Dora stared down again at the familiar stranger’s face. Jack Rees was a local legend, a heroic tribal warrior woven into the fabric of Fairbeach history. She scanned the article – he’d been in his sixties. The report said it was his heart.
A small pain formed in her chest which she recognised as grief. It took her by surprise, though she knew the pain wasn’t personal, but an abstract, unexpected sense of loss for the passing of someone of worth.
The pain, mixed with her earlier unease, made her feel faint. She stood very, very still, aware of Sheila’s voice like a distant echo over the roar of the wind. The sitting room suddenly seemed as if it were a bright patchwork quilt of colours and light, all sewn together by Sheila’s insistent running-stitch voice.
Sheila rearranged the tray on a coffee table and picked up the newspaper, glancing over the same front page, talking all the time. She stepped closer, into sharp focus, every last stitch of her best Sunday dress and her best Sunday face caught in a spotlight’s glare in Dora’s mind. Sheila, Calvin and Lillian Bliss were just too much for anyone on a quiet Sunday morning. She suddenly felt sick.
‘… I used to see him in town sometimes in that big car of his.’ Sheila leant forward to pick up her reading glasses, her tone cruelly derisive. ‘Coronary it says here, too much fancy living, if you ask me, “found dead on Saturday morning in his home in Parkway by his housekeeper.” The rest is all stuff about how much he will be missed …’ Sheila flicked the glasses off the bridge of her nose and dropped the paper back onto the coffee table. ‘Well, I won’t miss him. They’re all the same if you ask me. Out for what they can get, all of them.’ She sniffed again. ‘Housekeeper, I ask you –’
Dora smiled, trying not to let Sheila infuriate her; it was an uphill struggle.
Sheila peered at her. ‘What are you looking at?’
Dora forced another smile. ‘I don’t feel very well,’ she said quickly, suddenly dizzy. ‘Would you mind if I gave lunch a miss today?’
Sheila grimaced. ‘You might have rung and said something. Do you want me to call a taxi? You’ve gone really white.’
Dora shook her head. ‘No, no. I think the fresh air might do me good.’
Sheila fetched her coat and shoes, lips pressed tight together with a mixture of concern and pique. From the kitchen came the hot, greasy smells of lunch cooking. It was all Dora could do to stop herself from retching. Slipping on her coat, she smiled unsteadily.
‘I’ll ring you later when I get home.’
Sheila nodded, shaking Dora into her coat as if she were a child. ‘Hormones,’ she observed sagely, ‘that’s what I put it down to, it’s your age. I should go home and have a nice rest if I were you, put your feet up. Are you sure you don’t want me to ring you a cab?’
Dora shook her head and let herself out.
Outside spring had painted everything with great daubs of sunlight and impressionist daffodils. Dora smiled and pulled her coat tighter. Whatever it was, the pain had gone. She cut through the garages, back towards the town centre.
‘Would-you-like-to-tell-us-a-little-bit-about-your background?’ Safely back at her flat, Dora read aloud, typing in the words as she recited them. Relieved to be excused the ritual of Sheila’s Sunday lunch, she took a bite out of a sandwich, and scanned the rest of the questions scheduled for Catiana’s interview. Sunday afternoon, away from Sheila’s pink paper napkins, and everywhere was blessedly quiet. Dora stretched, lifted her glasses to pinch the bridge of her nose, and then reread Calvin’s fax.
The Fenland Arts production team certainly hadn’t stretched themselves, but then again maybe Calvin had warned them off. Dora stared up at the ceiling, screwing up her nose as she tried to get a fix on Catiana Moran’s fictitious origins.
‘I did think about being a nun,’ she typed slowly, searching for a punchline. ‘But …’
‘… But I look awful in black. And those house rules –’ Catiana Moran rolled her eyes heavenwards. On the TV screen, she ran her tongue around her beautifully painted mouth.
Dora shifted Oscar off her lap and lit another cigarette before turning up the volume on her ageing TV. Lillian Bliss was good – just give her the words and she delivered them with faultless comic timing. Dora glanced down at the draft copy of the script, following the lines she had written with her finger.
On screen, Rodney Grey from ‘Fenland Arts Tonight’, reclining in his black leather chair, laughed. His amused expression couldn’t quite hide his disdain. It was obvious he thought the interview was beneath him.
‘So when did you start writing seriously? Most people would like to know whether you’re writing from personal experience. In your latest book …’
On the set, Lillian was waiting for her next cue. The interviewer, still talking, touched the microphone in his ear and smiled wolfishly. For some reason the gesture and his expression made Dora shiver. She sensed something was happening but wasn’t sure what it was.
Rodney Grey leaned forward onto his elbows, turning a pen slowly between his long fingers.
‘Why don’t you tell us the truth. Miss Moran? I mean, this stuff you churn out is hardly great literature, is it? It’s upmarket porn. Cheap titillation for the masses –’
Dora tensed; that wasn’t in the script. Lillian pouted and stared at him blankly. He hadn’t fed her the cue line. She was completely lost.
The interviewer’s smile hardened. ‘Well?’ He slapped the front of the novel on the little table between them. ‘How can you justify this kind of cheap smut?’
Dora leapt off the sofa. ‘What are you doing?’ she hissed impotently at the TV. Oscar took the hint and scrambled for cover.
Lillian Bliss gnawed at her lip – there seemed to be an agonising, bottomless silence. After a few seconds, Lillian leant forward, eyes glittering, and very, very slowly the camera followed.
‘You horrible stuck-up little bastard. I knew you didn’t like me the minute I laid eyes on you,’ she snapped with suprising venom. ‘I wasn’t taken in by all that smarming round me in the dressing room – if I spoke with a plum in my mouth it would be different, wouldn’t it? Have you ever read one of the Catiana Moran books? Just because they’re dirty you think they can’t be any good. The latest one’s brilliant –’
Dora stared open-mouthed at the TV. She was stunned. She couldn’t have said it better herself.
Lillian Bliss took a deep breath. ‘I got into writing because I wanted to, and they say write about what you know – so I did.’ Lillian reached across the carefully arranged coffee table and plucked the novel out of Grey’s hands. ‘I’ve got this horrible poky little flat in Fairbeach, above the shoe shop in Gunners Terrace …’
Dora felt her colour draining. ‘No,’ she said to the girl on camera, as it moved in for a close-up. Lillian’s face filled the screen, her bottle-blue eyes locked fast on Rodney Grey.
‘You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve had to do to make ends meet. You’re all the same, you lot. There was this bloke, just like you, he was. Got a degree, talked all la-di-da. I’ll think of his name in a minute. He liked me to –’
‘No,’ Dora repeated more forcefully, barely able to watch.
Rodney Grey’s face was a picture. He glanced at the clipboard on his lap and, with remarkable presence of mind, began to speak.
‘So, Catiana, why don’t you tell us all about this new promotion tour of yours?’ he asked quickly, reverting to the script, stretching the words in front of Lillian like a trip wire.