The Making of Minty Malone (8 page)

I have the space – my flat’s quite big. And in any case, I’d never have refused. We’re first cousins but we feel more like sisters, probably because our mothers are twins. But to look at us you’d never guess that Amber and I were related. She has a shining helmet of honey-blonde hair and enormous, pale green eyes. She’s absolutely gorgeous, in a foxy sort of way, with high cheekbones that taper to a pointed chin. She’s slim, like me, though taller. Much taller. In fact, she’s six foot one. But she likes her height. She’s proud of it. No slouching or stooping there. She’s rather uninhibited. And she’s very clever.
Well, in some ways she is. She’s also extremely well read. You can tell that from the way she talks. It’s Thackeray this, and Dr Johnson that and William Hazlitt the other, and, ‘As Balzac used to say …’ She reviews books too, occasionally. It doesn’t pay much, but it keeps her ‘in’ with the publishing crowd. Or what Dominic liked to call ‘Lit-Biz’.

Anyway, I gave her the spare room, which isn’t huge, but it’s fine as a temporary measure, and she installed her things in there. And of course she had to bring Pedro – I understood that. They’re inseparable. And although he’s rather annoying, I’m fond of him too, in a way. He reminds me of Granny. And that’s not just because Granny had him for so long, but because he sounds exactly like her.

‘Oh,
super
, darling!’ he likes to say. And ‘No!
Really
?’ in a scandalised tone of voice. ‘I
say
!’ he squawks sometimes, like an avian Terry Thomas. Or, ‘What a funny thing!’ – Granny used to say that all the time. He’s got her cackling laugh too. Down to a tee. It’s shattering, and so authentic that I find myself saying, ‘What’s so funny, Granny?’ although she’s been dead for six years. Whenever the phone rings he says, ‘Oh,
hello
’ – like that. And then, ‘How
are
you?’ And, ‘Yes …yes …yes …’ in a desultory sort of way. When he’s not having one-sided telephone conversations, he whistles, and screeches and – this is really annoying – he barks. Whenever he hears the doorbell, he emits a volley of soprano yaps because that’s what Granny’s Yorkshire terrier, Audrey, used to do.

Pedro’s a Festive Amazon, just over a foot long, with peagreen plumage, a blue and red cap, and a vivid, scarlet waistcoat which is only visible when he spreads his wings. Granny bought him in Colombia in 1955, when she was doing the research for
An Amazon Affair.
She’d stopped at a little town called Leticia, on the border with Brazil and Peru, and in the market was a man selling young parrots which were crammed into crates. Granny was so appalled she bought Pedro, and brought him home on the plane. He spoke very good Spanish in those days – he’d picked it up in the market. He could say, ‘
Loros
!
Hermosos loros
!
Comprenme a mi
!’ – Parrots! Lovely
parrots! Get your parrots here! And ‘
Page uno, lleve dos
!’ – Buy one, get one free! He also used to shout, ‘
Cuidado que pica
!’ – Watch your fingers! and ‘
Cuanto me dijo
?
Tan caro
!’ –
How
much? You must be fucking joking! He’s forgotten most of his Spanish now, though I think it might come back if we practised it with him. He loves really authoritative female voices – Mrs Thatcher’s, for example. He used to shriek with excitement and bob up and down whenever he heard her speak. These days Esther Rantzen tends to have the same effect. Anyway, he and Granny were inseparable for almost forty years. And when she died, we didn’t know how he’d cope. But in her will she left him to Amber – ‘An Amazon for an Amazon,’ she wrote wryly – and luckily, though parrots are loyal to one person, Pedro adapted well. In fact, they adore each other. He likes to ride around on her shoulder, and nibble her blonde hair, or listen to her reading out bits of her latest book.

Anyway, Amber and I have always been very close, so the next morning she offered to drive me round London while I disposed of the wedding gifts. She said she didn’t mind, and that she’d welcome any distraction from her distress. She’d looked awful at breakfast, obviously hadn’t slept, and she kept trying to put the sugar in the fridge.

‘Are you sure you can concentrate enough to drive?’ I asked.

She nodded. ‘I’ll be fine.’

‘Woof! Woof!’

We’d already had the post – who on earth could that be? I opened the door to find a man standing there with a huge bouquet.

‘Miss Amber Dane?’ he enquired, as I stared at the profusion of pink roses.

‘No,’ I replied. ‘But she’s here.’ I signed the proffered delivery sheet and carried the bouquet into the flat. The cellophane said ‘Floribunda’. How
odd.
Why on earth would Helen send Amber flowers?

