Divas (15 page)

‘It isn’t your place any more, Lola, ’ Georgia said, sensing that Lola was wavering.

‘No, it isn’t, ’ Lola said slowly. ‘And it won’t ever be again. I mean, even if –
when
– everything gets sorted out with my dad’s money, I
won’t want to come back here, will I?’

‘No! You’ll buy something bigger and better!’ Madison confirmed. ‘With more than two bathrooms, for God’s sake!’

Lola stood up. Everyone looked at her. She looked at herself, in the mirror over the fireplace. Her big brown eyes were huge and dark, her pretty little jaw set with determination. She looked
– well, she looked like the girl who had stood up to Niels van der Veer yesterday, and lived to tell the tale.

‘Right, ’ she said. ‘We’re going to trash the place. Then I’m going to call some cabs and load everything in and take all my cases to Mummy’s, so she can look
after them for me. And then I’m going to turn around and go to Heathrow and get on the first plane to New York and find out exactly what’s happening with Daddy!’

‘Wey-hey!’ Georgia crowed, picking up a vase and throwing it to the floor, where it bounced harmlessly off the carpet.

‘I’m going to write things in lipstick on the walls!’ Devon jumped up excitedly.

‘I’m going to cut “I HATE YOU CARIN” into the bathroom mirror with my engagement ring!’ Lola capped that.

‘Jeez, ’ Madison drawled. ‘You girls are
wild
.’

‘This it, Miss?’ the cab driver asked, slowing down in front of a pair of stone gateposts, rather overgrown with ivy.

Behind them, two more black cabs, dutifully following in file, slowed down as well. Lola’s entourage had drawn stares from every car passing on the motorway and what felt like the entire
population of Whitstable: one black London cab down here in the country was unusual enough, but three of them was a once-in-a-lifetime sight. They’d probably be telling their children about
it for years to come.

Particularly since the second and third cabs didn’t have passengers, being stuffed to the gills with expensive suitcases.

‘Yes, this is the one, ’ Lola said regretfully.

The cabs turned into the drive, climbing up it with much chugging and changing of gears. Suzanne Myers, the Sunsilk girl, had chosen a rambling stone house on the clifftops of Whitstable,
overlooking Tankerton Bay. It was all very pretty and scenic, Lola was sure, but it was also totally typical of her mother not to pick a location that was slightly more
normal
. And by
‘normal’, Lola meant chic.

Beauty was most definitely in the eye of the beholder. Most observers would have considered Whitstable charming, with its narrow cobbled streets, its little painted shop fronts, its complete
absence of the ubiquitous chain stores that had taken over almost every other small town centre, turning them into outdoor shopping malls. Whitstable, by contrast, offered oyster bars, local
fishmongers, little galleries selling stained glass and ceramics, old-fashioned tea shops.

It was more than Lola could bear. The knowledge that she couldn’t walk on those cobbles in her Manolos – and if she did snap a heel here, there wasn’t a single shop in town
selling something she could bear to put on her feet instead – made her close her eyes as they drove through what she considered no better than a village. How could Mummy, who had been famous
for her beauty over at least three continents, bear to be cut off from civilisation like this?

‘Lovely spread, isn’t it?’ said the driver, looking at her in the rear-view mirror.

Lola didn’t even dignify this with an answer. Her mother had an absolute fortune from the divorce settlement with her father – he had been so generous her mother’s lawyer might
as well not have bothered to turn up at all – and she’d chosen to spend it on a glorified donkey sanctuary. Really, it would make Lola furious, if she didn’t have more important
things to worry about right now. She climbed out of the cab onto the gravel drive.

‘Shall we start unloading the cases, miss?’ called the driver of the second cab.

‘Hold on, ’ Lola said, walking towards the house.‘I want to get the front door open and then you can take them straight in –
aaaah!
’

The scream had been provoked by the appearance of a very large white bird, waddling round the corner of the house on its big orange feet. Planting them on the drive, it squawked threateningly at
Lola.

‘Oh my
God!
’ she exclaimed. ‘Is that a
swan?
’

‘I think it’s a goose, miss, ’ the second driver said.

Suzanne lived in a traditional country style. The front door was practically never used: the main access to the house was the kitchen door, round the back of the property, accessed by a wide
stone path.

