Bad Heir Day Read online

  The emphatic lack of any hint of food provoked a raging hunger in Anna’s stomach. But the disproportionately vast antique station clock on the wall was to measure out a further lonely, unrefreshed half hour before footsteps could be heard on the stairs. An extremely thin woman with white-blonde hair in a straight, short bob, vast black sunglasses, and a white waffle bathrobe wafted through the doorway into the kitchen.

  “Cassandra Knight,” announced the apparition, sticking out a hand so thin it was practically transparent and as chill as if it had just come out of the freezer. Anna gazed at the bathrobe with admiration. So this was what real writers wore to work in.

  She felt instantly disadvantaged by her own hot and sticky palm and not being able to see Cassandra’s eyes properly. She could sense them moving behind the sunglasses, cold and invisible as fish at the bottom of a pond. The lenses were as impenetrable as they were inexplicable. Perhaps, Anna concluded, they were intended to combat the glare of Cassandra’s computer screen.

  “Yes, I recognise you from your book jacket photographs.” Anna smiled, hoping to ingratiate herself. Panic flared in her stomach when, instead of looking flattered, Cassandra frowned.

  “Which one?” she demanded imperiously.

  Anna’s mind whirled. She sensed something was at stake. One false move and all could be lost. “Er, the one on Impossible Lust,” she hedged, plumping for the photograph which, when flicking through the volumes in the bookshop, had struck her as the softest lit, most touched up, and generally most flattering. She had guessed right. Cassandra preened.

  “Yes, Tony—Snowdon—did quite a reasonable job on that one,” Cassandra purred. “And he did say I was one of the most challenging people he had ever photographed. Let’s get down to business, shall we?” she suddenly barked. “I haven’t got all day. You want this job, I take it?”

  Anna swallowed. “I’d love to work for you. It would be a wonderful training for any writer…” She stopped as Cassandra held up a hand.

  “I am not offering a writing course,” she snapped. “In my letter to you I said I wanted a general assistant. To assist me, er, generally.”

  “Of course,” Anna echoed. “A general assistant.”

  “Precisely,” said Cassandra, inhaling so hard on her cigarette her eyes watered. “An, um, general assistant is exactly what I want. I take it you’re quite versatile?” Two plumes of smoke came flying out of her nostrils.

  Anna jerked her head up and down eagerly. “Absolutely. I can type, research…even write,” she added anxiously.

  Cassandra nodded curtly.

  “How are you with children?” she demanded.

  “Children?” Anna vaguely recalled from the potted biographies on the book jackets that Cassandra had a son. Anyone working at close quarters with her would of course have to get along with her family. “Oh, fine,” she stammered, recalling the occasional bout of unenjoyable teenage baby-sitting.

  “Good,” said Cassandra, grinding her cigarette out. “The job involves quite a lot of contact with Zak. He’s, um, between nannies at the moment. You—ahem, I mean, whoever did the job—would have to help with the school run, his supper, that sort of thing.”

  “I see,” said Anna, the dimmer switch of her enthusiasm turning down a jot. “But most of the job would be helping you, wouldn’t it?”

  Either Cassandra was nodding ferociously, Anna thought, or she was tossing that highly flammable-looking platinum bob out of the way as she ignited another Marlboro. “Absolutely,” Cassandra confirmed. “You’d be helping me an enormous amount.” She paused and pressed her lips together as the smoke poured out of her nostrils. “But of course if you feel it’s not quite right for you…”

  “Oh, no, I didn’t mean…” stammered Anna, panicking. “I’m absolutely happy to do whatever…” One child, after all, surely couldn’t be too much trouble.

  “Good,” said Cassandra, satisfied. She stared at her hands, pushing an amethyst the size of a door handle slowly round her forefinger. “Well, you seem all right to me. You can start tomorrow, if you like. The sooner the better as far as I’m concerned.”

  Anna felt a huge grin split her face. She was just about to stammer her thanks when Cassandra said, “We haven’t discussed pay.” She then named a weekly sum so ludicrously low that Anna gasped.

  “I can’t possibly live on that.”

