Neurotica (21 page)

As his mother floated closer, he could hear that she was
actually saying, “Dan, I want us to speak.” In his sleep, Dan
breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

“Please, Dan, make contact.” She moaned a long, echoing moan.
By now her naked, shriveled body was hovering just above his head.
Then, like a genie being sucked into its bottle, she was whisked
back towards the marble boiling fowl. In a second she had
disappeared.

T
hree days later Dan would phone Ada Bracegirdle, the
well-known spiritual healer and medium from Dagenham.

B
renda opened her mother's front door in Peckham, munching on
an egg roll. She stood staring at Anna's white, mascara-streaked
face and bright-pink suit covered in red stains.

“Christ, Anna, you look like you've come straight from the
JFK motorcade.”

Anna pretended to ignore the remark. Blowing her nose noisily
on a tissue, she pushed past Brenda, slumped into Brenda's mum's
lounge and threw herself facedown on the leatherette settee.

Brenda followed her into the room and switched off Trevor
McDonald. “OK, I'm a perceptive woman,” she said. “There's
definitely something up. What's 'appened? Don't tell me, you had a
fight with Hermann Goering and he came at you with a ketchup
bottle?”

A muffled sob came from deep within a brushed-nylon cushion.
“Anna, what is it?” Brenda demanded, the cheerful expression
starting to leave her face. She sat down on the sofa next to
her.

“We didn't have a fight,” Anna said, sitting up. “We made
love and it was absolutely wonderful, and
then .   .   . and then Alex had a heart attack.”

Brenda managed to look gobsmacked for about thirty seconds
before resuming flippant mode.

“Bet 'e had a smile on 'is face, though.”

“Brenda, will you cut it out,” Anna hissed. “I thought he
was going to die. Then, if that wasn't enough, while he was
being examined
at the hospital, I went to the coffee machine
and some
sixteen-stone yob who'd been stabbed in the arm
came into
casualty, passed out over me and bled onto my skirt.”

“Christ, Anna, I'm so sorry.” Brenda cuddled Anna. Anna
sniffed loudly and wiped her nose on Brenda's shoulder.

“So, 'e's gonna make it then, Quasimodo?” asked Brenda.

“I think so,” Anna said, pulling away. “I stayed at the
hospital for a couple of hours and pretended I was his secretary. I
spoke to the consultant and he said they would have to do a whole load
of tests, but his first instinct was that the attack was fairly
mild. .   .   . Didn't look mild to me, though. The
paramedics gave him oxygen in the ambulance, but he kept turning
blue. Brenda, I was so scared.”

“What about his wife? Has anybody phoned her?”

“I asked the sister on casualty to do it, but the answer
machine was on. She came over to me twice to check I'd given her the
right number. Apparently she kept getting this finger-picking music
and a woman's voice singing “I Come from Alabama with My Banjo on My
Knee.' .   .   . So it looks like Kimberley Tadlock exists
after all. .   .   . Brenda, I could really do with a
drink.”

“You'll be lucky .   .   . you know my mum doesn't
keep booze in the house. She's probably got some Emva Cream left over
from Christmas, but I can't imagine you'd want that. How about I
heat you up some Chinese?” She jerked her head towards the
glass-topped coffee table. It was covered in a mess of dirty plates
and virtually empty foil containers left over from the takeaway Brenda
had ordered as a treat for her mum and the children.

Anna shook her head, “Don't think I could keep it down,” then
immediately changed her mind. “Oh, go on, then,” she said. “Maybe
I could manage a couple of duck pancakes and a bit of sweet-and-sour
pork.”

“Stay there, I'll do it.” Carefully, Brenda separated the
last two pancakes and laid them on an unused plate. Anna watched as
she sprinkled the pancakes with bits of shredded cucumber and
spring onion.

“Listen, Brenda, there's something else I need to tell you,
something Alex told me before he had the heart attack.”

Brenda could sense the excitement in Anna's voice.

She handed Anna the plate. “Sure you don't want me to heat it
up?”

Anna shook her head.

“So what was it Alex told you?”

Brenda listened wide-eyed and unblinking as Anna explained
about Rachel Stern's cosmetic surgery. Anna lost count of how many
times Brenda said, “Would you fucking Adam and Eve it?”

