Pip

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain

by William Heinemann 2003

Copyright © Freya North 2003

Afterword © Freya North 2012

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

‘The Tears of a Clown’. Words and Music by Stevie Wonder, William Robinson and Henry Cosby © 1967, Jobete Music Co, Inc./Black Bull Music, Inc., USA. Reproduced by permission of Black Bull Music Inc., Jobete Music Co., London WC2H 0QY. All rights Reserved

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Source ISBN: 9780007462254

Ebook Edition © June 2012 ISBN: 9780007462261

Version: 2017-11-28

FIRST EDITION

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

For Mum and Dad

We never know the love of our parents for us till we have become parents.

Now I know! Thank you.

‘Clowns work as well as aspirin, but twice as fast’

Groucho Marx

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Acknowledgements

Afterword

About the Author

Acclaim for Freya

Also by Freya North

About the Publisher

ONE

‘There’s really not that much difference between lap dancing and doing what I do,’ Pip McCabe proclaimed in a very matter-of-fact way over a robust but imaginative dinner that her uncle Django had spent the afternoon preparing in celebration of his three nieces’ weekend visit home to Derbyshire. Django spooned a large portion of something alarmingly beige on to his plate and appeared to contemplate it at length. In fact, he was considering his eldest niece’s words, wondering if he’d misheard, wondering if Pip had changed jobs; wondering, basically, what on earth he was going to do with her. Pip’s two younger sisters, Fen and Cat, sniggered into their semolina. Django had proudly called it ‘polenta’. But that was imaginative both with the truth and with the ingredients of the dish itself.

The three sisters tactfully referred to it as ‘polenta’ because they, too, were being imaginative with the truth as well as heedful of the chef’s sensitivities. Having been brought up single-handedly by their uncle Django, the McCabe girls were well accustomed to his eccentricities and loved him all the more because of them. He devoted the same imaginative attention to idiosyncratic detail in his dress sense as to his cooking. The sisters saw nothing untoward about pea soup with tuna and stilton, or rhubarb crumble with Jelly Babies instead of rhubarb. They had never gone hungry and their taste buds had developed a commendable and valuable robustness. Nor did they think it odd that a man in his late sixties should dress in the souvenirs of his colourful past. Today, as Django dolloped polenta on to his plate and enlivened it with a hearty slosh of Henderson’s Relish, he tucked his paisley cravat (he’d partied with the Kinks in the 1960s) into his cambric shirt, and loosened the enormous buckled belt he’d acquired at some free festival or other, currently holding together a pair of jeans Clint Eastwood would have coveted for a Spaghetti Western.

‘Philippa,’ he said, chewing thoughtfully, ‘I implore you to elaborate.’

‘Not much difference at all, really, between lap dancing and my line of work,’ Pip mused whilst masticating. ‘Same attention to make-up, same use and abuse of one’s body. Strutting one’s stuff for money. Having often ghastly punters to deal with. Always being gawped at. I’m pretty much a painted lady, too – quite literally.’

Her family regarded her. Everyone chewed. They all thought to themselves that they were sure polenta was meant to melt in the mouth, not glue the hinges of the jaw together. If Jamie Oliver was to be believed. It tasted good, though, and surely that was the point.

‘It’s a new take on polenta,’ Django reasoned out loud. ‘A polenta for the Millennium.’ Privately they each wondered how long he could credit (or blame) his experiments in the kitchen on the Millennium. As his jaw worked energetically, his mind turned to the vagaries of his niece’s career.

‘The main difference between my work and lap dancing,’ said Pip, holding her fork aloft for good measure, ‘is the working hours. Because, of course, I tend to work days and not nights.’

The McCabes observed with awe how the polenta on Pip’s fork defied both gravity and her expressive hand movements to adhere with such determination.

‘Surely the main difference,’ Django said, sipping sherry from a teacup because he had used the sherry glasses earlier to measure olive oil and Tabasco, ‘is that you wear substantially more clothes when you perform.’