  “You won’t have to. The job is, of course, live-in.”

  Of course, thought Anna. That explained the awful money. Living in would be much cheaper for Cassandra. But surely it was unusual for assistants to live in? Nannies, of course, did it all the time. But she wasn’t a nanny.

  “I didn’t realise.” She spoke slowly, but Anna’s heart started to slam against her chest like a moth trying to reach a lamp behind a windowpane.

  “Well, obviously it’s live-in,” snapped Cassandra. “Children are a full-time job, you know. As is writing, of course,” she added hurriedly. “You never know when the muse will strike.”

  ***

  Half an hour later, Anna found herself standing, confused, beside the ready-packed salads in Ken High Street Marks and Spencer. She could not concentrate. Her ears were still ringing from Cassandra’s furious reaction to being told she would think about the job.

  “Most people would give anything to live for free in a house like this,” Cassandra had snapped. “I would, for a start,” she added acidly.

  “Of course, it’s the most wonderful house and most fantastic opportunity…” Anna had stammered.

  “So what’s stopping you?” Anna could feel Cassandra’s eyes, turning from cold fish to lasers, blazing through the sunglasses.

  “I need to discuss it with my, um, boyfriend,” Anna had faltered.

  “Your boyfriend? Can’t you make your own decisions? Christ, if I asked my husband what he thought I should do with my life, I’d be permanently making full English breakfasts in between giving him blow jobs.”

  But Anna, albeit shakily, stood her ground. She would let Cassandra know in the morning. She was not sure she wanted to move out of Seb’s so soon. And anyway, there was always the possibility—admittedly remote—that the prospect of her leaving would make him finally lay his cards on the table as far as their relationship was concerned.

  She lunged for a bag of Mixed Herb salad, grabbed a box of baby potatoes, and headed finally towards the checkout.

  ***

  “Where the hell have you been?” Seb demanded as she staggered through the door at precisely the same time that the bulging plastic bags, strained beyond endurance, finally burst their flimsy moorings and spilled their contents all over the hall.

  “For my interview, of course,” Anna said. “I got the job,” she added, scrabbling around on the floor after several mushrooms making good their escape.

  “Did you get any wine?”

  “What? Oh, yes, Chardonnay,” Anna told him abstractedly. “But they want me to live in,” she added, returning to the matter at hand.

  “What?” said Seb in outraged tones.

  “I know,” Anna said, relief surging through her system. “I mean,” she added, “they do live in W8, just off Ken Church Street, and their house is enormous, but…oh,” Anna gasped, gazing rapturously at Seb. “I’m so glad. I thought you wouldn’t care…”

  “Of course I care. Chardonnays so naff, for Christ’s sake. Why the hell couldn’t you have got Chablis?”

  Anna stared at Seb in disbelief. Had he not understood a word she had said? “So you don’t care one way or the other?”

  “Of course I care,” Seb snarled, furiously thrusting a long-fingered hand through his unbrushed hair. “I don’t want Mummy to think she’s at a bachelorette party in a Peckham wine bar, do I?”

  “Did you hear what I just said to you?” gasped Anna. “I’ve been offered a live-in job. Do you want me to stay here with you o
r not?”

  “We’ll talk about it later,” said Seb. “There’s too much to do just now.” He disappeared into the sitting room, switched on the television, and put his feet up on the sofa arm. Whatever needed doing, someone else was evidently going to do it. Can’t imagine who that might be, thought Anna, gathering the bags up and heading crossly for the kitchen.

  ***

  There was something about the way Seb’s mother rushed at him as if he were the first day of the Harvey Nicks sale that confirmed Anna’s worst fears. Lady Lavenham was, Anna realised, a full-on, fully-paid-up Son Worshipper.

  Anna could recognise the breed from a cruising height of thirty-three thousand feet. She had, after all, encountered them before. The boyfriend’s mother before last had been one; a Welsh Italian who had made almost nightly phone calls and who had insisted on driving up from Cardiff to college to comfort Roberto practically every time he sneezed.

