I Never Fancied Him Anyway
Page 18
Another chorus of tears here and it takes a few minutes and a lot more wine for Jo and me to calm her down again.
‘So he insists on buying me a stiff gin and tonic which I knock back, I’m that shaken, and then it’s like there’s an alarm bell starting to ring at the back of my head so I ask him what it was he wanted to talk to me about.’
I brace myself. Here it comes. Deep breath and have the Kleenex at hand, ready for the fallout.
‘And what did he say?’ asks Jo a bit suspiciously. I think she can guess what’s coming too. Let’s face it, you wouldn’t exactly need to be psychic for this one, now would you? Jack hasn’t exactly been behaving like a model boyfriend towards Charlene these past couple of days. In fact, as Jo put it, he hasn’t been behaving like a boyfriend at all. No calls, no invitations out, plus the way he stayed for a polite drink at her dinner party then left as soon as he reasonably could without seeming rude: he’s doing all the things guys do when they’re trying to put as much distance between them and an unwanted relationship, or in this case an unwanted non-relationship entirely driven by Charlene. This has been coming from a mile off. You could have seen the signs from space, but then, as Oscar Wilde once said, women can discover absolutely everything except the obvious. Sometimes the hardest thing is to see what’s staring everyone else in the face. Oh God, this is going to be so awful for her and on today of all days . . .
Charlene takes a long pause to wipe her eyes again, but she only ends up smudging her mascara all over her face, so now she looks like a tiny, vulnerable baby panda, the kind that always used to make headline news on John Craven’s Newsround.
‘He . . . he . . . he said . . . he said that . . .’
Even though I know what’s coming next, my heart constricts a bit.
‘Go on,’ says Jo, slowly and gently, sounding as if she’s equally certain of what’s on the way.
‘He said that it wasn’t anything for me to worry about, that this wasn’t the time and that he would always be there for me . . . as a friend.’
OK, that I did not see coming. I honestly thought he was going to finish things with her, to give her the old it’s-not-you-it’s-me speech, but now . . . I actually kind of like that he didn’t. It would have been bordering on cruel for him to have dumped her when she was this upset, wouldn’t it?
‘Obviously, I was a tiny bit put out by the “friend” reference,’ Charlene continues, still doing her stream-of-consciousness thing, ‘but he was just so sweet and supportive and then he really had to go back to his office so he offered to drive me home first and I said OK. I tried to get him to come in for a drink, but he said he’d better not, which I didn’t really like either, but I figured he’s been so compassionate and lovely I shouldn’t really give him a hard time over not coming in, although I really could have done with a cuddle. But he did say he was only on the other end of the phone if I needed to talk and I think he may have used the friend reference again, but I can’t remember. Or I might have just blanked it out.’
‘So are we up to the third bad thing yet?’ asks Jo gingerly.
‘Nearly. Bear with me. Anyway, I go back into the house and Dad and Marilyn call me into the drawing room and the pair of them are sitting there staring at me and it’s awful, just awful. Then Dad says that he and Marilyn are very upset at the way I’ve been behaving and they did their best to break the news to me as gently as they could and he knew I was a bit shocked but couldn’t I just be happy for them? Then he started going on about how good he’d been to me over the years and that all they wanted was for me to be involved with the new baby and be happy that I was going to have a new stepmother and that’s when I lost it. I just totally lost it.’
‘What, what did you say?’ Jo and I say together, unable to shut up and just let her tell her story.
‘I turned to Marilyn and – oh girls, I couldn’t control myself – I said, “Has anyone bothered to tell you about your predecessor? And what happened to her?”’
Oh God, I can hardly believe this.
‘And Dad says, “Your mother passed away well over thirteen years ago and can’t we just let go of the past?” So I shout back at him, “Yeah, like you let go, barely three months after she died, when you were shacked up in Monaco with someone new.” Then Dad yells at me, and you know how scary he can be, telling me I need to move on and get over it myself – so that’s when I do it.’
‘What?’
