Strange Allure

by Susan Lewis

  Chapter 5

  CARLA WAS HURRYING down the stairs, trying not to fall over Eddie who was bounding along with her, seeming to think all this speed was a game, instead of a rush to open the door before whoever was knocking managed to break it down.

  At last she fell against it, slid back the chain and dragged it open. ‘What the …?’

  ‘Surprise!’

  Carla blinked, blinked again, then her whole face lit up. ‘Oh my God!’ she gasped. ‘Avril? Oh my God! Oh my God!’ And throwing her arms round Sonya’s cousin, who’d been her best friend all through sixth-form college and university, and was how Sonya had come to meet Mark, she began dancing up and down in pure joy. ‘When did you get here?’ she cried. ‘Why didn’t anyone tell me you were coming?’

  Avril’s pretty, suntanned face was beaming. ‘Because it would have spoiled the surprise,’ she laughed. ‘How are you? You look fabulous.’

  Carla grimaced. ‘But look at you! When did you become a film star?’

  ‘Oh, that was last week,’ Avril airily responded.

  ‘And where’s Sonya? How did you get here?’

  ‘She dropped me off on her way over to her mum’s. She’ll be back around lunch time. So, do I get to come in? Hey, Eddie!’ she shrieked, spotting him lurking behind Carla’s legs. ‘Don’t you remember me, you little squirt? How are you?’ And swooping down on him from her great height of five feet five inches, she gathered him into a whole body hug. Not entirely sure what to make of this Eddie licked her face a couple of times, then looked to Carla for approval. Seeming to get it, he swiftly motorized his tail and set about removing Avril’s make-up with one of his more hearty welcomes.

  ‘You look so sophisticated and gorgeous,’ Carla told her, glancing back over her shoulder as Avril followed her along the hall to the kitchen. ‘America obviously agrees with you.’

  ‘America agrees with anyone if they’ve got money,’ Avril responded. ‘Oh God, I’d forgotten how much I love this cottage. It feels so much like home. And is that tea! A huge round fat teapot full of tea? Tell me it’s Typhoo. And is that toasted Hovis I can smell?’

  Carla was laughing. ‘You haven’t changed a bit,’ she told her. ‘Except for the clothes and suntan. And the hair. I love it all sculpted round your face like that.’

  ‘Isn’t it cool?’ Avril agreed, patting it. ‘Had it done by the same girl as does Sharon Stone. Do you think blonde suits me?’

  ‘It should, it’s your natural colour.’

  ‘But I’ve been dark for the past few years. Well, you saw me at the … Anyway, we’ll definitely have to get to work on you. When did you last visit a hairdresser, or manicurist, or colour specialist, or any kind of ist? Oh, let me take my coat off first,’ she gabbled as Carla offered her a mug of steaming hot tea. ‘Are you ready for this?’ And unfastening the top button of her black velvet swing coat, she swept it from side to side like Salome’s last veil, then cast it with a flourish on to the back of a chair.

  ‘Oh my God, you look sensational,’ Carla murmured. ‘What a figure!’ and she laughed as Avril, dressed in skintight black leggings, thigh-high boots and deeply plunging black top, waggle-danced round in a circle.

  ‘How about it?’ she demanded, smugly. ‘Cost a fortune, but worth every penny, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘You mean, you had it done surgically?’

  ‘Where do you think I’ve been these past five years?’ Avril demanded, gliding her hands over her voluptuous shape. ‘You don’t get anywhere in LA without gigantic tits and a tiny ass, and I sure as hell didn’t uproot my lardy old British butt just to go over there and sit on it. So yeah, course I had surgery.’

  Carla was still laughing. ‘The look might have changed, but you’re the same wonderful Avril, and I can’t tell you how fantastic it is to see you.’

  ‘Yeah, I thought it might be,’ Avril responded, going to stick a slice of bread in the toaster. ‘Oh, Eddie, Eddie, Eddie, you want a piece too,’ she crooned. And after adding another slice for him, she inhaled deeply and closed her eyes as she said, ‘Oh, it’s so good to be standing here in this kitchen with you, and knowing what I know.’

