Apocalipstick (15 page)

“And this is Max,” Lipstick said. “He’s a journalist.”

She shook his hand. Rebecca watched as she scrutinized the Paul Smith jacket and expensive shirt. (Grandma Rose understood little of modern fashion, but there was nothing the daughter of Maurice Bernstein, Ladies’ Mantles and Bespoke Suits, didn’t know about tailoring.)

“Max,” she said finally, clearly approving of the stitching on his lapels, “you seem like a discerning young man. Do an old woman a favor.”

“Oh, come on, Rose,” Lipstick cut in, “you’re not old.”

“Listen.” Rose laughed. “I can remember when Barnum and Bailey was only Barnum.”

Lipstick offered Rose a glass of wine, but she declined, presumably because she needed both hands to speak.

“Now then,” Rose said, turning to Max, “take a good look at Rebecca. Tell me honestly. What do you think? She’s intelligent. She’s pretty. You know, the ophthalmologist did wonders with her lazy eye. The only time you can see it now is when she’s tired. Of course she went through a terrible time with her skin when she was a teenager, but that’s all cleared up now. Don’t you think she’d make somebody a lovely wife?”

Rebecca had heard enough. Crimson faced, she went back into the kitchen and poured herself more wine. When the intercom went yet again, she let Jess get it. A few moments later she came into the kitchen carrying a large silver foil parcel.

“Houston, we have food,” she declared. “I told Minge we already had dessert, but she threw in an almond tart anyway. When I offered to pay, she wouldn’t hear of it.”

Rebecca’s face lit up. She said she’d send Minge flowers on Monday to say thank you.

Just then Max came in. Rebecca apologized for Rose. “I’m sorry if she embarrassed you.”

He grinned and said she hadn’t. Not even remotely. “By the way, I love the painting.”

“Oh, what,
Woman Wanking
?”

He laughed and colored up slightly. “Yes,” he said. “That’s the one.”

“Glad you approve.”

“So what’s for dinner?” he asked.

“Oh, I did a
boeuf en croûte,
” Rebecca said casually, indicating the foil parcel sitting on the counter. “I made it a couple of hours ago. Just needs a quick reheat in the oven.”

Jess suggested it would crisp up more without the foil. Rebecca agreed and began taking it off.

“Can’t wait to see this,” Max said. “Bet it’s magnificent.”

Confident Max was about to be severely impressed, Rebecca pulled off the final layer of foil. “Ta-dah,” she sang. But instead of wows, there was silence.

She looked down. Sitting on the counter was a huge iced cake. On top it said, “Nan and Cyril. Congratulations on your Golden Wedding.”

12

O
f course, everybody
had hysterics. Rebecca did her best to join in, but she found it hard to laugh about the Shergar stew and Thick Minge. She couldn’t help feeling everything was her fault and that she’d buggered up the entire evening. Domestic goddesswise, she felt about as adequate as a Voyage cardigan in a thunderstorm.

By the time they’d phoned Minge and she’d collected the cake and come back with the beef, it was well after eleven. Then, the moment they sat down to eat (minus Rose, who’d left for Milly’s—laughing her head off—shortly after the cake incident), Max’s mobile rang. It was Lorna to say she’d arranged a midnight conference call with the French minister for the environment and he should get over to her place straight away.

“A conference call at midnight,” Rebecca said. “On a Saturday?”

“Apparently he’s at some dinner,” Max said, getting up from the table. “Then he’s catching a plane to Mexico City. Said he’d speak to us on the way to the airport. I’m so, so sorry, Rebecca, but I really have to go. It’ll take me at least half an hour to get to Lorna’s.”

She walked him to the door. “We’ll catch up during the week, eh?”

She nodded.

“Then there’s the wedding on Saturday.”

Max’s mate Adam, a sub on the
Independent,
was getting married to Zoe, a staff writer on the
Sunday Tribune
who was a friend of Rebecca’s. It was only when Rebecca happened to mention the wedding to Max a few days ago that they worked out the connection and each realized the other had been invited.

