Simply Divine (41 page)

Moving on to the kitchen, she emptied the pre-washed salad she'd splashed out on in honour of the occasion into a bowl and threw the potatoes into a pan. Next she tackled the scarily exotic-looking red snapper in the fridge. She was relieved to note from the cooking instructions that it required no more attention than the cursory slick of butter she had been planning to give it. Just as she lowered the fish into their crematorium, Tom came through the door. Rushing to meet him, Jane noticed a pair of grey knickers on the bedroom floor and kicked them swiftly under the bed.

'Why haven't you taken your coat off?' he grinned, brandishing a bottle of Moet at her. Jane hurriedly divested herself.

'What's for dinner?' he asked, picking two champagne

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glasses from the kitchen cupboard and giving her his crinkle-eyed smile.

'Fish,' said Jane.

'Sounds brill,' grinned Tom. He shrugged off his battered leather jacket and lit up a Marlboro.

'I suppose you think that's very finny,' said Jane, twining her arms round his neck. 'But you're certainly a dab hand,' she added, as his warm fingertips slipped inside her knickers again. He certainly wasn't one to flounder, she thought, gasping as he rubbed gently at the warm, willing wetness between her legs.

'Cod we go to bed?' breathed Tom, grinding his cigarette out with thrilling force in the base of the cheeseplant.

'Just give me time to mullet over,' said Jane, walking slowly backwards towards the bedroom and pulling Tom with her.

As he pressed her gently down into the perfume-scented pillows, Jane prepared to give herself up to pure pleasure as Tom began to kiss her slowly. Very slowly. In fact, he almost seemed to have stopped. Jane opened her eyes. Above her, in the semi-gloom, Tom had raised his head slightly.

'What's that funny smell?' he asked. Jane felt panic shoot through her. Perhaps she
had
been a bit heavy-handed with the Number 5.

'Scent,' she admitted, shamefacedly. Would he think she was irredeemably naff? Dabbing perfume on pillows like a twelve-year-old.

'No, not that,' said Tom, sniffing. 'A sort of burning smell.'

Aaaargh!' Two nanoseconds later, a naked Jane had leapt out of bed with a speed that would not have disgraced an Olympic high jumper and raced into the kitchen where

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the red mullet was now distinctly black.

She pushed aside her tangle of hair and looked at Tom helplessly as, also naked, he loped up to the kitchen door. She was encouraged to see that the sickening smell of burnt fish, which she knew would linger around the flat for days, did not seem to have dampened his ardour one iota. A splendid erection rose triumphantly out of his abundant dark-blond pubic hair. He looked, she decided, rather like one of those fertility statues in the British Museum. 'Fancy a takeaway?' she asked with a weak grin.

'No, but I fancy you,' said Tom, giving Jane his slow-burn smile.

'Oh no,' wailed Oonagh.

Jane started reluctantly out of the most wonderful daydream at the crucial moment when she was just going up the aisle with Tom. As there was no further interruption, she lapsed back into it, to find herself fast-forwarded to their honeymoon in the sort of Caribbean luxury hideaway where you just stuck a flag in the sand when you wanted another cocktail. The daydream then changed scene to a sunny garden path down which she and Tom were walking with two merry, blonde, fish-finger-advert children.

'No. No. No,' cried Oonagh, burying her perfectly-coiffed head in her elegant arms. 'I don't believe it. It can't be true,' she moaned from the muffled depths of her cashmere. 'That has to be the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to me in my entire life.'

'What?' asked Jane, looking up distractedly. 'What's happened?'

Oonagh raised a despairing head. 'The Duchess of Dorchester has just rung me,' she said in anguished tones.

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'So what's the matter with that?' It sounded like a
Fabulous
dream come true to Jane.

'The matter is that she's an old friend of mine,' wailed Oonagh. 'Or
was.
I went to her daughter's wedding last week. Apparently there's a
video.'

'Oh
no,'
chimed in Tash, looking outraged. 'I just
don't
believe it. I mean, how
naff can
you get? Only
common
people have wedding videos. You're
quite
right to be furious, Oonagh.'

'Not
that,
spat Oonagh. Tash blinked. 'I'm more concerned,' Oonagh gasped, 'about the fact that quite a large part of the video features me making very loud and rude remarks about some of the other guests. Apparently my seat was practically
next door
to the video and sound recorder. Daisy Dorchester is
incandescent.'

Jane looked quickly down at a pile of faxes on her desk before anyone could see her laughing.

Most of the faxes were refusals from Jordan Madison's seemingly limitless band of press agents. Refusing to take no for an answer, Jane had pursued them by telephone and had still ended up with no for an answer. 'She doesn't do innerviews,' everyone had snarled, leaving Jane wondering why Jordan Madison needed press agents at all in that case. On the other hand, what was the point of not giving interviews if no one knew you didn't give interviews?

Jane sighed. She had to get this piece in the bag somehow. Having one good cover simply wasn't enough. Two and she'd be home and dry. And she needed to do it soon, before Victoria swept back, as she must eventually, and took all the credit for her efforts. Jane's heart sank at this most depressing of depressing thoughts. She was getting used to running the place on her own; more than that, she was enjoying it. Good ideas were finally starting

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to come out of the features department.

The telephone rang, providing a welcome excuse to leave Oonagh to her somewhat unsolvable problem. It was Tally.

'You won't believe how well it's going/ she exclaimed. 'People are just pouring in to the retreat. We even had a wedding here the other day.'

She spoke, Jane noticed, entirely without longing for her own near-miss nuptials. Clearly Tally had had enough of men for the time being.

