Fifty Shades Later: An Inevitable Conclusion (Fifty Shades of Neigh Book 3)

by Anna Roberts

  I blink and gaze back and forth between them. "Wait," I murmur. "Do you two...know each other?"

  Kate rolls her eyes and lolls her head back, so that for a moment she looks like a zombie in a winding sheet. She and Jessica look at me and then exchange a long, meaningful look across the distance of the spurious sheepskin rug.

  "Yeah," says Kate. "As you can see, some things never change."

  "No shit. Has she gotten worse?"

  "You have no idea," says Kate. "Hanna plus pregnancy-brain."

  "Dios mio."

  I stare down at my hands, conscious that they find me lacking. "I'm very confused right now," I murmur. "I think there's something I'm supposed to remember."

  "Thumbs," says Kate, adjusting the sheet. "Is it thumbs? Because you know how you forget you have those sometimes, right? I mean - I'm guessing that's the reason you keep staring at them."

  "No," I muse. "It wasn't that."

  "Them," says Jessica. Kate stares at her and she shrugs. "Subject-verb agreement," she mutters, toeing the floor with a high-heeled shoe. "I've written a lot of words in the last two years."

  I gaze at the big television screen in front of me and as I gaze, realisation dawns. "Oh my God," I gasp, leaping to my feet. "Someone's kidnapped my daughter!"

  "Huh?"

  "Where's Celestia?" I scream, grabbing Kate by her shoulders and shaking her. "Where is my baby girl!? WHERE IS MY DAUGHTER?!"

  The sheet falls to the floor. I gaze into Kate's eyes.

  "If you look down," she says. "I will fucking kill you."

  "Where is my baby?"

  "She's out with her grandma, you dingbat," says Kate.

  Jessica Waters retrieves the sheet and drapes it carefully back over Kate's naked body. She holds her eyes averted the whole time.

  "Thank you for not staring," says Kate.

  "No problem," says Jessica. "I may be a lady, but I am still a gentleman."

  I slump to the sofa, sobbing uncontrollably. "You think she's out with her grandma!" I wail. "But she's not. She's been kidnapped."

  "Are you sure you're not thinking of your sister-in-law?" says Jessica.

  Kate stares at me. "Hanna? Do you mean to say you still haven't called the police about El Fupacabra?"

  "Huh?" I gasp. "I don't understand any more. I don't know what's happening to my perfect life. I had the perfect husband and a perfect pair of breasts and now I'm being stalked and everyone's being kidnapped..."

  "Alicia got kidnapped," says Kate, slowly. "Like a chapter ago. Claudia took Celestia to the zoo. Goddamn it, Hanna - I know you don't like the plot, but can you at least make some attempt to participate in it?"

  "But I'm exhausted," I moan. "My husband has run off with a slutty architect, a seagull ate my ear-lobe, Alicia's been kidnapped and I'm just...so...tired, Kate! I'm so tired. My life is so dramatic and...and..."

  "Stupid?" says Jessica.

  "No! I was going to say glamorous."

  "Stupid also works."

  I sigh. "I need a vacation."

  "A vacation?" says Kate. "But we're halfway through the book!"

  "Yeah, seriously," says Jessica. "You can't keep avoiding the plot like this, Hanna."

  I shake my head. "No. No. I know." Oh my God. It hits me like a thunderbolt - a revelation. "I've just remembered what I'm supposed to remember!"

  "What?" asks Kate.

  "I have a house in Aspen!"

  "Aspen?"

  "What the fuck has that got to do with anything?" asks Jessica.

  "We have to go there," I explain. "And get drunk and try on clothes."

  Jessica folds her arms and blocks the doorway. "Uh uh. No way. You've had enough drinking and dressing up for one book. You even got new boobs. People are trying to read a book here, not watch an idiot play Barbies."

  "But...Aspen!"

  "Fuck it," says Kate. "What's the worst that can happen? So the book gets a few extra chapters of filler."

  Jessica stares at her. "Kate, it's over seventy per cent filler as it is."

  "Right. And right now you're padding that filler by adding even more cheap meta-tricks than usual. Come on - at least this way we get a free vacation."

  Chapter Ten

  What Happens In Aspen...

