The Queen's Margarine

by Wendy Perriam

  She spread the tartan rug across one of the white sofas, and stood back to judge the effect. Yes, a definite improvement. Fake leopard-skin had been impossible to find, but at least the zingy reds and greens made the flat more colourful, lessened its severity. And the giant-sized scarlet floor-cushion would be perfect to sit on while she wrote. She had bought a Snoopy notebook and a near-twin of her old Snoopy mug – a double dose of magic, bound to yield results. She planned to return to the computer once she was in full flow, but for now she’d trust to pen and paper. According to a piece she’d read, writing by hand was more natural altogether. The hand, it said, was connected to the arm, and the arm to the rest of the body and thus to the brain and heart, which meant the process could produce effects denied to soulless technology.

  Settling herself with her new notebook and new mug, she jotted her provisional title at the top of the first page. Then, biting her lip in concentration, she continued where she’d left off a good four weeks ago.

  ‘Nathan,’ she wrote, taking care to make her scrawl more legible than before, ‘was a cross between a peacock and Rottweiler – vain and self-regarding, but also savage, aggressive, destructive and obstreperous.’ She chewed the end of her pen, wondering if it was true. Who cared? The important thing was to get the words on paper. If Nathan sued, that would be a problem for the libel lawyers and, in any case, might even help her sales.

  Except she mustn’t think about sales. The publishers were building such high hopes on her, she was terrified she’d let them down. Suppose this second memoir bombed? Would they blame her, send her packing? When she’d written her first book (scribbling it as therapy rather than as literature), she’d known absolutely nothing about royalties, advances, foreign rights, book-club deals and all that sort of stuff. Now she felt overwhelmed by the expectations resting on her shoulders: would she sell serial rights to the Express or Mail on Sunday? Get a big American deal?

  ‘You won’t get a bloody thing if you don’t write the fucking book!’

  She was startled by the sound of her own voice. She was talking to herself these days almost all the time. Could it be a sign of something sinister? If she lost her marbles, that would put the kibosh on any future as a writer.

  ‘Don’t overreact,’ she told herself. ‘You’re just not used to being on your own.’ In her previous jobs, she had always interacted with the public, nattering non-stop to customers or clients, and spending barely any time alone. Talking to herself was simply a harmless substitute.

  ‘I first met Nathan,’ she continued, trying to concentrate on the task in hand, ‘when I was working at the Brasserie Chantal.’ God! The thrill of that encounter; the audacious way he’d looked at her, holding her gaze for an insolent two minutes flat, as if challenging her to lose her nerve and look down, look away. Instead, she’d stared back blatantly; told him with her eyes that she’d go as far as he liked – and further – do anything he pleased. But how could she put that meeting into words; make the prose rampage and throb with the sheer frenzy of that evening; the move from passion and elation to fury and despair? She sat sucking the end of her pen, conjuring up odd phrases in her head, only to abandon them as tepid. No words seemed quite to capture the emotions of that desperate, electric night.

  Maybe she was hungry – she’d had only toast for breakfast and half a nectarine. With some decent lunch inside her, the creative juices might begin to flow. Having mooched out to the kitchen, she stood examining the array of foods in the cupboard and the fridge. She had set up an account with an organic delicatessen, in an attempt to change her diet – in fact, embark on a total detox, by giving up booze and cigarettes. No more junk food or unhealthy snacks or greasy takeaways; only fruit and vegetables and stuff awash with vitamins. Just last week, she had taken a delivery of so-called superfoods, but already she was tiring of bilberries and wheat germ, probiotic yogurt, adzuki beans, alfalfa. Bamboo shoots, in her opinion, were better left to pandas; hemp-seed was canary-food, while only vegetarians would enthuse about five-lentil salad – or any kind of lentils, for that matter. What she really fancied was a cheeseburger and chips – and would it really hurt? After all, she could order a burger as easily as hemp-seed, simply by picking up the phone. She had the cash and standing now to summon anything she pleased, be it a bottle of Smirnoff or a hundred cigarettes. She had probably been too hard on herself, banning every pleasure, and all in one fell swoop. Most writers had their vices – needed them, in fact. While she waited for the burger, a vodka might actually help, loosen her up, cure that dreaded block.

