Fallen Women

Dedication

This book is dedicated with love to all the usual suspects, in particular Susan Opie at HarperCollins, Maggie Phillips at Ed Victor, and Mike Bell in Oakington, but most of all to my mum, who – with her impeccable sense of timing – managed to break her ankle three months after I began writing this book … although as yet there are no signs of her trading my father in for a toy boy.

Epigraph

‘May you live in interesting times …’

An ancient Chinese curse

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Epilogue

About the Author

By the Same Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

‘So, how tall do you want this dream man to be then, Chrissie?’ Kate scanned down the form on the computer screen, her face blank with concentration.

‘You can specify height as well? Jesus,’ said Bill, who’d been helping fill in Chrissie’s profile. He popped the top on another can of Bud. ‘And there’s you girls always telling us that size doesn’t matter.’

He said it in a sly, sarky way, which made Chrissie and Kate both turn round to give him a withering look. Grinning, he held up his hands in surrender, while Kate’s attention moved back to the screen.

‘Okay, so what have we got here? 5′ to 5′5″, 5′6 to 5′8″, 5′9″ to 6′00″,’ Kate read, ‘small, medium or large. Mr Right comes in several handy sizes apparently.’

‘Not in my experience he doesn’t,’ said Chrissie bitterly. She was half way through her second large glass of Archers and orange juice, the glow from the screen picking out cheekbones that only appeared when she was seriously depressed. Leaning over Kate’s shoulder, she peered myopically at the what are you looking for wish list. ‘Or over 6′4″? Good God no, I’d have to take a stepladder out with me every time I wanted a snog.’

‘Up to about 6′?’ suggested Kate.

Chrissie nodded.

‘How about hair?’

‘I’m getting bored with this,’ whined Bill. ‘It’s Friday, end of the week. I want to – to …’

They all looked at him.

‘What?’ snapped Chrissie. ‘Cut loose? Get lucky? Get laid? What did happen to What’s-her-name anyway?’

‘Oh, meow. Did you ever get that job in personnel?’ Bill growled right back.

‘No, I’m still flogging frocks; they decided I wasn’t fit to be let loose on real people.’

‘Hair,’ Kate said, attempting to whip them in.

‘Is that a straight choice between without or without?’ asked Joe, Kate’s husband, who had been watching the three of them. He ran his hand back over a crew cut that couldn’t quite disguise the fact he hadn’t got an awful lot of hair left.

Joe had been idly picking out a riff on the guitar in his lap, making out he wasn’t at all interested in what was going on. Since Kate first knew him Joe had constantly doodled with music; living with Joe was like having your very own incidental music, a soundtrack to all life’s little ups and downs.

‘What is that?’ said Bill, taking a pull on the beer. ‘Fleetwood?’

Joe shook his head. ‘Unfortunately not. It’s a jingle for a margarine commercial that I’ve been working on for one of Kate’s clients.’ He picked at the strings again, with more determination this time, transforming something sensual and bluesy into a hayseed cartoon sound. ‘Why don’ all you good folks rush down to y’local convenience store and buy our delicious yella spreadable fat,’ he mugged in a southern-style deep-fried accent.

‘Yes, very nice. Now about hair,’ Kate said impatiently, dragging everyone’s attention back to the task in hand.

‘Well, I don’t know, do I?’ Joe snapped peevishly. ‘I’m not a bloody expert on cyberdating. What does it for you in the hair department, Chrissie? Bald, a mullet, football boy perm? Early Jon Bon Jovi?’

Kate glared at him, not that it did a lot of good.

It was Friday evening in early summer in a semi-detached off a little side street on the Muswell Hill Road. Kate’s home was a mix of tasteful and cosy, cream walls hung with good prints, generous chairs and sofas upholstered in autumnal shades of orange and reds, the whole place dotted with plants. It was a house that encouraged you to lie back and linger

Tonight the whole place was full of the smell of tikka masala and Bombay potatoes. The supper party was a cheering up, new start, relaxing after a long rough week kind of an evening – or at least that was what Kate had in mind when she’d invited them round.

The four of them were sprawled around Kate’s office while Kate and Joe’s two boys were watching TV and creaming assorted life forms on the Playstation upstairs.

