Kitty wants Louis. Since the little man from Atlas Radio scuttled away, several hours ago now, she has checked her land line, ensured it’s still on the hook. She’s called her land line from her mobile and her mobile from her land line. Both in perfect order. She’s called his mobile and his land line from her mobile and her land line. She’s disguised her number and done it all again. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
She’s tempted to go to the pub, see if he’s there, and yet is unwilling to leave the house just in case he comes to visit. Which he might.
Ooooh
. He might. She’s pretty sure he said he might.
Finally, at her wits’ end, she has a brainwave. She tries him at Fanny’s.
He’s upstairs on the bed, smoking a spliff, pretending to think of things to photograph but actually feeling too depressed with himself and what he did with Kitty – in fact, with the all-round state of his life affairs – to do anything except stare out of the window, occasionally flicking ash into his trainer.
He’s been ducking Kitty’s calls all morning, but when she starts leaving a message for him on Fanny’s answer machine
– all throaty chuckles and admiring references to his genitals – he realises he’s going to have to confront her. He picks up.
‘AHHHH!’ she cries triumphantly.
‘Hey, Kitty,’ he says (polite, as ever). ‘How’s it going?’
‘Angel, it would be going a lot better if you could bloody well answer one of my telephone messages. What are you doing?’
‘
Working
, Kitty!’ he says, as if it were obvious. ‘I’m supposed to be in Torquay this evening. Photographing a bunch of guys…with metal detectors.’
‘Really?’ No. Not really. Louis lies very well. ‘That’s a shame. Because I’ve just this minute got off the telephone to Twiglet Prick—’
‘Really?’ No. Not really.
‘Of course, “really”! And I’ve got excellent news. I was thinking you might like to celebrate with a late lunch at the pub.’
She’s tickled his interest now. Because just now, when he was lying on the bed without an ashtray or any commissions, he was thinking what a shame it was that he hadn’t made a career out of his illustrating instead. And he was wondering, a little wistfully (because at that stage, five minutes ago, he was planning never to speak to Kitty again), whether her offer to him to illustrate the £650,000 children’s book had been a genuine one.
‘So what’s the news?’ He smiles.
‘Ah-ha! You’ll have to buy me lunch to discover that. What time do you have to be in Torquay?’
She wonders, after she’s hung up, what news she’s going to be able to come up with. Because she has never mentioned Louis’s name to her agent or publisher and, until this instant, has never consciously had the slightest intention of doing so.
Nevertheless, she clearly understands that behind her merriness and his pleasantness a tacit deal has been struck. She understands that if she’s to have him again she must tempt him with something more than her insatiable, middle-aged body.
She hesitates. The book, she remembers, isn’t meant to be carrying illustrations at all. She, Scarlett, Twiglet and the publisher have already discussed it. Her hand hovers over the telephone. She imagines – she
remembers
– Louis’s
thick, hot, rigid, throbbing
—Clears her throat. And makes the call.
‘Ah. Twiglet,’ she begins.
‘Twiglet speaking,’ he smiles. ‘Hello, Kitty, dearest.’ He’s never asked her why she’s taken to calling him that, but he assumes it’s affectionate, after all he’s done for her recently. He listens while she tells him what she wants.
‘But Kitty, we already established, the book’s not having illustrations.’
‘What? Of course it’s having bloody illustrations! Don’t be mad. Tell them Louis is doing them. And ring me back when you know how much money you can get. I need some sort of figure by lunch. In about half an hour.’
‘Come on, Kitty,’ he says. ‘You know it’s not as simple as that. They don’t want illustrations. We did discuss it, if you remember.’
‘We did not. I have no memory of it.’
‘That’s strange. I distinctly remember—’
‘It’s bloody outrageous!’
‘It is, Kitty. And I’m sorry. I’m sure Louis’s a fabulous illustrator. However, if you read the contract it is fairly clear—’
‘Oh, don’t be boring, Twiglet,’ she says and plonks down the receiver.
Kitty thinks about that. She turns it over and over, and in the pub later that afternoon she runs her gleeful hand up Louis’s perfect thigh…
‘Good news,’ she murmurs, ‘they’ve agreed to give you £10,000, Louis.’ She burrows inside the zip of his jeans. ‘£10,000 for ten little watercolours. Think you can manage that?’
He twists in his seat to look at her, inadvertently pinching her hand in the fold of his jeans.
‘They don’t want to discuss it with me first? They don’t want to look at my work?’
‘Nope. They trust my judgement entirely. As they should, of course.’
