'Do you have any relatives at all? You never talk about them.'
'Jon is my only relative and he's dead.'
'But he wasn't a relative; he was your boyfriend,' I say. 'Where do your mum and dad live? Are they in Paris?'
'We should work out what we're going to do with these scruffy old people,' says Elody, blindly and blatantly ignoring my questions. I'm fascinated by her family now she's refusing to talk about them. I guess once people get to a certain age, like beyond twenty-five, you take them for what they are, and what they've made of themselves, without stopping to think too hard about where they've come from. With Elody, though, I find myself wondering all sorts of things – where are her parents now? Does she see them? What are they like? Why has her late boyfriend had more of an impact on her than her own parents?
'What will your relatives do?' she asks me. 'They're going to end up getting in our way if we don't organise something.'
'Mum and Aunt Maude are going to stay here tonight,' I say, and Elody gasps in amazement. You'd think I'd invited a pack of wolves to stay in the house.
'Surely they can stay in a hotel?'
'No. They're staying in the house.' I feel quite protective now. How absurd would it be for my mum to come and pay a visit and for me to stick her in the local B&B? Elody may have a dysfunctional relationship with her parents but I don't.
'I can lend you the money for a hotel if you want,' she offers.
'Elody, it's not about the money.' How could she think it would be about the money when I've spent literally thousands of pounds on clothes over the past few days? 'I'd like Mum to stay here.' (That's not even true but I'm overcome by a wave of overprotectiveness towards my mother.)
'What will they do while we're at the party tonight?' Elody asks brightly, thinking she's caught me out. Clearly the mad old women can't stay here when we've already arranged to go out.
'They can come with us,' I respond, as much to my own surprise as Elody's. The wave of overprotectiveness I'm feeling towards my mother is now out of all control. It's a tsunami.
'To the party?' This last comment, I should point out, is screamed rather than spoken in a voice that has a rather unattractive shrieky element to it.
'Yep.'
So, the decision has been made, and it appears to be entirely my fault so I can't even complain about it; we're going to the party with Maude and Mum in tow. Furthermore, Elody has offered to style them for the occasion. Already I know that this can't end at all well.
'Sure,' I say, bravely and unwisely, and now I'm sitting here, waiting for emergence of the newly styled women.
'Are you ready?' asks Elody. Then, without waiting for a reply, she swings open the doors separating the bedroom from the huge and very grand dressing room. I'm greeted by a sight that almost moves me to tears. Mum looks like a princess, clad in a simple, long cream dress that does wonders for her figure. It sweeps to the floor making her legs look about three times as long as they do normally. As she moves to leave the room, the silk ripples around her feet, shimmering under the light of the candelabras. The sleeves are long and wide at the ends, adding to the lovely floaty look of the dress. At her neckline, there's a simple necklace and matching earrings, and Elody has draped a caramel-coloured shawl over her shoulders.
'Blimey, Mum!' I say when I see her. I have genuinely never seen her look anything like this good. I see the tears of happiness in her eyes, and feel a wave of affection towards Elody.
'Now, it's Maude,' says Elody with a flourish, and my great-aunt walks out of the room with an exaggerated wiggle designed to make her look sexy (but she just looks drunk). She looks much better than she looked but nowhere near as elegant as Mum. She has on a two-piece lilac-coloured suit with a fox-fur stole and a matching fur hat. To be honest, she looks like something out of the forties, which, according to Elody, is exactly the look Aunt Maude was after. She is wearing an alarming amount of Elody's trademark blood-red lipstick and her eyes have so much make-up on them that she looks a little bruised, as if she got into a fight with the fox before draping it over her shoulders.
'You both look wonderful,' I say, feeling a little dull in my simple black shift dress. 'Shall we go?'
'But we'll be on time!' cries Elody with considerable disdain. 'What will people think of us?'
'Come on; these two don't like staying out too late. If we don't go now, it won't be worth us going at all.'
