Apocalipstick

by Sue Margolis

  “Yeah, you’re right. I should stop worrying.”

  Jess brought the mugs of tea to the table. Rebecca asked how the pelvic floor exercises were going.

  She said she was persevering.

  “I read in one of the mags it can take a few months for things to get back to normal, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know. I probably wrote it. It’s funny, you spend your life reassuring other people. It’s so different when it happens to you. It feels like my entire body has gone to pot post-Diggory. Ed won’t even look at me.”

  Rebecca took her hand. “Look, you are one of the most beautiful women I know. Plus you’re clever and funny. Ed knows how lucky he is to have you. You just think he doesn’t fancy you because your self-esteem is a bit low just now.”

  “But I reek of milk the whole time. And I leak over the bed. Who could blame him for going off me? And why else would he come home late every evening? I mean take last night. He came to bed stinking of booze, barely said two words—admittedly I was feeding the Digperson and at the same time going through the French verbs that take être in the perfect tense, but he just turned over, fell asleep and started snoring. God, why do men snore?”

  Rebecca took a sip of tea. “It’s when they lie on their backs,” she said. “Their balls fall over their arseholes and the air pressure just builds up.”

  Jess couldn’t help laughing.

  “Oh, by the way,” Rebecca said, “Max Stoddart asked me out.”

  “And of course you said yes.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “’Cause you fancy him something rotten. Go on, you do, don’t you?”

  Rebecca reddened.

  “Aha! Told you. Told you,” Jess chanted. “So, when you seeing him?”

  “Tomorrow night. We’re having dinner at Le Poussin.”

  “Wow. Posh. What are you going to wear?”

  Half an hour later, when the assistant in Hampstead Whistles declared that the strappy blue silk, calf-length dress with the draped neck Rebecca had on would look even more sensational in a smaller size, she was convinced she could hear harps playing and birds singing.

  But when she tried the ten, it was fractionally too tight round her middle.

  “We could let it out,” the assistant suggested. “It would be ready by tomorrow afternoon.”

  “No, I’ll take it,” Rebecca shot back. “It’s perfect. Absolutely perfect.” There was no way she was about to allow her joy at discovering she was a size ten be diminished by having the dress seams let out.

  She patted her stomach. “Bit of water retention, that’s all. Time of the month.”

  Five minutes later she was in Boots buying Slim-Fast. There were three meals between now and tomorrow night. Plenty of time to lose the bulge.

  By the time Rebecca got back to the flat she was starving. She immediately made up the vanilla shake. She had to admit there wasn’t much of it. She’d down it in three or four mouthfuls. And all she’d eaten today was a tuna salad with her dad and a couple of sips of champagne. She knew there was some ice cream in the freezer. How many calories could there be in a couple of tiny scoops? It would just bulk the Slim-Fast up a bit, that’s all. Plus it was her firm belief that food consumed in private had no calories (along with food licked off spoons when cooking and anything consumed at the cinema, which was part of the entertainment package and didn’t count).

  She poured the shake into the blender and began chipping away at the Cherry Garcia Ben and Jerry’s. She looked at the fruit bowl, where a speckled overripe banana was just crying out to be eaten. She unzipped it and threw it in too, along with an inch of full-fat crème fraîche she had left in the fridge. It seemed a shame to waste it. She blended the whole thing up and stuck her finger into the mixture. Not bad. But it could do with something to counteract the sweetness. A bottle of Bacardi, left over from Christmas, was sitting on the counter. Perfect. It would also give the whole thing a bit of a kick into the bargain. After all, she’d had a shock today, a bit of alcohol would be medicinal. She reached for the bottle and sloshed a couple of inches into the shake. But by then the bottle was virtually empty, so she added the rest. She blended the whole thing one more time and poured it back into the glass. There was still masses left in the container. She would finish it later.

  She went into the living room and sat herself down on the sofa. As she sipped her “Slim-Slow,” she looked round the room and thought about how much she loved it. With the help of the Changing Rooms CD-ROM, the Ikea catalogue and an oversize, over-the-top crystal chandelier that Lady Axminster had found when she was clearing out her attic at Slapton Gusset, she had created a twelve-by-fourteen monument to what she liked to think of as funky minimalism.

