Lynne Truss - Going Loco

Professionally, things were a bit bleak for Maggie, and this didn’t help matters. Her total unlovability was being confirmed in all quarters. The Pinter had been good experience, though incredibly badly paid. She’d had a job on Casualty, classified in the script as ‘Bus crash scene – a woman moans’. But all the while her ambition to rejoin the Royal Shakespeare Company was coming to nothing. For the time being she must comfort herself with memories of two years ago, when she’d peaked in Stratford as the Lady Olivia in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, getting a review that singled her out as ‘quite extraordinary’ and ‘probably quite good-looking’.

She had really loved that production, which was very loyal of her because it was generally reviled. Playing to paltry houses who sometimes booed, it did not transfer to London. But Maggie loved her Olivia. Never one to argue with a director’s concept, she even loved her Olivia’s Mongolian peasant costume and comical clog dancing. (‘Nobility is relative,’ their director Jeff told them.) Jeff, whom the Financial Times described as ‘an idiot’, had bucketfuls of bold ideas, including the unprecedented notion of casting as Viola and Sebastian (identical twins) two actors who looked absolutely nothing like each other. ‘Most wonderful!’ Olivia would say each night in the last scene, doing a hilarious double-take through bottle-glass specs. Even the critics liked that bit. She wished now she hadn’t slept with Jeff, especially as he was married to the famous TV actress who had played Viola. But he’d done her a great service with that casting of asymmetricals. No one usually finds Olivia’s final-act confusion the least bit funny.

Leon pushed open the steamy door, and wiped his shoes. Oh God. He looked slightly less enormous than she’d remembered, and had washed his hair. Maggie fiddled with her teaspoon in the sugar, glancing up occasionally. But though he looked round carefully, he evidently failed to spot her, so she carried on reading the Stage – or pretended to, having read it all already.

She heard Leon order a cup of herbal tea and braced herself. He brushed past her (‘Sorry’), and sat at a nearby table with Time Out, studying the ballet listings. She stared at him until finally he looked up. ‘Well, hello,’ she said pointedly.

He frowned.

‘It’s me,’ she said. ‘Penelope Pitstop. You must be Muttley.’

He took a sip of tea, and looked behind him. ‘Sorry, were you sitting here?’ he suggested, at last.

‘What?’

‘Were you sitting here?’

His voice sounded funny. But it was definitely him.

‘No.’

He tried to look away again, but couldn’t. She was staring at him, and clearly getting angry with him, too.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Do I know you? I’m afraid I’m terrible at forgetting people. I meet such a lot of people in my work, you see.’

At which point, the door opened again, and a blonde woman came in, smiling directly at Leon. It was Julia, Maggie’s therapist.

‘Ah, there you are, Julia,’ said Leon, with relief. ‘Perhaps…’ and he gestured awkwardly towards Maggie, evidently hoping his wife could identify her.

‘Margaret?’ she began, but in a second Maggie had pushed past her, left the café and was outside.

Verity, high on crack cocaine, was just being bundled into a police van (they were manhandling her plaits) when Belinda wondered whether it might be time to ease up a bit.

‘Phew,’ she said, shaking her head proudly as she perused the last two pages of notes, and wishing she smoked cheroots. ‘What a scorcher.’

The phone rang. It was Viv. ‘Am I interrupting something?’

‘Only a drug bust. So I see you’re still talking to me? She’s only a cleaning lady, Viv.’

‘It’s about you and me,’ Viv said. ‘I was wrong, you were right.’

Belinda paused to take this in. ‘And who is this impersonating Viv, please?’

‘Belinda, listen. I was wrong to interfere in your life. If you want to be bad at things and disorganized and never tidy up, you can do that. You’re nearly forty, after all.’

‘I’m thirty-six, the same as you.’

‘You see, Linda isn’t what you think. I know I’ve always said she was Mary Poppins and all that, but the truth is I’ve been covering up for her.’

‘Viv!’

‘No, it’s true. She’s got a terrible self-esteem problem. You have to bolster her all the time. And you end up—’

‘Viv, I can’t believe you’d stoop so low.’

‘You haven’t sacked Mrs Holdsworth?’

‘That’s a point. Hang on.’

Alerted to the telltale sound of vacuum cleaning in the hall, Belinda popped her head round the door and found Mrs H pushing the Hoover back and forth on the same spot, apparently lost in thought. ‘Fucking disgusting!’ she yelled to Belinda, over the din of the Hoover.

Belinda gave her a thumbs-up and went back to the phone.

‘Not yet. I thought if I gave her a month’s money—’

‘Leave things as they are, Bea.’

Belinda harumphed grandly. Nobody harumphed as grandly as Belinda.

The doorbell rang.

‘I’ve got to go.’

‘If it’s Linda—’

‘I’ll ring you later. God, you’re so interfering. Why do you always think you’re responsible for other people’s lives?’

‘Perhaps because I’m a bloody anaesthetist, in case you’ve forgotten!’

Belinda pursed her lips.

The doorbell rang again.

‘If it’s Linda—’ Viv began.

‘I’ve got to go.’

Belinda felt rather good about standing up to Viv. Letting Verity’s behaviour go haywire had obviously given her a boost.

‘Atta girl, Belinda,’ she said to herself on the way to the door, stepping over Mrs H’s wellingtons – and opening it found, in a pool of afternoon light, carrying a very thoughtful bunch of chrysanthemums, the woman who was going to change her life.

Mid-afternoon, Jago rang Laurie Spink again. Spink was now body and soul the property of the Effort, because it was easier to give him an extremely well-paid regular column than think of someone else to write for the supplement. And now that Jago had his number, he could expect the usual Jago call.

‘I need some geneticists.’

‘I’ve got a tutorial.’

‘I need them this minute.’

So Spink had reeled off a few names, some of them with phone numbers. ‘I’ve got to go now,’ he added. ‘Copy by Friday, yes?’

‘Just one more thing. What do you know about Stefan Johansson’s work? He hasn’t done anything on monstrous boobs that he’s keeping quiet about?’

‘Oh, a lot of his notes were lost, unfortunately.’

Jago had been doodling. He stopped. ‘Lost when?’

‘When he died.’

‘Stefan Johansson died? Since this morning?’

‘No, no. Three or four years ago. Tragic. A fire. Best cloning brain outside the US. I suppose most people don’t know about it. He used his own genetic material for research – ghastly end. Led to all sorts of enquiries and bans, but it was mostly hushed up. Wife went mad, terrible stories.’

‘But he’s teaching at Imperial.’

‘Can’t be.’

Jago blinked hard. In a second he had cut off Spink and phoned Imperial. They had no Johansson. He phoned the cuttings library; they promised to e-mail an obituary from an obscure science journal. He cast his mind back (a manoeuvre that did not come easily to him). How much had Viv known about Stefan when they introduced him to Belinda? Nothing. Viv’s sister met him in the canteen, that’s all. He was an impostor! A cheating, clever impostor! Like, like—

‘Get me the names of some impostors quick!’ he ordered his secretary.