Apocalipstick Read online

  “Oh,” she gasped—in delight rather than annoyance, “and who is this handsome little chap?” She immediately started nuzzling him and scratching his head.

  “Harrison Ford, ma’am,” Lipstick said.

  “Ah,” Lady Axminster laughed, “just like the actor chappy.”

  “Indeed, ma’am. Actually I’ve got his christening album. Would you like to see it?”

  A couple of minutes later the two of them were off, oohing and aahing at Harrison’s puppy pictures.

  “And that’s my dad’s dog, Isaiah,” Lipstick pointed out.

  “Oh, after the prophet?”

  Lipstick gave her a perplexed frown. “No,” she said. “One eye’s higher than the other.”

  Rebecca and Jess excused themselves on the pretext of needing to check on the dinner.

  “Gawd, it’s nearly nine!” Rebecca wailed. “Where’s bloody Minge?”

  Jess had just gone to phone her on her mobile when the intercom went.

  It was Max. He came in bearing a vast bunch of lilies and white roses.

  “Oh, they’re wonderful,” Rebecca said, taking the flowers and kissing him.

  Just then Jess reappeared. Rebecca did the introductions. Jess didn’t manage much more than, “Hi, pleased to meet you,” on account of her mouth freezing itself into a stupid grin brought about by instant and overwhelming physical attraction.

  “Phwar,” she whispered into her friend’s ear as Rebecca led Max into the living room to meet Lipstick and Lady Axminster.

  When she found out he was the Vanguard’s science correspondent, Lady Axminster immediately began quizzing him about mad cow disease. Then Lipstick chipped in, saying how much the world owed to Thomas Edison because without him we’d all be watching television by candlelight. Lady Axminster roared, assuming Lipstick was joking, and asked Max what he’d studied at university. When he said radio astronomy, Lipstick countered with: “Oooh, so I bet you’ll have no trouble working out what star sign I am, then.”

  Deciding Max was more than capable of holding his own with her ladyship and Lipstick, Rebecca went to find Jess. She was in the kitchen.

  “OK, what did Minge say?”

  “She’ll be five minutes. Apparently there was a broken-down bus in Harlesden.”

  When the door went again, Rebecca assumed it was Minge. When it turned out to be Grandma Rose, she virtually keeled over.

  “Omigod,” she said to Jess as they waited for Rose to come upstairs, “when she finds out about me and Max, she’ll have one of her strokes.”

  It turned out Rose had decided to pop in and say hello since she was on her way to visit her friend Milly who lived in the next road. “She’s had a nasty bout of bronchitis. So I thought I’d take her some of those homophobic remedies.”

  Then she dug Rebecca in the ribs, winked and asked her if she’d had any interesting e-mails recently.

  Before Rebecca could confront the thorny issue of dateadoctor.com, Rose heard the chatter from the living room.

  “Oooh, you’ve got people.”

  She handed Rebecca her coat and trotted into the living room. Lipstick, looking surprised and delighted, offered her a huge hug and introduced her to Lady Axminster. Rose offered her commiserations about Jess and Ed and said pointedly that at least Lady Axminster had a daughter who was married. Then she let out a long sigh and said she’d virtually given up hope of Rebecca ever finding a husband.

  “And this is Max,” Lipstick said. “He’s a journalist.”

  She shook his hand. Rebecca watched as she scrutinized the Paul Smith jacket and expensive shirt. (Grandma Rose understood little of modern fashion, but there was nothing the daughter of Maurice Bernstein, Ladies’ Mantles and Bespoke Suits, didn’t know about tailoring.)

  “Max,” she said finally, clearly approving of the stitching on his lapels, “you seem like a discerning young man. Do an old woman a favor.”

  “Oh, come on, Rose,” Lipstick cut in, “you’re not old.”

  “Listen.” Rose laughed. “I can remember when Barnum and Bailey was only Barnum.”

  Lipstick offered Rose a glass of wine, but she declined, presumably because she needed both hands to speak.

  “Now then,” Rose said, turning to Max, “take a good look at Rebecca. Tell me honestly. What do you think? She’s intelligent. She’s pretty. You know, the ophthalmologist did wonders with her lazy eye. The only time you can see it now is when she’s tired. Of course she went through a terrible time with her skin when she was a teenager, but that’s all cleared up now. Don’t you think she’d make somebody a lovely wife?”