  Carla was confused, though grinning. ‘Which is?’ she prompted.

  Avril winked, and picked up her tea. Then in a genuinely sombre voice, she said, ‘I’m really, really sorry about your mum. Sonya said you don’t remember much about the funeral, which doesn’t really surprise me, because you didn’t even seem to know who I was when I got there. I wanted to stay longer, but I’d just got this new contract with one of the major studios for a new action-thriller that was worth megabucks, so I had to fly back. But I had to come. She was very special … I know I should have written, or called, but you know how it is, and Sonya’s kept me up to speed with how you’ve been doing.’ She suddenly grinned, showing her expensively straightened and capped teeth in an extremely infectious smile. ‘So, don’t you want to know how long I’ll be staying?’ she demanded.

  Carla laughed and shrugged. ‘Amongst other things,’ she answered.

  ‘So ask.’

  ‘OK. How long are you staying?’

  Avril’s chin came up. ‘For as long as you need me,’ she declared.

  Carla’s brow wrinkled.

  ‘I’m a PR expert, aren’t I?’ Avril boasted. ‘And according to Sonya that’s just what you need right now. So, give me the story.’

  Carla blinked, not entirely sure she’d just heard right.

  ‘The story,’ Avril prompted. ‘The scoop. What’s the programme about?’

  Carla was incredulous. ‘But what about your office in LA?’ she said. ‘I mean, I can’t possibly afford someone like you …’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, let’s make like that’s all done with,’ Avril cut in. ‘I’m a big shot West Coast hype-hustler whose good fortune and limitless talents don’t mean a goddammed thing if I can’t put them to use for a friend when she needs them. So, where do we start?’

  ‘But what about your other commitments? Surely you can’t just …’

  ‘Carla, honey, with the money I’ve made I can do just about anything I like these days. And with the staff I’ve got, I can take off on a slow boat to ecstasy, or take Ecstasy on a slow boat, and believe you me, they can cope. So, I say we start by searching out the nearest health spa so’s we can get you looking a bit more like your real gorgeous self. Oh, and would you believe, I just happen to have a couple of numbers right here,’ she declared with mock surprise as she produced a leather-bound notepad from her Ferragamo handbag and used a fine silk ribbon to flip it open.

  ‘I’m dreaming,’ Carla mumbled. ‘I’ve got to be dreaming.’

  ‘Sure, the whole of life’s a dream. Isn’t that what Descartes reckoned? So what do we need here? Hair cut, restyled, highlighted. Face oxygenized, peeled, enzymed, exfoliated and rejuvenated. Body detoxed, mud-wrapped, massaged, steamed, pummelled and pampered. Nails trimmed, shaped, buffed and polished. Feet soaked, de-callused, salted, replenished and rubbed. Let me see, anything I’ve forgotten? Ah, the wardrobe. Well, we’ll get on to that when we go up to London. Is that your car outside, by the way?’

  Carla nodded.

  ‘Can’t be seen in that. Give it away. We’ll rent something suitable for your new image as a stunningly successful independent producer who’s sassy and connected enough to hire herself a gen-u-ine PR professional from the U-nited States.’

  Carla was shaking her head and laughing in disbelief. ‘Just when did you turn into my fairy godmother?’ she wanted to know.

  ‘I guess about the time you turned into Cinders. Which reminds me,’ she went on, returning to her notepad: ‘Prince Charming,’ she wrote, ‘must give him a call when I know what I’m calling him about.’

  Carla’s face was draining. ‘You’re not talking about …?’

  ‘Richard? Good God no. We’ll just move right on past him and start planning the stupendous launch party you’re going to throw that’ll get the whole town talking.’

&nbs
p; This time Carla shook her head more vigorously. ‘No party,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t want to appear negative, but apart from not having the budget, I should remind you that Chrissie’s fronting the programme, so it’s going to look very odd if we throw a party and don’t invite her. And if we invite her, which I’m absolutely not prepared to do, we have to invite Richard, which there’s just no way in the world I’ll …’

  ‘Got the message,’ Avril chimed in. ‘But don’t worry, we’ll work something out. Are you in touch with them at all? Does she know the programme’s got a transmission date?’