Django, Fen and Cat were momentarily unnerved by the fact that Pip’s confirmation was not immediate.

‘Yes,’ she responded at length, ‘and no.’

‘No?’ Fen asked.

‘No?’ Cat echoed but with a raised tone.

‘No!’ Django boomed as an order, not a question.

‘I’ve modified my motley,’ Pip shrugged. ‘Somewhat skimpier – it’s spring, after all.’

‘God, I wonder whether to move back,’ Cat said, with an audible lump in her throat, as the sisters journeyed by train away from rural Derbyshire and Django, back down to their lives in London.

‘Listen, it’s still very early days for you,’ said Fen, thinking that actually Cat’s split with her odious boyfriend hadn’t come a moment too soon. ‘Why don’t you see how you feel after the summer? After all, it’s been a long-held ambition for you to follow the Tour de France as a journalist – give it your all.’

‘God,’ Cat sighed. Her dream-come-true was now more like a nightmare-in-waiting, such was the low ebb of her self-esteem.

Pip regarded her youngest sister and decided in an instant that humour was essential. ‘Think of all those bronzed thighs, all that testosterone, the lashings of Lycra!’ Cat couldn’t help but giggle. Pip felt she could now introduce a little common sense. ‘You’ve wanted to get up close and personal for years. Here’s your chance. It’ll be an excellent opportunity for someone in your position – further your career as a sports journalist plus get over Bastardwanker. And, of course, you never know whom you might meet.’

‘I’m off to Paris soon myself,’ Fen announced, ‘also to be surrounded by mouth-watering male physiques. Not in Lycra on bicycles, though,’ she all but apologized to Cat.

‘You’re a weirdo,’ Pip teased. ‘The men you salivate over are all marble and bronze sculptures.’ Fen, an art historian, found nothing remotely weird in her penchant for the work of Rodin and his followers and she screwed up her face and poked her tongue out at Pip in protest.

‘Well, I have no plans for Paris or pedallers,’ Pip said in such a tone as to suggest that she wouldn’t want to cross the Channel anyway, ‘but I, too, am due to be surrounded by men.’ She opened a packet of salt-and-vinegar crisps and offered them to her sisters. ‘Holloway, actually,’ she said, with such gravitas that she might well have said Hollywood. ‘I’m doing a show for a young man called Billy. And all his mates.’

TWO

‘Billy Billy Billy,’ Pip chants under her breath whilst putting on a hair band and laying her make-up out in front of her, ‘Billy’s the birthday boy. He’s the blond one in the Gap sweatshirt.’ She stares at her reflection in the mirror she always takes with her. She’s learned from experience not to trust other people’s mirrors – distortion, however subtle or slight, could have utterly drastic consequences. So, wherever she performs, regardless of the size of her audience, the length of her performance, the shortcomings of the venue or the fee she charges, Pip always demands of her client a changing-room with good natural light and a suitable surface other than her knees on which to prop her mirror. Today, she is in Holloway. The gentrified side; where fashionable young folk with large sums of money have been buying up the gorgeous terraces from elderly owners who paid ‘two bob’ for their homes decades ago.

‘Billy’s the birthday boy,’ Pip murmurs, applying her slap, ‘blond hair, Gap sweatshirt.’ She stares at her face.

I remember, when I was fourteen and had bought my first eye-shadow – admittedly bright green – Django saying, ‘Philippa, you’re pretty enough without make-up!’

Now look at me!

‘Positively garish,’ she mutters, wielding a bright red lipstick with gay abandon and adding a final flourish of powder to set the lot. She scoops her hair into two schoolgirl bunches, tying large polka-dot ribbons on each. She puckers up her lips and blows her reflection a pantomime kiss. ‘Well, this is for Billy,’ she says, standing and springing up and down as a warm-up. ‘He’d expect nothing less from me. He’s the birthday boy.’ She hops lightly from toe to toe, jiggling her arms and fingers. ‘Gap sweatshirt. Blond hair.’ Pip clears her throat and hums ‘Happy Birthday’ very fast. She’s ready.