‘I turn to Marilyn and I tell her everything. All the family skeletons come tumbling out of the closet in one go. About how devastated Mum had been about the divorce and how everyone said it was a freak boating accident and that she should never have gone sailing on her own, particularly as she wasn’t a strong swimmer, and then how we had that awful wait for the autopsy results . . .’
At this point both Jo and I are starting to well up too. I remember that awful time as if it were yesterday. How could I forget? We were only in school, barely fifteen, when the nuns took Charlene out of class to break the terrible news to her.
I had a flash, though. One of the worst ones I ever had. I saw the whole thing so clearly that for years afterwards I had nightmares about what had happened. And about the aftermath too.
‘And it came out that Mum had taken barbiturates, that her stomach was full of them; the autopsy report said death by misadventure but we all knew exactly what she was going through and how this was her way out. Everyone tried to say how terrible, that Mum had quietly been suffering from depression all this time and told no one, but she wasn’t. I know she wasn’t. This was the only way she felt she could cope with the awful pain she was going through, that he had put her through.’
Jo and I can barely speak.
‘Then Dad told me to shut up, that I’d said quite enough, and I started getting really upset all over again. I think I may have said that I didn’t particularly like misery and disaster but it had a really annoying habit of following me around and then Dad got really mad and said, “You better explain yourself.” I’m not kidding, he may even have used the phrase “young lady”. So I gave it to him straight. I told him that he’d never been much of a father to me and that his idea of parenting was to come home, wreak havoc and then leave, just as he’s doing right now.’
‘Brave, brave girl,’ says Jo, shaking her head.
‘Oh, that was only the warm-up, once I got going there was no stopping me. I told him he was pathetic and going through a mid-life crisis and that I never really understood the misery poor Stella McCartney must have gone through when her dad came home with Heather Mills until this moment and then Dad really, really lost it and told me that I was insulting the woman he loved and if I didn’t keep a civil tongue in my head, he’d stop supporting me and I was just so angry, I said . . .’
‘WHAT?’
‘I said, “Yeah, right, Father, if you could call fifty thousand euro a month support,” and he was white with fury, I’ve never seen him like that before. Then he went this ghostly shade and said that if that’s the way I felt then, fine, I could just try living without his money for a change, that it would do me some good to learn how to rough it a bit, like he had to at my age and that my problems were just so middle class. So then I said, “May I remind you that you are in my home and now I’d like the pair of you to leave.” That they’d grossly overstayed their welcome and would they please pack their bags and he refused to budge, saying that he’d bought the house for me as a present but it was technically in his name so he and Marilyn were staying put. And then he said that I was – if you can believe this – nothing but a spoilt princess who’d never amount to anything in the world. So I looked him straight in the eye and said, “I hope for this baby’s sake you do a better job at parenting than you did on me.” Then I said to Marilyn, and I’m bawling by now, that at eighteen I was given a house, a car and a credit card and his only idea of being a good father is to appear every six months or so and criticize me and run me into the ground until I can’t take it any more.’
‘So . . . my allowance is gone!’ she sniffs, reaching for the Kleenex. ‘As of right now, this minute. What am I going to do – without money, I mean? I’ve nothing to live off, nothing.’
‘Shh, shh, shh,’ says Jo soothingly. ‘It’s not the end of the world, you know. You could get a proper job; start earning your own living, making your own way in the world.’
‘She’s right,’ I say. ‘And, in time, your dad would be so proud of you for standing on your own two feet.’
‘And it’s not as if you don’t have a roof over your head,’ says Jo.
‘Good point,’ I add, trying to sound helpful and confident, as if this is a completely solvable problem.
‘OK, so he and Marilyn are staying put for the moment, but it’s not like this is their only home. They’re hardly going to stay there for ever,’ says Jo, which is actually a terrific point and I only wish I’d thought of it first.
