. ‘You must get help.’

She looked at me blankly. It was silly asking her to get in touch with her inner child. She’d no doubt thrown her up already.

I would just have to confront Rotterman. He was nowhere in the throng. I checked each room before finally peering into the murky, submarine light of the garage.

Flicking on the faint overhead bulb, I discovered the hunched malevolent shape of the newly arrived ‘associate’ counting money into piles of fifty-pound
notes
on the bonnet of Zachary’s new sports car.

‘J’mind?’ Rotty spat. ‘We’re havin’ a meetin’ here.’

‘Really? What’s the agenda? The advantages of moving to Italy where crime really pays; the hours are good and all the judges are dead …?’

‘Actually, it’s good that yer here.’ Balancing a plate of hors d’oeuvres, Rotterman reclined across the bonnet like a bloated lizard. ‘There’s somethin’ I wanted to tell yer.’

‘Let me guess. Your mother drank during pregnancy?’ I stared into a volcanic pore as he shoved his face into mine.

‘I should just kill you for that.’

‘If I had a corpse for every time you’ve said that …’ Despite my bravado it
was
getting a little Quentin Tarantino around here. ‘Now get out of my house,’ I bluffed. I opened the garage door. Light flooded in. Rotterman’s sleek limousine was slowly sharking up and down the street. ‘There’s a limo leaving in two minutes,’ I said. ‘Be under it … Otherwise, I bet Zachary would be interested in this little “meeting” of yours.’

‘Ha!’ Rotterman gloated. ‘Now that Zack’s finally signed his freakin’ contact ya can’t touch me, ya little shit weasel. I own him!’

‘He signed?’ My mouth dropped open.

‘Jest now, on the way to the airport.’ The carnivorous agent bit smugly into a priapic sausage.

‘He wouldn’t do that, not without consulting me.’

Rotterman flaunted a pile of paper in my face. ‘Read ’em and weep.’

Round three to Attila the Agent.

Zack had put me in a hairy situation. Hell. This situation needed depilation. And when it came to depilation, there was only one person to turn to …

30
I Waxed My Bikini Line For
This
?

I AM AS
fond of beauty spas as I am of being flayed alive with barbed wire. But Anouska was going to Champneys for a few days to recover from the news of Darius’s near-death experience (‘I’m so sorry.’ ‘Me too,’ she’d sobbed. ‘He
lived
. How could anyone survive Srebrenica?’) and the loyal, long-suffering Kate had given me a few days off to mourn for the drummer. I didn’t tell her I’d booked in for a boob and lube job.

Champneys is a luxurious health farm full to bursting with elephantine Saudi princesses bobbing about in the indoor pool, detoxing soap stars and a depressingly large number of newly divorced matrons getting in shape before heading back out into the Marriage Market.

After the customary bale of hay for lunch, we were
pounced
upon by broad-shouldered, Amazonian therapists, brandishing colonic irrigation nozzles. Opting for something less Gothic, I was counselled to apply aluminium oxide to my neck through a disposable syringe and advised to have an urgent consultation on cosmetic enhancement. (‘What? Like leg lengthening? My main problem is that I’m 5’ 3”.’) I was also instructed to inject purified botulism to inhibit muscle movement and so stop me from frowning. ‘I’m frowning because I can’t believe what a moron you’d have to be to do that.’

An hour later a micro-current facial toning machine had me down to about one double chin. Add a marine algae skin peel and my face would soon be too small for my hair. I was saved further shrinkage by the apparition of a seaweed-wrapped Anouska, with one half-tweezed eyebrow, bursting into my therapy room.

I levered myself up on to one elbow. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘I was just having my eyebrows arched …’

‘Why bother, Annie? You’re posh. They arched at birth.’

‘… when Julian walked by.’

I sat bolt upright. ‘
Julian?’ Here?
He hates exercise. Nearly as much as he hates wealthy, pampered people.’

‘And he’s not alone. He’s booked into a double room. With
his wife
.’

