Sisteria (3 page)

‘Liverpool's further west,' Queenie broke in. Beverley turned to look at her mother.

‘Don't look so surprised. I heard it on the radio yesterday on the way back from the day centre. The minibus driver was listening to some quiz show or other.'

‘Ah, so it is a trick question, then?'

‘Seems like it,' Queenie said. ‘All went way over my head, I'm afraid, but apparently the entire country tilts or something.'

‘I knew it. I remember reading somewhere about...'

‘OK, fine,' Natalie said, smiling with faux jauntiness. ‘Don't mind me. My emotional needs clearly come second to your interest in cartography.'

With that, Natalie flounced out.

‘Listen to me, Bev,' Queenie said. ‘You have to do something about that child. She's too thin. What does she look like? A nose on a string.'

‘Good God, Mum, don't you ever tell her that.'

‘As if I'd do such a thing,' Queenie said, her voice full of indignation. ‘You know me, I'm the epitome of tact...'

‘Yeah,' Beverley chuckled, gently patting the top of her mother's hand, ‘the absolute epitome.' She pronounced it epi-tome as her mother just had.

‘Right,' Queenie said, ‘I suppose I'd better go upstairs and put a face on before the minibus gets here. What time is it?'

‘Just after half eight.'

As the words left Beverley's lips, she suddenly remembered Benny.

‘Good God, that boy must still be asleep.'

‘Stay where you are,' Queenie said. ‘I'll give him a shout.'

Beverley smiled gratefully at her mother and helped her off the stool.

‘You know,' Queenie said, ‘about the money thing - I've told you before, if things get really bad there's the money from when I sold the house just sitting in the building society doing nothing. I can always lend you a couple of thousand to tide you over.'

‘That's really kind of you,' Beverley said gently, ‘and don't think I'm not grateful for the offer, but we need more than just a couple of thousand, and even if I could persuade Melvin to swallow his daft pride and accept a loan from his elderly mother-in-law, I just don't know when we'd be able to pay it back... if we'd ever be able to pay it back.'

‘Well, it's there if you need it...'

‘OK. And Mum... thanks.'

Queenie nodded.

***

Once her mother had gone, Beverley straightened her back and began rubbing her neck. As she dug her fingers into her sore, knotted muscles, she turned her head slowly from side to side. Feeling the tension beginning to ease, she took the folded letter from under the pepper grinder and stared at it.

Naomi, her younger and only sister whom she hadn't seen or spoken to since their huge bust-up five years ago, was suddenly full of apologies and begging to see her. It seemed almost inconceivable to Beverley that Naomi, who as far as she knew had never apologised for anything - even as a child - could have changed so much. But five years was a long time. Naomi was now in her late thirties. Perhaps she'd started to mellow, decided that life was too short for feuds and genuinely wanted to patch things up. If, on the other hand, Naomi being Naomi had some selfish ulterior motive for getting in touch, she'd discover it soon enough. In the mean time, what possible harm could there be in a phone call?

Chapter 2

Naomi Gold winced as she felt the involuntary tightening of her rectal muscles round the plastic tubing. A few moments later came the not unpleasant sensation of warm water coursing through her large intestine. As the water level rose up to her navel, the pressure inside her gut increased to something close to pain. She speculated as ever whether the stainless-steel contraption beside the couch looked more like a piece of kidney dialysis apparatus or a knitting machine.

As she lay watching the first dozen or so golden nuggets of her colonic irrigate float through a clear, corrugated pipe, Summer, her San Franciscan colonic irrigator, began massaging Naomi's abdomen through the blue cotton surgical gown.

‘That's real good, Naomi, just relax... excellent.' Summer's voice was calm and soothing. She pressed the heel of her palm down harder on Naomi's stomach and began rubbing in a circular motion.

‘Ow, that fucking hurts,' Naomi said, sucking in a sharp breath through pursed lips.

