Bad Heir Day (7 page)

She lunged for a bag of Mixed Herb salad, grabbed a box of baby potatoes, and headed finally towards the checkout.

***

“Where the hell have you been?” Seb demanded as she staggered through the door at precisely the same time that the bulging plastic bags, strained beyond endurance, finally burst their flimsy moorings and spilled their contents all over the hall.

“For my interview, of course,” Anna said. “I got the job,” she added, scrabbling around on the floor after several mushrooms making good their escape.

“Did you get any wine?”

“What? Oh,
yes
,
Chardonnay,” Anna told him abstractedly. “But they want me to live in,” she added, returning to the matter at hand.

“
What
?”
said Seb in outraged tones.

“I
know
,”
Anna said, relief surging through her system. “I mean,” she added, “they
do
live in W8, just off Ken Church Street, and their house
is
enormous, but…
oh
,”
Anna gasped, gazing rapturously at Seb. “I’m so
glad
.
I thought you wouldn’t care…”

“Of course I care. Chardonnays so
naff
,
for Christ’s sake. Why the hell couldn’t you have got Chablis?”

Anna stared at Seb in disbelief. Had he not understood a word she had said? “So you don’t care one way or the other?”

“Of course I care,” Seb snarled, furiously thrusting a long-fingered hand through his unbrushed hair. “I don’t want Mummy to think she’s at a bachelorette party in a Peckham wine bar, do I?”

“Did you hear what I just said to you?” gasped Anna. “I’ve been offered a live-in job. Do you want me to stay here with you or not?”

“We’ll talk about it later,” said Seb. “There’s too much to do just now.” He disappeared into the sitting room, switched on the television, and put his feet up on the sofa arm. Whatever needed doing, someone else was evidently going to do it. Can’t imagine who
that
might be, thought Anna, gathering the bags up and heading crossly for the kitchen.

***

There was something about the way Seb’s mother rushed at him as if he were the first day of the Harvey Nicks sale that confirmed Anna’s worst fears. Lady Lavenham was, Anna realised, a full-on, fully-paid-up Son Worshipper.

Anna could recognise the breed from a cruising height of thirty-three thousand feet. She had, after all, encountered them before. The boyfriend’s mother before last had been one; a Welsh Italian who had made almost nightly phone calls and who had insisted on driving up from Cardiff to college to comfort Roberto practically every time he sneezed.

“Call me Diana,” Seb’s mother barked to Anna on arrival. The coda, “If you dare,” hung unspoken in the air of the hallway, air that had suddenly thickened with expensive-smelling scent.

Anna had been expecting trouble. But she hadn’t expected it to look like this. Diana was about as far removed from the tweedy battleaxe Anna had been anticipating as Cameron Diaz was from Margaret Rutherford. It wasn’t just that Anna felt wrong-footed by Seb’s mother. She felt wrong-haired, wrong-makeupped, wrong-dressed, and most of all wrong-shoed. Diana Lavenham had the type of long, thin, patrician feet that even looked graceful in wellies. A fully-paid-up Fulham blonde, she had thick wedges of expensive hair that shone brilliantly in the light of the hall chandelier, as did the single, polished platinum ring hanging loosely on one long, tanned hand. She had expensive skin too, opaque, glowing, and virtually unlined from a rich diet of face cream. Seb, who had suddenly shot into the kitchen, now emerged sporting an apron, a tea towel over his shoulder, and an air of cheerful culinary professionalism. “Anna, will you take Mummy into the sitting room while I get on with supper?”

“Darling, you’re
so
clever,” Diana purred at her son as she followed Anna down the hallway. “Are you sure its not
too
much trouble for you?”

“No trouble at all, Mummy, honestly.”

That much was true, at least, Anna fumed silently.

Her mouth set rigidly into a smile, Diana regarded Anna with narrowed eyes
as they sat at opposite ends of the leather sofa. The silence roared in Anna’s nervous ears.

“Tell me about yourself,” Diana said creamily. “Basty tells me you want to be a writer. I’d love to see some of your work.”

“
Basty
?” echoed Anna, squirming at the thought of an unsympathetic stranger knowing such an intimate thing. Who the hell was Basty? Damn Seb for telling them, whoever they were.

