by Wendy Holden
She would never see him again. Their latest and most passionate encounter was to be the very last. Laura’s tears were coming thick and fast now.
As she awaited her slow drowning and digestion by Caledonia’s peat bogs, the voice of her grandmother drifted over the wind-bent grasses towards her.
‘Fierté. Espoir. Courage.’ These three words alone, more than anything else, had seen Mimi through France’s darkest years. She had often repeated them to Laura, who repeated them now, shouting them out defiantly and hearing the empty glen echo them back at her.
As she felt herself drifting off to a better place, a ‘chuppa-chuppa-chuppa’ sound, at first dim, but gradually surer and louder, made itself heard, with the deeper roar of an aero engine beneath that of the rotor blades.
Laura gasped. She could see the helicopter now. It was pink. She could even see the great blonde pile of Lulu’s hair inside, and her vast black sunglasses. She shut her eyes and opened them again. Was she imagining it? Was this some far-northern, bad-weather version of the traditional desert mirage?
Chuppa-chuppa-chuppa. No, it was real. Panicking stags were charging all over the hillsides now. Despite her dire situation Laura wondered why people bothered donning scratchy tweed and crawling around on their stomachs when all you needed was a low-flying AgustaWestland.
But how to get their attention? Her eye caught the bollock-splitter and an idea struck her. With a deftness of touch that Mimi would have appreciated, Laura both primed and discharged the mighty piece, which sent a vast and deafening crack and flash across the landscape.
Laura’s ears rang, and just as it seemed the chopper was fleeing for dear life, her distress signal having had the opposite of its intended effect, Vlad swung the craft around and came in low.
The side door slid open, and a rope ladder in Tiffany blue with silver trimmings tumbled out. Leaving the bollock-splitter – her saviour – somewhat reluctantly behind, Laura clung on with all her might. The whirring machine slowly lifted her from the bog – albeit sans culottes. In the literal sense, rather than the revolutionary.
But her loss of modesty was nothing compared to the relief of being saved. She was quickly hauled in by Lulu, who exclaimed and fussed and wrapped the now-shivering Laura in a brightly printed blanket from the Tom Ford Home Collection.
As the flying pink machine roared away, Laura looked down at the Valley of Death. Her eyes narrowed suddenly. On its brow, just out of sight from where she had been slowly drowning, she could make out a troll-like figure, binoculars in hand.
‘Struan!’ she murmured. ‘He was watching me die!’
Lulu wasn’t really listening. She was hurriedly and incomprehensibly filling Laura in about her own recent adventures. Something about corsets, was all Laura could make out.
‘Is lucky we flew this way back to London, hmm?’ Lulu concluded. ‘What is castle down there? Look nice.’
The helicopter was flying over Glenravish.
‘You don’t want to know,’ Laura said quietly. And neither did she, any more. The Scottish issue could go to blazes; she’d just have to face the consequences. As for the country itself, she’d been right first time round. It was hell on earth. She had no intention of setting foot in Scotland ever again.
PART THREE
Chapter Twenty-five
It was good to be back in London, Laura thought, pressing the bell to alert the driver that her stop was the next one. The No 64 bus might be something of a comedown after the splendours of Lulu’s helicopter, but she was happy to be on it nonetheless. She had always enjoyed riding about London on the top of double-deckers – the elevated position provided a wonderful view of the street and what was going on in it.
It was Sunday morning, and the main road was filled with cool couples either heading for or coming back from the nearby flea market. Men with beards were carrying hatstands, while waify women carried vintage film posters featuring Michael Caine under their slender arms.
Turning into Cod’s Head Row, Laura felt that it was weeks, rather than days, since she had last been on the street she called home. Nigel Forage, an ex-banker whose real name was Cassian, was outside his establishment in his clogs and leather apron, arranging stinging nettles, ferns and other enormous weeds on his traditional costermonger’s barrow. He waved at Laura in friendly fashion. ‘Haven’t seen you for a while!’
‘I’ve been away,’ Laura called back.
‘Anywhere good?’
While a resounding No! perched on the tip of Laura’s tongue, what she actually said was, ‘Scotland.’
