A Nice Cup of Tea

by Celia Imrie

  Sally pointed towards the corner and the sign reading ‘Toilettes’.

  The four teenaged children trooped off in the direction of the facilities.

  ‘I know you,’ said the wife, staring at Phoo Markham, sitting at the adjacent table. ‘You’re on the telly, aren’t you? Isn’t she, Danny? She’s famous. She’s on the telly.’

  ‘How lovely to be recognised so far away from home.’ Phoo gave a sickly-sweet smile of acknowledgement. ‘And might I say, what a charming family you have, my dear.’

  Sally watched while the woman continued to simper and coo over Phoo, then turned on her heels and disappeared into the kitchen to take a few deep breaths.

  ‘What are you doing in here?’

  ‘Taking a mini-break. What does it look like?’

  ‘Fine. So you won’t mind if I go in and introduce myself to La Belle Tropézienne.’ Benjamin took off his apron and waltzed past Sally, heading into the dining room.

  After a moment or two gathering herself, Sally moved after him.

  By the time Sally reappeared, the shell-suit family were all seated back in place, holding up menus which hid their faces.

  Another group of six stood waiting at the door, near the desk.

  The man held up six fingers.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Sally. ‘But tonight, as you see, we’re full.’

  The group grimaced a look of disappointed resignation and left.

  Wishing that the latter party of six had arrived a few minutes earlier, Sally took the order pad and walked across to the English family.

  ‘A few more minutes.’ Danny lowered his menu. ‘We’re still deciding. You know kids. Could we have that jug of water, please. Just tap will do. Adam’s Ale. None of that fancy stuff you charge a fortune for.’

  As Sally turned, Phoo threw her a look of sympathetic pity and stage-whispered, ‘Poor Salz! What a busy night.’ She grabbed Sally’s hand. ‘We’ve been laughing with your friend Benjamin about how funny you were in those dark, distant days when you thought you wanted a career in acting.’

  Phoo gave a throaty laugh.

  As Sally walked away, she noticed that Benjamin was now grovelling on one knee before Eggy and Odile as though they were the King and Queen of Fairyland on the verge of granting him three wishes.

  In the kitchen once more, as she stood at the sink, filling the jug, Sally let out a growl, which caused William to fall into a fit of giggles.

  Sally then smoothed down her apron, and returned to the shell-suit table where she poured out six glasses of water.

  ‘Two more minutes, please,’ said Danny. ‘Such a lot of choice!’

  Another table hailed Sally over to the far side of the room for their bill. Simultaneously Odile jangled her bracelets and demanded three coffees, express. She suggested that they should come with petits fours.

  Before Sally could reply Benjamin told her that they did. ‘Believe me, Odile,’ he gave her a winsome smile which Sally imagined he had practised at the mirror, believing it to be cute – personally such sycophancy made her want to vomit, ‘Sally will bring you a plate of petits fours to die for.’ Beaming from ear to ear, he then swanned off back to the kitchen.

  Sally managed not to say out loud, ‘And with any luck they will choke you.’ She hastily placed the bill on the nearby table and retired once again to the kitchen to fetch the coffees . . . and the petits fours.

  ‘What’s bitten you tonight?’ asked Benjamin. ‘Everyone is so famous and glamorous. And you actually know two of them! If I had famous friends I’d be over the moon.’

  As she poured the coffees Sally gritted her teeth. Benjamin was right. She did seem to be in a foul mood all the time these days. She wondered what was wrong with her. She felt stupid and hurt. It was how she remembered feeling in the school playground. But how could she have let two people from her past get to her like this? She was happy with her life out here. Wasn’t she? She’d escaped from an unhappy marriage and divorce and regained her independence here in Bellevue-sur-Mer. And yet, in just a few days, her whole outlook had changed so violently. She had been perfectly content until that stupid mosaic medallion failed to bring in the promised fortune. How shallow had she become? And these two shadows from her past were probably the only people in the business who had made her feel so small. No other job cast a shadow. But it was all so long ago. She was no longer a lowly assistant stage manager. They couldn’t report her to the company manager and get her sacked. If they wanted to carry on living in the past, that was fine. But she was the person with a lovely house here and a life full of sunshine and great friends. She must pull herself together and make the most of everything she had now, rather than suffering for a world of long ago.