'OK,' she concedes reluctantly, and we troop off to yet another Friday night party with my new friends on the hill, but this time with Mum and Great-Aunt Maude in tow.
Chapter 13
I know about halfway through the car journey that the decision to bring Mum and Maude to the party is not just 'bad' but probably the 'worst decision I've ever made in my life'. I had no idea that Great-Aunt Maude's incontinence is quite such an issue. I had no idea that Elody had insisted on her wearing these skintight control pants that leave no room for her incontinence pads. I had no idea of anything, looking back. It's not until she begins clawing at her head (which Mum says she always does when she feels stressed – I didn't know that either) and rubbing her hands all over her face that I wake up to the fact that problems are afoot.
'What's wrong, love?' Mum keeps asking, as the smell of old lady urine wafts through the car, clashing with the strong musky perfume favoured by Elody to create a truly offensive aroma.
'Everything all right?' Henry asks, winding down the window.
'Everything's fine, love,' replies my mum, gently stroking Maude's arm. 'We just need to get Maude to the party where she can sort herself out and everything will be fine.' She carries on stroking Maude's arm in such a kind and generous way that I feel almost moved to tears. Well, it's either the stroking or the strong ammonia smell floating through the car that's moving me to tears: one or the other.
We get to the house and Maude climbs out; her hair is standing up on end and her lipstick is smudged right across her face. She looks as if she's been in a drunken brawl. The back of her dress is soaking wet, along with the back seat of the car. I look up at Henry apologetically, but he shrugs my fears aside. 'I'll take it and get it cleaned while you're at the party,' he says. 'It'll be as good as new by the time I pick you up.'
'Thanks,' I say. Rufus's staff truly are some of the nicest people in the world.
Elody has not said a word for the entire journey. She just storms up to the door of Zadine's modern house, and rings the doorbell furiously. The Spice Girls song '2 Become 1' bursts out: a rather nasty tinkly-plinkly doorbell version of it, which is more offensive than the real thing. 'Christ,' says Elody under her breath. 'What on earth are we doing in this place? I mean – Zadine Collins? Why would I – Elody Elloissie – come to a party organised by Zadine Collins? Christ, if ever there was a woman untouched by charm and uncluttered by talent or style it was Zadine bloody Collins . . . Zadine! Darling! So wonderful to see you. How are you? You look wonderful. Fabulous.'
'My God!' exclaims Zadine, looking past the fawning Elody and staring straight at me. I think she's going to get cross with me for bringing such an entourage, but she seems to have hardly noticed them at all. 'You've lost sooo much weight! How are you doing it? Jan and Issy said you were looking thinner but I wasn't expecting you to look so thin. Make sure you don't overdo it; you don't want to lose all those lovely feminine curves of yours.'
Once we're inside, Elody goes storming through the house with her hands in the air, as if to say 'all this is nothing to do with me'. Zadine, meanwhile, is amazing; she's thrilled that I've invited Mum and Maude to the party and even manages not to look too shocked when she catches sight of Maude with her mad hair and crazy lady make-up. She keeps saying things like, 'I'm so glad your mum and Maude could come, especially given who else is here. We should get Maude cleaned up before she meets the special guests though, shouldn't we?'
Maude is having none of it; she's heard the party music and is transported back fifty years to a time when she was the queen of the South Londo
n dance floor. Before any of us can stop her, she's waddled into the sitting room and, with make-up that looks as if it were applied by Alice Cooper, and with the bladder control of a two-year-old, she's leaping around to the music with gay abandon. I glance at Elody and she's making that slice across the neck motion that people do when they want something to end as soon as possible. I can assure her that no one wants this to end more than I.
'Ah, look at her; she's having such fun,' says Mum warmheartedly.
