Apocalipstick (6 page)

“We could let it out,” the assistant suggested. “It would be ready by tomorrow afternoon.”

“No, I’ll take it,” Rebecca shot back. “It’s perfect. Absolutely perfect.” There was no way she was about to allow her joy at discovering she was a size ten be diminished by having the dress seams let out.

She patted her stomach. “Bit of water retention, that’s all. Time of the month.”

Five minutes later she was in Boots buying Slim-Fast. There were three meals between now and tomorrow night. Plenty of time to lose the bulge.

By the time Rebecca got back to the flat she was starving. She immediately made up the vanilla shake. She had to admit there wasn’t much of it. She’d down it in three or four mouthfuls. And all she’d eaten today was a tuna salad with her dad and a couple of sips of champagne. She knew there was some ice cream in the freezer. How many calories could there be in a couple of tiny scoops? It would just bulk the Slim-Fast up a bit, that’s all. Plus it was her firm belief that food consumed in private had no calories (along with food licked off spoons when cooking and anything consumed at the cinema, which was part of the entertainment package and didn’t count).

She poured the shake into the blender and began chipping away at the Cherry Garcia Ben and Jerry’s. She looked at the fruit bowl, where a speckled overripe banana was just crying out to be eaten. She unzipped it and threw it in too, along with an inch of full-fat crème fraîche she had left in the fridge. It seemed a shame to waste it. She blended the whole thing up and stuck her finger into the mixture. Not bad. But it could do with something to counteract the sweetness. A bottle of Bacardi, left over from Christmas, was sitting on the counter. Perfect. It would also give the whole thing a bit of a kick into the bargain. After all, she’d had a shock today, a bit of alcohol would be medicinal. She reached for the bottle and sloshed a couple of inches into the shake. But by then the bottle was virtually empty, so she added the rest. She blended the whole thing one more time and poured it back into the glass. There was still masses left in the container. She would finish it later.

She went into the living room and sat herself down on the sofa. As she sipped her “Slim-Slow,” she looked round the room and thought about how much she loved it. With the help of the
Changing Rooms
CD-ROM, the Ikea catalogue and an oversize, over-the-top crystal chandelier that Lady Axminster had found when she was clearing out her attic at Slapton Gusset, she had created a twelve-by-fourteen monument to what she liked to think of as funky minimalism.

She’d moved in six months ago and had spent virtually every weekend decorating. She’d steamed off the ancient mint green woodchip, lined the walls and painted them white, sanded and polished the floorboards. The only time she’d needed professional help was when it came to hanging and wiring the chandelier. All she needed now were blinds. Roman, she’d decided—in a slightly milkier shade of white. But not so milky that it would clash with the white marble of the fireplace, which had a slightly grayish tinge to it. On the other hand, if she went too gray it wouldn’t work against the rich yellow-gold floorboards. Best thing would be to go to John Lewis, get some swatches and stick them to the walls and floor. One was bound to speak to her.

“But, Becks,” she could hear Jess say the moment she saw the swatches. “They’re all identical. White is white is white.”

Then she’d beg her to go for a more practical color that didn’t show the dirt, like maroon.

Although she adored the marble fireplace, what Rebecca loved most were her sofas. She had two—bought on credit from Ikea. One was very long, low and bright pink. The other—black leather with stainless steel legs—was equally angular and self-consciously trendy, only smaller. Right now, she was sitting on the pink one. She closed her eyes, rested her head on its unyielding back and began caressing the soft woolen pile. Like all her girlfriends, she recognized there comes a point in a woman’s life—round about when she discovers the Naked Chef and acknowledges Tom Jones may be cheesy, but has a really great voice—when seating gets sexy.

Her friend Mad, who was doing a fine-art course, had provided paintings. She specialized in huge, highly abstract nudes and had given Rebecca two as a flat-warming present. She’d hung one—a bloke with a triangular head, whose pubic hair was made up of thousands of lowercase letters—over the mantelpiece. The other, which was at least six feet by four feet and which Rebecca had leaned against a wall, thinking this looked supremely arty, was of a chiseled angular woman wearing a hat made of equally angular fruit. She was lying on a bed, her hand draped between her legs. Mad, who wasn’t without pretension when it came to her work, called it
Plaisir et la Femme.
Jess called it
Woman Wanking.

Rebecca took another sip of her shake and wondered if she should have a wank, too—not because she particularly fancied one, but because she thought it might help her lose weight. She’d read somewhere that a few minutes snogging used up sixty-four calories. An orgasm had to be worth a couple of hundred. Maybe more. She could usually manage three on the trot with this brilliant new vibrator she’d just bought.

