Apocalipstick (10 page)

“Very funny,” she said, looking puzzled as he handed her the phone. She read the rest of the message with Max looking over her shoulder. “‘TCKTS STARLIGHT XPRESS 2MORROW. FANCY IT? I’M HOT 4 YOU, WARREN.’”

“So,” Max said, “who’s Warren?”

7

S
o, you phoned
this Warren bloke,” Jess said, scooping a dried-up cat turd out of the tray with a garden trowel, “told him he’s a lovely bloke,
Starlight Express
was a sweet thought, but the chemistry between you wasn’t quite right. Then you sent him on his way.”

Rebecca hesitated. “Pretty much.”

“How d’you mean, ‘pretty much’?” Jess said, carefully balancing the turd on top of the pile of rubbish spilling out of the pedal bin.

“I said I was in Greenland.”

“Greenland.”

“Yeah. I told him I was spending three months there researching a feature on the body-painting rituals of the Inuit and that I’d give him a call when I got back.”

“But why couldn’t you just be straight with him?”

“Dunno,” Rebecca said as Jess put the trowel back on the floor next to the cat tray. “I felt sorry for him, I s’pose. I wanted to let him down gently.”

“So you made up some daft story? I mean, like the Inuit even have body-painting rituals. They’re wrapped up in furs for eleven months of the year, aren’t they? Warren may be a bit pathetic, but from what you’ve told me he’s not stupid. There’s no way he’ll have believed it.”

“Yes, he did,” Rebecca said. “I turned on the hair dryer and held it over the phone, made out I was getting blown to bits in a snowstorm. He totally bought it.”

“But that means he’ll keep on phoning you.”

“He won’t. I told him I could only be reached on a satellite phone at five pounds a minute.”

“So, how did he get your number in the first place?”

“At first I thought it was my grandmother, but it turned out to be some temp at the office.”

“And what about the Max factor? What if he believes there’s something going on between you and Warren?”

“I explained everything. Told him about Gran’s matchmaking. He thought it was really funny.” She let out a long sigh. “You know, Max could be the one. It sounds sloppy and romantic, and I hardly know him, but I think I may have found the man of my dreams.”

“That’s how it goes,” Jess said wistfully. “You marry the man of your dreams and a couple of years later you find yourself living with a sofa that farts.”

Jess poured more coffee into Rebecca’s mug. They’d just finished lunch. Dolly had taken Diggory to the park in his pram.

“Come on, don’t go all cynical,” Rebecca said. “Be happy for me.”

“Oh, God, I’m sorry.” Jess reached out and squeezed her friend’s hand. “This no sex thing is really getting to me. I am happy for you, hon, really I am. Max sounds wonderful. I can’t wait to meet him.”

“You’ll love him.” Rebecca’s eyes started to glaze over. “He’s warm, romantic. All those candles. And did I tell you he likes
Seinfeld
?
”

“Only seventy-nine times,” Jess said, thumbing through Dolly’s
Mirror.
“Bloody hell, I bet if I looked like her, Ed’d have no trouble getting it up.”

She was stabbing at a picture of some Teutonic superwaif wearing a PVC triangle over her nonexistent tits and Madonna hipsters that showed off at least three inches of bum cleavage.

“Look, just stop it,” Rebecca said. “You know how . . .”

“. . . beautiful I am. Yeah, yeah.” She paused. “Listen, I’ve been thinking. It’s Ed’s fortieth next week. Why don’t I throw him a huge surprise party? Might really cheer him up. And afterward we could spend the night at some obscenely expensive hotel. Mum can hold the fort Diglington-wise. I’ll leave her a load of expressed milk. A night away with a couple of bottles of Krug and me in something crotchless might just do the trick. What do you think?”

“I think it’s a great idea,” Rebecca said warmly. “What have you got to lose? Things between you and Ed could hardly get any worse.”

“So, Stanley,” Rose said, peering at her son over her reading glasses and taking in the black suit jacket with the mandarin collar, “where do you think you’re off to? Nehru’s funeral?”

Rose, Stan and Rebecca were sitting at a table next to the gents at La Belle Epoque in Hampstead, waiting for Lipstick. It wasn’t the table Stan had booked. He’d specified one by the window for this meet-the-family dinner for Lipstick, but the moment they sat down Rose started complaining about the draft.

Of course there was no draft. Just like there had been no smear on the wineglass she’d sent back. It was all part of Rose’s campaign to make sure Stan knew precisely how much she disapproved of Lipstick. First there was her age.

