2000 - The Feng-Shui Junkie (29 page)

I open my eyes again. “Remember, Sylvana, this place is a secret, okay?”

It would be so humiliating if the world got to find out that I’d moved out of home, only to do a U-turn and move back in again.

“Right. But you do plan on staying here, don’t you?”

“I’m not ready to let the world know,” I reply evasively.

The world.

I dread the thought of work tomorrow. Only in the Law Library will I have to face the questioning glances, the narcotic female stares, the intrusive requests after my health. If someone dares to ask me if I am okay, I swear I will steal a judge’s hammer and murder them with it.

Here in my ‘new apartment’, at least, I can put the world into brackets. I am incognito. Safe. My hideaway, north of the city, is discovery-proof. I will not be bothered on the street or in the supermarket. No nosy inquiries about my marriage. No one to stick their pincers into me and tug at the weak, bruised, bulbous parts of myself. I can think in peace. Get myself back into working order in peace. Fortify myself against him.

For war.

I dread the thought of Mother. She is so inquisitive she should be locked in solitary. There’s only so much stretching her curiosity can take before her discreet wonderments turn into hellish interrogations. How to deal with her?

“Don’t let the world know, then, for the moment. And whatever you do, don’t see that woman again, promise?”

“Okay.”

“Just forget about everything, Julie, and soak up the sun.”

“Sylvana.”

“Yes?”

“I love you.”

I close my eyes again.

And yet even she doesn’t really understand. No one really understands. Nicole now. She’s probably the only one who comes close to grasping what it’s like to feel the way I’m feeling right now. There’s something touchingly pathetic about that.

I am alone. When Sylvana leaves tonight – and she will leave if I have to force her to – I will be even more alone.

There doesn’t seem to be much meaning in things any more.

Life seems like a barren wasteland. A dark, stinking pit. An ocean bereft of shorelines.

If there is a God, why did he create love when it causes such pain?

I
n the last thirteen hours, things have happened in my life that most respectable people would regard as scandalous. Things that would make men tremble to the roots of their toes. Things that would make
me
tremble to the roots of my toes if it weren’t for the nail varnish.

But let me tell you about my new apartment first.

I fell in love with it at first sight, even though it was just supposed to be a holding cell.

A superb, recent, fully furnished three-bedroom penthouse apartment with a delightful roof garden. South-facing balconies, accessed off the main bedroom and the living-room, affording fine views over the adjacent park. Finished to a very high standard internally, the decor is fresh and bright, and features warm Scandinavian oak flooring throughout. Electric storage heating, cable television, 1200 square feet approx., accessed via security gates, containing good car-parking facilities. Excellent local shopping centres; churches, schools and transport systems easily accessible…

The estate agent whom I seduced into subservience showed me through a small square hallway with three doors leading to three separate areas: one to the fitted kitchen on the left, one to the bedrooms and bathroom straight ahead (this is where the spiral staircase to the roof is located) and one to the lounge to the right, a long rectangular room with the all-important french windows plus shutters, French-style. He took me out to the balcony.

The park is a hidden oasis of tranquillity, centred by a lake frequented by swans and surrounded by a band of assorted rare trees: Spanish chestnuts, African cypresses, giant redwoods, Douglas firs, Scots pines, Ilchester oaks…and a swathe of illustrious rhododendrons…

Narcotic, isn’t that what Nicole said about rhododendrons?

It’s like this.

I was annoyed.

Here’s what happened.

As soon as I discovered that Ronan was heading for Paris last night, I dashed to Sylvana’s, screeched and stamped about the place for five minutes, then phoned Nicole’s B & B. The lady of the house told me she would be gone for two nights, but didn’t say where she was going. After screeching and stamping about a little more, Sylvana gave me a cup of hot milk with honey and put me into her spare, queen-size bed. I am certain she laced it with sedatives.

This morning I called Nicole again from Sylvana’s.

She was thrilled to hear from me. Her voice was full of it. “Guess where I am!”

“I haven’t a bloody clue.”

Pause.

“Julianne, we’re in Paris!” she squeaked, all excited.

“God love you.”

