Drop Dead Gorgeous

by Anna Cheska

  Oh, yeah? And more to the point check up on them. Like the way he was looking at her right now, as if he wanted to know every detail of her business. Jude was conscious of what she was wearing, that maybe she should have showered and changed the second she’d finished work. But what the hell …

  To avoid meeting his eyes, she concentrated on the scar that had earned him his nickname. It ran from the edge of his left eyebrow to halfway down his cheek, and right now it looked livid, as if he was holding back his emotions with some difficulty. She didn’t care. Whatever his plans for Florrie, she would fight him. All the way if necessary.

  ‘Could I have a receipt?’ Perhaps she was pushing it. But: ‘I must get on. I lead a—’

  He stopped her, one hand raised, muddy eyes crinkling into … laughter? Anger? ‘Very busy life?’ he suggested.

  ‘Absolutely.’ And Jude had no intention of giving away the kind of busy she was planning on being tonight.

  * * *

  Imogen locked up the shop, hurried to the car and drove back to the nineteenth-century flint cottage on the outskirts of Chichester, close to the City Wall, that she had shared with Edward.

  There seemed so much to do. So much paperwork, so much battling with documentation, mortgage reports, bank statements, insurance and pension details. You name it … And while she battled with the paperwork associated with death, Christmas was already colouring the streets around her. Trees had sprouted lights and tinsel; garlands of crêpe, tissue and foil flapped across shop windows; Santas, snowmen and reindeer flew and flashed across roofs. And in the midst of this, she reflected, the shock and the grief went on.

  It was raining quite hard now. She got what she needed from the car boot and took it into the cottage. She pulled off her coat, shivered, and opened the study door before she even checked the heating had come on, before she could change her mind. John Grantham, her dapper solicitor, was right. She must get on. And it shouldn’t be too difficult, sorting out her husband’s affairs, because Edward’s affairs would be like Edward himself – well-regulated, compartmentalised, neat. He simply wasn’t the type for secrets.

  Imo had failed to find a key to the locked desk drawer so clenched the screwdriver she held in her right hand and rammed it into the gap between drawer and desk. It slipped, chipping the precious mahogany. Damn! She swore softly. Again, she pushed the narrow metal edge into the gap by the lock. She jiggled it back and forwards, eased it in further, snapped it down, and … The lock gave, the drawer opened, a piece of paper catching in the mechanism. Secrets …

  She pulled it free. It was a bank statement. Nothing more sinister than that. She barely glanced at it. Putting it aside, she surveyed the drawer. It was stuffed with papers – stuffed in a very un-Edward-like way.

  What was going on here? She picked up another bank statement and frowned.

  * * *

  ‘Do you think Amelia will get rid of the baby?’ Hazel asked Jude, who was pulling on her knee-high black boots, guaranteed – she hoped – to make an impression.

  Jude stopped mid-lace. She was trying to focus on the blind date she had lined up, but thoughts of James Dean and Florrie kept intruding. And now her mother … ‘What?’ She frowned. Who was Amelia? A client? A friend of Hazel’s who had got herself into … as her mother always put it … trouble? Someone who had not obeyed the Nice Girl rules?

  ‘Amelia.’ Hazel clicked her tongue. ‘Jeff’s baby. You know…’

  ‘Ah.’ Unfortunately, Jude did know. ‘Mother, I don’t have the foggiest idea. I don’t watch the thing.’ Sometimes she worried that Streetlife was taking over their lives. But she, at least, had a life to live.

  ‘I did tell you.’ Hazel launched into the latest cliffhanger. ‘Amelia would never have looked at him if she hadn’t been so upset about Davide.’

  Davide? Clearly not the gorgeous Ginola. Jude pondered the French influence as she straightened her crimson skirt. Too long, too short? Just right? It was worth taking some trouble – who knew where it might lead?

  ‘And you could blame her for getting involved with a married man—’

  ‘Not necessarily.’ Was James Dean married? Probably. His wife would wear designer suits and shop in Liberty’s. Jude could just see her. She breathed in and glanced towards the mirror. It improved the line, but she’d never be able to stay like that all night. Every girl had to breathe.