When Anna had finished, Brenda chuckled, put her hand into
one of the takeaway containers, pulled out a cold, sticky
sweet-and-sour pork ball and raised it like a glass. “Right, then,
here's to old Hermann living to tell the tale.” She popped the pork
ball into her mouth.

They sat in silence for a few moments while Anna polished off
the food. Finally Brenda asked her if she was up to coping with
another bit of news.

“Fuck it,” Anna shrieked. “Lavender's sold her
story?”

“No, not yet.” Brenda stretched out on the floor and propped
her head up on her hand. She told Anna that she'd been back to the
Holland Park house to collect her mail and found two extremely
abusive and threatening letters from Lavender as well as a dozen
or so similar messages on the answer phone.

“In the letters—I've given them to my
solicitor—she calls me every sodding name under the
sun—“baggage' was her favorite—and promises it will
be a matter of days before her story appears in the papers and
my business is finished.”

“Christ,” Anna exclaimed. “Why haven't you got up off your
arse and phoned the cow to let her know what we've got on her?”

Brenda smiled.

“ 'Cos I thought this might be more fun.” She pulled a
piece of paper from her jeans pocket. “I tore it out of this month's
Country Life.
” She handed the paper to Anna.

It was an advertisement inviting women to come on a one-day
course to learn how to become the Perfect Company Wife.

Anna scanned it and then began reading it aloud in a mocking,
high-pitched upper-class voice:

“ ‘Are you desperate to get it right, anxious for your
husband's praise, but uncertain about what to wear for that
all-important company dinner? Are you hopeless at making conversation
with your husband's colleagues? Does organizing a cocktail party for
twenty high-powered executives fill you with dread? If you are
committed to becoming the consummate corporate consort, but need some
help to achieve your goal, then this course is for you.' Brenda, what
is all this crap?”

“Look at the name of the woman organizing the course.”

Anna read the name. It was Lavender Hardacre.

“Can you believe the woman's cheek?” Brenda said indignantly.
“Spends 'er entire marriage cheating on 'er husband and then has the
aw-bleedin'-dacity to lecture women on how to be perfect wives.”

Anna stared hard at Brenda. Brenda turned away, unable to meet
her eyes.

“Tell me you haven't,” Anna growled. “Brenda, please, tell me
you haven't. Please tell me you haven't enrolled us on this course. If
you want to go and have some fun confronting Lavender Hardacre, then
go. Don't drag me into it. No. The answer is no.”

Brenda gave her a pleading look.

A
mile or so from the Hardacres' pile,
Lovegrove Hall, Brenda
slowed down to read a signpost and then turned towards Anna, who was
retracting the aerial of her mobile phone.

“So, when did you say they're letting Alex out?” she
asked.

“In two or three days, so long as he gets the all-clear,”
Anna replied. “The consultant saw him yesterday. He's really pleased
with his progress. Poor jerk's got about ten different drugs to take
and has been told to drastically alter his diet. Plus he's got to
take things really easy for a while.”

“So that puts the mockers on any more shagging, then?”

“For the time being, I guess. To be quite honest, I don't give
a stuff about the sex, I'm just grateful he's alive and I won't have
to live out the rest of my life thinking I was responsible for killing
him.” She put her mobile in her handbag and reached for the road
map, which was on the dashboard.

“I think that's the entrance up ahead,” she said, looking up
from the map, moving her head towards the windshield and squinting.
Brenda braked, gently for a change, and turned in through the
huge black iron gates. Leading up to the house was a long gravel
drive with trees on either side. Like folk dancers, the trees had
joined hands with their branches and formed an arch, so that the
drive became the floor of a long, dark tunnel. Through the gaps
in the trees Anna and Brenda glimpsed what looked like hundreds
of acres of Hardacre parkland.

Brenda drew up a few yards from the front door, alongside a
selection of Mercedes estates, Volvos and Jeep Cherokees. She pulled
on the hand brake.

“S'pose this is what you call unmock-Tudor,” she said,
unwinding her window, sticking her head out and eyeing the huge
five-hundred-year-old house with its black beams and red herringbone
brickwork.

