Neurotica (14 page)

W
hile Anna carried on speaking Dan didn't move a muscle. For a few seconds he was concerned that she had found out
he was seeing Virginia Livermead. Once he realized this was not
the case, he turned over to face her.

“Anna, I'm fine, really.” His voice was gentle and soothing.
“I promise I'm not ill. It's, it's just that I've been making
a real effort lately to stop imagining symptoms. The thing is,
I think the strain of trying not to worry is really getting to me
and that's why I've been a bit odd. Do you think worrying about
trying not to worry can actually make you ill?”

“Christ, you need a bloody shrink, you know that, don't
you?”

Dan turned over and grunted.

Anna was no fool. She knew there was something Dan was
keeping from her. Nevertheless, she sensed he was telling the
truth when he said he wasn't ill.

She picked up her book, read a few paragraphs and then put
it down. She couldn't concentrate. In the space of a couple of
minutes all the fear she had been bottling up for days had turned
to relief, and then to elation. Dan wasn't dying. That meant she
was free to carry on with her “research.”

The sex with Charlie had been sublime. Just knowing that he
fancied her had made her feel more beautiful and more alive than she'd
felt in years. She knew she was behaving like some soppy
heroine in a Mavis de Mornay novel. She also knew that truly
liberated women didn't have to depend on men fancying them in
order to feel good about themselves. Over the last few days,
Anna had come to the conclusion that edicts such as this were
nothing more than the crazed rantings of a bunch of jealous
bull dykes.

Even though she had been worried sick about Dan's health,
Charlie Kaplan had brought some old-fashioned fun and joy into
her life which had been long overdue. Anna wanted to feel that
again. Soon.

Charlie had phoned her a couple of times from Los Angeles
to apologize for the dreadful way their final meeting had ended,
how distraught he'd been that there hadn't been time to say
good-bye and to tell her how much he missed her. He also added
that he had no idea when he would be in London next.

Anna closed her book. She calculated she had just over five
weeks before she would have to sit down and write her article on
clitoris-centered women. She realized she was unlikely to see
Charlie in the near future; her short affair with him was probably
as good as over. It was time to move on. Excitement at the
prospect of her next exploit shot through her like steam from
a cappuccino machine; this, she was almost ashamed to admit,
was fun.

Anna jumped out of bed and went into the bathroom. She
opened the door under the basin. Reaching over the deodorant
cans and shampoo bottles, she picked up the box of Tampax
which contained the telephone number for Liaisons Dangereux.

C H A P T E R     E L E V E N

“
R
ONNIE, REGGIE! MUMMY WON'T tolerate any more of this
fraightful racket!” Reenie Theydon-Bois, director of
Liaisons Dangereux, had broken off momentarily from her telephone
conversation with Anna.

“Sorry about that, may deeah, my little shih tzus
can be such naughty boys sometimes.”

The woman's voice, full of high-pitched social pretension,
had definite overtones of John Cleese doing the parrot sketch.

“Now then, where were we?” Reenie Theydon-Bois paused.
Anna sensed she was drawing deeply on a cigarette.

“Ah, yes .   .   . Ay tell you what to do, my
deeah. You give me your Visa number and then I'll fax you a list
of all the male clients Ay've got on may books. I guarantee
you won't be disappointed with the service I offer. I think it
would be fair to say that in the fayve years Ay 'ave been presaiding
over Liaisons Dangereux, none of may ladies or gentlemen 'as
hever once got the 'ump.”

Anna decided Reenie Theydon-Bois was, without doubt, an
ex-tart, probably from Ilford or Romford, who had struck it
lucky and been set up in a mews house in the West End by a
wealthy client. She pictured her as plump, probably in her
mid-fifties, wearing a bright-yellow Versace suit with too many
gold buttons, heavy lip liner and a sunbed tan. Anna could almost
smell the Coco.

Liaisons Dangereux, Reenie explained, catered exclusively
to respectable married people who, as she put it, felt a bit
neglected in the bedroom department, and who were looking for
someone to make them feel pampered and special. She kept on
stressing that none of her clients had any intentions of
divorcing their husbands or wives and thus discretion was of
the “hutmost.” So if Anna understood all that and had no
more questions all Reenie needed from her now was her
seventy-five-pound initial joining fee.

Anna took her Barclaycard out of her wallet. As she read
the number down the phone, it struck her for the second or
third time in the last few minutes that Reenie Theydon-Bois,
with her daft accent and ridiculous surname, was a phoney,
that Liaisons Dangereux didn't exist and that the whole thing
was simply a way of extorting money from gullible people in
celibate marriages. The likelihood was, thought Anna, that she
would pay her joining fee and never hear another word from
Reenie Theydon-Bois.

It wasn't losing the money that bothered her. Joining Liaisons
Dangereux counted as research for her newspaper piece and she
would simply add the fee to her list of expenses. What she really
hated was the thought of being duped.

