Perfect Timing

by Jill Mansell

  ‘Yes, but not buckets. Not this many buckets.’

  The phone rang. Poppy flinched.

  ‘Oh help, is that her? Did she want me to call her back?’

  ‘No. She just said she’d let you know when the funeral was.’

  ‘Look at me. Listen to me.’ Poppy was pale and red-eyed. Her voice was clogged with tears. ‘You answer it.’

  It was Babs the elegant PR girl. Not thrilled.

  ‘I thought you were going to meet me outside Langan’s at seven.’

  ‘Something else came up. Sorry, I won’t be able to make it.’ Caspar tried not to sound too insincere. He had forgotten all about Babs.

  ‘Go,’ sighed Poppy, nudging him. ‘Don’t stay in just because of me.’

  ‘Oh come on, you said you’d come to the party,’ Babs entreated. ‘You promised.’

  ‘Sorry, I can’t.’

  Caspar put the phone down. He turned to Poppy.

  ‘Now you are being stupid. I’m not leaving you on your own.’

  ‘But what about whatsername?’ Poppy gestured helplessly at the phone.

  ‘She had legs like Barry Manilow,’ said Caspar. ‘I’d rather be here with you.’

  The phone shrilled again, shortly after Claudia got home.

  ‘It’s someone from St Clare’s.’ She came into the sitting room looking helpless. ‘I told him you were ill but he isn’t happy. He says he’s got a classful of students waiting for a model and if you were ill you should bloody well have let him know.’

  ‘Oh hell,’ Poppy mumbled miserably, still on the sofa knee-deep in tissues. ‘Look at the state of me. I can’t do it.’

  ‘He’s not taking no for an answer. He won’t get off the phone.’

  Caspar looked at Claudia.

  ‘You’ll have to do it.’

  ‘What? Are you mad?’

  ‘Someone has to.’ He shrugged. ‘Like you said, they won’t take no for an answer. I mean, come on. It’s not such a big deal—’

  ‘You bloody go then.’ Claudia was staring at him in horror. ‘I can’t do that! If it’s no big deal, you can strip off your clothes for a classful of students.’

  Poppy, whose eyes were by this time so puffy she could hardly see, swiveled her head between the two of them. This was like Wimbledon.

  ‘I would. But the class is Study of the Female Form.’ Caspar played his trump card. ‘And I’m a man.’

  ‘You’re a complete bastard,’ wailed Claudia. ‘No, I’m sorry, Poppy, but you cannot ask me to do this.’

  ‘Please,’ Poppy whispered.

  ‘No, absolutely not.’

  ‘Okay. Don’t worry. Tell them I’m on my way.’

  Claudia watched Poppy sweep a mountain of soggy tissues off her lap. White-faced, frog-eyed and fragile she hauled herself to her feet.

  Claudia tried to imagine how she would feel if her father had just died.

  Then she tried to imagine how it would feel to be naked in front of a classful of art students, all ogling those bits of her she had spent her entire life trying to keep hidden.

  Her most hideous recurring nightmare involved walking into a party and suddenly realizing she wasn’t wearing any clothes.

  ‘Oh sit down, dammit,’ Claudia blurted out. ‘You can’t go anywhere looking like that. I’ll do it,’ she announced defiantly and with more than a trace of hysteria. ‘Okay? I’ll go.’

  ***

  ‘Poor Claudia, I feel terrible,’ said Poppy when she had left. ‘It takes the students six sittings to finish each picture. She’s going to be bamboozled into doing it now for the next fortnight.’

  ‘She might enjoy it.’

  Caspar had picked up a pencil and notepad. He did a lightning sketch of Claudia, spare tires atremble, cowering behind a screen in her overcoat, refusing to come out until every student had his blindfold in place.

  ‘She won’t enjoy it. She’ll hate every second.’

  ‘It’ll be character-forming. Anyway,’ Caspar spoke with a casual air, ‘you mustn’t feel terrible. I don’t.’

  Poppy was instantly suspicious.

  ‘Why should you? What have you done?’

  ‘Nothing much.’ Caspar put the finishing touches to his sketch. This time he was unable to hide his amusement. ‘Just changed the title of the course from Study of the Human Form.’

  ‘You mean you could have done it? You could have volunteered?’ said Poppy accusingly.

