by Wendy Holden
But Lulu dressed to please herself. She shook back her cascade of thick, shining, assisted-blonde hair and swept the menu with an expert eye.
The waitress appeared, her rubber soles making strange sucking noises on the glass floor. ‘Oysters and then cod please,’ Laura said. They were the cheapest things on the bill of fare. Lulu had already explained that a PR would pick up the tab, but she still disliked taking advantage.
‘For me scallops, then salmon and sticky toffee,’ Lulu announced to the waitress.
Laura raised her eyebrows. ‘Three courses?’ The country air had definitely given her an appetite.
‘Is not very filling,’ Lulu remarked, ordering her favourite aperitif, a glass of Moët champagne. ‘For you too, Laura?’
Laura was about to refuse; she had work to do this afternoon. But what the hell. She could do with a treat, especially after the Caspar call, the Bev ordeal and the news about National Express.
She half-wanted to tell Lulu about the latter, but it required too much explaining. While she had possibly seen them, from the blacked-out window of her limo, Lulu had never been on an actual bus. As for Caspar, it was too complicated. Lulu knew Caspar, of course, but, unlike Laura, was not the least bit in love with him. On the contrary, she was rather suspicious of him and Laura could easily imagine having to defend him with no evidence of his innocence. She hoped Lulu hadn’t seen the headlines or, having seen them, didn’t want to discuss them.
That left Bev, but Lulu wasn’t interested in work dramas. She had never had a job in her life.
The champagne arrived. It was served in two small test tubes, propped in wooden holders. Lulu took a big swig of hers, draining it on the spot.
Laura took a more measured sip. ‘So, what’s new in Great Hording?’
‘Free bears.’
Laura was used to Lulu’s malapropistic English. If Lulu ever became a nation state with a seat on the UN Security Council, she would be a shoo-in as simultaneous translator. ‘Three bears?’
‘Lady Mandy, she do Goldilocks and the Three Bears as panto this year.’
Laura grinned into her test tube. Lady Mandy Chease, mother of Orlando the actor, was the grande dame of Great Hording, the impresaria behind the annual village show. Competition for parts in it was so cut-throat that people hired acting coaches to prepare them for the auditions.
‘Who’s playing Goldilocks?’ Laura asked.
Lulu scowled. ‘Is Anna.’
That made sense, Laura thought. Even the all-powerful Lady Mandy had to watch it where Sergei was concerned. People who crossed him met sticky ends.
‘Sergei is bear. Wear fur hat and carry hammer and sickle. Russian bear, hmm?’
‘Who are the other two bears?’
‘Is no other bears.’ Lulu gave a twist of her pink glossy lips. ‘Sergei not want competition.’
The arriving food now interrupted things. Laura happily sat back to allow a silver dish with a large silver dome on top to be placed before her. She wondered what the oysters would be steamed with. Ginger? Spring onions? Soy sauce? Her stomach rumbled.
Lulu, opposite her, was leaning back so her considerable bust did not impede the silver dome being lowered in front. Then, in unison, and with ceremony, the two waitresses raised the domes.
Two clouds of vapour were simultaneously released. That billowing towards Laura had a faintly briny aroma. She stared down to see what was beneath the steam. Nothing. Just the empty surface of the dish. Glancing across at Lulu, she saw that her dish had nothing on it either.
‘Excuse me!’ Laura called after the retreating waitresses. ‘I ordered oysters?’
One waitress turned in apparent surprise. ‘Steamed oysters?’ Laura added, uncertainly.
‘Oyster steam, yes,’ the waitress answered.
‘Oyster steam?’
‘Reduced essence of bivalve suspended in vapour. Or essence of scallop in vapour, in the case of madam’s.’ She gestured at Lulu’s plate. ‘Exclusive to the Steam Room and a technological breakthrough.’
Laura looked incredulously across to Lulu. She was nodding in approval. ‘Is newest thing,’ she confirmed. ‘Ultimate skinny lunch, hmm?’
‘You mean,’ Laura said, as the full significance dawned on her, ‘that everything on the menu is just steam? No actual food at all?’
‘All the taste, none of the calories,’ confirmed the waitress. ‘It’s an entirely revolutionary cooking method, the first of its kind in the world. Genius, isn’t it!’