‘I know. Just hold on in there for a few more moments. You have no idea how much putrefaction and stagnant build-up I can feel.'

As Summer continued her pressing and rubbing, Naomi heard the tinkle of her silver bangles. After a few moments, Summer looked up and turned her thicket of henna-ed corkscrew curls so that she was facing the corrugated pipe.

‘I tell you, Naomi,' she said, her finger following the progress of one particular piece of irrigate, ‘unless you start laying off caffeine and all the processed crap you put into your body, and start replacing it with whole grains and organic produce, you are going to see this stuff really build up inside you. One autopsy report I read recently talked about a colon that was so loaded with mucoid faecal matter that it weighed forty pounds. Forty pounds, I ask you. Can you believe that?'

‘That is amazing. Truly amazing,' Naomi gasped, feigning astonishment purely for the sake of politeness. In fact, Naomi had about as much interest in bowels, healthy or otherwise, as she did in anchovy futures and only ever came for a colonic when, like today, she needed to drop a few pounds fast. This evening she was due at a telly-showbiz charity do at the Lanesborough and at eight o'clock this morning her black silk size eight Rifat Ozbek had refused to do up round the middle.

‘So tell me, Naomi,' Summer continued, ‘how long would you say it takes you to complete a bowel movement? And how would you describe the smell? Would you say it's pretty much odourless, or more putrefied cooked meat with a kind a lemony top note?'

‘No,' Naomi shot back, ‘I'd say it's more blackcurrant and gooseberry with an understated yet well-rounded woody edge.'

Summer nodded seriously, picked up Naomi's notes, which were attached to a clipboard, and began writing.

Naomi watched Summer's earnest scribbling and couldn't help smiling as she wondered why it was that all Americans seemed to lack the gene which made human beings capable of appreciating sarcasm.

Her deliberations lasted no more than a few seconds. They were disturbed, first, by the sensation of much cooler water suddenly entering her bowel, and then by the muffled ringing of her mobile.

‘Summer, be an angel, darling,' she said, ‘and pass me the phone from my briefcase. I don't think I'm in quite the right position to reach down.'

Summer made no effort to pick up the phone. She simply stared at Naomi. The look on her face stopped short of a fully fledged glare. It was more of a wishy-washy, peace-loving, alternative-lifestyle, tofu version of a glare.

‘Naomi, maybe you've forgotten, but we have addressed this issue before...' Summer's voice was as calm as ever, but it had taken on a faintly miffed quality which was the perfect accessory to her facial expression. ‘I really don't think it's appropriate for you to be taking calls during a cleanse. This should be a time of tranquility and relaxation. Your constant refusal to hear what I say is causing me to develop some quite negative feelings toward you.'

At this point the phone stopped ringing.

The nation's most beloved talk-show host and consumer champion, steadfast devotee of the underdog and eight times winner of the Pritchard and Jarvis (Debt Collection and Bailiff Service) Award for Compassionate Journalism, raised herself on to her elbows and glowered at Summer in a way that said: Lynching follows. Start trembling.

‘And your fucking refusal to pick up the sodding phone, you tie-dyed, pumpkin-seed-brained moron,' she bellowed, ‘has probably just caused me to develop the sack.'

Summer's eyes immediately filled with tears. What she did not appreciate, however, because she barely knew Naomi, was that on a bad day the woman's temper could reach fundamentalist Taliban proportions. By Naomi's standards, she was subjecting Summer to the tamest of tickings-off.

‘For all you know, you stupid wholewheat tart,' Naomi carried on shouting, spraying the air with tiny goblets of spittle, ‘that could have been Alan Yentob offering me a new series... or... or Cherie inviting me to cocktails at Number Ten.'

Naomi's rant was interrupted by the phone starting to ring again. Summer, whose tears were by now streaming down her face, bent down, snatched the phone out of Naomi's briefcase, slammed it down on the couch, and then ran out of the room sobbing. Naomi jabbed a button with a menstrual-red talon. ‘Plum,' she barked in recognition. ‘No, it's OK. This is a good time. Speak to me. What's the line-up looking like for this afternoon's pre-record?'