Nigel raised his thumbs. ‘Top place for thistles. Great things, full of nutrients.’
Laura hurried on before he could give her a recipe card.
Even during her short absence, several new shops seemed to have opened. If a week was a long time in politics, two days were an eternity in Cod’s Head Row. Businesses, especially those of the pop-up hipster variety, could rise, fall and rise again in half that time. Laura could barely remember what had been in the place of ‘Lubyanka’, the latest Iron-Curtain-chic brutalist cocktail bar whose brick-and-concrete front she now paused before. Perhaps it had been the previous Iron-Curtain-chic brutalist cocktail bar.
Lubyanka’s menu was scribbled over what seemed to be a free-school-meals application form from a Stockport primary school in the 1970s. Among its delights were Silver Needle Tea negronis and wagyu beef canapés rolled in fuchsia plum dust. She’d give it a week, Laura decided.
Other new arrivals on the street were a firm of ‘sound architects’ and The Thinking Pet, whose USP seemed to be edgy Japanese cat food.
She was relieved to see that Gorblimey Trousers was still there. It being a warm summer morning, the pavement outside it was filled with fashionable families kicking back over Campari sodas. Broadsheet newspapers were spread on the tiny melamine tables at which statement children sat with their iPads and under which statement dogs growled or darted out just in time to trip up passing athletes dangling with phone wires, strapped up with FitBits and sporting hi-vis hi-tech running wear which cost as much as a Chanel suit.
Laura hesitated, uncertain now that she wanted to go inside. Bill and Ben had been having a Scottish moment when last she had seen them and she would rather not be reminded of any of her recent traumas. It would be bad enough tomorrow, when she returned to Society, where the question of the Scottish issue would have to be faced.
Things seemed pretty quiet on that front, actually. Laura had expected, when her phone reconnected with the rest of the universe, lots of messages from her colleagues updating her on progress, asking for her views, or just dishing the latest dirt. There was nothing, however. After some thought, Laura had decided Bev Sweet was probably to blame. Under her rule, the British Magazine Company had become a totalitarian state. As individuality was always the first casualty in such regimes, she probably shouldn’t expect gossipy emails.
The interior of Gorblimey Trousers was as busy as the outside. Bill and Ben, both of whom were sporting short-back-and-side haircuts, were diving between their customers, large black circular trays on their shoulders, delivering food and drinks, picking up empties, all the time maintaining a friendly patter with everyone. Laura watched them with admiration. It was a kind of highly skilled ballet, dipping here, pirouetting there, weaving smoothly in and out, keeping everything running and everyone happy.
The tartans had gone, Laura noticed. In their place were expanses of leopard-skin.
She nodded at the walls. ‘I see the tartan’s had its day.’
Bill looked surprised, as if trying to recall a long distant event. ‘Lawks-a-lordy, it so has. We’re all about safari now. Out of Africa, Meryl Streep.’
Laura could see now that he was rocking a Happy Valley look, complete with vintage binoculars. ‘Love the shorts,’ she said.
‘Think so?’ Bill looked doubtfully downwards. ‘I’m worried me biscuits look knobbly.’
Biscuits and cheese, knees, Laura mentally translate
d. She punched him playfully on the arm. ‘Leave it out,’ she said, in her best Cockney. ‘Yer’ve got a smashing pair o’ bacons.’
*
The next day Laura travelled to work full of trepidation. She stood in the crowded train trying to convince herself that there was nothing to worry about. Or, if there was, she could deal with it. The fact that Gorblimey Trousers had dumped the Scottish look gave her hope at least. They were always miles ahead when it came to trends.
Society should follow their lead and have a more obviously lucrative theme such as jewellery. Or maybe a 100-per-cent fashion issue, which Laura personally would find as boring as hell, but which would certainly bring the money in. Yes, that could be the answer. She’d go and see Bev Sweet about it as soon as she got in.
‘Laura my darling! Mwah! Mwah!’ A glamorous red-haired woman lunged at her as soon as she got off at Oxford Circus.