  She’d moved in six months ago and had spent virtually every weekend decorating. She’d steamed off the ancient mint green woodchip, lined the walls and painted them white, sanded and polished the floorboards. The only time she’d needed professional help was when it came to hanging and wiring the chandelier. All she needed now were blinds. Roman, she’d decided—in a slightly milkier shade of white. But not so milky that it would clash with the white marble of the fireplace, which had a slightly grayish tinge to it. On the other hand, if she went too gray it wouldn’t work against the rich yellow-gold floorboards. Best thing would be to go to John Lewis, get some swatches and stick them to the walls and floor. One was bound to speak to her.

  “But, Becks,” she could hear Jess say the moment she saw the swatches. “They’re all identical. White is white is white.”

  Then she’d beg her to go for a more practical color that didn’t show the dirt, like maroon.

  Although she adored the marble fireplace, what Rebecca loved most were her sofas. She had two—bought on credit from Ikea. One was very long, low and bright pink. The other—black leather with stainless steel legs—was equally angular and self-consciously trendy, only smaller. Right now, she was sitting on the pink one. She closed her eyes, rested her head on its unyielding back and began caressing the soft woolen pile. Like all her girlfriends, she recognized there comes a point in a woman’s life—round about when she discovers the Naked Chef and acknowledges Tom Jones may be cheesy, but has a really great voice—when seating gets sexy.

  Her friend Mad, who was doing a fine-art course, had provided paintings. She specialized in huge, highly abstract nudes and had given Rebecca two as a flat-warming present. She’d hung one—a bloke with a triangular head, whose pubic hair was made up of thousands of lowercase letters—over the mantelpiece. The other, which was at least six feet by four feet and which Rebecca had leaned against a wall, thinking this looked supremely arty, was of a chiseled angular woman wearing a hat made of equally angular fruit. She was lying on a bed, her hand draped between her legs. Mad, who wasn’t without pretension when it came to her work, called it Plaisir et la Femme. Jess called it Woman Wanking.

  Rebecca took another sip of her shake and wondered if she should have a wank, too—not because she particularly fancied one, but because she thought it might help her lose weight. She’d read somewhere that a few minutes snogging used up sixty-four calories. An orgasm had to be worth a couple of hundred. Maybe more. She could usually manage three on the trot with this brilliant new vibrator she’d just bought.

  A few months ago, she and Jess had been out shopping for baby stuff and Jess had forced her into this trendy, upmarket sex shop in Covent Garden, where all the sex toys looked like they’d been made by Alessi.

  “So what do you fancy?” Jess had boomed across the packed store, sounding like a younger version of her mother. “A basic dildo, one with rubber spikes and an anal attachment or something battery operated with detachable heads?”

  Mortified, Rebecca shot over to where Jess was standing, next to a glass bowl of what looked like sequins.

  “Will you just shut up,” Rebecca hissed. “Now the whole bloody shop thinks we’re a pair of lesbians.”

  “No, they don’t. Stop being so sensitive.
I bet nobody even heard.”

  Rebecca grunted, then began trailing her fingers through the sequins.

  “Clitoral bindis,” Jess giggled, digging Rebecca in the ribs. “They’re called ‘clindis.’”

  By now Jess was bending over another glass bowl, full of tiny ornamental rubber dinosaurs. “Oh, and talking of lesbians. These are meant to be lesbian dinosaurs.” She burst out laughing. “Look at the name underneath.”

  “Lickalotopus,” Rebecca said tonelessly. “Brilliant. Now please can we go?”

  But Jess refused to budge. She’d gone back to the vibrators and was busy reading the blurb on the Vibroclit—the stainless steel one with the detachable heads.

  “You just have to buy this. It guarantees you’ll come within five minutes. God, maybe I should get one too. I take so long with Ed, he gets repetitive stress injury in his tongue.”

  Realizing buying the thing was the only way she’d get Jess out of the shop, Rebecca took the Vibroclit from her and marched over to the counter. They were leaving the shop, Rebecca dragging Jess out by her coat sleeve, when they heard some bloke say to his mate: “You know, I’ve always wanted to watch lesbians do it. Haven’t you?”