  When she got back to the dining room, she was just in time to catch the shell-suited family of six trooping out into the street, sated after their free and gratis water and lavatory break. ‘We don’t like any of this stuff you serve here,’ Danny’s wife called over her shoulder. ‘We really wanted a kebab, not this foreign muck.’

  It took every ounce of self-control Sally possessed not to crash the tray of coffee down on to the mosaic floor and stand there screaming till she passed out.

  As she approached the Markhams, Sally caught Phoo and Odile giggling into their hands.

  Calm! Calm!

  But it was impossible.

  She plonked the coffees down.

  ‘No need to take it out on us, old girl,’ said Eggy. ‘A simple glance at that lot, you could tell that this place was not for them. They were hardly sophisticated. You should have told them where to go before you let them sit down.’

  ‘You were caught, love,’ interjected Phoo.

  ‘Candid Camera and all that.’ Eggy mimed taking a picture. ‘Gotcha!’

  ‘Taken in by some very common people. Taken in, my love, hook, line and stinker.’ Phoo laughed as she slurped her coffee. ‘But, poor old Salzy. As I recall, you always were a teeny bit slow on the uptake.’ She turned to Odile and cooed intimately, ‘Sally used to be our stage manager, Odile . . . but she never quite got the hang of it.’ She turned back to Sally. ‘And in those days Sally was rather pudgy. Weren’t you, darling? You’ve done ever so well, you know. All this rushing around, serving at tables, has taken off pounds.’

  ‘We’ll have la addition now, please, old girl,’ said Eggy, brushing the crumbs down his bulging shirt front. ‘Tempus fugit and all that. And we have an early start tomorrow.’

  ‘Sparrow’s fart,’ added Phoo. ‘Plus, I have a few frightfully important phone calls to make. Entre nous, I’m angling after a very juicy film role. And I’m pretty confident that I’ll be a shoo-in.’

  Sally trudged back to the desk to print out their bill. She hoped that, once they’d paid, the Markhams and friend would quietly disappear never to be seen again.

  But it was a good half hour before they left the restaurant. Odile queried every item on the bill, before finally agreeing to pay two-thirds of the actual cost.

  ‘So, I hear through the grapevine that this restaurant’s up for sale,’ she laughed. ‘And no wonder!’

  TWELVE

  Take-off was delayed ‘due to staff shortages’, meaning that Theresa’s plane didn’t touch the runway at Nice Côte d’Azur airport till a few minutes before 1 a.m. Despite sitting squashed between a boy who spent the whole journey crunching his way through jumbo packs of crisps, and a woman listening to a beeping kind of electro-pop music through leaky headphones, for most of the flight Theresa managed to get some sleep, slightly relieved by the knowledge that it was not some fat, bald old paedophile who had lured Chloe away, just a boy at her school. But teenagers were unpredictable and the situation was far from over.

  Bleary-eyed, she shuffled through customs, and went out on to the forecourt where she climbed into a cab to take her home to Bellevue-sur-Mer. She knew that a taxi ride of that distance would cost around 100 euros, but at this time of night what other way did she have to get home?

 
Chloe’s disappearance was turning out to be not only a disturbing but an expensive business, to be sure.

  The ride home was much too fast and swervy for Theresa’s liking. But, when the driver eventually skidded to a stop outside her front door, she found she didn’t have the right money in small notes. The driver claimed not to have the right change, leaving Theresa no option but to overtip him wildly.

  She watched the tail lights of the taxi disappear up the hill as she let herself into the dark flat.

  It was strange. Even before she stepped inside she thought that the place felt different.

  Above all, there was a lingering smell of aftershave.

  She flicked on the lights.

  As she shoved the door open, a pile of rose petals spread themselves across the Welcome mat.

