Apocalipstick (7 page)

As she toddled off on her short bandy legs to answer the door, Rebecca tried Max’s mobile again. Still no answer. She left another message. After two or three minutes, Rose returned.

“Look, Gran, I’m really sorry, but I just have to go. I’ve got to have a shower and get changed.”

“OK, but you must come and say hello to Warren. He’s in the living room with the computer.” She cleared her throat. “Be rude not to.”

“All right, but it’ll have to be a very quick hello and good-bye.”

“Hi.” Rebecca waved tentatively from the doorway. “I’m Rebecca, Rose’s granddaughter.”

Rose pushed her so hard from behind that she nearly fell into the living room. She turned round. Rose was making shooing motions with her arms, urging her granddaughter farther into the room.

The penny finally dropped inside Rebecca’s head. She turned to glare at Rose, who was still busy shooing and pretending not to notice.

Warren stood up. He was tall and stooping, with masses of wiry ginger hair.

He gave her a nervous smile and introduced himself. Rebecca couldn’t work out if he had been expecting to meet her or had been set up, too.

“Why don’t I take your coat,” Rose said.

Underneath he was wearing a red Alan Partridge V-neck with snowflakes all over it.

“Your grandmother tells me you’re a journalist,” he ventured.

She nodded. “What about you?”

She was guessing something in environmental health.

“Local government,” he said.

“Which department?”

“Planning and urban traffic calming.”

She smiled to herself. OK, not quite environmental health, but it wasn’t far off.

“Oh, right. Must be interesting. You working on anything in particular at the moment?”

“I’ll say he is,” Rose butted in eagerly. “Warren’s planning a whole new road system for the center of Chalfont D’Arcy, aren’t you, Warren?”

“Yes. But it’s all a bit hush-hush at the moment.” He tapped the side of his large, pointy nose and began rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. “I’m working on this neotraditionalist road-growth paradigm based on grid street networks. Wouldn’t want the press getting hold of it.”

“God, no,” Rebecca said. “I mean the
Sun
would seize on something like that in a flash. Anyway, it was great to have met you, but I really must get going.”

“But I’ve made a lovely supper,” Rose pleaded. “Look at the table. Look at all the trouble I’ve gone to. It would be a crime to waste it.”

Rebecca turned toward the dining room table at the far end of Rose’s through lounge. Her grandmother couldn’t have found room for another platter or serving bowl if she’d tried.

“It’s your favorite,” Rose said to Rebecca. “Poached salmon. I even got those baby corn you like.” She turned to Warren, who was still rocking and looking stupid. “Ever since she was three years old, she’s had a thing for baby corn.”

“But, Gran, I have to go . . .” Rebecca whispered, giving her grandmother a how-could-you-do-this-to-me? scowl.

Rose responded by letting out a soft moan. Then she closed her eyes and began rubbing her forehead. “Oooh, the pain.” She gripped the back of the sofa and started to wobble.

Much as she adored Grandma Rose, Rebecca also knew she could be as manipulative as a two-year-old when she wanted something.

“Sorry, Warren,” Rose said in a small, breathless voice, “you’ll have to excuse me. Sometimes my blood pressure shoots up. The doctor says that at my age and with my blood vessel history, I can’t rule out the possibility of a stroke.”

Rebecca rolled her eyes. She was almost 100 percent certain Rose was putting on an act, but she couldn’t be sure. She put her arm round her shoulders and gently guided her to the armchair.

“All right, Gran.” Rebecca smiled, realizing she had no choice but to stay and keep an eye on her. “Of course I’ll stay for dinner. Just let me make a quick call.”

She went out into the hall and dialed Max’s mobile. Once again all she got was his voice mail. She explained about Rose, left profuse apologies for standing him up and said she hoped they could arrange another date.

When she came back into the room, Rose was yakking away to Warren, nineteen to the dozen.

“Of course the doctor thinks I should change my diet—you know, start eating health foods—but I keep telling him that at my age I need all the preservatives I can get.” With that she began shaking with laughter.

“So, feeling a bit better, Gran?”

“Maybe a little. I think perhaps the pills have kicked in.” She tapped the photograph album sitting on her lap. “I was just showing Warren the picture of you when you were bridesmaid at your cousin Valerie’s wedding. Look, you’d just gotten your new braces.”

