Everybody laughed except Rebecca. She sat looking at Lipstick, trying to make her out. Of course people’s personalities changed and mellowed as they got older. Take her own for example. Only a few days ago she’d caught herself in a lift humming along to the
Mull of Kintyre
Muzak. But this warm, up-for-a-laugh, salt-of-the-earth Lipstick seemed just too far removed from who she used to be. The Lipstick Rebecca remembered had about as much charm as Mrs. Satan the day before her period. On the other hand, Lipstick had come to look like her mum, so maybe over the years the rest of the maternal genes had kicked in and she’d taken on her personality, too. Then again, this new persona, along with the flowers for Rose and the offer to take her on the honeymoon, might be nothing more than a cynical schmoozing exercise. A way of wheedling her way into Stan’s affections before fleecing him. Maybe her first instincts about Lipstick had been right after all.
It was while they were having coffee that Stan turned to Rebecca and said he and Bernadette wanted to ask her a favor.
“Ask away,” Rebecca said brightly.
“Well, the thing is, Bernadette’s just bought a new flat and it’s being renovated—you know, new wiring, central heating—so that we can move in straight after the wedding. There’s going to be so much mess and upheaval. Plus she’s going to have no heat while they fit the radiators . . . she really could do with somewhere to stay for a few weeks.”
What? He wanted Lipstick to move in with her? Rebecca could feel herself starting to panic. How could Stan land this on her, out of the blue? He should have spoken to her in private, given her some time to think. Then again she could see how excited he was about getting married. He just wasn’t thinking straight. The point was, she didn’t know Lipstick. She was still struggling to come to grips with the prospect of having a stepmother her own age. She wasn’t even remotely ready for them to live under the same roof. But, above all, she didn’t trust her.
“Under normal circumstances she could have moved in with me,” Stan went on, “but I’m not going to be around. The manager of Lacy Lady in Manchester has just left without giving notice and I really need to go up there to straighten things out. And anyway my place is too far from Bernadette’s salon. So, we were wondering if you’d mind putting her up.”
Lipstick must have seen the expression on her face.
“Look, Becks,” she said, “I know it’s a cheek asking and I’ll totally understand if you say no.”
Rebecca hesitated, desperately searching for an excuse. Then suddenly it occurred to her that having Lipstick come to stay might not be such a bad idea after all. That way she could watch her and maybe find out what she was up to.
“’Course it’s not a cheek.” Rebecca smiled. “I’d be delighted.”
“Oh, Becks,” Lipstick squealed, “we are going to have a great time getting to know each other. I can’t wait.”
8
L
ipstick moved in
two days later with five suitcases, a tanning bed and Harrison Ford.
“Isn’t he just gorgeous?” she drooled as they sat in the kitchen drinking the Lambrusco Lipstick had brought to say thank you for having her. “Come on, tell me he isn’t gorgeous.”
Rebecca looked at Harrison Ford, who was still wearing his Burberry mac, and agreed he was indeed gorgeous.
“And he’s got a wonderful
pawsonality,
” she said, chucking him under the chin and nuzzling him. “But most important, he’s completely house trained. The only time he’s ever left an ickle pressie-wessie for his mummy was when he was a baby and he had a poorly tum tum.”
“Look, the thing is, Lips— I mean Bernadette . . .”
Lipstick laid her hand gently on Rebecca’s arm and said they should get one thing straight from the off. She loved being called by her old nickname. “You know,” she said, “my mates from school still call me Lipstick.”
“OK, if you’re sure.”
“I am. Promise. You know, Becks, I have to tell you I felt really weird finding out I was about to become a stepmother to a woman the same age as me. I wasn’t sure how you’d take it.”
“Well, I have to admit it was a bit of a shock at first.”
“I really hope we can be friends.” Lipstick’s face broke into a grin. “I promise faithfully I won’t lock you in a kitchen full of pumpkins.”
“OK, and I promise always to be home by midnight.”
“Deal,” Lipstick declared.
They both started laughing. Despite Rebecca’s ongoing suspicions about Lipstick, she couldn’t help quite liking her.
Rebecca wondered whether now was the time to clear the air about what had happened between them at school, but she thought it was probably too soon. They needed to get to know each other better. Instead, she thought she’d tackle the dog issue.
“The thing is,” Rebecca began tentatively, “about Harrison . . .”
“I know—you’re worried about what to feed him. Well, don’t even think about it. Every Sunday I cook up a week’s supply of heart and kidney. That’s your fayvwit, isn’t it, baby?”
“Excellent,” Rebecca said. She cleared her throat. “But you see, I’m not really much of a doggy person myself, and I’ve just bought these new sofas.”
“Oh, but Hawwison’s not a dog—are you, Hawwison? Hawwison’s a Bichon Frise. And does he ever have a pedigree. If Hawwison could talk, he wouldn’t be speaking to either of us.”
“Yes, but I’m just a bit concerned that Hawwison—I mean Harrison—is going to leave hairs all over the furniture and disturb the neighbors with his barking.”
Lipstick assured her the only place he ever sat was his basket and that he barked only if he was frightened.
