Last of the Summer Moët

by Wendy Holden

  The thing was, she knew this taste. This smooth, oily texture, too. Expectation fought recognition. Recognition, in its turn, fought disbelief, but ultimately recognition prevailed. She lowered her finger and raised her chin. Her eyes were cold, angry.

  Beneath his red bandanna, the celebrity chef’s stubbled face radiated expectation. ‘Well? You like, Kinkee?’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Hervé,’ Kiki exploded. ‘This isn’t mushy peas! It’s mushy avocados!’

  ‘Is what you show me on smartphone!’

  ‘No it wasn’t! That was peas!’

  Hervé’s eyes were blazing. ‘Piss? Is impossible to make – piss – look like – that!’

  ‘Hervé, the chip shops of Britain have been doing it for a hundred years!’

  Hervé twisted his lips. ‘Am not interested in shit shops of Britain! You eat mushy piss here? Thank God for Brexit!’

  Kiki stormed out of the kitchen, stunned at the disaster that had so unexpectedly presented itself. Pie and mashed avocado! It would be disgusting. She would be a laughing stock.

  The fact that Hervé had used every avocado in the place was yet another headache. People were wild about avocado on toast at the moment. It was a favourite on the breakfast menu, usually to fill up after Hervé’s minimalist suppers.

  Oh God, what was she going to do? She had promised mushy peas for the quiz menu and there had been an enthusiastic take-up.

  ‘Takes me back to my old nan’s back-to-back in the alley,’ said Sir Jeremy Young, Great Hording’s most senior barrister and leader of the ‘Legal Eagles’ team. He loved to remind everyone of his hard-scrabble background and make it clear that his rise to the top of the Bar was not the routine achievement of someone privately educated.

  ‘We always have mushy peas at the English barbecue in LA,’ Tim Lacey put in loudly. ‘Kate gets them flown over from Harry Ramsden’s.’

  But there was no time now to get them flown from Harry Ramsden’s. Or anywhere else. There was less than an hour to go. In Great Hording you could get anything from caviar to Kobi beef. The more recherché and expensive it was, the better. Italian village cheese rolled under the knees of octogenarian nonnas? Si! Sourdough from an Elizabethan bacillus? Verily. Butter churned in a vintage pastis barrel by a former Facebook CEO? You got it. But oven chips, microwave pizza, mushy peas? Forget it. Completely unobtainable.

  Kiki thought and thought and thought. She cudgelled her brains into thinking some more. And then, suddenly, she hit on the answer. There was one place.

  It was not somewhere she had ever imagined being of any use. But right now, it seemed the only hope.

  Kiki stumbled out of the kitchen and into the garden. Leaning against the vast silver Koons dog was a filthy racing bike, the ragged tapes on its drop handlebars dangling off.

  Staring at it, Kiki remembered Jonny mentioning a new sculpture. Here, presumably, it was. She needed to find a better place to display it than this. But first things first.

  She dragged her smartphone from its purpose-built pocket in the flowing Muck Sweat trousers, made a swift search online, then dialled.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The shepherd hut looked adorable from the outside, its baby-blue-painted wooden wheels lifting it high off the ground. Laura climbed the short flight of white wooden steps and opened the pretty white wooden door.

  ‘Whoa!’

  The shepherd this hut was aimed at was obviously au fait with fashion, like the Shoreditch scythers and weavers she knew. The decor was kitsch irony in overkill. On narrow shelves and along the skirting Disney character lamps jostled with Catholic ephemera. There were photo cubes, bowling pins, snowdomes and Spanish dolls. There was a jukebox, a large plastic Oscar and a giant ice-cream sundae. The walls held framed retro cigarette adverts and images of Elvis.

  ‘Lulu?’ Laura called doubtfully. She had been certain it was Lulu she had seen at the window – but it was impossible to now see her among all this hysterically patterned detail.

  ‘Low-ra!’ What Laura had thought was a poster of Brigitte Bardot now came to life. A hand flashing with rings waved from some cushions printed with classic rock album covers. Lulu was lying on a bed covered in a crocheted blanket beneath rows of Kim Jong-un bunting. She was swiping away at her phone; approaching, Laura saw she was looking at pictures of houses.

  ‘Is strange place, this pub,’ she announced, looking up. ‘I ask for croque monsieur,’ she added, gesturing at a plate on the floor with a biscuit on it. ‘But they send me gingerbread man.’

