2000 - The Feng-Shui Junkie (33 page)

How can I hate her?

I am at the doorstep of the B & B, staring at the bell, unsure. Turning round again, I notice it is almost dark. I can’t decide. I turn round again to face the door. I push the door and surprisingly it opens. I hesitate.

Then I walk in. I pass the small office on the right, but the lady is not there; the sliding panel is shut. Quietly I ascend the stairs. The place is in darkness. Wiry television sounds spiral from a thin yellow strip of light at the bottom of one door. From another room reverberate the bass sounds of muffled voices. I go to the top of the house where Nicole’s is.

I knock.

There’s no sound. Before knocking again I put my ear to the door. There’s just the low murmur of the TV. Now I hear some movement inside. She’s probably in her en suite.

I delay a few minutes and listen. She’s all alone. Her father and stepmother resent her. Her favourite brother is in Amsterdam. She has no family. She’s never spoken to me about any other friends she might have. She’s just finished a four-year relationship with a man who abused her. She’s putting all her hopes in a man I know won’t stick with her.

After several minutes I raise my knuckles to the door once more. I am about to knock when suddenly I hear this giggling. There’s a man’s voice now. I stand for another minute listening, paralysed. Until I am sure there can be no doubt.

I steal away until I reach the bend in the landing where I pause to listen again. I can hear only the scraping noise of televisions and the muffled sound of voices.

I run down the stairs and out of the front door.

I
t’s eleven o’clock and I’m still in bed. I know this is going to be one day when I order the world to go shove it where light beacons do not fit.

I have an unexpected appearance in court scheduled for today. I’m cancelling. My Senior Counsel can go dance. I’ll ring in sick. More appropriately, perhaps, I’ll ring in mental.

Fact is, I’m due a break from work. It’s important, sporadically, to give one’s misery some good, quality time.

I knew I heard something.

I sit bolt upright in my bed.

There’s a noise in the hall.

“Jesus, Sylvana! You gave me a fright.”

She walks in carrying a large paper bag, her haughty face locked into fierce alliance with me against mankind.

I drop back down on the pillow like a stone.

“Keep your hair on, Julie. Here – look what I’ve brought you.”

She opens her paper bag beneath my jaw. She’s brought me some doughnuts and Danishes and coffee. She’s a dear. I plump up the pillows behind me, and she hands me a paper plate and shakes a Danish on to it, followed by some stray pecan nuts, and she passes me a cup of cool coffee and I start to guzzle and slurp – even before she’s made herself comfortable at the end of my bed and starts to guzzle and slurp herself.

She’s a sweetie. She could have got me almond Danishes, or the chocolate or the strawberry Danishes, but she didn’t. She could even have got me those disgusting raspberry muffins which remind me of the vile doughnuts they used to make (and probably still make in certain quarters) with that rasping crimson chemical ointment in the middle that smells like wart remover and tastes like varnish – and you’re supposed to believe it’s crushed straight from the juicy strawberry.

But no – she got me pecan plaits.

Stuff like that matters.

But why has she come, I wonder?

Gossip, I bet. She wants to hear if I’ve been stupid, and gone and contacted members of a prohibited list.

And the Danishes? The sweetener. The tongue loosener. This is the danger of Danish pastries: they leave you open to subtle forms of abuse.

“Julie,” she says at last, grimly. “We have a problem.”

I look up at her, my cheeks full of Danish junk.

“Ronan called me just now. He was inquiring about his car.”

“He’s neurotic about that Porsche.” I munch.

“He assumed you might have an idea what happened to it.”

“What a ridiculous assumption.”

Sylvana likes it when I’m like this.

“He told me he’s calling round to my place later. If his Porsche is not there he wants you to be there instead.”

“His penis substitute.”

“What will I tell him?”

“I’ll go home and sort it out.”

“Don’t go back there, Julie; I really don’t think you should see him.”

I grab a doughnut. When I glance at her to check if she thinks I’m being incredibly greedy, I find her frowning at the magnolia plant I bought yesterday.

She turns back to me. “What’s a plant doing on your dressing-table?”

“It’s supposed to make a woman more beautiful.”