“Ronan’s in the en suite just a few feet away. Would you like a phone intro?”

“I don’t think so.”

I was pacing up and down Sylvana’s sitting-room, manic and directionless as a crab, goofed on Jakartan espresso.

“Ronan came over to the B & B late last night and told me to pack a bag, and while I was in the middle of doing that we sort of made love, then he went downstairs and paid the landlady and…”

“Does she charge much for the service?”

Pause.

“Only about twenty pounds. It’s expensive, but it is a lovely B & B and anyway Ronan can afford it. Oh, Julianne, I adore Paris. There’s a view outside our window of the Tuileries gardens just across Rue de Rivoli, beside the Louvre…”

“Rue de Rivoli.”

“Yes, that’s where he bought me those earrings, do you remember? And then the River Seine – you can just about make out the stone walls of the river bank. You can even see Pont Alexandre III from here. The light is amazing – it’s incredibly bright, it’s so bright it’s almost white – can you imagine that? As I’m speaking I’m looking at the Eiffel Tower over to the right, going all the way up like a huge tree trunk. I wish I could paint this view, Julianne, but I didn’t bring my canvas or materials. Ronan’s not in a great mood after last night. I think he’s furious with his wife.”

“Did you tell him about
Chi?
”

“No, but they had an argument. He actually called her a bitch. To my face! I couldn’t believe it. He really doesn’t love her; it’s clear to me now, Julianne. I told him I wanted to move to Paris. I’m really excited. It’s as if…”

I pressed off and tried to call Ronan then. But as usual he was suffering from cellphone erectile dysfunction.

I went home.

Mother was still in bed. When I went to the kitchen for a Danish and coffee I bumped the door into something semi-soft. It was Max beside a bowl of cat food. This time he was not ignoring me. Purring dangerously at the far kitchen door, the sniggering feline viper looked in the mood to scrape my eyes out and use them to play marbles with.

I made a dive for him.

He did a U-turn underneath the kitchen table and escaped between my feet, out through the kitchen door in a flash. I mounted a search. He was hiding beneath the banana couch in the hall. I flushed him out with a cushion. He sprang into the living-room. He took a running dive and slithered up the side of the fish tank, snarling like a starved rat, clinging to the glass edge with two sharp-clawed paws. One was now inside, digging fruitlessly away at water. The fish were going berserk.

I ran at him, thinking how dare you harm those poor fish.

I flokked him with one of the white leather cushions, sending the water in the tank up in thuds against the glass. Max scattered. After I finished counting the fish and establishing that they were all present and correct, I again searched for Max. Everywhere. Under the couch, armchairs, in the fireplace. He had to be in here because the door to the kitchen was closed, as were the french windows.

But where?

At last I spotted him seated with royal indifference on top of the grand piano. Or should I say, Max was seated inside the piano, making these scraping noises against the strings as he licked tropical marine water off his wet paws. He was positioned just beneath the huge pear-shaped piano lid, looming above him like a guillotine.

A guillotine suspended, as it were, by a matchstick.

One push of the finger, I was thinking, and the lid would crash down on the little squid as he smiled, slicing him through the tight mesh of music wire. There would be a resounding crash, some deft scattering of silent dust, perhaps a slight strangulating squeak from our furry friend, and finally an aural-friendly reverberative chasm of minor fifths and demented sevenths.

I moved in for the kill.

I laid my index finger against the lever when suddenly Mother walked in, wearing my tartan pyjamas.

She asked me what I was doing.

“Mother, could you please tell me what you are doing in my pyjamas?”

“Don’t pretend you like them.”

“I wear them.”

“What’s the matter, Julie? You’re rather pale-looking.”

“I was just…admiring the internal workings of this baby grand.”

“Babies again.” She smiled.

She approached the piano. She didn’t notice Max because of the angle. She sat herself down on the piano stool and started laying into poor old Schubert, quite unaware of the fact that she’d just sent Max into spasm to avoid getting his paws belted by the hammers.

He hopped on to the floor, twirled round a few times, then settled down on his bum and started to re-lick himself, happy to be on terra firma once more, sporting this familiar look of cat contentment, which I find so easy to despise.