“Twenty years from now,” she’d said to Rebecca on the phone earlier, “when she’s off out with her friends, he’ll be keeping in touch with his through the obituary columns.”

Then there was her religion. Apart from all the obvious objections Rose had to her son marrying out, she had a particular grievance against the church of Rome. Ten years ago, the Blessed Virgin down the road held a bingo session to which elderly members of her synagogue had been invited. To this day, she swore blind the priest called out the numbers in Latin so the Jews couldn’t win.

Rebecca patted her dad on the knee and told her grandmother she thought he looked great in the suit. In fact, she was less than keen, but anything was an improvement on the cargo pants he had been wearing the other day. She thanked the Lord his hair was back to normal. The dye must have been a rinse.

Rose said she still thought the suit looked ridiculous, to which Stan replied that ridiculous was a pierced scrotum. The suit was merely trendy. Rose told him to stop being vulgar and picked up the menu.

“So, what are we all having?” she said.

“Mum, we have to wait for Bernadette.”

“She’s late.” Rose tapped her watch irritably.

“Only a couple of minutes,” Rebecca said.

She felt the need to be generous for her father’s sake. Deep down she thought it was typical of Lipstick to keep everybody waiting. Twenty minutes from now she’d come swanning in wearing some itsy-bitsy floaty Voyagey thing, making it clear she was doing them a huge bloody favor by deigning to turn up at all. Rebecca looked down at her trousers, which were straining over her newly rebulged, post-last-night’s-curry stomach and winced. This was partly with revulsion and partly because the fabric was cutting into her. She slipped her finger between the waistband and her skin and felt the indentation it had made. There was nothing for it. She undid the front zip.

“But I have to eat,” Rose moaned. “If I don’t eat my blood sugar gets low and I get these spots in front of my eyes.”

“So, have you seen a doctor?” Stan said, spreading inch-thick butter onto a piece of bread stick.

“No, just the spots.” Rose was on her second sweet sherry.

“Look, if you’re feeling hungry, eat this.” Stan held out the piece of bread stick, smeared in butter.

“What? Are you joking? Butter? I can already feel my left ventricle slamming shut.”

“Oh, no. Please, Mum, not the angina monologue.”

Rose glared at him. “And have you looked at the prices they’re charging here?” she said. “Six fifty for fish soup. What do they put in it? A whale? I remember when you could get a bowl of soup in a restaurant for ninepence.”

Stan shot Rebecca a look, making it clear he wished his mother’s left ventricle would slam shut for a bit.

“Of course, you know where we should have gone,” Rose continued, “the China Garden down the road. I like it there. They do a wonderful omelette. But my friend Millie says nobody goes there anymore—apparently it’s gotten too crowded.”

Suddenly Stan’s face broke into a smile. “She’s here.”

Rebecca and Rose looked up.

“Where?” Rebecca asked.

“There,” Stan said, getting out of his chair.

The only person Rebecca could see was a plumpish, blonde woman about her own age, carrying a vast bunch of yellow carnations.

“Oooh, sorry I’m late, everybody!” the woman cried out as she came bustling toward them. “Traffic’s bloomin’ murder.”

Rebecca blinked.

“Isn’t she beautiful,” Stan whispered.

Rebecca nodded. There was no doubt she was still beautiful. The blue eyes and cheekbones hadn’t changed a bit. Unlike the rest of her. If ever there were a perfect antithesis of itsy, bitsy and floaty, it was the new Lipstick. Gone were the tiny waist and endless legs. Instead, she had thighs that were positively careering toward chunky and forty-inch hips. Oh, and tight leather trousers. Peach-colored ones.

Clearly this wasn’t the threatening vision in Voyage she’d been expecting. Ashamed as she was to admit it, this fact was causing Rebecca to perk up considerably.

“You must be Rose.” Lipstick beamed, extending her arms before virtually squeezing the life out of her prospective mother-in-law. “These are for you.” She handed Rose the flowers. “Stan said they’re your favorites.”

Despite herself, Rose’s face broke into a smile. “They’re wonderful. You really shouldn’t have.”

Stan put his arm round Lipstick, pulled her to him and kissed her on the cheek. “And here,” Stan announced, “with her trousers undone, is Rebecca.”

Rebecca turned bright red as she yanked up the zip.

“Rebecca,” the woman exclaimed, apparently oblivious to Rebecca’s frantic zip pulling.

“Bernadette?” Rebecca whispered. As she took in the sun bed tan, the truth dawned. Lipstick had simply turned into her mother—she of the caked-on UltraGlow. Mrs. O’Brien had been a bit on the heavy side, too.