Laura thought back to the hefty prices on the menu. Someone here was a genius, for sure.
Across the table, Lulu looked to be relishing her scallops. Her face was bent over the vapour in the approved manner.
‘Is good idea. Like facial and lunch at same time, hmm?’
‘It’s not a good idea. How can I taste any of yours? Or you mine?’
‘Hmm. You are right. No point asking two spoons for pudding.’
The next course arrived and served in the same way as the first. A hot, damp and presumably black-cod-flavoured cloud billowed up at Laura from under the dome. Her hair would stink of fish all afternoon.
There was a silence as Laura battled to retain her good humour. This was difficult when she was hungry. Even in the ebullient company of Lulu.
‘How’s Vlad?’ she asked. This was the transitioning Estonian butler/chauffeur who was the Jeeves to Lulu’s Wooster.
She had expected Lulu to beam, but what could be seen of her friend’s face looked troubled. The rest of it was obscured by the trademark enormous black sunglasses Lulu wore at all times, inside and out. Even so, Laura had learnt to read expression into the lenses, depending on the position of Lulu’s head. The expression now was definitely glum.
‘Vlad not like being country pumpkin,’ Lulu sighed. ‘Is uninterested corpse.’
‘Bored stiff?’ hazarded Laura. ‘Country bumpkin?’
‘Is big worry for me.’ Lulu clicked her fingers for the waitress. ‘And not only one, either.’
Laura wondered if her friend would be coming back to London. Lulu’s pink-doored stucco mansion, just next to Kensington Palace, had been closed up for months. To have her back now that Harry had gone would be great. Then Lulu’s last remark filtered through. ‘What do you mean, that’s not your only worry?’
Tiny drops of flavoured steam had vaporised on the empty platters. Lulu was dipping in a finger. ‘Is nice. Like consummation.’
‘Consommé,’ Laura corrected. ‘Tell me, Lu. What’s wrong?’
Lulu’s baby-pink, fur-covered shoulders went up and down in a sigh. ‘Is South’n Fried.’
Laura wasn’t exactly surprised. Lulu’s husband wasn’t the most faithful of spouses. His last global concert series, the Bust Yo Ass tour, had almost ended in South’n Fried’s own ass being busted, along with the rest of him, when the truth about his shenanigans reached his incandescent wife.
Contrary to the adage, what had gone on on tour had not stayed on tour.
Yet Lulu had forgiven him and not even Laura, who was far from being the rapper’s greatest fan, could doubt that Lulu’s husband was genuinely grateful and remorseful. It wasn’t just that Lulu was unbelievably rich. South’n Fried loved her because she knew a side of him that no one else did.
Unbeknownst to his fans, all angry young men on sink estates, South’n Fried enjoyed nothing more than a mosey round the aisles of Hobbycraft, picking up card-making kits and plain wooden picture frames to stick shells on. He had been delighted when it turned out Lulu shared his crafting enthusiasms and their friendship had deepened into love over weekends pressing flowers and making sunlight pictures.
Not the least of South’n Fried’s fears about his wife divorcing him, Laura suspected, was the possibility that some of this might come out and lose him what remained of his fan base. He had apparently decided, after his infidelities, that henceforth he would do everything Lulu wanted. Until now, apparently.
‘What’s he done?’ Laura asked.
>
‘He have trouble with Scottish gnats.’
‘Scottish gnats?’ Weren’t they called midges? ‘What do you mean, Lulu?’
‘He hairline festival Land of the Purple Haze.’
‘Headline?’ Laura guessed, getting it now. ‘But that’s great!’ South’n Fried’s career had recently reached what could only be called a hiatus. He needed a big gig to put him back on the map. ‘You must be thrilled.’
But Lulu, it had to be said, did not looked thrilled. ‘He can’t do it, though. Because of gnats.’
‘Can’t he use insect repellent?’
‘Is not that gnat. Is political gnat, hmm?’
Laura had no idea what she was talking about. A political gnat?
‘Salmon gnat,’ clarified Lulu.
There was a crash in Laura’s head as everything suddenly fell into place. The ruling party in Scotland were called the Scottish Nationalists, known as the Scots Nats. They had just appointed a new leader, Nadine Salmon.
