by Wendy Holden
Laura sat down apprehensively.
‘I wanted to ask you about a story.’ Clemency twisted a long, white finger through her long, red hair.
‘The Ellen O’Hara one?’
The green eyes sparked with annoyance. ‘Not that one. That one’s boring.’
‘Boring?’ Laura gasped. ‘But—’
The white editorial hand waved regally. ‘I’m wondering about a completely different story...’ The red editorial head dipped to one side, smiling winsomely. ‘We’ve been wondering how to cover the Ivys.’
Laura’s hands gripped the edge of the sofa cushions.
‘People are saying they’ll rival the Oscars one day.’
Laura waited. Just what was being suggested here?
‘What we’d really like,’ Clemency beamed, ‘is an insider story. About the Ivys. And we all know how good you are at insider stories, Laura. Don’t we?’ The red lips were still smiling, but the eyes were hard as emeralds.
‘You want me to do an insider story about the Ivys?’ Laura was determined to bluff this out. There was no way Clemency could know. She had never mentioned her connections to Caspar in the office.
‘A story about a night at the Ivys with one of the world’s biggest film stars, one of the award winners too, with any luck, is just the kind of thing we are looking for.’ Clemency raised her eyebrows enquiringly.
Laura’s mouth dropped open. So Clemency did know. And there was only one way she could have found out. She stared, outraged, at her oldest and bitterest enemy. ‘You just heard my conversation!’
Is this what had happened to her phone? It hadn’t gone to security at all – she had only ever had Karlie’s word for that anyway – it had been fitted with a tapping device?
‘How dare you?!’ she gasped. Was there no depth to which Clemency would not sink? ‘That’s outrageous!’
Clemency’s hard, red fingernails, enamelled to match her lips, tapped on the glass surface of the desk. ‘What would really be outrageous,’ she said sweetly, ‘would be for someone with such excellent connections not to use them, and for them to be, um, let go for refusing to.’ She tipped her head on the other side now. ‘Well, Laura Lake? Are you going to the Ivys with Caspar Honeyman? Or aren’t you?’
*
That evening, Laura looked through her wardrobe. It was pitifully limited. Dark jeans, navy shirts, a trench and a skinny jacket weren’t going to cut it at a film party. She’d have to borrow something from Lulu. Somewhere in Lulu’s twenty-seven wardrobes of evening dresses there was a particular flowing, long-jacketed trouser suit that looked like liquid gold and, for all her general lack of interest in labels, made her heart race every time she saw it. She’d ask Lulu this weekend, when she went to Great Hording.
Caspar had been delighted at her apparent change of heart. ‘You’ve come to the aid of your BFF!’
‘Best Friend Forever?’ Laura was slightly mollified.
‘Big Famous Friend. Look, I’ll get my people to send you the details. Sorry, gotta go. Films to star in, interviews to give, contracts to sign...’
‘Ha ha.’ Good that he could still laugh at himself.
‘I’m not joking. I really have got all that stuff to do. Blame Kiev Chicken.’
‘Kiev chicken?’ The breaded poultry dish which sent molten garlic butter spurting up at the unwary? Laura had heard it described as the Dry Cleaner’s Friend. But weren’t fried and fatty food off the menu for Caspar now?
‘It’s the working title for the new Bond film.’
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Riffs had changed, Laura saw when she arrived in her taxi on Friday night. Wonky de Launay and her vision had certainly been busy. The guitar-shaped swimming pool was now filled in and planted with what looked suspiciously like nettles. The formerly colourful herbaceous borders abounded with dock leaves and dandelions. The flowerbeds under the house windows were full of rosebay willowherb and wild garlic. In the strong, evening sun the smell was powerful, and not entirely pleasant.
Lulu came skipping out to greet her, clad in the silver wellies and gold quilted Barbour that were evidently her Great Hording uniform. In the bright light the outfit blazed. ‘Come see,’ she trilled, dragging Laura round the improvements and describing the industrial earthworks required to achieve these effects. The docks, for instance, had arrived in a ready-planted bed that had been lowered in by crane. Laura listened, marvelling at the expense and effort resulting in making Riffs look as if it had been abandoned for twenty years.