But right now the goose was standing on the path. And there was no other way round the house.

‘Shoo!’ Lola said hopefully. She advanced a pace closer to the goose, waving at it impatiently.

But the goose didn’t shoo. Instead, it picked up its rubbery feet and took a couple of steps towards Lola. And it opened its bright orange beak and made the same awful squawking sound,
even louder and more threatening now.

‘I’d be careful, miss!’ yelled the first driver.

‘Those things can break a man’s arm with their wings!’ added the second driver. ‘Nasty, they are!’

‘Nah, that’s swans, you pillock, ’ called the third driver, not wanting to be left out of the fun. ‘Geese can’t break your arm.’

‘They could bite, though, ’ the second driver retorted. ‘Look at the beak on that!’

‘
Shoo!
’

Lola windmilled her arms at the goose, trying to scare it off. It paused for a moment, and she thought she’d won. Then it lifted its wings menacingly, hunched its back, and went into a
tirade of squealing and hooting as another goose appeared from round the side of the house. And this one was hissing.

Lola stared at them in horror. The first goose had now started hissing too, and that was even worse than the squawks. Their nasty beady eyes were fixed on her, and what she could read in them
chilled her blood.

For a moment, there was a standoff. And then the geese started advancing on Lola, both hissing worse than the snake in
The Jungle Book
, and Lola let out a terrified scream and started to
run.

‘Come on, miss!’ yelled the first cab driver, reaching out his arm to unlatch the door for her.

At least Lola hadn’t worn stilettos to visit her mother. She was in her version of casual wear, which meant that her stack-heeled boots were only two inches high, and her jeans
weren’t so tight they cut off circulation to her crotch every time she sat down. She managed a sort of sprint, her boots crunching on the gravel, the geese hissing like demons after her. As
she fell into the open cab and the driver heroically slammed the door behind her, the lead goose went for the driver’s arm. It just missed, but its fury was such that it slammed its beak
against the paintwork of the taxi.

‘Little
bastards!
’ the driver said in amazement. ‘Little fucking
bastards!
’

Then he had to jam his finger on the button to close his window, as the goose was trying to stick its beak into the cab, squawking furiously.

‘Fucker!’ he yelled. ‘You little fucker!’

Scrabbling up to the seat, Lola looked behind her and saw that the second cab driver was doubled up with laughter, his face bright pink. And the third cab driver – oh
God
, the third
cab driver, damn him, was holding out his mobile phone, recording the entire thing. Lola muttered a heartfelt ‘Fuck!’ under her breath.

Lola practically never swore. But she knew exactly what was happening: the driver had recognised her and was going to sell the mobile phone clip to the tabloids. Her inglorious scramble across
the gravel was going to be front-page news tomorrow, posted on all the internet gossip sites. She was so angry she wanted to get out and punch that bloody goose right in its mouth.
Beak
.

‘Honk your horn, OK?’ she instructed the driver. ‘My mother never answers her bloody phone, I’ve been trying all the way here.’

The driver leaned on the horn. The loud parp-parp drove the geese into a frenzy of hissing. Somewhere in the distance, dogs started barking. Lola thought she could hear the donkeys, in a field
below the house, braying in response. And into the middle of all this noise, from the walled orchard on the opposite side of the house, strode Lola’s mother Suzanne, in faded jeans,
Wellington boots and an ancient T-shirt, her famous blonde hair now streaked with grey and pulled back from her face in a frayed hairband, her equally famous face lined and worn by years of working
outside in the wind and the sun.

But her legs were as long as ever, her waist as slim, her breasts as high and small as they had been in the glory days of her early twenties, when every man and quite a few women all over the
world had looked at the gigantic billboards of her in a royal-blue swimsuit, holding a bottle of Sunsilk shampoo, her golden hair tumbling down her back, and fallen in lust with her on the spot.
And her face was still so beautiful that the cabbie jerked his hand from the horn and said: ‘Fucking
hell
, that’s your
mum
?’ in reverent tones.

‘What is this racket?’ Suzanne said furiously. She walked up to the first cab. ‘
Lola?
Is that you? What on
earth
do you think you’re doing? The animals
aren’t going to settle down for
days
now!’ She looked over at the geese, who were both waving their wings and hissing like banshees. ‘Hamlet and Ophelia are both
very
sensitive!’