  Laura, hungry as always, bent and broke off the man’s leg. Cycling had given her even more of an appetite, as well as aching calves and blisters. The countryside round here looked deceptively flat. ‘Croque monsieur?’ She took another nibble. The terrain round here wasn’t the only thing playing tricks. This biscuit looked like ginger but it tasted amazingly like toasted cheese and ham. ‘I think it’s a kind of haute cuisine version of it. It might be a joke, croque monsieur, shaped like a man?’

  Lulu looked unimpressed at this culinary sally. ‘Menu here rubbish,’ she complained. ‘All essence of beansmoke. I ask toast and avocado, but no avocados, Kiki say. So anyway. You join me in pub squeeze with willage, yes?’

  ‘What?’

  It sounded like some sort of gang bang and while Laura would do anything for a story, she drew the line at group sex.

  But then the penny dropped. ‘Oh, the pub quiz!’

  The mass of blonde hair nodded up and down.

  Laura loved quizzes, they had been one of the few things she had enjoyed at boarding school. Her general knowledge was considerable, largely thanks to her grandmother. Mimi saw Paris as one big free history, literature and art lesson and as Laura grew up, had taken her to every museum, gallery, cultural site and celebrated garden the city offered.

  And yet, for all her knowledge, Laura’s team never won the Saturday night inter-house quiz competitions at school. Clemency Makepeace’s always did. But only because it cheated.

  ‘You come?’ From among the Bowie and Rolling Stones cushions, Lulu’s sunglasses were pointed questioningly at her. The gilt trim had a hopeful glint.

  ‘Sure.’ Laura suppressed her concerns about Lulu in a knowledge-based competition. Winning didn’t matter, anyway. So what if they lost spectacularly, she and a scatty billionheiress alone against Great Hording’s finest? She would have great notes for her article.

  ‘Okay, is good.’ Lulu broke off Croque Monsieur’s arm. ‘So now we talk tactics, humm? Special subjects, yes?’

  Laura stared. ‘You’ve got one?’ Fashion, presumably. Lulu’s grasp of that subject was phenomenal. Laura had seen her pick up a single sequin from the logo-carpeted floor of one of her wardrobe rooms and know instantly not only what garment it came from, but which part.

  The sunglasses flashed chidingly. ‘Am being good at geography.’

  ‘Geography?!’

  ‘Yes! Have visited many countries. And you?’

  ‘Erm, well, I’m quite good on history, art and literature.’

  She was expecting Lulu to look impressed, but the full, pink-glossed lips twisted doubtfully. ‘Not science, math?’

  ‘Not really,’ Laura confessed. She had passed muster in these subjects but no more.

  ‘Is no matter. If not have answer just look up on smartphone, hmm?’

  ‘Lulu!’ Laura was outraged. This was precisely the method Clemency Makepeace had used year after year with such success. ‘That’s cheating!’

  Lulu shrugged. ‘But we have hole in brain, hmm?’

  ‘Gap in knowledge?’ Laura guessed, reaching over and snapping off poor Monsieur Croque’s other arm. It was delicious, a million times more so than the deep-fried sausage Kearn had rustled up for her what seemed like hours ago now. They deep-fried everything at the Fishing Boat Inn, he had explained. He had worked out, using thermochemical algorithms, that it was the most economical use of time and energy. He had also offered her mushy peas, which she had declined.
>
  ‘The quiz might not be that hard,’ Laura suggested, without any real conviction. Given Great Hording’s leading lights in every imaginable field of expertise, it was likely to be set at a fiendish level.

  ‘Will be impossible!’ exclaimed Lulu. ‘Kiki tell me set by man in bookshop with mind like mousetrap.’

  ‘Brain like a steel trap,’ translated Laura.

  The giant sunglasses were flashing agitatedly. ‘Will be werry hard and Lulu not like to lose!’

  Well, you better prepare for it, Laura thought, looking out of the small shepherd hut window with its ironic net curtains pulled back on little ironic ruffles. Outside, bright green leaves rippled in the breeze and between them Laura could see a van drawing up alongside the rows of shining sports cars – a van so battered and rusting and so utterly out of place in the manicured purlieus of Great Hording that it could only be lost.

  Two figures now emerged from the vehicle. They were skinny, hoodied and baseball-capped and one was vaping copiously.

  ‘Kearn!’ And what was the other one called? Daz?

