Naked in Knightsbridge (18 page)

Oh shit. Jools edged backwards, trying to drag Rodney along with her.

‘
Is that true, Jools?’ Rodney shrugged her off.

‘
Sort of.’ Jools gnawed her fingernails. A hunk of sour-tasting polish slid off into her mouth and she tried to spit it out. ‘I’ll explain everything back in the car.’

But heading to the car was not on Rodney’s agenda. He made a beeline for Mrs Pho and extended his hand. ‘My dear woman, let me introduce myself.’

Jools had never seen him smile so brightly. Someone had done a good job on those teeth.

Mrs Pho, blinded by his charm and good looks, held out her hand, whilst her beady eyes darted between him and Jools.

‘
My name is Rodney Wetherspone and I want to be your MP.’

‘
I am Clare Pho,’ she told him, ‘and if you with that evil woman I never vote for you. Ever! Your career – your reputation – be ruined. Just like my beautiful house.’ She added a small wail for effect.

Rodney thought for a moment.

‘
Mrs Pho, it sounds like you might be having some problems with your builders?’

Mrs Pho nodded vigorously. ‘Problems, yes but not with builders. The council. They won’t let me rebuild to five storeys. They say my top floor illegal. How can that be? Mother-in-law live there for ten years. Are they saying she illegal too?’

‘
Is she?’ asked Jools innocently.

Mrs Pho and Rodney stared at her as if she had a bomb strapped to her waist.

‘
Why don’t you wait for me in the car,
Julia
?’

Shit. He had never called her that. He must be pissed. Jools trudged off and leaned on the car, only a few feet away.

‘
Mrs Pho, can I call you Clare? What if I said I can help get your five storeys back?’

Her round Botoxed features relaxed as much as they could. ‘You call me Mrs Pho. If you get me back into my house like it was, I not pass word around you are with that nasty witchy girl.’

Uncalled for, thought Jools.

‘
I think I can help, Clare,’ Rodney said, flashing the smile again. ‘But you need to promise not to cause any problems for my fiancée.’ He nodded towards Jools.

‘
You joking! You marry that? Since when?’

‘
Since we both recognised our shared affection for the great novels of Harry Tolstoy!’ Jools shouted from the hood of the car. She strode back over and took Rodney’s arm with a bit more force than she intended.

Mrs Pho sneered at Jools and sucked her teeth. ‘I sure.’ She turned to Rodney. ‘Tell you what, Wetherspone. You get me out this rat trap quick and I no tell press you engaged to known arsonist. You decide.’

Chapter 13

Dear Julia Grand, Arsonist,

We no friend, I despise you, but I please to accept invitation to your wedding, got today. But as you burn down my house no wedding gift for you!

C. Pho

A WEEK HAD now passed since Niles’ last attempt to contact Jools by email. To him, it felt like years. Now, standing in his shower, ice-cold water raining down on his skinny, naked body, he tried to cool the emotional firestorm building within his frantic mind.

After his run-in with Skuttle, Niles had returned to Jools’ flat in hopes of staking her out. She had to turn up at some point – if she still lived there. So he waited, hidden in a nearby tree, for nearly seven hours before deciding to give up. He took a quick tour of the neighbourhood to see if he could find Skuttle – he didn’t believe that wino when he said he didn’t know her – but he was out of luck there, too. Was everyone disappearing on him? Sometimes Niles would wake up in the middle of the night, cold sweat coating his body. Had Jools ever existed, or was she some fantasy he’d cooked up in his overheated brain?

Of course she existed, he chided himself. He had the emails and pictures to prove it. He had records of phone calls. He wasn’t that far gone. At least not yet.

Niles managed to get Rocco’s contact information from one of the other building tenants by telling them he was in the market for a new apartment. When he called Rocco to enquire about Jools, the dodgy landlord turned out to be just as cagey as Skuttle.

‘
Who da fuck is asking? You some sort of perv?’ Rocco had shouted after Niles asked if he had any information on Jools’ whereabouts.

Niles had completely frozen. ‘I’m an old friend,’ was the best that he could come up with.

‘
Well listen, old friend,’ Rocco said, mockingly, ‘I don’t give out personal information about my tenants unless they’re dead or wanted by the cops. But since Jools ain’t a tenant anymore, seeing as how I booted her fat butt out, I can tell you this: she don’t know how to pay her rent.’

Rocco slammed the receiver down. Frustrated he couldn’t seem to get any useful information, Niles did the same, managing to catch his index finger in the process.

‘
Owwwwwwww.’

This wasn’t supposed to happen. No woman was supposed to have this much control over him. Ever. Niles had fully expected Jools to be tied up in his basement by now. The harder she made it, the more he felt she deserved it. No woman had ever made Niles feel so powerless. He would make Jools pay for what she was putting him through – if only he could find her.

Deciding he wouldn’t sleep a single wink until Jools was safely stashed away in Slough, he dried thoroughly, patted himself down with liberal amounts of talcum powder, splashed some cheap cologne on his face and changed into his favourite tracksuit. Brewing a pot of very strong coffee, he sat down at the kitchen table to do some serious thinking.