  Rebecca didn’t forgive Jess until the following day—after she’d tried the Vibroclit and it had made her come in less than two minutes.

  She was just about to get in the bath, before having an early night with the Vibroclit, when the phone rang. She picked it up off the coffee table.

  “Hi, sweetie, it’s Dad. Listen, I hope my news didn’t come as too much of a shock today. I just wanted to check that you were OK.”

  “Well, I have to admit it was a bit of a surprise, but I’m fine with it now.”

  “Really?”

  “Honest.”

  “So how would you feel about meeting Bernadette? I thought after I’ve broken the news to your grandmother, maybe the four of us could go out for dinner.”

  She said that would be great.

  “Oh, and by the way,” Stan continued, “I forgot to tell you, Bernadette says she thinks she knows you. I had no idea, but the two of you were at the same school.”

  “Really? What’s her surname?”

  “O’Brien.”

  “O’Brien? You’re kidding, right?”

  “No. Why should I be kidding? So, you remember her, then?”

  Suddenly, everything became clear. Her father had always been a bit of a humorist, and now she realized the whole story of him getting married was just one of his jokes. Of course. It was just like the time he’d been having a spat with the Inland Revenue and had rung the local office to say he was from British Telecom and they were testing the lines by sending a blast of hot steam down the wires. She could still hear his voice.

  “And I would strongly advise your staff to wrap their phones in towels to avoid the possibility of being badly scalded. There’s a BT van outside full of towels.” He insisted that for legal reasons he needed to stay on the line and listen while they made the announcement. Which they duly did.

  She should have realized that the whole story, the marriage, the champagne, the “don’t tell your grandmother,” was nothing more than a huge windup. And she’d fallen for it.

  Marrying Bernadette O’Brien, yeah, right.

  “Becks, you there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here,” she said, laughing. “Very funny, Dad. You know you really had me going for a while.”

  “I did. How? I don’t get it, what’s so funny about me marrying Bernadette?”

  “Oh, come on, you know. She was …”

  She broke off. It suddenly occurred to her that Stan seemed genuinely confused. In a horror-struck instant she realized that this was no windup.

  “Dad, you’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Of course I am,” he said with an uneasy, slightly confused laugh.

  She swallowed hard and raked her fingers through her hair.

  “So, come on,” he repeated good-naturedly, “what’s so funny about me marrying Bernadette?”

  There was, of course, nothing even remotely funny about him marrying Bernadette. On the contrary. It was one of the most hideous things she could imagine. But she didn’t dare tell him that. How could she? He was happier than he had been in years. She couldn’t hurt him by telling him the truth. Instead she had to backtrack. Fast.

  “Sorry, Dad, I think we’ve been at cross-purposes. I was confusing Bernadette with another girl called O’Brien. This other one had buck teeth and terrible BO. I couldn’t believe you’d fallen for somebody like that.”

  He laughed, obviously relieved. “So, you remember Bernadette now?”

  “Of course I do,” Rebecca said, desperately trying to force some enthusiasm into her voice. “Who could forget Bernadette?”

  “Brilliant. I’m sure the pair of you will have loads to catch up on.”

  “Can’t wait.”

  She put the glass to her lips and downed the remainder of her “Slim-Slow” in one gulp.

  4

  Rebecca found the Crouch End High official school photograph (summer 1986—she was sixteen) rolled up on the top shelf of her wardrobe, along with a whole load of other memorabilia she didn’t have the heart to chuck out. This included copies of three pop numbers she’d written during her adolescent songwriting phase and sent to Wet Wet Wet—she was still waiting for a reply—and her Blue Peter badge from 1979 (for her poster promoting road safety).

  She spotted Bernadette immediately with her doe eyes, perfect figure and mass of bleached Kylie hair, pouting and posing in the back row. (The year before, she’d been crowned Miss East Finchley and it had gone to her head big time.) The lapels on her school blazer were turned up, the sleeves had been pushed to her elbows—sooo eighties—and her skirt was just a millimeter short of her knickers.

