by Freya North
Acclaim for Freya
‘Darkly funny and sexy – literary escapism at its very finest’
Sunday Independent
‘Secrets will make you smile, sigh and cheer as this story proves love can be found in the most unexpected places’
Sunday Express
‘… another sure-fire hit for Freya’
Heat
‘A breath of fresh air … fresh and witty’
Daily Express
‘A fab read’
Closer
‘Fast paced, page-turning and full of endearing, interesting characters. I defy anyone who doesn’t fall in love with it’
Glamour
‘Settle down and indulge’
Cosmopolitan
‘The novel’s likeable central characters are so well painted that you feel not only that you know them, but that you know how right they are for each other … the beauty of the North Yorkshire countryside contrasts convincingly with the bustle of London’
Daily Telegraph
‘North charts the emotional turmoil with a sexy exactitude’
Marie Claire
‘Freya North has matured to produce an emotive novel that deals with the darker side of love – these are real women, with real feelings’
She
‘A delicious creation … sparkling in every sense’
Daily Express
‘A distinctive storytelling style and credible, loveable characters … an addictive read that encompasses the stuff life is made of: love, sex, fidelity and, above all, friendship’
Glamour
‘Plenty that’s fresh to say about the age-old differences between men and women’
Marie Claire
‘An eye-poppingly sexy start leads into a family reunion laced with secrets. Tangled mother/daughter relationships unravel and tantalising family riddles keep you glued to the end’
Cosmopolitan
‘You’ll laugh, cry, then laugh some more’
Company
‘Freya North manages to strike a good balance between drama, comedy and romance, and has penned another winner … touching, enjoyable’
Heat
‘An addictive read with a realistic view of home life, sisterhood and identity crisis’
Prima
FREYA NORTH
Pip
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.
Harper
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain
by William Heinemann 2003
Copyright © Freya North 2003
Afterword © Freya North 2012
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
‘The Tears of a Clown’. Words and Music by Stevie Wonder, William Robinson and Henry Cosby © 1967, Jobete Music Co, Inc./Black Bull Music, Inc., USA. Reproduced by permission of Black Bull Music Inc., Jobete Music Co., London WC2H 0QY. All rights Reserved
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
Source ISBN: 9780007462254
EPub Edition © June 2012 ISBN: 9780007462261
Version 1
FIRST EDITION
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
For Mum and Dad
We never know the love of our parents for us till we have become parents.
Now I know! Thank you.
Contents
Cover
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Acknowledgements
Epigraph
Afterword
Acclaim for Freya
ONE
‘There’s really not that much difference between lap dancing and doing what I do,’ Pip McCabe proclaimed in a very matter-of-fact way over a robust but imaginative dinner that her uncle Django had spent the afternoon preparing in celebration of his three nieces’ weekend visit home to Derbyshire. Django spooned a large portion of something alarmingly beige on to his plate and appeared to contemplate it at length. In fact, he was considering his eldest niece’s words, wondering if he’d misheard, wondering if Pip had changed jobs; wondering, basically, what on earth he was going to do with her. Pip’s two younger sisters, Fen and Cat, sniggered into their semolina. Django had proudly called it ‘polenta’. But that was imaginative both with the truth and with the ingredients of the dish itself.
The three sisters tactfully referred to it as ‘polenta’ because they, too, were being imaginative with the truth as well as heedful of the chef’s sensitivities. Having been brought up single-handedly by their uncle Django, the McCabe girls were well accustomed to his eccentricities and loved him all the more because of them. He devoted the same imaginative attention to idiosyncratic detail in his dress sense as to his cooking. The sisters saw nothing untoward about pea soup with tuna and stilton, or rhubarb crumble with Jelly Babies instead of rhubarb. They had never gone hungry and their taste buds had developed a commendable and valuable robustness. Nor did they think it odd that a man in his late sixties should dress in the souvenirs of his colourful past. Today, as Django dolloped polenta on to his plate and enlivened it with a hearty slosh of Henderson’s Relish, he tucked his paisley cravat (he’d partied with the Kinks in the 1960s) into his cambric shirt, and loosened the enormous buckled belt he’d acquired at some free festival or other, currently holding together a pair of jeans Clint Eastwood would have coveted for a Spaghetti Western.
‘Philippa,’ he said, chewing thoughtfully, ‘I implore you to elaborate.’
‘Not much difference at all, really, between lap dancing and my line of work,’ Pip mused whilst masticating. ‘Same attention to make-up, same use and abuse of one’s body. Strutting one’s stuff for money. Having often ghastly punters to deal with. Always being gawped at. I’m pretty much a painted lady, too �
�� quite literally.’
