The Little Cottage in the Country. Lottie Phillips
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Freddie loved farms. ‘Can I drive a tractor?’
‘I don’t see why not.’ Richard looked at Anna. ‘Come?’ She nodded. ‘Soon?’ He turned on his heels and walked off. ‘Enjoy your breakfast!’
Anna started to walk back towards the kitchen but spied Diane peeping out of the front window.
Diane grinned. ‘Ding-dong! Now that’s what I’m talking about.’
Anna smiled. ‘He was quite good-looking, wasn’t he?’
Diane rushed up to her and held her hand to Anna’s forehead. ‘Quite good-looking? Quite good-looking? The man’s the finest specimen I have seen for a long time.’ She nodded. ‘A really long time.’ She looked at Anna. ‘Do you think “breakfast” is a euphemism in these parts? Like, I’ll give you eggs and bacon, if you butter my bread.’ She puckered her lips. ‘Delicious.’
‘You are incorrigible,’ Anna said, picking up a cushion off the sofa and throwing it at her.
With Diane’s bags offloaded into the sitting room and breakfast eaten, they headed out in search of a supermarket.
‘I’ll buy the food, darling. It’s the least I can do,’ said Diane.
‘No, no, you’re on leave,’ Anna said matter-of-factly. ‘In fact, how did you manage to wangle time away from work at the magazines? And didn’t Tracey want you to do the make-up on the set of that new Brit film?’
Diane worked as a freelance photographer and make-up artist – often combining the two – and she was good, very good. They’d first met through Barry, who clearly had some sort of crush on her.
‘Anna, I’d like to introduce you to the next Annie Leibovitz.’ He grinned broadly. ‘She just did a shoot with the one and only…’
Anna had watched them both steadily, waiting.
‘Alice Cooper!’ Diane had eventually announced proudly. ‘And I did his make-up.’
‘But he’s a man,’ Anna commented drily.
‘Yeah, so?’ Her grin faded and she arched an overplucked brow. ‘You want me to do your make-up?’
Barry rested his pudgy hand on Diane’s shoulder. ‘That’s my girl.’
Barry had given them their next job and, as they discussed how best to work London Fashion Week, Diane set about working her magic on Anna’s face. She hadn’t the heart to tell Diane she wasn’t sure the orange lipstick and glitter lashes really suited her, but she had found a soulmate. They went out and danced all night, drank cheap shots, and Anna quickly forgot she looked like a clown as they downed another round of Flaming Sambucas.
Anna glanced at her friend and thought she saw a look of worry cross her pretty features; but then, as quickly as it had arrived, it disappeared and Diane smiled at her. It was good to have her here, Anna thought. Diane looked in the small cosmetic mirror and reapplied her bright-pink lipstick with a steady hand as Anna drove. Smacking her lips, Diane turned in her seat and handed Antonia her lipstick. ‘You want some?’
‘No!’ Anna said, fearing this might be the first step in her daughter losing her childhood. She watched in horror as Antonia pushed the waxy lipstick against her mouth and drew a long line across her cheek, her forehead and back down to her mouth. Freddie laughed and grabbed the lipstick off his sister and roughly slathered the lipstick over his lips and nose. ‘Oh bugger.’ Now her son was experimenting with make-up. Joy.
‘Diane,’ she said crossly, ‘they’re five.’ She gave her a sidelong look. ‘Five.’
‘Yeah, well, they need to learn sometime, don’t they?’ She nodded, taking the stub of lipstick off Freddie. ‘They’re both naturals.’
‘Freddie is a boy.’ Anna turned the car into the Waitrose car park. ‘And now I have children who look like a Harley Street doctor has marked them up for cosmetic surgery.’ She pulled into a space and turned off the engine, before swivelling round in order to get a better look. ‘Oh bloody hell.’
‘Oh, buggy hell,’ Antonia said, clearly having decided her mother swearing wasn’t so bad after all. Anna knew it: lipstick had been a catalyst to puberty.
‘You’re going to have stay here with the children,’ she said to Diane. ‘We can’t go around the supermarket looking like… like this.’
Freddie sliced the air like a ninja. She didn’t have the heart to tell him he was about as far from inconspicuous as a little-boy ninja could possibly be.
Diane nodded. ‘Fine. I’ll tell the children about the latest celebrity I had to make up.’
‘OK. Good.’ Anna grabbed her bag out of the footwell under Freddie’s feet and got out of the car. ‘Who was it, by the way?’ She stood and bent in. ‘Who was the celebrity?’
‘Only Marilyn Manson!’ Diane said delightedly.
Now having second thoughts, Anna was about to suggest that Diane go round the supermarket alone, when Diane pushed a wad of twenties into her hand.
‘Where did you get this money?’ Anna stared at the two hundred-odd pounds in disbelief. ‘Have you robbed a bank?’
‘Have I robbed a bank?’ Diane threw her head back, laughing. ‘Kids, she thinks Auntie Dee-Dee would rob a bank.’
‘No, seriously, have you?’
‘Darling, if I’d robbed a bank, I’d be halfway to the Canary Islands by now, not kipping at my friend’s ramshackle cottage in Twee-ville.’
‘OK, so where? Have you taken out all your savings?’
‘Nope.’ She smiled. ‘Turns out Alice Cooper loved the bat I painted on his left cheek and the fangs I drew on with the kohl, so he found out my address and thanked me personally… Sent me a cheque emblazoned with a chicken. How cute is that?’
‘Cute,’ Anna said drily.
Diane shrugged. ‘Hence, Manson knocking on my counter, so to speak.’ She flung her arms out. ‘Darlings, turns out I am a big hit among the lords of the heavy metal.’ She grinned conspiratorially at Anna. ‘So, when I got your call last night, I figured I’d follow my bestie to Wiltshire and, if it worked and we ended up living together, I’d set up my own business in a shed or something and cater to the heavy metal stars of the shires.’
Anna suppressed a giggle. ‘What you really mean is you’ve been sent by Barry to take photos of me in the countryside and this was an advance?’
‘Yeah,’ she said, sucking her cheeks in in defeat. Then, a moment later, her energy returned and she said, ‘But Alice was telling me he owns a mansion up the road from you and Manson said he lives in Gloucestershire. I mean, seriously, it’ll be big. And what about Osborne? Isn’t his wife British? And, I mean, I’ll do either sex, so to speak. It’s going to be huge.’ She nodded her head defiantly. ‘Epic, in fact.’
Anna closed the car door and walked off, smiling. Diane, the girl who had never been out of London, was in for a shock, she thought, walking past a dozen Jack Russells tied up at the entrance to Waitrose and joining the throng of tweed and wax jackets. She grabbed a trolley and kept her head down, suddenly feeling very out of place in her scruffy denim jacket and I’M NOT SMALL, JUST FUN SIZE long-sleeve T-shirt. She made a mental note to visit Joules.
She started to fill the trolley with fruit and salad, feeling increasingly virtuous and like Mother Earth, until she reached the cake and sweet aisles, whereupon the thin layer of five-a-days was soon covered in Freddie’s favourite biscuits, Antonia’s Gummy Bears and her cake. Diane loved crisps so she picked up a buy-one-get-one-free multipack (she thought it uneconomical not to) and stocked up on spaghetti hoops and ketchup.
She was so busy debating the merits of Waitrose’s own alphabet spaghetti versus Heinz’s,