“Se
bast
ian?” said Diana in the bright voice of one trying to communicate with an idiot. “My
son
?”
She blinked repeatedly, her mouth turned up at the corners. “I call him that because I can’t bear the thought of anyone calling him
Seb
.
Ghastly
.
Makes him sound like an
estate agent
.” As opposed to an estate owner, I suppose, Anna thought.

Seb appeared. “Almost there with dinner,” he said, obviously lying. Anna wondered if he had even managed to find his way into the packets of salmon fillets. Heaven knew what he thought the carton of ready-made hollandaise was. Custard, probably.

“I’ll come and have a look, shall I?” She rose to her feet, for once grateful for the chance to slave over a hot stove. Anything to escape from this woman’s icy, interrogative glare.

Following Anna’s intervention, dinner was soon served. Throughout the meal, Diana chatted tinklingly yet pointedly to Seb about people Anna didn’t know. “Yes, darling, they’ve just bought a house in what they call up-and-coming Acton but honestly, I ask you.
Acton
?
I mean, where
is
Acton?
What
is Acton? Not even on the
A–Z
, is it?”

Anna opened her mouth. Here, at last, was something she could contribute to the discussion. “It
is
supposed to be getting slightly smarter, I believe. I have a friend who lives there.”

“Oh really?” Diana had still not looked at her once since they sat down at table. She did not look at her now. “And where do
you
live, Anna?”

Anna watched Diana stab a baby potato with her fork. Surely Seb had
told
her they lived together? She shrank into silence and waited for him to take the initiative. It was up to him to explain their cohabiting arrangements to his mother. Who must, even if she didn’t know, at least suspect it.

But the silence remained unbroken. Looking from Anna’s flushed face to Seb’s suddenly grey one, Diana raised a faintly amused eyebrow.

“
Kensington
,”
Seb burst out suddenly. “Anna lives in Kensington. Just off Ken Church Street, actually. With a writer. Anna’s her assistant.”

Diana looked coolly at Anna. Was it Anna’s imagination, or did those narrow blue eyes hold a triumphal glitter? Diana smiled. “How
fascinating
.”

***

“How
could
you?” Anna screeched at Seb after Diana, who had lingered as long as she possibly could in the obvious hope that Anna would leave first, had finally descended to her Dorchester-bound Dial-A-Cab.

Seb shrugged, unrepentant. “Well, what was I supposed to tell her? It’s not as if we’re married, is it? Anyway, I’ve done you a favour. She owns the place, after all. If I told her you lived here, she’d probably start charging you rent.”

“Thanks a
million
,” Anna snapped, having searched in vain for some appropriately reductive retort. She tried to console herself with the thought that even Oscar Wilde would have been stumped with Seb; all the
bons mots
in the world, after all, failed to get Bosie to behave himself.

“But it’s probably time you moved out anyway,” Seb muttered, not meeting her eye. Anna suddenly felt sick. Here it was then. It had finally come, the moment she had always been expecting, yet never really believed would happen. She was being given her marching orders. Like an employer dismissing an unsatisfactory servant, Seb had sacked her without batting an eyelid. There had been a steeliness to his tone which suggested attempts to plead for clemency would be useless. Not that she felt like pleading. She felt like taking the untouched hollandaise sauce and pouring it all over him. Especially when the mysterious person who refused to leave answerphone messages flickered once more into her mind.

Retreating to the bathroom, Anna slammed the door and set the water thundering from the taps to disguise the sobbing that suddenly overwhelmed her.

It was the humiliation. The helplessness. The sight of her naked body in the bath. The roll of flesh seemed bigger than ever; her stomach rose above the waterline like an island. An
island
.
Anna sighed, wondering what Jamie was doing now, and suppressed the thought of what she could be doing with him, were she there too. Why the
hell
had she told him about Seb? What had there, after all, been to tell?

She lay in the bath, hot and shiny with misery and sausage pink with fury. Her anger mixed with the steam rising from the foam-free water; the final insult was that Seb had, at some point during the day, used up the last of the Floris Syringa her mother had given her for her birthday. Her mother would never meet Seb now. But it was unlikely either would have relished the occasion.

One good thing, Anna tried to persuade herself, was that if she wasn’t going to be the wife of a sewage millionaire, at least she could take the job with Cassandra. This prospect, though it lacked the platinum charge card, sports coupe, and season ticket to Champneys that went with the former career option, at least offered a large and luxurious house in one of fashionable Kensington’s most fashionable streets. Not to mention an apprenticeship with a successful writer. She’d show Seb.
And
his stuck-up horse of a mother. Anna permitted herself a delicious few minutes imagining their faces when she hit the bestseller lists.

