Past Mortem (23 page)

‘Helen. Please. Do yourself a favour. Get over it. You only get one life. You should be getting on with yours. We’ll be out of here very soon. All right?’ He turned away.

‘My nipple’s fine, thanks for asking,’ Helen said bitterly.

‘I didn’t cut you, Helen. You did that yourself and I’m telling you now, you really need to get some help. Think of Karl.’

‘You know something, Ed? One thing I’ve learnt working for Kidcall is that with bullying it isn’t enough to stand round shaking your head. You have to
do something about it
.’

‘I’ve made a donation, Helen. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?’

‘You make me sick. Bye.’

Newson walked away and joined Christine in the catering tent.

‘I’ve got us a drink and some pudding,’ she said. ‘Pavlova. The meringue is
lovely!
I really admire people who do mass catering, don’t you?’

Newson smiled at her. There was something about Christine’s emotional resilience that he found refreshing. Yes, she was a little shallow, but she was happy being shallow, so why try to be anything else?

‘Poor old Helen,’ Christine said, daintily wiping cream from her lips. ‘You really would
not
want to be her, would you? She so needs to get over herself! I mean,
come on
, Helen!’

‘That’s exactly what I said to her.’

‘And you were right. Anyway, let’s forget her, she’s not going to ruin my day, which is turning out to be just the
best
. The only question is, what can we do to top it?’ Christine looked Newson steadily in the eye. He knew that the time had come to make his move.

‘Christine?’

‘Yes, Ed?’

‘Can we go somewhere?’

‘Where?’—

‘Maybe your place. Or mine. Or a hotel?’

‘OK.’

‘Great.’

‘My place, if that’s OK. I have to feed my flatmates’ cats. They’re both away.’

‘The cats?’

‘
You are so funny!
The flatmates. That’s why I have to feed the cats.’

‘Right. Great. Do we need to say goodbye to the old gang?’

‘No. I collected their money. And you were the only one I really wanted to see anyway. God, didn’t Sally Warren look
awful?
If ever I have kids I will simply
not
let myself go like that.’

They finished their drinks and made to leave. As they passed the security barrier Newson glanced over his shoulder and saw that Helen was watching them go, tears streaming down her face. He prayed that there were no sharp objects to hand.

TWENTY-ONE

N
ewson had been surprised to learn that Christine lived in shared accommodation. From the way she’d spoken about herself and her job on the Friends Reunited site, he’d thought that she would be able to afford her own place. This might have been the case had she been prepared to live in Barnet, Watford or Morden, but Christine was a city girl who put location before space and comfort. She lived with two friends in a very nice but very small flat in a thirties-built apartment block on Abbey Road.

‘It’s nearly Swiss Cottage, daaaarling,’ she joked in the taxi going up the Finchley Road. ‘Which is almost Hampstead.’ Soon they were pulling up outside the imposing listed-entrance porch of Christine’s block.

‘Both of my flatmates are air crew,’ she said as they entered the building and stepped into the old-fashioned lift with its big metal grille. ‘I love them, but I also love the fact that they’re away so much. They’re serving drinks and bits of shrink-wrapped cheese at thirty thousand feet while I get this fantastic flat all to myself. Mind you, they can’t complain. They make heaps of money.’

Newson could not help but reflect that this said something about what Christine must be earning herself, because he knew that flight attendants did not make ‘heaps of money’.

The flat was solidly built, with what would be described by an estate agent as period features, including big old-fashioned radiators and proper, decent-sized skirting boards. There were two bedrooms, a double and a single that was more of a large cupboard, a living room, a tiny kitchen and a bathroom.

‘When we’re all here together it’s a bit crowded for sure. I have to share the double with Maureen, because it was Sandy who found the flat. Her name’s on all the forms. Boys love it when I tell them I sleep with a girl! I tell them we snuggle up together with our cocoa and talk about sex. It’s all good fun, though. We have a great laugh. The
Sex and the City
girls, that’s us.’

It was a very girly flat, filled with magazines, paperback books and biscuit-packet wrappers. There was an old piano that was clearly never played because its lid was covered with numerous framed photographs of bikini-clad air crew having a fantastic laugh around pools in foreign hotels. The dining table that stood in the window bay and at which it was obvious no one ever ate was piled high with photos, CDs and cassettes, Nurofen boxes and more magazines. There were cushions strewn everywhere, and a huge television surrounded by DVD boxes. In front of that was a big saggy sofa on which, Christine explained, all three girls would sit and watch television together.

