Later that afternoon, when Charlie Lappin summoned me to his office, I realized that my feelings for the editor in chief had changed since my encounter with Linda Ross. If Charlie was friends with Pippa, and Pippa was friends with Linda Ross, then surely Charlie and Linda were friends as well? And if they were, wasn’t it doubly cruel of Charlie to betray the poor woman?
“Oh, hallo there,” said Rebecca when I came in with a mild and, I hoped, unreadable expression on my face. “We’re just getting the next few issues sorted and wanted to fill you in.”
“We’re doing à celebrity weight-gain special next month,” Charlie said. “Should be a slap-up issue, with loads of salad dodgers’ jiggles and cellulite, a wrap-up of the top diet pills, and a sidebar on chubby chasers.”
I no longer tried to translate a word of what he said and asked only, “But didn’t we just do a weight-loss issue shaming overzealous dieters? Won’t readers think that’s hypocritical?” I forced a chuckle to balance out the criticism.
Charlie shook his head. “That was donkeys’ years ago—who can remember a full fortnight back?”
“In any event, we’ve plenty to work on in the interim,” Rebecca said gravely. “Most crucially, our coverage of the BAMYs next week. Surely you’re aware of how huge the BAMYs are?” When I didn’t answer, she went on, “They’re our Grammys, only bigger, since almost nobody bothers about the other awards shows. Most of our staffers will be doing the same old routine—waiting until the celebs are well in their cups to chat them up.”
Charlie broke in here: “But since you, Mimi, possess such an exciting raw talent, we’ve conceived a task commensurate with your skills. So, do you think you’ll be up to shadowing Jacquetta Schloss? All our stories are about how brilliant and nice she is. Tit boring, if you ask me, particularly when Sizzle just ran a smashing exposé on—”
“I saw it,” I told him. Who in the office hadn’t read our rival publication’s damning report on Jacquetta stealing the cricket-player boyfriend of “supermodel” (unknown outside the U.K.) Jemina Cochrane?
“We need something even more massive,” Rebecca said. “Can you manage?”
“Of course!” I said, surprised by the enthusiasm in my voice. Five minutes ago, I’d been ready to quit this whole job—but that was before Charlie Lappin had singled me out for my “exciting raw talent.” The only catch that occurred to me then had nothing to do with morality: “But I don’t have a ball gown.”
“We’re not that daft,” Charlie said. “Nobody’s expecting you to be traveling with your trousseau. Becky here has rooms full of clothes given to her gratis by loads of fab designers. She’s run up and down the scale, and been every size this side of Winston Churchill.” He turned to chuckle at his deputy, whose face had gone as red as a strawberry. “Becky, you’ll lend her something suitable, won’t you, love?”
Rebecca, looking as if she’d swallowed a slug, nodded weakly.
After work, Anthony, Decca, Sophie, Nicholas, and I squeezed into a taxi to the Porthole. Sophie spent much of the cab ride rhapsodizing about her favorite holiday of the year: “. .. All the rellies from Henley come up, and we just stuff our faces with choccy oranges . . . and on Boxing Day Mum makes her roast venison . . .”
“Aren’t you the lucky one,” said Decca. “We go to Clapham Common and watch my dad in the carol singing. Then Uncle George starts singing along and Aunt Fiona tells him he sounds like a chipmunk and they have it out with each other in front of all the little children. It’s more excruciating every year.”
Anthony sat next to me, his elbow jutting into my rib cage—by accident or design, I couldn’t make out. At one point, he pulled a full-face lamb mask over his skull and declared, “It’s diabolically hot in here!” Almost immediately, he peeled the mask off again and pushed it on top of his head.
“A lamb?” Sophie sounded appalled. “I don’t see what you’re playing at. What does a lamb have to do with Christmas?”
“You’ve seen the nativity scene,” Anthony answered. “I’m the sheep.” He leaned into my ear and proceeded to bah.
Outside the hotel, we stepped out of the cab into a blinding flash of light. “That one was for the wife,” Ian called out to me. “She’s keen to see how the snowman worked out.” With that he trotted off, promising he’d find us later.
