Suckers

'I'll have a bath if you'll have a bath with me.'

The suggestion amused him. 'And we have to talk about Multiglom in the morning,' I said.

'Yes, yes,' he said, and went into the bathroom to start the hot water. I went into the bedroom to get undressed. I put on Lulu's pink towelling bathrobe and wiped my makeup off with some of her cleansing lotion.

'You look better without make-up,' Duncan said as I went back into the living room. Men always said that; they liked the natural look, though they didn't seem to care if it was achieved by unnatural means. I leaned over to kiss the back of his neck. 'Your lips are chilly,' he said. 'Come round here.' He sat me down on his lap and slipped his hands beneath the bathrobe to massage my skin. I was starting to feel deliriously warm and cosy when the entryphone made a noise like a sick sheep.

'Bugger,' he said.

'Don't answer.'

'Have to,' he said, tipping me off his lap. He went out into the hallway and said something into the intercom.

Lulu's reply came over loud and clear. 'Hi, it's me.'

My spirits plummeted. It was all over. Through the doorway I saw Duncan's face light up, then it was suddenly transformed into a mask of guilt, like a schoolboy caught smoking behind the bike sheds. 'Shit, shit, shit,' he said, racing back to me. 'Quickly, into the bathroom.'

'What?' I couldn't believe I was hearing this.

'You know what she'll think if she catches you here. She's possessive as hell.'

'This is ridiculous, like a French farce. Can't we sit down and discuss it like civilized people?'

'Please,' he said, flapping his arms. 'I'll make it up to you, Dora, I promise.'

There was another buzz from the entryphone. Duncan threw himself back at the intercom, pressed the button so we could both hear her saying, 'Oh Lord, I left my keys behind. Duncan, let me in.'

Duncan went wild. He fled into the bedroom and came back with my clothes all in a bunch, and pressed them into my arms.

I said, 'I don't know if…'

He turned very stern and forceful. I wished he was like that more often — I would have done anything he'd wanted. 'Now listen, your hot water heater's bust, someone spilled red wine all over you at Ruth's, and you've come round to take a bath. Now get in there right now.'

I slouched into the bathroom just as he was releasing the lock on the front door. I heard him say, 'Hey Lu, come on up,' and then I shut myself in. I dropped the clothes and kicked them as they fell. The black chiffon scarf somehow floated loose and drifted into the bath. I left it swirling in the water. How dared he treat me like this? I picked up a can of shaving foam and squirted FUCK across the steamed-up mirror.

The bath was a large Victorian one with legs, and barely a quarter full, and the water was scalding hot, so I started to run the cold as well. I paced up and down, tweezed my eyebrows, clipped my nails, cleaned out my ears with cotton buds. The everyday bathroom activities helped me to simmer down. I was half expecting Lulu to knock on the door at any second and demand to know what I was doing, but I couldn't hear anything over the noise of the running water. I wondered if they were arguing about me, so I opened the bathroom door a crack, just so I could hear what they were saying.

They weren't saying anything. I opened the door a bit wider and peeped out. Duncan was sitting in his favourite spot on the sofa. Lulu had her back to me, and she was sitting on his lap, exactly where I'd been before she'd shown up. She had her arms around him, and they were kissing, really getting into it. I couldn't believe it. This was too much. Duncan had swapped one girl for another — as though we were different makes of car or something. He was acting as though nothing had changed, everything was back to normal.

Only it wasn't. Not quite. There was something off-kilter about the scene, only I couldn't work out what it was, not until I felt a draught and started shivering again, more violently this time. I drew Lulu's pink bathrobe more tightly around my chest, and it was then I realized what was wrong. Lulu always wore pink. Pink or red, everybody knew that. But she wasn't wearing pink now. She was wearing black.

I stood there, blinking, trying to absorb this information. It was significant, I knew that much, but I was so tired and drunk I couldn't even begin to work out why. I don't know how long I was standing there. It might have been a few seconds, or it might have been a couple of centuries. Then I must have made a noise. Either that, or it was the cloud of steam leaking out of the bathroom which made her look up. No, look up is wrong; she didn't so much turn her head as whip it round.

The black didn't make her look sallow, as she'd always feared, but she seemed paler than usual, powdery white, and the contrast with her skin made her mouth appear luscious and red. At first I thought it was lipstick. Then she licked her lips, and I saw she'd had her teeth done, but the dentist had made a hash of it; some of them were too sharp. There was a small red bead clinging to her chin, and even from where I was standing I could see minute flecks of white powder suspended on the curved surface. I stared very hard, but I had a feeling I was concentrating on all the wrong things.

'Dora,' she said. 'How nice.'

She rose and came towards me. She'd always been tall — five nine, bumped up to five ten or eleven for professional purposes — but I'd never felt her towering over me quite as much as she did now. Her feet were touching the ground, but she wasn't walking so much as gliding, I couldn't actually see her taking the steps, no matter how hard I stared. She was getting nearer, and I realized I'd been standing there for ages, staring, when I should have been doing something else, such as making a run for the front door, or shutting myself in the bathroom. But I was no longer sure where the bathroom was. I'd been thinking it was right behind me, but somehow I must have been moving away from it without I realizing because now I was standing right in the middle of the living-room floor, staring into the big mirror on the opposite wall. I couldn't see Lulu there, but I could see myself. At least I assumed that's who it was, because it didn't look like me at all; this unfamiliar-looking person had the expression of a rabbit gazing into the headlights of an oncoming truck.

I might have stared for ever if the ancient springs of the sofa hadn't creaked. I tore my gaze away from the mirror and saw Duncan was still where she'd left him. I said his name once or twice, but my voice was very tiny and there was no reply. He was sitting in an unnaturally stiff position, clutching his brandy glass. The collar and most of the upper part of his shirt were a deep red. Tie-dyed, I thought. It crossed my mind that he might be dead.

I thought, Oh fuck.

It wasn't fair. I wanted to wind the tape back and start again. I'd always been so careful and now here I was, half-naked and defenceless, no garlic, no crucifix, no nothing. Lulu opened and closed her mouth like a guppy — it should have been comical, but it wasn't. She was making a strange whistling noise through her teeth. She hadn't yet grown accustomed to them, and the thought filled me with disproportionate relief, as though it made any difference from where I was standing. Then she said, in a conversational tone, 'Honestly, Dora. You can't leave him alone for one minute, can you?'

'I was just having a bath,' I said with an embarrassed giggle. 'My Ascot broke.' Even to me it sounded pathetic.

She threw back her head and laughed too, but throatily, not like her normal little-girl giggling. Now she was closer, she didn't look quite so good. The make-up was thick, but not thick enough to conceal the state of her skin, which was dry and flaky, dull and lifeless. She hadn't been taking those early nights, after all.