“Yesss,” she muttered to herself. “Yesss.”
Just then Jess and Lipstick appeared with the drinks.
“OK,” Jess said, “the Jack Daniel’s is for Becks.”
She leaned across the table, toward Donal. “And the Grolsch is for you, Father.”
The next morning, Rebecca was still cringing with embarrassment. “But I don’t understand,” she said to Lipstick, who was sitting at the kitchen table with Harrison on her lap, feeding him lightly poached egg off a teaspoon. “How could you forget to tell me he was a priest?”
“I’m sorry. I just did, that’s all. Anyway, once you’d explained why you’d snogged him, he didn’t seem to mind. Between you and me I think he secretly enjoyed it. I bet he went to bed last night and broke a fairly major vow.”
She cackled and turned back to Harrison. “Come on, baby,” she said. “One more bit of eggy for Mummy. It’ll bind you up. I’m afraid Hawwie’s got a bit of a runny tum this morning. But he was a good boy. He did it all in his tray, didn’t you, baby?”
Rebecca grimaced and pushed away her bowl of Weetabix.
“So,” Lipstick said, “how does it feel, getting your own back on Max?”
Rebecca shrugged. “Great for a bit. Now I feel pretty rubbish, to tell you the truth.”
“That’s because you still love him. Even though he hurt you, you can’t bear the thought of hurting him back.”
“He deserved it, though. After the way he behaved.”
“Maybe he did, but in my experience tit for tat behavior never makes you feel better. Best to let go. Isn’t that right, Hawwie? Isn’t it best just to let it go?” She picked up Harrison’s Burberry mac from the table and started pushing his paws into it. “Right, we’ve got a vet’s appointment in fifteen minutes. I’ll take Hawwie into the salon today to keep an eye on him.”
Rebecca had just gotten out of the bath when the phone rang. It was the chap from the lab.
“I have run this test over and over and I have to say, it’s a very odd result. Basically, it’s a standard skin preparation. They’re all pretty much the same and none, if I may tell you, as effective as Vaseline. But this cream does contain an unusual ingredient: Kenbarbitol Cyclamate.”
“What’s that? It sounds like something that reduces you to a nine-inch-high plastic figure with a miniature moped.”
“Hmm, yes, well, I know this is going to sound a bit James Bond, but believe it or not it’s a very powerful truth drug. It was invented by the Germans during the war. They used to inject it into suspected spies. People squealed almost immediately, apparently. Afterward psychiatrists used it for years to help patients lose their inhibitions and open up about their problems, but it disappeared in the sixties when drug therapies went out of fashion.”
Of course, it made perfect sense. Lucretia confessing all her sexual fantasies, the Harrods customer telling Lady Axminster she’d slept with her husband, the woman in the restaurant in Paris telling her friend how much she hated her and that her husband was gay. It wasn’t that Revivessence simply sent people loopy—it was a truth drug.
“But why put it in a face cream?”
“I had the same thought, so I dug out some of the literature. Apparently it has a fairly major side effect. It plumps up aging skin and fills out wrinkles. Nobody knows how it works, but somehow it boosts the body’s ability to produce collagen.”
“So is it dangerous?” She was especially worried about Lucretia.
“Not in the short term and with the relatively small amounts being used. I’m also pretty sure that the truth-telling effect isn’t permanent. The likelihood is, it wears off an hour or so after using the cream. But there’s no way of knowing what the long-term effects might be. I’d hate to think what could happen if this stuff were ever sold over the counter.”
She put down the phone.
“Yesss! Oh, yesss!” She punched the air and did a little dance round the living room in her bath towel. At last something in her life was going right. She’d pulled it off—her first major investigative story. Pretty soon job offers would be flooding and she’d be able to kiss the makeup column good-bye. All she needed to do now was to phone Charlie, who was in Nigeria. A peace deal was about to be signed by two warring African states and Charlie, who had a special interest in African affairs from his days as a correspondent in South Africa, had insisted on covering the story himself rather than sending a reporter.
She would tell Charlie about her sensational truth drug discovery and find out how he saw the story being written. She looked at her watch. They were only an hour ahead in Lagos. If she was lucky she might catch him before he left his hotel for the day.
He picked up almost immediately.
“Sorry, Rebecca, can’t talk for long. All hell’s broken out here.”
He explained that he’d just gotten back from an all-night sitting of the peace conference. Apparently the parties were on the point of reaching a peace settlement, when Madame N’Femkwe, the wife of T’chala N’Femkwe, one of the warring leaders, burst into the compound occupied by the rival delegation screaming that the wife of the enemy leader was a bitch whore daughter of Satan who couldn’t grind cassava to save her life and, more to the point, was having a passionate affair with T’chala’s brother.
