by Anne Billson
Lulu didn’t bring much with her when she moved in - just a couple of Swiss Cheese plants and a trunkful of clothes and make-up. She insisted that Duncan sell two-thirds of his book collection so the remainder fitted neatly into a couple of alcoves instead of cluttering up the entire room. Each month she bought Vogue and the rest of the glossies and arranged them in neat stacks on the coffee table. She also bought a lot of imported Italian fashion magazines, though her knowledge of the language was limited to words such as l’uomo, donna and lei.
Now she was bustling round the kitchen, dressed in her customary leisure wear of pink Lycra leggings, oversized pink T-shirt, and pink towelling headband. There wasn’t much in Lulu’s wardrobe that wasn’t pink or red. She never wore black. As far as I was concerned, this was her one redeeming feature. She thought it made her look sallow.
She finished messing with the blender and started peeling the paper from a big slab of ricotta. I told her about Patricia Rice because I knew it would upset her. To my delight, she made little tutting noises of disapproval. ‘Dora, that’s awful,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure that you realize how awful that is. It’s really mean. You wouldn’t like it if I did that sort of thing to you.’
‘But you wouldn’t do that sort of thing,’ I said. ‘You’re much too nice. Besides, you and I know each other, and the whole point is that Patricia and I have never met. This way, even if she called the police in - even if they could be bothered to launch an investigation into a couple of harmless anonymous notes - they’d never know where to start looking.’
‘Not unless someone tipped them off,’ Lulu muttered, just loud enough for me to hear.
Duncan looked up from his retouching. ‘Dora, you’re wicked,’ he said. ‘We’d better ask her to dinner, Lu, or we’ll start getting poison-pen letters.’
Lulu shot him a look of exasperation. ‘Duncan! I’m not sure there’s enough food as it is.’
‘That’s OK,’ I said brightly. ‘I don’t eat much.’
Lulu gritted her teeth and pretended not to sulk.
‘That’s settled, then,’ said Duncan, like a referee.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That seems to be that.’ She ploughed her fork through the cheese so vehemently that a large clod of it flew out of the bowl and landed on the table, just missing the edge of his photograph.
‘Jesus, Lu!’ he snapped. ‘For Christ’s sake watch what you’re doing. That was nearly half a day’s work down the tubes.’ His expression was thunderous, and for a minute I thought he was going to scrunch up the photo and chuck it at her. On the whole, he managed to keep his temper, like a lot of other things, under wraps, but sometimes it got away from him. These days, though, he was better at controlling it, and now I could see him taking a deep breath and staring hard into the middle distance until the storm clouds dispersed. He wiped the cheese up with his finger and ate it, then looked pointedly in my direction, as if to punish Lulu by deliberately excluding her from the conversation. I tried not to smile as I saw her lower lip quivering.
‘Dora,’ he said, ‘I really need your advice.’
‘About what?’
For a moment, he was lost for words, as though my response had thrown him off balance. ‘Work,’ he said at last. ‘Photos and stuff.’
I hadn’t expected this. I’d done a short stint in the photographic department at college, but Duncan was aware I didn’t know anything like as much about photography as he did.
Lulu muscled in. ‘Maybe I could help.’
‘I doubt it, love,’ Duncan said. He only called her ‘love’ when he was being patronizing. ‘It’s technical.’
‘What do you want to know?’ I asked, hoping for another chance to get Lulu to demonstrate her stupidity.
‘Show you later,’ he said.
Lulu turned to face the stove, still looking as though she was about to burst into tears. As soon as she’d turned her back he gave me a look, a glance so naked in its desperation that it knocked me for six. It was just for a moment, and then it was gone. Then he bent his head back down over the print and continued to dab away at the shadows with his fine-pointed brush, filling in all the flaws with tiny black dots. Years of point-blank brushwork had taken their toll on his eyesight. Sometimes, for watching television and so on, he was having to wear spectacles.
For a while there was silence. Lulu continued to pout, and Duncan continued to dab. I sat without moving, trying to resist the temptation to start rocking my chair again. I had a feeling deep inside which at first I had trouble identifying, because it had been years since I’d last felt it - thirteen years, to be exact. It took me some time to recognize it as excitement.