  Three drinks later, she struggled up to answer the bell. The delivery man looked really rather gorgeous, with olive skin and tousled jet-black hair. Why not ask him in, if only to hear another human voice? She could invite him to share her lunch; even embark on a harmless flirtation – nothing heavy, just a bit of fun.

  But, having handed over the package, he froze in mute embarrassment when she touched his chest provocatively, then turned tail and fled to safety. Well, bugger him – she didn’t care; didn’t even want his rotten food. In fact, the reek of grease and onions made her feel quite queasy, on top of all the booze. What she did need was a nap. Nobody could write when they were knackered, and she had barely closed her eyes these last few weeks. She was so used to sleeping on a narrow, lumpy divan, her new, ultra-large, ultra-comfortable super-bed made her somehow restless and uneasy. And, of course, it only emphasized the fact that there ought to be a bloke beside her. A singleton in a double bed was a glaring sign of failure.

  She removed the rug from the sofa and laid it on the bed, in place of the white counterpane. That was another problem: the overload of white. If her memoir had a colour, it was shrieking, flagrant scarlet, so was it any wonder that the damned thing wouldn’t work in this chaste, unspotted sanctuary of a flat?

  When she woke, the room was pitch-dark. She groped out her hand for the light-switch and peered groggily at her watch. Half-past two – in the morning – which meant she’d been dead to the world for nearly thirteen hours. Well, that was a minor triumph in its way, compared with her recent insomnia. In fact, now that she’d had some sleep, her brain would probably function. She must go straight to her computer and stay there for the rest of the night; seize this chance with both hands. The new notebook hadn’t worked, so it was back to the keyboard for some punchy, powerful prose.

  She turned over on her back, listening to the silence. The triple glazing blocked out every sound, but instead of welcoming the peace, it increased her sense of isolation. Was there anybody else awake in this whole vast apartment block? Anyone alive? She had never heard the slightest noise from any of her neighbours, never even seen them, for God’s sake. Could she really be the only living tenant in a complex of 500 flats? Perhaps all the rest had vacated the place, or simply lain down and died. Perhaps the whole of London had suffered an apocalypse.

  Dragging herself from the tangled sheets, she stumbled into the lounge, desperate to see the city lights and prove there hadn’t been a meltdown. The floodlit buildings reassured her instantly, as did the lighted squares of windows in the adjacent blocks of flats. And the river pulsed with light – lights along the bridges; lights along the embankment; the illuminated London Eye gazing down from its lofty vantage point.

  She switched on all the lounge lights, creating her own private blaze from spotlights, desk-lamps, table lamps and chandeliers. Great – she’d banished the darkness, and next she’d banish the block. Hugo didn’t even believe in writer’s block; dismissed it as another name for laziness or fear. Actually, she suspected he was tiring of her. He seemed more edgy these days, and had even told her not to phone so much. Well, she certainly couldn’t phone him in the middle of the night, so best to stop faffing about and have another crack at writing. She caught sight of herself in the mirror: a total wreck, with crumpled, slept-in clothes and unkempt hair. Still, she refused to waste precious time making herself presentable when there was no one to impress. Even the gulls had gon
e to roost.

  She turned on the computer, welcoming the tiny fanfare as it carolled into life, and the mechanical voice informing her, ‘You’ve got mail.’ That cheery voice was comforting. She just wished it had a slightly larger repertoire. Why not ‘You’ve got inspiration’, instead of the endless ‘You’ve got mail’, or, better still, ‘You’ve got a male’? Yes, a big, hot, sexy bloke in her bed would do her very nicely, thanks. Although emails themselves would have to wait until she’d produced at least a thousand words – and brilliant, blistering words at that.