When Lipstick disappeared to the loo, Rebecca got down on all fours and stared directly into Harrison’s sickeningly appealing, chocolate-box-brown eyes.
“Right, you froufrou little mutt, make one mark on my sofas, leap up at me with your muddy paws and you are dead. Do we understand each other?”
Harrison clearly got every word because he let out a pathetic little whimper. Rebecca sat down again, told him to stop being so bloody manipulative and that there was no way he was getting round her.
“Just because we’ve been forced to live together, it doesn’t mean we have to be friends.”
He looked up at her, a picture of doggy pathos. She refused to meet his eye.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” she said eventually, taking a dog biscuit out of the packet Lipstick had left on the table and throwing it to him. He gobbled it up.
When he finished he came toward her, stood on his hind legs and laid his head in her lap. She screwed up her face and patted him as if she were patting the head of an Ebola carrier.
As she was throwing a biscuit to the other side of the kitchen to make him go away, she remembered she hadn’t checked her answer machine for a day or so. She picked up her wine and went into the living room. There were nineteen messages.
“My God,” she said as Lipstick came into the room, “I’ve never seen so many. Somebody out there wants me.”
“I think you’ll find they’re mine,” Lipstick said, shoving her hair extensions into a scrunchie. “I hope you don’t mind, but I had my calls forwarded. It’ll be clients. I always tell them in case of an emergency—you know, a sudden bikini line crisis—to try me at home. I’ll listen to them in a sec.”
“Right,” Rebecca said sweetly, giving no hint that she was a bit hacked off at Lipstick clogging up her answer machine without asking if it was OK.
Lipstick began looking round the room. “I can see you’re almost there,” she said, surveying Rebecca’s monument to minimalism. This was considerably less minimal than it had been a few hours ago, on account of Lipstick’s tanning bed taking up nearly half the room. “All you’re short of really is a few knickknacky things. Some bits to make it more homey. An arrangement of silk flowers on the mantelpiece, maybe. Or what about a pine Welsh dresser full of novelty teapots. I love those.”
Rebecca smiled and said she’d think about it.
Eventually, Lipstick’s eyes alighted on
Woman Wanking.
Rebecca watched her as she stood considering the painting. She kept craning her neck this way and that, as if any second—once her head reached the apposite angle—the penny would drop and she’d get it.
“Well, it’s different. I’ll give it that. Wouldn’t you have preferred a nice landscape? Or some framed photographs?”
Apparently she was planning to have this photographer in Friern Barnet do a studio portrait of her and Stan.
“He’s got all these different costumes and backdrops to choose from. At the moment I’m torn between ‘On Safari’ and ‘Victorian Tourists in the Fjords.’”
They spent the rest of the evening looking at Harrison’s christening photos.
This was followed by two albums of pictures of him when he was page boy (blue velvet breeches, white silk shirt, lace collar) at his doggy best friend’s wedding. After an hour or so, Rebecca said she hoped Lipstick didn’t mind but she was knackered and had to crash.
She arrived at the office the next morning and immediately went in search of Lucretia. She knew she was going to have an almighty job convincing her to let her start investigating the Mer de Rêves story because the company was one of the paper’s main advertisers, but she was determined to try.
She’d spent most of the drive working on her pitch. In order to sell the idea to Lucretia, it had to contain the two ingredients she considered staples for a magazine aimed at women: glamour and intense personal suffering.
“Lucretia,” she heard herself saying at one point, “I’ve found this great story—it’s sort of Oskar Schindler meets Pussy Galore.” God, no. That wouldn’t work. She couldn’t possibly say “Pussy Galore” to Lucretia. The woman would have a baby.
Lucretia’s office was empty. Snow was nowhere to be seen either. She went back to her desk to find Max waiting for her with a present of cappuccino and an apricot Danish.
“Oh, Max, that is so sweet. Thank you.”
“I just wanted to say,” he whispered, brushing his fingers against her cheek, “you know, how much I enjoyed the other night.”
“Me, too,” she said, holding his hand against her skin for a moment. Then she reached up and kissed him quickly on the lips.
“Listen,” she said afterward, “you don’t know where Lucretia is, do you?”
“Ah, you obviously haven’t heard?”
“Heard what?”
“About Lucretia’s call from the producers of
Watching You, Watching Me.
”
“What?” Rebecca laughed. “That new
Big Brother
rip-off?”
“Yeah, apparently they’re kicking off with a celebrity edition. Shooting starts tomorrow. But last night Anne Robinson went down with some bug and they asked Lucretia to step in. She said yes, only if she could bring Snow.”
“Hmm, to do all her chores while she sits around refurbishing herself all bloody day, presumably.”
She asked him who had taken over as she needed to get the go-ahead for the Mer de Rêves story. He told her Charlie Holland, who normally edited only the main newspaper, was filling in.
“Which is brilliant news,” Max said. “There’s no way Charlie would let a bit of advertising revenue get in the way of a good story.”
He kissed her and gave her bum a quick squeeze. “How’s about lunch?”
She nodded. They arranged to meet in the lobby at one.