  ‘What, take my clothes off for a bunch of strangers?’ Caspar looked appalled. ‘No fear.’

  Chapter 31

  ‘You haven’t said a word about the money from the painting,’ said Jake. Marlene was keeping an eye on the stall while they sat upstairs in a quiet corner of the café. He watched Poppy dunk doughnut number two into her cup of hot chocolate and wondered why she wasn’t the size of a sofa.

  ‘What is there to say?’ Poppy licked the sugar off her fingers. ‘That chap from the paper asked me what I thought you should spend it on and I said a decent haircut.’

  ‘I want you to have half the money.’

  Poppy looked shocked.

  ‘I don’t want it! It’s nothing to do with me. Even if it was, what would I do with it? Seriously, Jake,’ she shook her head so hard her spiral earrings almost flew off, ‘what on earth would I spend that kind of money on?’

  ‘Buy a house, somewhere of your own.’

  The thought of living alone now filled Poppy with horror. As if the Balham studio hadn’t been awful enough.

  ‘I don’t want a house. I like it where I am.’

  ‘A car then.’

  ‘I had a car once. All it ever did was break down and run out of petrol. Anyway, the tube’s quicker.’

  ‘Jewelry,’ hazarded Jake.

  ‘Real jewelry? God, I’d lose it.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He looked flummoxed. ‘Maybe you could treat yourself to a few things.’

  ‘If you can afford things,’ said Poppy flatly, ‘they aren’t treats.’

  ‘You are weird. Isn’t there anything you want? Anything at all?’

  I want Tom, thought Poppy. Sadly, he wasn’t available in Harrods.

  ‘I know what I’d really like,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘To take you shopping.’

  Nervously, Jake said, ‘What for?’

  ‘Among other things,’ she replied, dunking the last of her doughnut, ‘a decent haircut.’

  Knowing Jake as well as she did, Poppy realized the key word was speed. No time could afford to be wasted. At the first sign of someone making a fuss, Jake would lose patience and disappear.

  They were going to shop military-style.

  In.

  Do the deed.

  Out.

  ‘If you make me look stupid,’ Jake warned, ‘I’ll never speak to you again.’

  ‘Don’t nag.’

  Minutes later, he was gazing up in horror at the blue and gold frontage of the hair salon she had brought him to. In Knightsbridge.

  ‘I’m not going in there. That’s for girls.’

  ‘It’s bisexual.’

  Poppy pushed him inside.

  The male stylist she had booked for the job wore blue leather trousers. His hair was tied back in a blond ponytail.

  But he was brilliant at his job.

  And he was fast.

  ‘What are we aiming for?’ he asked Poppy.

  Jake was beyond words. He sat in front of the mirror doing his impression of the incredible shrinking man.

  ‘Think Pierce Brosnan,’ said Poppy.

  ‘Mmm, gorgeous.’ The stylist ran his fingers experimentally through Jake’s wayward hair.

  ‘Is that it?’ Jake demanded fifteen minutes later. ‘Can I go home now?’

  ‘Contact lenses,’ she announced, just to see the expression on his face.

  ‘No way.’

  Poppy hadn’t expected him to say yes. She took him to an optician and at lightning speed selected a pair of gold-framed, serious
ly flattering spectacles with amber tinted lenses.

  ‘Don’t do that—’ Jake tried to stop her snapping his old taped-together horn-rims in half and tossing them into the bin under the optician’s desk. ‘They can be my spare pair.’

  ‘They can’t now.’

  Since there was no point choosing clothes Jake would only flatly refuse to wear, Poppy kept it simple. She chose cotton shirts and faded jeans from The Gap, lambswool sweaters in plain colors, brilliantly tailored black trousers, a black leather jacket, and three pairs of brogues.

  Not a shred of polyester, not a pattern in sight.

  Poppy surveyed her purchases with satisfaction. If he stuck to these, and only these, not even Jake could make them clash.

  Unless…

  ‘Socks,’ she announced, but Jake had had it up to here with shopping.

  ‘Enough. You can get them another time.’ He grabbed the carrier bags from Poppy. ‘When am I supposed to wear this stuff, anyway?’

  ‘Every day. All the time.’ Kindly, she added, ‘You can take them off at night.’

