Vanity (14 page)

Bella looked in the mirror inside her cupboard door with satisfaction. She wasn't always pleased with her appearance, but today she knew she'd scrubbed up well. She was wearing a short, sleeveless polo dress from American Apparel in a bright sherbet-pink that complemented her light tan and dark hair perfectly. Just a touch of make-up – concealer, mascara, pink blusher and lip gloss – kept the look clean and pretty, and she'd played up the wholesome, preppy thing by tying her hair back into a loose plait.

She did a little twirl then poured herself a glass of white wine and went to sit on her balcony while she waited for Andy to come back from his chores. It was Saturday
lunchtime
and at last the English summer had come into its own. With a blissfully free agenda, Andy and Bella had decided to make the most of the sunshine and go for a picnic in Hyde Park, just the two of them. Bella couldn't think of a lovelier way to spend a day.

‘Belles! I'm home!' As ever, Bella's heart leapt at the sound of his dear deep voice. She put her wineglass down and raced back into the flat to give him a hug. But
something
in his dark, bespectacled eyes stopped her in her tracks.

‘What is it?' she asked in alarm. ‘Andy, what's the matter?'

‘I just cannot get over how beautiful you are,' he said seriously, his eyes looking deep into hers the way they used to when they first met. He took her face in his hands and proceeded to kiss her with such exquisite tenderness that before she knew it they were tearing one another's clothes off and making love, right there on her living-room floor.

By the time they were walking hand in hand down Portobello Road, Bella's plait was considerably more
dishevelled
, her cheeks considerably more flushed. Neither of them could stop smiling as they negotiated the crowds in the market and decided what to buy for their picnic.

Eventually, laden with freshly baked walnut bread, a variety of cheeses and charcuterie, a crab, some duck-liver pâté, an old-fashioned round lettuce, a ripe avocado, several tomatoes on the vine, a bunch of spring onions, a bag of cherries and three bottles of Prosecco, they reached the Boris Bikes docking station on Elgin Crescent.

‘D'you think we might have overcatered a tad?' asked Bella, laughing.

‘Don't worry, it won't go to waste,' said Andy, kissing her again. Bella smiled. Andy ate like a horse, but his tall, rangy metabolism meant that he burnt all the calories off practically before he'd consumed them.

They set off through the back streets of Notting Hill, the sun beating down on their exposed limbs, a soft cooling breeze blowing through their hair. Bella loved the Boris Bikes scheme, started only a couple of years ago by the eponymous and flamboyant mayor. What was not to love? You avoided the hideousness of the Tube, you got fit, you had fun (scary London traffic notwithstanding). And cycling through any of London's parks was just heavenly. Handy when she lived so close to one of the biggest and most beautiful of them.

Now they'd entered Kensington Gardens and cycled past the Round Pond, along a pleasing tree-lined path until they hit Hyde Park, then a quick circuit around the Serpentine. They parked the bikes and headed on foot to their favourite spot, close to the Peter Pan statue, back in Kensington Gardens. The lake was unpopulated by boats here, but thriving with birdlife in the overgrown reeds and bulrushes. On such a beautiful day the park was teeming with people, great parties of laughing picnickers with iPod speakers, footballs and Frisbees, but here, in their special place, Andy and Bella were afforded relative privacy.

Bella spread out their tartan rug as Andy started unpacking the food.

‘First things first, though,' he said, popping open one of the bottles of Prosecco and pouring it into two plastic cups. ‘Cheers!' He raised his cup and smiled, the breeze ruffling his thick black hair.

‘Cheers, darling.' Bella smiled back at him, her heart overflowing at the sight of him looking so young and
carefree
for once. He'd been working so hard recently, there'd been a permanent tense furrow between his eyebrows that she longed to smooth out.

They drank copiously and gorged themselves on the various delicacies they had procured, making one another laugh by attacking the crab lasciviously, raising eyebrows at each other as they slurped the meat loudly from the claws.

‘Wait till you see me tying knots in the cherry stalks with my tongue …' said Bella.

Andy laughed. ‘Oh, God, I love you. Promise me you'll never leave me.'

‘Of course I promise.' Bella leant over and kissed him. ‘What's brought this on?'