  At this point in the book, Hanna was deemed ‘officially too drunk to continue’ and I, your humble narrator and sometime Inner Goddess, decided to hand over the narrative to Kate. The alternative was a totally faithful parody in which all characters apparently lost interest in the wafer-thin plot and buggered off to Aspen in order to get hammered and punch people in nightclubs. Not even kidding.

  They say there’s no such thing as a free lunch – whoever ‘they’ are. And maybe they say there’s no such thing as a free vacation either, but whatever. They also say you should never look a gift horse in the mouth, and let’s face it – when your so called employer spends most of her time gargling Pinot Grigio and staring bemused at her own thumbs, it’s probably a good time to start turning a blind eye to equine gingivitis.

  And after two years maybe it’s about time we got to dump the kid on Hanna’s mother-in-law. It’s not like Claudia’s taken up any of the childcare slack before. I don’t think she even likes children, which may go some way to explain how her crack-baby-sale brood grew up to be so incredibly fucked in the head.

  Ironically Crispian is now the least embarrassing of her children, since he’s dead and can no longer humiliate her in public by drawing dirty pictures of My Little Ponys or marrying idiots. Bennett’s not so bad – he just thinks kink is some kind of substitute for an actual personality. Besides, you should never diss the guy who loaned you his private plane so that you can fly to Aspen and get drunk. ‘They’ never said that, obviously, but it goes without saying, right?

  “Do you think there was something going on?” asks Jessica, who still thinks I’m speaking to her for some reason.

  “With what?”

  “Hanna’s husband. And Betty Lasagne.”

  “How should I know?”

  “I don’t know. I just figure he felt guilty enough to loan Hanna the plane. And she said she walked in on him with a breast in each hand.”

  “Sure,” I say, opening an in-flight magazine. “Except he’s a plastic surgeon. He’s probably handled more boobs than Hugh Hefner.”

  Jessica crosses her legs and stares out of the window. “Boobs,” she sighs. “God, I miss boobs.”

  “So stand in front of a mirror and jiggle,” I say, turning the page so aggressively that I get a paper cut. I feel like my eye is trying to crawl out of my ear so it can get a look at Jessica’s chest. It’s so hard to tell what’s going on there. Her crepe de chine blouse is cut too high to show cleavage, but her chest doesn’t look completely flat. Did she get implants or what?

  There’s no question that Hanna did. Her pointy Cold War titties poke ahead of her as she makes her way down the aisle of the plane. “Oh, this is going to be so much fun,” she says. “The perfect girly weekend!”

  “Except I’m a man,” says Jessica.

  I stare at her (him?) while Hanna burbles on, oblivious. “We’ll have daiquiris and talk about boys and try on shoes – not that I’m really into shoes, being more the bookish kind and all...”

  “I love shoes,” says Jessica. “And I’ve probably written more books than you’ve fucking read.”

  I don’t really care about shoes, but Jessica is wearing a pair of pale pink things with three inch heels. Stockings too, I expect. We always used to mess about with garter belts and lace tops. And nasty-ass nylon lace panties that were super easy to tear off in elevators and the backs of cars. My mouth turns dry.

  “Did you say you were a man?” I ask, as Hanna wanders off in search of more alcohol.

  Jessica nods. “I did.”

  “But I thought you were...you know?” I glance down at the boobs.

  He shakes his head, reaches down and removes one of those little gel pads. “Chicken fillets,” he says.
>
  This is hard to take in. I thought he’d become a woman. “What the hell do I call you?” I ask. “Jesús or Jessica?”

  He shrugs. “Whatever you like.”

  “But I thought you were...like...an actual girl now.”

  He grins and shakes his head. “Nah. Actually I wanted to ask you to do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Be Jessica. I started making money and people started wanting to meet me and interview me, and I was going to ask you to do the public appearances as Jessica so I could concentrate on writing.” He gives me a reproachful look. “And I was going to cut you in for doing that.”

  I snort. “Bullshit. You never cut me in on Sasquatch Gangbang.”

  He pouts. “Oh my God – you haven’t changed. You came up with the title, Kate. That was all.”

  “Title and concept.”

  “And then you laid around on the couch smoking weed and playing Left 4 Dead. I wrote the goddamn books.”

  I snort. “I haven’t changed? You should listen to yourself. Do you think about anything but money? Sasquatch Gangbang was high-concept. My high-concept.”

