Some Like it Hot

by Amanda Brobyn

  John shook his head as he watched the stunning vision in front of him. He had never come across Jude Westbury in his line of work although he had heard her name mentioned, usually relative to some charity event or other but none relative to this line of work. She was good.

  “If the stairs simply go from back downstairs to back upstairs, they won’t get the benefit of the natural daylight which will be exaggerated by the new floor-to-ceiling windows I’ve got my eye on.”

  As she smiled, her wide mouth shone with pearly whites and her flawless skin was plump with vitality, a cheating youthfulness. Jude didn’t suffer from crow’s feet – her smile spanned across her cheeks without the need to push up the delicate skin beneath her eyes, making her appear younger than she was.

  “What is the world’s most expensive coffee-maker then, Jude? I thought it was a kettle?”

  “No! Although that’s definitely a cheaper option.” She was amused. “Apparently the Concordia Coffee Systems offer the world’s most expensive coffee-machines . . . and what Sophie wants Sophie gets.”

  John took the opportunity to make a sexist joke. “Do you think the blondes will be able to work it? Those machines do require a little intelligence, you know.”

  He saw Jude’s arm extend as a playful slap headed his way.

  “Just kidding honestly!” he added as Jude retreated. “Although if they come in as blondes but go out as brunettes they’d have a better chance of success!”

  Jude shot him a jovial but defensive glance in the name of all the blonde women she knew – Sophie Kane being at the top of her list. She knew really that he was just keeping her going and she liked the natural camaraderie they seemed to share. It helped, given they were to be working together for the coming months.

  Jude was happy. More than happy. Today she felt like she was back in her twenties experiencing a day at the office like she’d never been away. Only she had.

  Jude had told herself in the preceding weeks that she would have to apply what she had learned in the fifteen years as wife, mother and fundraiser to her new role. After all, only a foolish woman would believe that in a life of domesticity she had learned nothing. Jude had learned a great deal, even if the core of that education was the realisation that she needed to break free.

  Helena flung the plethora of bags in the middle of the floor euphorically. She never remembered shopping being such fun but then again, with no money it was hardly fair to call it shopping.

  She and Nathan had done a lot of window shopping. Some Saturdays they would wander into the town centre playing their favourite game of ‘I spy’, but it was ‘I spy’ with a twist. They would browse and pore over the clothes, shoes, toys, games, books and CD’s they wanted and tell the other one ‘I spy that when I win the lottery you can have . . .’ or ‘I spy that when I’m rich and famous I will buy you that ring . . . ’ and Nathan would point to the biggest diamond he could see in the shop window.

  Some days the game worked perfectly for Helena and she walked home linking Nathan in the comfort that one day, when he got his big break, she would be looked after just like Peter looked after Roni. On other days, she would simply stare at him, noting how engrossed he would become in his fabricated mind and this unnerved her. Life seemed to be one massive game to Nathan Bream and it had taken Helena the guts of nine years – six of them living together – to work it out.

  She was losing her touch.

  In the bedroom, the smaller of the two in Sophie’s apartment, Helena ripped off her old clothes, replacing them with the new garments which lay carefully placed on the bed, their tags hanging proudly.

  She yanked on a pair of black skinny jeans which made her look extremely skinny, and Helena decided she would wear them when she was able to fill them out a little more. She scoffed at the irony of others wanting to look skinny, but there was skinny and there was bulimic-looking and she wanted to be back to the size she had been when life was normal and when her relationships were normal. But Helena wasn’t entirely sure what normal was these days.

  Quite often the Curry Club would make a statement or a comment which made her question the stability and mediocrity of the relationsips of her friends as they flagged up issues in their marriage or proposed questions about infidelity. Helena had taken to normalising her own unusual affairs with Nathan because of this. But it was only when she felt him squeezing her hand while simultaneously scouring the contents of her mind that she recognised she had narrowed the gap between trying to put a positive slant on things and being completely evasive of the cold hard facts. That night she had been scared for the first time. Nathan had ranted and raved before and she’d taken it on the chin – he was always throwing his toys out of the pram and Helena knew this was par for the course. But when he had grasped her hand in his and penetrated her with that look, she knew he was trying to get inside her mind and transfer her thoughts into his. It had felt that way. His controlling streak had become more and more evident to Helena, yet strangely enough she had no real evidence to corroborate it.