  Rebecca had heard enough. Crimson faced, she went back into the kitchen and poured herself more wine. When the intercom went yet again, she let Jess get it. A few moments later she came into the kitchen carrying a large silver foil parcel.

  “Houston, we have food,” she declared. “I told Minge we already had dessert, but she threw in an almond tart anyway. When I offered to pay, she wouldn’t hear of it.”

  Rebecca’s face lit up. She said she’d send Minge flowers on Monday to say thank you.

  Just then Max came in. Rebecca apologized for Rose. “I’m sorry if she embarrassed you.”

  He grinned and said she hadn’t. Not even remotely. “By the way, I love the painting.”

  “Oh, what, Woman Wanking?”

  He laughed and colored up slightly. “Yes,” he said. “That’s the one.”

  “Glad you approve.”

  “So what’s for dinner?” he asked.

  “Oh, I did a boeuf en croûte,” Rebecca said casually, indicating the foil parcel sitting on the counter. “I made it a couple of hours ago. Just needs a quick reheat in the oven.”

  Jess suggested it would crisp up more without the foil. Rebecca agreed and began taking it off.

  “Can’t wait to see this,” Max said. “Bet it’s magnificent.”

  Confident Max was about to be severely impressed, Rebecca pulled off the final layer of foil. “Ta-dah,” she sang. But instead of wows, there was silence.

  She looked down. Sitting on the counter was a huge iced cake. On top it said, “Nan and Cyril. Congratulations on your Golden Wedding.”

  12

  Of course, everybody had hysterics. Rebecca did her best to join in, but she found it hard to laugh about the Shergar stew and Thick Minge. She couldn’t help feeling everything was her fault and that she’d buggered up the entire evening. Domestic goddesswise, she felt about as adequate as a Voyage cardigan in a thunderstorm.

  By the time they’d phoned Minge and she’d collected the cake and come back with the beef, it was well after eleven. Then, the moment they sat down to eat (minus Rose, who’d left for Milly’s—laughing her head off—shortly after the cake incident), Max’s mobile rang. It was Lorna to say she’d arranged a midnight conference call with the French minister for the environment and he should get over to her place straight away.

  “A conference call at midnight,” Rebecca said. “On a Saturday?”

  “Apparently he’s at some dinner,” Max said, getting up from the table. “Then he’s catching a plane to Mexico City. Said he’d speak to us on the way to the airport. I’m so, so sorry, Rebecca, but I really have to go. It’ll take me at least half an hour to get to Lorna’s.”

  She walked him to the door. “We’ll catch up during the week, eh?”

  She nodded.

  “Then there’s the wedding on Saturday.”

  Max’s mate Adam, a sub on the Independent, was getting married to Zoe, a staff writer on the Sunday Tribune who was a friend of Rebecca’s. It was only when Rebecca happened to mention the wedding to Max a few days ago that they worked out the connection and each realized the other had been invited.

  “I’m looking forward to it,” she said.

  “Me too.”

  He apologized again for having to dash off, snogged her briefly but thoroughly, and was gone.

  Rebecca was woken by the phone. She reached out from under the d
uvet, her hand fumbling for the receiver. “Hi, Gran,” Rebecca said, sounding groggy and full of early morning nose block. “What time is it?”

  Apparently it was “well after nine.”

  “So, you and this Max, then?”

  Rebecca rolled over onto her back.

  “I wasn’t sure,” Rose went on, “so I just rang Marjorie.”

  “Marjorie” was in audible italics. Rose was clearly relishing being on hobnobbing terms with the aristocracy.

  “What do you think?” Rebecca said tentatively.

  “I think he’s wonderful.”

  “You do? But he’s not Jewish.”

  “Rebecca, listen to me. The world is full of famines, wars, children dying of AIDS and you’re worried because your boyfriend’s not Jewish? Isn’t it time to get a little perspective here?”

  “Me, get a little perspective?” Rebecca gasped.

  “All right, I admit I may have been a bit intolerant about the religion thing, but now I can see just how happy your dad is with Bernadette. And if anybody deserves a bit of happiness in his life, it’s Stan.”