She finished reading out the Barclaycard number. Reenie
said she would fax over the client list in the next few minutes
or so and Anna should give her a call when she had two or three
prospective gentlemen in mind.

Five minutes later, as she sipped her coffee and munched on
a low-cal rice cake, she heard the faint creaking sound of the fax
machine as it spewed out paper onto the bedroom floor. Reenie
Theydon-Bois had not scarpered after all.

D
an leaned back in his office chair and put both feet up on his desk. The
Vanguard
newsroom was almost empty.
Everybody had disappeared to the pub over the road for lunch.
Dan had decided to give it a miss because even though he always
promised himself he would stick to mineral water,
he inevitably
ended up having a couple of beers and spending
the afternoon
fighting to stay awake. Instead, he had popped
into Tony's, the
sandwich bar next door to the
Vanguard
building.

As he finished chewing on another piece of bacon bagel
and took a suck of thick chocolate milk shake, Dan began thinking
about his therapy sessions with Virginia Livermead. He had to
admit that despite his misgivings about the woman, he had been
feeling much better since he'd started seeing her.

Slowly, Dan was beginning to make the connection between
his mother and his hypochondria. Virginia explained what Anna
had been trying to get through to him for years, that even though
his mother was dead, she still had such a hold on him that each
time he tried to rebel or break away from her, he experienced
feelings of profound guilt. As a consequence he punished himself
by developing imaginary illnesses which he believed were going
to kill him.

M
aking loud, childish sucky noises through his straw, Dan
drained the last of his milk shake and dropped the cardboard
container into the wastepaper bin under his desk. He had eaten only
half of his bacon bagel. He stared at the bit he had left
and reflected that this was by no means the first time he had
deliberately eaten a Jewish roll filled with nonkosher meat and
then compounded the heresy by drinking milk at the same time.

If he thought back, he had been consuming forbidden food
since his early teens. Instead of shouting and screaming at his
mother and telling her precisely what he thought of her whenever
she humiliated him, he had invariably dealt with her abuse by
disappearing to the greasy spoon down the road and demolishing
a bacon-and-egg fry-up.

Dan was aware that this was the first time in his life he
had not felt guilty after doing something which he knew his mother
would deplore. It further occurred to him that if Virginia
Livermead had got it right and his imaginary illnesses were
nothing more than a way of punishing himself for upsetting his
mother, this might also mean the end of his hypochondria. If he
felt no guilt, Dan reasoned, then there was no need to punish
himself.

Dan bent down and reached under his desk for his briefcase.
Neatly stowed inside were his fire extinguisher, his electronic
blood pressure machine, a stethoscope, the little sticks he used
to test his urine for sugar and a few sterile essentials necessary for
draining a collapsed lung. These included a yard of plastic
tubing, a couple of kidney-shaped bowls made of gray eggbox
card and a scalpel.

Looking round to check that nobody had come back into the
office, Dan took each piece of his medical paraphernalia out of
the briefcase and placed them on his desk. Slowly he ran his
hands over every item. He lingered over the fire extinguisher,
caressing and stroking its smooth, curved body as if it were
a lover. Then he placed his finger inside the small opening
on the side of the blood pressure machine and felt the familiar
tightening.

For the first time in years Dan dared to believe he might
be fit and well. If that were the case he didn't need to keep
monitoring his health. He didn't need this apparatus. The thought
of losing his beloved crutches and failsafes filled him with
terror.

He reminded himself of what Virginia had said as he got
up to leave at the end of their last session: “You know
you're not ill, Dan. You are simply angry and guilty—and
perhaps a little confused.”

Dan rammed everything back into the briefcase as fast as
he could. He felt his pulse quicken. He took a deep breath.
He decided he must have the courage of his confusion. He would
ditch the lot. Right now. He realized he was probably cruising
for a psychotherapeutic bruising from Virginia, who would
doubtless have preferred him to take fifteen years gently
building up to this moment, but he didn't care.

A
nna looped the yard of fax paper over her arm. As she took
the scissors from her desk drawer she cursed herself for
being such a cheapskate and not paying the extra fifty quid for
a fax machine with a built-in cutter.

Finally she stapled the pages together. There had to be
at least a hundred men on Reenie's client list. None of them gave
their names. Instead they used a reference number. This was followed
by a seven- or eight-line personal résumé and
a description of the kind of woman they were hoping to find.

Anna scanned the first twenty or so ads and got bored
after a minute. There appeared to be a standard form of words
which she found dull, smug and predictable: “Professional
male, late forties, some gains round waistline, compensating
with losses round hairline, good sense of humor, married but
physical side dead, seeks sensuous slender (size 12 max)
twenty-something lady with firm, voluptuous bosom, to lift him
from his despair and share uncomplicated passionate meetings
and occasional overnights. Total discretion assured. Photograph
appreciated.”