‘This is all just so perfect, and – well, I suppose work's getting me down a bit recently.'

‘Do you want to talk about it?' Bella knew that Andy was investigating some Russian people traffickers, but generally he just wanted to switch off when he got home.

‘Not in too much detail.' Andy smiled at her. ‘The way those girls are treated beggars belief, and it makes you feel filthy just knowing what actually goes on. But I think I'm getting closer to finding out who the main boss is.'

‘Jesus, Andy, what are you getting yourself mixed up in?'

‘I'll be all right, sweetheart.'

‘Hmmm …'

‘Anyway …' Andy hurriedly moved on. ‘He's been around for years as far as I can gather. Started off exploiting underage girls in former Soviet states – Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus. Once the Soviet Union split up he realized there was more money to be made from Western punters, so he started bringing the girls over here. Anyway, it'll all be worth it if we expose him and, with any luck, break up his disgusting empire.'

‘God, you're a good man. What did I ever do to deserve you?'

‘I ask myself the same thing every day.'

‘Git.'

‘
Git?
' Andy laughed. ‘I don't think anybody's said that to me since I was twelve.'

Her new iPhone beeped. Bella was always the last person to get around to the technology everybody else had been using for years.

‘Oooh, Facebook message.'

Andy rolled his eyes.

‘It's from Poppy. A round robin about a party she's having tonight. Now, why do you think she'd include me in that? She knows I'm not in New York. Is she just trying to rub my nose in how bloody glamorous her life is?'

‘Belles, stop it.' Andy took the phone away from her and topped up her glass. ‘And listen to yourself.
Your
life's not too bad, now really, is it?' He gestured at the leafy canopy above them, at their lavish picnic spread, across to the Serpentine, where a magnificent heron was picking his long, spindly-legged way through the swampy
undergrowth
, staring at them beadily.

‘No it's not, it's wonderful.' Bella lay back and rested her head on Andy's lap, smiling up at him. ‘I love you.'

‘I love you too.'

Poppy and Damian's Prohibition party (dress code: gangsters and molls) was in full swing, their interior-brickworked warehouse flat crammed to the rafters with glamorous New Yorkers. Not bad, considering they'd only been living there a few months. Although pretty much all of them were new contacts of Poppy's, thought Damian bitterly, as he poured himself a strong cocktail out of a teapot into a pretty china teacup. Another of Poppy's bright ideas, though he'd mixed the cocktails.

In one corner of the room he could see his wife holding court, a group of admirers hanging on her every word as she joshed and twinkled and giggled. She looked absolutely stunning, he had to admit, in the eau-de-nil silk slip with coffee-coloured lace trim she'd picked up at Sandra's vintage store. She'd set her blonde hair in pin curls against her head, topped off with a coffee-coloured lace headband.

Come on
, he tried to snap himself out of it as the strong liquor warmed his veins.
Your wife is bloody gorgeous, and it's not her fault you can't get a fucking break.

He'd finally come up with what he thought was a
brilliant
idea for his screenplay, but so far all his tentative enquiries had drawn blanks.
Early days, mate, early days
, he told himself.

‘DAMIAN!' a huge voice bellowed in his ear. ‘MY MAN!'

‘Lars!' Damian looked around with relief. At last,
somebody
he could call a friend of his own. ‘Am I glad to see you. But …' He started laughing now. ‘What the
fuck
are you wearing?'

‘Don't you fanshy me?' Lars did a little shimmy in his floor-length gold lamé bias-cut frock. ‘I wash thinking I would be a gangster, and then I thought,
No, more fun to be a moll
. The chicksh have all the fun these days, my friend, do they not?' He was glassy-eyed and slurring a bit and Damian could tell he was more than a little pissed already. The Romanian girl who'd ‘loved the banker more than the man' had a lot to answer for, he reflected.

‘Never a truer word said. But where on earth did you find something like that to fit you?'

‘Many specialist transvestite shops in NYC, my friend.'

Damian started laughing again. Lars really did look magnificent in a platinum-blonde Mae West wig, with long satin gloves, long beads and long cigarette holder. His cheeks were rouged, his lips scarlet, his eyes adorned with
enormous
, spider-like false lashes.