  After what she had done that day there was no way she would have permitted anyone to enter into her psyche. She had closed down her mind, emptying it of evidence. She knew she would never be proud of her actions – that she could be sure of – but one day when she could, Helena knew she would be able to put things right. It was all very short-term.

  “That’s the last of his stuff.” Kath sniffed at James whose eyes had welled and dried repeatedly in the past half hour.

  Kath had rewashed and ironed every item of Jason’s and packed them with unusual precision in his holdall. She barely ironed her own clothes – didn’t see the point – but if she was going to throw her son from his family home to teach him a lesson in tough love, temporary as she hoped it was, then she needed to make sure he knew it was done with care and that her actions were for the best. Not at all bitter.

  There wasn’t too much to pack in addition to his clothes and shoes which were mainly trainers. Just an iPod, DVD player, Wii and an eclectic mix of DVD’s.

  James lifted the bag into the boot of Neil’s Ford Focus. He turned to his wife. “Is that definitely it, love?”

  Kath could do little else but nod. She needed to keep it in for James’ sake. She was the strong one of the two. Hadn’t he been through enough?

  James slammed down the hatchback, giving three loud thumps on the glass window using the palm of his hand and he watched as the car rolled down the narrow driveway.

  It turned left towards Sentry Drive and Kath hoped that Norma would not be standing in the window as normal, watching the comings and goings of the street like she so often did.

  Inside the house was quiet. It was always quiet in fairness but this time they felt it because they had made it that way.

  Kath wondered how long it would be before Jason was back with them. She hoped it was temporary but she was enough of a realist to know that unless her youngest son grew into the man they hoped he would become, there was little hope of him moving back in. The stakes were too high. Their sanity was on the line.

  Over the past year, Kath had noticed ten pounds here, twenty pounds there missing, and each time she had scolded her deluded self for miscounting or carelessly squandering her funds. But when she placed the money she was saving under the bottom right-hand corner of the mattress only to find that it had disintegrated like it was made from delicate tissue, she knew in her heart that her gut instinct had been right all along. Her son was a thief. The stolen money she could cope with, but he had stolen her heart too and stolen the comfort of their perfect family unit from under all of their feet.

  The phone shrilled and Kath rushed into the hall.

  “Hello?”

  She slumped down on the bottom stair. It wasn’t Jason. He’d only just left, she was being silly.

  “Hi, Helena. We’re okay thanks. Holding together well given the circumstances. How are you?” Kath listened with interest as Helena spoke and her face lit up. “Okay, just a minute, I’
ll ask him.”

  She yelled to James who was watching the football.

  “Jim, do you mind if I go out with Helena for a few drinks?”

  The dense chant of football was muted and the silence kicked in. “No, love, you go for it!” he shouted back at her.

  Kath needed a pick-me-up and right now Helena was so positive and vivacious that Kath hoped she might be infected with her new enthusiasm for life. Not that she wanted new, she wanted old. She wanted things to be just as they had been before her sticky-fingered son began helping himself to other people’s cash. She quickly wondered when it had started. Had she neglected to provide him with sufficient material and immaterial things? Had she turned a blind eye to his basic needs, brushing them off as luxury items as she so often did? Kath pushed the negative post mortem out of her mind as she listened to an exuberant Helena desperate for a night out to catwalk her new fashion items.

  “He’s fine with it, Helena. Where shall I meet you?”

  Her eyebrows rose to full height as she digested the instructions from her friend. “Do you know how expensive the drinks are there, Helena?” Kath gasped. “Have you won the lottery or something?”