Rebecca gave Warren a weak smile.

“Now then, why don’t we all go and sit down,” Rose said.

As they made their way to the table, Rose gave a little tug on Rebecca’s fleece. “Couldn’t you have worn something a bit smarter?” she hissed.

“So, Warren,” Rebecca said, offering him a bread roll from the basket, “tell me all about this new road layout of yours.”

“Well,” he said, reaching for a roll, completely unaware that he was dragging his sleeve through the potato salad, “my plan is a reaction to the arterial-slash-collector road system we have at the moment, which essentially supports urban sprawl. You see, road networks don’t have to be like that. I mean, take Peninsular Charleston in South Carolina. There you have a perfect example of a vibrant, eclectic, profoundly inspiring urban village. . . .”

Even though she’d finished her column, Rebecca decided to go into the office the next morning. She had some research to do for a profile she was writing on some new girl band, which the
Mail
had commissioned. She could see no point staying at home and paying for phone calls when she could make them at the
Vanguard
for free. On top of that there was always the possibility—albeit unlikely—that a major investigative scoop would come her way.

When she arrived just after ten, there was no sign of Max. She guessed he’d gone off on a story. Her phone must have rung half a dozen times that morning. Each time—assuming it was Max—she’d snatched it off its cradle and purred a deep, sexy hi into the mouthpiece. The first time it was Rose phoning to find out what she thought of Warren.

“Very sweet, but not really my type,” Rebecca said diplomatically. She decided that getting cross about last night would only send Rose’s blood pressure up again.

“You know your problem, don’t you?” Rose said in a gently scolding tone. “You’re too fussy by half. Take my word for it—wait much longer for your boat to come in and you’ll find your jetty’s collapsed.”

The rest of the calls were from beauty company PRs looking for publicity for new products. The last one was from Mimi Frascatti at Mer de Rêves, who had been phoning every couple of days to try and persuade Rebecca to do an interview with the director of Mer de Rêves, Coco Dubonnet du Sauvignon.

Rebecca, who had about as much interest in Coco Dubonnet du Sauvignon and her doings as she did in those of Sven Goran Eriksson, had repeatedly made “I’ll mention it to the editor”–type noises and promised to get back to her. Of course she never did, which meant Mimi was forever on the phone nagging.

“Now, I even have a brilliant peg for the interview,” Mimi had trilled a few minutes ago. “Mer de Rêves is about to launch a new antiwrinkle cream—Revivessence. But unlike all the other wrinkle creams, this one really does work.”

“Right,” Rebecca said, with the same kind of enthusiasm with which she greeted her dental hygienist.

“No, honestly. It really does work. You see it contains this miracle ingredient, which dissolves wrinkles in a matter of days—completely organic, of course. Unfortunately we can’t let you have a sample yet because it’s all deeply under wraps until the official launch. But we’d adore some prepublicity—you know a
Hello!-
type interview with Coco looking gorgeous, sipping Taittinger at her rustic gîte in the Périgord.”

Rebecca made the point, as tactfully as she could, that without a sample to try out on some willing guinea pigs, there really wasn’t much of a story.

“Right,” Mimi said, going into flounce mode, “I desperately want to give it to you as a world exclusive, but we have got
Vogue
and
Elle
snapping at our heels.”

“You must do what you think best,” Rebecca said, in little doubt that Mimi had already tried
Vogue, Elle
and very likely the
Romford Recorder
too and met with the same response.

She’d just gotten rid of Mimi when the phone rang again. Once more she tried the sexy voice, only to discover yet again a woman’s voice on the end of the line.

“Hello,” it said in an anxious nervous whisper, “you don’t know me. My name’s Wendy. I saw you at the Mer de Rêves party the other evening.”

A cold chill shot down Rebecca’s back. She knew at once it was the creepy woman who’d been following her.

“I tried to speak to you then,” she went on, “but I was too scared.”

Rebecca frowned. “Scared? Of what?”

Pause.

“Them.”

Them. Rebecca groaned inwardly. Why was it that wherever she’d worked the switchboard always sent her the paranoid, gibbering schizos convinced they’d seen Stalin in the Asda parking lot with a cart full of Vienettas?

“Look, can you just tell me what this is about?” Rebecca said kindly. For some reason she decided to persevere with this one.