If the job was still available, that was. Anna glanced at the watch on top of her pile of clothes on the loo seat. Just past midnight. Too late to ring Cassandra now. Please God she hadn’t found someone else. She’d ring her first thing in the morning. In the meantime, Anna decided, as the silent sobs overtook her once more, she’d just sit in the bath and weep.

Usually, Cassandra never saw first thing in the morning. She usually hit it around fourth or fifth thing, but this particular antemeridian was different. She’d had to get up
ridiculously
early to do an interview. In the normal course of events, Cassandra loved nothing better than talking endlessly about herself to journalists—friendly
OK!
and
Hello!
ones
in particular. But there was nothing friendly about the sharp-faced, skinny woman sitting opposite her on the cowskin sofa with a tape recorder, a notebook, and a sceptical twist to her lips. Her eyes
intermittently darted round the room, focusing in on, Cassandra was cringingly certain, every surface left respectively undusted, bashed, and unwiped by Lil as she had made her morning rounds. That was the trouble with minimalism; there was nowhere to run when it came to hiding dirt.

Lil herself had already been grilled; as Cassandra had clumped down the thin, stripped wood stairs to greet her inquisitor, she had overheard the cleaner being questioned about her mistress’s working hours and daily routine. Although not a religious woman, Cassandra had sent a heartfelt prayer heavenwards to whichever benevolent deity had allowed her to appear on the scene before Lil had got on to the breakfast gin and tonics.

A curse on her publishers though, thought Cassandra, grimacing. The deal that had eventually been hammered out between her agent and the increasingly irascible people who commissioned her books had been that, the continued non-appearance of Cassandra’s expected new manuscript notwithstanding, the planned publicity for the novel should continue to go ahead. Hence the presence of this spiky girl in her sitting room.

Cassandra sighed inwardly and gazed glassily at the journalist. The pre-interview nerve-soothing double gin had not only affected her concentration, but had dealt a temporary death blow to her ability to see straight.

“Sorry, can you rephrase that?” she asked.

The journalist looked astonished. “Er, yes. I just asked you what the name of your son was.”

“Zachary Alaric St. Felix Knight.” Alaric St. Felix had been the dashing hero of
Impossible Lust
,
in whose heady, thrilling, champagne-and-cash-flooded wake (and particularly the former) Zak had been conceived. Repeating Alaric’s name only reinforced Cassandra’s awareness that she had so far failed to invent a hero to rival him.

“How do you
cope
with him?” the journalist asked next.

Cassandra’s heart skipped a beat. What
exactly
had this woman heard about Zak? Surely she didn’t know about the dreadful events of yesterday. “Theft, madam, is a criminal offence no matter
whose
son you are,” that ghastly little Boots store detective had snapped. “How
could
you?” Cassandra had furiously admonished Zak all the way home. “Stealing like a common criminal.”

It wasn’t the
criminal
bit she minded—heaven knew, half the squillionaires in the City were crooks and she was fervently hoping Zak might join their ranks one day. It was the
common
.
And from
Boots
,
for Christ’s sake. If Zak
had
to steal, he could at least have chosen Harvey Nicks.

“Cope?” she asked suspiciously. Was this woman trying to catch her out?

“Well, we’ve talked about your bestsellers and how you write them, but we haven’t touched on how you also manage to run a house this size
and
have a family life. Not to mention how you keep yourself in such great shape.”

Relief swept through Cassandra. This was more like it. “Oh, well, I find getting up at five and doing a couple of hours on the treadmill generally does the trick,” she simpered. “I try and read all the papers at the same time.”

The journalist looked astonished. “But surely you have some help with
something
?
Do you have a nanny even?”

Cassandra shook her head vigorously. “No,” she smiled. “No help at all.”

“Why on earth not?”

Because that stupid fat Anna girl had had the unbelievable cheek to practically
beg
for the job and then announce, cool as a Decleor face pack, that she’d
think
about it, Cassandra thought viciously whilst training a look of melting sincerity on the journalist. “I suppose I can’t bear to think of my child being brought up by
anyone
else but me,” she said silkily. “It would be
desperately
sad to miss these crucial years when his character is forming, don’t you think? He’s so independent, Zak. Such an amazing little personality already.”