‘They’re from Charlie!’ Amber screamed, grabbing the tiny white envelope. ‘It’s his handwriting, and he wants me back. It’s only been a few hours, but he’s already realised he’s made
a
dreadful
mistake.’ She ripped open the envelope and removed the small, rectangular card. She read it in a flash, then I saw the light fade in her eyes.

‘He should have sent a wreath,’ she said bitterly, handing the card to me.

‘
I’m really very sorry it had to be like this
,’ Charlie had written. ‘
I do hope you’re all right, Amber, and that you’ll wish to be friends one day.
’

And I thought, Dominic didn’t send me flowers. Dominic didn’t offer me the hand of friendship. Dominic offered me nothing but a few of my possessions stuffed into two plastic bags.

‘I can’t bear to look at them,’ said Amber, as she picked up her car keys and bag. ‘I’ll give them to the hospital.’ So we went first to the Royal Free, where she left the bouquet at the reception, then we got on with the task in hand. We had to make a total of five trips because there were so many wedding presents and Amber’s car is very small. Her black Mini hovered like a fly on the double yellow lines while I dived in with the gifts. I felt like Lady Bountiful with a horn of plenty as I distributed my brand-new luxury goods. Cut glass and kettles and picnic rugs flowed forth from my outstretched arms.

‘Don’t you want this?’ said the woman in the Red Cross shop as I handed her an exquisite Waterford bowl.

‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘I don’t.’

Amber was a bit aggrieved about the Antonio Carluccio truffle-grater and the
River Café Cookbook
, but I wouldn’t relent – it all had to go. Every item. Every atom. And as we drove round Camden and Hampstead her mood began to lift. And she went on and on about what a bastard Dominic was and how she’d like to kill him for what he did to me. And then she went on about what a bastard Charlie is, too, which isn’t true at all. And I don’t blame him for dumping Amber, though I’d never dare say that to her. So I tentatively asked her if she was sure she wasn’t making a mistake with Charlie and that she wouldn’t one day change her mind.

‘Of course I’m sure,’ she snapped. ‘Do you really think I’d
want to go through
that
? It’s barbaric!’ And then she went on and on, again, about the awful things that happen when you’re pregnant. The nausea and cramps, the swollen ankles and the varicose veins. ‘The heartburn and the thousand natural shocks,’ as she likes to put it, not to mention the haemorrhoids and hair-loss.

‘Basically, Minty, a foetus is a parasite,’ she declared as we pulled away from the kerb. ‘It will suck the calcium out of your teeth, the iron out of your blood, and the vitamins from your food. It’s like a fast-growing tumour, taking over your body.’ And then she went on about the horrors of childbirth itself. The pain of parturition: the screaming, the stitches and the blood. But worse than any of these, she says, is the loss of mental power.

‘It is a well-known fact that a woman’s brain shrinks during pregnancy,’ she said, with spurious authority, as I got into the car again.

‘Well, yes, but not by the 70 per cent
you
claim,’ I replied, as we set off. ‘I think that statistic may be, you know, not quite right.’

‘I’m sure it
is
right,’ she said, pursing her lips and shaking her head. ‘I have a number of
extremely
intellectual friends who, the
minute
they got pregnant, took out subscriptions to
Hello
!’

And then she started talking about Dominic again and what a ‘total shyster’ he was and how, if it hadn’t been for him jilting me, Charlie would never have dumped her. I didn’t agree with this analysis, but obviously I didn’t say so. I never argue with Amber. I’ve never really argued with anyone, though I’m beginning to think I should. And then she went on and on about how she’s going to put Dominic in her next book. And I said, ‘Please, Amber, please, please
don’t.
’

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ she said with a sly smile as we hurtled home. ‘I’ll do it very subtly.’

Subtly? Amber has all the subtlety of a commando raid.

‘No, really, Minty, I’ll disguise him
totally
,’ she went on in that pseudo-soothing way of hers. ‘I’ll call him Dominic Lane,
thirty-five, a blond insurance salesman from Clapham Common, so no one will know who he is!’ And she laughed maniacally at this as she jumped another red light.