“Oh, don’t tell me.”

“What?”

“
Feng Shui
.”

“Well, yes.”

“You’re turning into a
Feng Shui
hippie. All those candles you got as well. They’re not for a blackout at all, are they? I worry.”

“I happen to have a booklet on the subject handy.”

“You’ll end up like her if you’re not careful.”

“Like how?”

“She has a screw loose.”

“I don’t know.”

I turn towards the window. I sense her eyes latching on to me.

“Do you think otherwise, Julie?”

I can feel myself reddening. “Well…” I begin, sipping my coffee. “She’s not…exactly…a
bad
person in her own right…as such…”

I sip my coffee again.

“Do I still detect a note of sympathy for her case?”

“You do not.”

I start nibbling a second doughnut. I don’t want this conversation right now. Even if I am grateful to be in the middle of guzzling most of Sylvana’s breakfast.

“You just said ‘as such’.”

“I met her yesterday.”

She turns her head and smiles into the distance with mute forbearance, as if she’s wondering what I’ll tell her next.

“She called me,” I insist.

“And that makes it okay.”

“She just needed someone to talk to. She’s all messed up. She’s been badly hurt.”

“She’s a bitch, even if she’s a saint compared with him.”

“It’s not really her I blame.”

“Julie, you’re not well.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Anyway, I only wanted to find out…information.”

“You plan to go back to Ronan, don’t you?”

“Now what do
you
think?”

She says I must stick by my decision to embrace my new life and my new apartment and my new freedom. She advises me to do all the things I insisted Nicole should do. She forbids me to see either of them again. She says she’s more than happy to mediate for me, regarding the Porsche.

I have to get out of here.

I reach for my mobile and input for messages. Ronan has left one, at nine o’clock this morning, informing me that he is currently in a taxi on his way to the surgery. (Is he about to discover a new angle on
Chi
, at long last?) He says that this is simply ‘not acceptable’ because one, he’s going to be late for his patients and two, he already has a car and he would like to know what the hell I have done with it.

The poor boy is chauffeur-driven to work and he’s complaining.

There’s a message from Mother, left this morning an hour after Ronan’s. She’s commanding me to come home and sort out my husband who has suddenly returned from work in dangerously ‘Cyclopic’ form. And if I don’t come home now and bail her out, she threatens, I could be putting my own tropical marine fish in danger of liquefaction. She actually says that! She can be so droll.

I throw the bedclothes off me and jump on to the floor.

“Where are you going?” demands Sylvana.

“Home,” I reply.

“But why do you…?”

“Because I have nothing but the highest regard for tropical marine fish.”

“What do you mean?”

“Madeleine Albright wants to see me.”

W
hen I get home, Mother is in the kitchen manipulating sausages and rashers on the grill with a wooden spoon. She looks funny in her green apron and long light-blue dressing-gown and the huge pink furry Teletubby slippers I got her as a joke last Mother’s Day but one, not guessing she’d actually wear them.

“He’s inside,” she says, flipping the contents of the grill on to a plate.

“I guessed. How is he?”

“I bumped into him this morning,” she says. “He got up a little earlier because he had to take a taxi to work.”

“Did he say anything?”

“He muttered something all right. I wouldn’t swear to it, but it sounded strikingly like ‘good morning’.”

“So he’s still tormenting you.”

“He returned from work just now, for whatever reason. I passed him in the hall. He didn’t even look at me. He went straight into his bedroom and shut the door. I’m convinced it’s male hormones.”

It’s
Chi
, that’s what it is.

She puts the mixed grill down on the table in front of me.

“Mother, I’ve just had a huge breakfast with Sylvana.”

“What did you have?” she asks accusingly.

“Three Danish pastries and coffee.”

“Dear God, child, you’ve never lost your innocence. Sit down there, now, and eat some proper food.”

Grudgingly, I sit down and pick up my knife and fork.

“But what are you going to have?”

“Toast.”

“But you made this grill for yourself.”

“Motherhood, Julie, is all about sacrifice.”

Stony silence.

“What are you saying? That I should be a mother?”