Wonky had clearly seen Lulu coming. Laura told herself that surely it was better for her heiress friend to be swindled by a grabby gardener than a guy with bad intentions. Perhaps Lulu had been thinking the same thing, because she suddenly sighed and said, ‘You know, Laura, am missing South’n Fried, hmm?’
‘But he left you for Savannah,’ Laura stoutly pointed out.
The mass of long, golden hair nodded in the sun. The densely black sunglasses flashed in agreement. ‘Think has seen herrings of waist now, hmm?’
‘Error of ways?’
‘He skype me from Altamont.’
So South’n Fried was still circumnavigating the world on his ‘Bust Yo Ass’ tour, like a rapping Sir Francis Drake in jewelled trainers. Laura was about to advise against the contact, but didn’t. There was something very endearing about Lulu’s capacity to forgive.
They had reached the back of the house now, where there had been a formal rose garden was, well, what?
‘Is my foraging patch!’ But the clump looked just like dense weeds to Laura. Lulu was complaining that Vlad had not yet used any of it in the Riffs kitchen which, Laura gathered, had been behaving itself perfectly well since Kearn arrived on site. He had apparently been settled in the old stable block, where Roger Slutt had stored his collection of vintage submarines.
Wandering in under the block’s ornate Victorian Gothic arch, the two women were greeted with the sight of Lulu’s guest, close-cropped brown hair glinting in the sun, tinkering away with bits of engine. ‘Roger left lots of different parts behind,’ Kearn explained. ‘I’m putting them together to make a U-boat. Something to do now I’m the Julian Assange of Great Hording.’
He grinned at Lulu, to whom he was quite obviously already devoted. It seemed she had provided him with a safe house, or, as Kearn called it, safe mansion, not a second too soon. Feeling against him in the village had now reached fever pitch, Laura learnt. But now Kearn was safe, he could turn his attention to clearing his name. Which meant exposing those whose crimes he was accused of – if he could find them.
‘I can tell that they got in by hacking weak passwords,’ he told Laura. ‘But who “they” are is impossible to establish. GCHQ don’t seem to know either.’
‘You’ve been in touch with GCHQ?’ That he had such connections was a surprise.
Kearn did not reply, just raised a fine ginger eyebrow.
‘You’ve hacked into GCHQ?’ Laura breathed. ‘Couldn’t you be prosecuted for that?’
Kearn grinned and picked up a spanner. ‘I don’t hack in as myself, obviously. I’m usually North Korea. Or Russia. Sometimes even the FBI, which is true, actually.’
‘You work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation?’
‘No, the Fishing Boat Inn.’
Given such distractions, it was not until much later, over dinner, that Laura remembered the gold suit for the Ivys. ‘Is saving children,’ Lulu said, chewing on a piece of tournedos Rossini. The fillet of beef topped with foie gras was her favourite, and they had had fresh oysters to start. ‘Simple country food, hmm?’ Lulu had said, without irony.
‘You’ve donated it to a charity shop?’ Laura was dismayed. Lulu’s generosity was laudable, but what was she going to wear now? Vast as it was, her friend’s ‘occasion’ wardrobe tended towards the short, tight and spangled.
Could she, Laura wondered, borrow something from the Society fashion cupboard? It was the least Clemency could do to help. She ran mentally through wha
t she had last seen in there. Shoots currently planned by Raisy and Daisy included the new trend for wearing two pairs of trousers at once. And the reverse bikini, where the top was worn as the bottom. ‘Dry-humping the zeitgeist,’ as the fashion editors put it.
There was also the designer who made exquisite, full-skirted dresses which he then set on fire. The burnt and charred remains were what went in the shops and on the models.
Possibly not the fashion cupboard then. Laura put the clothes problem to the back of her mind. After a week with Clemency she craved the peace and quiet of the countryside.
On Saturday morning, after one of Vlad’s full Englishes, Lulu announced that she had a panto rehearsal. ‘You come!’ she urged. ‘Lady Mandy might give you part. People drop out all time because licks.’
‘Licks? Oh leaks.’
‘Jolyon, Willow, Mandy, Tim. What next, hmm?’
