Simply Divine (7 page)

Jane felt rather sorry for the pleasant-looking boy she imagined must be Champagne's brother. It was bad enough having to talk to Champagne for a few hours a week. Growing up with her was something she couldn't begin to imagine.

She picked up another photograph of a white-haired baby being pushed in a pram by a fierce-looking woman in a dark blue uniform. There was no time to put it back as the mistress of the house suddenly bounced into the room and strode quickly up behind her.

'Oh, that's me and Nanny Flange,' Champagne declared in her ear-splitting rattle. 'Sweet old thing really. Left after I bit her leg.'

'Did what?' asked Jane.

'I bit her leg,' said Champagne matter-of-factly. 'Mummy was furious.'

'Well, I suppose it was a bit naughty.'

'Yah, Mummy went ballistic. "Oh, darling," she said. "How
could
you have bitten Nanny's
filthy
leg?"' Champagne put back her head and roared with laughter.

Her bare, brown flesh was scarcely covered by the tiniest pair of knickers Jane had ever seen. A tight, cropped, pink T-shirt evidently made for a two-year-old struggled to cover her exuberant bust. Her hair was a bird's nest, a cigarette dangled from the corner of her lipstick-smudged mouth and her mascara had run, but this, Jane was irritated to observe, only made her look more beautiful than ever.

As Gucci exploded into more high-pitched yapping,

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Jane realised they were not alone in the room. Slinking his way along the back wall was the snub-nosed photographer's assistant whose trousers had been so excitable at the Dave Baker shoot. Matters had evidently developed since then. He stood, twisting his hands, by the door into the hall.

'Weel I see you again?' he mumbled to Champagne in a heavy French accent.

'Yah, course you will,' said Champagne, drawing on her cigarette as she bundled him out of the door. 'Buy
Gorgeous,
there's a good boy,' she added, closing the door firmly and padding back into the sitting room. 'Phew,' she said. 'Just in time. Rollo'll be here in a minute. He'd go ballistic if he bumped into FabergeV

Quite, thought Jane. Rollo probably had a vitreous temper. Nonetheless, disappointment flooded through her at the news that he and Champagne were still together. On the evidence of what she had just witnessed, she was beginning to wonder if she might bag Rollo for Tally. Whatever his shortcomings, he was at least rich.

The poodle's yapping continued unabated. Jane's head started to spin with the volume. 'Gucci, darling,' cooed Champagne, falling gracefully to her knees to pet him. 'You're hungry, aren't you?' Scooping the shrill scrap of noise into her arms, she left the room.

Jane followed her into a brilliant white kitchen where Champagne was rummaging in a vast metal techno-fridge much taller than she was. Like her, it had evidently not seen any food for several days. The only evidence of nourishment anywhere were the empty bottles of Krug thrust neck down in a Fortnum's box in the corner.

'Bingo!' Champagne, who had been throwing open a succession of empty cupboards, finally produced a tin. As she placed the scraped-out contents before the dog, Jane

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realised it wasn't Pedigree Chum. 'But that's foie gras,' she said.

'Yah, absolutely,' said Champagne, not batting an eyelid. 'Gucci adores it. Can't stand the stuff myself.
Bloody
fattening. And so cruel to the geese as well, forcing all that food down their throats. Worse than an anorexic rehab centre.'

Jane's antennae began to twitch. She fished out her pencil and started to scribble. 'Better mention my really cool new car,' Champagne honked, noticing.

'What car?' asked Jane.

'Parked outside. White sports car?'

Jane recalled the menacing machine lurking alongside the kerb. 'Hey, big spender,' she said, mock-chiding but envious.

'Oh, it wasn't that much,' Champagne said silkily. 'Rather a bargain in fact. Amazing after-sales service as well,' she added coyly, looking at Jane from under her eyelashes. 'So I'd love to give them a mentionette in the column, if possible.'

'Fine,' said Jane, wondering what sort of after-sales service Champagne had required. After all, the car was brand new. Perhaps someone had had to come and show her where the ignition key went. Or... It suddenly dawned on Jane that Champagne had probably been given the car for free. Bargain indeed, she thought furiously, breaking the stub of her pencil on her notebook.

There was an abrupt ring at the front door. 'Oh fuck, it's Rollsy,' groaned Champagne, leaping up. 'Sorry, have to run. Got to dash off to New York. But we've done the next column now, haven't we?'

Jane found herself being shown to the door just as the Hon. Rollo Harbottle manoeuvred his teeth into the hall.

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Up close, he was even more repellent than he appeared in the newspapers. How on earth could Champagne bear to touch him? Nick may be grumpy, but at least he didn't have a face like a basket of fruit. And he was, Jane thought happily, finally back from Brussels tonight. Hopefully with a vast box of Belgian chocolates.

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Chapter 4

Jane put the phone down, feeling numb with disappointment and
fury.
She'd spent all lunchtime buying, and all evening preparing, dinner for Nick's return. And now he'd called to say he would be late. Not by a few hours, though.
By another whole day.
'There's a Caravanning League of Belgium Fringe Pressure Group fondue I can't afford to miss,' he informed her via a crackling mobile phone.

Depressed, Jane returned to the kitchen. The pasta had taken advantage of Nick's phone call to weld itself to the bottom of the pan, while the putanesca sauce, which she had hoped might set a spicy and whorish tone to their reunion, was starting to burn. Cooking, Jane knew, had never really been her forte. But then, what was?

At least, she thought, poking the flaccid, off-white mass of pasta, she could always beat Tally into a cocked cacciatore. No one this side of Macbeth's three witches was as bad a cook as her. Jane would never forget the evening at Cambridge when Tally had invited her round for supper.