Max was right. Charlie Holland, DFC—who had seen action in the former British colony of Aden in the sixties before going to Oxford and eschewing the military for Marxism—leaped at the Mer de Rêves story.
“OK,” he barked, picking up a rubber band from his desk. “So, what’s your MO?”
“MO?”
He rolled his eyes and began stretching the rubber band.
“Your modus operandi. Your game plan.”
Champion of the poll tax rioters he may have been, but Charlie had never quite managed to shake off the gung-ho fighter pilot thing.
Rebecca cleared her throat nervously. At no time had he asked her to sit down. She felt like she was up before the wing commander for going AWOL.
She told him she was planning to take up Mer de Rêves’s offer of an interview with Coco Dubonnet.
“The PR wants me to do it at her place in the country, but I’m hoping I can convince her to let me come to the company’s offices in Paris. My plan is to convince Coco to let me see the lab where they make this cream and somehow get hold of a sample for analysis.”
He let go of the rubber band. It snapped back into shape. “OK. Carry on,” he said, “but make sure you keep me briefed at every stage.”
She nodded.
“And, Rebecca,” he said, “on no account fuck this up. We don’t want you splattered against the wall in some St. Valentine’s Day mascara.”
He cracked a smile. She only just managed to resist saluting.
As Max had a telephone interview with one of his French contacts arranged for two o’clock, they decided to grab a quick bite at Nick’s, the Greek place a couple of blocks away.
As soon as they sat down, Max handed her the Marks and Spencer bag he’d been carrying. “Another little thank-you for the other night,” he said.
She opened the bag. Inside were four videocassettes.
“Copies of my top
Seinfeld
episodes,” he smiled. “Sorry I didn’t have time to wrap them.”
“Omigod. Max, you shouldn’t. This is fantastic. Must have taken you ages. Thank you so much.”
She began reading the sticky labels on the cassettes. “Ooh, it’s got ‘The Ex-Girlfriend.’ The one where Kramer becomes obsessed with cantaloupe. I love that one. You are kind.”
“Next time you watch it, you can think of me.”
“Oh, I will,” she grinned. Then she reached across and kissed him.
They both ordered the stuffed red peppers. Rebecca told him about Lipstick moving in and how she was worried that she might be planning to do the dirty on Stan. “Plus she is driving me mad. For a start she’s so bloomin’ upbeat and cheerful all the time. It’s like living with an escapee from the
Brady Bunch.
If this is all an act, it’s bloody good.” She told him about Harrison and the novelty teapots.
Max laughed and said at least it was only for a few weeks.
When they’d finished eating, Max told her how gorgeous she looked and how he really fancied her. He beckoned her toward him. She leaned across the table.
“OK, he whispered, “slide down in your seat.”
“Why? What for?”
“Just do as I say.” He grinned.
“But I don’t get it.”
“Just do it.”
She did it. “OK,” she said, “what now?”
He mouthed at her to open her legs.
“What?” She immediately sat back up again.
“Come on. Open them.”
“Max, we’re in a public place. Behave.”
She watched him lean down and take off his shoe, then his sock. His bare foot was forcing her knees apart. Giggling, she slapped his wrist with her hand, but he carried on pushing.
The place was packed. She looked around to see if anybody was watching. They weren’t. And they wouldn’t see a lot if they were. The table was covered in a long white cloth.
Hiding her giggles with her hand, she slid back down again and did as he asked.
“I hope you’ve cut your toenails,” she said.
He grinned and assured her he had.
A moment later it was all she could do to stop rolling her head in sheer delight.
“Aah. Oh, my God,” she whispered.
She wasn’t even vaguely aware of somebody coming toward the table.
“Ees everything all right for you?”
It was Nick, the restaurant owner, but since Rebecca was way past the point of no return orgasmwise, she didn’t care.
“Yes, great,” Max said to Nick.
“Aah, ummm.”
Nick frowned.
“The lady. She’s OK? She look a beet flushed maybe?”
Rebecca’s head was now in her hands as she tried to prevent herself making eye contact with Nick.
“No,” Max said, “she’s fine.”
“Tell you what, I got some freshly baked baklava. You want to try some? Look, eet’s over there on the counter. Just look at all that honey just oozing out. Mees, you sure you all right?”
“Oooh. That’s it. Yeah, there. Just there. Keep it there. Just like that.”
“We’ll just have the bill, please,” Max said.
“No baklava?”
“No baklava.”
“What about some halva? I got some wonderful chocolate halva.”
“Nope. No halva. Just the bill.”
Just then Nick’s wife started calling him. “Neek, are you coming?”
“Yes,” he said irritably, “I’m coming. I’m coming.” He started to walk away.
“Oh, God! Oh, God, me too!” Rebecca cried.
Nick swung round.
“It’s OK,” Max said, “I think maybe the stuffed peppers disagreed with her.”
Rebecca spent most of the journey home on the phone to Jess telling her about Max toe-fucking her. Afterward she wished she hadn’t.
“Great,” Jess had said, “you’re getting toe-fucked while I have to make do wanking with an electric toothbrush and end up flossing with my pubes.”