  How had they got there? Had someone been in here while she was away? Who had keys?

  Only Sally, and she wasn’t the rose-petal-delivery type.

  Or had they just been emptied through the letterbox?

  Nervously Theresa moved further into the flat. ‘Hello?’

  Tiptoeing around, slamming open the wardrobe doors, she checked every cranny to make sure she was alone.

  She inspected the small back yard, too, even though the only ways anyone could get into it were by coming through her flat as she had done, or by jumping from a window in the Hotel Astra or the upstairs flat.

  She peered up into the darkness. Most of the windows which looked out on the courtyard were small – probably lavatory windows, except in the hotel; but you’d really have to be very fit to make that jump and land one piece. And then, how would you get up there again?

  As Theresa moved back inside, still looking up behind her towards the yard, she heard a great thump coming from somewhere near the front door.

  She froze.

  What was that?

  Breathing heavily, she took a few tentative steps into the living room.

  Another thump.

  Then a blood-curdling scream.

  She dashed through the living room and stood beside the front door, ready to open up and run for it.

  She could hear footsteps above her. She glanced at her watch. Almost 2 a.m.

  Perhaps it was a tourist, renting the flat, packing for an early flight. They would have to leave soon if they were booked on the first flights out of Nice at 5 a.m.

  A diabolic laugh from above.

  What was going on?

  She could hear a woman’s voice now, pleading. She sounded terrified.

  The man laughed again and once more a loud thump.

  Silence.

  Barely daring to breathe, Theresa opened the latch on her front door and went out into the street to take a look up at the windows of the flat above.

  The curtains were drawn, but a sliver of light spilled through the gap.

  Theresa looked around her.

  No one was in the street, and the lights in every building except the flat above her own were extinguished.

  The only sound was the gentle wash of waves rattling the pontoon.

  Should she go and knock at her upstairs neighbours’ door?

  Where would that place her? What if he was in the middle of killing a woman? Would a murderer let her go so that she could run to the police?

  On the other hand, what if it was a couple involved in some sex game? Everyone had read that Fifty Shades book. And Theresa had read that, since it first came out, sales of velvet handcuffs and whips had gone stratospheric …

  The lights upstairs went off. Silence reigned. Whatever they had been up to, they were now clearly settling down for the night.

  Theresa moved discreetly back into her own apartment.

  Once safely inside, she went straight through to the bedroom and flopped down on the bed.

  Her phone beeped.

  She sat up and pulled it out of her handbag. It was a text from Imogen: ‘Have you arrived yet?’

  Sally had tossed and turned for hours, blushing with horror at how small she felt whenever the Markhams mocked her. It was just like being back at school, being picked on by the playground bullies. But she had to get back the old rhino-hide. Just because these two treated her like a walking joke who’d been completely useless at the job, that wasn’t to say she hadn’t been a good actress. She had had nominations, won awards and been showered with wonderful reviews from national newspapers to prove it. So why did it matter so much?

  Sally realised that it was because it affected her life now, her life here in Bellevue-sur-Mer. It was as though the Markhams had arrived here, moved among her friends and constructed a totally new past for her. And now her current friends looked at her differently.

  She was disappointed in Benjamin.

  He had not helped her situation by being quite so obsequious with them.

  Sally turned over and curled up into a ball. She hadn’t felt so low since those grim days which followed her husband dying in his secretary’s bed.

  If she hadn’t felt such emptiness, she would have cried herself to sleep. Instead she lay awake until she drifted off into a nightmare in which Odile de la Warr, wearing a black witch costume and armed with a pair of flashing silver Japanese kitchen knives, was chasing her through a dark, moonless forest.

  The phone rang.

  Sally opened her eyes, thankful to have escaped from the dream.

  ‘Allô?’

  ‘It’s William.’

  Sally flopped back into the pillows, dreading what he had to say that was so important.