  “Call me Diana,” Seb’s mother barked to Anna on arrival. The coda, “If you dare,” hung unspoken in the air of the hallway, air that had suddenly thickened with expensive-smelling scent.

  Anna had been expecting trouble. But she hadn’t expected it to look like this. Diana was about as far removed from the tweedy battleaxe Anna had been anticipating as Cameron Diaz was from Margaret Rutherford. It wasn’t just that Anna felt wrong-footed by Seb’s mother. She felt wrong-haired, wrong-makeupped, wrong-dressed, and most of all wrong-shoed. Diana Lavenham had the type of long, thin, patrician feet that even looked graceful in wellies. A fully-paid-up Fulham blonde, she had thick wedges of expensive hair that shone brilliantly in the light of the hall chandelier, as did the single, polished platinum ring hanging loosely on one long, tanned hand. She had expensive skin too, opaque, glowing, and virtually unlined from a rich diet of face cream. Seb, who had suddenly shot into the kitchen, now emerged sporting an apron, a tea towel over his shoulder, and an air of cheerful culinary professionalism. “Anna, will you take Mummy into the sitting room while I get on with supper?”

  “Darling, you’re so clever,” Diana purred at her son as she followed Anna down the hallway. “Are you sure its not too much trouble for you?”

  “No trouble at all, Mummy, honestly.”

  That much was true, at least, Anna fumed silently.

  Her mouth set rigidly into a smile, Diana regarded Anna with narrowed eyes as they sat at opposite ends of the leather sofa. The silence roared in Anna’s nervous ears.

  “Tell me about yourself,” Diana said creamily. “Basty tells me you want to be a writer. I’d love to see some of your work.”

  “Basty?” echoed Anna, squirming at the thought of an unsympathetic stranger knowing such an intimate thing. Who the hell was Basty? Damn Seb for telling them, whoever they were.

  “Sebastian?” said Diana in the bright voice of one trying to communicate with an idiot. “My son?” She blinked repeatedly, her mouth turned up at the corners. “I call him that because I can’t bear the thought of anyone calling him Seb. Ghastly. Makes him sound like an estate agent.” As opposed to an estate owner, I suppose, Anna thought.

  Seb appeared. “Almost there with dinner,” he said, obviously lying. Anna wondered if he had even managed to find his way into the packets of salmon fillets. Heaven knew what he thought the carton of ready-made hollandaise was. Custard, probably.

  “I’ll come and have a look, shall I?” She rose to her feet, for once grateful for the chance to slave over a hot stove. Anything to escape from this woman’s icy, interrogative glare.

  Following Anna’s intervention, dinner was soon served. Throughout the meal, Diana chatted tinklingly yet pointedly to Seb about people Anna didn’t know. “Yes, darling, they’ve just bought a house in what they call up-and-coming Acton but honestly, I ask you. Acton? I mean, where is Acton? What is Acton? Not even on the A–Z, is it?”

  Anna opened her mouth. Here, at last, was something she could contribute to the discussion. “It is supposed to be getting slightly smarter, I believe. I have a friend who lives there.”

  “Oh really?” Diana had still not looked at her once since they sat down at table. She did not look at her now. “And where do you live, Anna?”

  Anna watched Diana stab a baby potato with her fork. Surely Seb had told her they lived together? She shrank into silence and waited for him to take the initiative. It was up to him to explain their cohabiting arrangements to his mother. Who must, even if she didn’t know, at least suspect it.

  But the silence remained unbroken. Looking from Anna’s flushed face to Seb’s suddenly grey one, Diana raised a faintly amused eyebrow.

  “Kensington,” Seb burst out suddenly. “Anna lives in Kensington. Just off Ken Church Street, actually. With a writer. Anna’s her assistant.”

  Diana looked coolly at Anna. Was it Anna’s imagination, or did those narrow blue eyes hold a triumphal glitter? Diana smiled. “How fascinating.”

  ***

  “How could you?” Anna screeched at Seb after Diana, who had lingered as long as she possibly could in the obvious hope that Anna would leave first, had finally descended to her Dorchester-bound Dial-A-Cab.