A few months ago, she and Jess had been out shopping for baby stuff and Jess had forced her into this trendy, upmarket sex shop in Covent Garden, where all the sex toys looked like they’d been made by Alessi.

“So what do you fancy?” Jess had boomed across the packed store, sounding like a younger version of her mother. “A basic dildo, one with rubber spikes and an anal attachment or something battery operated with detachable heads?”

Mortified, Rebecca shot over to where Jess was standing, next to a glass bowl of what looked like sequins.

“Will you just shut up,” Rebecca hissed. “Now the whole bloody shop thinks we’re a pair of lesbians.”

“No, they don’t. Stop being so sensitive. I bet nobody even heard.”

Rebecca grunted, then began trailing her fingers through the sequins.

“Clitoral bindis,” Jess giggled, digging Rebecca in the ribs. “They’re called ‘clindis.’”

By now Jess was bending over another glass bowl, full of tiny ornamental rubber dinosaurs. “Oh, and talking of lesbians. These are meant to be lesbian dinosaurs.” She burst out laughing. “Look at the name underneath.”

“Lickalotopus,” Rebecca said tonelessly. “Brilliant. Now please can we go?”

But Jess refused to budge. She’d gone back to the vibrators and was busy reading the blurb on the Vibroclit—the stainless steel one with the detachable heads.

“You just have to buy this. It guarantees you’ll come within five minutes. God, maybe I should get one too. I take so long with Ed, he gets repetitive stress injury in his tongue.”

Realizing buying the thing was the only way she’d get Jess out of the shop, Rebecca took the Vibroclit from her and marched over to the counter. They were leaving the shop, Rebecca dragging Jess out by her coat sleeve, when they heard some bloke say to his mate: “You know, I’ve always wanted to watch lesbians do it. Haven’t you?”

Rebecca didn’t forgive Jess until the following day—after she’d tried the Vibroclit and it had made her come in less than two minutes.

She was just about to get in the bath, before having an early night with the Vibroclit, when the phone rang. She picked it up off the coffee table.

“Hi, sweetie, it’s Dad. Listen, I hope my news didn’t come as too much of a shock today. I just wanted to check that you were OK.”

“Well, I have to admit it was a bit of a surprise, but I’m fine with it now.”

“Really?”

“Honest.”

“So how would you feel about meeting Bernadette? I thought after I’ve broken the news to your grandmother, maybe the four of us could go out for dinner.”

She said that would be great.

“Oh, and by the way,” Stan continued, “I forgot to tell you, Bernadette says she thinks she knows you. I had no idea, but the two of you were at the same school.”

“Really? What’s her surname?”

“O’Brien.”

“O’Brien? You’re kidding, right?”

“No. Why should I be kidding? So, you remember her, then?”

Suddenly, everything became clear. Her father had always been a bit of a humorist, and now she realized the whole story of him getting married was just one of his jokes. Of course. It was just like the time he’d been having a spat with the Inland Revenue and had rung the local office to say he was from British Telecom and they were testing the lines by sending a blast of hot steam down the wires. She could still hear his voice.

“And I would strongly advise your staff to wrap their phones in towels to avoid the possibility of being badly scalded. There’s a BT van outside full of towels.” He insisted that for legal reasons he needed to stay on the line and listen while they made the announcement. Which they duly did.

She should have realized that the whole story, the marriage, the champagne, the “don’t tell your grandmother,” was nothing more than a huge windup. And she’d fallen for it.

Marrying Bernadette O’Brien, yeah, right.

“Becks, you there?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” she said, laughing. “Very funny, Dad. You know you really had me going for a while.”

“I did. How? I don’t get it, what’s so funny about me marrying Bernadette?”

“Oh, come on, you know. She was . . .”

She broke off. It suddenly occurred to her that Stan seemed genuinely confused. In a horror-struck instant she realized that this was no windup.

“Dad, you’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am,” he said with an uneasy, slightly confused laugh.

She swallowed hard and raked her fingers through her hair.

“So, come on,” he repeated good-naturedly, “what’s so funny about me marrying Bernadette?”

There was, of course, nothing even remotely funny about him marrying Bernadette. On the contrary. It was one of the most hideous things she could imagine. But she didn’t dare tell him that. How could she? He was happier than he had been in years. She couldn’t hurt him by telling him the truth. Instead she had to backtrack. Fast.