  ‘What about my real clothes?’ Jake looked as if he was suffering withdrawal pangs already.

  ‘They aren’t real; they’re unreal. And if you ever wear any of them again,’ she told him, ‘I will burn down your house.’

  Poppy sat alone at the back of the church and watched her father’s coffin slide silently from view. The curtains swished shut. That was it; he was gone.

  He never even knew who I was, thought Poppy, biting her lip and willing herself not to cry. If she started again, she might not be able to stop.

  The service at the crematorium didn’t take long. Stragglers from the last funeral had been there when they arrived and when they emerged afterwards the next lot were already waiting to go in.

  It made you think, Poppy reminded herself. All day long, six days a week, people were being brought here to be cremated. And it was happening all over the country… all over the world…

  There was a lot of death about. She wasn’t the only person mourning the loss of a parent.

  Poppy told herself this, hoping it would help, hoping it might make her feel better.

  It didn’t.

  ‘You all right, love?’ Rita hugged her outside the crematorium while everyone milled around looking at the wreaths on display. ‘You’re coming back to the house, aren’t you? D’you need a lift?’

  ‘I’m okay, Caspar’s lent me his car,’ said Poppy.

  ‘Sure you wouldn’t prefer a lift? We’ll be sinking a few.’

  Poppy had guessed as much. Knowing she had to drive was her excuse for not getting plastered. Otherwise, who knew what indiscretions she might helplessly blurt out.

  She squeezed Rita’s hands.

  ‘I’ll be fine. You’re doing brilliantly.’

  ‘Yeah, well. Got to give Alex a decent send-off, haven’t we.’ Beneath the broad-brimmed black hat and extra make-up Rita was baggy-eyed but determined. ‘Flippin’ heck, I’d never hear the last of it if I let him down now.’

  Alex had his decent send-off. Back at the house, it didn’t take long for sober commiserations and much eye-dabbing to develop into a rip-roaring wake. Everyone from the Cavendish Club was there. Alex’s band played all his old favorites. The dancing was uninhibited. At one stage, Poppy found herself jitter-bugging with Rita’s drunken cousin, who had no memory at all of the last time they had met.

  ‘Come with me a sec,’ said Rita, taking Poppy’s hand and leading her into the deserted drawing room. ‘I’ve got something for you.’

  ‘What?’ Poppy hoped it wasn’t another dress.

  ‘A present from Alex.’

  Rita took the lid off a Bally shoe box. Poppy half-expected a pair of Day-Glo pink stilettos to wink up at her. She wondered if Alex had really wanted to give her a pair of shoes.

  But when Rita peeled away the layers of black tissue, Poppy saw not the dazzle of pink patent leather but the rich gleam of cobalt blue glass.

  Rita unwrapped the second spirit bottle, which nestled beside the first. She held them, side by side, up to the light.

  ‘They are alike. I can’t tell ’em apart. Anyway, they’re yours. Alex wanted you to have them.’

  ‘He did?’ Mustn’t cry, mustn’t cry.

  ‘Said they deserved to stay together.’ She clinked the two bottles together and mimed a kiss. ‘Reckoned they might miss each other if you split ’em up now.’ Fondly, Rita said, ‘Silly sod.’

  Poppy’s stomach did a slow somersault. She wondered if she was reading too much into Rita’s recollection of Alex’s words.

  But could he—could he—have realized who she was? Was it possible that he actually could have made that connection, that he might have put one and one together and made three?

  Surely not.

  But then, maybe…

  She would never know.

  ‘Did he say anything else?’

  Rita thought for a second, shrugged, and shook her head.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Although you can settle a silly argument.’ Belatedly Rita remembered. ‘Your middle name. It is Teresa, isn’t it?’

  Poppy looked blank. The subject had come up in conversation the other week. Rita knew it was Teresa.

  She nodded.

  ‘See! I told him!’ Rita looked triumphant. ‘I was right and Alex was wrong. Silly bugger, he was so sure it was Laura.’

  It was serious hangover time. Poppy shuddered and gasped as an alarm went off inches from her ear. Now she knew how it felt to be trapped in the bell tower next to Big Ben.

  She crawled out of bed, fumbled her way into the shower, and clung to the sides while power-assisted needles of boiling water pummeled her brain.

