by Sue Margolis
Rebecca frowned. “Scared? Of what?”
Pause.
“Them.”
Them. Rebecca groaned inwardly. Why was it that wherever she’d worked the switchboard always sent her the paranoid, gibbering schizos convinced they’d seen Stalin in the Asda parking lot with a cart full of Vienettas?
“Look, can you just tell me what this is about?” Rebecca said kindly. For some reason she decided to persevere with this one.
“Well, until yesterday I worked at Mer de Rêves as a personal assistant. But I was sacked.”
“Oh, I see,” Rebecca said, relieved. “Look, if you’re after publicity for an unfair dismissal case, I’m not really your person. You should talk to—”
“No, no. It’s nothing like that. I mean, I was unfairly dismissed, but that’s not what I want to talk to you about. You see, I have some information about the company you might find interesting.”
“What sort of information?”
“I can’t say. Not over the phone. Could we meet?”
There was no way Rebecca was going to meet up with a possible nutcase until she had something more to go on. She pressed the woman for more information, but she refused to say another word.
In the end Rebecca’s curiosity won out over common sense and she agreed to meet her for coffee the next morning at Salvo’s, the sandwich bar across the road.
When two o’clock came and Max still hadn’t called, she decided she’d definitely blown it. Having gathered most of the information she needed for the girl band piece, she decided to work on it at home.
She was halfway there when she decided that as she hadn’t had lunch, she’d stop off at Jess’s for a quick sandwich.
Dolly answered the door in her hat and coat. As Rebecca stepped into the hall, she could hear Jess and Ed rowing upstairs. Dolly rolled her eyes.
“Been going at it all bleedin’ morning,” she announced. “Right, that’s me done for the day. I’m off.”
With that she picked up her shopping bag from the hall table and disappeared out the door.
Rebecca hung her coat on the end of the banister.
“So who is she?” Jess was shouting. “Come on, Ed, who have you been sleeping with?”
“For Chrissake, you know there’s no other woman on the planet apart from you.”
“So, what are you telling me—that you’ve been sleeping with an alien?”
Silence followed by a door slamming.
“OK, fuck you,” Jess screamed.
The next moment she was charging down the stairs, her face red and puffy from crying. “Becks,” she said, sniffing, “I didn’t hear the bell.”
“Hi, babe.” Rebecca smiled. “Look, I can go if you want.”
“No, stay. I fancy a talk.”
Rebecca followed her into the kitchen, where Diggory was fast asleep in his pram. She stood with her back to the sink. Rebecca sat down at the table.
“We tried to do it again last night, but this time Ed couldn’t get it up at all. My body clearly repels him. Becks, I’m really starting to panic. I think he might have found somebody else. We’ve been rowing ever since.”
“Come on, Jess,” Rebecca said, getting up to give her a hug, “most blokes get a touch of willy-nilly from time to time. It doesn’t mean he’s having an affair. I’m sure it’ll pass. What the pair of you need to do is sit down quietly and talk about what’s going on. I mean have you thought that perhaps you’re so taken up with Diggory at the moment that he feels a bit pushed out?”
“Yeah, it did occur to me. God, I’m an agony aunt, for crying out loud. Why am I handling this so badly?”
“The reason you’re handling it so badly,” she said, “is because you have a new baby and you’re severely sleep deprived. Exhaustion does your brain in.”
She sat Jess down and put the kettle on.
Just then Ed appeared. Tall, blond, boyish freckles. Most women thought he was dead cute, but although she thought the world of him, lookswise Ed was just a touch too Hitler youth for Rebecca’s taste.
“Right, I’m off,” he said to Jess. He shot Rebecca an awkward smile. There were dark shadows under his eyes.
“I’ve got a going away party tonight,” he said to Jess, “so I’ll be back late.”
Jess ignored him and looked straight ahead, grim faced.
“Jess, come on,” he pleaded, bending down and giving her a kiss on the cheek. She looked up at him. Rebecca could see she was doing her best to fight it, but a moment later her face had broken into a weak smile.