“Omigod, it’s so lovely to see you.” She hugged Rebecca as if they were long-lost sisters.

“I cannot believe the two of you went to the same school,” Stan said, laughing.

Rebecca was positive that for the briefest of moments the smile left Lipstick’s face. Did she remember what had happened between them at school?

“So,” Lipstick continued, a tad uneasily, Rebecca thought, but back on full beam, “here’s me in the beauty business and you with a makeup column. Can you believe we’ve got so much in common, Becks? You don’t mind me calling you Becks, do you?”

“Er, no, that’s fine.” Rebecca gave her a weak smile.

“Come on, Rose,” Lipstick chivied merrily. “Shove up and make room for a little ’un.”

Still smiling, Rose shifted along the banquette. Lipstick squeezed in after her.

“Now then, Stan,” she said, “don’t just stand there. Find a waiter and order some champagne.”

Once they were all sitting down Lipstick reached into her handbag and pulled out a gift-wrapped parcel. She gave it to Stan. “Guess what, I found another one of those bizarre books you like.”

Smiling, and saying how much Bernadette spoiled him, Stan pulled off the wrapping. “Oh,” he said, “
A Farewell to Arms
.”

“Yeah,” Lipstick said. “Isn’t that just the greatest title for a diet book?”

Stan roared.

“What?” Lipstick said. “What’s so funny? Come on, I’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick again, haven’t I?”

“Don’t worry,” he smiled, “I’ll explain later.”

“So,” Rebecca said, “Dad tells me the two of you met at a book club.”

“A friend persuaded me to go,” Lipstick confided. “I don’t read much as a rule. I’m more of a miniseries person really. But they were reading this great book about this woman called Jane Eyre. I was just transported to another world. I could just see the movie in my head.”

They sat drinking champagne, Rose getting more and more tipsy. Rebecca asked Lipstick about her business, which turned out to be called “The Face Base and Talon Salon.”

“You must come in. I’ll give you a treatment on the house.” She lowered her voice. “You know, I have a friend who used to have your kind of eyebrows until she came to me.”

Rebecca’s hand shot self-consciously to her eyebrows. They’d always been a bit heavy, but until now she’d always thought they made her look like Sophia Loren.

Finally the conversation got round to the wedding. Stan said they were thinking about arranging it for sometime in April.

“So, Bernadette,” Rose said, “Stanley tells me you’re Catholic.”

Rebecca held her breath. Stan held his head. Lipstick nodded.

“Although I don’t go to Mass as often as I should. My family’s quite religious, though. Back in Ireland I have a cousin who’s a priest.”

By now Rose was rubbing the left side of her chest. “Omigod, you’re not thinking of getting married in a . . . ?” Rose couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence.

“No, we thought a registry office would be best,” Lipstick said gently. “But look, Stan and I have been thinking. We’ve decided that when we go on our honeymoon, you must come with us. It’s my way of saying thank you for producing this wonderful man.”

Rose’s face could have lit up Brent Cross.

Rebecca started breathing again. Stan let go of his head. If Rose had any remaining doubts about Lipstick, they had clearly disappeared there and then. Rebecca could just see her gassing on the phone to her friends, showing off about how her son and daughter-in-law thought so much of her, they wanted her to come on their honeymoon with them.

To her credit, Rose patted Lipstick’s hand, thanked her for the wonderful offer and said she wouldn’t dream of inflicting herself on them like that. Stan’s relief was palpable, but only Rebecca noticed.

“You know who’s a great man?” Rose said.

They all looked at her.

“The pope. He speaks Polish, you know.”

“Gran, the pope
is
Polish.”

“Yes,” Rose said, “but it’s a very hard language.”

Ordering was a fiasco. Rose kept changing her mind and demanding to know precisely how everything was cooked. Salt was bad for her blood pressure. Cucumber gave her heartburn. It was the skin. “The tiniest morsel and I’m pacing all night.” Ditto anything fried. The waiter did his best to keep his patience.

“OK, maybe I’ll have the veal. No, on second thought, change that to the
poussin.
Tell me, how do you prepare the chicken?”

“Don’t worry, Mum,” Stan said, “they tell it straight out it’s going to die.”

Lipstick roared and said one of the reasons she’d fallen for Stan was because he made her laugh so much. She told them about the time they’d gone into a restaurant where breakfast could be ordered at any time and Stan had asked for kippers in the Renaissance.