I was expecting Anthony to abandon me once we were inside as per custom, but that night he was in an uncharacteristically attentive mood. “What’ll you have,” he asked, “mulled wine or a bit of nog?” I chose the former—I hated eggnog, even as an ice cream flavor—and sat down next to him on a brown leather sofa that ran perpendicular to the bar.
Next to us on the couch, Zoe, who was usually too busy breaking celebrity news to look up from her computer, had kicked up her legs and was singing along to “White Christmas” with Sophie. Anthony and I remained seated after the two of them left for the bathroom. He did get up frequently, but only to fetch more drinks—mostly, as usual, for himself. By the time I’d finished my first cup, he was already on his fourth, and I once again reflected with amazement that Anthony, at twenty, was still below the legal drinking age in America. He already seemed to have decades of practice under his belt.
“What, you’ve never seen an open bar before?” I teased.
“Whoever mixed this batch did a crap job,” he said, frowning at his nearly finished eggnog. “I think they forgot to add the alcohol.”
It was odd how attention-deficit-disorder Anthony stayed so focused all evening—and even odder that I was his focus. Only once did I catch him checking out another girl, and that was Vanessa Daniels, a former Miss London who now did weather on one of the breakfast TV shows.
We giggled together as we watched Rebecca Bridgewater being courted by Terry O’Connor, a hirsute radio DJ who, as Anthony explained, had split from his wife—“his childhood sweetheart, mind you”—after she caught him sending erotic text messages to their twenty-one-year-old nanny. “There was a big to-do in the press, typically,” Anthony told me, “and he was so gutted he publicly vowed never to look at another woman again.”
Terry was now swaying his hips and lifting Rebecca’s hand high in the air, trying to cajole her into dancing with him. Decca was pushing Rebecca toward her suitor, encouraging her to “Go on, go on.”
To the techno version of “Winter Wonderland” blaring overhead, Rebecca started wagging her hips, joining Terry,in a racy variation on the salsa. “I can’t watch this,” Anthony said, shielding his eyes as he tugged me to my feet.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
He made no answer as he piloted me down a corridor and toward a dark phone booth. Before I could get my bearings, Anthony drew me into the booth and used his foot to pull the door closed. The back of his hand brushed my arm, and my stomach went completely squishy. “Is this where you bring your sources for tips?” I asked in a pathetic attempt to sound adult and collected.
Still without answering, Anthony leaned against the door and pulled me close. He administered a sloppy kiss to my cheek, then readjusted his mask, which was sliding up his head. His breath smelled of nutmeg as he moved his lips to my eyelid, then my forehead, then my other lid, and my other cheek, all with the methodical motions of a clock. Finally he placed his mouth on my lips and, after such delicate preparation, rammed his tongue right down my throat. His movements were rapid and confident, his tongue spinning like a helicopter blade inside my mouth. As I struggled to keep up, I found it difficult to lose myself in the moment: the mingled taste of eggnog and alcohol was too overpowering.
Then, just as abruptly as he had begun, Anthony scooted back an inch and yanked the lamb mask back down over his face. “Right, then,” he said through the mouth slit. “Shall we return to the festivities?”
Dizzily, I followed him back to the main room. I still couldn’t figure out if I’d enjoyed the experience. Maybe I’d need another test drive to decide.
Hide-and-Go-Stalk
I SPLURGED ON A BLACK CAB H
OME, my first since the trip from Stansted. It must have rained while Anthony and I were in the phone booth, for outside the slick streets reflected streetlights in blurry orbs. My head felt just as blurry as I tried to unscramble the events of the last few hours, but it was too much for me, and the three boys I had ever kissed (Sam, Boris, now Anthony) smeared together into a weird hallucination on the ride through London.
Blomfield Road was gorgeous in the foggy evening. The vines and droopy flowers that clung to the sides of the big white houses glistened with dew. I let myself inside, but instead of going straight upstairs I ambled to the back of the kitchen and unlatched the broad French doors that led into the garden. Robin Fox, an avid gardener, had after long deliberation positioned his new wrought-iron bench directly next to the jasmine blossoms. I took a seat there and breathed in the fruits of his hard work, thinking how remarkable it was that any corner of such a loud city could smell so sweet.