  Only now did she remember that she had not returned his bike. Was that why Kearn was here? In indignant pursuit? Laura scrambled for the door, sending a pile of eighties electropop singles scattering in her wake.

  She emerged from the shepherd hut just in time to see Kearn and Daz loping off towards the pub entrance. They bore on their shoulders packs of green tin cans swathed in plastic. Unlikely as it seemed, they were delivering some kind of food.

  But the question of what comestible Kearn, son of an establishment that deep-fried everything, could possibly be delivering to the exclusive Golden Goose, suddenly paled in comparison to what else struck Laura now.

  They needed a maths and science specialist for their team. And here, right in front of her, was a man studying thermochemical algorithms.

  *

  The bar-room of the Golden Goose was filling up. Rich evening sun slanted through the diamond-pane windows over the York stone flags reclaimed from a brothel in Bahrain. There was the thump of expensive handbags meeting saw-mark-ravaged tables.

  Air scented with Diptyque’s ‘La Plume De Ma Tante’ rang with chatter, laughter and excited exclamation, plus the rapid fire of champagne corks. Behind the ‘White Riot’ lyrics engraved on the front of the bar, Pavel and Rosie struggled to keep up with demand.

  Kiki, draped gracefully on a bar stool, watched the corks fly from the champagne bottles. They were selling a record amount, which would help with the deficit created by the eye-watering sum that Kearn from the Fishing Boat Inn had extorted for his cans of mushy peas. But profit had never been the point. The Golden Goose was all about influence. And influence there was here tonight, in spades.

  Not that it was necessarily evident. Richard Threadneedle in jeans looked more like a holidaying vicar than the second most powerful man in British banking. At the Politicos table, portly Jolyon Jackson who had been crammed into pinstriped suits all week was now exploding out of jeans and a pink checked shirt. His long-suffering wife Annabel, MD of a children’s clothing company called Nanny Knows Best, wore a shapeless shift and a tense expression. Hardly surprising, given that the Politicos team included a pair of the fruity graduates Jolyon had mentioned, lean in wrap dresses, tossing shining hair about and flashing insincere smiles.

  On the next table Wonky de Launay, the society florist famous for inventing the jam-jar posy, and Willow St George, the celebrated clean-eating chef credited with making the spiraliser sexy, sat with their hedgefunder husbands. More people who would need to put their phones away, Kiki thought, watching the husbands, with their blue shirts and slightly mullety hair, frowning into their screens. Wonky and Willow were shrieking with Anna Goblemova, the young, blonde and very gorgeous third wife of the thickset village oligarch, Sergei. He too was squinting into his screen with mean little eyes. She would, Kiki nervously decided, leave it to Pavel to tackle him about his phone.

  Jeremy Young’s barristers all looked suitably terrifying, lean-faced with hawk eyes and thick pepper-and-salt hair. Evidently eager for battle to commence, they were sipping water in an impatient sort of way.

  Zeb Spaw’s table, by contrast, were all drunk. According to Pavel, who had ears like a lynx, My Quiz Team had front-loaded on My Absinthe at Etchings, Spaw’s mansion just outside the village. Zeb’s Vietnamese wife Dung wore a pink fright wig while his Brazilian mistress Carla – the ménage was a perfectly peaceable one, apparently – sported a child’s silver plastic tiara. The artist himself wore his usual fur hat, wraparound shades and pleased-with-himself expression.

  Something huge and purple caught Kiki’s eye: Dame Hermione processing to her seat in one of her regulation pleated tent dresses. She was followed by the rest of Page Turners; of the three middle-aged women, Kiki had heard, the thin and haunted-looking one was Dame Hermione’s publicist while the one with badly dyed hair was her long-suffering editor. Of the two egg-bald men with round glasses, the more cheerful-looking one was Dame Hermione’s husband Derek. He ran a novelty publishing company producing feline-themed cartoon versions of classic titles. The Great Catsby and Bleak Mouse made far more money than his wife’s Booker winners. Or so rumour had it.

  Right at the back, to Kiki’s relief, was the empty Dumb Blondes table. So Lulu had seen sense and decided not to turn up. She was less relieved about the so-far-empty Merely Players table – had that pompous old boot Lady Mandy decided to chuck the quiz after all? And where was Development Hell – that overbearing midget Tim Lacey, his train of Hollywood producers and his hot young star? Kiki groaned inwardly. She should have known better than give those teams such a prominent position. Now everyone could see her failure.

