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.