Bad Heir Day (2 page)

“Er, I’m Anna. Anna Farrier.”

“Orlando Gossett,” boomed the check suit. “How do you do. And
what
do you do?”

“I, um, nothing much at the moment, as it happens,” Anna stammered. As an expression of faint contempt seeped into the protruding blue eyes of her neighbour, she added, flustered, “Trying to write.”

“Write, eh?” boomed Orlando. “Well, you’re in good company. You see that dark-haired girl?” He pointed a fat red finger in the direction of the skinny brunette. “That’s Brie de Benham. Works at the
Daily Telegraph
.
Real rising star, they say. Does all their big interviews. And that chap with the white jacket on she’s talking to?”

Anna nodded.

“Gawain St. George. Works in Washington for the
Sunday Times
.
One to watch, apparently.”

“Yes, I know Gawain,” Anna said. “I know Brie too, as it happens. We all did the same university English course.”

“
Did
you now? Well, in that case I wouldn’t be wasting time talking to
me
.
I’d be over there, trying to screw some work out of them. Ever heard of
networking
?”
Orlando Gossett raised his eyebrows and gave her a patronising smile.

Natural politeness—or rank cowardice—stopped Anna pointing out that she’d had no desire to talk to him in the first place. It was with great difficulty she resisted the temptation to dash his glass of champagne into his scarlet jowls.

“Actually,” she muttered, “the kind of writing I want to do isn’t really journalism. More novel-writing, really. Books.”

“Oh well, you’d better try and talk to Fustian Fisch. Chap with the very bright green jacket on? Got the most colossal book deal—well into six figures, I believe—before he’d even done his Finals. Something about a mass-murdering Welsh tree surgeon who’s obsessed with Beethoven, apparently. Film rights went for a fortune…”

Anna glanced at Fustian Fisch. He was busily helping himself to three glasses from the replenished tray of the gangly waiter and looked extremely arrogant.
A six-figure book deal
.
Anna sighed inwardly. So far, she had failed even to get a sentence published. And it wasn’t for want of trying; before finally abandoning her attempts to write a novel she’d sent off screeds of manuscript to every magazine, agent, and publisher in the
Writers and Artists Yearbook
.
The response hadn’t even been the sound of one hand clapping—more one letterbox flapping as the rejections trickled slowly back. Still, at least the diary she had recently started was going well. Writing for a readership of one, it seemed, was easier than trying to hit the spot for thousands.

“…now Lavenham, over there, he’s got the whole thing completely sussed.” Orlando Gossett was gesturing at a group at the other side of the room. “Father’s made a fortune out of the sewage business—been made a life peer as well—and the son will be rolling in it for the rest of his life. You could s-s-say,” Gossett chortled, “that Lavenham won’t have to give a
shit
about anything, in fact. Haw haw
haw
.”

Anna shrank back as Gossett opened his surprisingly vast red mouth and roared, jerking his fat, tightly clad little body about in paroxysms of mirth for the best part of the following minute. “Quite eligible too,” he gasped, wiping his streaming eyes
with a chequered handkerchief, “although,” he added in a conspiratorial whisper, “they do say his girlfriend’s
quite
extraordinary.”

“Do they?” Anna said, not at all sure what he meant. She reeled slightly. Orlando’s breath was pure alcohol. One flick of a lighter and…

“Yah. Put it this way—Lavenham always says she screws like an animal.”

“But that’s rather flattering, isn’t it?”

“Not really.” Gossett paused, then nudged her. “Like a
dead dog
,
he says. Haw haw
haw
.”

Anna did not smile. “Have you met her?” she asked coldly.

“Not exactly, not in the flesh, no.”

“You have, actually.”

“Sorry?” Orlando looked blank.

“Met her. You’re meeting her, in fact. Sebastian Lavenham is my boyfriend.”

There was an exploding sound as Orlando Gossett choked on what Anna calculated to be his seventh glass of champagne. “
Christ
.
Oh my goodness. Oh
fuck
.
I really
didn’t
mean…I’m
sure
he was joking…”

“Yes.” Part of her refused to believe Seb could ever be so cruel. Part of her, however, feared the worst. “Excuse me, I really must go and powder my nose.” At least she had an excuse to get away from him now.