Her family regarded her. Everyone chewed. They all thought to themselves that they were sure polenta was meant to melt in the mouth, not glue the hinges of the jaw together. If Jamie Oliver was to be believed. It tasted good, though, and surely that was the point.
‘It’s a new take on polenta,’ Django reasoned out loud. ‘A polenta for the Millennium.’ Privately they each wondered how long he could credit (or blame) his experiments in the kitchen on the Millennium. As his jaw worked energetically, his mind turned to the vagaries of his niece’s career.
‘The main difference between my work and lap dancing,’ said Pip, holding her fork aloft for good measure, ‘is the working hours. Because, of course, I tend to work days and not nights.’
The McCabes observed with awe how the polenta on Pip’s fork defied both gravity and her expressive hand movements to adhere with such determination.
‘Surely the main difference,’ Django said, sipping sherry from a teacup because he had used the sherry glasses earlier to measure olive oil and Tabasco, ‘is that you wear substantially more clothes when you perform.’
Django, Fen and Cat were momentarily unnerved by the fact that Pip’s confirmation was not immediate.
‘Yes,’ she responded at length, ‘and no.’
‘No?’ Fen asked.
‘No?’ Cat echoed but with a raised tone.
‘No!’ Django boomed as an order, not a question.
‘I’ve modified my motley,’ Pip shrugged. ‘Somewhat skimpier – it’s spring, after all.’
‘God, I wonder whether to move back,’ Cat said, with an audible lump in her throat, as the sisters journeyed by train away from rural Derbyshire and Django, back down to their lives in London.
‘Listen, it’s still very early days for you,’ said Fen, thinking that actually Cat’s split with her odious boyfriend hadn’t come a moment too soon. ‘Why don’t you see how you feel after the summer? After all, it’s been a long-held ambition for you to follow the Tour de France as a journalist – give it your all.’
‘God,’ Cat sighed. Her dream-come-true was now more like a nightmare-in-waiting, such was the low ebb of her self-esteem.
Pip regarded her youngest sister and decided in an instant that humour was essential. ‘Think of all those bronzed thighs, all that testosterone, the lashings of Lycra!’ Cat couldn’t help but giggle. Pip felt she could now introduce a little common sense. ‘You’ve wanted to get up close and personal for years. Here’s your chance. It’ll be an excellent opportunity for someone in your position – further your career as a sports journalist plus get over Bastardwanker. And, of course, you never know whom you might meet.’
‘I’m off to Paris soon myself,’ Fen announced, ‘also to be surrounded by mouth-watering male physiques. Not in Lycra on bicycles, though,’ she all but apologized to Cat.
‘You’re a weirdo,’ Pip teased. ‘The men you salivate over are all marble and bronze sculptures.’ Fen, an art historian, found nothing remotely weird in her penchant for the work of Rodin and his followers and she screwed up her face and poked her tongue out at Pip in protest.
‘Well, I have no plans for Paris or pedallers,’ Pip said in such a tone as to suggest that she wouldn’t want to cross the Channel anyway, ‘but I, too, am due to be surrounded by men.’ She opened a packet of salt-and-vinegar crisps and offered them to her sisters. ‘Holloway, actually,’ she said, with such gravitas that she might well have said Hollywood. ‘I’m doing a show for a young man called Billy. And all his mates.’
TWO
‘Billy Billy Billy,’ Pip chants under her breath whilst putting on a hair band and laying her make-up out in front of her, ‘Billy’s the birthday boy. He’s the blond one in the Gap sweatshirt.’ She stares at her reflection in the mirror she always takes with her. She’s learned from experience not to trust other people’s mirrors – distortion, however subtle or slight, could have utterly drastic consequences. So, wherever she performs, regardless of the size of her audience, the length of her performance, the shortcomings of the venue or the fee she charges, Pip always demands of her client a changing-room with good natural light and a suitable surface other than her knees on which to prop her mirror. Today, she is in Holloway. The gentrified side; where fashionable young folk with large sums of money have been buying up the gorgeous terraces from elderly owners who paid ‘two bob’ for their homes decades ago.
‘Billy’s the birthday boy,’ Pip murmurs, applying her slap, ‘blond hair, Gap sweatshirt.’ She stares at her face.
I remember, when I was fourteen and had bought my first eye-shadow – admittedly bright green – Django saying, ‘Philippa, you’re pretty enough without make-up!’
Now look at me!