Chapter 2
Lulu had swapped her pink leisure wear for pink formal wear. She swayed from side to side to the music, if you could call it music.
‘What is this noise?’ I asked.
‘It’s New Vague music, Dora. Recommended by my yoga teacher. It’s supposed to relax you.’
‘Sounds like whales,’ said Alicia.
‘I think it’s got whales in it somewhere,’ Lulu said.
I picked up the cassette case and scanned the notes. ‘Nope, no whales here. Ethereal flutes, yes. Haunting pan-pipes. yes, not to mention the gentle ebb and flow of celestial oceans. Oh, and we mustn’t forget the cosmic tinkle of intergalactic glockenspiels.’
Lulu snatched the cassette case from me and read out loud, ‘This music creates the perfect ambience for those precious contemplative moments.’
I yawned, which probably convinced Lulu the New Vague was working. I’d already had my fill of precious contemplative moments. Over on the other side of the room Duncan was listening intently to Jack. I wished he would get to the point and tell me what was on his mind.
Alicia was flicking through magazines. You couldn’t blame her; the repartee, so far, had not been sparkling. Over pre-dinner drinks, Jack and Duncan had talked about Ferraris and Grand Prix racing, while Alicia had listed the pros and cons of Pampers versus Peau Douce. Then, while Lulu was slopping out the hummus, Jack launched into a monologue about office politics on the weekly magazine where he was Features Editor. He worked with a load of degenerates who seemed to do nothing but snort cocaine and misspell the names of world-famous celebrities: Stephen Speilberg, Eddy Murphy, Arnold Shwarzenegger. Everyone listened politely as he fulminated about his co-workers’ habit of using up all the office biros - throwing away the ink-tubes and leaving the outer cases crusty with a mixture of white powder and snot. I noticed he scrupulously avoided mentioning Roxy, his zaftig personal assistant. I’d seen them in Gnashers together, but they’d been too busy snogging to see me back.
At this point I started to cast despairing glances in Duncan’s direction, but Jack was getting into his stride. He surrendered the floor only when he came up against someone even more self-centred than himself. The first we heard was a faint spluttering from the bedroom, like water gurgling through an ancient plumbing system. Then came an ear-splitting wail which persisted all the way through the pasta course. Eventually, Alicia noticed I had dropped my fork and jammed fingers in both ears, so she brought the baby to the table and rocked it into semi-silence.
Once everyone’s attention had been drawn to Abigail, the rest of the evening disappeared swiftly down the plughole. After the tagliatelle Lulu related in meretricious detail the plot of a film which none of us had seen nor even wanted to see; she herself had watched no more than a TV trailer in which the three leading actors made comical attempts to change a baby’s nappy. Lulu interpreted this as a challenge for her to demonstrate that she could do what highly paid Hollywood actors pretended the could not. We were duly treated to a round of nappy-changing between the pasta and the pudding. We were also treated to a round of full-frontal breast-feeding from Alicia. I almost expected Lulu to have a go at that as well, just to prove she had what it took.
And now it was decaffeinated coffee table time. Alicia was cradling the baby with one arm and using her free hand to leaf throug
h the magazines. Abigail’s tiny fingers made a grab for the nearest page and scrunched it into a rudimentary origami design. ‘Abigail, no. Mummy’s reading.’ There was a sound of glossy paper rending as Alicia prised the chubby little fist away.
Lulu brandished another magazine. ‘The second issue of Bellini,’ she chirruped. ‘I’m going in to see them. Amanda says they pay really well.’
Alicia glanced at the cover. I caught a glimpse of it too, and wished I hadn’t; it was a larger-than-life close-up of a heavily made-up model winking at the camera. It gave me the heebie-jeebies whenever I saw anyone winking; it never failed to remind me of things I preferred to forget. I looked away and counted slowly to ten - my well-tested method for wiping unwanted images from my mind. When I looked back, the magazine lay open on Alicia’s lap and the picture was no longer visible. She was studying the masthead on the contents page. ‘Bellini,’ she cooed, rocking the baby gently. ‘Bellini... Never heard of it.’
‘It’s a champagne cocktail,’ Lulu said helpfully.
