Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend Page 17

  At the end of the derelict row was one little building with a light on.

  ‘Hello, Memento,’ said Cal, pushing open the door into a roomful of deafening music.

  The room was lit by a fluorescent strip buzzing overhead. There were about six tables, the white plastic garden type, with cheap plastic mats over them and mismatched chairs. Four were occupied by large groups of people of all colours eating, shouting and drinking beer. It didn’t look like anywhere I’d ever been before.

  ‘Hello,’ said the large lady behind the counter. ‘You’ve brought friends.’ She looked me up and down with a judge-mental air which I found a bit insulting considering she was about four-foot square. ‘But still no girl, eh, Cal?’

  Cal rolled his eyes. ‘Stop worrying about me, Memento, you’re not my mum.’

  ‘Usual?’

  ‘Yup, two . . .’ He turned to me. ‘Are you sure you won’t eat?’

  Actually, the place smelled fantastic. It was making me hungry. Not quite the Michelin-starred places I normally toyed over salad in. But no. I was too sad.

  ‘No, thanks,’ I said. Memento raised her eyebrows then looked more closely at me.

  ‘Hey . . . aren’t you that girl in the paper?’

  ‘She’s been getting that all day,’ said Cal smoothly. Eck pulled out a chair for me. I sat down on it, trying not to notice that one of its plastic legs looked like it was bending over.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, wearily. ‘Yes, I am.’

  Memento raised her eyebrows at Cal. ‘Well, she looks like she needs to eat.’

  Frankly I felt like I needed a full sauna, steam and spa day, possibly followed by a colonic irrigation to undo the damage done by all those sausage sandwiches, but I wasn’t in the mood for arguing and threw my hands up in submission. Ten seconds later three steaming plates of curry were set in front of us. They smelled absolutely wonderful.

  ‘You don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to,’ said Eck, gently.

  ‘Yes she does,’ said Cal. ‘Look at the girl. She’s practically in shock. Get it down you and you’ll feel a lot better.’

  ‘Has anyone phoned the house?’ I asked weakly. Without thinking, I forked a load of the curry into my mouth. It was delicious.

  Cal’s brow furrowed. ‘Not phoned as such,’ he said.

  ‘Actually, they’re camped outside,’ said Eck. ‘Waving lots of money for exclusives.’

  ‘Really?’ I briefly perked up. ‘How much money?’

  ‘Ignore them,’ said Cal. ‘They’re vultures.’

  ‘They’re not,’ I said. ‘I got papped once. They shout at you all the time and all the flashbulbs go off and it’s brilliant. ’

  ‘Well, those days have gone, sweetheart,’ said Cal. ‘Eat your goat.’

  ‘Eat my what?’

  ‘Don’t you think . . .’ said Eck, trailing off. He wasn’t eating, but playing with his food, pushing it round his plate. Weirdly, my appetite was voracious. As if my body was telling me not to give up. I ate the whole thing and when I looked up, Eck was talking. Cal was looking at me as if he couldn’t believe how much I’d just stuffed my face.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s possible you’ll get the money back?’ said Eck. ‘After all, it can’t all have gone, can it? Surely they’ll just sell the house and sort it out then you’ll be OK? Plus your dad must have had tons stashed away in offshore accounts and things that they’ll never find.’

  I thought back to what Leonard had said.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘He was kind of betting his own money. Which means we owe the banks something like a billion squillion dollars or something. Nothing you’d get back from the house.’ I couldn’t quite believe it.

  ‘So you have to go and talk to your stepmother,’ said Eck. ‘She’ll know.’

  ‘So why hasn’t she called me?’ I said. ‘Why won’t she pick up the phone?’

  I noticed that while Eck was being quietly organised and reasonable and trying to help me out, Cal was getting betting tips from the guys at the next table who were talking about three-legged greyhounds and smoking indoors.

  ‘I don’t even know where she is,’ I said. ‘Does it say in the paper?’

  ‘It says . . .’ and he took it out of his jacket. Oh God, had he been hauling it around all day to show to people? ‘It is not known whether Mrs Chesterton is close to her stepdaughter, whose tabloid antics must often have embarrassed her.’

  ‘Dancing on tabletops is not “tabloid antics”,’ I said, finishing my food. ‘It’s youthful exuberance. Everyone knows that.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ said Eck.

  ‘We haven’t always got on,’ I admitted, ‘that’s for sure. But I’m sure she wouldn’t hide my dad’s money from me.’

  ‘Money does strange things to people,’ mused Eck.

  ‘Not having any money is much, much stranger, believe me,’ I said.

  ‘Neh, you should just say “Sod it”,’ said Cal, feeding Eck’s curry to a mangy-looking dog who’d wandered in. ‘Forget all about it. It’ll just piss you off. Why don’t you just get on with life?’