  Rebecca couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  “And I suppose I was a bit put out when nothing happened between you and that nice Warren chap—particularly when I found out his father just died and left him forty million pounds.”

  Ah, Rebecca thought, chuckling to herself. So that explained how he pulled the gorgeous Fabergé.

  “Anyway,” Rose went on, “that’s all by-the-by now. Max is a lovely boy and he’s practically a doctor.”

  “No, he’s not, he’s the Vanguard’s science correspondent.”

  “Now you’re just splitting hairs. What that boy doesn’t know about blood pressure isn’t worth knowing. He gave me an entire lecture on how I should be cutting down on salt. On top of that, it turns out one of the companies that makes those electronic blood pressure machines has just sent him one, as a freebie. Said it was mine if I wanted it.” She paused. “Look, sweetie. I know it’s early days yet. But if it works out for the two of you, I couldn’t be happier.”

  “And it will work out,” Jess said that evening as they watched an ER repeat—Lipstick had gone to bed early. “I’ve told you before, just give it time and stop worrying.”

  Rebecca grunted. “Bet Bloody I’ll-call-you-when-I-get-back-from-Chequers Lorna doesn’t cook Shergar instead of braising steak. Bet Bloody Lorna can knock up a Thai feast for thirty at the same time as running a marathon, shaving her pubes and mugging up on Labour’s transport policy.”

  She lay on the sofa contemplating, hands under her head. Then: “She’s after him. I just know it.”

  “Well, it’s you he wants,” Jess declared, without taking her eyes off the TV screen, “not Bloody Lorna. I can tell just by the way he looks at you.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  Rebecca smiled and went all coquettish. She sat up. “So … er … how exactly would you say he looks at me?”

  “I dunno.” Jess shrugged. “He just gives you these looks, that’s all. When he thinks nobody can see. God, Dr. Greene’s sexy. Oh, I love this episode. It’s the one where they operate on his malignant brain tumor. He gets over it.”

  “What sort of looks?” Rebecca asked. “I mean, would you say they’re sexy, affectionate or just platonic?”

  “Affectionate … Oh, look, Dr. Corday really loves him. She’s having their baby. I love her hair. Do you reckon it’s naturally curly or she has it permed?”

  “Not sexual, then? Or loving?”

  Jess was glued to Dr. Greene and his carcinoma. Rebecca repeated the question.

  “Loving, too,” Jess said vaguely.

  “So, definitely not sexual, then?”

  “OK, affectionate, loving and sexual.”

  Rebecca went back to the TV, but only for a moment. “So, how much is sexual? I mean what would you say is the ratio of affection to sex?”

  “Sixty–forty …Ooh, ooh, look. Some bloke’s arresting. Come on, get out the bloody paddles!”

  “What, sixty: sex, and forty: affection? Or the other way round?”

  Now Jess sat up. “For chrissake, moron,” she barked at the screen, “he needs a shot of adrenaline… .Becks, please. A man could be dying here. Max Factor cares about you, OK?” She lay back down again.

  “Really?” Rebecca said.

  “Omigod, we’re off again. He cares about you—really, really, really. OK?”

  Satisfied at last, Rebecca watched the rest of ER. Afterward she picked up the newspaper and turned to the TV listings.

  “It’s Watching You, Watching Me next,” she said. “We have to see how Lucretia’s getting on. I can’t believe she hasn’t been chucked out yet.”

  During the break Rebecca put the kettle on and Jess went to the loo. When they got back it had already started.

  Lucretia, a girl-band singer called Brie and some F-list soap actress whose name Rebecca had forgotten were sitting chatting in the girls’ bedroom.

  “Do you know,” Lucretia said as she finished cleansing her face with a cotton pad, “I’d like Prince Charles to take me from behind.”

  Rebecca sat bolt upright. Jess gasped.

  “Yeah,” Brie said. “Wasn’t that a big hit in the eighties for Frankie Goes to Hollywood?”

  Lucretia laughed. “It’s not a song,” she said, unzipping her outsized makeup bag. “It’s my secret fantasy. I’ve never ever told a soul until this moment.”

  “What on earth’s going on?” Rebecca said to the screen. “Lucretia has the most almighty hang-up about sex. She wouldn’t even acknowledge having a sexual fantasy, let alone talk about it.”