I leaned back into the cold metal of the bench and closed my eyes, thinking about my fifteen minutes in the phone booth with Anthony and wondering if he’d been drunker than usual. I had trouble conjuring his face without elements of Sam and Boris grafting themselves onto it: Sam’s reddish brown eyebrows, arched in ironic disapproval; Boris’s electroshocked hair, poking skyward.
And sitting there, I felt a flaring up of anger at Boris. If he’d been a less incompetent long-distance boyfriend, I’d never have followed Anthony into that phone booth. But I had, and though I wasn’t sure if I’d had any fun in there, I certainly didn’t regret the experience. No, instead I felt proud, vindicated almost, after a summer of Boris’s slights. Anthony was hot, possibly the hottest male who had ever paid attention to me. He was also witty, clever, and a far more experienced kisser than Boris and Sam combined. And, of course, he had the best accent ever.
Suddenly, there was a shriek from the kitchen. “Lulu! My God, Lulu darling!”
I opened my eyes to see Pippa standing at the threshold of the door I had left open, and, just like that, I understood. Oh God. How many times had I been told? In the Foxes’ household, there was only one rule: Never, ever, ever let poor maimed Lulu out of the house.
Pippa’s eyes, hot with rage, lighted on me. “What are you doing out there?” she yelled, charging into the peaceful garden. “And where’s my Lulu? Pray tell me you’ve locked her inside the laundry room. Where is she? Tell me you know where my Lulu has gone off to!”
“I . . . I . . .” But ultimately, there was nothing to say: I knew how much the Foxes loved their Lulu. “I’ll go get her,” I declared, despite having no idea where she was.
I spent the better part of the next two hours crawling around the neighborhood, clicking my tongue and calling out “Luuuuuuluu—Luuuuuluu” over and over again. Through gardens, behind garbage cans, under cars, you name it: I looked there. The night was growing thicker and darker, but I couldn’t give up, not if it meant facing Pippa without Lulu in my arms. Then, just when my despair was becoming unbearable, I spotted a familiar four-legged creature poking around a rosebush. My chest flooded with happiness as the slim gray cat arched her back and meowed at my approach.
“Lulu,” I whispered, moving slowly to avoid scaring her. “C’mon, Lulu, that’s such a good little girl, c’mon, girl, let’s go on back home.”
After considering the matter, the cat meowed again and trotted toward me. I scooped her up with trembling arms and thanked my lucky snowman brooch. “Hey, little girl,” I cooed softly, and planted a kiss on her gray nose.
Except that her nose wasn’t gray. It was white. Lulu was completely gray, down to her whiskers and toe hair: this cat, on closer inspection, had not just a white nose, but white paws and a triangular patch of white on her chest. And not one but two sparkling green eyes. This cat, in other words, was not Lulu. I released the wriggling animal from my arms and returned to Bridge House in defeat. There was no point. I’d searched everywhere; Lulu had vanished.
When at last I entered the kitchen, I gasped to see Pippa sitting at the island with Lulu curled up in her lap. “Oh, hullo,” Pippa said mildly. “I found her immediately after you left. She’d fallen asleep behind the curtains, you see—she does that sometimes, the naughty little puss.”
Inside me, relief and outrage swelled up, competing for dominance. Why hadn’t Pippa come to tell me? Had she any idea what I’d gone through these past two hours?
But Pippa didn’t seem too preoccupied by my state of mind. She was focused on Lulu, rubbing the cat between the ears and playfully admonishing her. “You’re a naughty little pussy, aren’t you?” she kept saying. “Naughty little pussy!
“Oh, and Mimi.” Pippa looked up and met my eyes with a level, ice-cold gaze. “I’ve just had quite a fascinating phone call from my friend Linda Ross—our guest at dinner the other night, surely you recall? It seems she finally remembered where she’d seen you before. It was in the loo of a restaurant, wasn’t it? Just a few days before your employer published that damning report on her marriage.”
Pippa’s voice was flat, her face expressionless. I made a gargling sound of protest, then stuttered out, “It wasn’t my idea at all. I didn’t know she was your friend and I didn’t want to run the story. Nobody would listen to me, I swear!”