“Christ knows what it's worth,” Anna said, leaning across
Brenda to get a better look and counting the first-floor mullioned
windows. “Must have at least ten bedrooms.” She imagined there
being a huge oak four-poster in one of them, with Elizabeth and Essex
carved on either side of the headboard and a furry nosegay hanging
from the middle. Brenda turned off the ignition and adjusted the
curly red wig she'd insisted on wearing.

“I want Lavender to find out who I am, but not until I'm
ready. .   .   . You don't think she'll recognize me, do
you? I mean, my face is pretty well known.”

“Brenda, she won't have the foggiest,” Anna reassured her.
“Just remember, don't go losing your temper with the woman. She'll
only call the police and it'll be all over the papers in a matter of
hours.”

“I'm not going to lose my temper.” Brenda grinned, reaching
onto the backseat for her bag.

“When I nail the fucking tart's 'ead to the floor, I shall make
sure I'm perfectly calm.”

T
hey walked up to the front of the house and bashed the heavy
iron door knocker. They could hear footsteps and loud barking coming
from inside the house.

“Christ!” Anna whispered. “I take it you gave Lavender a
false name.”

“Oh, God, yes. I'm Begonia Cockington. You're you.”

Before Anna could gasp at the ridiculousness of Brenda's choice
of pseudonym, a beaming Lavender Hardacre opened the front
door.

In their discussions about her, Anna and Brenda had decided she
would be tall, glamorous and haughty. The woman who greeted them
was short, tending towards plump, with Angela Rippon eyebrows and
thinning, overlacquered blond hair. She was wearing a chain-store
calf-length navy pleated skirt and a matching short boxy jacket. She
looked red and flustered as she struggled to keep her grip on the
collar of an overexcited liver-colored Labrador.

“Oh, how lovely. You must be Anna and Begonia,” she gushed
breathlessly. “You're the last of my ladies to arrive. Do come in,
do come in.” Her voice was plummy and jolly. There appeared to
be nothing remotely haughty about her.

Her entire body listing to one side as she continued to do
battle with the Labrador, Lavender held open the door.

As Brenda stepped forward, her arm extended to shake hands,
the dog finally broke away from its mistress's grip and leaped up at
Brenda, leaving muddy paw prints over her skirt.

“Oh, dear, I'm most dreadfully sorry,” Lavender said, clearly
distressed. “Your poor skirt .   .   . Ochre, bad girl.
Get down.” She managed to grab the dog's collar and pull her off.
Brenda flicked the mud with her hand and said not to worry, but
Lavender had already turned her back on the two women and was dragging
the dog, its claws scraping, along the parquet floor.

“Do excuse me,” she said, turning her head back towards them.
“Be with you in a jiffy. I must get rid of this frightful hound.”
She left Anna and Brenda standing in the oak-paneled hall beside a
wooden hat stand. There must have been three or four different
items of headgear on each hook. Anna counted several deerstalkers
and velvet hard hats, a couple of Panamas, an ancient cricket cap
and a couple of floppy tweedy things covered in brightly colored
fishing flies. She turned to Brenda.

“Why is it,” she said in a whisper, “the British upper
classes can't perform any activity without wearing a bloody
hat?”

“Dunno, s'pose they're just copying the
royals. .   .   . I bet Lavender's got one she wears
on the can. .   .   . What d'you make of her?”

“She's got a voice that sounds like it's spent its life
organizing village gymkhanas, but apart from that, I think she seems
really nice. I can't believe this is the woman who's been
threatening you.”

“Course it's 'er,” Brenda shot back, her voice loud and
indignant. “She's just a bleeding two-faced cow, that's all.”

Suddenly hearing Lavender's footsteps, they wheeled round. She
was coming towards them almost at a trot, still flushed and
beaming.

“Now then, I'm certain you must be in dire need of some
refreshment. I'll go into the kitchen and rustle up some more
coffee. All my other ladies are in the drawing room.” She indicated
an open door on the right. “Do go in and say hello.” With that
she turned her back on them once again and continued down the
hall.

A dozen or so women, mostly in their thirties, were standing
round the sunny, comfortable room braying at one another and
drinking coffee from translucent china. There were a number of
Hermés scarves and umpteen strings of pearls. One woman
stood out from the rest because she was wearing expensive black Lycra
trousers, a Moschino belt and Chanel earrings, but it turned out
her name was Cheryl, which explained it.