Lola watched the three cabs disappear down the steep hill, taking a substantial amount of her money with them. She couldn’t believe how much it had cost.

But right now, she had a more immediate problem to sort out: her suitcases, which were piled in a heap in the middle of the drive, looking like the lost luggage for an entire business-class-only
airline.

‘You can’t leave these here!’ Suzanne was insisting, her hands on her waist. ‘I should never have let you get those cabbies to unload them.’

‘Mummy! What was I going to do, turn round and drive round England in a procession of black cabs, looking for someone with a big house and a lot of room?’

‘There are such things as storage units, you know, Lola, ’ her mother protested.

Lola’s face went completely blank.

‘
Are
there?’ she said. ‘How do they work?’

Suzanne threw up her hands in desperation.

‘We’ve ruined you!’ she cried. ‘Your father and I have ruined you!’

‘Oh Mummy, not that again—’

‘We’ve spoiled you so much you don’t know how to do the slightest thing for yourself!’

‘I do!’ Lola said crossly. ‘I worked out how to get all my stuff packed, and how to bring it here—’

‘In
black cabs!
How much did that cost you? Did it never occur to you to rent a van?’

‘Eeeww!’ Lola was visibly taken aback. ‘No! How would I even
do
that?’

‘I need a cup of tea, ’ Suzanne moaned, and turned away, walking round the side of the house.

Lola followed her nervously.

‘But what about my cases?’ she asked.

‘I’ll give Neville a ring. He’s the gardener, a total godsend. He’ll find somewhere to put them, ’ her mother said over her shoulder.

‘Oh, thank you, Mummy! Um, are you sure the geese are—’

‘They’re safely in their pen, don’t worry, ’ Suzanne said. ‘But I don’t know what you can have done to upset Hamlet and Ophelia. They’re the
gentlest
creatures.’

‘Mummy, one of them attacked the cabbie when he was slamming the cab door for me! It tried to take a bite out of his arm!’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Lola, ’ Suzanne said, sighing. ‘You’ve always been jealous of my animals. I can’t understand why. You know I loved you
best.’

They paused for a moment to look over Tankerton Bay, which was laid out below the cliffs, shingle beach stretching away as far as the eye could see. It was an overcast day, and the tide was out,
which meant that the grey shingle sloped down to sloppy-brown mudflats, studded with old pieces of shell that would cut your bare feet. The sea, which would have made the scene much prettier, had
withdrawn far in the distance, as if wondering whether it could really be bothered to come back in and cover all that dirty mud up again. Round the edge of the shingle beach was a line of brightly
painted beach huts, little shacks without running water or electricity, which Lola had heard sold for a relative fortune.

Standing on the cliff, looking down at the bay below, Lola shuddered. Having to spend her summer holidays here would be the worst torture she could possibly imagine. She looked over at Suzanne,
whose beautiful face had momentarily been washed clean of annoyance by the sight of her beloved sea view. Lola shrugged.
Well, each to her own
, she reflected.
If everyone wanted to stay
in lovely hotels on the most exclusive Thai beaches, they’d get awfully crowded, wouldn’t they?

Suzanne took a deep breath of sea air, and reluctantly turned away from the prospect of Tankerton Bay.

‘I’ll put the kettle on and ring Neville, ’ she said, pushing open the kitchen door.

The house was accessed through a mud room, crowded with old Wellington boots, frighteningly sharp-looking racks of gardening paraphernalia, and dirty old raincoats. Lola shuddered again. She
wished her mother wouldn’t live like this. Even the kitchen, which, with its huge picture windows, could have been very nice if done up with the latest granite worktops and brushed-steel
fittings, was resolutely rustic: an old cream Aga, acres of faded wood cupboards, and a huge old oak dining table. For Lola’s tastes, it was horribly rustic. There was even a smelly old
spaniel curled up in a basket next to the Aga, which whopped its tail on the floor at the sight of Suzanne.

‘That dog really pongs, Mummy, ’ Lola said disapprovingly, pulling out a chair and inspecting it for cats before dusting off the animal hair and gingerly sitting down.

‘He’s old, Lola. We all get old, and then we die, ’ her mother said, as if this were somehow news to Lola.