I lurched off the treatment table, grabbed a robe and
staggered
after her, somewhat burdened by the discovery that two tubs of avocado face-rehydration mud weigh more than I do.

When I barged into room 32 on the east wing, the first words out of my mouth were ‘What the
hell
do you think you’re doing?’ Although seeing my best friend’s legs wrapped around my husband’s ears like the ends of a stethoscope should have given me a vague indication.

Kate and Julian un-suctioned their faces from each other’s groins and catapulted off the bed.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I screamed at Julian. ‘You loathe Kate.’

‘Um … would you believe, airing our differences …?’ He shrugged on a fluffy white gown.

The shock was physical as well as mental. I felt the pain of it jackknife through my body.

Kate’s eyes scurried like mice back and forth across the carpet. She groped for her spectacles.

‘Do you want to have your last words now, or save it for your epitaph?’ I lunged at her, but Julian restrained me.

‘If she disappears without trace, people will notice,’ he said calmly. ‘Particularly me.’

‘Well then you’d better get her into some kind of MI5 Relocation Programme for Adulterous Best Friends, and soon.
How could you?
’ I roared at her. There are some things a Feminist should never do. And not sleeping with your best friend’s husband is
about
100 of them. Besides which, you hate each other. You always have!’

‘Platonic friendship,’ said Julian, struggling to keep hold of me as I squirmed furiously. ‘It’s the gun you didn’t realize was loaded.’

‘Anyway, it’s
your
fault,’ Kate whimpered, shrouding herself in a blanket. ‘
You’re
the one who made me go and see Julian on your behalf. And, well, then I got to know him better and …’ she faltered.

‘You told me you could “read him like a book”. But I didn’t expect you to thumb the goddamn pages! And what the hell’s that on your tits?’

‘What?’ She glanced down. ‘Oh. Nipple rouge,’ she said too shell-shocked to sham.

‘Nipple rouge!’ I reeled back in astonishment. ‘You didn’t even wear a
bra
until last week.’ I followed the seam of her stocking to its erotic conclusion in a pair of shimmeringly shiny patent-leather ‘follow-me-home-and-fuck-me’s’. ‘I thought you said high heels dehumanized women?’ Breaking free of Julian’s grasp, I rummaged through the tangled sheets looking for other signs of Kate’s hypocrisy.

She scurried up the bed away from me. ‘It can be a sign of female empowerment too,’ she tentatively rallied.

Finding the His and Her leopardskin lederhosen beneath the pillows, I uttered the kind of long, loud groan which in these surroundings would have been instantly mistaken for a post-enema high. Passing
therapists
would have been giving each other smug congratulatory beams. ‘Lederhosen! I told you about the lederhosen! You … My God. You’ve just pretended to be my friend in order to glean that sort of inside information so you could steal my husband. No. No. This is
not
in the Best-Friend Charter.’ I lunged at her again. ‘This is a breach of the “Besties” Code. This is Best-Friend Divorce!!’

‘Ah … The D word,’ Julian twisted one arm up behind my back and spun me around to face him. ‘You may have forgotten, but we are about to divorce. At
your
instigation.’ The robe I’d flung on in the therapy room gaped open. Julian glanced at my naked form without a flicker of interest. I’m not kidding. The guy mentally
dressed
me. ‘Kate and I are not doing anything wrong. Nothing at all. That’s
your
department. Now kindly get out of our room or I’ll call security and have you removed.’

‘Removed? What am I? A melanoma?’ I lashed out at Kate again. ‘I’m still his wife, goddamn it.’ Kate howled as my foot made contact with her shin; her
shaved
shin. ‘You’ve shaved your legs?! I don’t bloody believe it!’

‘Get out.’ There was a steeliness in Julian’s blue eyes that I’d never seen outside the courtroom. ‘Or I’ll have you arrested for unlawful wounding and affray.’ He placed a protective arm around Kate who’d uncharacteristically retreated.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, Becky, but I knew you’d
go
ballistic. The thing is, Jules was so vulnerable, thanks to the way you’d treated him, and … well, things just escalated. We didn’t mean to fall in …’ she pulled up short.