‘Oh yes,’ Laura said. ‘She’s a bit extreme, isn’t she? She wants to rewild Edinburgh and ban all non-Gaelic sports.’
All the same, she could not imagine what Nadine Salmon had to do with South’n Fried. A less political animal was hard to imagine, for all his badass lyrics about the Grenfell Tower.
She listened in amazement as Lulu haltingly explained that Nadine Salmon had demanded that the licence for Land of the Purple Haze be revoked unless all the acts could prove their Scottish ancestry.
South’n Fried came from Coventry, Laura remembered. Nor was that the only problem. Lulu now showed her the official list of approved instruments issued to would-be Land of the Purple Haze performers by the Scottish First Minister’s office. It included fiddle, flute, penny whistle, uillean pipes, bombarde, accordion, banjo, mandolin, cittern and bouzouki. So far as Laura knew, South’n Fried couldn’t play a conventional instrument, let alone an ethnic one approved of by Nadine Salmon.
‘Oh dear,’ she said.
Lulu shook back her hair. In the restaurant’s witty lighting, her sunglasses flashed defiantly. ‘But I might just have found way round it, hmm?’
Laura was surprised. ‘How?’
A triumphant smile was twitching the corners of Lulu’s plump pink lips. ‘South’n Fried have famous Scottish ancestor.’
‘Really? Who?’ Laura could not imagine. Deep Fried Mars Bar?
Still smiling, Lulu reached downwards and rummaged in her vast jewelled tote bag, its handles dense with designer charms and knick-knacks. From its depths she pulled out a large brown envelope and pushed it victoriously towards Laura. ‘This arrive this morning. From Scotland leading family history export, hmm?’
‘Expert,’ corrected Laura, taking out the contents. It did not look very expert. It was a sheet of paper which had apparently been snarled up in an ancient printer running out of ink. ‘Certficate of Relationship to Flora MacDonald,’ it said. South’n Fried’s name was badly written in biro on a dotted line and it was signed by a ‘Professor McPorridge, Head of the Ancestry and Ethnicity Department at the New University of the Highlands and Islands’.
‘Vlad find on dark web,’ Lulu added proudly at the exact same time her pearl-studded iPhone 19 burst into life in her bag, playing ‘Bomb The Neighbourhood’, one of her husband’s biggest hits.
As Lulu loudly answered it, a number of fellow steam enthusiasts looked round in irritation from their tables. But in this as in most other matters, Lulu made her own rules.
‘Is great news, lapotchka!’ she informed her nearest and dearest. ‘Ancestor is come in post, hmm? You are relative of Flora MacDoughnut.’
‘Who the frack is that?’ The rapper’s loud American tones, in which a tiny hint of Coventry could yet be detected, echoed around the restaurant. Lulu had yet to master her latest phone’s loudspeaker.
‘You not know Flora MacDoughnut?’
Astonishment was glinting off the enormous sunglasses and Laura felt sorry for her friend. It wasn’t her fault that her husband had played truant from school and was as a consequence uneducated. Lulu herself concealed a well-informed brain under her pile of blonde hair, as Laura had discovered at the World’s Poshest Pub Quiz during the Elite Village story.
On the other hand, Laura reflected, South’n’s school would probably never have offered a lesson about Flora MacDonald whether he’d turned up or not. The school history syllabus had long since switched its focus from ancient, complex events such as the rise of the Jacobites to more recent ‘relevant’ phenomena such as the rise of Strictly Come Dancing as a force in popular entertainment. That her own boarding-school curriculum had been less exposed to the forces of shallow populism was one of the few good things that could be said about it.
‘She helped Bonnie Prince Charlie escape after the battle of Culloden,’ Laura explained, taking the phone from Lulu whose malapropistic explanations were just making everything worse. ‘He was dressed as a woman,’ she added.
‘Ain’t no way I’m dressin’ like a ho,’ South’n Fried responded to Laura’s annoyance. She hated her best friend’s husband’s sexist and degrading habit of lumping the entire female population under this unflattering description. South’n Fried had in the past tried to convince her that it was a term of endearment. But she hadn’t bought it then and she wasn’t buying it now.
‘Lulu’s not suggesting that you do,’ she snapped. ‘She’s just trying to prove that you’re related to Flora. She’s actually the most famous and beloved of Scotland’s heroines.’