“Well, until yesterday I worked at Mer de Rêves as a personal assistant. But I was sacked.”

“Oh, I see,” Rebecca said, relieved. “Look, if you’re after publicity for an unfair dismissal case, I’m not really your person. You should talk to—”

“No, no. It’s nothing like that. I mean, I was unfairly dismissed, but that’s not what I want to talk to you about. You see, I have some information about the company you might find interesting.”

“What sort of information?”

“I can’t say. Not over the phone. Could we meet?”

There was no way Rebecca was going to meet up with a possible nutcase until she had something more to go on. She pressed the woman for more information, but she refused to say another word.

In the end Rebecca’s curiosity won out over common sense and she agreed to meet her for coffee the next morning at Salvo’s, the sandwich bar across the road.

When two o’clock came and Max still hadn’t called, she decided she’d definitely blown it. Having gathered most of the information she needed for the girl band piece, she decided to work on it at home.

She was halfway there when she decided that as she hadn’t had lunch, she’d stop off at Jess’s for a quick sandwich.

Dolly answered the door in her hat and coat. As Rebecca stepped into the hall, she could hear Jess and Ed rowing upstairs. Dolly rolled her eyes.

“Been going at it all bleedin’ morning,” she announced. “Right, that’s me done for the day. I’m off.”

With that she picked up her shopping bag from the hall table and disappeared out the door.

Rebecca hung her coat on the end of the banister.

“So who is she?” Jess was shouting. “Come on, Ed, who have you been sleeping with?”

“For Chrissake, you know there’s no other woman on the planet apart from you.”

“So, what are you telling me—that you’ve been sleeping with an alien?”

Silence followed by a door slamming.

“OK, fuck you,” Jess screamed.

The next moment she was charging down the stairs, her face red and puffy from crying. “Becks,” she said, sniffing, “I didn’t hear the bell.”

“Hi, babe.” Rebecca smiled. “Look, I can go if you want.”

“No, stay. I fancy a talk.”

Rebecca followed her into the kitchen, where Diggory was fast asleep in his pram. She stood with her back to the sink. Rebecca sat down at the table.

“We tried to do it again last night, but this time Ed couldn’t get it up at all. My body clearly repels him. Becks, I’m really starting to panic. I think he might have found somebody else. We’ve been rowing ever since.”

“Come on, Jess,” Rebecca said, getting up to give her a hug, “most blokes get a touch of willy-nilly from time to time. It doesn’t mean he’s having an affair. I’m sure it’ll pass. What the pair of you need to do is sit down quietly and talk about what’s going on. I mean have you thought that perhaps you’re so taken up with Diggory at the moment that he feels a bit pushed out?”

“Yeah, it did occur to me. God, I’m an agony aunt, for crying out loud. Why am I handling this so badly?”

“The reason you’re handling it so badly,” she said, “is because you have a new baby and you’re severely sleep deprived. Exhaustion does your brain in.”

She sat Jess down and put the kettle on.

Just then Ed appeared. Tall, blond, boyish freckles. Most women thought he was dead cute, but although she thought the world of him, lookswise Ed was just a touch too Hitler youth for Rebecca’s taste.

“Right, I’m off,” he said to Jess. He shot Rebecca an awkward smile. There were dark shadows under his eyes.

“I’ve got a going away party tonight,” he said to Jess, “so I’ll be back late.”

Jess ignored him and looked straight ahead, grim faced.

“Jess, come on,” he pleaded, bending down and giving her a kiss on the cheek. She looked up at him. Rebecca could see she was doing her best to fight it, but a moment later her face had broken into a weak smile.

“Oh, look, no milk,” Rebecca piped up, sensing she should make herself scarce for a few moments. “Perhaps it’s still on the step.”

She made a swift exit into the hall and stood listening.

“Love you,” she heard Jess say. “Look, I know there’s nobody else. I’m just being paranoid. Sorry.”

“’s OK. I love you too. So we friends again?”

“Friends,” Jess said.

Eucch. Snogging noises.

Rebecca counted to ten and went back into the kitchen. Ed was putting his PalmPilot into his Eastpak.

“Oh, look,” Rebecca said, picking up the carton of milk from the table, “there it was all the time.”

Ed winked at Jess, gave Rebecca a tiny wave and left.