“Oh, look, no milk,” Rebecca piped up, sensing she should make herself scarce for a few moments. “Perhaps it’s still on the step.”
She made a swift exit into the hall and stood listening.
“Love you,” she heard Jess say. “Look, I know there’s nobody else. I’m just being paranoid. Sorry.”
“’s OK. I love you too. So we friends again?”
“Friends,” Jess said.
Eucch. Snogging noises.
Rebecca counted to ten and went back into the kitchen. Ed was putting his PalmPilot into his Eastpak.
“Oh, look,” Rebecca said, picking up the carton of milk from the table, “there it was all the time.”
Ed winked at Jess, gave Rebecca a tiny wave and left.
“So,” Jess said, “how was the hot date?”
Rebecca explained. “I’ve blown it, haven’t I? I mean why else wouldn’t he call? Oh, God, please tell me I’m not going to end up married to a stupid town planner with a head full of ginger pubes.”
Jess laughed. “Why don’t you call him?”
“Who? Ginger pubes?”
“No, you dope. Max.”
“I called last night,” Rebecca pronounced. “Now it’s his turn.”
Her friend snorted with impatience. “Oh, for Gawd’s sake get off your high horse. Just phone.”
Jess handed her the phone and she rang his mobile. When she got his voice mail, she tried the office. He picked up immediately.
“Hi, Rebecca—God, synchronicity. I’ve just this second walked in. I was about to phone you. Look, I am so sorry about last night. I hope you can forgive me.”
She frowned. “Forgive you?”
“Yeah, I left messages on your answer machine—just after six last night. You know, about being stuck in the biodiversity meeting.”
God, she hadn’t played back her messages.
“Oh, yes,” she said brightly, doing her best to disguise her unease, “of course you did.”
“In the end I didn’t get home until three in the morning. Then when I got in I realized I’d had some problem with my mobile and I can’t access any of my messages.”
Her face could have lit up a small town.
“Look, these things happen,” she said, her voice oozing understanding. “Please don’t worry about it.”
“So,” he said, “what are you doing tonight?”
5
Hideous as they were, the huge, industrial-strength control pants provided her with a positively prairie-flat stomach. If Max made a move, she would simply say she had a strict no-sex-on-the-first-date rule. This was true, although in Max Stoddart’s case, she had been prepared to make an exception.
Her cleavage came courtesy of a wondrously sexy, ninety-pound La Perla bra. (She’d justified the expense on the grounds that spending money was her only extravagance.) A pair of Kurt Geiger killer heels gave the illusion she possessed ankles. These had cost even more than the bra, but, as she kept reminding herself, Cinderella didn’t flirt wearing Birkenstocks.
Thanks to La Perla, Herr Geiger and the pants, the blue dress looked and felt fantastic.
As she waited to be shown to Max’s table she slipped off her pashmina (thereby offering him an eyeful of her gorgeously sexy shoulders and cleavage as she walked in). Then she turned to face one of the restaurant’s mirror-covered pillars so that she could touch up her lipstick. She lifted her hand to her face and froze. Armpit stubble! Four days�
� worth, at least. And it was flecked in deodorant. She screwed up her face in horror. She’d shaved her pits less than an hour ago—in the shower. She lifted the other arm from her side. Depilated to perfection. She immediately realized what had happened. She’d been so engrossed listening to PM on Radio 4 that she’d lost concentration and shaved one pit twice. By now sweat had started breaking through her expensive freebie foundation.
She took a deep in-through-the-nose, out-through-the-mouth yoga breath. OK, she could handle this. She would just have to keep the pashmina on. Bummer. Now he wouldn’t get to see her shoulders and cleavage. And there could be no question of a good-night kiss. The moment she put her arms round his neck, he was bound to notice the fuzz.
Max was sitting at a table by the window—gray suit, purple open-neck shirt—stirring the ice in his Scotch. Her heart rate picked up. He stood up the moment he saw her. She gave him a tiny wave and quickened her step toward him, unaware that the waiter was leading her in a completely different direction.