‘A clot of dread rose in my throat. ‘Love? You and Julian? Oh excuse me while I wipe these tears of laughter out of my eyes.’

‘It’s true,’ said Julian calmly. ‘Kate is everything you’re not. She’s reliable, unselfish, honest …’

‘Honest! Huh! I thought you were being kind, giving me all that time off, but you just wanted to get me out of the way! Exactly when did this, this …’ I didn’t know what to call it. ‘How long?’ I demanded.

‘New Year’s Eve, actually,’ Julian said in measured, even tones.

‘
New Year’s Eve?
’ Take knife. Plunge into heart. Twist. The streamers, the silk pyjamas, Kate’s party refusal. A frightened, disbelieving laugh heaved out of my chest. Oh, this was a Kodak moment if ever there was one.

‘Look on the positive side,’ Kate said appeasingly. ‘Finally it’s
me
doing something irresponsible and completely bloody insane.’

I caught sight of my reflection in the hotel mirror. I’d forgotten about the algae mask. My face was bright Martian green, my skull encased in a Mrs Norman Bates hairnet. Globs of avocado neck wrap were sliding dismally down on to my chest. ‘But … but I thought you loved
me
?’

‘It’ll be hell surviving without you, Rebecca.’ Julian jostled me towards the door. ‘But let me give it a go.’

‘Becky …’ Kate scrambled for her vest. ‘We can get past this, mate, we can.
You’re
the one who told me to get a man …’

‘Sure, I wanted you to get laid.
But not by my own husband!
’

‘I’m not yours. You sent me back, remember? Let’s spend some time together really soon …’ Julian continued mercilessly. ‘Have a nice century.’ And with that he shoved me unceremoniously out the door, slamming it in my face.

‘Let me go order you a colonic irrigation, Kate,
with cement
,’ I screeched, pounding my fists on the door.

At the approach of two evangelistic therapists with that ‘aggressive behaviour indicates you need a good purging’ look in their eyes, I followed Anouska, who’d been hovering helplessly in the doorway to pilot me into the dining room. ‘Look on the bright side,’ she said. ‘Brilliant Karma points.’

In a daze I sat down amongst the honed and toned healthy people. Their high-tech, all-in-one tracksuits and complicated air-cushioned training shoes with self-cleaning tread patterns gave them the look of Captain Kirk’s crew. My algae-green face pack made me the alien on Planet Betrayal. With Kate the Klingon on my starboard bow.

This was
definitely
the downside of love affairs. I’d been so busy being duplicitous that I’d failed to notice
my
husband cheating on me! I failed to notice my best friend cheating on me too. Kate’s treachery, utterly at odds with my deepest expectations, was cataclysmic. Girlfriends are supposed to get you through the tough times, not contribute to them. God. My best friend had run away with my husband – and I missed her awfully already.

Anouska, in an effort to distract me, rabbited on about how, from now on, she was only booking Darius on dodgy airlines – anything Colombian to Honduras and absolutely
any
where mountains ring the runway – ‘Terminals must be so-called for a reason, right, doll?’ I nibbled on a salad valued at a tenner per leaf and absorbed the full impact of what I’d lost. It hit me like a body blow. Kate and Julian! Oh, lust had found a new sewerage outlet. I’d sent her to provide comfort and she’d promptly melted him in the warmth of her sympathy. It was like buying someone a lottery ticket as a present, only for it to win.

With a sickening jolt, I realized that I wanted my husband back. I didn’t know what had got into me! Yes, I did. Ten throbbing inches. But I was now living with the fixtures of an outgrown fantasy. My heart contracted.
I still loved Julian
. I’d made the terrible mistake of looking at our marriage through the fog of habit – only to find myself now missing his hypochondria, his opera addiction, his relatives, the way he sucked on the end of his pen, the way he never ate his crusts. I even missed his vocabulary, for Christ’s sake.