Apocalipstick

by Sue Margolis

  By now the color had drained from Rebecca’s face and her heart was racing.

  So, Lipstick really was out to fleece Stan. She was even planning to do a runner with some lover—to a South American country that had no extradition treaty with Britain. The ditsy lovable airhead thing, the new blinds, the cushions, sucking up to everybody was all an act—a ploy to gain their trust, making it easier for her to pounce. She must have done it today, while she was with Stan in Manchester. She’d probably asked him for money—claiming it was for some new business venture. Or perhaps she had persuaded him to put some of his investments in her name. Rebecca was on the point of barging into the room and confronting her, but managed to stop herself. It would only end in a massive row and Lipstick running off with Stan’s money. What she needed to do was warn Stan. It was up to him to confront her. She thought about phoning him straight away, but decided a call from her at three in the morning would frighten him to death. She would leave it until the morning.

  God only knew how she was going to break it to him.

  She lay in bed until Lipstick had gone to work. Then she tried Stan, but there was no answer. She dialed his mobile, but it was switched off. As soon as she got to the office she tried him again on the shop number. He picked up immediately.

  “Hi, sweetie. Look, can I call you back? I’m just about to start interviewing prospective managers. I’ll be busy all morning. Then I’m going off to see if I can find Bernadette an engagement ring. She told me yesterday she’d like a solitaire. So I thought I’d get her a cluster of solitaires. What do you think?” He burst out laughing.

  She felt sick. Poor Stan. Here he was joking as usual, without even the remotest idea of what was going on.

  “Very funny, but look, Dad, this is very important. I really do need to talk to you.”

  “Oh, look, the first interviewee has just walked in. I really have to go. By the way, great news about you and this Max chap. Your gran told me.”

  “But, Dad …”

  He was gone.

  Realizing she needed somebody to talk to, she dialed Jess. Her line was busy so she decided to try Max. She didn’t like disturbing him while he was working, but she assumed he’d have his mobile switched off if he was in the middle of something important. He picked up almost immediately.

  “Hi, Max, it’s me. Listen, something terrible’s happened …”

  “OK, Monsieur Volaile,” Max came back, “if you could just fax those details to me at my hotel I’d be grateful.”

  She realized what was going on. “Whoops. Sorry,” she said. “You’re in an important meeting and can’t talk?”

  “Exactement, monsieur.”

  She was just about to hang up when she heard a woman’s voice in the background. “Max, come on. Get off the phone. The minister is starting to get impatient. He has to leave for the airport in a few minutes.”

  Rebecca put down the phone. There was no mistaking that haughty tone. Lorna was with him in Paris.

  “OK, OK,” she said, doing her best to calm down, “Max and Lorna are working on the French story together. It’s perfectly reasonable she should be in Paris with him.” And by the sound of it they’d clearly been working rather than shagging. But why hadn’t Max told her she was going to be there? If there was nothing going on between them, why keep it a secret?

  Her thoughts were interrupted by Charlie, who’d come over to get an update on the Mer de Rêves story. She didn’t have the heart to tell him about Lipstick being a liar and a cheat who had undoubtedly been conning her about the Mer de Rêves award and that for the moment, at least, she now had no idea how she was going to infiltrate the MdR lab.

  At lunchtime, her head bursting with worries about her dad, Max and Lorna and the Mer de Rêves story, she popped out to get a sandwich. Then, when she got back, she couldn’t eat it. Instead, she decided to try Max again. She had to find out once and for all what was going on between him and Bloody Lorna. She was just about to dial his number when she heard Bryony, the news desk assistant, shouting across the room.

  “OK, people—Lucretia alert. Lucretia alert.”

  So obsessed was everybody in the office with Lucretia’s Prince Charles confession, that Bryony had been unofficially relieved of all news desk assisting duties. Instead, she spent the day glued to her computer screen, monitoring Watching You, Watching Me live online, with instructions to yell if it looked like Lucretia was about to drop another ball. A moment later, thirty people, minus Charlie Holland, who was writing a lead in his office with the door closed, had gathered round Bryony’s desk. Lacking her colleagues’ enthusiasm, but curious nonetheless, Rebecca joined them. She got there just in time to hear Lucretia confess that she’d always fancied a threesome with Willard Scott and Barbara Walters. The snorts and guffaws were deafening.