Alicia looked as though she were biting back a sharp comment. ‘Up to a point, Lu,’ she said, in that tone she sometimes used, the one which periodically reminded me why I quite liked her. She flicked through the pages, eventually coming across something which made her stop and flick back. ‘But these girls are all topless,’ she said.
‘So?’ I said. ‘It’s no worse than The Sun. Or Vogue.’
‘No, no,’ she said. ‘When I say topless, I mean they don’t have any heads.’
I was about to lean over and see what she was talking about when Lulu snatched the magazine away from her and riffled through it. ‘It’s all very surreal,’ she said grandly. ‘Surreal’ was one of her favourite words. ‘Look at this,’ she said, flattening the pages at what appeared to be a fashion feature about lingerie. From where I was sitting it didn’t look very surreal at all. She and Alicia bent their heads down over it and started to make bitchy remarks about the models.
I was dying for a cigarette, but I was stuck in a room with four non-smokers. My thoughts turned to alcohol instead. I had drained my glass of wine, and no-one was breaking their neck to offer me a refill, but there was a bottle of cheap brandy sitting untouched on the table. Duncan had bought it some months before, duty free from Barcelona airport, but he never went near alcohol these days, and Lulu drank spirits only when she was trying to impress somebody. Alicia didn’t want her milk contaminated with noxious substances, and Jack was sticking to moderate quantities of white wine so that later on he would be able to point the car in the direction of their flat, which was all of two hundred yards away.
No-one was paying me any attention, so I poured myself a large measure and gulped it, slooshing the liquid around my mouth so it wouldn’t inflict third-degree burns on my palate. Jack and Duncan were talking about Ferraris again. I began to wish I hadn’t stayed.
The New Vague warbling stopped. Lulu was sifting distractedly through her pile of magazines and didn’t notice. She was looking for something. ‘Duncan?’ she asked. ‘Where’s the first issue?’ She raised her voice. ‘Duncan?’
Duncan broke off his conversation.
‘Bellini,’ Lulu insisted. ‘Where did you put the first one?’
‘It’s somewhere around.’
‘I want to show Alicia.’
Duncan paused, and then he said, ‘You can show her another time.’ There was a note in his voice which hadn’t been there before. Oh-oh, I thought. Watch out, Lulu.
‘Duncan,’ she said.
Usually he did whatever she asked - anything for a quiet life. But now he was glowering. I hadn’t seen him so edgy and bad-tempered in ages, but I really didn’t mind, not if it was directed at Lulu. She was pouting again, but with her chin thrust out, determined to stand her ground in front of Jack and Alicia, who were both looking slightly embarrassed.
‘Please, Dunc,’ she said in her whiniest voice. ‘Duncan Doughnut.’ This was her pet name for him. He had never actually said that he hated it, but you could sometimes see the muscle in his jaw twitching.
For one glorious second I thought he was going to gouge her eyes out, but instead he sighed, and got to his feet. ‘I think it’s somewhere in the darkroom,’ he said.
Lulu laughed triumphantly and clapped her hands together. ‘Alicia, wait till you see this,’ she said. ‘It’s really gross.’
As he went past my chair, Duncan spun on his heel and looked me straight in the eye. The effect was like a mild electric shock to the base of my spine. I got the message immediately and leapt to my feet. ‘Now?’
He nodded, all of a sudden looking ten years older. ‘Might as well get it over with,’ he muttered, more to himself than to anyone else. Then he raised his voice. ‘We’ve just got to go over this stuff. It won’t take long. A couple of minutes.’
‘Can’t it wait?’ asked Lulu.
‘No,’ he said. ‘No, it can’t.’
Jack and Alicia exchanged glances. They thought I was a pest, hanging around Duncan all the time. Lulu was acting like an abandoned puppy. I permitted myself to flash a quick grin in her direction as I followed Duncan into the office. Once the door was shut behind us, I toyed with the idea of making loud and interesting party noises, but he didn’t seem to be in the mood for japes.