  “As in you were high when you came up with it?” says Jesús/Jessica, curling his/her lip. “Well, that part I do buy.”

  “No. High-concept means the concept is super easy to explain, dumbass. And Sasquatch Gangbang was the ultimate in high-concept – you know exactly what you’re getting when you buy a book named Sasquatch Gangbang. It was both high concept and a unique selling point.”

  He takes a careful sip of in-flight champagne through a straw, the better not to mess up his lipstick. “Actually it was fucking gross,” he says. “From my perspective, anyway. You think I like speculating about sasquatch penises?”

  “Oh yeah. My heart bleeds, dude. How much are you making per month? I’m not even getting paid for taking care of Hanna’s neglected hellspawn. The fucking Oompa Loompas have a better union than me.”

  Jesús peers over the rims of his cat’s eye glasses. “She’s still got those in her apartment?”

  “Yeah. Narnia and shit. It’s all still there. Goddamn fire-breathing dragon burned her false eyelashes clean off when she was looking for the booze the other day.”

  He laughs, reminding me a little too well of the good times, before Kindleporn came between us.

  “It was pretty funny,” I say. “Did I tell you she got her ear bitten off by a seagull?”

  “What? How the fuck did she manage that?”

  “She was in a car chase or something. I don’t know. Her Mom’s been rescuing birds from the pizza-grease slick that’s washed up from Cheetopia.”

  Jesús frowns. “She got her ear bitten off by a seagull during a car chase?” he says, slowly.

  “Yeah. That’s the magic of Hanna. Don’t tell me you haven’t missed her – juust a little.”

  Hanna is shitfaced by the time we land in Aspen. She spent most of the flight reading e-mails, staring at her hands and destroying one champagne flute after another. Given that she's already pumped full of tetracycline from the seagull bite, she makes quite an entrance on the tarmac. Or an exit. Whatever.

  "I'm so looking forward to doing some skiing," she murmurs, adjusting her Jackie-O sunglasses over her wildly swivelling eyes.

  "In August?" says Jesús, but he gets no further as Hanna lurches forward slightly and pebbledashes the tarmac in a fetching shade of champagne a la carrot chunks. "Ah, this takes me back," he sighs, as she falls to her hands and knees, ralphing like Linda Blair on ipecac.

  We clean her up as best we can and bundle her into the waiting car. The driver looks uncertain about letting her ride, but Jesús promises to make sure Hanna hangs her head out of the window. "It's fine," he says. "She'll love it. She can get in touch with her inner golden retriever."

  "Hanna has an inner dog?" I ask, as I watch him bundle her into the car. He always did have annoyingly good legs for a man. He closes the door carefully but he needn't have bothered - Hanna sways to the side and ends up with her cheek mashed up against the glass of the window and her mouth wide open.

  "Why not?" says Jesús. "She has an inner everything else. Except maybe an inner ear. Hanna, wind the window down...for God's sake...dammit, she's getting puke all over the glass. Is that glitter? Does she puke glitter now?"

  "Nah. I think it's lipgloss."

  "Whatever," he says, scrambling across to open Hanna's window. Her head lolls out and his skirt rides up, exposing the lace tops of his sheer stockings. Oh God. This is going to be an interesting vacation.

  Hanna's 'cabin' turns out to be a glamorous case-study house set in the pine woods. Still, I guess at least this time she's not calling it a potato. We're halfway down the long driveway when the mountain air finally has the desired effect and stirs Hanna from her alcoholic near-coma. "Oh, we're here," she mutters, sitting up and rummaging in her purse.

  Jesús is first out of the car. "Niiiice," he says, picking a wedgie. I slap the back of his hand.

  "What?"

  "Don't pull your underwear out of your ass like that. It's not ladylike."

  "Sorry," he says, carefully adjusting his chicken-fillets.

  Hanna wobbles out of the back seat, having finished reapplying her lipstick. Unfortunately she's plastered it on at like forty-five degrees to her face. "Oh God," she moans. "I appear to be incredibly rich."

  "Truly a feminist parable for our times," says Jesús. "Dumb girl with no brains, talent or marketable skills marries millionaire..." He grabs one of her noodly little arms and pulls it around his shoulders, motioning for me to take the other.