‘You should see us. Pjs, red wine, choccy biccies. We’re terrible. We have a rule that if ever we’re all single at the same time, we get a bottle of Baileys and do
Dirty Dancing
and
Grease
on DVD as a double bill. Who needs real men when you’ve got Patrick Swayze and John Travolta? By the time we get to ‘We’ll Stick Together’ we’re singing every word. The neighbours hate it.’

Along one wall was a bookshelf filled with stuffed toys.

‘Most of them belong to the others, Christine explained. ‘They get given them by Japanese businessmen…This is mine, of course. My bestest and most precious friend in all the whole world.’ She plucked an ancient stuffed figure of the lazy-eyed cartoon cat Garfield from the group of simpering fabric monsters. ‘Say hello to Inspector Newson, Garfield. Do you remember him?’

Newson could scarcely believe it. ‘Christ, Christine. That’s not — ’

‘Yes it is, Ed. I’ve still got it.’

He had given her that stuffed toy himself. Christine had loved Garfield, as had lots of her post-Snoopy generation. She’d had a Garfield pencil case, a Garfield ring folder and a poster on her bedroom wall about being allergic to mornings. Newson had bought her the toy as a Christmas present and had sent it to her after she had dumped him in what he hoped was a dramatic gesture. He’d enclosed a note with it that said, ‘I’d been hoping to give you this personally, but it was not to be. Merry ‘heartbroken’ Christmas from one’ who will always love you.’

Newson had last laid eyes on that Garfield twenty years before and here it was, grinning at him again.

‘I never thanked you for it, did I?’ Christine said.

‘No, you didn’t. But that’s fine.’

‘Thank you, Edward.’ She dropped the toy to the floor between them and put her arms around him. A moment later they had collapsed together on to the squashy sofa, locked in a passionate embrace.

After a long and jaw-breaking kiss in which Christine worked her mouth and tongue as if trying to unblock a toilet, she disengaged her face, smiling the big, pretty smile that she had perfected at the age of eight. ‘That nice?’ she said, in a slightly babyish voice.

‘Um, yes, lovely.’

‘Just picking up where we left off, really.’ Christine’s hands went behind her back and she began to unfasten her halterneck top.

Newson gulped. ‘That Garfield isn’t really your favourite thing, is it?’ he asked.

‘Well, let’s put it this way, I always kept it, didn’t I? And I’ve had a few presents in my time, I can tell you.’

‘I’m sure you have.’

‘I don’t keep them all for twenty years, you know. But I thought it was cute. Like you.’

Her top was off now and Newson could not help but stop and stare in amazement. They looked so
strange
. Not unattractive, by any means, but strange. Of course, he’d seen pictures of breasts like these before, two perfect domes attached to a chest with that slightly weird location of the nipples, sitting unnaturally high. But he’d never seen a pair for real, and they were without doubt fascinating objects. Christine had not gone obscenely far With hers: these -were not grotesque caricatures of breasts as beloved by tabloid newspaper editors, but she’d certainly opted for big ones, and they were staring at Newson like two entirely in-dependent entities.

‘You like?’ said Christine, now affecting a sort of Italian accent.

‘Lovely,’ Newson replied.

‘Obviously, I’ve had them done.’

‘No! Really? Honestly? That’s amazing. I had no idea.’

‘A couple of years ago. I think they look fantastic. I’m really proud of myself for doing it.’

‘Yes, yes. And so you should be. They’re lovely. Absolutely lovely,’ Newson said, although he was not sure that he was telling the truth.

‘They were pretty big before, anyway. Well, you’d remember, I expect, you naughty boy.’—

‘Oh yes. I remember.’

‘So I had to have a lot put in or else it wouldn’t have made any difference, would it?’

‘No. I’m sure not.’

‘I know of girls who’ve spent
thousands
and when they came out their boyfriends have asked them when they’re going to have the operation. That’s no good, is it?’

‘No, certainly not.’

‘I’m thirty-five, Ed. In my job image and looks are everything.’

Newson wanted to tell her that she didn’t need to justify herself to him, but he knew that if he said that she’d be offended. So instead he remained silent.

‘Nobody wants birds with saggy tits fronting up their corporate dos. The company I work for bin you the second you start looking even slightly rough. We had a girl let go because she came back from holiday with brown sunspots on her face. Don’t talk to me about employment rights. They get round them. They’re bloody ruthless.’

Newson was learning a little more about Christine’s life all the time. He had presumed that she worked for herself. Now he knew that she did not, that she was paid to stand around being a blonde with a pretty face. Not a career at all, but a job and a job with a sell-by date on it.

‘You look fantastic,’ he said.

‘I tried to claim them against tax,’ she said, looking down at her breasts, ‘No go, though.’

‘That’s a pity.’