  ‘But of course he didn’t tell her to start with.’ Hazel wagged an admonitory finger.

  Well, he wouldn’t, would he? Jude checked her bag. She’d take her card and be prepared to pay her whack. Unlike her mother, she had long ago concluded that economic dependency could be seen to confer certain rights – both to demand and to criticise. Well, she wasn’t having any of that, thanks very much.

  Hazel caught her breath. ‘And you know I don’t approve of abortion,’ she said.

  Jude knew. When she had found herself pregnant – after forgetting to take only two pills, for heaven’s sake – Hazel had begged her not to ‘kill my grandchild’. That was what came of watching too many soaps, Jude decided. One developed a taste for the melodramatic.

  But Hazel needn’t have worried: the thought of having a child at thirty-five turned out to be an appealing one to Jude. So what if she were single? She wouldn’t have wanted to marry Daisy’s father in any case. And this way she got to make all the child-rearing decisions herself. It may have been both unexpected and unplanned, but Jude had no intention of passing up this chance of motherhood.

  ‘But in this case…’

  What case? Jude grabbed her coat.

  ‘… who could blame her?’ Her mother was clearly expecting a response.

  ‘Who indeed?’ Jude ran into the kitchen where Daisy-in-her-nightie was sitting at the counter on a high stool, coming to grips with a pot of glue, some cardboard and a tube of glitter. Her mother was going to love this. She smiled and kissed her daughter’s upturned nose. ‘’Bye, sweetie. And don’t make too much mess.’

  Daisy sneezed loudly.

  ‘Bless you.’ Would she have this cold if Jude spent more time with her? Of course she would. She should take her own advice to Imo, Jude told herself, and let the guilt trip leave without her.

  ‘Because she did give Jeff the option,’ Hazel said as Jude re-entered the tiny sitting-room.

  She peered out of the window. Was that a taxi? No one had come to the door, but sometimes they thought it was a laugh to wait for two minutes and then whizz off to the next call.

  ‘And if you have an affair with a married man…’

  Jude lost track. ‘Rod isn’t married.’ Though it was a possibility. Rod was potential assailant, heart-breaker, married man, prince … The list went on and on.

  She turned to find her mother shaking her head at her. ‘Not Rod, silly, I’m talking about Jeff.’

  ‘Jeff, yes, of course.’ It was time to go.

  ‘So who could blame her for making that difficult decision?’ Hazel clutched hold of a maroon scatter cushion. ‘And deciding to terminate?’

  ‘Not me, Ma.’ Jude kissed her on one powdered cheek. ‘Certainly not me.’

  * * *

  She must encourage her mother to find new interests, Jude decided, as she sat in the cab and smoothed on another layer of Luscious Blackberry lip colour. How was she looking – under forty or over forty? The wrong side of forty was an abyss. All right she was in it and she didn’t feel a whole lot different to tell the truth. But maybe that was because she was still clinging to the sides.

  ‘Raphael’s, was it?’ The taxi-driver looked about fifteen – all mouth and acne. He braked, almost causing an unfortunate incident with the lipstick. ‘Shit,’ he pronounced.

  Jude glanced at her watch. She would be ten minutes late which was about right – not late enough to risk Rod’s walking away and not early enough to look keen. Singleton rules. Don’t be early. Don’t chase.

  They drew up outside Raphael’s and she snapped open her purse. ‘How much?’


  He told her, flicked the interior light on for a microsecond and then flicked it off again. He was tapping his fingers on the steering wheel, eager to be off. ‘Haven’t got all night, lady,’ he muttered.

  Jude took no notice. So what could her mother do? Ballroom dancing? Suitable – though there were always too many women, she’d heard, and she couldn’t see her mother being the man. Bridge? Too sedentary. Hazel could do with something a bit more active.

  Jude paid the cab-driver, omitting a tip, and paused on the pavement to check her hair. At least it had stopped raining. It felt good to be blonde, she decided – people said they had more fun, and she was beginning to think it was true. Men noticed blondes. Blondes had a certain panache.

  She took a deep breath and swept into Raphael’s, laced black boots leading the way with a confidence she didn’t feel. The restaurant was one step up from a burger joint with red and white decor and lots of tables crammed too close together. But what did it matter?