  Seb shrugged, unrepentant. “Well, what was I supposed to tell her? It’s not as if we’re married, is it? Anyway, I’ve done you a favour. She owns the place, after all. If I told her you lived here, she’d probably start charging you rent.”

  “Thanks a million,” Anna snapped, having searched in vain for some appropriately reductive retort. She tried to console herself with the thought that even Oscar Wilde would have been stumped with Seb; all the bons mots in the world, after all, failed to get Bosie to behave himself.

  “But it’s probably time you moved out anyway,” Seb muttered, not meeting her eye. Anna suddenly felt sick. Here it was then. It had finally come, the moment she had always been expecting, yet never really believed would happen. She was being given her marching orders. Like an employer dismissing an unsatisfactory servant, Seb had sacked her without batting an eyelid. There had been a steeliness to his tone which suggested attempts to plead for clemency would be useless. Not that she felt like pleading. She felt like taking the untouched hollandaise sauce and pouring it all over him. Especially when the mysterious person who refused to leave answerphone messages flickered once more into her mind.

  Retreating to the bathroom, Anna slammed the door and set the water thundering from the taps to disguise the sobbing that suddenly overwhelmed her.

  It was the humiliation. The helplessness. The sight of her naked body in the bath. The roll of flesh seemed bigger than ever; her stomach rose above the waterline like an island. An island. Anna sighed, wondering what Jamie was doing now, and suppressed the thought of what she could be doing with him, were she there too. Why the hell had she told him about Seb? What had there, after all, been to tell?

  She lay in the bath, hot and shiny with misery and sausage pink with fury. Her anger mixed with the steam rising from the foam-free water; the final insult was that Seb had, at some point during the day, used up the last of the Floris Syringa her mother had given her for her birthday. Her mother would never meet Seb now. But it was unlikely either would have relished the occasion.

  One good thing, Anna tried to persuade herself, was that if she wasn’t going to be the wife of a sewage millionaire, at least she could take the job with Cassandra. This prospect, though it lacked the platinum charge card, sports coupe, and season ticket to Champneys that went with the former career option, at least offered a large and luxurious house in one of fashionable Kensington’s most fashionable streets. Not to mention an apprenticeship with a successful writer. She’d show Seb. And his stuck-up horse of a mother. Anna permitted herself a delicious few minutes imagining their faces when she hit the bestseller lists.

  If the job was still available, that was. Anna glanced at the watch on top of her pile of clothes on the loo seat. Just past midnight. Too late to ring Cassan
dra now. Please God she hadn’t found someone else. She’d ring her first thing in the morning. In the meantime, Anna decided, as the silent sobs overtook her once more, she’d just sit in the bath and weep.

  Chapter Seven

  Usually, Cassandra never saw first thing in the morning. She usually hit it around fourth or fifth thing, but this particular antemeridian was different. She’d had to get up ridiculously early to do an interview. In the normal course of events, Cassandra loved nothing better than talking endlessly about herself to journalists—friendly OK! and Hello! ones in particular. But there was nothing friendly about the sharp-faced, skinny woman sitting opposite her on the cowskin sofa with a tape recorder, a notebook, and a sceptical twist to her lips. Her eyes intermittently darted round the room, focusing in on, Cassandra was cringingly certain, every surface left respectively undusted, bashed, and unwiped by Lil as she had made her morning rounds. That was the trouble with minimalism; there was nowhere to run when it came to hiding dirt.

  Lil herself had already been grilled; as Cassandra had clumped down the thin, stripped wood stairs to greet her inquisitor, she had overheard the cleaner being questioned about her mistress’s working hours and daily routine. Although not a religious woman, Cassandra had sent a heartfelt prayer heavenwards to whichever benevolent deity had allowed her to appear on the scene before Lil had got on to the breakfast gin and tonics.

  A curse on her publishers though, thought Cassandra, grimacing. The deal that had eventually been hammered out between her agent and the increasingly irascible people who commissioned her books had been that, the continued non-appearance of Cassandra’s expected new manuscript notwithstanding, the planned publicity for the novel should continue to go ahead. Hence the presence of this spiky girl in her sitting room.