Just then Anna heard the front door open. Brenda yelled
a “Hi, I'm back” and came plodding up the stairs. She'd been
to a meeting with Alfie's head teacher who was anxious to know
where Alfie was and why he was missing so much school.

Brenda plonked herself down on the edge of the double
bed. Anna turned to face her. Brenda looked dreadful.

“I'd forgotten,” she said, bending over to pull off
her heavy-duty CAT boots, “ 'ow bad this morning sickness
lark gets. Coming back from the school, I had to stop the
car three times to puke. I think I might feel better if I knew
when that bloody Hardacre woman was intending to make her
move—I mean, it's been days since she threatened to sell
her story. What's she playing at?”

“Well,” said Anna, “I'm pretty sure she hasn't spoken
to any of the papers yet. Dan and I still haven't heard even
the faintest rumor that anybody's about to run it. That could
mean she's got cold feet about dobbing you in. Alternatively
she's a sadistic cow who is simply enjoying the thought of you
sweating it out waiting for the shit to hit. Whatever the
reason for her taking her time, it's allowing us some grace. What
we really need to do is rake up some scandalous muck from the old
bag's past which nobody knows about. Then you simply threaten
to use it against her unless she backs off.”

“Yeah, right. Easy. Listen, Anna, I'm barely coping with
feeling sick all the time. I could do without the threat of being
sent down for a five stretch for blackmail and giving birth in
Holloway shackled to a couple of twenty-stone female screws.”
Brenda had kicked off her boots and was on the point of going
down to the kitchen to get a glass of Perrier to relieve the
nausea when she caught sight of the fax lying on Anna's desk.

“Christ, you don't waste much time,” she said, picking
up the sheets of shiny paper. “That Charlie geezer's only
been gone five minutes and you're already planning
your next campaign. If you ask me, I reckon there should always
be a decent period of mourning between one lover and the next.
You know, three months when you live in the same pink velour
tracksuit and gray saggy bra, don't wash your hair, and
eat nothing but Twinkies and peanut butter from the jar. I used
to do that years ago before I had Alfie and the business. I
always found it helped me get my head together, even if I'd
been the one who'd done the chucking.”

Anna said that although it didn't look like it, she
was missing Charlie. She was certainly missing his body, but he
was commuting between Dublin and LA, and she was here. What was
more, she continued, she was still living with a man who lacked
any semblance of a sex drive, and added to this, there was the
small matter of needing to get started on her piece for Alison
O'Farrell, which was due in a few weeks.

Brenda decided she was in no position to argue with Anna
and get holier-than-thou, bearing in mind she'd got herself in
the club after a one-night stand and had also been the one
who'd introduced Anna to Liaisons Dangereux in the first place.
She began looking down the list.

“ 'Ere, look at this one. He reckons he drives a
Testarossa. That means he's probably got a winkle the size of an oven
chip.   .   .   . Mind you, what about the next one
down?”

Keeping her finger on the ad, Brenda leaned forward and
passed the list to Anna.

“Sounds like he might be the business,” she went on. “Not
that I approve, mind you. I still think you're playing with
fire. Or in your case, shagging with it.”

With that Brenda ran to the bathroom, her hand over her mouth.
Ignoring the dreadful sounds of retching and heaving coming from
inside the lavatory bowl, Anna started reading the ad.

“ ‘Frustrated Quasimodo look-alike seeks his
Esmeralda. Small fat ugly guy with hairpiece and own hump,
drives brown Datsun Cherry, wife finds him sexually repulsive
due to ongoing psoriasis, wants to make bells ring with any
woman brave enough to reply to this ad. Use of beach hut in
Shoeburyness.' ”

Anna giggled, read the ad again and wondered how on earth
she'd missed it. By the time she'd finished reading it for the
second time, she'd come to the conclusion that Quasimodo was
either a regular bloke with an excellent sense of humor and a
huge amount of self-confidence who had decided to write an
eye-catching ad, or a deformed weirdo with scabs and an anorak
who kept a selection of kitchen knives and nylon rope in the trunk
of his Datsun Cherry.

Ignoring the continuing retching sounds coming from next
door, Anna picked up the phone, hesitated for a moment and
dialed.

D
an came tearing out of the office and stood
hovering by the
lifts for a few seconds. He knew if he hung around
too long he might change his mind about dumping his medical
equipment. He decided to take the stairs. Once outside, he
crossed the road to the Oxfam shop. He dashed in and without
even pausing to acknowledge the blue-rinse lady in a floral
shirtwaist who was stacking shelves, dumped the briefcase
on the counter and darted back out into Kensington High Street.
As he strolled back to the office, he hoped his treasured brood
would find a good home with a caring couple of hypochondriacs
in the country.

I
t had taken Anna over an hour to get through to Reenie
Theydon-Bois because Reenie's line had been constantly engaged.
When Anna finally managed to speak to her and said she might be
interested in meeting Quasimodo, Reenie almost choked on her
cigarette. It was clear to Anna he wasn't the most popular client
on Reenie's books.