The next thing she knew she was lying on the floor, her head pounding and spinning. Max and the waiter were helping her up.
“Rebecca, you all right?” Max said. His face was full of concern. Despite the pounding and spinning in her head, she managed to register how sublimely sexy she found this.
“Yeah,” she said, “just a bit dizzy, that’s all.”
The waiter disappeared to get her some water.
“God,” she said, brushing some flecks of dirt off her dress, “what happened?”
“The wall’s made of mirrors,” he said. “You were waving at my reflection and you ran into it. You’ve cut your forehead. Let’s sit you down and take a look at it.”
It was only now that she realized her pashmina had come off in the fall and was lying on the floor. Even with her left arm clamped to her side, she could see the little tarantula legs sticking out. If she wasn’t careful, he’d see it and think she was a member of some weird cult that only shaved one armpit. How she was going to get the pashmina on again with only one arm, she hadn’t the foggiest. But before she had a chance to try, Max had picked it up and draped it round her shoulders.
As Max guided her to their table, she could feel warm blood starting to trickle down her forehead.
Once she’d sat down, he crouched in front of her and gently lifted her fringe. She got the faintest whiff of expensive aftershave.
“It’s not huge, but it’s pretty deep,” he said, dabbing at it with a napkin. “I think we should get you to the ER. You might need a stitch in it. And there’s always the possibility you could have concussion.”
“No, I’ll be fine,” she said, still shaking. “Tell you what, though, I wouldn’t mind a vodka and tonic.”
She wondered if it was possible to be concussed while at the same time as horny as a herd of rampant rhinoceroses.
When Rebecca’s head was still hurting two vodkas later and the bleeding was refusing to stop, Max absolutely insisted on skipping dinner and driving her to the hospital. (He’d gotten his car back that morning. The police had found it abandoned in Ilford minus only its CD player.)
She spent most of the journey apologizing and remembering to dab at the cut with her right arm.
The ER was pretty empty, but the electronic notice board was indicating a two-hour wait. The TV was blaring in the corner (BallyK) and they sat on red plastic chairs eating salt-and-vinegar-flavored Monster Munch, which was all the machine had left.
“At least you’re a cheap date,” Max said, smiling.
They passed the time talking about work. She told him how she was just doing the beauty column to pay the bills. “It’s not really me,” she said, “I’m desperate to get stuck into a proper story.”
“You shouldn’t knock the beauty,” he said. “Great stories often crop up where you’d least expect them.”
“Funny you should say that.” She told him about the weird phone call from the woman who got sacked from Mer de Rêves. “I’ve agreed to see her, but she’s probably just some nutter.”
“Maybe. But you never know. You could be on the verge of a huge beauty industry exposé.”
“Yeah, right,” she said, laughing, “I can see it now: ‘Rebecca Fine peels off face mask of lies and deceit in deep cleanser scandal.’ They could call it exfoli-gate.”
“You know, you’re very funny.”
She could feel herself going red. “So,” she said, “tell me a bit more about this French story you said you were working on.”
He explained that just over a year ago a partly British-built nuclear power plant eighty miles east of Paris had come within minutes of blowing up. Had it happened, it would have left a radiation cloud over the whole Paris region and part of southern England, too.
“Apparently the workers were having a Christmas party and nobody noticed the radiation leak. Of course …” he lowered his voice to whisper, “the French government and ours have been trying to cover it up. At least two people who’ve tried to tell their stories have been bumped off.”
“Blimey. Aren’t you scared that they could do the same to you?”
“A bit, but it’s unlikely.”
He explained that the moment he’d uncovered the story (which had come via a physicist he’d known since his post-grad student days at the Sorbonne), the Vanguard had insisted on sharing it with Liberation and a French TV company, as well as Channel 6.
“The plan is to release the story simultaneously. It’s all about safety in numbers.” He started grinning. “If the French government finds out we’re on to them and tries to stop us, there’d be a heck of a lot of people to kill.”