I don't think I ever realised before just how amazing and patient my mum is. In the room there is the usual collection of the rich and well connected, including an older-looking couple, watching from the corner of the room, holding their champagne glasses gingerly by the long stems and glancing with alarm at events taking place before them. I vaguely recognise the woman. She must be an actress; she has that impossibly well-groomed look that so many of these ageing stars have. She looks a little like Jane Fonda; a tiny, little creature with the smallest wrists and the slimmest ankles I've ever seen. Gosh, I bet she was a stunner when she was younger.
Elody walks over to them and they embrace her passionately, kissing her cheek, remarking on her incredibly high shoes, and examining the necklace round her neck. I can imagine the conversation now. 'Oh but, Elody, you always look so perfect. Your jewellery is divine.' People have a habit of noticing, remarking on and admiring Elody without seeming to actually like her that much. You get the feeling that they'd be first in the queue to tell her she looks wonderful, but last in the queue to hold the sick bowl if she was unwell. Not like Mandy and Sophie. I feel so bad about what happened with those two.
Meanwhile, in the middle of the floor, Maude is sitting down with her legs splayed, having overcome the restrictions imposed by the dress by hiking it up to her knees. She's doing that 'rock the boat' song that she says she remembers her children doing at discos when they were younger. She's trying her best to urge the glamorous older couple to join in but, for some inexplicable reason, the prospect of joining an incontinent old lady with mad wiry hair and lipstick all over her face, is not appealing to them in any way. I'm standing there, wondering what to do when Mum walks over to her, helps her to her feet and takes her off towards the door where Zadine is waiting to assist. In front, the two older people are walking towards me. Thank God I've just moved to this area and don't know anyone.
'Hello,' says the lady who's even more glamorous close up. 'You must be Kelly.'
'Yes,' I say, waiting for them to introduce themselves.
'I'm Rufus's mother,' she says with a half-smile. 'It's lovely to meet you at last. Who on earth was the mad woman with the crazy hair?'
Oh God.
Chapter 14
EXCLUSIVE
By Katie Joseph
Daily Post Showbiz Correspondent
Bizarre goings-on in the home of Rufus George! While the actor is away in LA working on his reincarnation as 007, his new live-in lover appears to have turned his mansion into an old people's home. Look at our exclusive pictures taken last night!
These two ancient women, danced around for our cameras before being whisked inside by burly security men who rushed out while sirens raged through the building. They threatened our photographers who were only doing their jobs, and hurled the old ladies into the back of a black car before driving them through the gates. The ruffians then grabbed the camera off one photographer and ran inside with it so the pictures could not be published. But don't worry! We had not one but two photographers there last night, and the other managed to escape from the thugs to bring you these exclusive shots of the two women who look like mental home escapees. Weird? You betcha! Rufus will be wondering what his lovely young lady has been up to while he has been in LA.
Just one more day before Rufus returns and I CAN'T WAIT. My God, I'm just yearning to hold him and kiss him and . . . well, you know what. More than anything, I'm desperate to have him here; away from that horrible bitch from hell Kearney. If I see another picture in the paper of her smooching up to him with her pretty little heart-shaped face aglow and her blonde hair rippling over the shoulders of her painfully thin body, I think I'll scream. Fucking hell. Why did he have to go out there to promote the film? Couldn't he have done it from here?
I could really have done without the pictures of Mum and Maude being splashed all over the papers, with a follow-up story when the paper realised that the two old women they'd captured on camera were two of my closest relations. Then there was Dodgy Dave. I just knew he'd materialise . . . talking about what a 'goer' I was. Christ! My dad was delighted to read that. The drink-driving story came out too. I knew it would. Well, that's not true. I didn't know it would, but I feared it would and had been warned by Rufus that it might well find its way into the public domain. The hard thing about this life is that people write about you, and you have no real right of reply because things are exacerbated if you add your voice to the debate so, basically, there is no debate. Everyone just says what they want about you and, unless it's truly damaging, it's better to lay low than to strike a blow in your defence.
I think all this press intrusion is having a particularly big effect on me because I'm so bored all the time. I stopped working for a month because I just couldn't do it properly so I'm sitting at home, obsessing about everything and everyone.