“No, Julie. I’m saying that I am your mother and you haven’t been home in three days, and I know something’s wrong between you and Ronan. Now I realize that it’s none of my business and I don’t wish to pry.”

Translation: I do wish to pry because it is all of my business.

“Can we talk about it later?”

“I hope you’re not planning on separating.”

I cease sawing a rasher in half and look up at her amazed. “Why?”

“Because,” she eyes me with a strange glint, “I refuse to live here on my own with him.”

“We’re just having an argument. Sometimes it’s healthy to take a short break away from your spouse.”

“I wouldn’t blame you. Even Prudence dislikes him.”

“Prudence has extraordinary psychic powers,” I observe, rouge-ing at this mention of the cat.

What I will do is this: finish my breakfast and slip out and nab the cat box from under the tarpaulin and wrap it in a black bin bag and steal it out of the apartment for disposal, before she or Ronan gets wind of it, literally.

“Oh, by the way, Julie,” she says, as if reading my mind. “Where
is
Prudence? I haven’t seen him anywhere.”

“Oh…”

“Have you seen him?”

I have indeed seen Prudence. He’s out on the balcony, decomposing.

I jump up to shove a slice of bread in the toaster. Mother is difficult to lie to, mere inches away. Three metres’ distance and you stand a better chance.

“Don’t worry about the cat, Mother. I got rid of him.”

She’s nodding now. “How did you do it?”

“Mother, I got rid of the cat in the sense that I handed it back to its rightful owner.”

“You don’t really think I bought that story.”

“What story?”

“That Sylvana owns Prudence.”

“Of course she does.”

“Then how come she didn’t know the cat’s sex?”

“Can we just forget this conversation?”

I pour her more tea.

A second later Ronan walks in the door.

H
e leans against the wall, arms folded, glaring at me through eyes cold and scathing.

I know what this is about.

This is about
Chi
.

“So it’s come to this, Julie,” he says.

“Is something wrong?” I wonder, casually buttering some toast.

“You’re back early, Ronan,” chirps Mother. “Had you no dental appointments today?”

“I had my secretary cancel them.”

“Are you not feeling well?” she asks.

He turns to me: “Julie, let’s talk about this inside.”

“Don’t mind little old me,” says Mother, determined not to miss an opportunity like this.

“It’s not you, Gertrude, it’s just that – ”

“That’s okay, then,” she interrupts, pouring out a cup of tea. “Sit down, here’s a cup of tea.”

“No thanks.”

She gives it to me instead.

“Thank you, Mother.”

“You’re welcome, dear.”

“Julie, my Porsche is missing,” he snaps. “Where is it?”

“What makes you think I took it?”

“A few reasons.” He pauses, glancing at Mother. “For one thing, you obviously imagine I’ve been seeing another woman.”

“Ah,” I observe. “Motive.”

Mother chuckles to herself, stirring sugar into her tea. When Mother chuckles like this I read it as a warning signal. I do not want Ronan to see her dark side. There are dimensions to her personality he hasn’t even dreamt about.

“Ronan, your car has obviously been stolen.”

“Obviously.”

“I think you should call the police,” I cunningly add.

“Against my wife?”

I look up at him, feigning amazement. “You don’t seriously think I stole your car?”

“Confiscated, borrowed, hid…it’s all the same.”

“Only a non-lawyer could say something like that.”

“Well? Did you?”

“I most certainly did not steal your car.”

I
sold
it: important technical difference here.

Mother: “Ronan – don’t be at Julie. She’s had a hard week.”

Ronan makes this sound: not quite a snigger, not quite a sigh.

“I’d never have suspected her – but for one thing.”

“What?”

I am insanely curious, flipping through my microchip memory, certain that I did not carelessly deposit so much as one microbe of evidence connecting me to the evil deed.

“Yesterday I was rooting in the kitchen press,” he begins.

“As husbands tend to do,” is my little filler.

“And I discovered the stopper of our wine decanter.”

Christ, the wine decanter. Sometimes my mind works even more quickly than I give it credit for. Like brilliant lightning, I flash back at him, “
Really?
”

“It had bits of yellow paint stuck to it.”