“I’m looking forward to it,” she said.

“Me too.”

He apologized again for having to dash off, snogged her briefly but thoroughly, and was gone.

Rebecca was woken by the phone. She reached out from under the duvet, her hand fumbling for the receiver. “Hi, Gran,” Rebecca said, sounding groggy and full of early morning nose block. “What time is it?”

Apparently it was “well after nine.”

“So, you and this Max, then?”

Rebecca rolled over onto her back.

“I wasn’t sure,” Rose went on, “so I just rang Marjorie.”

“Marjorie” was in audible italics. Rose was clearly relishing being on hobnobbing terms with the aristocracy.

“What do you think?” Rebecca said tentatively.

“I think he’s wonderful.”

“You do? But he’s not Jewish.”

“Rebecca, listen to me. The world is full of famines, wars, children dying of AIDS and you’re worried because your boyfriend’s not Jewish? Isn’t it time to get a little perspective here?”

“Me, get a little perspective?” Rebecca gasped.

“All right, I admit I may have been a bit intolerant about the religion thing, but now I can see just how happy your dad is with Bernadette. And if anybody deserves a bit of happiness in his life, it’s Stan.”

Rebecca couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“And I suppose I was a bit put out when nothing happened between you and that nice Warren chap—particularly when I found out his father just died and left him forty million pounds.”

Ah, Rebecca thought, chuckling to herself. So that explained how he pulled the gorgeous Fabergé.

“Anyway,” Rose went on, “that’s all by-the-by now. Max is a lovely boy and he’s practically a doctor.”

“No, he’s not, he’s the
Vanguard
’s science correspondent.”

“Now you’re just splitting hairs. What that boy doesn’t know about blood pressure isn’t worth knowing. He gave me an entire lecture on how I should be cutting down on salt. On top of that, it turns out one of the companies that makes those electronic blood pressure machines has just sent him one, as a freebie. Said it was mine if I wanted it.” She paused. “Look, sweetie. I know it’s early days yet. But if it works out for the two of you, I couldn’t be happier.”

“And it
will
work out,” Jess said that evening as they watched an
ER
repeat—Lipstick had gone to bed early. “I’ve told you before, just give it time and stop worrying.”

Rebecca grunted. “Bet Bloody I’ll-call-you-when-I-get-back-from-Chequers Lorna doesn’t cook Shergar instead of braising steak. Bet Bloody Lorna can knock up a Thai feast for thirty at the same time as running a marathon, shaving her pubes and mugging up on Labour’s transport policy.”

She lay on the sofa contemplating, hands under her head. Then: “She’s after him. I just know it.”

“Well, it’s you he wants,” Jess declared, without taking her eyes off the TV screen, “not Bloody Lorna. I can tell just by the way he looks at you.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Rebecca smiled and went all coquettish. She sat up. “So . . . er . . . how exactly would you say he looks at me?”

“I dunno.” Jess shrugged. “He just gives you these looks, that’s all. When he thinks nobody can see. God, Dr. Greene’s sexy. Oh, I love this episode. It’s the one where they operate on his malignant brain tumor. He gets over it.”

“What sort of looks?” Rebecca asked. “I mean, would you say they’re sexy, affectionate or just platonic?”

“Affectionate . . . Oh, look, Dr. Corday really loves him. She’s having their baby. I love her hair. Do you reckon it’s naturally curly or she has it permed?”

“Not sexual, then? Or loving?”

Jess was glued to Dr. Greene and his carcinoma. Rebecca repeated the question.

“Loving, too,” Jess said vaguely.

“So, definitely not sexual, then?”

“OK, affectionate, loving and sexual.”

Rebecca went back to the TV, but only for a moment. “So, how much is sexual? I mean what would you say is the ratio of affection to sex?”

