Dead Sexy, page 22
Shelly gasped, audibly. Kit’s wife seemed to have the sexual compassion of a praying mantis. But she persevered. ‘Look, I know you’re furious that he stole your little daughter, but try to see it from Kit’s point of view. Okay,’ she conceded, ‘you’re going to have to squint quite hard but . . .’
Pandora gave Shelly a sucked-on-a-lemon look. ‘Does he honestly think I would let him get his grubby little mitts on her trust fund?’ The gems in the heiress’s rings flashed like traffic lights. ‘That’s the only reason he’s taken her. And I must get her back before he completely ruins her. She’s growing so insolent and impetuous. Just like him. I cringe inside when I hear Matilda say “toilet” instead of “lavatory”. Or “serviette” instead of “napkin”. Or “equerry” instead of “e-querry”.’ (She rhymed it with cherry.)
Or pro-noun-ciation, instead of pro-nun-ciation, Shelly thought, flummoxed. Was it possible Matilda’s mother had flown all this way and forked out all this money to save her child from poor vocabulary? She was tempted to call over the waiter for a second opinion. ‘She’s really a Thunderbirds puppet, isn’t she?’ But the waiter was trying to appease Pandora’s hostage negotiators for the absence of bathing beauties. The only topless thing about this pool bar now was the fact that the roof had been blown off.
Pandora gave a chilly smile. ‘But boarding school will sort her out.’ She was nuclear winter in the tropics. ‘After all, look what it did for me!’
Quite, thought Shelly. Kit had told her that Pandora’s approach to co-parenting was that it should be divvied up equally – between the boarding school and the nanny. But she hadn’t believed that any woman could be so meticulous and loveless. Kit had joked that Pandora’s interest in children would be best reflected in a car bumper sticker which read, ‘I Don’t Care Who’s on Board’. At least she’d thought he was joking at the time . . .
‘I never really saw myself as a baby person.’ Pandora fiddled with the foam of white pearls which frothed around her Botoxed neck. ‘Oh, I thought I might have a child one day . . .’ She paused, and Shelly nodded encouragingly, ‘you know . . . just in case I ever needed an organ donation.’
Shelly was aghast that a mother’s heart could be set at such waxworks museum temperatures.
‘But I had no idea how time-consuming motherhood would be.’ Pandora sanctioned her profligacy with a long-suffering sigh.
*
‘Ugh. All those questions she’s always asking!’ Pandora winced with maternal martyrdom, before steeling herself. ‘But children aren’t like dogs. One can’t just have them put down. So it is up to me to train her to an acceptable level of behaviour. Children need to be house-trained.’
Or mansion-trained, Shelly thought with growing irritation as Pandora’s serrated voice cut into her.
As if approaching a slumbering baby, Shelly now began to tiptoe towards the notion that Kit had been telling the truth about his wife. She also peeked over the edge of his accusation of her jealousy towards Matty. Had a subconscious craving for a devoted dad of her own coloured her feelings? Not a father like Kit, of course. No – a dad who wandered around waving barbecue tongs, whistling Elvis, and loved her tender, loved her true.
The sole overworked waiter proffered a plate of nuts and crisps, but Pandora shook her head. She was sucking the liquid centre from a sweet with a wet, slurping sound when she addressed him. ‘So, what are you? A Hutu or a Tutu?‘
‘Um, I think you’ll find that a tutu is a ballet dress,’ Shelly whispered, in an agony of embarrassment. ‘It’s Tutsi. And they live in eastern Africa,’ she explained, as Pandora proved that it takes more than a manicure to give a woman polish.
‘I’m not hungry.’ Pandora waved the waiter away with operatic grandeur, slicing her long and perfectly lasered legs open and closed like a pair of scissors as she recrossed them.
‘Probably something to do with your nose,’ Shelly said curtly, scrutinizing the tell-tale ring of white powder she’d just noticed around Pandora’s left nostril. ‘I doubt that inhaling half of Bolivia is actually on your twelve-step programme, is it?’ So Kit hadn’t lied about his wife making Kurt Cobain look teetotal either.