Working from home was a mixed blessing. Under normal circumstances the office was the holy of holies. Kate worked very hard to maintain a boundary where domestic life stopped and earning a living began, in case clients thought it implied a lack of professionalism, but tonight, for Chrissie, who was currently getting over some heartless bastard who had cut her up, made her cry and generally messed her around just three short months after being declared Mr Right, she was prepared to make an exception.

When she wasn’t patching up her best friend’s love life, Kate freelanced for a PR agency, which always sounded glamorous but these days mostly seemed to involve writing advertorials, press releases and recruitment stuff, helping to co-ordinate the odd trade show, and generally keeping her clients out there in the public eye. It paid well enough, though, and meant that Kate had been able to work from home since the boys were small. There were just about enough jollies, freebies and days out to make sure it was, if not exactly exciting, then at least never truly monotonous.

So, Friday night; Kate was on the computer while in one corner of the office Joe was lolling in her new incredibly uncomfortable ergonomically-designed swivel chair that had cost an arm, a leg and a kidney. Chrissie was grazing through the munchies on top of the filing cabinet, eyes firmly on the screen, while Bill was propped up alongside her drinking a beer.

Chrissie, still mulling over the hair question, scooped up another handful of Bombay mix. ‘As long as they haven’t got any on the palms of their hands. Oh and no rugs, toupees, knits, weaves, transplants or comb overs either. What’s that?’ She pointed to a box on the screen. She wasn’t wearing her contacts because crying constantly and rubbing her eyes had made them unbearably sore and Chrissie was way too vain to wear her glasses out of the house, which was why Kate was doing the typing.

‘It’s a sample ad from the RomanticSouls.com web-site. A little taster of the delights on offer once you’ve signed up. “Adam X is 45, 6′, tanned, with his own business, he likes to work out, eat out, go sailing at weekends and enjoys the theatre. With his own holiday home in the south of France, he’s looking for …”’

‘Whoa,’ said Chrissie, grabbing Kate’s arm. ‘That’ll do very nicely, thank you. Can you just wrap him up, pop him in the trolley and lead me to the checkout? Is there a photo? What sizes does he come in?’

It was funny, or at least they all laughed – all except Joe.

Before Chrissie had shown up, and Kate was still fluffing the table and sorting the kids out, Joe had come through into the kitchen carrying the wine and a few more beers for the cooler.

‘I wish you’d asked me before inviting people round for the evening,’ he said, levering the fridge door open with his foot.

‘Oh for God’s sake, they’re not people, they’re Bill and Chrissie.’

‘You know what I mean and you know how I feel about Chrissie, Kate. You ought to be doing this computer dating thing when I’m not about. She’s, she’s – Oh, Christ, I don’t know.’

Kate lifted an eyebrow. ‘What, Joe? A bad influence? Trouble? A nasty rough girl? Why don’t you just spit it out and get it over with?’

‘You know that isn’t what I mean – she’s always in debt, credit cards whacked up to the hilt, one man after another. She ought to get herself sorted out. Those boys of hers must wonder what the hell is going on half the time.’

Kate stared at him in astonishment. ‘The boys are great, Joe, you can’t say that. She’s been through a tough time.’

‘Most of which is her own bloody fault.’

Kate paused, about to leap to Chrissie’s defence, and then considered for a few seconds before nodding. ‘Okay, maybe you’re right, sometimes she does weird stuff and makes bad choices – but it doesn’t matter, she’s still my best friend. Come on, we’re really lucky to have friends living so close –’

‘It’s your country roots showing. Kate, getting on with the neighbours is not what Londoners do best,’ Joe sniffed. ‘So, you really think you ought to be doing this?’ He picked up the sheet of paper where Kate had jotted down lonely hearts web-site addresses from an article she’d been reading in the Mail.

‘I’m not doing it, Chrissie is.’

Joe pulled his world famous don’t-prat-with-me face. ‘You know what I’m saying here, Kate. This is like giving a psychopath a loaded gun.’

At which point the doorbell had rung. Kate went to answer it to get away from Joe, and met Bill and Chrissie standing on the doorstep, each of them clutching a bottle of New World red.