As Plum, Naomi's long-suffering PA, spoke, the features on Naomi's face started to form themselves into a gurn of prize-winning ugliness. There were two reasons, for this. The first was that the woman who had agreed to come on the show and tell the story of how her three-month-old baby drowned in the bath after she left it alone while she went downstairs to watch Supermarket Sweep, and was now suing Armitage Shanks for negligence, was, according to Plum, having doubts about whether she wanted to appear after all. The second was that Naomi's colon was still filling with water. Summer had been so distraught when she left the room that she had forgotten to turn off the tap on the knitting machine. The result was that as more and more surged dam-like into her gut, Naomi had begun to experience the kind of abdominal griping pains that were usually associated with aid workers in Africa suffering from amoebic dysentery.

Whatever physical pain Naomi was in, it didn't begin to compare with the anger she was feeling towards the Armitage Shanks woman. So furious was she that her brain failed to register that her gut pain was being caused by her colon filling with water. As it continued to dilate and distend, Naomi simply gurned and groaned and took out her agony on Plum.

‘What the fuck do you mean, she's refusing to appear if she has to weep on screen? What fucking use is that? How many times do I have to tell you, Plum, it's tears which make ratings. Listen to me - I don't want her unless you draw up a contract and she gives us a written undertaking to cry. Tell her we'll stick raw onion down her cleavage if it'll help. Offer her tickets for
Les Mis
. Tell her we'll arrange a night out for her with Michael Winner. Anything. Just get her, Plum.'

Naomi pressed the off button and dropped the phone on to the couch. She then let out a cry which sounded like a cross between two coyotes on the job and the death throes of a parrot. Suddenly realising that her gut was on the point of exploding, she tried to yank out the tube which had been inserted into her backside. For some reason, probably because of the searing pain coming from her bowel, her muscles were holding on to it for dear life and the thing wouldn't budge. Naomi screamed for Summer.

In a second, Summer's head appeared round the door. It was almost as if she had been waiting for Naomi's frantic call, and that she hadn't forgotten to turn off the tap but had left it running on purpose.

‘Turn off the fucking tap. Turn off the tap. I'm swelling up like the sodding Michelin man here.'

Summer smiled in a way which indicated that she had in the last few minutes, mastered the art of wickedness.

She moved forward and put her fingers on the water tap, but made no attempt to turn it.

‘Only if you apologise for being so rude,' she grinned.

Naomi, who saw apologising as losing face, said nothing. Despite her excruciating agony, she couldn't bring herself to say she was sorry.

‘Just turn it off,' she shrieked.

‘Apologise.'

‘No.'

‘Come on, Naomi. In a few seconds, the contents of your insides are gonna hit the ceiling like some good ol' Dallas gusher.'

Naomi could tolerate the agony no longer.

‘All right, all right. You win. I'm sorry. I'm truly sorry for being so rude.'

With that, Summer, who was still smiling, turned off the tap. A few moments later, Naomi experienced a bowel evacuation so sublime that as bodily sensations went, there was little to choose between it and the most magnificent of orgasms.

***

Naomi got to the Channel 6 office in Hammersmith just before eleven. As she stepped out of the lift, she patted her stomach and smiled. Delivered of its stagnant buildup, it was flatter than it had been for weeks. Then, almost immediately, as she set off down the long corridor towards her office, temptation struck in the form of the glorious greasy-spoon smell which was wafting down from the canteen upstairs. She realized she could murder a Bacon Bastard. This was a canteen special which consisted of three or four rashers of cheap streaky shoved between thickly buttered Sunblest.