  ‘If she does it wasn’t me who told her.’

  Avril nodded. ‘Do you want to use her in the publicity at all?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘OK. So what we need to do is find your front person for the next series and start promoting her – or him. Re-enter Prince Charming, who’s sure to have some ideas. Ah, toast! Eddie, do you take butter or jam? I see, three dozen tail wags in less than three seconds, must mean both. And I do declare if Carla had a tail, then by the look of her she’d be wagging hers too. But before we get into circus acts, I reckon you, Carla, should get that pretty little butt of yours upstairs and dressed, while Eddie and I carry on fixing things here.’

  In a something of a daze, and almost breathless with the speed at which Avril was managing to take over, Carla obediently trotted up the stairs, followed by the faithful Eddie who brought his toast with him, and slotted the shampoo spray on to the bath taps ready to take a shower. With it being too cold to remove her dressing gown until the hot water came through, she kept it huddled around her as she padded into the back bedroom to ferret out a clean towel. Noticing that the door of the wardrobe where the memory boxes were kept had fallen open, she pushed it closed, turned the key and emerged on to the landing in time to hear Avril gabbing away downstairs with Faith, the post lady.

  ‘You might be getting mail for me,’ she was saying, ‘because I’m going to be moving in here for a while.’

  ‘Oh, that’s nice,’ Faith remarked. ‘She was getting a bit lonely here on her own. Until she got herself that new boyfriend, of course. Nice that. Shame he’s married though, she deserves someone special if you ask me. Someone she can call her own.’

  Carla didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. The woman obviously had no shame, gossiping so outrageously right on her victim’s doorstep.

  ‘No! He’s not married, is he?’ Avril cried. ‘I never knew that.’

  ‘Told me so herself,’ Faith assured her. ‘Married he is.’

  ‘Well I never. I knew he was on the run, and I keep telling her she shouldn’t be harbouring criminals, she could get herself into trouble. But married!’

  Carla had to stifle a laugh, as she had no problem at all imagining the three ‘O’s that had just formed on Faith’s gullible face. ‘On the run,’ Faith echoed. ‘What, from the police like?’

  ‘Yeah, them too,’ Avril confided. ‘Anyway, better go before she hears what we’re saying.’

  ‘You are incorrigible,’ Carla told her as she closed the door.

  Avril laughed. ‘Go get showered. I’ll start ringing around to try and find us a decent rental car. Oh, before you disappear, what’s the password to get into your email? I gave your address to my PA, so I’d better tune in for the latest crises.’

  Carla froze. She hadn’t checked the email herself yet this morning to see if Richard had replied to her message last night. It wasn’t that she thought Avril would deliberately pry, or even that she felt the need to hide anything from Avril, it was simply that she wanted to read his answer first. However, it was going to look extremely odd if she were to refuse to give Avril a simple password in the light of everything Avril was about to give her. So, with a roll of her eyes, she confessed it was Eddie, and went off to take a shower.

  By the time she came back downstairs Avril was at Sonya’s desk heavily engrossed in striking a deal for some kind of Porsche that she wanted driven down from London, so that she could use it to ‘drive up to London. Moron,’ she added under her breath.

  Seizing her chance Carla quickly typed in her password, waited through the squeal and crush of the Internet connection, and felt her insides flutter as the American-accented words, ‘You’ve got mail,’ issued from the speaker.

  Her heart immediately tightened as she saw Richard’s address, and dragging the mouse to the relevant line she clicked it open.

  She was so convinced that it would contain an answer to last night’s question that she had to read the short message three times before she could make it sink in. In the end she recognized it as another quote from Voltaire, this time, she thought, from the Philosophical Dictionary. ‘The greatest geniuses can have false judgement about a principle they have accepted without examination,’ the message said.

  Was that an answer? If so, what exactly was he saying? Was it himself he was alluding to as the genius? And what principle was he referring to?

  She felt a sudden flood of anger. To him this might be a game, to her it was anything but.

  ‘Jerk!’ Avril muttered as she put the phone down. Then with a happy smile, ‘Cinderella’s carriage will be here by one.’

  Carla stared at her, then, remembering the Porsche, she started to laugh.