‘And did they do your face at the tranny shop too?'

Lars roared with laughter. ‘What do you think, my friend? That that is a shkill I learned at Merrill Lynch? Yesh, they did my fashe. And now I must drink.'

He poured himself a drink from the teapot, downed it in one, then poured himself another.

‘And now I musht say hello to your beautiful wife.'

‘In that case, come with me.'

They weaved their way through the crowds to where Poppy was now chatting to Marty and Eleanor.

‘Lars!' Eleanor threw up her arms, beaming. She looked fabulous in a Louise Brooks black wig and scarlet dress made entirely of feathers, with a matching scarlet pout.

‘Wow,' said Marty amiably. ‘I don't know which of you three girls is the most gorgeous.'

Poppy smiled. Her boss was a good sort.

‘So glad you could come,' she said, reaching up for a hug. ‘You look fantastic!'

‘You too, babe, you too,' said Lars, picking her up and twirling her round and round like a rag doll. Damian tried not to feel hurt that Lars had once picked him up like a rag doll.
Just snap out of it, you tit.

‘So,' Eleanor turned her sincere pale blue eyes on him. ‘Poppy says you're writing a screenplay? My, what a creative couple you are.'

Damian looked at her suspiciously. Was she taking the piss?

‘I wish I could be creative like that, but as Marty says, there's only room for one creative mind in
our
marriage. I was always the business brain, but I'm afraid that turned to mush once Hammy was born.' She laughed self-deprecatingly and Damian started to relax. She was a nice woman and he really had to get a grip.

‘I'm sure that's not true,' he said, his natural good manners returning. ‘And of course, being a mother is the most important job of all.'

‘You're sweet,' she said, smiling and putting a hand on his forearm. ‘So tell me about your screenplay.'

In the kitchen, Marco, Chase and Fabrice were sniffing poppers and dancing to Donna Summer. Poppy burst into peals of laughter as she walked through to get another bottle of champagne out of the fridge.

‘Nothing like conforming to stereotype,' she giggled.

‘Want some, cutie pie?' Fabrice offered her the little brown bottle.

‘Oh, OK, fuck it, why not?' It was her party and she could sniff kiddy drugs if she wanted to. She took a large sniff and felt a huge rush of blood to her head, the disco music suddenly making perfect sense.

‘I feel luuuuur-uuur-uuur-uuuurve,' she sang, dancing around with her arms in the air. ‘I feel luuuurve!'

All three of her newish gay friends followed suit, and they pranced around the kitchen together, like – well, just like gay people on amyl.

‘God, life is great when you're off your tits, isn't it?' Poppy shouted over the music.

‘Hey, looks like I've found the right party,' said Sandra, the vintage-store owner, bursting through the kitchen door. ‘Poppy, doll, you look fabulous!'

‘You too, Sandra,' said Poppy with chemically enhanced feeling. Her new female friend was done up in her own approximation of gangster-chic, in black pin-striped shorts and waistcoat, with PVC over-the-knee boots, her
peroxide-bl
onde hair piled up into a trilby.

‘Guys, this is Sandra …'

‘Hey, Sandra,' said Marco. ‘We met when we shot
Poppy Takes Manhattan
in your
to
-
die-for
store, remember? I'm Marco, the assistant director. And this is my partner, Chase.'

‘Oh, Gaaaaawd, I should have guessed. Way too good looking to be straight, both of ya. Way to go, laws of
what a waste
. And you!' She pointed at Fabrice, who was bare-chested in tight leather pants, his only concession to the dress code a trilby and white bow tie that stood out against his inky black, perfectly smooth chest. ‘No point in asking, huh?'

‘No point at all.' Fabrice grinned, sensing a fellow
outrageous
free spirit. ‘I'm Fabrice.'

‘Well, Sandra, you're in safe hands here,' said Poppy. ‘Help yourself to drinks. I just have to mingle for a couple of minutes …' She was worried about Damian and wanted to check that he was OK. He'd been in a weird mood all night. Actually, all week, if truth be told, ever since coming up against his last brick wall, screenplay-wise. She'd been trying to boost his confidence, telling him how clever he was, that it was only a matter of time. But to no avail, it seemed.