“Sixty–forty . . .Ooh, ooh, look. Some bloke’s arresting. Come on, get out the bloody paddles!”

“What, sixty: sex, and forty: affection? Or the other way round?”

Now Jess sat up. “For chrissake, moron,” she barked at the screen, “he needs a shot of adrenaline. . . .Becks, please. A man could be dying here. Max Factor cares about you, OK?” She lay back down again.

“Really?” Rebecca said.

“Omigod, we’re off again. He cares about you—really, really, really. OK?”

Satisfied at last, Rebecca watched the rest of
ER.
Afterward she picked up the newspaper and turned to the TV listings.

“It’s
Watching You, Watching Me
next,” she said. “We have to see how Lucretia’s getting on. I can’t believe she hasn’t been chucked out yet.”

During the break Rebecca put the kettle on and Jess went to the loo. When they got back it had already started.

Lucretia, a girl-band singer called Brie and some F-list soap actress whose name Rebecca had forgotten were sitting chatting in the girls’ bedroom.

“Do you know,” Lucretia said as she finished cleansing her face with a cotton pad, “I’d like Prince Charles to take me from behind.”

Rebecca sat bolt upright. Jess gasped.

“Yeah,” Brie said. “Wasn’t that a big hit in the eighties for Frankie Goes to Hollywood?”

Lucretia laughed. “It’s not a song,” she said, unzipping her outsized makeup bag. “It’s my secret fantasy. I’ve never ever told a soul until this moment.”

“What on earth’s going on?” Rebecca said to the screen. “Lucretia has the most almighty hang-up about sex. She wouldn’t even acknowledge having a sexual fantasy, let alone talk about it.”

Glued to the screen, they watched as Lucretia unscrewed a jar of Mer de Rêves face cream. Rebecca recognized the gleaming Mercedes hubcap top and the letters
MdR
picked out in tiny pretend diamonds. The
Watching You, Watching Me
people had clearly refused her request for Nicky Clarke and the flotation tank, but sent somebody round to her flat to fetch the cream she’d left behind.

“You know,” Lucretia said, dotting her face with cream, “I lie in bed sometimes imagining the two of us romping in slow motion through the gardens at Highgrove. I’m completely naked. He is too, apart from gardening gloves and a pair of pruning shears. . . .”

Rebecca and Jess squirmed as her fantasy became more and more graphic.

“Of course, it’s all wondrously dangerous because neither of us knows when Camilla or the boys might appear. The bit I like best is when he fondles my lobelia . . .”

Snow, who had walked into the room at that second, stopped and did a confused double take. Then, clearly assuming she’d misheard, she placed a neatly folded pile of laundry on Lucretia’s bed.

“There’s another load still in the dryer,” she said. “I’ll iron it later.”

Lucretia nodded.

Then Snow said that Billy Piper and Ainsley Harriott had just made cocoa if anybody wanted it.

Jess turned to Rebecca. “How could she humiliate herself like that on national TV—in front of millions of people? Charlie Holland is going to be furious. Wouldn’t surprise me if he gave her the boot. What is the woman on, risking her career like that?”

“God knows,” Rebecca said. “God only knows.”

As it turned out, she didn’t see Max at all that week. When he wasn’t meeting secret contacts in greasy diners off the A1, he was in late-night meetings with the people at Channel 6—which of course included Bloody Lorna. He’d only phoned her twice and each time he’d seemed distracted and distant. She kept telling herself he was working on the most important—not to mention life-endangering—story of his career and had every right to be distracted and distant. But a huge part of her couldn’t help wishing he was working on the most important, life-endangering story of his career without the help of Bloody Lorna.

Jess kept up the pep talks, though, and by Friday, knowing she was going to see him the next day at the wedding, she’d cheered up no end.