When Mother was not looking I closed in on Max, grabbed him like a rug by the back of the neck, hauled him from the floor, carried him out to the veranda, shut him in the cat box in case he fell off the veranda, and closed the french windows again. And clapped the dust off my hands, satisfied.

I dashed into the bedroom, packed a large suitcase in five minutes flat, stole a Valium from Mother’s private collection in our bathroom, popped it into my mouth and felt calmer at once, slid out of the apartment, dived down to the car park and commandeered Ronan’s Porsche, and it was with a sense of driving purpose that I screeched through suburbia in a yellow blaze track of smoke to my estate agent, a roaring spitfire across the city.

Six hours later I handed my estate agent one month’s deposit and two months’ rent – three grand in total. I got the cash from the sale of the Porsche to a service-station crook I knew well from a recent Circuit Court prosecution. The rest I blew on a fantastic day out at the shops.

“What you need is an image change,” Sylvana advised as we waited in the seating area of Toni & Guy. “I haven’t got an image to change,” I replied. “So what am I doing sitting here?’ ‘Rubbish,” she countered. “You’re a stunning sex bomb, Julie.”

“I know: I explode whenever a man goes near me.” She advised me to have my hair cut short. That men these days loved women with short hair. I protested that at this low ebb in my life I’d rather not make my hair the pretext for male fantasies. “And keep it black. Black is seductive and mysterious and…dangerous.”

“Of course, I’ll be like a sex bomb, then.”

“Primed to go off at the rate of ten creeps a minute.” So I just sat there with my eyes closed and let the guy cut my hair short and darken it by a few degrees (like you can darken black). When I opened my eyes again I discovered with horror that I was shorn like a sheep. I ran out of there crying.

Sylvana found the whole thing most amusing. She led me into one of her own Whole-Self outlets and re-emerged with a bag full of soaps and shampoos and conditioners and aromatherapy oils. All for me.

While I was at it, the fancy grabbed me to purchase eight thick candles – recommended by the
Feng-Shui
booklet I’d swiped from Nicole’s place. Sylvana asked me if I was planning for a blackout in my new place so I just told her yes. To shut her up.

Finally, we took a standard deviation to purchase lipstick, mascara and foundation. To her credit, Sylvana succeeded in drumming up some enthusiasm in me.

I was equipped, at last, with my new identity.

On the way back to my new place, we hopped out at a local supermarket and bought provisions, most crucially milk, coffee, bread, butter, jam, bottled water and enough bananas to turn us into overnight baboons. In the drinks section we got a bottle of brandy, naturally, and Sylvana insisted on buying champagne. The most expensive in stock.

We were back just in time for the potted-plants delivery man: Sylvana’s idea for my new roof garden. The bloke managed to put a dent in the landing wall with a rectangular earthenware pot. Not a squeak of apology out of him. It’s hard to credit it – the man just shuffled in and out of my new apartment, leaving his personality on the wall. Every time I look at that dent, there’ll be a blundering male in the flat with me.

One good thing, though: the same blunderbus banged his head as he was ducking through the low roof exit – presumably because his vision was impaired by the begonia he was carrying. He grunted – and then, believe it or not, he apologized. Either to himself or the begonia, I can’t be sure, but at least he apologized.

After he left, with his foul breath and his BO issues and his baggage-smashing installation techniques, we both unloaded the car and filled up the kitchen presses and made up my new bed with fresh-scented sheets that Sylvana had thoughtfully purchased for me, along with duvet, pillows and pillowcases.

I was set up in my new ‘home’.

We stripped, togged out, grabbed our Ambre Solaire and our champagne, our magazines, our shades, our radio and our new chaises, and a fruit bowl sprayed with cherries and Belgian chocolates. And we headed up here to bake.

It’s half-seven, now, and there’s no sign of us moving yet. The heat is still raw, blistering down on our skin like acid. I’m baking away like a scone in the oven. My head is leant back against oblivion, my eyes closed beneath my Calvin Kleins and that hazy, lazy, dazy sensation is just about holding back the teetering frontiers of forlornness.

I look over at Sylvana.