‘She’s great,’ Zac Holmes, who’s been watching quietly from the back of the room, murmurs to the man standing next to him. ‘I must get her number. So many of her ilk can be such a let-down – and pricey, too. You sometimes don’t get what you pay for.’

They watch as Pip does the splits. Billy and his mates gasp with delight. The man next to Zac gives her a round of applause and chuckles, ‘Do you reckon she has business cards to give out?’

Zac feels tired. He rubs his eyes, wondering why he’s wearing contact lenses and not his glasses. His eyes feel dry and uncomfortable. It’s suddenly all a bit too noisy and frantic for him. He’d rather not be in Holloway; he’d rather be diving into a gorgeous cool swimming-pool in the Caribbean, soothing his eyes, refreshing his limbs. But chance would be a fine thing. He hasn’t taken a holiday for over a year. He stifles a yawn. He really ought to go home. He has work to do, despite it being the weekend; regardless that it’s the first weekend he’s officially had off in weeks. Billy’s birthday was fun for a couple of hours but Zac has had enough now. He doesn’t much like Holloway. He’s never really cared for birthdays. He let his own thirtieth come and go without so much as a quick drink with colleagues after work, let alone a celebration with friends or family. And that was almost five years ago. Birthdays. Bollocks. Yes, he’s going to go.

The show now over, Billy and the gang are guzzling down the drinks and tucking into the grub. Zac is hungry but doesn’t really fancy anything on offer. He’ll grab something on his way home to Hampstead. Someone knocks a drink over and it soaks Zac’s right trouser leg. No one seems to notice, let alone apologize. It really is time to go.

‘Happy birthday, Billy old man,’ Zac says, turning on the charm and ruffling Billy’s hair boisterously. ‘I have to go. I’d love to stay but I can’t. I have to work.’

Someone else is vying for Billy’s attention and another drink is sent flying.

‘Have a great party,’ Zac continues. ‘Happy birthday.’

‘Where’s Tom?’ Billy asks, not seeming too bothered if Zac stays or goes.

‘He was hoping to come,’ Zac says, ‘really wanted to. But he hasn’t been feeling too well.’

‘Say “hi” from me.’

‘Happy birthday, Billy,’ Zac repeats.

Alone, out in the hallway, Zac rummages around for his jacket. He has a headache lurking and is muttering ‘Nurofen’ under his breath. He’s suffered with his headaches a lot recently. He searches his pockets but finds only Marlboro Lights. Why does he always carry cigarettes when he rarely smokes more than two a day and doesn’t know why he even smokes those two anyway?

‘Stupid fucking idiot,’ he hisses at himself.

‘Language!’ chastises a female voice.

Zac turns around. Who? Oh. Her. Without the make-up, eyes still quite a startling blue-green. Dressed down in jeans. Upright, not doing the splits. Hair in a plain pony-tail. She’s smaller now, close to and not in costume.

‘I didn’t recognize you with your clothes off,’ says Zac and then cringes. ‘I mean, with your clothes on. I mean, in jeans.’

She laughs. ‘Did you enjoy the show?’

‘Great,’ Zac answers economically. He really doesn’t feel much like chatting. He’s hungry and headachy in Holloway when he’d so much rather be home alone in Hampstead.

‘Thanks,’ the girl says, with grace.

‘Have you a card?’ Zac asks, remembering he wanted one though now wondering why.

‘Sure,’ she says, and one seems to materialize, as if by magic, from what appeared to be the swiftest snap of her fingers.

‘Ta,’ says Zac, not looking at her, pocketing her card without even glancing at it. He’s at his car. He gets in and drives off. Doesn’t give her a backward glance nor even so much as a ‘goodbye’. His headache is threatening to consume him.

Pip McCabe thinks he’s rude, though. She stands on the kerb side, watching him drive away – too fast.