By now she was in no doubt that she’d fallen in love with Max. She wasn’t sure exactly when it happened. During that daft Kit Kat row maybe. All she knew was that when she was with Max she was overwhelmed by the feeling that she’d come home. She could say anything to him. He made her laugh. He was her warm place. When she was with him, she could shut out the rest of the world.

Hardly a night went by when she didn’t fantasize about him taking her in his arms and telling her he loved her too. Maybe it would happen tomorrow, she thought, when he saw her in her wedding outfit.

Another one of her girlfriends had gotten married last spring and she’d splurged on a gorgeous sixties-style pale pink woolen dress and jacket. The dress was a dead straight shift, but it managed to cling in all the right places. The tiny boxy jacket had big buttons and three-quarter-length sleeves. She’d set it off with a row of chunky pearls, and a low-brimmed hat. Everybody had said she looked “sooo Audrey.” She didn’t actually pick anyone up, though. All the decent blokes had been in couples, but she’d felt their eyes on her. The only chap who’d made a move was the toastmaster, who had a handlebar mustache and a beach hut at Swanage. Even so, she couldn’t remember ever having felt quite so sexy. Max wouldn’t be able to keep his hands off her when she walked into that church tomorrow.

She stayed up late, getting her clothes ready and (for once in her life) planning her route. The wedding was being held at Zoe’s parents’ place—a vast manor house somewhere in the wilds of north Yorkshire. Max and Rebecca weren’t driving up together because Max was spending the night with Adam and some friends in Leeds, where they were having Adam’s stag night.

By half past seven, she was ready to go. Lipstick was still asleep, but Jess, who was up feeding Diggory, gasped when she saw her and said the moment they got to the reception Max was bound to cart her off to one of the bedrooms to ravage her. “Hope you’ve got decent underwear on.”

Then she told her to go and have a wonderful time and forget all about Bloody Lorna.

Despite pelting rain and several sets of roadworks on the M1, she reached Leeds just before eleven. Kettlesthwaite was a good forty miles farther north. Even on minor roads it couldn’t take more than an hour. The service was at twelve. She should make it with a few minutes to spare.

Soon the city gave way to glorious Yorkshire countryside. The rain had stopped and patches of denim blue were beginning to break through the February sky. She stuck
Abba Gold
in the cassette player and began singing along, belting out the lyrics for all she was worth.

The first time she sensed the car was losing power, she thought she was imagining it. When she looked at the speedo and realized she wasn’t, she started pressing down harder on the gas. The aged Golf merely shuddered and continued to slow down. She pressed the accelerator again. Then again. Nothing. Just before the car came to a complete stop, she managed to pull into a muddy recess next to a five-bar gate.

“Oh, terrific,” she muttered, bashing the steering wheel.

She reached under the dashboard and tugged the hood lever. Although her underhood skills were limited to filling the windscreen fluid dispenser, she felt she should take a look. An obvious bit of wiring may have come loose that she might just be able to shove back. She opened the car door. After the downpour, the road was awash with liquid mud. Tentatively, she lowered a pink suede sling-back. Then she reached across to the passenger seat and picked up her mobile. (Her dad was a brilliant mechanic. If she couldn’t find anything obviously wrong under the hood, she would phone him for advice.)

She got out of the car and stood surveying the narrow lane for muddy puddles, roadkill and anything else that could put her precious Manolos at risk. Looking back, she supposed she must have heard the cattle truck coming. But she’d clearly been too preoccupied with her road stakeout to notice. By the time she saw the truck bearing down on her, it was too late to get back in the car. She pinned herself to the side of the car, managing to drop her mobile in the process and watched in silent horror as it thundered by, spraying her jacket, skirt and shoes in thick, sand-colored mud. For a few moments she was too numb to move. All she could do was stand there, staring at her ruined clothes. Finally a single tear streaked her face. Like Max would want to ravage her now.

She bent down and picked up her phone. The back of the case was cracked and coming off. She tried turning it on. Nothing. “Marvelous. Now I can’t even phone the AA.”