Ruth Rendell - Adam And Eve And Pinch Me

Zillah forgot all about Jims’s instructions to refer all such requests to Malina Daz. She forgot her fear of journalists. They’d been so kind to her in the Mail . Why shouldn’t she do it? The children weren’t back yet. This would give her a chance to confirm everything that had already appeared in print and maybe get some more glamour shots. “Will you take photographs?”

She must have sounded apprehensive for the journalist misunderstood. “Well, yes, of course. A piece about someone as attractive as you wouldn’t be much without photos, would it?”

Zillah agreed to it. Two hours later the features editor of a glossy magazine was on the phone. They’d left her alone for a few days, but the time had come to have something appear that was more comprehensive than a few lines about her wedding. Zillah mentioned the other journalist.

“Oh, don’t worry about that. Ours will be very different, I assure you. You’ll love it. You’re going to receive a great deal of attention, I can tell you, especially with the rumor going around that your husband was going to be outed.”

“There was never anything in that,” Zillah said nervously.

“You cured him, did you? Sorry, that wasn’t very PC of me. Maybe I should say, you brought about a change of heart. How’s that? We’ll say Friday at three, then, shall we? The photographer will come an hour earlier to get set up.”

By the time Zillah got around to telling Jims and, through him, Malina Daz, two more newspapers and another magazine had joined the queue. Malina belonged to the school of thought which holds that all publicity is good publicity. Jims was more cautious, urging Zillah to deny his reputed orientation as vehemently as possible. The night before the first journalist was due, the two of them invented a past girlfriend for Jims, her name, her appearance, her age, and Zillah’s jealousy of her. At the interview Zillah said this woman was now married and living in Hong Kong. For obvious reasons, her present identity couldn’t be disclosed. When she talked to the magazine she forgot the former girlfriend’s age and said she lived in Singapore, but Jims said it wouldn’t matter, as newspapers got everything wrong anyway.

The children were still in Bournemouth. Their grandparents had agreed, though rather grudgingly, to keep them a week longer. Mrs. Watling said on the phone she thought there was something ironical about Eugenie and Jordan staying in Bournemouth “indefinitely” when for the first time in their lives they had a decent home, while she and their grandfather had never seen them from one year’s end to the next when they’d lived in that dump in Dorset. Zillah said to bear with her a while longer-a phrase she’d picked up from Malina Daz-and she and Jims would be down to fetch the children the weekend after next.

The first interview appeared in print on Friday morning. The photographs came out wonderfully well and the feature itself was a chatty piece with nothing in it about Jims’s prospective “outing” and plenty about Zillah’s lovely looks and dress sense. In another Malina phrase, the whole subject had been “treated with sensitivity.” The invented girlfriend was mentioned with a few words about her “long relationship” with Jims. Altogether it was highly satisfactory. Two more articles were “in the pipeline,” said Malina, and several more interviews were to come.

Jims was happy with the piece but knew the ways of the media as Zillah didn’t. He could hardly have been in the Commons for seven years without knowing their ways. “Tabloids are often okay until they’ve got their knife into you,” he said to Zillah. “Magazines are fine, magazines are pussycats. It’s national dailies like the Guardian you want to worry about.”

“It might be useful for me to put in a presence,” said Malina, meaning she ought to be there, “when Zillah meets with the print media, especially the quality broadsheets.”

“Good idea,” Jims agreed.

Zillah didn’t like Malina. She hadn’t been told the truth about the marriage but had guessed. Sometimes Zillah thought she’d caught her smiling secretly to herself. She was in and out of the flat in Abbey Gardens Mansions, popping into bedrooms, Zillah suspected, opening drawers and poking her long, slender fingers into desk pigeonholes. Malina had a boyfriend who was a top cardiologist in Harley Street and she was thinner than Zillah, maybe two whole dress sizes thinner.

She didn’t want Malina present when she talked to the Times and the Telegraph . It was bad enough having the photographer there, taking pictures when she was off her guard and had her mouth open or held her head at an awkward angle. Malina’s secretive little smile and way of contemplating with admiration her own hands and silver-painted nails would be, in her own word, “inappropriate.” So Zillah said nothing to her about the forthcoming interview with a freelancer for the Telegraph Magazine . Jims would be absent too, in the Commons Chamber on that day for the local government bill.

She was waiting for the photographer to come, standing in the window looking across toward Dean’s Yard, when she saw a car draw up and park by the curb on a double yellow line. A newspaper photographer ought to know better. They’d tow him away or clamp him. She opened the window, preparing to call out to him not to leave the car there, but instead of getting out, the driver stayed where he was behind the wheel. Zillah couldn’t see very clearly, but in spite of the car being a BMW and a far cry from the ancient Ford Anglia he had driven away in after their last meeting, she was almost sure the man was Jerry.

She put her head out of the window and stared. He was studying something, probably a map or plan. It looked a lot like Jerry, but from this distance she couldn’t be sure. If this photographer and journalist hadn’t been coming she’d have gone down and made sure of his identity and, if it was Jerry, confronted him. If they weren’t coming she wouldn’t have been all dressed up in skintight purple trousers, shoes with three-inch heels, and a black and white bustier. She closed the window. It was too far away to see properly. The man in the car looked up. It was Jerry. Surely it was. And whose was the dark blue BMW? Not his, that was for sure. The doorbell rang.

The photographer had come from the Abbey direction, which was why she hadn’t seen him. He had an assistant with him, the usual teenager, or teenager lookalike, and the two of them started setting up, spreading ice white sheets all over the furniture and opening and shutting a silver-lined umbrella. Zillah went back to the window. A traffic warden was talking to the man in the BMW. She hoped he’d get out so that she could have a proper look at him. He didn’t, but drove off toward Millbank.

Zillah didn’t enjoy the interview. The journalist was once again a woman but serious-looking and austerely dressed in a black trouser suit. She introduced herself as Natalie Reckman. Her features were severely classical and her fair hair was scraped back and fastened by a barrette. She wore no jewelry but a thick, heavy, and curiously sculpted gold ring on her right hand. A businesslike notebook was taken out of her black leather briefcase, as was a recording device. Zillah, who had been feeling glamorously dressed, was suddenly conscious of the ornate Oriental necklace she was wearing, amethysts in tooled silver, the fashionable dozen or so bead bracelets, and the earrings dangling to her shoulders. And the questions put to her were more awkward than usual, more probing.

This woman was the first journalist to say nothing complimentary about her appearance. At first she seemed more interested in Jims than in his new wife. Zillah did her best to talk about him as an ardent young bride might about her new husband. How clever he was, how considerate of her, and what a wise move it was to marry one’s best friend. As to his political career, he was so dutiful that they’d postponed their honeymoon until Easter. They were going to the Maldives. Darling Jims would have preferred Morocco, he was longing to go there, but he’d deferred to her choice of the Maldives. They’d go to Morocco in the winter.