  Glued to the screen, they watched as Lucretia unscrewed a jar of Mer de Rêves face cream. Rebecca recognized the gleaming Mercedes hubcap top and the letters MdR picked out in tiny pretend diamonds. The Watching You, Watching Me people had clearly refused her request for Nicky Clarke and the flotation tank, but sent somebody round to her flat to fetch the cream she’d left behind.

  “You know,” Lucretia said, dotting her face with cream, “I lie in bed sometimes imagining the two of us romping in slow motion through the gardens at Highgrove. I’m completely naked. He is too, apart from gardening gloves and a pair of pruning shears… .”

  Rebecca and Jess squirmed as her fantasy became more and more graphic.

  “Of course, it’s all wondrously dangerous because neither of us knows when Camilla or the boys might appear. The bit I like best is when he fondles my lobelia …”

  Snow, who had walked into the room at that second, stopped and did a confused double take. Then, clearly assuming she’d misheard, she placed a neatly folded pile of laundry on Lucretia’s bed.

  “There’s another load still in the dryer,” she said. “I’ll iron it later.”

  Lucretia nodded.

  Then Snow said that Billy Piper and Ainsley Harriott had just made cocoa if anybody wanted it.

  Jess turned to Rebecca. “How could she humiliate herself like that on national TV—in front of millions of people? Charlie Holland is going to be furious. Wouldn’t surprise me if he gave her the boot. What is the woman on, risking her career like that?”

  “God knows,” Rebecca said. “God only knows.”

  As it turned out, she didn’t see Max at all that week. When he wasn’t meeting secret contacts in greasy diners off the A1, he was in late-night meetings with the people at Channel 6—which of course included Bloody Lorna. He’d only phoned her twice and each time he’d seemed distracted and distant. She kept telling herself he was working on the most important—not to mention life-endangering—story of his career and had every right to be distracted and distant. But a huge part of her couldn’t help wishing he was working on the most important, life-endangering story of his career without the help of Bloody Lorna.

  Jess kept up the pep talks, though, and by Friday, knowing she was going to see him the next day at the wedding, she’d cheered up no end.

>   By now she was in no doubt that she’d fallen in love with Max. She wasn’t sure exactly when it happened. During that daft Kit Kat row maybe. All she knew was that when she was with Max she was overwhelmed by the feeling that she’d come home. She could say anything to him. He made her laugh. He was her warm place. When she was with him, she could shut out the rest of the world.

  Hardly a night went by when she didn’t fantasize about him taking her in his arms and telling her he loved her too. Maybe it would happen tomorrow, she thought, when he saw her in her wedding outfit.

  Another one of her girlfriends had gotten married last spring and she’d splurged on a gorgeous sixties-style pale pink woolen dress and jacket. The dress was a dead straight shift, but it managed to cling in all the right places. The tiny boxy jacket had big buttons and three-quarter-length sleeves. She’d set it off with a row of chunky pearls, and a low-brimmed hat. Everybody had said she looked “sooo Audrey.” She didn’t actually pick anyone up, though. All the decent blokes had been in couples, but she’d felt their eyes on her. The only chap who’d made a move was the toastmaster, who had a handlebar mustache and a beach hut at Swanage. Even so, she couldn’t remember ever having felt quite so sexy. Max wouldn’t be able to keep his hands off her when she walked into that church tomorrow.

  She stayed up late, getting her clothes ready and (for once in her life) planning her route. The wedding was being held at Zoe’s parents’ place—a vast manor house somewhere in the wilds of north Yorkshire. Max and Rebecca weren’t driving up together because Max was spending the night with Adam and some friends in Leeds, where they were having Adam’s stag night.

  By half past seven, she was ready to go. Lipstick was still asleep, but Jess, who was up feeding Diggory, gasped when she saw her and said the moment they got to the reception Max was bound to cart her off to one of the bedrooms to ravage her. “Hope you’ve got decent underwear on.”

  Then she told her to go and have a wonderful time and forget all about Bloody Lorna.

  Despite pelting rain and several sets of roadworks on the M1, she reached Leeds just before eleven. Kettlesthwaite was a good forty miles farther north. Even on minor roads it couldn’t take more than an hour. The service was at twelve. She should make it with a few minutes to spare.