Pandora’s eyes flashed. ‘Anything Kitson Kinkade, or Rupert Rochester, which is his chosen nom de spin, has told you about me is a tissue of falsehoods,’ she declared, fumbling for said article in her handbag to remove the narcotic evidence. ‘Kidnapping a child is the most grave misconduct. And he will pay!’ Her small mouth was taut with disgust. ‘We flew here via Paris where I got an emergency court order binding in Réunion, giving me custody of Matilda. I have instructed my hostage negotiators to offer the rebels half a million to release Matilda. However, I will also offer them extra money to keep Kinkade. A stroke of brilliance on my part. That’ll be one way to ensure that shit never ever sees my daughter again!’
Shelly felt a jolt of misery surge through her as she realized she’d been labouring under a delusion. Another delusion. Hell, the woman needed to join the Labouring Under a Delusion Union. Everything Kit had said was true. Shelly could have wept with horror. She made the sort of noise you make before your car collides with a stationary object. That was what her life had become – one of those terrible automobile smashes that people slow down to gawp at, then, having seen the true horror of it all, choose to leave at speed.
But one person was guaranteed to hang around to watch the carnage. Shelly glimpsed half hidden behind the fallen debris on La Caravelle’s stage, a pair of stout, hairy legs in short trunks patterned in yellow deck chairs and dusky hula dancers, and a spasm of revulsion went through her. ‘How long have you been filming us, Towtruck?’
‘Filming?’ Pandora brayed. ‘Stop imijately!’ She snapped her fingers and her Executive Outcome personnel tossed aside the jumble of overturned tables and chairs, to loom over Towtruck with menace.
Towtruck’s shifty eyes jumped left to right. ‘It wasn’t my idea.’ He squeaked like a lost puppy. ‘It was the Singlet. I told ya she was a two-faced bitch.’ Away from the jurisdiction of his director, the cameraman became vitriolic about her. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t organize the bloody cyclone and the military coup just for better fucking footage!’ he squawked.
Shelly knew that Towtruck had little usage, except in methane production. (‘A botty breeze’ the cameraman called his melodious farts.) But the reality TV director was the tricoteuse at the guillotine: getting close-ups of emotional executions.
‘Where is she?’ Shelly demanded, as Pandora, book-ended by her bodyguards, flounced off to check in to what was left of the hotel. Towtruck, still terrified, pointed into the shubbery. Shelly angrily parted the fallen palm fronds.
The upper lips of the guilty don’t often perspire, except in movies. The guilty usually remain cool and calm. ‘So, are you ready for your close-up?’ Gaby asked with equanimity, filming with her steady cam.
Shelly narrowed her eyes. ‘Gaby Conran. How aptly you are named. Have you lost all your self-respect?’
Gaby shrugged and glanced around. ‘I guess it’s around here somewhere . . . probably under something.’
‘Why did you really squeal on Kit? And let the rebels know about Matilda’s value as a hostage? Not to mention luring Pandora out here?’
‘To make things more pathetic and desperate, of course,’ Gaby said, with a glazed expression of smug self-righteousness. ‘There is only so much interest audiences have in watching young, beautiful people with all their chances laid out in front of them – especially when they’re not taking them. It’s when their chances are all behind them that things get really riveting. When it’s Prawn Cocktails for Two at the Last Chance Saloon,’ she concluded, with calm and calculated cruelty. ‘TV is a piranha tank, Green, and I say that with the greatest affection. Oh, by the way, here’s your next instalment. £25,000.’ She took the thick wad of money out of her shoulder bag. ‘Just a little incentive to keep you camera-friendly,’ she said, moving towards Shelly for that close-up.
‘Put that camera down! . . . Unless you’re heavily insured and have a death wish! Thanks to you, Kit and Matty are now chained to some radiator somewhere eating rats and trying to gnaw their own feet off!’ Shelly snatched the proffered money. ‘I’m looking on this as early release from my contract – time off for good behaviour.’
Gaby seized her shoulder. ‘Unless you cooperate with me, I will have no choice but to use the footage taken of you in the limo. On that first day. With hidden cameras. It makes for very . . . juicy viewing.’
While Shelly absorbed this appalling revelation, it was Silent Mike who became indignant. So indignant that he stepped out from behind the cameraman, removed his headphones, opened his mouth and actually uttered words for the first time, and in a lovely, lilting Irish accent. ‘But . . . but what about your woman’s contract? No filmin’ on the bog or when havin’ sex, you said.’
‘Well, they weren’t having sex exactly. Kit was just dining at the Y, darling.’