  Rebecca had tried to join in the fun, but her mind was taken up with imagining what was going on between Max and Bloody Lorna. She could just see them strolling arm in arm by the Seine, sipping Pernod in some little bar in the Latin Quarter. Each night they would climb the steps to Sacre Coeur and stand there looking out over the city. She could see it now, lit up like a box of jewels. Then he would take her in his arms and tell her how much he loved her.

  She dialed his mobile again. When she got no answer she decided to try the hotel.

  “Ah, Monsieur Stoddart et Mademoiselle Findlay,” the chap on the desk said. “Oui. Room 213. I weel put you through.”

  A sharp intake of breath from Rebecca. “Non, monsieur, un moment, s’il vous plaît. Er, Monsieur Stoddart and Mademoiselle Findlay—they are in the same room?”

  “Mais oui. Bien sûr. I connect you now.”

  The phone was picked up on the third ring.

  “Allo?” Perfectly accented French, but once again, there was no mistaking the voice.

  It was as much as Rebecca could do to get the words out. “Er, is Max there?” It came out as a hoarse whisper.

  “Sorry, he’s in the shower. Can I take a message?”

  “No. No message.”

  “Hang on, I’ll find out how long he’s likely to be… .Honey, you almost finished in there?”

  Honey. She called him honey. A single tear streaked Rebecca’s cheek. She could see it all now. Max had clearly been in two minds about whether he wanted her or Lorna. Paris, with all its magic and romance, had intoxicated him and he’d chosen Lorna. All she could think about was the pair of them shagging in some sumptuous fin de siècle hotel room overlooking the Seine.

  It wasn’t long before the hurt turned to anger, not to mention an overwhelming desire for revenge. Before she knew what she was doing she’d picked up the phone and was dialing the Channel 6 switchboard. Her voice perfectly calm and steady, she asked to be put through to Lorna’s office. A woman she took to be her personal assistant answered almost immediately.

  “Oh,” Rebecca said innocently, “is Lorna Findlay there?”

  “No, I’m afraid she’s in Paris all week.”

  “Oh, dear. Well, may I leave a message?”

  “Certainly. Go ahead.”

  “It’s a rather delicate personal matter. I’m phoning from the clinic.”

  “Clinic? What clinic would that be?”

  Rebecca cleared her throat. “The, er …” She lowered her voice. “The special clinic.”

  “Special? How is it special?”

  “No, no. You misunderstand. I’m phoning from the STD clinic. It’s with reference to Ms. Findlay’s anal warts… .”

  “Ooh, ooh,” Bryony was calling out for a second time. “Rumpus.”

  Everybody, including Rebecca, who was feeling positively cathartic after her phone call, leaped up and rushed over to the screen.

  “OK, I have had it,” Snow was yelling at Lucretia. They were alone in the girls’ bedroom. “It’s about time you learned to look after yourself.”

  “Snow, darling, please calm down,” Lucretia was saying. She looked genuinely taken aback. “All I did was remind you to use
the thermometer I gave you to check my bathwater was precisely sixty-seven degrees. I can’t see why you lost your temper.”

  Lucretia put a placating hand on Snow’s shoulder. Snow snatched it away.

  “I lost my temper because I’m fed up with being treated like your servant,” Snow snarled. “From now on you can run your own bath, do your own washing and ironing, put your own ice in your drinks and rub anticellulite cream into your own bloody arse. I am out of here. Do you understand? Out of here!”

  As Snow stomped off into the communication room—presumably to arrange her exit from the house—the entire office broke into cheers and applause.

  “Blimey,” somebody said through the din, “who’d have thought Snow would finally find the balls to stand up to Lucretia?”

  The catharsis starting to wear off, Rebecca thought about going home. But she knew she’d only mope and eat. Plus she just had to find some way of getting into the Mer de Rêves offices. She decided to put in another call to the senior PR in Paris and have another go at buttering him up. She rang his extension, but there was no reply. She would try again later.