“Sorry, Dad, I think we’ve been at cross-purposes. I was confusing Bernadette with another girl called O’Brien. This other one had buck teeth and terrible BO. I couldn’t believe you’d fallen for somebody like that.”

He laughed, obviously relieved. “So, you remember Bernadette now?”

“Of course I do,” Rebecca said, desperately trying to force some enthusiasm into her voice. “Who could forget Bernadette?”

“Brilliant. I’m sure the pair of you will have loads to catch up on.”

“Can’t wait.”

She put the glass to her lips and downed the remainder of her “Slim-Slow” in one gulp.

4

R
ebecca found the
Crouch End High official school photograph (summer 1986—she was sixteen) rolled up on the top shelf of her wardrobe, along with a whole load of other memorabilia she didn’t have the heart to chuck out. This included copies of three pop numbers she’d written during her adolescent songwriting phase and sent to Wet Wet Wet—she was still waiting for a reply—and her Blue Peter badge from 1979 (for her poster promoting road safety).

She spotted Bernadette immediately with her doe eyes, perfect figure and mass of bleached Kylie hair, pouting and posing in the back row. (The year before, she’d been crowned Miss East Finchley and it had gone to her head big time.) The lapels on her school blazer were turned up, the sleeves had been pushed to her elbows—
sooo
eighties—and her skirt was just a millimeter short of her knickers.

She was easily the most beautiful girl in the school, but although there were tons of boys and fawning Bernadette wannabes who hung around her, not everybody liked her. She had an aloof, sneering manner and made no secret of the fact she thought she was better than everybody else because she was pretty. On top of that her parents were well-off—at least by Crouch End High School standards. They owned a chain of betting shops. Rebecca remembered seeing them show up at the school summer fête one year in their metallic gold Rolls; him chewing on a fat cigar, her face caked in UltraGlow. But although they were a bit flash, they were bighearted, salt-of-the-earth types. Completely different from their daughter.

On the day of the fête, Bernadette’s mum had been in charge of the lucky dip and she’d spent the entire time laughing and joking and letting the first years have extra goes for free. As a result the stall was permanently mobbed. Three times, she had to ship Bernadette’s dad off to Woolies to buy more prizes. Even back then Rebecca used to think how funny it was that somebody like Bernadette O’Brien should have a nice mum.

Everybody knew Bernadette’s parents spoiled their only child. Girls who’d been to her house said she had two wardrobes stuffed with clothes. She also had a twenty-quid-a-week allowance and a pony, which was kept stabled somewhere in Hertfordshire.

If money and beauty weren’t enough to separate her from the Crouch End High rabble, in the second year she received yet another boost to an already grotesquely inflated ego. Her cousin became a roadie with Kajagoogoo. In her eyes, not to mention the eyes of everybody in the class who clamored for the free tickets she could now get to any gig anywhere in the country, this catapulted her to star status. Consequently most of the class went into permanent suck-up mode and Bernadette took to swanning round the place, looking down her nose like Christie Brinkley in Argos.

She started wearing makeup to school in the third year—thick black eyeliner and equally thick purple frosting on her lips. From then until she left school at sixteen, she was continually being sent home by the aging spinster head, Miss Titley, for coming to school “looking like a harlot.” She’d relent for a few days and then go back to makeup. The boys started calling her Lipstick or Panda Eyes, but it was Lipstick that stuck. Pretty soon nobody called her Bernadette anymore. Snotty as she was, she didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she seemed to rather like the idea that she had been singled out for a nickname. It clearly made her feel even more important.

But Lipstick wasn’t simply a stuck-up tart. She was also a bully. Swots were her main target—girls like Rebecca who were much brighter than Lipstick, who worked hard and handed their homework in on time. Of all the swots, she picked on Rebecca the most. She singled her out because she was small for her age and at thirteen, going on fourteen, she was virtually the only girl in the year not wearing a bra. (“Oi, Fried Eggs, here’s some cotton wool” . . . and she would try to stuff it down Rebecca’s shirt front.) Rebecca also had braces (“Oi, Tin Grin, give us a smile”). Each time, the rest of the class—apart from Rebecca’s small but loyal gang of mates—would snigger. Lipstick was never threatening or violent, just relentlessly taunting and bitchy.

Rebecca didn’t merely dislike Lipstick. She loathed her. She never mentioned Lipstick’s bullying to her mother, because she knew she would go marching up to the school, which meant Rebecca would get a reputation for being a mummy’s girl and Lipstick would pick on her even more.