“Well, you won’t be alone,” Gossett remarked cheerily. “Half of Kensington’s chatting to Charlie in there. They say there’s more snow in Strawberry St. Felix’s bag than in the whole of St. Moritz.”

Seb having completely disappeared, Anna decided to pass some of what promised to be a very long evening exploring the castle.

As she wandered from the thronging hall, ringing with the depressing sound of everyone but her having a good time, Anna wondered where she and Seb would be sleeping that night. And whether it would be the same place. The traumas of the journey were beginning to catch up with her. She longed for a lie-down.

The passage she was walking down was very dark, of a blackness so intense it almost felt solid. Anna inhaled the deep, cool, mildewed smell of centuries and wondered what it would be like to live somewhere so ancient. To have a past of burnished oak refectory tables, tapestries and mullions; Anna, whose own past was rather more semi-detached, G-plan, and Trimphones, was fascinated by the air of age and decay.

The darkness was now absolute. Anna, proceeding steadily onwards, stuck her hands out in front of her, terrified of being impaled on something sharp—perhaps another of the intimidating halberds she had noticed festooning the hall. The silence was ringing in its intensity—the noise from the hall having long receded. Yet, straining her ears, Anna thought she heard the faint sound of a door closing. A bolt of fear shot through her as she realised the castle might be haunted. That, of course, was the downside of old places. Say what you like about semis, Anna thought, you rarely saw headless green ladies in them. Unless you’d knocked over one of Mum’s china shepherdesses. On seeing a dim light in the distance, Anna felt weak with relief. Approaching, she saw that the faint glimmer was a large, diamond-paned oriel window, the deep recesses of which held two cushioned seats facing each other. She collapsed on one of them gratefully. A sense of calm ebbed slowly through her as she gazed out into the night.

Directly in front of her, picturesquely distorted through the ancient and tiny panes of glass, a full moon with a searchlight beam silvered the vast expanse of the loch. The water shimmered and wrinkled like liquid satin, edged with the thinnest of watery lace as it rippled peacefully up the pebbly shore. All was silence.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” said a voice beside her.

Anna leapt out of the seat and tried to scream, but found she could only manage a petrified croak. Yet even in her terror she couldn’t help noticing that the voice was less marrow-chilling and deathly than low and well-spoken and shot through with a warm thread of Scots. Anna opened her eyes. The moonlight shone on tumbling dark locks. A shock of hair, in every sense of the word.

“Terribly sorry,” gasped the diffident waiter. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Well, I dread to think what happens when you do,” Anna snapped, immediately regretting it. For some reason she didn’t want him to think she was a harridan. As he put a nervous hand over his mouth to stifle a rather forced-sounding cough, she noticed the signet ring that glinted on his finger. Anna stared at it, surprised. But then why shouldn’t a waiter wear a signet ring if he wanted? It was disturbing to realise that Seb’s values—that only the wealthy and well-born were allowed rings with coats of arms—were seeping through.

“My name’s Jamie Angus,” he told her, proffering his hand. It felt cool and reassuring over hers.

“Anna. Anna Farrier,” she mumbled, embarrassed both at how prosaic it sounded beside his own splendidly Caledonian affair and also at the waves of attraction thudding up her arm, down through her stomach, and straight into her gusset. I must be drunk, she thought wildly. Guiltily, even, until, suddenly, the memory of Seb’s hand on Strawberry’s naked back flashed into her mind. Slowly, reluctantly, she withdrew her hand from Jamie’s and, looking at him, smiled.

His wide, dark eyes, Anna noticed, were as far removed from Seb’s spiteful blue ones as soft malt was from a vodka martini.

“Did you come on your own?”

“I came with my boyfriend, actually.”
Damn
.
Why the hell
had she said that?

The warm light in Jamie’s eyes died away.

“Although,” Anna gabbled, desperate to limit the damage, “he seems slightly more interested in one of the other women guests.”

“Well, he must be mad,” Jamie said, with what could have been no more than usual politeness. Silence descended. In an abrupt change of tack, Jamie asked her if she’d ever visited Scotland at the exact same time she asked him if he’d worked here for long. “No,” was the mutual and simultaneous answer.

“Not exactly,” Jamie elaborated. “I’m just helping out.”

“I think it’s beautiful,” Anna said.

