The Queen of New Beginnings (7 page)

If this particular newspaper was to be believed, Alice knew the exact whereabouts of a dangerously vindictive man who, according to Stacey Cook, was in urgent need of medical help. “To have done what he did, he’s clearly sick in the head,” she was reported as saying. “If Barry and I weren’t suffering to the extent we are, we’d pity him.”

Clayton was not going to be beaten. Well, no more beaten than he already was. If food was required, then he would go in search of it.

For his intrepid expedition had helped himself to a selection of outdoor clothing from the room off the kitchen—boots, thick socks, a full-length green raincoat that had several bulky and heavy layers to it, and a hat with a wide brim so large a family of four could take shelter beneath it. He looked and felt ridiculous. Everything was too big for him; Glen’s friend had to be some kind of colossus. He had seen stuff like this advertised in the back of magazines but never thought people actually wore it. Funny what people got up to in the country. But at least there wasn’t a chance of anyone recognizing him in this get-up. He didn’t recognize himself, come to that.

He had been walking for what felt like several days, but was in actual fact only three quarters of an hour, and still there was no sign of any shops. Had that wretched girl Alice deliberately lied to him? Were the shops further away than she’d made out?

She hadn’t lied about how dreadful the weather could be, that much he knew. It had rained solidly all day. He’d been tempted to go online and arrange for a supermarket to deliver the things he needed, but nearly a week of being cooped up and cabin fever had kicked in. He needed a change of scene. It was a simple choice between venturing out into the great unknown and going stir crazy. Knowing his luck, if he did try ordering anything online, given the remoteness of where he was staying, the chances of his order arriving would be slim. So tramping the wilderness it was. Because the sharp pointy end of the stick was, deny a man the essential sustenance of his existence—bread, milk, eggs, bacon, sausages, coffee, wine—and who knew what kind of a monster he might turn into?

He’d also acquired a fixation for peanut butter. He hadn’t eaten it for years but suddenly it was all he could think of. Peanut butter on hot buttered toast. Peanut butter on hot buttered crumpets. Smooth peanut butter. Crunchy peanut butter. Organic peanut butter. Peanut butter with every known noxious additive and deadly preservative added to it. He didn’t care how it came, so long as he could get his hands on a jar to satisfy his craving.

As a young child he used to eat masses of it, usually in front of the television on a Sunday evening whilst waiting for his hair to dry before going to bed. His mother had been a belt, buckle and braces kind of mother, the sort who believed he would catch pneumonia if he went to bed with so much as a single strand of hair that was damp. He had been eight years old when he’d finally convinced her that he didn’t need to take a spare pair of underpants to school with him every day. She had claimed she was only trying to save him the shame of embarrassing himself in front of his friends if he had what she coyly referred to as a “little accident.” Never mind that the humiliation of his peers discovering the underpants in his bag one day and chucking them from the window of the school bus damn near killed him.

When
Joking Aside
took off and he and Bazza were regularly pitching up at award ceremonies, Clayton’s mother was constantly on the phone warning him of the perils of not having an extra pair of trousers to hand for such a special occasion. “What if you trip on the way and rip your trousers? What if you spill a drink over yourself? There’ll be all those cameras. Everyone will
see
. What will they
think
of you?” She had never fully accepted that he had outgrown the worst of his childhood clumsiness. He had been a hopelessly uncoordinated child, incapable of catching or kicking a ball, but a world-class athlete in tripping over his own shadow.

God only knew how his mother would have coped with the shame of the last few weeks. In contrast, he knew exactly how his father would have handled it. He would have been tight-lipped and assumed his normal position of regarding his only son as the oddity he’d always believed him to be. Death had at least spared them both the ignominy of having to face the neighbours.

He stomped through a puddle and hoped he wasn’t making the mistake of reliving his childhood to avoid the here and now. He had never been in favour of staring up his backside in search of an answer to the meaning of life. His life in particular. He had done many futile things in his time, but esoteric journeys of navel gazing weren’t about to be added to the list. He’d had enough of that with Stacey.

In the last year of their relationship she had taken to sitting up in bed preaching to him from the latest book of life-enhancing flim-flam she was currently swallowing whole. “You need to hug and touch more,” she had informed him one night.