‘You’re not trying to fix me up with Bill, are you?’ asked Chrissie suspiciously, eyeing him up and down. He was looking particularly tasty in faded jeans and a black tee-shirt, a well-worn leather jacket hooked on one finger slung over his shoulder.

Kate grinned, kissing first one and then the other. ‘Good God no, I like you both far too much to inflict you on each other. Come on in. Supper won’t be very long. Joe’ll get you a drink.’ And once he had, they had all crocodiled off to Kate’s office.

‘Maybe I should order one as well, get something with a little more get up and go?’ Kate said, throwing Joe a sideways glance. Since they’d arrived he’d been concentrating on playing his guitar, sulking, picking his nose and drinking his beer. Looking up, he grimaced in a way that implied Kate really shouldn’t push her luck.

‘Maybe I ought to have a look myself,’ he replied.

‘Maybe you should,’ Kate snapped right back. ‘If you think you could find some other mug who’d put up with you.’

Currently they were slap bang in the middle of one of Joe’s moody tortured artist phases. It was always the same when he’d got a well-paid bread and butter job that he considered a piss-take of his musical talent. Maybe, Kate thought, staring him out, willing him to look away first, under the circumstances it ought to be bread and margarine. But whichever it was he’d given her the whole soulless artless world speech earlier in the day, the one about how great men have always been paid peanuts for artistry and magic and mega-bucks for popsy-pink cute commercial drek. How he was worth more than this creatively, far more. Not that he was planning to turn the margarine commercial down, obviously.

‘Can you pair finish your row later?’ snipped Chrissie, ‘I’m famished.’

‘Just a couple more questions,’ said Kate

‘Age?’

‘Over thirty-five and under fifty, own teeth, and nothing that unscrews at night. I’ve only ever sent off for books and CDs, till now,’ Chrissie paused for effect. ‘Do these guys come with a no-quibble guarantee?’

‘Only if you haven’t tampered with the packaging,’ said Kate.

Across the room, Joe snorted.

So they finished off the questions and Kate nipped out to check on the food, while Bill checked the form through.

Joe followed Kate into the kitchen. ‘This is totally and utterly crazy,’ he hissed, pulling another beer out of the fridge.

‘What is?’

‘What do you mean what is? She’s got crap taste in men. She’ll end up picking some nutter and we’ll be the ones sitting up till three in the morning listening to her going on and on about how bloody awful he is to her.’

‘You mean, I will,’ Kate said, pushing a thick tendril of dark red-brown hair back behind her ear. She kept it long even when it was fashionable to have a crop or a bob. Naturally wavy, her hair framed a gamine face and huge grey eyes. Handsome rather than pretty, Kate Harvey had a face that lingered in the mind like a tune. A sensual bluesy tune that is, not popsy-pink cute commercial drek.

‘Well, don’t say that I didn’t warn you. You know what she’s like.’

‘And exactly what am I like, Joe?’ Chrissie said, right on cue, as she stepped in to the kitchen behind him.

He spun round, reddening furiously. ‘I was just saying you need to be careful with this dating stuff, meet somewhere public. We’ve all read things in the papers.’ He was speaking fast, the words crisp, sharp and defensive. ‘Don’t give them your address or phone number. You don’t know who they are, they could tell you anything. Anything at all.’

Nice recovery, Kate thought, stirring the curry.

Chrissie lifted her eyebrows. ‘Oh right, and so real live men, talking face to face, always tell you truth, do they, Joe?’ She poured herself another long shot of Archers.

‘No. You’ve got to be careful, that’s all I’m saying.’

Chrissie rolled her eyes heavenwards as if to say she didn’t need nannying by anyone, least of all Joe. ‘How long till we eat?’

‘Few more minutes,’ replied Kate.

Back in the office, at the computer, Bill was still reading through Chrissie’s application form. ‘Do they have women on here as well?’ he asked, as Kate and Chrissie came back in.

‘Uhuh, in fact just about anything your pretty little heart desires.’ Kate slipped back into the seat as Bill vacated it and moved the cursor across to one of the menus.