  ‘Well, dear, you made a right cock-up of tonight. Benjamin and I have been discussing it for the last hour, and we both feel assured that a good mention by Odile de la Warr in one of those local magazines would have got the whole project rolling again. Instead we get another anonymous one-star diatribe. Odile obviously hated the whole experience and, thanks to you, the night was a disaster . . . And now we’re a laughing stock. And, yes, Sally, before you jump in to make excuses for yourself, I do lay it all at your clumsy feet.’

  Sally tried to get a word in, but William was on a roll.

  ‘And as for those two theatrical types with her . . . Handled properly they might have given us a bit of prestige too. Not to mention the faux pas of the night . . . What were you thinking letting those awful chavs in, and losing us a whole table for the last service? This is not working out, Sally. You’ve bolloxed up the Shore-to-Ship deliveries, you couldn’t hack it for your one night in the kitchen, and now you’ve proved you cannot manage the heat of working front of house. So tell me: what can you do?’

  ‘I don’t know why every disaster turns out to be my fault.’ Sally felt seriously aggrieved and wished they could be shot of the restaurant tonight and never have to set eyes upon it again. ‘I was too pressed. Where was Carol? That’s what I’d like to know. It was too much to manage on my own.’

  ‘Poor Carol is still stuck up in La Turbie.’

  ‘What on earth is she doing up there?’

  ‘That’s another thing which counts against you. You’ve broken the delivery van, putting an end to one of the most lucrative parts of our failing enterprise.’

  ‘What are you talking about now?’

  ‘The van broke down up in La Turbie. According to the man who came to fix it, “somebody” forgot to put in any oil.’

  ‘I did put in oil. Last week.’ Sally sat upright again. Why was Carol trying to frame her? She thought they were friends.

  ‘Well, there was none in the engine tonight, and as a result the gearbox or the bearings or the big end or something has gone to hell. My brain clouds over when anyone talks about technical things to do with cars. But I understand money and the repair bill comes to nine hundred euros plus tax.’

  Sally gasped.

  ‘Exactly. That’s yet more dosh draining out of La Mosaïque’s dwindling coffers. Or should I say empty coffers. The only thing we appear to be accumulating at the moment is debt and bad will. And now the choice is a new van, or hiring one for the fo
reseeable future. Oh, and paying Carol’s hotel bill for tonight. She’s stuck. The last bus left La Turbie at six p.m. and there’s no other way home but taxi, which would cost double the price of the B&B.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say, William. I’m sorry. Really.’ Sally sighed. What else could she do? Tonight she hated everything and everyone, including herself. ‘If I had any money I’d resign my share right now and pay for my escape.’

  ‘Dream on, love. The only income you have is us. And until that van repair is paid off, your pay is docked. Face it, Sally. You are a flop. Anyway – see you tomorrow, if you can be arsed to get off your backside and come in to work.’

  Sally put down the phone, laid her head back on the pillow and cursed the world.

  Her phone rang again.

  She picked up.

  ‘Just bugger off and leave me alone to get some sleep now, all right?’

  ‘Sally? It’s Theresa.’

  ‘Oh, sorry.’ For the moment Theresa’s predicament had entirely gone out of Sally’s head. ‘Any news of Chloe?’

  ‘No. But I’m back home. Down the road.’

  Sally froze. She hoped this was not really bad news.

  ‘Chloe is somewhere here, in France. And we think she’s in this area. It turns out it was some schoolboy she’s run away with, not a bald fat man, after all. I know it doesn’t make it that much better, but at least it’s not some mad old paedophile.’

  Sally wondered why Theresa was phoning at two in the morning to tell her this.

  ‘I just wondered, Sally.’ Theresa lowered her voice. ‘While I was away have you let anyone into my flat?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You didn’t give my keys to anyone?’

  ‘No. They’re hanging up in the cupboard in the restaurant cellar. I saw them there tonight. Someone had left me a pink rose and a heart.’

  ‘That’s strange,’ said Theresa. ‘That’s why I thought someone had been in my flat. There are pink rose petals by my door.’

  ‘Carol did see some man hovering around outside yesterday,’ said Sally. ‘He was worried about the acoustics or something.’