The journalist nodded sympathetically; this argument, Cassandra was gratified to see, went down much better with her than it did with Mrs. Gosschalk. For Zak had taken full advantage of the interregnum in nannies and had, besides the shoplifting, recently been conspicuous by his absence at school.

The result was that the headmistress’s office had been on the phone again complaining about his behaviour. Cassandra’s blustering defence that it was proof of her son’s extraordinarily entrepreneurial outlook and incredible creative spirit had cut no ice with Mrs. Gosschalk, although she had conceded “extraordinary” and “incredible” were accurate descriptions.

“And then of course,” said the journalist, “you’re half of a high-profile marriage.”

Half
,
thought Cassandra indignantly. If you were talking profile, she was a good
two-thirds
of it, thank you very much. What on earth had Jett done this side of the Boer War? She very much doubted the re-formed Solstice would be a stadium-filler. If the tepid press reaction their reunion had prompted so far was anything to go by, they’d be lucky to be a stocking filler.

“Yes. Jett and I are truly blessed,” Cassandra cooed through gritted teeth, “because, apart from being lovers, we’re such good friends. We’re very close. There’s hardly ever a cross word…”

The sound of the slammed front door interrupted her musings. “Sandra?” roared a voice. “Where the hell are you? You’ve got to get someone else to take that
goddamn
brat to school. He’s doing my goddamn head in.”

The journalist stared in astonishment.

“In here, darling,” trilled Cassandra, faking a sudden attack of coughing in the forlorn hope of drowning Jett’s yells. The journalist’s thin lips curved slowly upward.

“Hang on, I’m getting a goddamn drink first,” yelled Jett, thundering down the stairs to the kitchen. “Zak made me park the goddamn Rolls round the corner
again
,”
he bellowed from below. “Said he was embarrassed in case the other kids saw it. And when I told him he should be goddamn
pleased
,
not embarrassed, that his father had achieved enough to have a Rolls,” Jett continued, his voice approaching up the kitchen stairs, accompanied by the rattling of ice cubes, “Zak said he was embarrassed because the Rolls was so
uncool
and
all the other kids’ parents had groovy four-wheel drives
.”

Cassandra had now coughed so much her face was red and streaming. That her efforts had been utterly in vain was obvious from the way the journalist was checking the red Record button of her tape recorder and scribbling maniacally on her pad. As Jett’s raddled visage appeared round the sitting-room door, Cassandra was momentarily torn in deciding which of them she wanted to murder the most.

“What’s going on?” he demanded, looking from Cassandra to the journalist. “Not another of your
goddamn
Mystic Meg sessions, for Christ’s sake.”

“If you’re enquiring as to whether this is one of my metamor-phic technique lessons, then the answer is no,” said Cassandra, icily. “I’m being
interviewed
.”

The revelation that he was in close proximity to a publicity opportunity had a more electric effect on Jett than the famous incident in Athens, Georgia, 1978, when his guitar had been accidentally (or was it? he was still not sure) plugged into the mains. Even by his optimistic lights, the reaction of the music press to the news Solstice were re-forming could hardly be described as ecstatic, with the result that “Sex and Sexibility” needed more of a push than overdue quadruplets. He could not afford to let golden opportunities like this pass.

“Hi. Jett St. Edmunds,” Jett said, stretching out a hand to the journalist. Not bad, he thought. A bit skinny and pasty perhaps. “And you are?” he asked, pulling in his stomach and moving closer.

“Brie de Benham.
Daily Telegraph
.”

“Hi, Brie. Know the name,” Jett drawled, chewing on a nonexistent piece of chewing gum.

Yes, of course you do, Cassandra only just stopped herself saying.
From the Waitrose cheese counter
.
She could spot Jett’s thunder-stealing game a mile off. She was aware that “Sex and Sexibility” was hardly lined up to be the Christmas number one, but she’d be damned if it got publicity, however badly needed, at the expense of her new book.

“How’s it going?” Jett asked, fixing Brie with his most charismatic stare.

“Fine,” Brie smirked. “Miss Knight has been telling me how she gets up at five and reads all the newspapers while she’s working out in the gym.”