  God, that felt awful, worse than when she’d started. Whoever had dared her to down a pint of Malibu and milk deserved to be shot.

  When she had finally managed to dry and dress herself, Poppy tottered downstairs.

  Rita, in a canary satin robe and matching high-heeled mules, handed her a tumbler of frenziedly fizzing water.

  ‘I know, looks like a volcano about to erupt. I thought four Alka Seltzers,’ she said as Poppy peered nervously into the glass. ‘Think that’ll be enough?’

  ‘I can’t even remember setting the alarm clock,’ mumbled Poppy. It was unlike her to think of something so sensible.

  ‘You didn’t. You just said Jake would swing you round by your earrings if you weren’t on the stall by nine. I set it,’ said Rita. ‘Come along, drink that down. Now, d’you think you could manage a bit of toast?’

  Poppy spread the marmalade with a trembling hand. This was kill or cure.

  ‘At least it’s shredless,’ she said. ‘I can’t stand marmalade with bits in.’

  ‘Neither can Alex; that’s why I buy it.’ Rita stopped. She shook her head and corrected herself. ‘Neither could Alex.’

  There was silence for a fraction of a second.

  ‘Oh buggeration,’ sighed Rita, reaching for her Rothmans. She lit one and inhaled down to her toes. ‘You’ll never guess what else the silly sod wanted me to do. Only give up smoking. Can you imagine?’

  ‘Someone told me once that hangovers are worse when you smoke.’ Poppy struggled to keep her toast down as a great waft of eau de cigarette drifted across the kitchen table. She clutched her head, which was still pounding. ‘I can’t imagine that.’

  ‘You don’t look great,’ said Rita, who had probably drank twice as much but had had far more practice.

  ‘I feel diabolical. I especially borrowed Caspar’s car,’ Poppy groaned, ‘to stop me drinking.’

  ‘Then I went and spoiled it all and begged you to stay. Well, I’m glad you did, even if you aren’t.’ Rita pushed her fingers through her unbrushed hair. She winced as one of her rings caught in a backcombed bit. ‘I didn’t want to wake up on my own this morning.’

  Poppy couldn’t think of anything to say.

  Rita twirled the end of her cigaret
te in an ashtray shaped like an elephant.

  ‘No kids, that’s my problem,’ she mused. ‘Other people have their children to rally round when this happens. Three different people yesterday said wasn’t it a shame me and Alex never had any and why didn’t I get down to the pet shop?’ She said wryly, ‘It’s a great comfort apparently, when your old man’s kicked the bucket. If you don’t have kids, get a bleeding dog.’

  ‘Would you?’ Poppy looked doubtful.

  ‘Would I heck. Doesn’t seem like much of a deal to me. Does a dog argue with you about which channel to watch? Does he moan about Manchester United playing like a wagonload of one-legged monkeys? Can he tell you which shoes look best with your new dress?’

  Poppy had finished her toast, which mercifully appeared to be staying down. She knew she wasn’t doing a great job conversation-wise but guessed that all Rita needed was someone to talk to.

  ‘There, told you it’d help.’ Rita nodded at her empty plate. ‘How about a coffee now? I could do you a nice bacon sandwich.’

  To Poppy’s amazement her stomach gave a greedy rumble of approval. A bacon sandwich would be completely brilliant. She broke into a smile.

  Rita jumped up from the table.

  ‘Smoked or unsmoked? And d’you like your rashers crispy or soft? My God, listen to me. Is this what it’s like to be a mother?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Poppy. ‘If you were my mother you’d be nagging me to tidy my room and telling me to cook my own sodding breakfast.’

  ‘I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Oh yes, you would. It’s what mothers do. And they tell you your bangs needs cutting. Either that or do it themselves,’ said Poppy with feeling, ‘and never get it straight. In every photograph of me when I was young, my bangs are up to here and crooked.’

  Rita laughed. She threw the bacon rashers in the frying pan and leapt back as the too-hot oil began spitting furiously.

  ‘You turned out okay. Your mum would’ve been proud of you.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have thought much of my bangs.’

  When the sandwich was made, Rita sat down to watch Poppy eat it.

  ‘If I’d had a daughter I’d have wanted her to be like you.’

  ‘Sure about that? I cheat at Monopoly.’