“Oh, my God,” Rebecca gasped, her mind shooting back to Paris and Coco Dubonnet’s conversation with Madame N’Femkwe. “She uses Revivessence. Madame N’Femkwe uses Revivessence. Coco sent her a freebie sample.”
“Fascinating cosmetic detail, Rebecca,” Charlie said dismissively, “but the point is the peace agreement here’s in absolute tatters. I tell you we could be looking at a major African conflict unless Bush or Blair steps in a bit sharpish with some fancy diplomatic footwork.”
“Charlie, Charlie, you don’t understand. This is relevant. I know why this has happened. The Mer de Rêves cream contains . . .”
But the line was beginning to crack up.
“Charlie, can you hear me?”
Nothing. She tried ringing back, but the line seemed to be down.
“Fuck!”
She started pacing. What did she do now? A story that had begun as a fairly straightforward investigation had suddenly acquired ridiculous significance, and with her bizarrely at the epicenter. The whole of Africa was about to descend into war and she alone knew what had caused it and had the power to stop it. She, Rebecca Fine, makeup columnist, held the future of the African peace deal in her hands. The news had been full of stuff about how, unless the deal was signed, oil prices were going to skyrocket and the economy would be plunged into recession.
It was up to her to find a way of convincing the African heads of state that Madame N’Femkwe had only behaved the way she did because of the truth drug.
Sod the bloody Press Awards, she thought to herself. If she pulled this off, we could be talking Nobel Peace prize here. Her face formed a smug smile. Bloody Lorna would be so jealous she’d eat her own head.
In the end it didn’t take her long to work out her next move. Mad, who’d painted
Woman Wanking,
had a friend, Ruby, who was the editor of
Anne-Marie,
a fashionable women’s magazine with intellectual pretensions to a social conscience. And Ruby was huge mates with the Blairs. She and Cherie had done a nanny share years ago, when the Blairs lived in Islington. She picked up the phone.
“Mad, listen. Can you phone your mate Ruby and get me an urgent five-minute appointment with the prime minister?”
18
M
ad said she
was happy to phone Ruby, but felt she needed to be able to tell her why Rebecca wanted to speak to the prime minister.
“OK, but this is top, top secret, right? Apart from Ruby, you cannot tell another living soul.”
Mad agreed.
When Rebecca got to the end of explaining that the entire African peace deal had been scuppered, not because Madame N’Femkwe was an evil warmonger, but because there was a truth drug in her antiwrinkle cream, Mad burst out laughing.
“A truth drug in her antiwrinkle cream. Oh, come on.”
“Look, I know it sounds a bit unlikely.”
“You think?”
“No, really. It’s true. You have to believe me. I’ve even had it analyzed.”
It took some time, but somehow Rebecca convinced her to phone Ruby. Five minutes later, she was back on the phone.
“Sorry,” Mad said, “Ruby’s reaction was much the same as mine. But she did say her magazine was doing a feature on women who suffer from poisoning fantasies, and were you up to being interviewed?”
Terrific.
She tried Charlie again—all newspaper editors had access to Number 10—but there was no reply from his hotel room. Then she tried the
Vanguard
’s news and political editors, but they were both in meetings. She had just put the phone down, when Lipstick and Harrison appeared. Lipstick looked white.
“I couldn’t go in to work. I feel dreadful. Really nauseous. I think I may have caught Harrison’s tummy bug.”
“Come on, let’s put you to bed,” she said. “I’ll make you a nice hot-water bottle.”
“Thanks, but I think I’d prefer to keep upright. Oh, by the way, I saw Max as I came out of the vet’s.”
Rebecca’s heart skipped a beat. “Really? Did you speak to him?”
“No, he was on the other side of the road. Seems like he’s ditched Lorna because he had his arm round some girl. Looked like a student. I wasn’t sure whether to tell you, but I thought I should just in case you saw them one day and got upset.”
“Don’t worry, that’s Amy, his goddaughter. They’re really close. She must have the day off school for some reason. He was probably taking her shopping.”
“Oh, right. I have to say he didn’t strike me as the type who went for young girls.” A beat. “So, what you been up to?”
“OK,” Rebecca said, “do you feel up to hearing some amazing news?”
“Go on.”
She told her about Madame N’Femkwe and the truth drug. “The thing is I really need to speak to Tony Blair—or at least speak to somebody who can speak to him on my behalf.”
Lipstick told her not to worry and that she was bound to reach Charlie Holland eventually.
“You know,” she said, standing up. “Suddenly I’m starving. I could murder an M&M McFlurry.”
Rebecca tried to tell her all that fat on an upset stomach probably wasn’t a good idea, but she wouldn’t listen.
“No, it’s what I fancy,” Lipstick said. “I’ve just got to have it.”
The moment she disappeared with Harrison, the phone rang.
“Er, hello—is that Rebecca?” It was a male voice. Not one she recognized.