  She was easily the most beautiful girl in the school, but although there were tons of boys and fawning Bernadette wannabes who hung around her, not everybody liked her. She had an aloof, sneering manner and made no secret of the fact she thought she was better than everybody else because she was pretty. On top of that her parents were well-off—at least by Crouch End High School standards. They owned a chain of betting shops. Rebecca remembered seeing them show up at the school summer fête one year in their metallic gold Rolls; him chewing on a fat cigar, her face caked in UltraGlow. But although they were a bit flash, they were bighearted, salt-of-the-earth types. Completely different from their daughter.

  On the day of the fête, Bernadette’s mum had been in charge of the lucky dip and she’d spent the entire time laughing and joking and letting the first years have extra goes for free. As a result the stall was permanently mobbed. Three times, she had to ship Bernadette’s dad off to Woolies to buy more prizes. Even back then Rebecca used to think how funny it was that somebody like Bernadette O’Brien should have a nice mum.

  Everybody knew Bernadette’s parents spoiled their only child. Girls who’d been to her house said she had two wardrobes stuffed with clothes. She also had a twenty-quid-a-week allowance and a pony, which was kept stabled somewhere in Hertfordshire.

  If money and beauty weren’t enough to separate her from the Crouch End High rabble, in the second year she received yet another boost to an already grotesquely inflated ego. Her cousin became a roadie with Kajagoogoo. In her eyes, not to mention the eyes of everybody in the class who clamored for the free tickets she could now get to any gig anywhere in the country, this catapulted her to star status. Consequently most of the class went into permanent suck-up mode and Bernadette took to swanning round the place, looking down her nose like Christie Brinkley in Argos.

  She started wearing makeup to school in the third year—thick black eyeliner and equally thick purple frosting on her lips. From then until she left school at sixteen, she was continually being sent home by the aging spinster head, Miss Titley, for coming to school “looking like a harlot.” She’d relent for a few days and then go back to makeup. The boys started calling her Lipstic
k or Panda Eyes, but it was Lipstick that stuck. Pretty soon nobody called her Bernadette anymore. Snotty as she was, she didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she seemed to rather like the idea that she had been singled out for a nickname. It clearly made her feel even more important.

  But Lipstick wasn’t simply a stuck-up tart. She was also a bully. Swots were her main target—girls like Rebecca who were much brighter than Lipstick, who worked hard and handed their homework in on time. Of all the swots, she picked on Rebecca the most. She singled her out because she was small for her age and at thirteen, going on fourteen, she was virtually the only girl in the year not wearing a bra. (“Oi, Fried Eggs, here’s some cotton wool” … and she would try to stuff it down Rebecca’s shirt front.) Rebecca also had braces (“Oi, Tin Grin, give us a smile”). Each time, the rest of the class—apart from Rebecca’s small but loyal gang of mates—would snigger. Lipstick was never threatening or violent, just relentlessly taunting and bitchy.

  Rebecca didn’t merely dislike Lipstick. She loathed her. She never mentioned Lipstick’s bullying to her mother, because she knew she would go marching up to the school, which meant Rebecca would get a reputation for being a mummy’s girl and Lipstick would pick on her even more.

  There were a couple of examples of Lipstick’s nastiness that Rebecca would never forget. First there was the art lesson in the fourth year when Lipstick purposely smeared red paint on the back of Rebecca’s skirt, so that it looked like she had her period and was leaking. Even now she could hear the boys chanting “Rebecca Fine’s on the blob.”

  When Judy found out she was livid and it was all Rebecca could do to stop her phoning Lipstick’s parents.

  “Mum, you can’t,” she’d pleaded. “You’ll just make it worse. I’ll deal with it. OK?”

  And she did. By then, she was older, more confident, and people were beginning to stand up to Lipstick. Rebecca and her posse took their glorious revenge the next day. They went to Lipstick’s locker, where she kept her packed lunch, pried it open with a screwdriver and spread Head and Shoulders inside her cheese and pickle sandwiches. Even in the sixth form—after she’d left—people were still telling exaggerated tales of how Lipstick had run red-faced and screaming from the school canteen, yards of bubbles streaming from her mouth.