I'm losing weight, which is the one good thing in all of this, but the drugs are stopping me from sleeping at all. I mean, really; I don't sleep at night any more, I just pace around and go onto Google and terrify myself half to death as I see pictures of Cindy Kearney. I then get caught up in a horrible cycle of depression about the fact that she must be sleeping with Rufus and that prompts me to dig even deeper and to scour the internet for even more pictures and stories about her; all of which appear to confirm my fears that she's much prettier than me, much slimmer, better dressed and with nicer hair than me, and most damning of all . . . far better suited to being with Rufus than I will ever be.
Rufus is back tomorrow . . . tomorrow!!!! The prospect of it is sending shivers right through me. I've come to terms with the fact that my friends (should I call them 'former friends'?) are no longer interested in me, and my life now revolves around these Friday night drinks parties with my 'new' friends. I have been invited to openings and premieres and things like that, but Elody's been a fantastic buffer, and has told Rufus's agent (because all the invitations etc. do tend to go through him) that when offers come in, he's to send them to her and she'll discuss them with me. So far she's rejected them all, saying that Rufus wouldn't like it if I went to them without him, which I guess is fair enough (even though he is always saying that he's happy for me to go if I want to). When they're important events or going to be full of celebrities, Elody has tended to go in my place – which she loves.
I've also come to the terms with the fact that Rufus and I hail from such colossally different backgrounds that it's like we're almost different species. That was obviously thrown into real stark relief when my mum and Maude and his mum, Daphne, and her new husband, Joey, came to the party together. My mum was almost curtseying at Daphne and I saw Daphne take a distinct step back when she was introduced to my mum. We didn't even bother introducing her to Maude; we decided it was easier all round if we just didn't go there.
I didn't say much more to Daphne that night, other than to enquire whether she wanted to stay at the house, and how long she was staying for. It turns out that no, she didn't want to stay at the house, but she was going to be around for a while – for a week, to be precise, at an interior design show and awards evening. 'I'm the host,' she declared proudly.
'Oh please, do come and stay,' I said, thinking that I ought to, for Rufus's sake, make a point of sounding as if I really wanted her to come, but even as I made the offer, Elody was slashing her hand across her neck as if to suggest that would be a really bad idea.
'Darling, don't stay at the house, Kelly has relatives there,' she said in half-whispered, wholly conspiratorial tones to Daphne.
Rufus's mother smiled knowingly, as if to suggest that she understood.
It was all very rude, if you think about it. But that's what these people are . . . they're all rude; there's no other way to describe them. Anyway, it meant Daphne didn't stay at the house and I can't begin to tell you how utterly relieved I was about that. The thought of two sets of relatives coexisting with the staff running around catering to their different demands would have been too much for me to face on my own.
Daphne spent most of the night talking to Elody about clothes; the two of them speaking the same language of trapeze shapes, bell sleeves, eighties retro and 'darling Vivienne, isn't she a scream!' Also hotly debating the role of pleats on the Paris catwalks, and the surprise news that in New York it was all about ruffles. Who knew? Mainly though, Daphne went on and on and on about how much she loved Elody's necklace. There was a rare moment of lightness and humour between Elody and me afterwards when she said, 'Every time I see that woman she goes on about my necklace; it might be less painful if I just gave her the fucking thing.'
God how I wish Rufus was here.
I've spoken to him loads, of course. We have heaps of phone calls and he says he sends lots of texts but I never get any of them. Perhaps texts don't come through when you text from abroad? Anyway, he ends up reading out the texts on the phone in the evening, which is always quite funny.
I remain entirely paranoid about bloody Cindy Kearney, of course, because Elody does go on and on about how pretty she is and how much they used to adore one another, and how everyone thought he'd end up with her, but the thing is, I've been scouring the newspapers and the TV and the internet and I can't find any mention of the fact that the two of them ever went out together.
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