  Inside, the bar was the vanguard of fashion. Without a doubt it was the most modern, stylish bar Kath had ever stepped foot in and she felt immediately underdressed compared with Helena who towered above her in five-inch show-stopping heels. She looked like a runway model who had just stepped off a Parisian catwalk and Kath saw the heads turn to gawp at the new face about town.

  In the centre of the bar was a feature fire place, built within a white granite surround which extended as far as the ceiling. Its fake logs crackled away imaginatively and the heat radiated throughout, warming the clientele in addition to the heat from the fermented alcohol they were readily consuming.

  The drinks tables were high – round glass table-tops held up by beech-coloured leggy tripods. They appeared to be very stable for such a simplistic design as drinks were slammed down on them with alarming clumsiness.

  The tall white-leather retro bar stools dotted around each of the tables oozed a bright, clean look – if not a little sterile – while the orange and red flames reflected against the white backdrop, adding light and warmth against their paleness.

  Helena took Kath’s hand and squeezed it. She was alive and kicking. She felt like she had shaken off the remnants of dirt and scrubbed away any remaining excess until all traces of the old Helena Wright had been washed away. She had stared down the plughole of Sophie’s pristine white bath, watching as fragments of her old life disappeared. She didn’t care if the underground sucked it away and took it on a dirty and perilous journey. She would never see it again.

  “Those people are going, Kath.” Helena pointed to a table close to the open fire. “You grab that and I’ll get the drinks.”

  Kath headed to the table, standing back politely until the young fashionistas had gathered their belongings and left without feeling hurried.

  “Thanks very much.”

  “Enjoy your night,” the tanned dark-haired girl said kindly.

  “I will, I’m not paying!”

  The girls laughed as they headed towards the manned exit where the suited doorman bade them farewell.

  Helena lifted the clasp of her new sequined clutch bag. The small decoration of sequins matched perfectly with the sequined design on the rear pocket of her black jeans. She had caved in and worn the skinny jeans. So what if she looked a little too thin? Wasn’t it better than looking a little too fat? She felt the influence of Sophie Kane beneath her shallow thoughts.

  Helena scoured the place for familiar faces. She was relieved to see that there were none. Nobody but senior bank management would be able to afford the prices of The Front Room anyway so she had no risk of bumping into anyone from work. Although she need not worry, she was on annual leave, it wasn’t as though she was skiving off or anything. She hadn’t taken her holidays last year because she was hoping to be paid for them, but the bank insisted that she take some and carry some over, so Helena had started off the year with six weeks leave and had taken only two days so far.

  The fortnight off would do her the world of good.

  She might even apply for a promotion when she returned to work.

  “Champagne!” Kath clapped her hands with glee. “Oh wow! You certainly do know how to take my mind off things, Hel. Are we celebrating something that I should know about? You’ve taken over Jude’s new job? Sophie’s salon?”

  Helena looked at Kath pointedly. “Life,” she said lucidly. “I’m discovering the joie de vivre that I never thought I’d feel again, Kath, and it’s all because I got whacked on the head in some taxi and had a bit of common sense knocked into me.” She laughed at the stupidity of her own remarks but it really had felt like that. When she had rubbed her head, dazed and shaken, something had immediately felt different.

  “Here’s to you, love! You deserve a stroke of luck after the tough couple of years you’ve had.”

  Their glasses chinked together and they drank.

  “So what’s the latest with Jason then?” Helena groaned as the bubbles slid down her throat.

  “He’s out. Neil’s taken him in.” Kath lifted the glass to her mouth as a distraction.

  Helena could see that she was hurting inside. She knew what it felt like to want someone but for them not to want you back.

  “What are his plans, do you know?”

  Kath shook her head. “He needs to get a job, Helena. Without one he won’t have any money and he’ll just find other ways of getting it.” She clasped her unpainted fingers tightly around the glass. “I can only hope it’s just James and me he’s taken from and not anyone else. He really would be behind bars if that were the case.”

  Helena nodded slowly, her expression nonchalant. She listened well, it was part of her make-up, but she also knew Kath was in need of a little light entertainment and that the distraction would do her good.