‘Positively garish,’ she mutters, wielding a bright red lipstick with gay abandon and adding a final flourish of powder to set the lot. She scoops her hair into two schoolgirl bunches, tying large polka-dot ribbons on each. She puckers up her lips and blows her reflection a pantomime kiss. ‘Well, this is for Billy,’ she says, standing and springing up and down as a warm-up. ‘He’d expect nothing less from me. He’s the birthday boy.’ She hops lightly from toe to toe, jiggling her arms and fingers. ‘Gap sweatshirt. Blond hair.’ Pip clears her throat and hums ‘Happy Birthday’ very fast. She’s ready.
‘She’s great,’ Zac Holmes, who’s been watching quietly from the back of the room, murmurs to the man standing next to him. ‘I must get her number. So many of her ilk can be such a let-down – and pricey, too. You sometimes don’t get what you pay for.’
They watch as Pip does the splits. Billy and his mates gasp with delight. The man next to Zac gives her a round of applause and chuckles, ‘Do you reckon she has business cards to give out?’
Zac feels tired. He rubs his eyes, wondering why he’s wearing contact lenses and not his glasses. His eyes feel dry and uncomfortable. It’s suddenly all a bit too noisy and frantic for him. He’d rather not be in Holloway; he’d rather be diving into a gorgeous cool swimming-pool in the Caribbean, soothing his eyes, refreshing his limbs. But chance would be a fine thing. He hasn’t taken a holiday for over a year. He stifles a yawn. He really ought to go home. He has work to do, despite it being the weekend; regardless that it’s the first weekend he’s officially had off in weeks. Billy’s birthday was fun for a couple of hours but Zac has had enough now. He doesn’t much like Holloway. He’s never really cared for birthdays. He let his own thirtieth come and go without so much as a quick drink with colleagues after work, let alone a celebration with friends or family. And that was almost five years ago. Birthdays. Bollocks. Yes, he’s going to go.
The show now over, Billy and the gang are guzzling down the drinks and tucking into the grub. Zac is hungry but doesn’t really fancy anything on offer. He’ll grab something on his way home to Hampstead. Someone knocks a drink over and it soaks Zac’s right trouser leg. No one seems to notice, let alone apologize. It really is time to go.
‘Happy birthday, Billy old man,’ Zac says, turning on the charm and ruffling Billy’s hair boisterously. ‘I have to go. I’d love to stay but I can’t. I have to work.’
Someone else is vying for Billy’s attention and another drink is sent flying.
‘Have a great party,’ Zac continues. ‘Happy birthday.’
‘Where’s Tom?’ Billy asks, not seeming too bothered if Zac stays or goes.
‘He was hoping to come,’ Zac says, ‘really wanted to. But he hasn’t been feeling too well.’
‘Say “hi” from me.’
‘Happy birthday, Billy,’ Zac repeats.
Alone, out in the hallway, Zac rummages around for his jacket. He has a headache lurking and is muttering ‘Nurofen’ under his breath. He’s suffered with his headaches a lot recently. He searches his pockets but finds only Marlboro Lights. Why does he always carry cigarettes when he rarely smokes more than two a day and doesn’t know why he even smokes those two anyway?
‘Stupid fucking idiot,’ he hiss
es at himself.
‘Language!’ chastises a female voice.
Zac turns around. Who? Oh. Her. Without the make-up, eyes still quite a startling blue-green. Dressed down in jeans. Upright, not doing the splits. Hair in a plain pony-tail. She’s smaller now, close to and not in costume.
‘I didn’t recognize you with your clothes off,’ says Zac and then cringes. ‘I mean, with your clothes on. I mean, in jeans.’
She laughs. ‘Did you enjoy the show?’
‘Great,’ Zac answers economically. He really doesn’t feel much like chatting. He’s hungry and headachy in Holloway when he’d so much rather be home alone in Hampstead.
‘Thanks,’ the girl says, with grace.
‘Have you a card?’ Zac asks, remembering he wanted one though now wondering why.
‘Sure,’ she says, and one seems to materialize, as if by magic, from what appeared to be the swiftest snap of her fingers.
‘Ta,’ says Zac, not looking at her, pocketing her card without even glancing at it. He’s at his car. He gets in and drives off. Doesn’t give her a backward glance nor even so much as a ‘goodbye’. His headache is threatening to consume him.
Pip McCabe thinks he’s rude, though. She stands on the kerb side, watching him drive away – too fast.
THREE
You can tell a lot about a person by the friends they keep. You would think you could tell a lot about a person by the clothes they wear and the place they live. However, you’d be hard-pressed to guess what Zac does for a living by analysing his dwelling, his dress or his disposition. Each is at odds with the other and none are remotely representative of the stereotypes traditionally associated with Zac’s particular vocation.