  ‘Because my life sucks,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes, I forgot how hellish it was for you, living with us,’ he said, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘You could do it, Sophie,’ said Eck. ‘We could help. Show those bastards what for.’

  ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence,’ I said. The bill came. It was a sum of money that wouldn’t have covered one cocktail in the old days, but it still made me a little anxious. ‘Us against all the lawyers and bankers in the world who have cash and actual rightness on their side.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Eck. ‘I’ll get the bill.’ Then he winked at me. ‘You can pay me back later.’

  I couldn’t help it; my confidence perked up a little.

  Back at the flat, Eck put on the kettle, but I was knackered; I’d barely slept in forty-eight hours.

  ‘No, thanks,’ I said. I glanced round at the kitchen. The floor was covered in cereal. I raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Did Wolverine get into the Cheerios again?’ Eck asked Cal in an accusing voice.

  ‘Looks like it,’ said Cal.

  ‘I’ll do it in the morning,’ I said. I guessed I was still on cleaning duty, because if anyone tried to up my rent this month I was completely stuffed. ‘Goodnight, everyone.’ I turned round and headed for bed.

  As I reached the door of my bedroom, I heard footsteps behind me. It was Cal.

  ‘Hey,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘I dunno . . . just thought you might want some company. ’

  Actually, a night of good but completely emotionless sex was exactly what I didn’t need right now. I could do with a cuddle, and being cherished. I could do with a long heart-to-heart with a close friend. I could do with sitting and having dinner with my dad. I could do with a lot of things, but tonight, pointless screwing wasn’t one of them.

  ‘I’m fine, thanks,’ I said. My mind flashed briefly to Eck. He would never give such a rough come-on. He’d be respectful. A gentleman.

  ‘Oh,’ said Cal. ‘It’s just after the other night . . .’

  ‘I thought we weren’t going to mention the other night?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, right. OK.’ He paused. ‘You seemed to like it at the time.’

  That made me cross for some reason. ‘Look,’ I said. ‘OK, my life is not in a great place right now. But you should know that I’m actually a very cool and sorted person. When things aren’t completely in the shitter. So I don’t need pity shags, or you’re-very-convenient shags or whatever you think this might be, OK?’

  ‘I never thought that.’

  ‘You’re ordering me up like pizza!’

  ‘I’m just standing in the hallway.’

  ‘Yes, your hallway! How convenient. Why don’t you spend the evening doing something useful like . . . I don’t know. Washing your duvet cover? It’s this thing that’s on your duvet and, amazingly, it comes off! Then—’


  ‘OK, OK,’ he said, retreating. ‘Sheesh.’

  I watched his long body slouch off. For a moment I felt regret. Then, as if to remind me what a tomcat he was, I heard the front door slam, and watched him lope off out, somewhere into the dark grimy city, up the Old Kent Road.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘What about my diamonds?’

  ‘Covered by the insurance policy. Never left the house. They’ve gone too.’

  ‘Should I have stolen them?’

  ‘Probably,’ said Leonard ruefully. ‘Oh. I never said that.’

  I was scrubbing the skirting boards and talking to Leonard at the same time. I wasn’t making a particularly good job of either task.

  I’d been calling him everyday. I just didn’t believe there was nothing we could do. Well, there was, but it meant mounting an appeal and funding lawyers and, basically, we couldn’t win. My dad had bet all his money. And he’d lost. It hadn’t stopped Eck encouraging me, but throughout that long, dark winter, I just felt crappier every time the subject came up, as I boiled up noodles for the fourth time that week.

  I knew, at some point, I was going to have to go and find Gail. I was trying to put it off, like a smear test. But if there was anything left, anything at all, she’d know. Obviously I was putting it off because I didn’t want to see her. But also I was putting it off because she was the last ditch solution; the last chance saloon.

  So far, so not exactly jolly. Which explains why, when Philly called and left a message saying a new restaurant had opened in St James that did the most unbelievable sashimi and people were flying in from Japan to taste it, and you couldn’t get in there without donating a kidney and your firstborn and even then it took two years, and she was doing the PR, I was absolutely tempted beyond endurance. Though slightly embarrassed, obviously, that I could forgive the most horrible betrayal if there was very lightly battered tempura involved.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’ll stick it on expenses. You can fill us in on all the goss.’

  Which I suppose meant, tell us lots of miserable stories and we’ll buy you a nice lunch. Well, everyone has a price.

  Plus, Cal had gone off on some ludicrous international shag fest which meant that every morning there was a nine-foot blonde, or a short Amazonian pygmy, or a sloe-eyed beauty in the kitchen exclaiming over how pleasantly clean the teacups were. But Cal and my paths rarely crossed, he’d become nocturnal again.