No-longer-silent Mike downed his boom and unplugged the battery. ‘I went along with Towtruck plantin’ the dead dog at the dive site in the hope of lurin’ a reef shark . . . And you spikin’ Shelly’s meal with chilli so she’d throw up . . . And us stealin’ Kinkade’s clothes on the island . . . And you pretendin’ to save Shelly from Towtruck trying to get off with her so she’d trust you. And all those other wee pranks . . .’ They all looked on in amazement as the unprepossessing little guy stuttered his confession. ‘But I never, ever agreed to makin’ no porn movie. What would me mammy think? You know what? Coups, cyclones, no feckin’ beer in the bar . . . you can stick your job right up yer hole.’
‘I think I preferred it when you didn’t speak, you poisoned dwarf.’ Gaby then pointed at her cameraman. ‘Come on, shit-for-brains. You can operate that boom thingy, can’t you?’ she ordered, revealing the extent of her technical expertise.
Towtruck shook his head with relish. ‘No can do. Union rules. I’m afraid the Show Must Go Off! Think I’ll go whack one off and get a cat-nap,’ Towtruck announced wth a yawn, before shadowing his newly loquacious soundman down the beach.
Shelly, who’d finally relocated her vocal cords, now emitted one long, startled, hollow howl. ‘You filmed us secretly? In the limousine? Oh God. Towtruck’s right. This isn’t a documentary. This is porn.’
‘Yes. And that’s what makes good television,’ Gaby announced, with grim enjoyment, as she kept right on filming.
‘No. This makes good television.’ And so saying, in a surge of anger, Shelly scrambled on to the stage and dashed Towtruck’s camera to the ground.
Dead bodies, devastated villages, distraught fathers – while none of these had moved Gaby Conran, her mouth now twisted into an agonized howl. ‘No!!’
Dominic had chosen this selfsame moment to make his grand entrance in the part of New and Improved Boyfriend. He was showered and shaved, his Calvin Klein aftershave set to Stun, his tight trousers – ‘French grape-smugglers’ Kit called them – leaving nothing to the imagination. This was a man definitely ready for his close-up . . . Open-mouthed with shock at seeing Shelly smash the camera, the entertainment officer’s interest in her deflated faster than a poolside lilo at the end of summer vacation. ‘You broke ze camera?’ he thundered. The man seemed to have undergone a precipitous mood plunge. ‘Ziz is my big moment! You sink I want to teach zese fat, ugly hags, zese vieilles peaux in ze pool forever?’ He jabbed a finger like a bayonet in Shelly’s face. ‘Ziz is my chance to get noticed, internationally!’
What Shelly had never noticed was the man’s dental-drill voice – as relentless as it was painful. And it suddenly irked her. She found herself missing Kit’s honeyed twang. ‘So this whole time you’ve just been seducing me to get your face on the telly?’ she asked, confounded.
‘Mon dieu! I don’t seduce women! I am French. Women, zey just fall at my feet.’
‘What? Drunk, are they?’
French charm, Shelly realized, is like mayonnaise: you definitely need something else to go with it. So Kit had been right about Dominic after all. Actually, he’d been right about a whole lot of things.
‘Oh, go and drink your bidet water, noodle boy.’
‘You are not going to turn Dominic down,’ Gaby growled. ‘You will not wreck my dénoue-fucking-ment. I’ve hand-picked him! He’s the end to my story!’ She took off her grimy spectacles and squinted at Shelly while she frantically cleaned the lenses on her shirt-tail. ‘Dominic is that rarest of creatures – a man with no faults!’ Shelly watched Dominic’s face glow with pleasure. He tossed his head in a glory of self-congratulation.
‘Um, but I think that’s a fault right there; thinking you don’t have any,’ Shelly retorted. At least Kit knew he was profoundly flawed, which made him pretty much perfect in her eyes. ‘You know what a woman really wants? A man who’s perfect enough to understand why she isn’t.’
‘I need a happy fucking ending, goddamn it!’ Gaby’s cold eyes made neat, surgical incisions into her subject. She catapulted onto the stage. ‘And you are going to give it to me!’ She almost wrenched Shelly’s arm out of its socket. ‘Dominic is the French antidote to that arrogant Yank bastard, Kinkade. Dominic represents the civilized European culture. Kinkade epitomizes all Americans – with his head so firmly planted in the ground!’