'It's going to be in
Hello!
next week,' Tally twittered. 'It was some heir to a vitreous enamel fortune marrying his psychic, apparently.'

'Not the Hon. Rollo Harbottle, surely,' said Jane.

'Yes, how on earth do you know him?' Tally sounded astonished.

'Don't ask. Marrying his psychic, was he? Very trendy. I'm glad to hear he's finally got himself a relationship with a future.'

'You should have been there,' said Tally. 'It was hilarious. Mummy arranged it and you know what that means. A mad New Age ceremony where the bride and groom were naked and coated with mud and sang to each other at the top of a hill as the dawn rose. They were standing,' Tally added, snorting, 'in the middle of a giant representation in leaves of the male and female genitalia and exchanged oak saplings instead of wedding rings.' She

giggled.

'What else is happening?' said Jane, trying not to look too amused for Oonagh s sake. The picture editor was still staring into space, contemplating the smoking ruins of her social life.

'Well, the retreat is full already and Mummy wants to

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build more tents,' said Tally. 'She says there's no more beautiful sight than the dawn rising over teepees.'

'Not my idea of a morning glory,' giggled Jane, thinking instantly of Tom. Really, she was becoming one of those people who thought about sex every six seconds.

'How's it going with you?' Tally asked.

'Fine,' said Jane, not wishing to start the Tom story now. She'd tell Tally when she saw her. 'Everything's fabulous, in fact. All I need now,' she muttered, almost to herself, 'is Jordan Madison and my world will be perfect.'

'Sorry?'

'Oh, nothing.' Poor dear Tally, stuck in what were quite literally the medieval backwoods of Mullions, was hardly likely to have heard of Hollywood's latest hip, hot and happening star.

'Oh, it's just that I thought I heard you say Jordan Madison,' said Tally.

'I did,' said Jane, surprised. 'Why, have you heard of her?'

'She's Hollywood's latest hip, hot and happening star, isn't she? I only happen to know because she's staying at the retreat at the moment.'

'WHAT?' yelled Jane.

Tash whipped round and stared.

'She's a great friend of Mummy's. Worships her, in fact. Mummy helped her to discover the goddess inside herself or some such guff while they were cleaning out the loos together at that ashram in California.'

'It's amazing what you find down a U-bend, isn't it?' Excitement rose in Jane like a geyser. 'Gosh, do you think you could get Julia to ask her .. .' Her voice dropped to a murmur as she explained the
Fabulous
cover situation. 'Having Jordan on the front would practically make my

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life'
she ended, 'Oh, and could you find out if we could bring a photographer?' Don't ask, don't get, she told herself, feeling cheeky.

'All right,' said Tally breezily. 'She's in a tree-hugging seminar at the moment, but I'll ask her the minute she's out. Call you back.'

Why did I bother going through the agents? wondered Jane. It seemed so obvious, in retrospect, that mad, hippy Julia would have an address book starrier than the Milky Way. Everyone knew that these days the real deals were done in AA meetings, drug clinics and holistic retreats, not the agents' offices. Why hadn't she thought of the New Age network before?

Despite this excitement, it didn't take long for her mind to drift back to Tom. What was he doing now? He wrote in the afternoons, she knew. She devoted a blissful few minutes to imagining Tom, sleepy of eye and furrowed of brow, scribbling furiously in longhand like a schoolboy taking Common Entrance.

Almost exactly an hour later, Tally called back. 'That's fine,' she said. 'No problem.'

'What? You mean Jordan will do it?'

'She'd love to,' said Tally. Anything for a friend of Julia's, she says. She's here for the next fortnight at least, so any time you want to come up is fine. And it's perfectly all right to bring a photographer.'

'Holy shit.' Jane crashed the receiver joyfully down, leapt up from her desk and danced wildly round the room. Never, never would she laugh at Julia and her New Age eccentricities again. 'We've got Jordan Madison for our cover,' she shouted. 'Thank Goddess,' she yelled, punching the air and running out of the office, feeling like a winning-goal-scoring footballer doing a lap of honour

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round the stadium. This would show Victoria, she thought. This would put a bomb under the opposition on the news-stands. This would confirm her position as a hot new editor who could make things happen. She was much too excited to stay in the office. She decided to dash out and tell Tom straightaway. How wonderful it was, she thought happily, running down the back stairs, to be in love and have someone to share good news with.

Scattering a giggle of camp-looking photographers and their assistants in her wake, Jane shot through the foyer, out of the doors and on to the street. Plunging straight through the crowds of improbably tall Scandinavian schoolchildren wandering impassively up and down Carnaby Street, she dashed across Soho, skipping down the narrow streets, dodging parking meters and people, running across roads in front of taxis, sidling through narrow spaces between cars. At Busty Models she bolted through the door without even tapping on Tom's window and narrowly avoided falling flat on her face on the stairs leading down to his flat.

'Tom, Tom,' she cried excitedly, bursting through the door. 'Tom?' she repeated, a nanosecond and a whole world of difference later. Because Tom was not writing. He was not even alone. Tom was standing in the middle of the room embracing a beautiful blonde. And not any old bog-standard, run-of-the-mill beautiful blonde either. The girl he held in his arms was Champagne D'Vyne.

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Chapter 26

Huddling deep in the dark, warm, foetal fug of her duvet, Jane heard the answerphone repeatedly click on. Whoever was calling, she didn't care. She'd turned the sound right down, just as she'd switched off the entrance buzzer by the flat door. If only she could switch off her life. 'Her dehydrated brain throbbed from the entire bottle of gin she'd drunk the night before. But coping with a hangover was nothing compared to catching Tom in flagrante with Champagne.