THREE

You can tell a lot about a person by the friends they keep. You would think you could tell a lot about a person by the clothes they wear and the place they live. However, you’d be hard-pressed to guess what Zac does for a living by analysing his dwelling, his dress or his disposition. Each is at odds with the other and none are remotely representative of the stereotypes traditionally associated with Zac’s particular vocation.

Take a look around his flat. To say it sings with colour is an understatement. It’s not so much a symphony of colours as a full-blown rock opera. To forgo the approved, if ubiquitous, muted heritage hues predominantly deployed by fellow Hampsteadites was no act of rebellion, no salute to the Shock of the New on his part. Zac simply opted for oranges and turquoises and citrus greens and parma violets because they are his favourite colours. Leyland Paints groan when he comes into the store. He spends a fortune there because he is so exacting. ‘No. I said ultramarine and I mean ultra,’ he’d complain and they’d have to spend a morning adding a dribble of this and a drip of that until Zac nodded and grinned and proclaimed something along the lines of ‘Turquoise-tastic! Fan-bloody-brilliant! Ultimate ultramarine. Ta.’

Zac’s inspiration comes not from the Sunday Times ‘Style’ section, certainly not from Changing Rooms, not from hip clubs, but really just from his own predilections. Zac is in no pretentious pursuit of retro-psychedelia; nor is his home an arty-farty appraisal of the merits of kitsch. Objectively, elements of his colour schemes are indeed psychedelic and some of his furniture and objects are quintessentially kitsch. But he only chooses what he loves. He doesn’t refer to style magazines. In fact, when he flicked through a copy of Wallpaper at a friend’s house, he thought it so brilliant that he started chuckling because he genuinely assumed that the magazine was a parody on other style magazines. He was quite horrified to learn it was serious. ‘But it’s so far up its own arse,’ he’d reasoned, ‘they might as well call it Toiletpaper.’

Zac doesn’t read about art but he does love to look at it. He didn’t consider trend when he was choosing colour for his walls and furniture for his rooms but he did pay homage to Matisse. Zac simply loves colour for its own sake. He loves the greenness of green, the blueness of blue, and he finds great expanses of solid colour incredibly satisfying. He cannot comprehend how colours can be in and out of fashion. He loves it that he cannot fathom how colour can convey movement, rhythm and mood. It’s a mystery he is content to be awestruck by.

My job’s stressful. The building is grey. I want to come home to energy and a place that – I don’t know – grins. Turquoise and orange have always made me feel positive. Green makes me feel refreshed. What’s all this crap about blue being a ‘cool’ colour – cool in what respect? Cold? Or hip? Pardon? I just find blue relaxing. Swimming-pools and cloudless skies.

Zac goes for things he really likes the look of. He loves things that amuse him. His acid yellow PVC banana beanbag chair is just as comfortable as his black leather Eames lounger. He knew the Eames was almost vulgar in cost but what price ultimate comfort for reading papers or snoozing or chilling out with a beer? The Eames serves much the same purpose as the banana chair but the banana chair was forty pounds. Zac didn’t think it a ‘bargain’, he simply thought ‘funky chair, great colour, really comfortable’, bought it on the spot and took it home on the bus. He doesn’t own a coffee-table so it’s just as well that he doesn’t buy sumptuous coffee-table tomes. Though he loves the feel of his Folio editions of fables and myths, he also devours commercial paperbacks. His book shelves are crammed with them. ‘What’s wrong with Grisham or Herbert?’ he might say. ‘They’re bloody good reads.’ He sometimes rereads Wilbur Smith and he really quite liked Bridget Jones’s Diary. He read it on the tube going to and from work. He was aware that people stared at him. He didn’t care.