  In the meantime she had a column to write. She opened her desk drawer and went trawling through her freebie samples, looking for inspiration.

  By five o’clock—between the occasional blub and worrying about Stan—she’d managed to research and write what she considered to be a spectacularly focused and well-argued piece in favor of cheek stains as opposed to traditional powder blushers.

  Starving now, because she’d had no lunch, she rewarded herself with a cappuccino and an apricot Danish from Salvo’s. As she sat sipping and chewing, she thumbed through the Daily Mail. A picture on the Dempster page caught her eye. An elderly tweedy type who looked like she had spent her life mustering hounds had been photographed at the Harrods delicatessen counter beating another woman round the head with a large vacuum pack of smoked salmon. The beatee was in her fifties, Rebecca guessed. She was tall, slim and exquisitely dressed—or had been. At the precise moment the photograph was taken, her face, hair and suit were covered in coleslaw. Rebecca burst out laughing, but stopped almost immediately.

  “Bloody hell.” The elderly tweedy type doing the beating was Lady Axminster.

  She didn’t bother to read the text. Instead, she got straight on the phone to Jess.

  “Oh, God,” Jess groaned. “It happened weeks ago. Mum made me promise not to tell anybody because she’s so ashamed. She hoped it wouldn’t get out, but some paparazzo just happened to be in the Food Hall, photographed them and sold it to Dempster.”

  Rebecca asked her what had caused the fracas.

  “It was terrible. This woman she’d never met in her life, but who clearly knew her, came up to her and announced she’d slept with Dad while he and Mum were on honeymoon.”

  “On honeymoon? My God. Bitch.”

  “Mum thought she knew everything there was to know about Dad’s philandering, but this came as a real shock and she just lost it.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Rebecca said. “But why would this woman have told her now—after all these years? It’s such an unnecessary and spiteful thing to do.”

  “I know, but as you can imagine not a lot of discussion went on. Once Mum had finished bashing her up, she vamoosed. If you look, they’ve named her in the piece. Mum feels she ought to phone her to apologize, but at the moment she’s still too angry.”

  Rebecca made her promise to tell Lady A how sorry she was.

  “So,” Jess said, “you and Max Factor still on track?”

  Rebecca said there had been an unforeseen derailment, but when she got to the bit about the anal warts, Jess screamed with laughter.

  “I don’t get it,” Jess said finally. “All you’re looking for is a man who’s sensitive, caring and good-looking. Why can’t you find one?”

  “I’ll tell you why. Because they all have boyfriends.”

  Jess gave a half laugh. “Come and have dinner,” she said. “You’ll only sit at home and get miserable.”

  Rebecca explained about the Lipstick situation and said she couldn’t come because she really needed to be at home to keep an eye—or to be more accurate, an ear—on things. It took Jess a few minutes to process what Rebecca had told her.

  “I’m sorry, I just don’t see it. There has to be some mistake. Lipstick’s kind, generous—a bit of a ditz brain, I grant you, but she’s not a crook.”

  Rebecca grunted and said there was no mistake. “The ditsy thing is just a brilliant act, a cover. We’ve all been taken in.”

  Jess let out a slow breath. “I still can’t believe it,” she said. “Look, just promise me one thing—that you’ll discuss all this with Stan and not do anything daft like go charging round to the Talon Salon to confront her. If you’re wrong, you will make such a fool of yourself.”

  Rebecca said she had no intention of confronting Lipstick and that she was fully aware this was her father’s problem, which he had to sort out for himself.

  Rebecca put down the phone and found herself returning to the photograph of Lady Axminster.

  “Blimey, she really went for this woman,” Rebecca said, noticing the contents of the woman’s posh carrier bags lying strewn all over the floor. Among the clothes and shoes was a large jar. Rebecca only noticed it because the shop lights had caught the diamond letters on the lid, brilliantly illuminating the MdR logo.