  Jude scanned the tables with mental fingers crossed, every sense alert, waiting for the moment of truth …

  Chapter 4

  As she drew level with the florist’s, Naomi Gibb checked her purse. It always seemed light these days. But those white lilies in the tub just inside the open doorway of the shop were so pure, so perfect …

  She pulled off her worn brown gloves, tucked them carefully in her coat pocket and flicked the clasp. There was enough change – just. She really shouldn’t succumb; flowers were classed as a luxury these days, although Marisa frequently received scentless ruby rosebuds or huge cellophaned bouquets.

  But lilies were special. And buying or not buying, it was pleasant to linger, Naomi thought. To catch the fragrance that lent this biting winter breeze an exotic sweetness. You could close your eyes and almost be somewhere quite different, back to summertime perhaps, back to a time when life was simpler, when she wasn’t playing this … oh, this dreadful waiting game.

  A customer left the shop, shutting the door firmly behind him. Back to summertime? Naomi sighed. What a hopeless romantic she was. Marisa often said that. But Marisa said lots of things – and should one listen too closely to a daughter? Flowers did so much for a house. She could do with a brighter day, a sharpening of the senses, a reminder of summer. Naomi sniffed hungrily but the scent was lost. Perhaps she could make a deal with herself? Forgo her weekend bottle of wine?

  The shop, Say It With Flowers (a charming name, though what Naomi wanted to say to herself, she wasn’t sure), seemed to be empty, apart from a leggy teenager with spiky white-blonde hair and an alarming amount of facial piercings. Not only did she seem to have been used as a pincushion and plugged into a thousand volts, but she had an attitude discernible even from Naomi’s vantage point as she peered past the window display from her position on the pavement outside.

  And then the tall brunette wandered through from the back. She was older, in her thirties perhaps, often to be seen here tenderly arranging blooms in wedding bouquets and wreaths. Weddings and funerals … Was it sad to deal with such combinations every single day? She knew nothing about the woman but instinctively Naomi liked her – because of the way her long sensitive fingers dealt with the flowers perhaps. With love.

  Now that was silly. She shook herself as if to free her mind from sentimentality. Marisa had no time for it, perhaps that was why she was strong. But now, as always, the look of that woman – whose name she didn’t even know – drew Naomi inside the shop.

  ‘Hi.’ The girl with attitude seemed even more abrasive close up. Below the shop overalls her legs were encased in skintight black and silver lurex. Naomi knew that lots of girls bleached their hair these days. And several rings in the ears meant nothing, though the nose was a little much and the eyebrow definitely over the top. But still, the brashness of it almost took her breath away. She fingered her own short curls – red, like pale gingerbread rather than carrots. The kind of hair that went inevitably with too-pale skin and an abundance of freckles.

  The girl’s face was white, her eye make-up black. Naomi tried a tentative smile. She felt over made-up in anything more than translucent pressed powder and a dash of lipstick. ‘Hello.’

  ‘What would yer like?’ The girl drummed her fingernails on the counter and Naomi noted the black-and-white-striped varnish and pierced thumb nail. She winced. Goodness knows what that was trying to say.

  ‘I was wondering about the lilies.’ She addressed this to the girl but looked hopefully at the other woman – who might not think her daft to wonder about lilies. Naomi could no more march straight in and announce what she wanted than she could fly. Perhaps she needed some reassurance before she could justify the purchase. Or perhaps Marisa was right and she was just plain middle-aged barmy.

  What was happening to her – truly? For so long she had been treading water, staying safely tucked in limbo, imagining the kind of happy ending that belonged to fairy-tales. And now, the worst thing was the not knowing, the waiting. She prided herself on never phoning him at work. But for how long could she stand not knowing?

  She pulled her thoughts back to the here and now. The other woman in the shop was elegant, with striking, almost classical features, though today she was pale and her eyes drawn. However, when she smiled, her face was transformed. And she was smiling now at her lilies.

  ‘They are lovely, aren’t they?’ She moved closer to the tub. ‘I was just saying to Tiffany, I shall take some home with me tonight.’