  Half an hour later, she had written half a paragraph. Nathan himself seemed to be acting as a stranglehold on any creative burst. The shame and fury she’d always felt on his account not only tied her into knots but kept posing awkward questions. Could she blame him entirely for the horrors of the relationship? Or was it partly her fault? Blame had fuelled her first book and she’d had no hesitation in attacking mother, father, brothers and her whole extended family. But now doubts had started niggling and throbbing like the pain from a deep cavity in a slowly rotting tooth. And, far-fetched as it might sound, it was the judgemental flat itself that seemed to be forcing her to face the truth. But what was the truth, for Christ’s sake? Fact and invention were now hopelessly entangled; indeed, in the months since publication, invention had become the truth. The interviewers and chat-show hosts had all regarded what she’d written as totally authentic and, as sympathy increased for her dire, disastrous childhood, that childhood grew more horrific still. If you repeated something often enough, even to yourself, it became so familiar, it was difficult to know if it had started out as true or not. And, of course, she’d been more or less compelled to add extra twists and traumas, to feed the growing hype.

  Yet, sitting here alone, further stabs and twinges of doubt began shooting through her head, undermining her victim-role. Her mother wasn’t an alcoholic, not in any strict sense of the word, even less a druggie – in fact, the only drugs she ever took were Mogadon and Stelazine, prescribed by her GP. And was it really fair to call her father’s scrap-merchant business ‘flagrant racketeering’? OK, he turned a blind eye sometimes to distinctly shady deals, but he wasn’t the shameless conman she’d described.

  ‘Get lost!’ she hissed to her invisible accuser – an accuser who dwelt here in the flat, as if embodying its sanctimonious character. Since the day she’d first moved in, that shadowy persona had been bent on gagging her writing-voice, as her parents had gagged her child’s voice.

  ‘Except they didn’t, Lauren, did they? That was just another fabrication. You screamed blue murder most of the time, and no one could have silenced you, even if they’d tried. You always won by yelling louder.’

  ‘Piss off, I said! You just don’t understand. Any memoir-writer is bound to exaggerate a bit – it’s part of the whole process.’

  ‘But you claimed quite categorically that all three of your brothers repeatedly abused you. That’s more than exaggeration – it’s a gross distortion of the facts.’

  ‘Listen, if I’d shrugged it off as a bit of childish horseplay, there wouldn’t have been a story. The word “abuse” sells books, and I have to think about sales, if only to please my publisher.’

  ‘You didn’t have a publisher when you concocted all those lies. You were acting out of revenge, because your brothers were successful, while you were just a nobody.’

  ‘Yes, but now I’m the toast of London! Fans worship me, you know. A lot of them write in and say how much I’ve helped them, just by being frank about all the shit I’ve had to take.’

  ‘Being frank? Lying through your teeth, you mean.’

  ‘Stop using the word “lie”. All I did was add a bit of emphasis.’

  ‘It’s hardly “adding emphasis” to depict your brothers as sex-crazed criminals. If they’d decided to sue, you’d have been done for libel.’

  ‘Look, if you really want to know, a libel lawyer read the book, prior to publication – every single page of it – so what’s the fuss about?’

  ‘And what did the lawyer conclude? That it was a risk – a serious one. Yet your publishers went ahead, regardless. With you cheering them on, of course.’

  She fled to the front door and slammed it furiously behind her, refusing to listen to another word. The ghostly presence in this flat had become an accusing judge, a narrow, strait-laced prosecutor, determined to evict her because she didn’t have the cachet expected of its tenants. And it knew nothing whatsoever about writing – how you were forced to embroider the truth, otherwise your memoir would read like Mary Poppins. OK, she’d gone a bit too far, but it had paid off, hadn’t it? Piers Pemberton himself had called her ‘a sensation’.

  Too overwrought to wait for the lift, she began running down the stairs, her bare feet slipping and hurting on the cold, uncarpeted stone. After eleven flights, she was forced to stop to catch her breath, leaning on the banister in a state of near-despair. What the hell could she do the rest of the night? Prowl up and down the corridors, in the hope of finding someone else awake?

  She stole along the passage of this unfamiliar nineteenth floor, stopping to listen at the door of every flat. No music, no voices, no sound of any night-time life. If she hadn’t left her mobile on her desk, she could have phoned Hugo, claimed it was an emergency and asked to sleep on his sofa. Or rung her friends, to get a bit of support. What friends? They’d all deserted her – or she’d deserted them. Anyway, how could she admit to such a crisis, when she was meant to be a dizzying success?