There were a couple of examples of Lipstick’s nastiness that Rebecca would never forget. First there was the art lesson in the fourth year when Lipstick purposely smeared red paint on the back of Rebecca’s skirt, so that it looked like she had her period and was leaking. Even now she could hear the boys chanting “Rebecca Fine’s on the blob.”

When Judy found out she was livid and it was all Rebecca could do to stop her phoning Lipstick’s parents.

“Mum, you can’t,” she’d pleaded. “You’ll just make it worse. I’ll deal with it. OK?”

And she did. By then, she was older, more confident, and people were beginning to stand up to Lipstick. Rebecca and her posse took their glorious revenge the next day. They went to Lipstick’s locker, where she kept her packed lunch, pried it open with a screwdriver and spread Head and Shoulders inside her cheese and pickle sandwiches. Even in the sixth form—after she’d left—people were still telling exaggerated tales of how Lipstick had run red-faced and screaming from the school canteen, yards of bubbles streaming from her mouth.

But the most hurt she ever caused Rebecca was just before the fifth-year prom. Although Rebecca’s tits had arrived by then, so had her acne. Acres of it. Her face was a mass of blackheads, boils and those hard painful lumps that refused to turn into actual zits. Even the unaffected skin was flaky and red raw, through too much washing and overuse of the Retin-A the doctor had prescribed.

“Dunno why you’ve bothered to come, Spot,” Lipstick had sneered, all purple frosting and thigh-high side slits. (By now Lipstick was seeing a twenty-five-year-old bloke called Craig, who had George Michael hair, drove a Ford Capri and was rumored to be Duran Duran’s record producer.) “Nobody’s going to want to dance with you.”

And, of course, nobody did—despite the fabulous Laura Ashley taffeta ball gown Judy had bought her. For most of the evening Rebecca sat with Roger Shakelady, the class saddo, who wore knitted school sweaters and had been infamous when they were all at primary school for sitting in the playground licking moss.

“And my dad’s about to marry this appalling, stuck-up tart,” Rebecca wailed on the phone to Jess.

“Oh, stop it,” Jess came back. “That was years ago. You were kids. She won’t still be a tart. Or even remotely appalling or stuck up.”

“OK, I expect she probably isn’t a tart anymore. She was a snob and she’ll have gone all sophisticated by now. She’s probably got entire rooms full of Prada and Gaultier. But she’ll still be horrible. I guarantee it.”

“Look,” Jess said, “your mum was one of the kindest, most down-to-earth people I’ve ever met. Stan would never go for somebody who wasn’t like her.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Rebecca said. “All men lose the plot when beautiful women start paying them attention. Particularly beautiful younger women. She’ll have conned him—made out she loves him when all she’s after is his money. She’s just the kind of cold calculating type who’d do that.”

“But you said her family was rich. She doesn’t need money.”

“They had money and they were flash, but they weren’t rich rich. Anyway, she’s the type who could never have enough.”

“Sorry, but I can’t see it,” Jess said. “Your dad has spent ten years waiting for the right woman to come along. He is not going to make a mistake like that. You told me the other day you’d feel threatened if Bernadette turned out to be beautiful. Well, she is and here you are, jealous as hell.”

Rebecca didn’t say anything for a moment. “She’s also successful,” she muttered, eventually.

Jess laughed. “Come on,” she said gently, “I bet Lipstick’s really sweet.”

“I dunno,” Rebecca said. “I can imagine Lipstick being a lot of things, but sweet ain’t one of them.”

Rebecca fell asleep—having completely forgotten about her date with the Vibroclit—and dreamed her stepmother-to-be had two really ugly grown-up daughters and that all three got to go to the annual Press Awards ball and dance with Max Stoddart, while she was forced to stay at home stitching endless Bagpuss pajama cases.

The next morning, the bulge was still there. She decided it was a toss-up between starving all day, doing five hundred stomach crunches or going on her date with Max wearing her M&S control pants. It was no contest. Starving herself would only make her feel sick and lethargic and probably have no effect on the bulge. Crunches hurt and although she fancied Max Stoddart, she didn’t fancy him enough to slip a disk for him. The pants, on the other hand, would cure the problem instantly—even if they were the size of the Balkans and so tight they cut off the blood supply to her head and turned her bum into a mass of taut, unyielding flesh that gave a whole new meaning to the phrase tight-assed. She would just have to hope he didn’t try to stroke it.