'What's this?' Jane had asked, staring at a burnt-looking lump of bread running with sticky sweet goo. 'Sixth Form Special,' Tally had replied proudly. 'Toasted Mars Bar

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sandwich. You stick a couple of slices in the Breville and put a Mars Bar in the middle. Close and cook for two minutes. Delicious. We lived off them at Cheltenham.'

Jane felt a stab of guilt at the thought of Tally, Mullions and the missing multimillionaire. Locating one had sounded so simple after a bottle of wine on an empty stomach. In the cold light of day, it had presented certain logistical difficulties. Thumbing through her address book, Jane realised she didn't know a thousandaire, let alone a millionaire. The nearest she could manage was Amanda, an old friend from Cambridge who had married a merchant banker and swapped bedsit life for six-bedroomed, domestically-aided splendour in Hampstead. Jane wondered if she should get in touch.

The telephone rang again. Jane dashed to answer it. Had Nick changed his mind?

'Hi there,' said Tally mournfully.

'I've just been thinking about you,' said Jane, hoping she didn't sound too disappointed.

'Probably because Mullions has become one huge psychic energy transmitter since Mummy's come back,' said Tally grumpily. 'As I speak, my mother's making ritual fire towards the waxing moon and Big Horn is ceremonially constructing a mercurial harp in the paddock.'

A what?'

'You don't want to know. Suffice to say, it is based on the ground plan of Stonehenge and the geometry of the magic square of Mercury. And, to top it all, quite literally, is a stone from the ancient Cheesewring site in Cornwall.'

'No!'
said Jane.

'Oh yes. Apparently it is meant to bring harmony and peace to the house, but I can assure you that from where

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I, Mr Peters and Mrs Ormondroyd are standing, it's war.
Damn!'

'What was that?' asked Jane.

'I'd better go. Billiard room door's just fallen off.' Moral support wasn't the only kind Tally needed at the moment.

She could do with a boost herself, come to that. Nick's no show had hardly got the evening
off
to a flying start.

Wandering into the tiny sitting room, Jane stared at the candles on the table guttering in the breeze which swept under the door. The carefully wrapped little welcome home present (a pair of cuff-links) lying on Nick's plate suddenly looked pathetic. The polished wine glasses, shining in the candlelight, stood ready for the bottle of champagne and the bottle of Pouilly-Something she'd dithered over for ages at Safeway's, unable to decide between Fume' or Fuiss^.

Pouring herself a stiff gin and tonic, Jane decided to spend the evening lying on the couch with an old bonk-buster. After all, snuggling up with Jilly Cooper was probably the nearest she was going to get to a sex life for the moment.

Ten minutes later, lost in the adventures of a raunchy TV executive and her well-heeled brute of a lover, Jane was suddenly brought down to earth. By something on her ceiling. She sat up and listened. A series of loud clatters from the flat above made her wince. All hell seemed to be breaking loose. It sounded as if Tom was playing Twister with a herd of elephants in platform shoes.

Jane tried to concentrate on her book. The TV executive and the brute were now indulging in some steamy bedroom scenes. She followed the bumping and grinding avidly, vicariously. The banging on the ceiling kept pace, a faint thump of music accompanying it.

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Jane gripped Jilly hard by the spine and glared at the words. Five seconds later, she flung Mrs Cooper to the floor in despair, flew out of the door and up the stairs and banged her fists on Tom's door.

The door opened to reveal Tom naked from the waist up and rather red in the face.

'Hi, there,' he grinned, shoving back a clump of hair from his glowing forehead. Something around Jane's lower pelvis ignited like a gas stove at the flash of armpit revealed as he did so.

'Hi,' said Jane, shifting from foot to foot. 'Er, you're making quite a lot of noise, actually, and

'Am I? God, sorry. I'm just packing up a few things. I'm moving out, you see.'

'Moving out?' Jane looked up at him as he filled the doorway. His smooth, tanned torso suddenly struck her as eminently
lickable.

'Yes. I'm going to New York. Tomorrow, in fact. So you won't have any more noise problems. I've just finished in any case.'

'Oh. Right.' Jane was suddenly filled with the wild desire to drop to her knees and beg him to make as much noise as was humanly possible. 'Well, good luck,' she said, starting to back away from the door. 'Goodbye.' This was beginning to sound like
Brief Encounter.
If only it was. An encounter with his briefs was just what she needed.

'Bye then,' said Tom, and closed his door.

Jane re-entered the flat. It was now frustratingly silent. Absolutely no reason to go upstairs again at all. She walked over to the window and, sighing, started to clear the table. She looked out. The sky was still light outside, the usual grey, featureless fading evening oddly characteristic of Clapham.

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She gazed up beseechingly at the patchy ceiling, stained by generations of overflowing baths, broken-down shower units and rising damp. She willed Tom to break out into a foundation-shaking series of crashes, but there was silence. Except — Jane's ears pricked up — a slight, insistent tapping at the window behind her, which could have been a branch.

Only there were no branches near her window. Nothing grew in the scrubby, slimy apology for a back garden that Nick had neglected for as long as he had lived here. A rapist, then. A Jehovah's Witness? Jane whipped round, and drew her breath in sharply, her hand shooting automatically to her throat. Something huge, dark and misshapen was visible at the window, tapping gently against the pane.

She approached cautiously. The object seemed to be hanging from some sort of string. As Jane got closer, she realised it was a trainer. Poking out from inside it was a white slip of paper. Jane scrabbled frantically to open the peeling, scabby, moss-streaked window frame. She grabbed the piece of paper with a shaking hand and smoothed it out on the half-dismantled table, upon which one of the candles still flickered.