  Best to call on a stranger; invent some story about being mugged on her way home from a club – that would explain her dishevelled appearance, her lack of shoes and coat. Yes, a gang of thugs had assaulted her, nicked her Chloe handbag and her best black leather jacket; even her Jimmy Choos, for heaven’s sake. An attack on that scale would win her instant sympathy. She might be offered a brandy – tea and comfort certainly.

  Plucking up her courage, she chose a flat with two 3s in its number, and rang the bell as long and hard as she could. Three was lucky, wasn’t it, so how could two 3s fail?

  No answer. Well, whoever lived there was probably fast asleep; would need a bit of time to shake himself awake, fumble for his dressing-gown. It was a man, she’d bet. She needed a man – someone she could cling to, someone she could charm.

  She rang again, louder still. All at once, the door was flung open by a stout, silver-haired matron wearing a long-sleeved nightgown and an expression of such fury, Lauren simply fled – back along the passage and headlong down all nineteen flights of stairs. When she reached the foyer, her feet were sore, her heart pounding through her chest, her lungs bursting from the unaccustomed exertion. And, although her body gradually quietened, her mind continued spinning and sparking like some manic Catherine-wheel. She must get help; find some cool, calm person who would damp her down, douse the freakish firework she’d become.

  ‘Larry!’ she thought, limping along to the night-porter’s desk. He had his back to her and was sorting something out in the cupboard opposite. But when he turned to face her, she saw it wasn’t genial Larry but the other porter, Ivan, an odious piece of work. She and Ivan had almost come to blows last week, just because she’d asked him to change a fucking light-bulb. OK, she’d lost her rag and sworn, but he shouldn’t have tried to pass the buck and tell her to call Maintenance.

  ‘Can I help you, Miss Armitage?’

  She shook her head, stalked out through the main doors, wincing as the winter air pounced on her and nipped; whipping through her pathetic purple leggings and filmy cotton top. And, as she picked her way, barefoot, along the river-path, the ridged paving stones felt pitilessly rough. The whole place was deserted – no one out at this hour – certainly no one fool enough to brave the late-November night without a coat and shoes. But nothing would induce her to go back to the flat. She just couldn’t be herself in such a prudish, disapproving place.

  But did she even have a self? If her memoir wasn’t true, then all th
at money and attention had been grabbed on false pretences. And she could hardly continue with the second volume without more pangs of conscience. She had planned to paint Brian in the blackest possible hue; make Greg half-pimp, half-gangster, and reveal all Nathan’s vices, even throwing in some extra, to spice things up a bit. You had to pile on drama and sensation, Hugo told her constantly, to keep your readers coming back for more.

  It was his fault, in a way, for taking her on in the first place. He had described her as a ‘hot property’: sexy, young and streetwise, but he should have known she couldn’t really write and that her success was just a fluke. Making it as an author was largely a matter of luck; some brilliant writers languished, whilst crap ones hit the jackpot. And she was crap – that was clear enough. No wonder Hugo had told her not to ring. He had obviously seen through her, at long last; realized she had lost the grain of talent she might have had a year ago, and was now burnt out as a writer, finished and washed up.

  Finished as a person, come to that – with no job, no home, no friends, no family. Christmas was only a month away, but where in God’s name would she spend it, when her brothers barred their doors to her and her parents had changed the locks? Well, not in her apartment – God forbid. The dizzying block reared haughtily above her; her own flat indistinguishable amidst the acreage of glass. River Heights – what a laugh, when she was in the depths. Instead of moving to this lordly tower, she should have crawled into some rat-infested cellar.

  She leaned against the railings, staring down at the river; the glittering lights of London reflected in its surface. That was a lie, along with all the rest. Beneath the dazzle was mud. She had seen it at low tide – sludge and silt and sediment; endless centuries of history crumbling into gunge. Wasn’t she like that, as well: the glittering surface concealing filth and lies? Is that why Nathan had left her, Brian betrayed her and Greg refused to speak to her again?