Mr Ferguson has an incredible portfolio of trophy homes all over the world. Well, the part of the world that’s tax-exiled, that is. Stunning, palatial-type residences, the kind that estate agents must drool over in their sleep. He even keeps an apartment in that giant floating hotel/ cruise-ship, The World, which Charlene and Marc with a C once took a trip on, but they both got bored after a few days, saying they thought it would be like Titanic but it wasn’t. (By that I think they meant it would be stuffed full with Leonardo DiCaprio types, but it turned out to be all elderly, rich, retired couples who wanted to sip sherry and play bridge all day.)
‘Anyway,’ Jo goes on, ‘what I’m trying to say is that a bit of distance and space from each other might give all of you a chance to get your heads around everything.’
‘Oh, come on, Jo, you know what Dad is like when he’s dug his heels in,’ says Charlene, whiter than a sheet by now. ‘He said they weren’t budging and, believe me, he meant it. So I looked him in the eye and said, “Fine. If that’s how you want to play it, that’s cool by me. If you’re staying, then I’m going.” And Dad said, “Right, best of luck,” and he was looking at me as if he expected me to crumble, as if I was bluffing, but I thought: No, I’ll show you what I’m made of, so I held my head high and said, “I’m moving out, have the place to your bloody selves and may it fall on your bastard heads some night for causing me such misery.” Then he said, “You won’t last a wet day in the real world without cash and credit cards,” and I said, “You just see if I don’t,” and – Oh girlies, you’d have been so proud of me – I drew myself up to my full five feet two and said, “This is the last you’ll ever see of me.” And I went out through the hall, banged the door behind me and came straight round here.’
Jo whistles. ‘You are one incredibly strong girl, I’ll give you that,’ she says as we both hug her again. ‘So where are you going to stay until it all blows over?’
Charlene looks at Jo, puzzled. ‘What do you mean, “until it all blows over?” I told you, I’ve completely cut all ties with those people. That’s it. Finito. I’ve deadheaded them and that’s all there is to it. I share DNA with my father, which entitles him to either bone marrow or possibly a kidney, but from now on, that’s it.’
‘You’re too upset to make any big decisions now.’
‘I’m not upset.’ Huge sniff.
‘So . . . what’s the next step?’ says Jo.
‘Well, it’s obvious,’ says Charlene. ‘I’m going to prove to that shower that I’m well capable of standing on my own two feet. I’m going to become a huge success and I’m going to do it without Dad and without his blood money.’
‘Bravo,’ I say proudly. ‘Good girl.’
‘Oh, and there’s just one other, tiny thing I forgot to mention,’ she adds.
‘What’s that?’ Jo and I say together.
‘I’m moving in here. With the two of you. My loyal and true friends.’
There’s a stunned silence as Jo and I try to digest this. All I can think is: I call myself a psychic but in a million years, I never saw this coming.
‘So can I have your room, Jo?’ says Charlene, pouring herself another large glass of wine. ‘You know it’s bad for my chakras to sleep in a north-facing room. And most of your stuff is in the spare room anyway. Girlies, why have you both gone so quiet? I assume this isn’t a problem?’
Chapter Nine
THE TAROT DECK
THE THREE OF CUPS CARD
Signifies Three Women. Three women, possibly living together. Three women sharing one bathroom, one remote control and, even more testingly, one shower. Pictured on this card are three lovely ladies, all young and carefree, one blonde, one dark and one red-haired, kind of like Charlie’s Angels. In fact, if this was America, they’d probably be out on the streets of LA fighting crime. However, the warning this card carries is that a test of friendship could well be looming.
In other words, this is a time to be patient and tolerant with your pals, even if they persist in borrowing your favourite shoes, lashing on your really posh, expensive La Prairie face cream as if it was aftersun lotion, using every last drop of available hot water and generally driving you nuts. Because, hey, isn’t that what friends are for?
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, the three of us come to a nonnegotiable arrangement. Given that Charlene is now, shall we say, short of funds and completely determined to forge her way in the big bad world without going cap in hand to her father, here’s the deal.
Jo and I have agreed that she can stay with us, rent-free, for as long as she likes, on the condition that she keeps the place tidy in return. And that’s pretty much it.