Recognising through sheer instinct who this was, Laura shook off the parody of a fashion-world greeting. She was not Clemency Makepeace’s darling; still less was Clemency hers. Not to put too fine a point on it, she loathed her. She had hoped, after their last encounter, never to see her again.
Clemency Makepeace had not only attended the same school as Laura – where she had been the resident bully – but had entered the same industry. She had been a clear and present danger ever since. Several times, over the past few years, she had attempted to steal Laura’s job. And while her evil schemes had always been thwarted, and Clemency herself sent, disgraced, into the outer darkness, she had a habit of returning from it. That she was now back in London seemed to suggest that she had done so again. With her green eyes glittering in her heart-shaped face she looked, as ever, not only like the cat who had the cream, but the bowl it came in as well.
‘What are you doing here?’ Laura demanded. So far as she remembered, the latest outer darkness to which Clemency had been sent was as cover on a gardening title whose editor had had a baby.
‘I don’t think that’s any of your business,’ Clemency returned with a smirk.
‘How’s the maternity leave going?’ If the editor was back and Clemency on the job market again, it could be bad news. An unemployed Clemency was a plotting Clemency.
Her oldest enemy grinned a dark-red-lipsticked grin. ‘Good job you’re not in journalism, Lake. Otherwise you might have found out it wasn’t just maternity leave. I was made the permanent editor of Weeds Today.’
Laura felt a wave of relief. If her rival had an editorship of her own, there was less chance she still wanted Laura’s. ‘The other editor didn’t want to come back?’
‘She didn’t have any choice. Not once I’d exposed her appalling incompetence to the management.’ Clemency shook her glossy red head in mock sorrow. ‘She had to be let go, sadly. I do hope she’ll find another job soon. Or a roof over her head again, at least.’
Laura felt a wave of pure disgust. Clemency was so unapologetically evil. ‘I have to go,’ she said, pushing her way into the crowd in the wrong direction.
‘You said it,’ Clemency cackled and gave another toss of her red hair before clattering off on her spike heels in the direction Laura would normally take.
*
Thinking about Bev Sweet again, Laura walked with the crowd at Oxford Circus feeling as if her stomach had been removed and replaced with a large stone. Moving down Argyll Street with the tide of commuters, she fought back the waves of panic. She was tired into the bargain, having slept badly on her return to Cod’s Head Row. Upstairs, Edgar had been having a rehearsal of his whistling choir and the amount of noise they made was as unexpected as it was unbelievable.
Laura had huddled under her duvet with her fingers in her ears as what seemed like hundreds of people immediately above shrilled out ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ in multi-part harmony. It quite made her long for the old days, when Edgar brought home gangs of overseas servicemen in the early hours and proceeded to entertain them in uproarious fashion. He had always been apologetic the next day, as indeed he had been this morning. ‘We’re giving a concert soon,’ Edgar had explained, raking a skinny hand through his hedge-backwards hair. ‘We’re all very nervous about it.’
Perhaps she was feeling Edgar’s nervousness by proxy, Laura thought as she approached the black-and-white mock-Tudor front of Liberty. His stage fright had transferred itself to her through the floorboards or down the waste stack.
It wasn’t just that, though, nor was it even the prospect of returning to Society. For all his breezy ‘See you in London’ on the beach at Glenravish, Harry had not been in touch at all. She had called him at work, on his mobile, but nothing. It was if their Scottish meeting had never been; either she had imagined it as a consequence of her hangover, Laura was beginning to think, or it had happened but meant nothing to Harry.
A sharp blade of disappointment twisted within her. He had been so loving, so passionate; so ardent and yet so gentle by turns. How could he not have meant it? But then, Harry was a professional keeper of secrets and always had been. Perhaps that also meant he was a professional liar. Perhaps she had meant nothing to him all along.
There had been nothing in the post, either, only flyers for Specsavers and organic-veggie-box delivery services, plus a book of personalised discount vouchers from Boots. Curated by an algorithm and predicated on her last major purchase – a pumice stone for the rough skin on her feet – it offered unmissable bargains on verruca treatments, corn plasters and bunion removers. Finally, and heartbreakingly, there were a couple of estate agents’ brochures for yet more newbuild developments. Tossing the details of the Spatula and the Lemon-Squeezer into the bin, Laura reflected that at least she would be spared those particular boiling-water taps and slow-closing drawers. Not now Harry wasn’t here to insist she look round them.