“Speaking.”
“God. This is really embarrassing. Look, you don’t know me and I don’t quite know how to put this, but I appear to have bought you.”
“Bought me?”
“Yes. In an auction.”
“Sorry, I haven’t got time for jokes—”
He interrupted her, begging her not to hang up until she’d heard him out. “It was organized by the Hendon and District Synagogue Ladies’ Guild. I think your grandmother, Rose, is a member. Anyway, they’ve been raising money for Romanian orphans and your grandmother suggested all the members should bring in photographs of their single children and grandchildren and auction them.”
Rebecca pressed her eyelids with her fingers. She would throttle Rose when she got hold of her.
“So, let me get this straight—sorry, what’s your name?”
“Alex.”
“OK, Alex. So, right, you’re under the impression you now own me?”
He laughed. “No, not quite. My mother saw your photograph and thought you looked just my type. So, she decided to bid for you and won. The upshot is, I now have a date with you. I was furious with her at first, but then she showed me your picture and you looked, well, absolutely gorgeous, really. So I thought I’d risk phoning you to see if you fancied meeting for a drink. Look, I’d totally understand if you told me to get lost.”
Absolutely gorgeous. He thought she looked, what was it?—absolutely gorgeous.
“So, er . . . how much did your mother bid for me?”
“Seven pounds fifty.”
“Wow, as much as that?”
“No, apparently that was brilliant. The bids only went up fifty pence each time. I think the most they got was a tenner for a girl who’s been in
Emmerdale.
So would you like to meet up?”
He sounded pleasant enough and it wasn’t as if blokes were queuing up to take her out. They arranged to meet that evening, at the All Bar One round the corner from Rebecca.
“Oh, by the way,” she said, “as a matter of interest, which photograph did my grandmother choose? Was it the usual bridesmaid one with the teeth? Or the one of me aged sixteen about to throw up on the Wall of Death at Alton Towers?”
“I think it may have been the throwing up one. But you still looked cute.”
“I did?”
“God, yes.”
Wow, a man who thought she looked cute, even when she was about to puke. She couldn’t wait to meet him.
By the end of the day, she was still no nearer getting an appointment with the prime minister, and Charlie still wasn’t answering his phone. She tried his mobile, but that was permanently on voice mail, and she doubted he would be able to pick up messages in Nigeria. By six o’clock she was feeling so frustrated and miserable she decided to cancel her date with Alex. It was Lipstick who persuaded her to go because it might cheer her up and take her mind off things.
When she arrived he was already there. Her spirits sank almost immediately. He was beaky, and had the overironed look of a man who lived at home with his mother. When he stood up to shake hands she saw he was no more than five four. On top of that his voice was too loud. He began the conversation by announcing so as it could be heard three tables away that he didn’t drink.
“Alcohol gives me palpitations, so I stick to soft drinks,” he boomed. “But only caffeine free. I think it was caffeine that did in my bowel last year. Have you ever had a barium enema?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Oh, you’d remember if you had. They stick this tube up your rectum and then turn you upside down. Humiliation doesn’t even begin to describe it. Having said that, you get to see your colon on TV, which is fun.”
“I can imagine.”
He looked embarrassed. “My God,” he said, “what a subject to be talking about on a date. I can hear you saying to your friends tomorrow: ‘This guy was incredibly good-looking, but the first thing he asked was, have you ever had a barium enema?’”
“Well, certainly one of the above.” Rebecca smiled.
“So, I’ll get the first round, shall I?” he said. Rebecca detected a definite reluctance.
“Or we can go Dutch,” she replied. “I’m fine with that. Tell you what, why don’t I make it my treat?”
“Really? Oh. OK, then. I’ll have a diet Coke, no ice . . . sensitive teeth.”
“Of course.”
As she went through her bag to find her purse, she took out her phone and put it on the table.
“My God,” he said, “you’ve got the Ericsson T39. Great phone.”
“It is? I don’t know. I talk into it. People talk back. I guess that makes it great.”
“But don’t you find the WAP browser awesome?”
“I have a WAP browser?”
“Oh, do you so ever have a WAP browser.” He leaned across the table. “You must let me browse your WAP sometime.”
“I’ll . . . er. I’ll get the drinks, shall I?”
When she got back they talked about jobs. He was impressed she worked for a left-wing newspaper. (She didn’t mention the makeup column. She had the feeling he was the type who would have views about that sort of thing.)
It turned out he was a senior manager at Muswell Hill General Hospital. She felt she should show an interest, just to be polite. As a result, he spent the next forty-five minutes explaining the intricacies of public-private partnership in the National Health Service. When he eventually went to the loo, a woman who was sitting with some friends at the next table patted Rebecca on the shoulder.
“I don’t know what effect that bloke’s having on you,” she said, “but he’s boring the pants off us.”