“But they could still try.”
He shrugged. “I try not to think about it.”
How could he be so cool, so laid back? She hadn’t felt so horny since that bit in Braveheart where Mel Gibson saves his wife from being raped.
Her head X ray was clear, but the harassed junior doctor said the cut was deep and needed a couple of stitches.
Rebecca was no coward. On a school Outward Bound trip to Wales when she was sixteen, she’d rappelled down a forty-foot rock face and canoed through rapids. On holiday in Corfu a couple of years ago she’d had a go at paragliding. Despite her undoubted bravado, she couldn’t bear the thought, let alone the sight, of needles.
“Can’t you put one of those sticky tape things over it?” she asked the doctor, having explained about her fear of needles.
The doctor said he wouldn’t advise it as the wound would only open up again. When he offered her a couple of Valium to calm her down, she agreed straight away.
She started to feel woozy almost immediately. It was probably made worse by the two double vodkas she’d downed on an empty stomach.
While the doctor fiddled around with surgical gloves and tools, she could feel herself getting more and more relaxed. She barely flinched as he injected the area round the cut with local anesthetic. Max was looking down at her.
“You all right?” he asked gently.
“Couldn’t be better,” she said with a drunken, and drugged to boot, giggle. She paused. “Has anybody ever told you how incredibly sexy you are?”
Max reddened and exchanged a glance with the doctor, but Rebecca didn’t notice. “Doctor,” she carried on, “don’t you agree that this is one of the sexiest men you have ever seen? I mean I know you’re a bloke and everything, but I reckon even blokes know when another bloke’s sexy.”
Then she must have drifted off.
“Right, that’s it. All done,” the doctor announced as she started to come round again. He snapped off his gloves.
She was aware of Max sitting at the end of the cubicle. He was sipping coffee, but so Valiumed-up was she, that she was convinced he was licking ice cream from a cornet.
“God, I bet you give the best oral sex,” she said woozily.
The doctor suggested they leave her to sleep off the effect of the Valium for a half hour or so. When she woke up, she still felt pretty
doped and had no memory of what she’d said. Max insisted on driving her home. They stopped off at a drive-through Burger King. She had a veggie burger because they were less fatty than meat burgers, which tended to give her indigestion.
“Look, I am just so sorry for the way tonight turned out,” she said as he pulled up outside her flat. “I ruined everything. Do you forgive me?”
He didn’t answer. Instead he cupped her face in his hands and drew her toward him. Then he kissed her lightly on the lips. Oh God, she wanted his head between her legs and she wanted it now.
“Just to show you how much I forgive you,” he said, “why don’t you let me cook you dinner tomorrow night?”
“That would be lovely,” she said, running her hand through her hair and realizing too late that her underarm fuzz was on full view.
6
OK there has to be a catch,” Rebecca said to Jess the next morning, as she lay on the sofa in her Angelica Rugrat PJs, cordless to her ear. “No man is this perfect. Not only is he gorgeous, intelligent and kind, but he is risking his life for the sake of justice and truth.”
“Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded, survived.”
“What?” Rebecca said.
“Sorry. Diglet and I were in the middle of our history lesson when you phoned. We’re doing Henry the Eighth. Why on earth should there be a catch? You’re being paranoid. Maybe that bump on your head was more serious than you thought.”
“Don’t be daft. I’m fine. No, there has to be something wrong with him. I know—I bet he’s a veggie. God, yeah, that’s bound to be it.”
In Rebecca’s book real men ate food that had parents. Veggie blokes on the other hand had lifetime membership to the National Trust, ran like girls and wore prosthetic sympathy stomachs when their wives were pregnant.
“What’s the betting he goes on Tyrolean walking holidays?”
Jess laughed and told her to stop being so stupid.
“So how are things?” Rebecca asked.
“Nightmare. Ed still can’t get it up. 1535, dissolution of the monasteries begins and Thomas More is executed… . Says he doesn’t know why. Swears he still adores my body.”
“See, what have I been telling you?” Rebecca said.