‘So do you want to feel them, then? Of course you do. everyone does. Even girls. Go on, I want you to.’

Newson reached out and began to caress Christine’s firm breasts.

‘You’ve got lovely gentle hands,’ she said. ‘You always were a gentle person, weren’t you, Ed?’

A great surge of pleasure and affection swept over Newson. He was drunk, and it was all so very erotic. Christine sat next to him on the sofa, her long blond hair falling on her tanned shoulders, her feet tucked under her long legs, a happy smile on her face. She looked like a caricature of a cartoon teenager, and he felt like an adolescent, fumbling and fingering away.

‘OK,’ she laughed. ‘Now you’ve got to know them you don’t need to be scared of them.’ She leant forward and unzipped Newson’s trousers.

‘My
my
, Ed!’ she exclaimed with comical shock. ‘Have you had
this
cosmetically enhanced? It’s
most
impressive. Well, you know what they say about short men!’

They laughed together. Christine’s frank, open manner was relaxing to be around. Perhaps it was her PR training, but she knew how to make a man feel at ease.

‘I don’t think I ever saw this the first time around, did I?’ she enquired.

‘No, we didn’t get quite that far.’

‘Such innocent days. Special, special days. I’ll just get something to put on it, shall I?’ She got up and went to the bathroom, walking across the room in her little mini-skirt with her breasts leading the way. Moments later she returned. ‘Have to do the right thing, don’t we?’

She slipped a condom on to Newson, then stood up, reached under her mini-skirt and pulled down her knickers. Then, stepping daintily out of them, still wearing the skirt, she placed herself astride Newson, one golden thigh on either side of him, and lowered herself down. Newson could not help but reflect that Christine for all her silliness was a girl with a fair degree of natural class. He certainly preferred this to Helen Smart’s taste in lovemaking.

And so began a wonderful, long, relaxed evening of gentle, unselfconscious, undemanding adult sex. They did it together on the sofa with Christine on top. Then they drank a Bacardi Breezer, which was all the booze that Christine had in her fridge, and went into the bedroom where they made love again, but this time for a long, long time in the big soft old double bed with its pink sheets and picture of Betty Boop on the duvet cover.

By the time they had sated themselves it was past ten o’clock. Christine turned off the shaded lamp that had illuminated their lovemaking and they fell asleep. It had been a long time since Newson had actually
slept
with a girl, spending the night in her bed, and he relished the experience. He gloried in the soft skin so close to his, the gentle breathing, the hint of perfume in the room, and the warm, cosy luxury of a woman’s presence, in a woman’s room. He woke up several times in the night but was happy to lie there listening to Christine sleep. At about four a.m. she stirred and they made love again. Her tastes were as conventional as Helen’s had been strange, and Newson much preferred it that way.

Afterwards, Christine smoked, something that normally Newson would not have liked, but even this now seemed sexy and feminine and intimate.

‘I’m thinking about that woman,’ she said.

‘Which woman?’ Newson said with a start.

‘Helen Smart.’

‘Ah, her.’

‘We did do what she said we did, you know.’

‘I thought you had.’

‘It was a fucking terrible thing to do.’

‘Yes, it was.’

‘There were six of us, and a nasty tease got out of hand. We made her put that tampon in her mouth. It was my idea, too. I just suddenly did it. I called her a disgusting cow and told her next time perhaps she would remember to stick it where she was supposed to stick it and then she wouldn’t mess up the changing room.’

‘Because she’d left blood on the bench?’

‘Well, we said that was why, but I think we did it because she thought she was better than us. She was some intellectual bloody communist and we were airheads.’

‘I don’t think she had that much confidence.’

‘We thought she did, and, anyway, it happened. I’ve always known it was terrible and it shows I’m not a good person. I’ve thought about it over the years and it always makes me feel bad.’

‘But not bad enough to have owned up to it yesterday.’

‘Like Roger Jameson did?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I sort of tried, didn’t I, when we bumped into her backstage. But she was so nasty, same old self-righteous Helen Smart. I thought, who knows, maybe she deserved it.’ Christine put out her cigarette and rolled over to go back to sleep. ‘Maybe I’ll send her something, some flowers or a bottle of champagne,’ she said sleepily. ‘John Lewis do a nice basket with a half bottle of Australian and some muffins.’

Newson wondered whether she was joking, and decided that she was not. In Christine’s world a nice basket of muffins was significant currency.

He closed his eyes and, unbidden, Natasha was with him. She was with him every night before he slept, although on this occasion she had taken a little longer than usual to turn up. He tried to force her from his mind and replace her with the girl lying next to him, but he could not.