She blinked. Something had just flashed in her vision, someone in the crowd that she recognised not only with her eyes, but with her heart.
The figure, although visible only from the back, was tall, young, dark-haired, and, most Harryish of all, emanating an irritated, preoccupied energy. She could see him turning impatiently to cut through the crowds with his shoulder. That was too was a Harry trait. She hesitated, then dashed after him, slap bang into the people coming the other way. Angry eyes flashed up from their phone screens, then looked straight back down again.
London’s changed, she could hear herself saying to Sandy. It’s full of people charging down the pavements, looking into their smartphones.
Half of her wondered what Sandy was doing now, what she had made of Laura’s own disappearance, which had been every bit as sudden and unexpected as Harry’s. She, too, would feel let down after all the promises that had been made to her. I’ve no room to talk, Laura thought, slowing down now. I’m just as bad as he is.
Harry – if indeed it had been him – had gone anyway, turned the corner into Regent Street. She would never catch up with him now.
Laura shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her trusty trenchcoat and turned her footsteps towards the pale art deco office block of the British Magazine Company. She slipped her ID card through the security reader, nodded at the guards behind the front desk and headed for the lift.
On the fifth floor, she pushed open the office door of Society and stood still in shock. She realised that part of her had expected this all along.
‘I was made the permanent editor of Weeds Today…’
She had, Laura now realised, failed to register what the significance of that was. Because now the speaker was editor of something else.
Society.
Sitting in Laura’s office, in Laura’s chair, with her feet in their high-heeled pumps up on Laura’s desk was Clemency Makepeace.
Chapter Twenty-six
Laura’s first instinct was to rush into her office and order Clemency to get out of it. Her second was to hesitate. Confrontation was unlikely to get the result she wanted. The first thing that would happen was that Clemency would refuse to move. Then there would
be a blazing row. Then Clemency would probably call security, claim she had felt threatened and have Laura thrown out.
She had used all these tactics before. And what had saved Laura in the past was that Christopher Stone, then CEO, had been on her side. Now the CEO was Bev Sweet, who was on the side of the devil. One incarnation of whom was the red-headed supplanter now lolling in Laura’s office, talking animatedly on the phone.
She must, Laura realised, play it cool. Play the long game. She would allow events to develop, for the situation to reveal itself, and then she would decide what to do. She must stay in the room, as people said. Not get ejected from the entire building within ten minutes of arriving.
She took a deep breath, and forced her features into a vast, insincere Clemency-esque smile. They refused to do this, so she made do with an expression of careful neutrality and walked up to the door of what, until recently, had been her office.
As Clemency, still yakking away to her mystery interlocutor, ignored her, Laura took the opportunity to look round. Given the short time she had occupied the hot seat, her rival had made a lot of changes.
A sofa shaped like a pair of vampish red lips had supplanted the old yellow settee on which the entire staff heaped itself during meetings. Framed photographs of Clemency with A-list celebrities crowded the shelves that had formerly held Society’s journalism awards, some of which Laura had helped to win. A gleam of glass from the waste paper bin hinted at where they had ended up.
‘Laters at the Firehouse, darling. Toodle-oo!’ Clemency finally replaced the receiver and raised glittering green eyes to Laura. They looked her up and down, flashing evilly. ‘Well, well, well. Look what the cat’s dragged in.’
Laura met the malicious gaze with a level one of her own. ‘Can we talk?’
‘What else are we doing?’ quipped the woman in the editor’s chair, currently swinging about and crossing her legs like Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct. Clemency wore a close-fitting black skirt, white blouse and black stilettos whose pointed toes looked even sharper than their heels. It was a uniform Laura recognised. The new editor was Bev Sweet’s Mini-Me. Or, possibly, given the size of Bev Sweet, her Maxi-Me.