She decided to finish her column at home and e-mail it to Lucretia. That way she could spend the afternoon titivating. Her bathroom shelves were stacked with freebie tubes, jars and gadgets. Cynical as she was about the beauty business, it seemed a shame to let them go to waste.

By half past five she’d cleansed, toned, exfoliated and moisturized to such an extent that even she had to admit her skin felt as soft as an Hermès scarf. She was sitting on the sofa watching
Neighbours
and sanding the Parmesan buildup on her feet, when the phone rang. It was Rose.

“Darling, I was wondering if you could do me a favor. I forgot to pick up my prescription for my blood pressure pills today and I’ve run out. Do you think you could possibly pop round to the doctor before the office closes and collect it? I wouldn’t bother you if it weren’t really urgent. You see the moment I stop taking the tablets I start getting these pounding headaches.” Pause. Cue weak pathetic voice: “Apparently they can be really dangerous if they go untreated.”

Rebecca couldn’t help thinking that her grandmother should have been a travel agent for guilt trips. “OK, don’t panic,” she said kindly. “It’s no problem. I’ll be as quick as I can.”

She threw on a pair of trackie bottoms and a fleece. It wasn’t six yet. She wasn’t meeting Max until half past eight. There was just about time to get to Hendon and back.

But the rush-hour traffic was hellish. On top of that, the doctor hadn’t printed out the prescription and she had to wait. Then there was a twenty-minute queue in Boots.

By the time she pulled up outside Rose’s it was nearly seven. She decided to ring Max to say she was going to be a bit late, but there was no reply from his home phone, his mobile or his office line. Since he was clearly not at home or at work, she left a message on his mobile.

Rose opened the door dressed in her best suit—the imitation Chanel she’d had ever since Rebecca could remember. It was navy with gold buttons and cream edging around the jacket. These days the skirt was a bit stained and a couple of the buttons were missing. She’d also painted her nails. Badly. But the clumsily applied scarlet provided the perfect accessory to the wobbly red on her lips and the dollops of sky blue on her eyelids.

Rebecca kissed her hello and remarked on how glam she was looking.

“So, what’s the occasion?”

“No occasion,” Rose said casually. “I just felt like giving the outfit an airing, that’s all.”

Rebecca handed her the Boots bag, said she was sorry that she had to dash and that she’d catch up with her at the weekend.

“But you can’t go,” Rose insisted. “You only just got here. Come in. Sit down. Have a cup of tea.”

“But I can’t. I’m meeting some friends for dinner and I’m already late.” She didn’t dare say she had a date. Rose’s interrogation would be endless.

“Five minutes, that’s all I ask. What difference can five minutes make? I hardly get to see you these days.”

“But I came for dinner four days ago.”

Rose pulled one of her lonely neglected old woman faces.

“OK. Five minutes,” Rebecca said firmly.

She followed Rose into the kitchen and sat down at the old blue Formica table. Rose started faffing around making tea. Every so often she would stop to peer shortsightedly at the kitchen clock.

“You sure you’re not expecting somebody?” Rebecca asked.

“Who should I be expecting?” Rose sounded distinctly edgy, Rebecca thought.

“Dunno. It’s just that you keep checking the clock.”

Rose’s tea making seemed to take forever. Rebecca kept expecting her to bring up the subject of Stan and Bernadette, but she didn’t. Clearly Stan hadn’t plucked up the courage to tell her yet.

Once she’d poured the tea, she couldn’t find the biscuits.

“Gran, I don’t need biscuits. I’m going out to dinner. Look, I really should get going.”

“No, you can’t go.” The edginess had turned to pure anxiety. She fell theatrically onto a kitchen chair. “Ooh,” she said, breathing hard and tapping her chest, “I just went a bit dizzy there for a second. Darling, do you think you could fetch me my pills and a glass of water?”

“’Course,” Rebecca said, jumping up. She went over to the sink and picked up a glass from the draining board.

“Gran, you OK?”

Rose was rubbing her forehead. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”

“But I am worried. Perhaps I should phone the doctor.”

“No, no, it’s nothing. It’ll pass as soon as I’ve taken my tablets.”

Rebecca handed her the box of pills and the glass of water. Rose pushed two tablets out of the foil and knocked them back.

Just then the front doorbell rang. As if by magic, the tension left Rose’s face and her mouth turned smileward.

“Oh,” she said, “that must be Warren. He’s Esther’s nephew. The picture’s gone fuzzy on my PC. She said she might send him round to take a look at it. Apparently he’s a wiz with computers. Lovely boy. Oxford degree. Very brainy.”