But the line had gone dead. Either the rapper had gone out of range or, as seemed more likely in Laura’s view, he had taken exception to someone standing up to him for once. She passed the phone back to Lulu and looked down at the ancestry sheet again.
She had never heard of the New University of the Highlands and Islands. The old one either, come to that. Professor McPorridge had a similarly implausible ring and the various misspellings weren’t encouraging either. Had Lulu been scammed?
It looked more than likely. How else could a black man from the West Midlands be related to an eighteenth-century woman from the Western Isles?
She took a deep breath and looked up. ‘Er, Lulu.’
Five minutes of explanation later, her friend was looking thunderous. ‘Pay ten thousand pound to Professor McPorridge!’
Laura patted her hand sympathetically. ‘Best put it down to experience, Lu. You’ll have to find some other way to make South’n Fried Scottish.’
Lulu stuck out her bottom lip. ‘But what?’ she pouted, just as her phone lit up again with South’n Fried’s number.
Laura braced herself again for the loud, bumptious, fake American tones. But it seemed that South’n Fried had only now realised the extent of the cultural forces ranged against him, In other words, he had finally read the technical requirements. ‘Baby,’ Laura could hear him wailing in his throaty US-meets-West Midlands accent. ‘This Scottish instrument thing, it’s a pain in the ass, man.’
‘You should try blow pipebag,’ Lulu told him.
‘Baby, I don’t do drugs no more,’ South’n reminded her.
‘Is not drug, hmm. Is Scotch-egg national instrument.’
‘Bagpipes!’ yelled the other end. ‘Great idea! I’m a genius!’
Laura rolled her eyes. It was typical of South’n Fried to take all the credit for someone else’s idea. But Lulu, never one to bear grudges, had other matters on her mind. ‘You have to wear skirt with it!’ she exclaimed, sunglasses blazing with excitement.
‘Kilt,’ corrected Laura.
‘And go commander!’ Lulu added, excitedly.
‘Go commando!’ hissed Laura.
‘Hey. Stop right there.’ The voice on the other end had gone high with alarm. ‘I’ve already told ya. I ain’t wearing no skirt on no stage. Specially with no crackers on.’
Laura pictured Lulu’s husband the last time she had seen him, lolloping round their country mansion in rose-gold sunglasses and diamond-studded denim
s so low-slung they started around his knees. It was true that a kilt would be a sartorial step change.
She sighed. Lulu was still arguing with South’n Fried, but it was clear she was getting nowhere. They would have to think of something else.
She glanced at her watch and her heart sank. Time to go back to the office. A meeting was scheduled for the afternoon with Harriet, during which the finer points – if finer was the word – of the Scottish trip would be gone through. Details of the Scottish estate agents, the other properties on sale.
The other properties on sale…
Laura had been standing up, but now she sat down again with a thump. An idea had occurred to her, a solution which would be impossible with any normal person. But given Lulu’s vast wealth it was more than feasible.
‘Lulu,’ she said urgently, ‘why not buy South’n Fried a Scottish castle?’
‘Is genius!’ Lulu slapped the table so hard the empty test tubes leapt in the air. ‘Ancestral home for South’n Fried!’ Her sunglasses were blazing with excitement.
‘Perhaps not ancestral, exactly,’ Laura demurred. ‘But he could certainly become a resident. Wasn’t that one of Nadine Salmon’s criteria for performers?’
She took her phone and searched for the Wrack and Ruane website. ‘This place is called Glenravish,’ she added, passing it to Lulu. ‘I’m going there myself, for the magazine. Why not come with me? See what else they’ve got?’
It was, she thought, the very definition of enlightened self-interest. If Lulu could be persuaded to make the journey too, Laura would be able to body-swerve the bus. She could travel in comfort, billionheiress style!
Lulu’s powerful, purring Bentley with its black-piano shine would eat up the miles. It also had every in-car entertainment imaginable, from massage seats to a surround-sound cinema. It even had a pothole sensor to ensure a smooth ride so the champagne didn’t spill in the flutes.
Lulu had seized her own phone and was ringing her husband again. ‘Have had big idea! Another way to show Nadine Salmon you love her country. Buy Scottish estate! Invest in Scotland!’