The village hall, as they entered it, was dark. All the curtains were closed, focusing the attention on the brightly lit stage. At the back was something strange that looked like... well... but couldn’t possibly be, especially as stomping in front of it was Lady Mandy, clutching a script and crammed into jeans that made her broad beam look all the broader. The other onstage figure wore tight PVC trousers and a tiny white top. She was holding a broom upside down and sweeping with the handle end.
‘Cinders difficult part for Anna,’ Lulu whispered. ‘Never use brush before. In Sergei houses, many servants.’
A bear-like figure with heavy eyebrows now barrelled on stage. ‘Sergei Cinderella father,’ Lulu explained. ‘Lord No Money.’
‘Baron Hardup, you mean?’ Laura snorted. She hadn’t credited Lady Mandy with a sense of humour. ‘Great characterisation,’ she remarked appreciatively.
Witty direction too. Gloriously sending up the popular image of an oligarch, Sergei, emanating menace, was pacing about and growling Russian into two phones at once.
Lady Mandy threw him an irritated look. ‘You’re not in this scene, Sergei. Please go and make your phone calls somewhere else.’
The Russian stomped angrily off.
‘He doesn’t seem to be enjoying it much,’ Laura remarked.
‘Only do so can keep eyeball on Anna,’ Lulu hissed back. ‘She make sex with Zeb. Sergei go to mad.’
‘What?’
‘Oh yes.’ Lulu nodded sagely. ‘Make sex together. On stage.’
‘In front of everyone?’
‘Mmm-hmm.’ Lulu’s sunglasses flashed emphatically.
Was something being lost in translation here? The oligarch’s wife and the local celebrity artist could not possibly have staged an erotic show in Great Hording’s village hall, could they? On the other hand, she had commissioned him to make the giant glowing purple willy sculpture for Brybings...
Lulu waved a hand. Her diamonds glittered in the footlights. ‘Sex there at back of stage, hmm?’
‘You mean the set!’ Laura steeled herself to look at it again.
Her initial impression was correct. It really was a vast, protruding bottom made of pale pink plaster. Huge plaster hands clamped either side pulled the cheeks apart. Laura had imagined it an unfortunate optical illusion, but Zeb Spaw’s involvement put a whole new cast on things, as it were. ‘It looks like a bum,’ she said.
‘Bum, yes.’
‘Why’s there a huge bum at the back of the stage? This is Cinderella.’
‘Is post-modernist spatialist Willage Idiot, Zeb say.’
Laura rubbed her face. It had been a long week. ‘So it’s a visual metaphor? The pub’s called the Village Idiot and a village idiot is like a tramp, and this is a bum, and...’
Lulu’s hair flew about in a nod. ‘Is concept art, yes!’
‘Who’s that standing next to it?’ Only now did Laura notice a large man in black wearing a headset, arms folded, expression forbidding.
‘Is security guard from Zeb gallery in London. Taking bum when pantomime finish. Sell for millions.’
They were interrupted by a shout from Lady Mandy. Cinderella was receiving some acting training, and not looking very happy about it.
‘No, no! Declaim! Like this!’ Lady Mandy’s vast chest reared skywards with a deep intake of breath. ‘A man from the royal palace has come/Bearing an in-vi-ta-e-cee-on...’
Anna struggled to imitate her, whilst simultaneously grappling with the broom. She clearly could not sweep and talk at the same time.
‘Ever heard of scansion, dear?’ called a sarcastic female voice from the stalls. It sounded to Laura vaguely familiar.
‘Script by Dame Hermione,’ Lulu explained in an undertone. ‘Sell translation rights in sixteen languages, hmm?’
‘It’s about counting the beats.’ An urbane male voice floated out of the shadows somewhere near the great author.
‘Thank you so much for explaining that, Peter!’ A positively smitten-sounding Lady Mandy beamed towards the darkness of the stalls. ‘I simply don’t know what I’d do without your help as a prompter. You’re an absolute marvel. You keep this village going, you really do.’
‘I do my best, Lady Mandy,’ came the chivalrous reply. ‘But I am a factotum, merely. The credit for everything goes to you. You are, if I may say so, the presiding genius.’
‘You may say so,’ Lady Mandy graciously allowed.
Laura settled on one of the wooden chairs and watched Lulu play a scene in which the Slipper and Cinderella argue about Cinderella’s address.