“I tried that earlier and you said you weren’t interested.”

“That was sex, Clayton. I’m talking about embracing your inner child and inviting others to touch that child.”

“Whoa! What the hell are you reading?
The Paedophile’s Getting to Know You Handbook?
”

“That’s so typical of you,” she’d said, slapping the book shut and slamming it down on the bedside table. “You purposely misunderstand things so you don’t have to admit you need to change. Why do you always have to be so aggressively anal? Would it kill you to consider there’s another way to be? That hugging a stranger might just make you less of a stranger to yourself?”

It was all part of the litany of You-know-what’s-wrong-with-you-don’t-you? Would hugging people he didn’t know have saved his career or his relationship with Stacey? Was that what Lucky Bazza was so good at? And when, he wanted to know, had it become a crime not to want to be hugged and kissed by a total stranger?

It seemed to Clayton that an ever increasing number of people were obsessed with change. Why couldn’t they accept that not everyone needed to change the way they were, that maybe they were even happy with the status quo? Could it be that the Staceys of this world were only capable of being happy when changing others to suit their needs? It also meant they were doing a canny job in avoiding holding up the mirror to themselves.

He felt his mobile vibrating in his jeans pocket and after fumbling under the layers of his coat for it, Caller ID told him it was Glen. About time too!

“Sorry I didn’t get back to you yesterday, Clay,” Glen said. “I had wall-to-wall meetings then a dinner to attend in the evening. I’m just on my way back to the office after a long lunch with the new Head of Light Entertainment at the Beeb. I’m having a busy week.” Clayton could hear voices and the rumble of traffic in the background. It was music to his ears: civilization! “So how’s it going?” Glen asked.

“Glad you could find the time to ask,” Clayton replied. “Two words: bloody and awful.”

“That’s three.”

“Your perspicacity astounds me at times.”

“I’ve told you before, if it’s love you’re after, there are plenty of women out there only a credit card away.”

“Something you’d know all about.”

“Is that the sound of righteous self-pity I hear?”

“Hey, if I don’t feel sorry for myself, who will?” Clayton then recounted his discovery, regarding Alice pretending to be Katya.

He’d just got as far as saying how she’d admitted that she’d grown up at Cuckoo House when Glen said, “Yes, I got a call from the cleaning agency this morning. I must say, that girl sounds nearly as off-kilter as you. But what did I say about keeping a low profile? There was to be no engaging in any conversation. You were to keep your head down and avoid trouble. Which bit of my advice did you not understand?”

“I tried but believe me, she was a force of nature. She would sweep in and just start yapping on and on.”

“Do you think she knows who you are?”

Never mind the girl, Clayton suddenly wanted to shout at his agent. What about me, forced now to scavenge for food in the pouring rain? Was this what his life had come to? “She’d latched onto the idea that I was hiding here,” he said, attempting to get a grip on his exasperation, “but from the way she was interrogating me, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know who I am. She even tried to blackmail me.”

“
What
?”

“She said she would continue to shop and clean for me if I told her who I really was.”

“I don’t like the sound of that. You be careful. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea of mine to pack you off up there. Have you seen a newspaper recently?”

“I’ve seen zilch. I’m not even looking at the stuff online. Why do you ask?”

“You’re back in a few of the red tops today. Stacey and Bazza are whoring themselves around the neighbourhood again. I heard they’re making another television appearance in the coming week.”

“You’d think they’d be bored of it by now. Or at least the public would be. What do you think they’re trying to gain by it?”

“Sympathy? Higher Profile? You tell me.”

“At this rate I’ll never be able to come home.”

“We need an angle, Clay. Something with which to fight back. Got any ideas?”

“I could try committing suicide.”

“Mmm…you know, that might just work.”

“I was joking!”

“Oh, right. Yes. Of course. Ha, ha, funny one.”

“Yeah, bloody hilarious.”

“It’s good you haven’t lost your sense of humour. No chance that you’ve had a creative urge and written anything, have you?”

“St. Glen the Patron Saint of the Bottom Line. You’re all heart, Glen.”

