Sisteria Read online

  ‘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 stor
ies 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.

  Naomi finished going through the list. For once, the traditional abuse failed to erupt from her mouth and her frown disappeared. She looked up and gazed into the distance. The expression on her face flirted with becoming one of satisfaction, as she pictured the close-up of her holding the husband-killer’s hands and urging her, with tears in her eyes and almost saint-like concern in her voice, to reveal every grizzly, blood-squirting moment of her tale. She would then turn to the nine children and bestow a beatific caress on each of their cretinous little heads.

  Plum, registering his boss’s rare approval, felt his pulse begin to slow down.

  ‘OK. That doesn’t look too bad,’ Naomi declared, suddenly coming back to earth, ‘the only thing you haven’t mentioned is what’s happening with the Armitage Shanks woman.’

  Plum, feeling his heart rate beginning to gallop again, ran a hand over his bleached crop. He knew he must at all costs avoid doing what he inevitably did as Naomi’s mercury level threatened to rise past critical - lapse in his nervousness into broad Lancashire. This happened at least once a week, and every time, without fail, Naomi would scythe him down with an exaggerated hand behind the ear and the same withering joke: ‘No, no, sorry, Plum, darling,’ she would cut across him when he was halfway through briefing her, ‘all I’m getting is some strange noise. You’ll have to run that lot past me in English this time.’

  Plum’s cheeks turned crimson. Finally he took a deep breath and started to speak in an overstated attempt at Home Counties English. ‘The Armitage Shanks woman will be here at half past two,’ he said in the slow, studiedly baritone voice, his vowels ridiculously rounded. ‘And she’s agreed to cry if we promise her four tickets for Les Mis. Said Michael Winner doesn’t do a lot for her really.’

  ‘Brilliant, fucking, fucking brilliant.’ Naomi was actually brimming over with excitement. ‘Well done, Plum. What I think we need to do now is find some suitable musical accompaniment for the stupid cow as she comes on. Instead of going for lunch, see if you can dig out a recording from somewhere of “Your Baby has Gorn Down the Plughole”.’

  ‘Right chew are, then, Nay-ohmi,’ Plum said cheerily. Despite his accent and his uncontrollable nerves, he harboured ambitions to become a Blue Peter presenter and had no intention of jeopardising his career by challenging Naomi’s capricious demands, or indeed her grotesque choice of music.

  ‘OK, now I need food,’ Naomi declared, bashing the top of her desk with an outstretched hand. Her joy at having snared the Armitage Shanks woman had caused all thoughts of fasting to vanish.

  ‘Plum, be a love and go upstairs to the canteen and get me a green salad, no dressing, and some lean ham. And don’t forget to take the scales. I must have precisely four ounces of salad and eight of protein. And make sure you wipe the leaves on a paper towel. Residual water buggers up the weight reading. Remember, my lettuce needs to be more than just green. It should be positively emerald, darling. If the canteen have only got that pale, limp stuff, then jump in a cab and pop up to Planet Organic.’

  The moment Plum shut the door, Naomi dived into her Il Bisonte briefcase and began hunting for a Wagon Wheel. If she couldn’t have bacon she would make do with chocolate. Rummaging furiously among the letters, documents and folders, all she could find were two Clubs, a couple of Penguins and a Walnut Whip. She couldn’t make up her mind between a mint-flavoured Club and the Walnut Whip. She had just decided to sod it and have both when the phone started ringing. She left it for a few seconds while she ripped into the plastic Walnut Whip wrapper with her teeth. Then, with the piece of swirly chocolate on one hand, she picked up the receiver.

  ‘Beverley!’ Naomi exclaimed, her voice meandering from falsetto to contralto between one end of her sister’s name and the other. ‘Darling, it really is wonderful to hear from you after all this time. So, you got my letter.’

  As Beverley spoke, Naomi brought the narrow end of the Walnut Whip slowly towards her mouth, clamped her teeth around it, paused for a second or so and decapitated it.