She decided to make an excuse and leave, but in the end it wasn’t necessary.
“Look,” he said as he got back to the table, “I’d really like to do this again, but I really should get home early tonight. Big day tomorrow.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. Tony Blair’s coming to the hospital to open our new obstetrics wing. Although it’s really a chance for him to make a speech about the government’s commitment to the NHS.”
She put down her drink, barely able to conceal her excitement. “Tony Blair is coming to your hospital? Tomorrow?”
He nodded.
She thought it best not to appear too desperate.
“God, I’ve never seen Blair in the flesh,” she said, running her finger across the rim of her wineglass. “The Downing Street press office only allows a limited number of reporters to go to these things. I don’t suppose there’s even the remotest chance you could get me in, is there?”
“Don’t see why not.” He shrugged.
At this point she lost it, leaped out of her seat and threw her arms round him. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” she squealed. “You have no idea how much this means to me.”
He gave her a look of startled bemusement, as did the women at the next table. Then she felt his arms round her. She screwed up her face. Omigod, she thought, starting to panic. He thinks he’s scored. She moved away, gently removing his arms. Then she took his hand and began shaking it vigorously. Now he looked really confused.
“Well, it’s been great meeting you, Alex.”
“Yes, you too,” he said. “See you tomorrow. Come into the main building and ask for me at reception.”
Then he said he hoped she didn’t mind if he didn’t drive her home, but he had to pick up his mother—whom he lived with—from her bridge night. Rebecca said she didn’t mind at all.
When she arrived at the hospital, there was a press pass waiting for her, identifying her as a representative of
Health Service Management Today
magazine. There was also a note from Alex saying he’d been called away to a meeting, that he was still hoping to make the PM’s speech and maybe he and Rebecca could get coffee afterward. She groaned inwardly when she got to the coffee bit. She would meet him and then let him down gently.
She headed off across the parking lot to the new obstetrics wing. As she opened the door she was confronted by a thicket of reporters, photographers and TV crews—all standing round chatting and drinking coffee from polystyrene cups. As she eased her way through, a woman she knew slightly from the
Tribune
waved and shouted hi. Finally she made it to the reception area, where the crowd had thinned out a bit. Behind the desk, a gang of nurses were passing round the lipstick and giggling nervously, while at the same time, daring each other to have a go at Tony about the way the government was neglecting the National Health Service.
It was only then that Rebecca realized something she ought to have known from the outset: with the huge press presence, not to mention all the hospital high-ups, patients and minders in attendance, she didn’t stand a cat in hell’s chance of having a private word with the PM.
Cross with herself for not thinking straight and desperately trying to think up some way of rescuing the situation, she wandered into the corridor that led off from the reception area. One side was glass, overlooking the parking lot. The other was made up of a series of tiny four-bed wards—all of which had been in use for a couple of months, even though the building hadn’t been officially opened. She poked her head round one, taking in the NHS’s best attempt at creating a home away from home—the mock mahogany dado rail (varnish chipped), the baby-blue, bow-motif wallpaper frieze (riding up at the edges) and the dusky pink nylon floor covering that was already covered in stains and ash from illegal ciggies.
Most of the mothers were gathered at the window in their dressing gowns and full makeup, watching excitedly for Tony’s car. A few were carrying babies over their shoulders. She carried on down the corridor toward the dayroom. Here, half a dozen women, in slightly more upmarket dressing gowns, were sitting drinking tea and looking defiant. Definitely the Tory mums, Rebecca decided.
She wandered back. There had to be some way of getting the prime minister on his own. She knew the drill. He would come in, full of smiles, shake patients’ hands and coo over a few babies. The mums would ask him about little Leo. He would smile, come over all proud dad and deliver some bland sound bite like: “Oh, he’s getting to be a real rascal. Into everything. You need eyes in the back of your head.” And that would be it. In a few minutes he would be heading back to the main hospital to make his speech. She had to think of some way to get his attention before he left.
Then it hit her. The solution was staring her in the face. Virtually all the mothers were up, leaving dozens of beds empty. Why not take one and pretend to be a patient? It was risky. The mother whose bed she chose could come back at any time. But it was either that or go home. She walked into the ward on her left. None of the mothers were there, although the babies were in their cribs next to the beds. Rebecca marched over to the nearest bed, took off her coat and shoes and jumped in.
A few moments later she heard footsteps coming toward her. A nurse, she presumed. She pulled the covers up over her head and turned on her side, pretending to be asleep. She prayed the nurse would carry on down the corridor. But she didn’t. She stopped. At Rebecca’s bed.
“All right, Mrs. Hollingsworth,” she singsonged, “if you’d like to pull up your things, I’ll quickly pop in your suppository. If this doesn’t have your bowels open by teatime, nothing will. Mrs. Hollingsworth—you awake?”