‘Is Three, Pantoland High Street!’
Lady Mandy heaved on stage, palms aloft. ‘No, no, no, Lulu! Three, the High Street, Pantoland! Now, Sergei, are you ready? It’s time for Baron Hardup’s big number with the landlady of the Village Idiot.’ She looked around. ‘But where’s Kiki?’
Kiki was hurrying through Great Hording. Her heart was racing, not just with the effort – she was used to jogging, after all – but with terror. Jonny had called about the sex huts just as she was leaving and while she was pleased about his support, and additional suggestions for manacles and chains, the conversation had put her departure back by some ten minutes. Now she was late for rehearsal and the fear that Lady Mandy might give her part to someone else added a spring to her step.
She could not lose her big chance! Not now she had been finally accepted among the village elite. And certainly not now she was about to show Lady Mandy just what she was made of, acting-wise. Thanks to YouTube, she was now fully briefed on the Method. The non-speaking part of the Village Idiot’s landlady might be silent, but it would be full of power.
The village hall door loomed at last before her sight and Kiki burst in, panting, to find the rehearsal well under way on the stage. It wasn’t a part of the panto she recognised. Several figures, including Lulu, Lady Mandy, Dame Hermione and Peter Delabole were crowded round a bulky figure on the floor. The back of the stage looked unusual; the scenery had gone. Zeb’s enormous bottom with its parted cheeks was missing. Oh no, wait, it was on the stage floor. It seemed to have collapsed.
Kiki approached, alarm pulsing through her. And now alarm turned to horror. Lying beneath the vast buttocks, apparently stunned, lay Sergei. His eyes were closed and a red line of blood trickled out from his mutilated ear.
Anna was nowhere to be seen.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Sergei was not popular, but the violence of the accident shocked everyone. The only positive aspect was that Kearn could not possibly be at the bottom, as it were, of this one.
Rather, the finger of guilt seemed to point firmly in the direction of Anna and Zeb.
Anna’s going outside for a cigarette at the exact moment her husband was crushed by a pair of colossal bum cheeks struck many as coincidental. Had she arranged it with her lover?
Zeb’s alibi was also anything but sound. He had been due to conduct an interview with Einzurstendeneuebaten, a German art magazine. He had failed to turn up. While this was par for the course, Zeb’s well-known excuse on such occasions, that absence is actually presence,
seemed suspicious in the context. Had he been behind the scenes of the village hall, waiting for his moment?
Sergei, meanwhile, was recovering in a private hospital surrounded by bodyguards. According to his doctors, the blow from the bum would have killed someone with a normal cranium.
‘Goblemov’s skull is like solid concrete, and an inch thick all the way round,’ Kearn reported. He had been following the emails of the various doctors. The ease with which he hacked into the hospital was amazing. ‘Simple when you know how,’ he said.
And yet, brilliant as he was, he had got no further with the Great Hording information leaks – frustratingly for Laura, who was intending to weave the exposé into her article. She was working on it nightly, although the new developments meant it changed all the time and got longer. At this rate it was going to be the size of Anna Karenina, or Anna Goblemova, which might be a good title, come to think of it.
On Sunday evening, Vlad drove Laura back to the station. It was a beautiful evening; warm, scented and full of the thick light of summer. Hedgerows dancing with flowers edged fields brilliant with grass; the glossy flanks of cattle wound slowly over the lea. As the road climbed the smooth curve of the hill, Great Hording was suddenly revealed, its cluster of sloped grey roofs giving way to pale yellow sand and white-lace-edged blue sea. A turn in the road and it was gone; she would not now see it for a week, a week in which she would be stuck in the city under the merciless cosh of Clemency and her acolyte Karlie. Laura groaned. Then, suddenly, she was bolt upright.
Something – someone – had just flashed past. Laura stared out of the rear window. A girl on a bicycle. Nothing unusual about that, of course. It was just – was there something familiar? Mid-twenties, long arms, supermodel legs, large spectacles. Long straight blonde hair that rippled behind her in the breeze, like a flag. Karlie!
There was no doubt about it. Laura knew it with all her senses. She definitely hadn’t imagined this figure. There it was, a dot in the distance, even now.