  However, Lady Mandy or no, Tim Lacey or no, the show must begin. The crowd were getting restive and, in the kitchen, God only knew what was happening to the mushy peas. The sooner they were out on plates the better.

  Peter Delabole was trying to catch her eye. She felt grateful for the comforting smile he now flashed her. His quiz questions were filed neatly in a plastic folder next to the discreet half of bitter before him. No witty craft beers or hipster gins for him, Kiki thought admiringly, giving him the thumbs up.

  Peter descended from his stool, cleared his throat and immediately the crowd fell quiet. He had such authority, Kiki thought, watching the lean figure in the cords and graph-paper shirt with longing. But then she reminded herself she never slept down, only up. Although after tonight, if the teams didn’t get here, she might not be sleeping anywhere.

  Peter Delabole looked about him with a cryptic smile. ‘My lords, ladies and gentlemen. The moment you have all been waiting for. Tonight’s inaugural Golden Goose Quiz can now begin.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Few men could resist Laura in full persuasive throttle. Kearn was certainly not one of them. Within seconds he was putty in her hands and signed up to the Dumb Blondes quiz team. ‘But I’m not blonde,’ he bleated, as, now, he crossed the car park between the two of them.

  ‘Me neither,’ Laura reassured him. ‘Don’t worry, it’s only a tactic. Lulu wants everyone to underestimate us.’

  Another group was arriving, shuffling in the bumptious wake of someone short with thick white hair, a red face and modish blue glasses. He looked, Laura thought, like the Union Jack.

  ‘Come on!’ he shouted over his shoulder. ‘Don’t you just love quizzes? Reminds me of University Challenge.’

  ‘I used to watch that on telly,’ said a young man slouching at the back of the group with what might have been reluctance. He was resplendent in baggy orange trousers, a shirt of hysterical pattern and a jaunty pork pie hat.

  That voice! Slightly croaky, drawling, satirical. Recognition ricocheted through Laura, jangling every nerve-ending. But how could it be?

  The red-faced man stopped and turned to the hat. ‘I didn’t watch it, lovey, I was in it. Won it, in fact! Me, Richard Curtis, Eddie Redmayne and Tom Hiddleston!’

  The hat slowed d
own further and allowed the gap to widen before hissing, to nobody in particular, ‘Pompous twat!’

  That was it for Laura. Before she could stop herself, she sprang forward.

  ‘Caspar!’

  The hat stopped and straightened up, shocked. A confused hand pushed the straw brim yet further back. A pair of round brown eyes met hers, then rolled slowly up and down the length of her. ‘Laura Lake,’ said Caspar. ‘You look fantastic.’

  ‘You look...’ Laura paused, taking in the silly hat, the open Hawaiian shirt, the sequinned flip-flops and the orange trousers with their tight legs and huge baggy bottom, ‘like a film star, I guess.’

  ‘Like a wanker you mean?’ Caspar looked himself wryly up and down. ‘If you think this is bad, you should see the rest of Tinseltown. At least I haven’t got guybrows and a man-bun. Not yet, anyway.’

  Lulu and Kearn, the latter with a disbelieving look at Caspar, had gone on ahead into the Golden Goose. ‘What are you doing here?’ Laura demanded.

  ‘My agent made me. Tim Lacey might direct the next Bond, apparently. If I want to keep my job I need to keep him onside.’

  So that was who the short guy was. Laura wrinkled her brow. ‘But – Bond films? Doesn’t Tim Lacey make cheesy romcoms?’

  Caspar altered the angle of his hat despairingly. ‘Precisely. I’ll be starring in films called Thunderball, Actually and The Man with the Golden Wedding Invitation.’

  Laura snorted. She had forgotten how funny Caspar was. The memory of his flakiness was still strong, however. Their last phone conversation came back to her. The magazine interview he had promised and failed to deliver.

  ‘I’ve got a bone to pick with you.’

  ‘I know, I know. The interview.’ Caspar took off his hat and ruffled his hair, an appealing gesture which, despite Laura’s efforts not to let it, appealed. ‘My agent again. He made me go with Vogue. ‘If it had been up to me...’

  He had hold of her hands now, his touch shooting bolts of excitement up her arms and straight into her heart. He was staring into her eyes with that melting gaze that had charmed Bond girls, Moneypenny, Laura herself in the past. Even Mimi, sternest of judges, had found Caspar irresistible.