‘Just like that?’ He’s not convinced, she can tell.
‘Our good friend Twiglet Prick is working out the details as we speak. I could even give you an advance, if you like…Would you like that, Louis? Would it help?’
Louis doesn’t quite meet her eye. He shrugs. ‘I, er…’
‘I only suggest it because you mentioned you were feeling very broke. And God knows, we’ve all been there. Darling, sorry. Could you budge a bit? Your zip is pinching my…’
He looks down. ‘Oh! I’m sorry, Kitty.’
‘That’s better.’ She nuzzles his earlobe. ‘Let’s go home. I think a
bed
, this time, don’t you? Scarlett’s at school.’
‘Actually, Kitty, y’know I’m not really—’
She puts a finger to his lips. ‘Let’s talk about it when we get there, shall we…’
‘ARE YOU LISTENING?’ Jo’s voice, booming out of Kitty’s answering machine, sounds angry: controlled but very angry. She’s had a horrible call from Solomon Creasey, whom she finds alarming at the best of times. Solomon had telephoned Atlas Radio and in one terse conversation with the news editor, been brought quickly up to speed with everything
that was going on. Solomon was furious: peculiarly furious, it occurred to Jo, since none of it especially concerned him.
Jo had insisted she knew nothing about Kitty’s Atlas interview, which was true in a way. ‘Why the hell not?’ he yelled. ‘You represent her. And you represent the school. You should bloody well know when it’s under attack. Apart from which—’
‘OK, OK, OK,’ she interrupted. Feeling guilty, and more than a little nervous. (She’d been regretting her secret conversation with Clive Adams all morning, wondering how to prevent herself from getting any more involved. And now this.) ‘Shut up, Solomon. I get the message.’
‘Good. So I take it you’ll be telling the Adamses and Kitty Mozely to organise their own loathsome little self-promotion exercises in future?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jo said stubbornly. ‘I’ll think about it. What did Kitty say, exactly, anyway?’ she asked – again. For the fourth time, in fact. ‘Is her first husband dead? I didn’t even know she’d been married.’
‘And maybe you should call Fanny,’ Solomon says. ‘Tell her the interview’s not going out, will you?’
‘It isn’t?…How come? How do you know?’
‘And you can clarify whose bloody side you’re on while you’re at it. The poor girl’s going mad. She thinks she’s surrounded by enemies…’
‘ARE YOU LISTENING? Kitty? Are you there?’ Jo’s voice continues to blast out from the answer machine on the cluttered kitchen counter. Beneath it Louis, the stallion, pauses between ruts, offers a questioning look to his mount. Who shakes her mane impatiently, and bucks him on.
They hear Jo click her tongue. ‘I’ve just been brought up to date about your interview with Atlas Radio this morning, during which I understand you made some extremely unhelpful comments.’ Jo breathes deeply, annoyed that she
still doesn’t know exactly what they were. ‘Which comments, for your information, will never be broadcast. Anyway, I wonder if you could call me. Please.’ Another pause, as if she can’t decide whether to hang up or to say more. ‘In fact, no. Don’t call me back. I don’t want anything more to do with this mess. I don’t want anything to do with any of you any more. Not you or Clive or Geraldine. I don’t like what you’re up to, frankly, and I’m sorry I was ever involved. You’re all bloody well fired.’
‘Oops,’ murmurs Louis with a distracted smirk, running his hands from stifle to flank, plunging himself deep inside her. ‘She sounds a bit upset…What was all that about?’
But Kitty doesn’t want to tell him and he’s not that interested in the answer anyway.
Fanny’s just winding up a call to her mother (feeling much better; turds good and solid again) and catching the late-afternoon sun on her front porch, when she spots Louis trying to skulk back into his cottage. She hasn’t seen him all day.
‘Hey, Mum, got to go…
Louis!
’ He pretends not to notice her. Fanny blows a kiss to her mother and leaps up to catch him. ‘Where’ve you been all afternoon? I’ve been looking for you. I’ve got so much I want to tell you,’ she gabbles at him. ‘It’s been such a horrible day. What are you doing now? Shall we go for a drink?’