Where could she be?

He spread the newspaper out on the table before him. Mindlessly flipping the pages, he peered at the giant black-and-white images plastered beside each article. A boy on a farm had raised a five hundred pound pig; a woman in Yorkshire had given birth to identical quintuplets, all as ugly as she was; a teacher at a local boys’ school was being accused of exposing herself to one of the students during Morning Prayer. Niles was disgusted. The world was full of pathetic people scrambling to get what they could before they died.

Then, there it was. On the front page of the local news section, a sign from God. The newest political golden boy, the probable new MP of Kensington and Chelsea, standing in front of a row of terraces with a giant smile on his smug face. Wearing an impeccable suit, shiny shoes and hair so perfect it seemed moulded from plastic, Rodney Wetherspone looked ecstatic.

And why shouldn’t he be, thought Niles, with that pretty young piece next to him?

He looked closer.

Wait a second . . . wasn’t that . . . ?

Yes, it was! His Jools!

The sight of her standing there, all dolled up in a posh suit, arm in arm with Rodney Wetherspone, was enough to make him want to tear his hair out.

Instead, he slowly sipped his coffee, cut the photo out of the paper, and started making a new plan.

*

Back in her perfect white bedroom, Jools swore to herself that she would do everything possible to protect Rodney’s public image.

The incident with Mrs Pho had been a very close call, and further humiliating experiences had to be carefully avoided. Which meant if she and Rodney had any chance of pulling off their scam, it was necessary to sever all ties with the biggest personal embarrassment of all: her dad.

She placed the call.

‘
Hiya!’ Jools’ dad answered the phone cheerily.

Jools had been expecting him to sound just a bit more penitent and downtrodden, considering that he was wanted by the authorities in at least one country.

‘
Dad, it’s me.’

‘
Joolsy! My little girl. All grown up and getting married! How do you like that?’

Brilliant. He’d received the invitation. Margaret Wetherspone was certainly efficient.

‘
It’s great news, Dad,’ Jools said, trying to find the right way to break the bad news to her father. Not only was he no longer invited to the wedding but he could pretty much never set foot in her life ever again. Not that he’d been there much to begin with.

‘
So, Dad, there’s something we need to discuss,’ Jools said anxiously.

‘
Don’t worry, hon, I’ll make sure to buy a proper suit for the ceremony. That Wetherspone bird said she’d handle everything. Joolsy, you done real good landing that bloke. His mother sounds like a right posh bit – loaded, too. The Dorchester. Fancy that!’

‘
Yes, Dad, Rodney and his family are very well off.’

‘
And he’s in politics, eh? That’s my girl. I knew you’d land on your feet. Just like your dad.’

‘
Right,’ Jools said.

‘
I’ll tell you, it sure was nice of the Wetherspones to fly me and the old lady back home. I don’t know how I would have done it otherwise. And I’ll be damned if I’m not going to be there on my little girl’s special day.’

Charlie Grand sounded legitimately happy for her and in the thirty seconds they’d been on the phone, he hadn’t once asked her for money. A small patch of warmth began to coat her heart. As embarrassing as he was, and as much as she sometimes loathed him (and wondered if she was, in fact, his at all), Jools was touched by the sentiments and couldn’t bring herself to cut him from her life.

Well, not at that particular moment, anyway.

‘
So what else is happening?’ he asked, finally giving her the opportunity to speak.

‘
Oh, you know, not much. Just busy with the planning.’

‘
Well luvvie, I’d like to chat but I was just popping out for a cocktail.’

‘
What time is it there?’

‘
Cocktail time. Always cocktail time here, Joolsy. Cheers, talk soon.’ And with that, he was gone.

Jools sat in silence for a moment. What on earth was she going to do?

When nothing came to mind she went to the kitchen to review the contents of the huge, state-of-the-art, stainless-steel fridge.

Sitting on the beach in Ibiza, his skin the colour of an over-ripe blood orange, Jools’ father turned his daughter’s wedding invitation over and over in his hands.

‘
That’s quite the return address,’ he mused, staring at the crisp, Smythson stationery.

Jools had really hit it big. He wasn’t sure exactly how she had managed to charm this rich, handsome, successful man into falling for her. Sure, Jools was cute, but she wasn’t the kind of bird he himself would go for — probably a good thing, seeing as how they were related.

They had never been particularly close but he was her father, after all. He raised her, paid for her clothes and food, put a roof over her head when she was growing up. It figured that she owed him. Wasn’t it the child’s job to care for the parents in their old age? Not that he was old, mind you. He was younger at heart than most men half his age. He could still get the girls, too. They loved him. Sometimes he thought he was too good with the ladies. It was his charm that had got him into his current mess.

I need to get out of here, he thought to himself. Get out of Ibiza and back to old Blighty – and live with Jools and the Wetherspones in their mansion. It made perfect sense, and it was the least Jools could do.

‘
Right, sorted,’ he said aloud, rising from his beach chair, folding the invitation into thirds and stuffing it into his back pocket. ‘I’ll get out of here, back to the UK, and live with Jools and her posh new family.’