Although she was starving and her mouth was now full of saliva, Naomi, who, along with her fierce temper, could, when required, summon up gargantuan quantities of self-control, was determined not to give in to her desire for a bacon sandwich. Having just spent fifty quid getting rid of her stomach bulge, she had no intention of allowing it to reappear an hour later. What's more, as someone who liked to shower three times a day, who insisted on every cubicle in the Channel 6 Ladies' being fitted with a bidet and who used tampons even when she didn't have a period, she was rather taken with the idea of fasting for a couple of days in order not to get dirt on her freshly irrigated bowel.

There was, however, another reason why Naomi decided against the bacon sandwich. Image. A strong, powerful woman like Naomi Gold, whose success was due in large measure to her ability to instil the fear of God into her colleagues, did not sit in the canteen stuffing her face with grease, looking like some desperate cow who'd just tunnelled out of an Overeaters Anonymous meeting.

She had always made fun of gym junkies and food faddists, but late in the day had come to the conclusion that it was important for media high-flyers to prove their physical as well as their mental strength.

The upshot was that she made sure everyone in the office knew she had joined a gym and was now working out from six until eight every morning with a personal trainer. What's more, in front of her colleagues, she was determined to give the impression that she had also embraced healthy eating. During production meetings she would sneer at people's Eccles cakes and slices of Battenberg while passing round a bowl of carrot batons accompanied by some dark green dip which looked like it had been made from puréed algae.

Her junk-eating marathons only ever happened when she was home alone. After one of her four-slices-of-Nutella-on-white-bread-followed-by-an-Indian-take-away binges, she would either live on Lucozade and water biscuits for a week or make an appointment with Summer.

***

Furious at having to forgo the Bacon Bastard, Naomi slammed her briefcase down on the desk and bellowed for Plum, who had an interconnecting office.

By the time Naomi had sat down, Plum - goatee beard, flares, Adidas Gazelles - was standing in front of her. Plum's real name was Jason Plumley. He came from Preston, and because he was a bit of a wuss and built like a sparrow with growth hormone deficiency, Naomi enjoyed emasculating the poor lad even further by calling him Plum. Humiliated as he was, Jason didn't have the balls to fight back. He simply blushed.

His puny frame, combined with his slightly bowed head and anxious smile, made him look like a petrified first-former up before the head.

‘Right,' Naomi said, giving a single clap of her hands, ‘how many cripples, cretins and inadequates have we got lined up today?'

Keeping up his smile, but saying nothing, Plum handed his boss a print-out of the list of stories they were proposing to cover in that day's show. Naomi sat back in her leather swivel chair and scanned the page. Plum watched the familiar frown form on her face as she went down the list searching for an excuse for molten abuse to start pouring from her mouth. As usual, the two-hour show was to be a mulch of consumer stories, showbiz interviews and Oprah-style talk and tears.

When Naomi had decided on the show's present mixed-bag format, none of the producers or editors thought it would be popular with the punters. In private they referred to the new structure as ‘a fucking shambles' and ‘a ragbag of crass and unfocused ideas'. A few of them even dared to hint at this to Naomi's face. She simply rode roughshod over them, pushed on with her plans and, when the show became a runaway success, insisted that the Channel 6 bosses sack her detractors. When the newspapers found out that a TV presenter had become so powerful that she was sacking her producers, it suited Naomi's purposes admirably; if there was previously anybody in television who didn't regard her with fear and awe, there wasn't now. As for the public, she fobbed them off with a heartrending interview in
Hello!
in which she accused the media of fabricating the entire story, possibly for anti-Semitic purposes.

Today's
Naomi!
line-up included the story of the homophobic caterer who gave all the guests at a gay ‘wedding' salmonella by deliberately serving them off sushi; some D-list Hollywood starlet who was coming on to promote her controversial new range of padded clothing designed to make anorexics look curvy; and a woman, now on probation, who had been invited on to the show to tell the moving story of how, on Christmas Eve, she had bludgeoned her bully of a husband to death with a frozen turkey and then, with the help of her nine children, all of whom had learning difficulties, ate the evidence the following day.