  ‘So,’ Avril said, screwing up her nose as she slipped on an extremely chic pair of Gucci sunglasses to shield her eyes from the dazzling glow of a Riviera sunset, ‘is it Richard who’s got the post lady all aflutter?’

  Carla started, then, looking down at her drink, she said, ‘No. The married man Faith’s talking about is my brother, Mark, did she but know it. Or Graham, I suppose, as he pops in from time to time.’

  ‘Graham? The writer? The one your mum was seeing?’

  Carla nodded.

  Avril sighed. ‘Well, I’m glad it’s not Richard,’ she said.

  Carla turned away and gazed out at the spectacular view. She hadn’t quite got to grips with being here yet, since it had happened so fast that her head still felt as though it was back home in Somerset. First the Porsche had arrived, then Sonya, then bags were thrown into boots, Eddie was whisked off by Sonya, and the next thing she knew she was zooming up the M4, being bundled through the airport, and was on a flight to Nice. From Nice they’d taken the helicopter hop over to the Principality, checked into the Hotel de Paris, and now here they were, sitting on the terrace of Monte Carlo’s famously exclusive Thalassotherapie health spa, wearing sumptuous white terry robes after the two stupendously luxurious massages they’d just received, and sipping champagne cocktails as they watched rich men’s yachts bobbing and gliding in and out of the harbour below. Part of her felt as though she might just as well die right now, since tomorrow couldn’t possibly bring anything better, and even if it did she’d just feel overindulged. Another part felt disheartened by Avril’s remark.

  ‘Do you have any contact with him at all?’ Avril asked.

  Carla took a breath. ‘Just a couple of emails.’

  ‘Saying?’

  Remembering the first one Carla’s expression turned wry, as she said, ‘He’s asked me to be godmother to his daughter.’

  Avril choked. ‘What?’

  Carla smiled and picked up her drink.

  Avril was still reeling. ‘Is the man on drugs?’ she demanded.

  This time Carla laughed. Then she gave Graham’s theory that the invitation was merely an attempt to establish contact.

  Avril looked baffled. ‘Bloody peculiar way of doing it,’ she retorted. ‘But then, I have to confess, Richard Mere was always a mystery to me, and from what I remember it sounds just like the perverse kind of thing he’d do. Anyway, go on. What else do these emails say?’

  Carla told her first about the page she’d found in the thesis, then about the answer she’d received that morning.

  By the time she’d finished Avril looked drunk. ‘Do you want to run that last bit by me again?’ she said.

  As she quoted it again, Carla turned t
o gaze out to where the sun was disappearing in a fiery glow behind the dark pink crenellations of the Grimaldi Palace.

  ‘How do you know it was Voltaire?’ Avril asked. ‘French classics wasn’t your subject.’

  Carla shrugged. ‘He’s used it before. I can’t remember about what now, but he told me at the time where it was from.’

  Avril seemed happier with that, then dismissed it with, ‘But you still don’t know if your mother knew about him and Chrissie?’

  ‘No. But I don’t suppose it’s important now, is it?’

  Avril’s powers of analysis approached that from all angles before she said, ‘No, I don’t suppose it is. But I can see why it was a blow when you first read the letter. Must have brought it all back like it was yesterday.’

  Carla looked at her and smiled, and right at that moment she couldn’t imagine wanting to be with anyone else in the world.

  Avril looked back, her small face made golden in the early evening light, her big eyes, thickly fringed with naturally curling lashes, only just visible through the dark lenses of her glasses. Though she’d hidden it well, she was still dealing with the shock of just how much devastation had been wrought on the vibrant Carla she used to know. Oh sure, Carla was making an effort to hide it, and were Avril anyone else she might be fooled, but she knew Carla too well. It wasn’t only the gauntness of Carla’s face and disturbing loss of weight that had changed her, a light somewhere inside her had gone out when that man had crushed her with his betrayal, and God help her, she seemed to think that these ludicrous emails were the way to getting it back. Avril could only be grateful that she was stepping in now, before any real harm was done, though not for a minute did she think talking Carla out of anything where Richard was concerned was going to be easy.