  “Hungry?”

  “I’m always hungry . . . this body never stops!”

  “La-la-la-la!” Helena put her fingers in her ears.

  “I’m not talking about sex!”

  They laughed like teenagers as Helena picked up the tapas menu and they ‘ooed’ and ‘aahed’ their way through it.

  Kath giggled at her friend. She always knew that Helena was comical – when she wanted to be – but tonight, infused with fizzy pop, she had done a great job of making her laugh even if some of it was at her own expense.

  “Okay, what about this, Kath? Olives. Humous and pitta bread, handcooked cracked-black-pepper kettle chips . . . washed down with another bottle of pop?”

  Kath was amazed. “The other week, Hel, you couldn’t even buy yourself a new pair of shoes. What the hell has happened to you because I’ll have some of the same!”

  “I’ve dumped that dickhead for starters, leaving him knee deep in a shitload of bills, all of which I stupidly paid for him for way too long, and I am now living in a luxury waterside apartment.” She cleared her throat for effect. “Rent free, might I add, with my best friend. It’s a simple as that.” She added. “I do all the cleaning for Sophie and as much cooking as possible, although that’s easy given she barely eats. All this as long as I save hard for a deposit for my own place. That’s her only rule.”

  “She’s a saviour.” Kath digested the facts, marvelling at how the young woman had been transformed before her very eyes. “She’s all bark and no bite, that girl.”

  “She is, Kath, but you know we’ve been best friends since we were tiny. We know all there is to know about each other.”

  “What’s there to know about Sophie that isn’t already transparent? That girl is as see-through as a piece of cellophane.”

  Helena looked away sharply. “I’ll go order this stuff then, shall I?”

  “What are we doing today then?” asked Karl as he took the clamp from Roni’s tired hair. He handed it to her, desperate to remove it from his own
stylish person. He didn’t wait for an answer. “We’re getting rid of that thing for starters!” He laughed. “It’s not exactly the accessory I expected from such an elegant-looking woman.”

  Karl was deliberately sweet-talking Roni. He knew all there was to know about her from Sophie and, much as he tried to dislike her as a loyal offering to his friend, he simply couldn’t. On the contrary, although they had only met ten minutes earlier, he found her shy, nervous and intriguing. There was something about her that was much deeper than her disjointed facade and he was looking forward to conversing with her over the next couple of hours.

  “I don’t know too much about hair.” Roni looked at Karl through the huge circular mirror in front of her. “I’m happy for you to suggest something. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a hairdresser’s to tell you the truth. I tend to do it myself . . .” Roni looked down. She fixed the black cape around her knees, covering her clothes protectively.

  “I can see that,” he teased her.

  Roni was nervous about today but Sophie had been a dream when she had asked for her help. She offered her right-hand man with no hesitation and Roni knew the faith that Sophie had in his creative ability. She was extremely pleased, if not a little unnerved at how kind Sophie had been of late. She had helped Helena out, offered Jude the career lifeline she had been waiting for, and Roni had heard through the grapevine that she had lent a listening ear to Kath in her hour of need. Right now, it appeared that Sophie Kane was the glue holding the Curry Club together.

  Perhaps though, thought Roni, it was she herself who was changing and not Sophie Kane? Maybe she was seeing things differently – for what they were – instead of finding fault and flaws. Life certainly did seem a little less tense and less bleak than it used to but she still needed a hell of a lot of work. The road was long.

  “How precious are you about the blonde colour, Roni?” Karl placed his hands on Roni’s shoulders as he leaned in to talk to her. He noticed how she shrank ever so slightly into her seat at his touch and he made a mental note to keep his usual tactile approach at bay. He wanted nothing more than for his new client to relax and enjoy the ceremony before she was duly crowned and suitably sent home as the new queen. He noticed that like many members of the Royal family, she too had slightly horsey features about her and she was also, like many of them in his opinion, both plain and yet strangely striking at the same time.