  She still hadn’t made contact with Stan. Apparently as soon as he’d finished interviewing prospective managers he’d had to drive over to Sheffield to sort out some emergency with his French knicker supplier. She’d been trying his mobile, but it was switched off. She looked at her watch and decided to call him again, but all she got was his voice mail. When she phoned the shop, the girl who answered said that they hadn’t heard from him since he left and that as far as she knew he was still in Sheffield.

  As Rebecca put down the phone, it began to dawn on her that something could have happened to him. Maybe he’d broken down. Or, God forbid, had an accident. A bad accident. She started to think the unthinkable. He could be lying dead in a ditch. And maybe it wasn’t a genuine accident. Maybe Lipstick had caused it on purpose. Could she have persuaded him to change his will in her favor and then … ?

  “Omigod,” Rebecca cried out, “she’s cut his brakes.”

  She realized the moment she’d said it that the idea was preposterous. She’d clearly become so obsessed with the Max and Bloody Lorna thing that she wasn’t thinking straight. Lipstick might be a cheap con artist, but she wasn’t capable of murder. And the overwhelming likelihood was that Stan hadn’t had an accident. He’d probably gone out for a drink with the French knicker bloke in Sheffield and simply forgotten to switch his mobile on. On the other hand, Lipstick was clearly out to ruin Stan financially. For all Rebecca knew, she might have done it already. She suddenly realized that with Stan out of contact, she had no option but to take matters into her own hands. Totally forgetting her promise to Jess, she decided she had to confront Lipstick now, before she took off for Brazil.

  She charged to the lift, putting on her jacket as she went.

  Of course, the rush hour traffic had to be particularly nightmarish that evening, and it was well after six by the time she reached the Face Place and Talon Salon. She wasn’t sure if it would still be open. Then she saw Lipstick’s BMW—registration: K9 GAL—parked outside and realized she was still there. She came to a cartoon halt in front of it and leaped out of the car, totally unaware her rear end was sticking miles out into the road.

  As she opened the door and stepped into the empty reception she was convinced she’d stumbled across the Muswell Hill annex of the Palace of Versailles. The walls were covered in floor-to-ceiling mirrors with swirly gilt edging. Against the window was a matching gilt table with a mirror top. At one end of it was a pile of glossies. At the other sat a gold cherub playing a lyre. The carpet was mauve with a gold scroll design. More cherubs were suspended from the ceiling along with a vast c
rystal chandelier. Tiny gilt chairs with mauve velvet seats lined one wall. A second gilt table identical to the first, although minus the cherub, served as the reception desk. Rebecca walked over to it, picked up a tiny brass bell shaped like a lily and shook it so that the stamen inside tinkled. She wasn’t sure who would appear, Lipstick or Marie Antoinette’s PA.

  But it was Lipstick, carrying Harrison on her front in a baby sling. “Becks,” she said, looking both surprised and delighted. “I was just about to lock up. What are you doing here?”

  “I think it’s time you and I had a talk,” Rebecca said icily.

  Lipstick looked taken aback for a moment. Then: “Ooh, I think we’ve been rumbled, Hawwie,” she giggled. “Becks is a bit cwoss with us because we’ve been keeping an ikkle seecwit.”

  “Ah, so you admit there is an ikkle seecwit, then?”

  Lipstick pulled a fake long face. “Guilty, your honor,” she said. “Look, I know I should have told Stan, but I was holding back until everything had been finalized. I wanted it to be a surprise.”

  “Oh, it’ll be a surprise all right,” Rebecca said, wondering what, precisely, “it” would turn out to be.

  “You know, Becks,” Lipstick said, scratching the top of Harrison’s head, “this has to be the best day of my life.”

  “I bet,” Rebecca muttered.

  “I’ve got your dad and now all this. So how did you find out? Did the council try and reach me at the flat this morning?”

  Rebecca frowned. “The council? What’s the council got to do with it?”

  Now it was Lipstick’s turn to look confused. “But they must have told you. The council’s just given me planning permission to extend the salon into the empty shop next door. I’ve been waiting months for a decision and suddenly there’s a letter waiting for me on the mat when I got in this morning.”