  "And falls madly in love with the contents of the cocktail cabinet," I finish, as we drag Hanna across the threshold. "Hanna, if you barf on me I'm gonna fucking kill you. I get enough of that from your daughter."

  The house is huge and ultra-modern, with a glass fireplace burning in the centre of the room. I'm not sure but I think the ugly-ass painting on the feature wall is an actual Picasso. Hanna groans and sort of folds in two, so we let her sink back onto her hands and knees. Even if it wasn't August, I don't think it would be a good idea to let her go skiing - not if you wanted her to come back, that is. Her centre of gravity is off at the best of times and it only takes a couple of drinks before it's completely shot.

  I hear thundering footsteps on the stairs and wonder who else is here - surely Claudia was staying in Seattle? Then a guy dressed in what appears to be a mascot costume comes bounding down the stairs and does some kind of grotesque pantomime of throwing his hands up in surprise and then bouncing around in a circle, clapping his hands (paws?) in apparent excitement.

  "Oh dear," says Jesús, who is way ahead of me.

  It's not a mascot costume. Of course we both know that; we've wasted enough hours looking at weird shit on the Internet to know that this person is not dressed up as a cartoon fox in order to cheer on their favourite football team. We all know about furries. It's just that nothing quite prepares you for how creepy the thing is in the flesh - it's like the same vicarious embarrassment you get from mimes only with an added level of unsettling because you can't see their eyes. Or any part of their face.

  The furry sees Hanna on all fours, throws up its paws again and then gets down on hands and knees in front of her in an approximation of a canine 'play' stance, butt way up in the air. Hanna is busy retching at first and doesn't see, but the moment she raises her head and sees this hellish fucking cartoon head all up in her grill she screams at the top of her lungs and takes off from all fours with a speed and coordination I had no idea she was capable of.

  "It's probably a good time to mention her crippling fear of mimes," I say.

  The furry starts to say something, but it's muffled. Eventually it takes the head off the costume to reveal the sweaty-haired face of Casper Neigh, yet another one of Claudia's failed experiments in parenting.

  "I'm not a mime," he says. "I'm her brother-in-law."

  "What are you doing here?" I ask.

  Casper pres
ses a paw to his chest. "Me? I'm here for a quiet, intimate weekend," he says. "Don't tell me we've double-booked the place."

  "It's fine. We'll leave," says Jesús, backing towards the door.

  "Oh please, no," says Casper. "You ladies are quite safe with me. I love girls. I’m totally in touch with my feminine side. Besides, you’re not nearly anthropomorphic enough for my tastes. Come in! Come in!"

  "I don't know what that means," says Jesús. "But no. To all of it."

  "It's fine," I whisper, as we step over Hanna's latest puddle. "He thinks you're a woman. You can convince him you're a woman, can't you?"

  "Girlfriend please," says Jesús. "I convinced Oprah."

  "There you go then. Just so long as you don't turn into a muscular gay skunk or something you'll be quite safe."

  Jesús looks uncertain, but I figure a luxury ski-lodge containing a couple of furries is better than no luxury ski-lodge at all. "Come on," I say. "Let's go make sure Hanna hasn't Jimi Hendrixed on her last payload of puke."

  He follows me up the stairs. "I'm not sure I even care at this point," he mutters.

  "I do. She's not fucking dying before I get the combination to her safe. She must have at least half a million in diamonds stashed in that thing."

  We follow the sound of retching to an ensuite off the master bedroom. There's another furry head on the bed - some kind of purple bear or something. "I'm really not comfortable with this," says Jesús, giving the bed a wide berth.

  "What? So they like to dress up as little woodland creatures when they fuck. It's not the worst thing I've ever heard."

  "Well, no," he says, eyeing the bear head. "I just don't know how they dryclean those things."

  I bang on the bathroom door. "Hanna? Are you okay in there?"

  There's a shuffle and a cough and the door flies open. Hanna appears, clinging onto the handle. She's missing one shoe and her blouse and the tips of her weave are liberally splattered with barf. At some point she must have thought that reapplying mascara was a good idea because her eyes look like a pair of drunk spiders have taken up messy residence on her lids. "I've decided," she says, with alcoholic gravity. "We're going to have the best weekend ever. Just us girls. Because I don't need no stinkin' man."