Pippa, evidently, didn’t want to listen to me, either. “I must say, well done, Mimi. You’ve surpassed even dear Charlie, and he’s always been a bit of a bastard. At least he has the good sense to know the difference between public and private, I’ll say that for him. What were you thinking, eavesdropping in the loo? Really, I mean, that’s a bit too vulgar, even for A-ha! I rang up Charlie just now, and he’d no idea how you’d obtained your little revelation.
“Charlie would never do anything so indecorous. Of all the times Charlie’s been over here, he’s never once printed a single snippet of our conversation, not unless he’s been specifically asked to. He’d never behave so . . . indiscreetly. But you—you . . . I’m sorry, but it’s just not on, Mimi, not on at all.” Lips trembling with rage, Pippa shook her head, and without another word, stood up and took the cat upstairs to bed.
For several minutes afterward, I remained frozen in place at the kitchen island, paralyzed by the horror of my actions, all the horrible consequences I’d never fully confronted. It didn’t seem appropriate to follow Pippa up to her room and remind her of all the secrets I hadn’t spilled, namely her affair with Mario. I found myself wishing I were still toiling away at the Meyerson-Cullens. Suddenly a summer of workbook exercises and gluten-free snacks didn’t seem so awful.
Early the next morning, as bright yellow sunshine fell in patches across the floor of my bedroom, I momentarily wondered if the previous night hadn’t been some overly complicated dream, a regrettable product of my hyperactive imagination. First Anthony. And Lulu. And Pippa. And God—Linda Ross.
Then I saw the little white rectangle of paper slipped beneath my door. With a feeling of premonition, I jumped out of bed and picked up the letter. I admired the heavy pulp paper. This was no Rite Aid envelope. It was the stuff of aristocratic correspondences. I flipped it over, half expecting to find the royal watermark on the other side. Then, finally, I forced myself to open it, and to read the following message:
30 vii
Mimi,
I apologise for the inconvenience I’m about to impose on you, but after the ghastly occurrences of last night, I cannot simply carry on as if nothing has happened. I’m afraid I must request that you find alternate lodging for the remainder of your stay in London. I expect this news won’t come as a complete surprise to you—indeed, it might even be welcome. We’ve made ourselves scarce for the day so you can gather up your belongings and make arrangements for your departure in privacy. If you are unable to stay with a friend, I’d be happy to recommend a reasonably priced hotel.
With my most sincere regrets, and all best wishes for future endeavours,
Philippa Fox
Loose Ends
MY EYES WELLED AS I READ, and rerea
d, Pippa’s letter. Against my better judgment, I stuck my head out in the hallway and called out Lily’s name, but there was no answer. I slammed shut my bedroom door—what was until recently my bedroom door, that is—and lowered myself onto the bed.
What was I supposed to do? I had no money for a hotel, and I didn’t have any English friends, not real ones. Then again . . . I shot up, recalling what Anthony had said the night of his Harley-Davidson event, when we’d joked about my living with him and being his French maid. So what if his intentions toward me weren’t entirely fraternal? Mine weren’t either, and round-the-clock sexual tension sure beat homelessness. I grabbed the phone and dialed his mobile number.
“Palfrey here,” he said in his well-bred voice, sounding surprisingly smooth for somebody who’d consumed such quantities of eggnog the previous night. When I’d left the party, he’d been persuading Decca to affix a branch of mistletoe to her backside.
“Anthony!” I cried, and immediately launched into a garbled account of my crisis, minus the Linda Ross detail. “A cat! It’s so petty, really, the whole thing, but what else can I do? I can’t leave; my plane ticket isn’t until August twenty-second, and, well . . .”
“Beastly, that!” Anthony cried after I’d finished. “I do say, the Foxes sound positively spastic. So what’s next for you?” he went on lightly. “Surely you could pay a fee and change your ticket, assuming the airline isn’t too extortionate.”
My heart thudded. Anthony knew exactly what I was asking of him, and he was choosing to ignore it. “I guess I’ll find a place to rent or something,” I said softly, feeling foolish for having called him in the first place. “But, um, can you tell Charlie and Rebecca that I probably won’t be in today? And please don’t explain why—just say I’ll be back by Monday.”
“Not a problem at all, love. And best of luck to you—I’ve no doubt you’ll sort it out.” Then, with a cheerful “toodle-pip,” Anthony hung up on me.
Foreign Exposure Page 20