Jett stared at his wife, who returned his gaze unblinkingly. “Gets up at
five
?”
he chuckled. “Oh yes, she gets up at
five
,
all right. Five in the goddamn
afternoon
,
that is. And working out? The only thing of Sandra’s that gets regular exercise is her goddamn credit card.”

In the hall, the telephone began to ring. Both Jett and Cassandra held their ground, locking eyes, neither willing to give up the valuable field of potential publicity to the other. “Phone’s ringing,” smirked Jett at his wife. “Probably that goddamn Gosschalk chick. She’s never off the blower.”

Silently telling herself she was doing it for her son, Cassandra gritted her teeth and stalked out of the room. Jett promptly sat down on the sofa beside Brie de Benham, who immediately rammed her elbows together to make the most of her skinny cleavage.

“
Ass Me Anything
,
”
he breathed. Might as well get in a plug for the album straightaway.

“OK.” Brie switched on her tape recorder again. “Is it true that Jett St. Edmunds isn’t your real name and you’re really called Gerald Sowerbutts?”

“
What
?
What are you goddamn talking about?”

“You said to ask you anything.”

“
Ass
me anything. Name of the new goddamn album.”

“Oh. Right. Well, anyway, is it true? About the name?”

“Of course it bloody isn’t,” snarled Jett. “I’m called St. Edmunds because I come from there.”

“From Bury St. Edmunds?” At least, he thought, she’d got off the Gerald bit.

“You gottit, baby.”

This was, in fact, merely the version of the truth preferred by the record company who, having decided to ritz up Jett’s Christian name, completed the exercise by surnaming him after the town where their A&R man first discovered him performing “House of the Rising Sun”
a capella
to an audience of two at a bus stop. Jett had objected to the name at first because he thought the town was pronounced Bury Street Edmunds, but preferred the story, as well as the rest of the tricky subject of his origins, to remain cloaked in mystery.

“And do you ever take your sunglasses off?”

Through the mirrored shades Jet invariably wore to do everything but sleep in, he saw Brie looking at him coolly. “Take them
off
?”
He laughed theatrically. “Honey, I’m in showbiz.” Brie smirked.

“Is it true what I’ve heard about you women journalists?” Jett murmured, moving his mouth close to her ear. “That you keep vibrating pagers in your knickers so you get a thrill when someone calls you?” He placed a hand heavy with silver skull rings on her thin, black-nyloned knee and began to work it slowly up her thigh. Hearing the phone slam back down in the hall, he hastily took it off again.

Cassandra swept back into the room looking triumphant. “Thank God,” she declaimed. “That girl’s finally seen sense. She’s moving in tomorrow morning.”

“What girl?” asked Jett, looking hopeful.

“The fat one who
inexplicably
lives in Mayfair. She’s coming to be the nanny.” Joy was not a regular visitor to Cassandra’s fearful heart, but now she positively fizzed with it. No more interminable games of Monopoly with Zak, although it
was
gratifying how good he was at it. No more Harry bloody Potter at bedtime. Best of all, no more calls from Mrs. Gosschalk.

“The nanny?” echoed Brie, faintly mocking. “So you’re getting some help after all.” Cassandra did not like the tone of her voice.

“Not at all,” she snapped. “This girl is an Oxbridge graduate. She is coming to be my assistant. It’s just that,” Cassandra added in an undertone, “she’s going to be assisting me in rather more ways than she bargained for.”

***

The following morning, Anna let herself out of Seb’s flat for the last time. As she headed for the bus stop and the Kensington-bound No. 10, she worked out that probably the most valuable thing she possessed was an old beaver coat which had a marked tendency to moult. It had been the only thing Seb had ever given her. Apart, that was, from an inferiority complex the size of Manchester.

Her recent emotional traumas, however, had not remotely affected her ability to be everywhere far too early. It made sense in a way; she had always suspected that her tendency to be unfashionably punctual had sprung from a lack of self-esteem. Following Seb’s recent antics, it was surprising she wasn’t even earlier—Cassandra had told her to present herself and her belongings at eight o’clock sharp, and here she was at a positively devil-may-care five to.

For reassurance more than warmth, Anna huddled further into the depths of the tatty coat. Seb had told her it gave her a Russian air. Doubtless, she thought sourly, he had meant less Anna Karenina than headscarved babushka with wrinkles deep enough to rappel down.
Bastard
.