Another pause followed. Unwilling to risk banalities, Anna stared silently out of the window at the moonlit loch. The waves flexed tiny, tight muscles beneath the surface of the water, while the path of light lay sparkling above, leading to the distant horizon and the dawn. She stared hard at the stars glowing like Las Vegas in the blackness of the sky and tried to work out which of the constellations she could see.

“Is that a planet over there?” she ventured, pointing at a very bright star to the west. “It looks very bright. Is it Venus?”

“No. That’s the planet easyjet.” Jamie said it gently but sounded amused.

Anna reddened in the darkness as the star moved steadily through the sky, accompanied by a bright flashing light. Astronomy had never been her strength. Orion’s belt was about her level, and she wasn’t altogether certain of that. The one she was staring at seemed to have fewer notches than last time. Perhaps he’d been losing weight. Lucky old him.

“I’d better get back,” Jamie said. “The cake needs cutting. And I think the disco has started in the Great Hall.”

He led her back down the passage and gave her a swift, sweet, farewell peck on the cheek before propelling her through a door which, unexpectedly, opened directly into the cavernous, vaulted room, amidst whose friezes and flagstones the disco was indeed in full swing. Or swinger—a superannuated Ted with a thinning, greying quiff proudly presided over a console emblazoned with the words “Stornaway Wheels of Steel Mobile Disco.” As the cacophonous blare of “The Locomotion” filled the air, Anna’s heart sank in depressed recognition of the nuptial-attender’s ritual nightmare, The Wedding Disco From Hell.

She glanced around the scattered strobe-lit crowd for any sign of Seb. Or Strawberry. Neither was in evidence. Taking care to position herself as far as possible from Orlando Gossett, currently investigating the buffet at one end of the room, Anna headed for the bar and drowned her sorrows in getting to know a group of delicious White Russians. After a while, emboldened by their company, she tottered unsteadily towards the dance floor and sank gratefully into a chair at the edge. The flashing lights made her head spin, as did the jerking forms of about thirty men in morning suits leaping around as the dying strains of “Love Shack” were replaced by “Come on Eileen.” Roaring and foot-stomping floated through the speakers. When “Fever” succeeded “Mustang Sally,” Anna felt the first urge to laugh she had experienced all day. The sight of Orlando Gossett writhing around and assuring some blonde, horsy woman in an Alice band that she gave him Fever All Through The Night made Anna snort with suppressed mirth.

It was odd, Anna mused with the intensity of the inebriated, how people seemed happy to sacrifice all dignity in the face of really terrible music. Just what
was
it about “Hi Ho Silver Lining” that got couples leaping up from their tables? Why did “I Will Survive” prompt mass histrionic role-playing, or “YMCA” and “D.I.S.C.O.” have everyone waving their arms about like the compulsory morning workout at a Chinese ball-bearing factory? Most of all, why did the merest riff of Rolling Stones suddenly turn every man on the floor into Mick Jagger (in their dreams)? Even now, Orlando Gossett was prowling plumply around with one arm stuck straight out in front of him, rotating his wrist and imploring the horse-faced blonde to give him, give him, give him the honky tonk blues.

The music changed, as it was inevitable it would do, to
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
,
and, as the heaving crowd on the dance floor shifted, Anna suddenly spotted her long-absent consort Doing the Time Warp Again. She watched, unsure whether the nauseous feeling in her stomach was because he was doing it a) at all, b) with a willowy, writhing someone bearing a striking resemblance to Brie de Benham, or c) because the effects of the White Russians were by now wearing off. Or possibly wearing on. Unable to reach a conclusion, or indeed anything else apart from the arm of the chair on which she kept a tight, stabilising grip, Anna watched their gyrating figures, oddly comforted by the fact that even the beautiful people looked ridiculous in the context of a really dreadful disco. It was a great leveller. Quite literally, she thought, as Orlando Gossett flicked to the right just a little bit too enthusiastically and went crashing heavily down on his well-upholstered bottom.

“
Desperate
,
isn’t it?” Anna had been too absorbed in watching the floorshow to notice that someone had sat down next to her. “Still, it beats L.A., I suppose,” added the voice. It belonged, Anna saw, to an extremely pretty girl.

“It does?” Anna stared at her neighbour’s glossy tan and radiant teeth. “But I thought L.A. was full of beautiful people.”