  Eck and I, though, had taken to eating our breakfast together. It was just kind of nice to come downstairs and find that someone had made you a cup of coffee, not because they were being paid to do so, but because they liked to. I would have made Eck coffee too, but he grimaced once too often and said it was all right, he knew I was trying and that was enough but twenty-five was probably too late to learn how to make a decent cup of coffee so I should just wait till I got my money back and could afford to buy him Starbucks every day. I rather liked this idea of his; that one day in the future all would be well, and we would still be friends and get to go to Starbucks. I liked it a lot. Plus, Starbucks seemed an achievable goal when all my other goals - get back all my money, win a new fabulous boyfriend to annoy Philly and Carena with and get over the fact that all my previous friends and old life were actually a bit horrible - seemed a little tricky.

  Eck agreed that I should see the girls, and not just for the sashimi. That maybe my life was different now, but bitterness wasn’t going to help it. And I thought he was right about that.

  ‘OK,’ I said to Philly, and we planned for next Saturday. She booked the table, I just thought about the pickled carrots.

  I spotted Philly and Carena at the corner table, the best one in the room, and sidled my way over to them.

  ‘Ah, the prodigal daughter,’ said Philly, getting up and giving me a kiss.

  I chose to ignore her.

  ‘Now,’ said Philly once we’d seated ourselves. ‘You must have what you like, no expense spared.’

  A part of me wanted to order very little, to show I really didn’t give a toss, that I didn’t think this might be the last time I ever got to eat here. But then I thought, Well, sod that, and ordered so much - starting at the dim sum and moving up to, I think, fried horse - that the girls’ eyebrows moved further up their faces (well, Carena’s did; Philly had had a recent Botox top up).

  ‘Thanks,’ I said finally, once I’d got stuck in. ‘So how is everyone?’

  ‘Do you mean Rufus?’ said Carena quickly. ‘He’s fine.’

  Actually, I realised, I had been asking quite generally. Ever since the party, he hadn’t taken over my thoughts anything like as much.

  ‘Good,’ I said.

  ‘Everything’s great,’ jumped in Philly. ‘Preparations for the wedding of the season continue . . .’

  Carena shot Philly a look.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ Philly tailed off.

  I was stuck with a prawn tail half hanging out of my mouth.

  ‘The thing is,’ said Carena, putting on her sensitive voice. ‘I’ve been putting the guest list together, and I thought . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well,’ she looked at me.

  I took the prawn tail out of my mouth.

  ‘Sophie, I know we’re friends, but . . . I mean, under the circumstances. When we met, Rufus and I . . . it was as if, suddenly, true love had shown the way, and we had to follow our hearts, regardless of the consequences. When true love happens to you, you’ll see that’s right. Do you understand? ’

  I eyed her suspiciously. Not the Bolt of True Love That Excuses Everything again.

  ‘Anyway, I just feel that I don’t want the spotlight to fall on you . . . after all this terrible negative publicity, and, you know, the wedding is at the Dorchester, and it will be quite dressed up and I wouldn’t want you to feel lacking in any way. And, well, it’s not very nice to remind Rufus that technically he was seeing you when he and I were hit with a thunderbolt, and . . .’

  I put my chopsticks down. Bum. I mean, I was never in a million years going to go. But I had thought at least I’d be asked and be able to smugly decline. This implied that they thought I’d turn up wearing a wedding dress and pitch myself into the cake in a crying fit!

  ‘Here, have some more seaweed,’ said Carena, passing it over. ‘It’s very naughty, but so yummy.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  ‘We’ll send you the photos,’ said Carena, as if trying to cheer me up.

  ‘Who’s taking the photos?’ I couldn’t help asking.

  ‘Oh, we’re going for a top fashion photographer, not a snaps/wedding photographer type. They’re so naff.’

  ‘Hmm,’ I said. ‘What about Julius Mandinski?’

  ‘You think we’d get him?’ said Carena, eyes widening. ‘I mean, he’s so cutting edge . . .’

  ‘I’d have thought it would be just the thing,’ I said. ‘Maybe not,’ I added. ‘He’d probably cover you in dead fish or photograph you upside down on a rope or something.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Carena, which worried me a bit. It was a ‘Hmm I think I’d like to do that’. And I knew what usually happened when Carena wanted something.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Philly, getting a bossy look on. ‘Sophie, we’ve - I’ve - got a proposition for you.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘You know, there’s a lot of interest in you.’

  I looked around the table to see if there was anything else to eat.

  ‘Yeah, I do. They hang about my house trying to take pictures of me crying in my sweatpants.’

  ‘Did they get any?’ asked Carena.

  ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘Well,’ said Philly, dragging the focus back to her. ‘Why don’t you capitalise on it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’re the Poor Little Rich Girl! Society Darling fallen on hard times! Why aren’t you cleaning up?’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’