“It’s just a thought. After all, what else have you got to do up there?”

After the sound of a siren blaring in Clayton’s ear had passed, he said, “Is there any point in me writing anything ever again? Who’s going to want it?”

“Have faith, my old mate. You write something good, I’ll find a home for it. That’s a promise. Did I tell you I’ve just taken on a new client?”

“Wow! Like I’m really interested to hear that.”

“He reminds me of you. In the old days when you used to produce some of the best stuff ever written.”

“Go to hell!”

“Be nice to me, Clayton.”

“Just remind me how you’re able to drive around in an Aston Martin?”

“I work my butt off for you. Always have. Always will.”

“What’s ten per cent of an Aston Martin these days? Because that’s how nice I am to you.”

“Sorry to burst that balloon of self-sacrifice but it’s not enough for the amount of grief you put me through. Now what do you want me to tell that woman at the cleaning agency? Do you want someone else? Although if you do, you’ll have to wait a while as apparently she’s—”

“Short-staffed,” Clayton cut in impatiently. “Yes, I know all about that. For now I’ll manage on my own.”

“It’ll probably be safer that way. Just don’t make a mess of the house. Meanwhile, stay out of trouble.”

Clayton rang off, shoved his mobile into one of the many pockets the coat had and trudged on in the rain.

Stay out of trouble
.

Glen made it sound as if he deliberately went around looking for trouble. It was the other way around. Trouble came looking for him. It always had.

He thought of his agent’s new client and idly wondered what kind of money was involved. The thing about the industry was that no matter how much an individual was paid to come up with a hit show, there was always someone else coming up on the rails with a potentially bigger and better hit show and being paid more for it. It was what made it the bitchy, ego-crushing world it was. Sometimes he thought he was well out of it. Other times he thought he’d sell his own liver and kidneys to get back in the game.

Having slogged to the crest of a hill, he was now peering through the rain and misty gloom at a stretch of long and winding tarmac road; it was completely deserted, not a car or person in sight. It crossed his mind that he might be lost. He had assumed that if he kept walking in a straight line, he would sooner or later end up where he needed to be. Had he missed a vital turning? If he had, he’d probably done it when he was talking to Glen. What should he do? Continue on, or retrace his steps?

If he retraced his steps he might well find himself back at Cuckoo House, and what would he have achieved then? No eggs. No bacon. No peanut butter.

He had to have that peanut butter.

No matter what else, he was not going to return to Cuckoo House without a jar of peanut butter.

The answer was to press on and hope for the—

He froze.

Gunfire? What was this, bandit country? Another gunshot going off had him looking around for something to take cover behind. Then through the gloom, coming from the direction he’d just walked, he saw what was causing the noise: it was a car. Deliverance! It was the first car he had seen. No way was he going to let it pass.

He stepped into the middle of the road as the car slowly approached. It was an ancient Morris Minor, with…with no one at the wheel. How as that possible? Had he slipped through a portal into a weirdly surreal world where cars drove themselves? Whatever was driving it, the car appeared to have no intention of stopping. He held his ground. It was almost upon him when through the windscreen he saw a small, beaky face peering over the steering wheel. A hand was waving furiously at him to get out of the way. Clayton held his breath and stayed where he was. He wanted that jar of peanut butter and nothing on this earth was going to stop him.

Just inches from the toes of his borrowed boots, the car backfired to a stop. The engine wheezed, spluttered, rattled and then died. His heart banging with fear and relief inside his chest, Clayton swallowed. He went round to the driver’s side of the car. The small, beaky face belonged to a hobgoblin wearing a plastic rain-hood. He hadn’t seen a rain-hood in years. Not since the days when his mother had worn one to protect her hair when she came home from the hairdressers. Come to think of it, when was the last time he’d seen a hobgoblin?

On closer inspection the hobgoblin was in actual fact a wizened old woman. She was staring implacably at him through the steamed up side window. The ferocious hostility in her face made him take a step back. “I seem to have lost my way,” he said loudly. “Can you help me?”

She made no attempt to wind down the window.

“I’m looking for the shops,” he shouted. “Can. You. Help. Me?”