‘Here you are, darling, no need to go without, what are you looking for? Male, female, bisexual, gay, lesbian, transsexual, transvestite. If you can’t find anything you fancy there, Bill, they’ve also got a category “Other, please specify”.’

‘Sweet Jesus.’

‘You want to knock yourself up a profile while we’re here?’ Kate asked with a grin

‘Not at this precise moment, no.’

‘So did we miss anything out?’ Kate enquired, glancing back at the screen.

‘Do you only want to see profiles of members with photos?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Chrissie, who was on a roll now. ‘I’d like to see who it is I’m going to spend the rest of my life with.’

Joe shot Kate another warning glance.

‘I’d take a chance if I were you,’ Bill was saying, ‘looks aren’t everything.’

‘Presumably that’s something you’ve learned from personal experience, is it, eh, Bill?’ said Chrissie.

‘Ouch,’ Kate said. ‘Saucer of milk, for this table please.’

The two of them enjoyed needling each other so much, although it always seemed to Kate that it wasn’t so much a fancying thing, more that they were both desperate to out-clever each other.

When he first moved in to their street she and Chrissie had suspected Bill was gay, for no other good reason than he was tall and dark-haired, softly spoken, nicely preserved and kept himself in good shape. He was a photographer, which kind of fitted the profile.

Then one summer, when the kids were smaller, they had invited loads of friends over for a barbecue and Bill had been included somewhere along the line. Half a dozen drunken musos jamming away at the bottom of the garden, picking out Neil Young tunes under a starry sky, lots of very right-on conversation and barefoot women cradling sleeping babies and wine glasses, rocking buggies, sitting around putting the world to rights; it had been a good evening.

When the party was whittling down to the well-known, well-loved hardcore, Bill had had a huge row with some little blonde bird, who stood in the middle of their patio, hands on hips, letting off a great tirade of abuse.

Seconds later they’d all watched Bill leg it out of Kate’s garden like a rat up a drainpipe, bolting back to his house, vaulting over the back fence, although unfortunately the little blonde had seen him go and hared down the alley to cut him off.

‘You bastard, Bill, you think you can just screw me and throw me out, do you? I’m not like your other women. You bastard! Talk to me. Talk to me. Bill? Bill? Let me in. Let me in. I love you, I love you,’ she had wailed, all bottle blonde hair, sun bed tan and white stilettos. So, definitely not gay then.

Everyone at the party was totally enthralled and shuffled out into the street with their drinks to watch the performance. By this time the little blonde was hammering on the front door and then began throwing handfuls of gravel up at the window. When that didn’t work and Bill didn’t come out, she’d thrown a milk bottle and then another one, followed by his precious red geraniums in their terracotta pots, until the front steps and the light well outside the basement window were totally covered in shards of glass and bits of pot plant. Then she had thrown something else, something bigger, that had smashed the main pane in the bay window at street level. Finally, exhausted and wild with frustration, she had burst into tears, jumped into her car and driven away, tyres screaming, horn blaring. When Bill came out a few minutes later, looking sheepish and scarlet with embarrassment, everyone had cheered furiously.

Kate glanced up at them; she and Joe and Bill and Chrissie went back a long way. Although Bill’s taste in women didn’t appear to have improved significantly over the years.

‘Play nicely, you two. Just because Bill’s latest woman was gorgeous but – but …’ Kate winced; it was too late to pull out of the dive where she was headed. ‘Is there any way I can put this nicely?’

‘No need to pull your punches, she was decorative but deeply, deeply dumb,’ said Bill, taking another slurp of his beer. ‘Which was a real shame, because she was a lovely girl, but what I’m really looking for is a good woman. No, make that a great woman. Someone you don’t have to explain the punch line of every joke to. It was bloody terrifying being with someone so young, she treated me like this heroic super stud, someone who knew everything, in and out of bed, someone who had all the answers.’

‘Oh right, that’s it, rub it in, why don’t you,’ said Joe.

‘No, I’m serious. It was flattering being picked up by someone like her but not once I realised she was looking for a father figure. It was bloody awful, I totally felt responsible for her,’ and then he grinned, ‘although actually I thought that Chrissie was talking about me, not my choice in women. Anything else we have to do before we send off Madam’s application?’