That’s just the kind of thing she
would
do, though. Because the truth is, she doesn’t disguise people at all. It’s appalling. I don’t know how she gets away with it. For example, I featured in one of her books,
Fat Chance
, as ‘Mindy’, a frustrated radio reporter with ambitions to be a presenter. She’d even given ‘Mindy’ my long curly dark hair and the same address in Primrose Hill. Mum was in the next one,
The Hideaway
, which was a sort of Aga-saga set in London W9. And of course everyone knew it was Mum. In fact, Amber made it so obvious I don’t know why she didn’t just call the character Dympna Malone and be done with it. And when Mum and I eventually said that we’d really rather not be in any more of her books, thanks, because, well, we’d just rather not, she went into her usual spiel about how she was only creating ‘composites’ and how no one could
possibly
think it was us. And we’d heard that convenient, self-serving lie so many times before.

‘Why don’t you try using a little, you know,
imagination
, dear?’ Mum suggested sweetly. ‘Next time, why don’t you just try and make the characters up?’

Amber gave Mum this funny, and not particularly friendly look, while I stared at the floor.

‘Auntie Dympna,’ she said seriously, ‘I’m a
novelist.
It’s my job to “hold the mirror up to nature,” as the Prince of Denmark himself once put it.’

‘Yes, but it’s a
metaphorical
mirror, dear,’ Mum pointed out without malice.

At this, Amber picked up one of her books and opened it at the second page. ‘“This novel …”’ she announced, reading aloud, ‘“is entirely a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or localities, is entirely co-incidental.”
Entirely
,’ she added, pointedly.

So that was that. At least we haven’t come off
too
badly in Amber’s books, though I don’t think Mum enjoyed being portrayed as an eccentrically dressed, late middle-aged woman,
indiscriminately raising money by highly dubious and quite possibly criminal methods for any charitable cause she could lay her hands on. But it’s worse for Amber’s exes. She’s terribly hard on them. In they all go. Unfavourably, of course, as paedophiles, axe-murderers, benefit cheats, adulterers, gangsters, drug-dealers, hairdressers and petty crooks. Totally defamatory. I’m amazed they don’t sue. Too embarrassed, I suppose, to admit it might be them. I guess this is what Amber banks on, but one day her luck will run out.

Still, even though there are certain, well, tensions, there, I like having her around. At the moment we help staunch each other’s wounds. Hand each other hankies. Try and make each other eat – I’ve lost six pounds since Saturday, and my hips are starting to show.

Amber’s making Charlie pay to have all her stuff sent over in a van. She said that as he’d dumped her, he’d have to pay to get her out. So on Friday a white transit van pulled up in Princess Road and out came box after box. Loads of books, of course, and her computer; three pictures, and a couple of lamps; a bedside table and an easy chair, and several suitcases of clothes. And there was kitchen equipment too. I felt sorry for her as she took the things in, with tears streaming down her face. I was a bit concerned, to be honest, about where it would all go. Well, she’ll only be here for a while, I told myself. And I’ve a big half-landing, and a shed.

‘Hello!’ squawked Pedro. The phone. Dominic! I picked it up. Dom –!

‘Minty …’ My heart sank. It was Jack.

‘Hello, Jack,’ I said warily.

‘Minty, look …’

‘What is it?’ I said, though I knew exactly why he’d called.

‘I won’t beat about the bush, Minty. When are you coming back?’

I sank on to the hall chair.

‘I’m not ready yet,’ I pleaded. ‘It’s barely a week. Please, please give me more time.’

‘Well …’

‘Compassionate leave?’

‘You don’t qualify – you’re not bereaved.’

‘I am bereaved!’ I moaned. ‘In a way …’ I just couldn’t face them all yet. ‘I’m …
bereft
,’ I added quietly, swallowing hard.

‘I need you here, Minty,’ Jack said. ‘And I think it will be good for you to come back to work. Get it over with. As you know, we’re all very …sorry.’

‘That’s what makes it so much
worse
,’ I wailed. ‘I don’t
want
your sympathy.’ I was crying now. I couldn’t help it. ‘Dominic took all my dignity,’ I sobbed. ‘Every shred of it. Every last bit. I’d rather he’d have shot me!’

‘I’d rather you’d have shot
him
!’ said Jack. ‘A hundred years ago someone would have done it for you. Would you like me to get up a posse?’ he added. ‘I’m sure I could round up a few willing volunteers to avenge your wounded honour.’

All at once, I had visions of Dominic being pursued round London by lasso-wielding cowboys, led by Jack, with a shining sheriff’s badge. And at that, I laughed. I laughed and laughed. And I suddenly realised it was the first time I had laughed since Saturday. Then I laughed again, madly, and couldn’t stop. I was hysterical. I was
literally
hysterical, I think.