We both feel that we can’t really ask her to do any more as (a) she’s been so inordinately generous to all of us over the years, it just wouldn’t seem right somehow; (b) this is a woman whose proudest boast is that the only supermarket she’s ever set foot inside is Harrods’ food hall; but most of all (c) the fact is that she’s never cooked anything, not even a piece of toast, in her entire life and there’s a very real chance that if we ask her to put on a nice, straightforward bit of pasta for us all later, we could well come home to the charred remains of our house.
I even remember one Christmas when I presented her with Nigella Lawson’s Domestic Goddess book and she handed it straight back with ill-concealed disappointment, saying ‘Oh look, a gift gag. So where’s my real pressie then?’
Anyway, we make the deal, both Jo and Charlene look at me just to double-check that I’m not getting any flashes along the lines that our house goes up in flames and we all end up visiting Charlene in a hospital burn-victims unit, which I’m not. I am, however, getting a very clear flash that Marilyn will call me later on, but more about that anon . . .
After the tears and drama of last night, Charlene, amazingly, comes out full of fighting spirit this morning, brave heart that she is. Jo fishes out a pair of yellow Marigolds and hands them to her and she immediately puts them on and starts strutting around the kitchen saying, ‘Look at me! I feel like I’m in a play!’ So off to work we go, with Charlene squealing down the driveway after us, ‘Doesn’t this just feel like the nineteen fifties, starring me as the stay-at-home wifey? If I knew a Doris Day song, I’d sing it right now!’
‘Stepford wife, more like,’ Jo quips to me as we both hop into my car.
‘Don’t be like that,’ I say defensively, ‘this is a really good thing we’re doing, you know. Speaking for myself, I’ve never felt so noble in my entire life. I feel like I’m all profile.’
Anyway, I drop Jo off, make it into the Tattle office, head for my desk and get stuck right into the stack of letters that’s waiting for me. (Is it my imagination, or am I getting sent even more than usual ever since I started going on TV? Hmm, the plot thickens . . .) And, miraculously, for once I’m not late for my deadline.
Well, not all that late. My deadline is tomorrow morning and it’s not as if I d
on’t have the whole day ahead of me. Ah sure, I’ll be grand, won’t I? I mean, it’s only half-nine and if I chain myself to the desk, work right through lunch and everything and don’t get stuck into major long gossips with Sir Bob, and stay here until really, really late tonight, honour will be saved.
‘Hello there, old thing,’ Sir Bob, the man himself, interrupts me. ‘How’s the life of a telly-box star treating you, then?’
‘Morning, Sir— oops, sorry, I mean Bob,’ I answer cheerily.
‘Fancy a spot of tea? I’ve got such a lot of delicious scandal to impart.’
‘Ooh, what are you waiting for, then? Stick that kettle on this minute.’ What the hell. Sure, I’m only having a teeny, weeny little tea break. Five minutes of chat, then back to work. Promise.
‘Goodness, what a veritable mountain of letters you’ve received, my dear,’ he says, rifling through my pile and picking a few up at random.
‘I know. Course, they’re not all going to get published but I do try to get around to answering as many as I can.’
‘Jolly nice of you too, old thing. Golly, just look at this one.’
‘I think I’m in love with my dead husband’s brother. Please can you contact said late husband in the spirit world to see if he’d approve,’ I read over his shoulder. ‘Bloody hell, I’ll have my work cut out with that one.’
‘No, no dear, I meant this one,’ he says, leafing through the pile.
‘I married for a passport then fell in love?’ I ask him, singling out another one and instantly getting a feeling that it was written by someone Russian.
I’m suddenly seeing a tall, brown-eyed woman with long blond hair and short black roots. From Moscow, I think. Sagittarius . . .
Oops, sorry, I was getting so caught up in my flash I almost forgot Sir Bob is standing right in front of me. ‘That’s mild compared to some of them, believe you me.’
‘No, you goose, this one here,’ he says, handing one over to me. ‘It was the red pen on top of it that caught one’s attention. Now, I do hope you don’t think it’s terribly rude of me to read it, but then it is about to receive national publication, is it not? I think the laws of privacy can be waived a little here, don’t you?’