  ‘Will you? How nice.’ And how fortunate to work in a flower shop, Naomi thought.

  The girl called Tiffany tore off a sheet of cellophane. Naomi watched her. With those fingernails she looked capable of ripping someone’s face to pieces too. ‘How many stems?’

  Naomi wavered. Her hand gripped hold of the battered leather purse more tightly. She had always known it wouldn’t go on forever. What did she have to offer a man like him? What had she ever had to offer? And now this lurching uncertainty. It wasn’t like him. And it was such bad timing, coming right on the heels of her redundancy like that. Some had families to support. Families … Naomi sighed. She only had Marisa. It was ridiculous to feel that you couldn’t afford to buy yourself a few flowers, but hard, at forty-nine, to know quite what to do next.

  ‘Four, five?’ Tiffany was waiting. Like Marisa, she was probably thinking Naomi doo lally. Well, let her. The young didn’t know about reflection, Naomi reminded herself. They simply acted, usually in their own self-interest.

  But the other woman, obviously in charge, clearly did know about reflection, and maybe indecision too. She was bending forwards in rapt concentration, her long fingers caressing one white petal of an open flower. ‘Just two would look dramatic enough,’ she said now. ‘If that’s what you would like?’

  ‘Yes.’ Naomi felt absurdly grateful. The other woman seemed to understand so perfectly. ‘That’s exactly what I should like. Thank you.’

  Tiffany raised her eyebrows (and one of her gold hoops) but made no comment as she wrapped the lilies.

  Careful, Naomi wanted to tell her.

  ‘Enjoy them.’ The other woman accompanied her to the door. Her long brown hair was swept up today, she was dressed in black under her overalls, and she looked sad. On the third finger of her left hand was a wedding band; a lone amber ring shone on the little finger of her right. A fly in amber. Naomi’s heart went out to her. There was something …

  Naomi was not a fatalist. She had always believed that a person should take responsibility for their own actions, their own dreams. But now, with the heady scent of the lilies and this sense of some bond between them, she was almost tempted to ask her – was there any work available? Did they need someone for Saturdays? As if she had been meant to walk into this shop, as if someone had wanted them to meet, to establish some connection. But that was plain daft – there were already two of them working here, and the shop wasn’t busy enough for more than two, it couldn’t be. She turned to go.

  * * *

  Naomi
was glad to leave the shops behind and round the corner into Chestnut Close. Theirs was a small house in a terrace of six – all painted in modest colours from dove grey to primrose yellow – bordered by a low brick and flint wall. Surely no one could take it away from them? Whatever happened next.

  Outside the house a couple were lingering – Marisa and a young man, she realised. Naomi watched them. Marisa was standing slightly apart from him, not allowing him to enter the aura of self-sufficiency that always hung around her, Naomi thought, rather fancifully perhaps. But she was getting her key out of her bag and moving towards the gate. Well, well … this was a surprise.

  Naomi’s steps quickened. Even inside the gloves her fingers were cold and her thin scarf seemed to offer no protection against the wind. Marisa had never brought a man home before. Because she was ashamed of where she lived, her mother’s ordinariness? When I get out of here, she had said once, as if Chestnut Close were a ghetto slum, I’m going up, just you watch. Naomi knew there were men – from Marisa’s throwaway comments, from the flowers and phone calls, the outings to dinner, the Festival Theatre, wherever. But there were so many men, that Naomi worried sometimes.

  She drew closer to the house, her precious lilies cradled in the crook of one arm. The man with Marisa had thrust his hands into the pockets of his coat. He was tall and loose-limbed with longish hair. Casual bordering on scruffy … was that Marisa’s type? The scent of the lilies swept over Naomi once more. She didn’t think it was. Marisa had always expressed a preference for smart suits and expensive cars. And money of course. Marisa liked money.

  Naomi watched them disappear into the house. Marisa had never been easy. Always so demanding, so strong-willed, so sure of what she wanted. Unlike Naomi, and unlike her father too … Sometimes Naomi wondered if Marisa had even engineered this distance between them, as if she blamed her mother for being a single parent, for giving in too much, for not giving enough, for everything. Children did that sometimes.