  Chapter 3

  ‘So,’ Naomi said warmly, breaking yet another awkward telephone silence, ‘how are you? I mean how are you really? Are things still difficult - you know - money-wise?’

  ‘Oh, you know. In the midst of life we are in debt,’ Beverley said breezily.

  ‘God, really? Is it that bad?’ Naomi said, her voice full of concern.

  ‘No. I’m exaggerating,’ Beverley laughed. ‘We’re doing OK. Honest.’ Having found out that Naomi had just bought a three-quarters-of-a-million-pound flat in Holland Park (‘Complete wreck, of course. Daren’t tell you what I’ve spent on it’), she was blowed if she was about to come across as a complete charity case.

  ‘In fact,’ she went on, ‘things are really starting to look up. It’s all a bit hush-hush at the moment, but Mel’s just pulled off this amazing import deal with the Koreans.’

  ‘Oh, fabulous, I’m so delighted,’ Naomi said. ‘Let’s just hope it’s more successful than the homeopathic-sticking-plasters-that-didn’t-stick fiasco.’

  ‘Oh, God, that was yonks ago,’ Beverley said, trying to convince herself as much as her sister. ‘I don’t think he’d make a mistake like that again... Look, Nay, it was really good to get your letter. I’ve missed you.’

  ‘Yeah, me too.’

  ‘I meant to pick up the phone so many times, but there was just so much, you know, water under the bridge, and I didn’t know what to...’

  ‘I know. You don’t have to explain. Look, Bev, I’m truly sorry for the rotten things I said. You must hate me.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ Beverley said. ‘I was angry, but I never hated you.’

  ‘So, do you forgive me?’

  Beverley didn’t hesitate.

  ‘’Course I do,’ she said kindly.

  ‘Bev, I can’t tell you how happy that makes me,’ Naomi said, sounding close to tears. ‘Listen, I’d really like us to meet. We’ve got so much to catch up on. Plus there’s something really major I need to discuss with you.’

  ‘Sounds ominous... Oh God, Nay, you’re not ill or anything, are you?’

  ‘No, no, I’m fine. It’s nothing like that. Promise. Look, I don’t want to talk about it over the phone. How about meetin
g for lunch?’

  ‘Great. When?’ Beverley reached across the worktop for her diary.

  ‘What about one day next week. Say, Tuesday?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Tell you what, let’s go somewhere really posh. What about the Ivy? You won’t have heard of it, darling, but it’s simply the place to go. It’ll be my treat.’

  ‘Oooh, brilliant,’ Beverley shot back. ‘I love it there.’

  ‘No, darling, you misunderstand. I mean the Ivy, in Covent Garden.’

  ‘Yes, so do I. You remember Rochelle and Mitchell, our rich friends from round the corner? He made a fortune in the deli business, she’s got breast implants and a four-wheel drive with interchangeable soft tops - pink for summer, green for winter? Well, they took me and Mel to the Ivy for our last wedding anniversary.’

  ‘They did?’ Naomi said, coughing in disbelief. ‘Goodness, I had no idea its fame had spread quite so... so far afield.’

  ***

  Beverley closed her diary and smiled. Her sister was still full of herself. Still the dreadful snob she’d always been. Those bits of her would never change. On the other hand, much as Beverley had predicted, she seemed calmer, less angry and more at peace with the world than she’d ever been. There was no doubt in Beverley’s mind that she genuinely and desperately wanted to be friends again. Even the suspicion that Naomi had only got in touch because she wanted something from her had begun to fade. Beverley was also pretty sure she knew what Naomi wanted to discuss. Their mother. Naomi had spent her entire adult life hating Queenie - and not without reason. If she remembered, she sent her mother a cheap card on her birthday. When Queenie had gone into hospital for her hip operation, she’d sent a small bunch of carnations. For as long as Beverley could remember, that had been the extent of their relationship. They hadn’t actually seen each other for six years. If Beverley’s memory served her correctly, that had been at their mad hippy cousin Roma’s welcome-to-the-world party for her first baby, at which Mad Roma had served up fried placenta on bridge rolls.