Kate glanced back at the screen. ‘Not really, we just need a pseudonym now.’

‘Oh, this should be fun,’ said Joe in a voice that suggested it would be anything but.

‘How about Vulnerable Venus?’ suggested Bill after they’d tried out a few rude ones and a few clever ones and a few downright daft ones.

‘Oh please,’ said Chrissie, pulling a face.

‘It’s got a ring to it,’ said Joe.

‘And you can always change it later,’ said Bill. No one liked to say it but Chrissie’s laughter was getting more brittle with every passing second, it was time to wrap this up and eat, and so that’s what Kate typed in. ‘Vulnerable Venus.’

‘You don’t think this is a bit sad?’ Chrissie said, just as Kate was about to press ‘send’.

Bill shook his head. It was a very definite gesture. ‘It’s only another way to meet people. But like Joe said, just be careful. Then again falling in love is about chemistry and attraction and all that stuff you can’t possibly define on your shopping list.’

Kate looked at Bill and laughed, ‘Ohhhhh, my God, you are such a soft touchy feely bunny, Bill. It’s such a terrible shame you pair don’t fancy each other.’

And then Joe snorted, put his guitar down, and said. ‘And let’s face it, they can’t be any worse than the prats and no hopers that’s she’s picked up before.’ Before Chrissie could react, he continued, ‘Come on, for Christ’s sake, let’s go and eat. I’m starving,’ and so they did.

Later everyone was sitting around the kitchen table when they heard the phone ring. Nobody moved.

After three more rings it stopped and the hall door swung open.

‘Mum, it’s for you.’

‘Can you take a message?’ Kate said to Danny.

‘They said it’s really urgent.’

It was around nine o’clock, maybe half past. Half way through supper.

‘Nothing is that urgent. I’m not planning to deliver anything anywhere for anybody tonight,’ Kate said.

‘So, you want me to tell them that then, do you?’ snapped Danny. It was one of those family face-off moments. Danny looked a lot like Joe but with more hair. Same attitude.

They stared at each other for a few seconds, mother and son, and then Kate got to her feet. Clients really don’t like to be told the truth. ‘No’ does not appear anywhere in the Client-English dictionary. ‘Actually I’m working on it at the moment. I’m just waiting for agency to email more copy, more images, more bullshit,’ are just fine. Acceptable. ‘No’ is strictly a no-no.

‘Excuse me, folks, won’t be a minute. Bloody clients,’ Kate mumbled under her breath.

Except that it wasn’t a client. It was her little sister, Liz.

‘Kate? Is that you?’ The words were strung as tight as piano wire.

‘Yes, what on earth is the matter? Are you okay?’

‘It’s Mum. She’s had an accident.’

Kate felt an odd nip in her throat and then a great lurch of pain and panic in her solar plexus. ‘Oh God, what happened?’

‘She’s fallen over.’

Momentarily, the pain pulled back like a wave on a beach, replaced by relief, only to return an instant later, gentler but still raw. ‘Fallen over?’ Kate repeated.

‘She was coming home from the shops, I think, and fell down the steps at the back of the house. God alone knows how long she’d been lying there before they found her. It’s terrible. Anything could have happened. I mean, at her age. She’s getting frailer; when was the last time you saw her?’

There was a pause, well larded with guilt and any number of unspoken accusations. Kate leant back against the hallstand waiting for the next salvo.

The whole house smelt of curry. It hadn’t been a bad evening so far, a couple of beers and half a bottle of wine, and even Joe was starting to thaw out a bit.

‘Doesn’t bear thinking about, lying there, all on her own,’ Liz added, in case there was some possibility Kate might have missed the point. There was an even longer pause and then she said, ‘You know what Mum’s like, she won’t ask for help and she certainly wouldn’t ring up to let us know she had a fall. If it hadn’t been for her lodger, I probably wouldn’t have known at all. I told him that I’d ring you.’ Heavy sigh. ‘I wonder whether we ought to have a family conference. I’ve been looking at brochures for sheltered accommodation; if you can find the time to get up to Norfolk, obviously.’