The office was cramped, with no windows; there was barely enough room for a desk and filing cabinet. One of the walls was taken up by a sliding door; Duncan pulled this open and we went through into the darkroom, which was only slightly bigger than the office and stank of stale chemicals. He tugged a cord and the light came on, and somewhere an extractor fan whirred into life. He dragged a stool away from the bench and insisted I sit down. While he was rummaging through the contents of a filing tray, I twisted round to peer into the sink behind me; it was full of black-and-white twelve-by-tens which eddied slowly as the water level repeatedly rose and fell. The topmost picture was of a nude girl wearing a hat shaped like a dead seagull.
I asked, ‘So what’s all this about?’ but Duncan ignored me and went on rummaging. After a minute or so, he found what he was looking for. I just had time to clock the Bellini logo before he turned to a page somewhere in the middle, smoothing it flat on the bench in front of me.
I looked, and my blood pressure leapt a few notches. The words Night People! were printed in dripping crimson across the top of the page. It was some sort of fashion spread, glistening with saturated colour. The model, of course, was wearing black. It was a dress cut low at the neck, made out of that clinging fabric you could only wear if you were prepared to spend half your waking life in the gym. But the dress itself wasn’t so extraordinary; Lulu had a dozen or so like it in various shades of pink. What was extraordinary was the rest of the picture.
The model’s face was dead white, and it appeared frozen with shock, which wasn’t so surprising since somebody, not entirely in frame, was ramming a sharp stick through her chest. The dark fabric of the dress was gleaming even darker where the stick went in. A trickle of blood ran from one corner of her immaculately painted mouth. Her brilliant teeth were bared in a snarl, and there was no doubt that two of them were fangs.
I read the accompanying column of text out loud. ‘Smart vamps only come out at night in the slinkiest of fabrics, but stakes are high when the claret begins to flow and the chips are down.’ Beneath this was a list of labels and prices.
I could hardly believe my eyes. But I calmed down and studied the photograph objectively. ‘Decadent chic,’ I sneered. ‘So passe.’
‘Go on,’ Duncan urged. I flipped the page. The next picture was even more tasteless: the same model in a different dress, black with sequin trimming around the neckline. The same faceless co-star was applying a hacksaw to the dotted line which had been drawn round her neck. There was even more blood than on the previous page. I read, ‘Toothsome cuties dress in black, and keep their heads down when all around them are losing theirs.’
I tried to summon up another sneer, but my heart wasn’t in
it. I looked through the rest of the feature. It was the same story in each picture: a white-faced, raven-haired, scarlet-lipped woman, clad in an assortment of little black dresses, being subjected to violent and potentially lethal indignities. I wondered how much it had cost to have the fake bloodstains removed from the clothes after the photo session, though not all the pictures had blood in them. In one, the model’s mouth was being stuffed full of lettuce and radicchio. ‘Le dernier cri de French Dressing,’ said the text, ‘but remember to go easy on the garlic.’ Another shot depicted the unfortunate girl being dunked in a bath: her eyes were bulging and her long hair swirled like seaweed around her head beneath the force of the water cascading from the taps. ‘Still waters run deep,’ intoned the text. ‘Careless dress codes can lead to an early bath.’
The last photograph in the series was relatively restrained, but somehow that made it all the nastier. The model was bound to a chair, directly in the path of a beam of sunlight which was slicing through a gap between the curtains. She was snarling again, straining at the ropes which held her fast. Where the shaft of light fell on her bare arm, the make-up artists had applied an unpleasant-looking weal, and the blackened flesh appeared to be smouldering. ‘Sunburn can be fatal,’ said the text. ‘Smart vamps prize their pale skin and use barrier cream to shield their features from the ultraviolet.’
A dreadful idea occurred to me. This was Duncan’s work, his idea of a public confession. He had finally gone and flipped. ‘Don’t tell me these are yours,’ I said, not wanting to hear the answer.
‘God Lord, no.’ He shook his head rather more violently than was necessary, jabbing his finger at the small print at the bottom of the page. ‘Dino, it was Dino.’
‘Sick-o,’ I said. I’d seen Dino’s byline before, but had never met him. I didn’t have to, I’d seen enough of his work to know he was a pretentious, obnoxious git - he liked to photograph naked women in compromising positions, adorned with lots of tasteful bondage and tight leather corsets. The prints were usually hand-tinted.