‘Fan!’ he says, edging away from her. He tells her he’s been at Kitty’s, because like all good liars he knows it’s always safer to stick with as much of the truth as possible. ‘I’ve been having a drink with your old friend Deadly Nightshade,’ he says lightly, hoping Fanny will smile. He explains that Kitty’s publisher has commissioned him to do ten little watercolours for her book. ‘Good news, hey? Looks like Deadly’s come up trumps.’ He doesn’t mention that
Kitty’s publisher hasn’t yet laid eyes on his portfolio, has no idea what his work is like. He doesn’t mention, either, that Kitty has offered to advance him the £10,000 fee. Fanny might suspect the commission wasn’t for real. ‘Anyway, I thought I’d just go take a shower, but then maybe we could celebrate…Maybe even venture out of Fiddleford for the night,’ he adds. Not wanting to bump into Kitty. ‘How about that! Life beyond Fiddleford. Imagine it!’
But Fanny doesn’t smile. ‘You were at Kitty Mozely’s?’ she says, looking at him strangely. ‘I didn’t realise—’
‘What? What didn’t you realise?’
She shrugs. ‘I don’t know. I suppose I didn’t realise you were still such good friends.’
‘Well, I’m not,’ he says tetchily, ‘“such good friends”.’ He backs away from her, slides the key into his lock. ‘Anyway, I’ll catch you later, OK? Give me ten.’
‘Only – because, Louis listen, Kitty gave an interview to the local radio this morning. Did she not mention it?’
But Louis has already slipped inside and shut the door behind him.
Fanny knows Louis. She knows he would never have meant any harm by it. It’s just that he’s friendly. He loves to talk. But still, when she pictures the moment of his actually mouthing the words, his telling Kitty the long, involved, unhappy story, she feels a stab of pain. She can see the expression of prurience on Kitty’s face, of pleasant, conversational detachment on Louis’s. She can see their heads bent together somewhere, in some quiet corner – at the Fiddleford Arms, perhaps. Or maybe in Louis’s Arms…
‘Louis!’ Fanny shouts through the door at him. ‘I think you and I need to talk.’ But Louis doesn’t reply. And they don’t go out that night, after all. Louis telephones her ten minutes later claiming he’s just been sick.
‘Too much excitement, I guess,’ he murmurs, ‘or something. I feel like shit, Fan. I’m going to go to bed.’
‘All right then,’ says Fanny. She doesn’t try to argue. She
certainly doesn’t offer to come round and help. In fact, as she wishes him goodnight and hangs up the telephone she feels nothing more than a sad flutter of relief.
Next door, Tracey Guppy has locked herself into Macklan’s bathroom and is refusing to come out. Half an hour earlier, as they were lying side by side in bed, he’d run a hand over her hard, round belly and tentatively suggested she should go to see a doctor about it.
‘Because that’s not
fat
, is it?’ he said, giving it a tap. ‘It’s not blubbery like fat. Maybe there’s something wrong with you. And if there is, Trace, you’re better off finding out sooner than later. I don’t need to tell you that.’
‘It is
fat
,’ she said, trying to wriggle away from him.
‘No, it’s not,’ he said, holding her firm and tapping again. ‘Listen!’
Tap-tap
.
She elbowed him in the stomach and scrambled wildly out of the bed.
Now he’s tapping not on her belly but the bathroom door. ‘Tracey?’ he shouts through the keyhole. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Trace. I don’t care what kind of fat it is. I mean, you’re not fat, anyway.
I love you!…
’
Silence.
‘Baby, I’m on my knees here…Tracey?…I’m – I’m
proposing
to you…’
Silence.
‘Tracey? Can you hear me? You’re not fat, you’re beautiful. I love you. Will you marry me? Please?…
Please
, Trace. I didn’t mean to upset you. Never. I never want to upset you.
Please
, unlock the—’
Her head pops round the bathroom door. Her eyes are bloodshot, her thick make-up smudged down her cheeks. She’s smiling at him. ‘Of course I’ll marry you!’ she says.
But when his face lights up and he opens his arms, something inside her seems to buckle. She drops her head on to his chest and sobs, racking sobs that shake her whole body.
‘Trace,’ he pleads. ‘What is it? What’s wrong? We can’t be married if we’re going to have secrets. You’ve got to tell me what’s wrong.’
But she offers no explanation.
‘Is it because you don’t want to marry me? That’s OK! We don’t have to marry, Trace. Not if you don’t want. It was just a suggestion. We can do whatever we want.’
‘No, I want to marry you. I love you, Mack.’
She sobs for some time, until finally she vomits in the bathroom sink.
They don’t mention the swollen belly again, but unlike Fanny and Louis, alone in their separate beds, Tracey and Macklan make love to each other with great tenderness that night. And afterwards Tracey finally agrees that in the morning she will talk to Uncle Russell about moving out.