Kit might have his head in the ground, Shelly realized with a surge of pain, but she worshipped the ground his head was in. She felt sick to her stomach. She looked at herself in the mirror behind the bar. She had that jaundiced, ill look that meant she had either just eaten a bad oyster, was coming down with the flu, or was truly, madly, deeply in love. ‘What happened to the sisterhood, Gaby? What happened to us girls sticking together? The pathetic thing about you is that you’ve turned into the very type of ruthless, arrogant Alpha male you hate.’
As Gaby frantically tried to resurrect her camera, Shelly bolted towards her bungalow to pack. The ground seemed to billow beneath her feet like a waterbed, the shapes of buildings slipping and sliding. Despite the relief of sunlight and oxygen after that day in the sweltering bunker, Shelly, sprinting past the pool, felt as bleak as Wuthering Heights, colder than Mrs Danvers.
What Shelly had thought was the roar of the surf turned into the sound of armoured trucks and police vehicles barrelling up the beach road. The resort, usually a favoured beauty spot with its fishing port and sandy coves, was becoming incongruously crowded with mortars, howitzers and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. In the once fragrant tree grove there now skulked two camouflaged lorries with radar equipment. Shelly was so distracted that she bumped smack bang into Pandora’s hostage negotiators, returning from their resort reconnoitre.
‘Hostage negotiators?’ Shelly faked a warm smile. ‘Wow! How exciting!’
Their suspicious eyes darted around her like buzzing flies. ‘Although my first thought is – poor old kidnappers! Have you met Pandora’s daughter? Well, believe me, that kid’ll question them into submission in no time by the sound of it. Who will live the longest? God, the Easter Bunny or Father Christmas?. . . Does the Statue of Liberty wear knickers? . . . Those rebels will be staggerin’ down the mountain in a few hours begging you to take the hostages back. Bloody hell, they’ll pay you! They’ll probably even throw in a few complimentary rum punches. “Quick! Before the kid asks me one more time where roads end!”’
The two men didn’t smile exactly, but they stood at ease. One of them even went so far as to remove his suit jacket, revealing a swastika tattoo.
‘And that awful hubby of hers,’ Shelly persisted. ‘No wonder Pandora instructed you to offer the rebels $500,000 to hand over the little girl, and more to keep Kit.’
‘Keep, ja, or even better, kill,’ said the heftier of the two, in an Afrikaner accent that smacked of buffalo hunting and biltong. ‘Cheaper than divorce.’ He winked at her, but it was a humourless wink, full of warning.
‘Ja, till bladdy death them do part,’ jeered the other, a half-chewed cigar lopsiding his face.
Leaving Pandora wasn’t grounds for divorce – apparently, it was grounds for murder.
Reality splashed like cold water. Amidst the sinister speculations swimming in her head, Shelly was only sure of one thing. She had to get to Kit before they did. But how? Once more that classical music degree was proving itself so damn useful. And even if she did make it to the rebel headquarters ahead of the hostage negotiators, what then? Pandora’s money couldn’t buy her love, but it would certainly put her in a better bargaining position. . . .
The Differences Between the Sexes: Humour
Men maintain women can’t tell jokes.
Women maintain this is possibly because we marry them.
19. Mobilization
Vacationing these days mourns more early deaths than stunt- doubling, bull-fighting and space travel. Yes! Do come and holiday in the French Colonies! Give morticians more employment!
This is what went through Shelly’s mind as she entered her room and locked the door, only to discover, as she turned, that something was moving in the shadows. A primitive dread electrified her nerves, her skin prickling and crawling as though invisible creatures were creeping over her flesh. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, the sensation that she was being watched intensified. Shelly fumbled quickly through her knicker drawer for Coco’s gun. Violence was out of character for Shelly, but necessity and urgency had mutated her anger into pure purpose. Suppressing thoughts that this was the way serial killers got started, she cocked and aimed the gun. Not only did Shelly not have a licence to kill, she didn’t even have a learner’s permit, but the gun proved persuasive enough for her assailant to come out of hiding.
‘Merde! I wondered what ’appened to zat gun.’ Shelly snapped open the blinds to reveal Coco getting up from her crouching position beside the bed. She extended her hand. ‘I will take zat.’