It’s always open house at Zac’s. His flat just has a subliminal effect of putting people in a good mood. He doesn’t officially entertain but he has the sort of personality and the type of place that encourage people to pop in. Male friends stop by for a beer or two if they’ve had a crap day at work or a row with a wife or girlfriend. And those very same wives and girlfriends pop in if they’ve walked their feet off perusing Hampstead’s shops. Zac tells them to ‘take a load off’; while he fixes them a juice, they revolve a while in the Eames, or snuggle gratefully into the bizarre banana chair. If their kids have thrown tantrums at the Finchley Road Sainsbury’s, they’re dragged in to let off steam at Uncle Zac’s; scampering around his flat, throwing themselves on to his large low bed, rolling off on to the tufty orange rug by the side, coming back into the living-room to snuggle on Mummy’s lap and gaze at the lava lamp or quietly snigger at the massive painting that’s allegedly of mountains but really looks like a large pair of blue bosoms.

Ah, but have a look inside Zac’s wardrobe. It’s like an archive for Gap. Beige, navy or black. No deviation. Trousers, shirts or pullovers. He owns one suit. It’s currently at the dry-cleaner. It’s navy. He never wears it by choice; only if he must – a meeting with specific clients, a wedding, a funeral. His underwear is unremittingly black and blue.

His kitchen reveals his obsession with gadgets which he affectionately calls ‘toys’. A top-of-the-range fully automatic espresso machine, a sixties-inspired juicer, an impressive if intimidating array of Global kitchen knives, all manner of high-shine stainless-steel utensils hanging from hooks above the granite worktop. His fridge-freezer is, of course, one of those cavernous walk-in American machines that do ice and cold water and can take a whole sucking pig plus the apple. There is no pig inside, just a staggering array of ready-meals. Does this man work for M&S? No? He must have a discount card, then, surely? No? Does he have substantial shares in the company, then? Or is this simply what you’d call brand loyalty? Or is it just plain laziness? No wonder that all his utensils and gadgets look so pristine – they’ve never been used. He has no need of any of them. You do not need a mandolin from Divertimenti to prepare an M&S ready-meal. The only things requiring any chopping are the tomatoes (aesthetically still on the vine) and, of course, the oranges for the juicer (despite the fact that there are cartons of fresh juice, every conceivable variety, in the fridge). His friends’ offspring like the cupboard over there best; it contains the most astonishing variety of biscuits, chocolates and crisps. Have a peek in his kitchen bin – nothing but chocolate wrappers and cartons from his shove-it-in-the-oven-at-190-degrees meals. Zac Holmes hides nothing. He is totally at ease with his likes and dislikes and the choices he’s made.

‘I like figures,’ he said ingenuously on a recent date with a Canadian girl who’s the cousin of one of his friends. ‘I really love getting my teeth into them.’ The Canadian girl was so charmed by his open personality, so taken with his slate-grey eyes, handsome face and naturally athletic physique, that she told him her figure was honed to perfection because she worked out five times a week and could they please get the bill right now, though their main courses had not yet arrived, so he could take her back to her hotel and get his teeth into her figure. Zac obliged. He doesn’t like to disappoint people. And he does love figures. He didn’t let her down back at her hotel. He didn’t get his teeth into her but he certainly employed a fabulous technique of nibbling and sucking.

Zac likes sex very much. He has quite a lot of it. To him, it’s a colourful, fun, recreational activity and he’s rather good at it. He doesn’t mind at all that over the last three years or so sex has not led to deep and meaningful relationships. He’s had two of those during his life. One from his late teens to his early twenties, the other in his late twenties. He’s not now shying away from commitment. And, nearing thirty-five, though he does, of course, have a past, it is one with which he is at peace. If there is any baggage, he certainly doesn’t look on it as a burdensome weight on his shoulders. He hasn’t been in love these past five years. But his life hasn’t lacked for it. He’s loved his last five years, loved the sex he’s had – the quick flings, the threesome, the three-month dalliance, the couple of six-month demi-relationships. He hasn’t met the right girl because he really isn’t looking. Sex wouldn’t be the better for it. Nor does his life want for lack of it. So, being single is neither a problem nor a conscious decision. However, because he’s not on the lookout, he might well not recognize Her.