Suckers

'A chain of cinemas? That's really throwing money down the toilet. They'll never make any profit on that.'

He shrugged. 'They've never made a loss yet.'

'Who? Dragosh?'

'No, Multiglom,' said the Yorkshireman, fast losing patience.

'I thought you said it wasn't Multiglom.'

He sighed and rolled his eyeballs. 'Multiglom is just the media arm,' he explained as though he was talking to a five-year-old. 'Multiglom is a part of Dragosh. The nerve centre.'

'But I thought you said…'

I was ready to grill him further, but he mumbled something about having to get a refill and swiftly moved off in the direction of the butler. It was the first time I had ever been abandoned by a party bore, and I didn't much care for the feeling. I was wondering whether to tag along with him anyway when I saw Duncan. He was standing, or rather leaning, with one arm draped across the padded shoulders of an all too familiar figure — Francine. I went up and said hello, I could see he'd been working really hard all afternoon.

'Hi, Dora,' he said. 'Dora, this is Francine.'

'I know who it is,' I said. Francine smiled sweetly at me. I smiled sweetly back. 'Where's Lulu?' I asked him.

'Who's Lulu?' asked Francine. As soon as she opened her mouth I was hit by a blast; she'd been at the garlic again. It was overkill. I'd stopped scoffing the stuff after Duncan had complained, and now I kept it ready peeled in my pocket. But I didn't see him whingeing about Francine's breath the way he'd whinged about mine, and that really pissed me off.

'I don't know,' said Duncan, who appeared to be having some difficulty understanding what people were saying to him. He removed his arm from Francine's shoulders and regarded her gravely. 'Do you know where Lulu is?' he asked. Francine shook her head.

'Are you sure she's coming?' I asked.

'S'what Ruthie said.' He peered around exaggeratedly. 'Where is Weinstein anyway? Can you see her?'

'Weinstein?' asked Francine, igniting like a Roman Candle. 'Weinstein Galleries? Maybe I should introduce myself.'

Duncan swayed gently, to and fro. Red wine slopped dangerously near the rim of his glass. 'Where's Lulu?' he repeated.

'Should I know Lulu?' asked Francine. 'Is she famous?'

'She is now,' I said. 'Francine, honey, why don't you… run along and talk to Ruth. There she is over there, the one with the perfect nose and podgy calves.'

'No, no,' said Duncan, putting his arm back around Francine's shoulders. 'I think Francine should stay with me. Francine is telling me all about Dino and his latest scheme. It's very interesting, isn't it Francine?'

Francine touched his lips with her finger and made a noise like a soda syphon. 'He's had a bit too much to drink,' she explained, as though I were deaf, dumb, and blind. I was about to ask about Dino and his 'scheme' when I noticed that Duncan, in light-hearted mood, was trying to slide his hand down the front of her little black dress. Her resistance was less than token. I couldn't stand to watch any more. He just wasn't worth the effort. I'd left my cigarettes on a table across the room and went back to reclaim them; no one owned up to smoking any more, so the packet was exactly where I'd left it. I was just lighting up, looking forward to a spot of peaceful isolation, when Ruth bore down on me with that stiff-legged trot which meant business. Her expression was not at all appropriate to a party occasion; it was grim.

'I've been meaning to talk to you,' she said.

'Again?' I said.

'No,' said Ruth, 'I mean properly. You never let me talk to you properly, Dora. You always change the subject, or turn it into a joke. Now I have something important to say, and I want you to shut up and listen.'

'Sure,' I said, not sure at all. I was thinking she was going to tick me off about the cigarettes.

'Not here,' she said, looking around apprehensively. 'Upstairs.' I followed as she headed back through the crowd towards the staircase. One or two people were dancing, but a bit too energetically, as if to prove they had no inhibitions. Someone cannoned into me and I nearly lost my balance. There was a lot of high-pitched laughter and hysterical shrieking. I hadn't realized everyone had been getting quite so intoxicated. Ruth's parties were usually rather sedate.

She led me up to a spare room where the bed was half-buried beneath a mound of coats, and perched on the window-ledge while I flopped on to someone's fake fur and finished my cigarette. 'Give us one,' Ruth begged. I held out the packet, but grudgingly. This was typical; Ruth said she was a non-smoker, but she was always cadging from other people. She took a couple of shallow but showy puffs and asked, 'What's going on?'

'How should I know? It's your party.'

'Don't tell me you haven't noticed. Something's happening.'

'Like what?' I laughed, but she didn't laugh back — she puffed on her cigarette and looked anxious. This wasn't like Ruth at all.

She chose her words carefully. 'Everyone is sort of… highly strung,' she said. 'It's like the week before Christmas, when everyone's desperate to have a good time, and the harder they try, the worse it gets.' She kept fiddling with her fringe, brushing it forward and then back from her face. There were surprisingly deep lines etched into her forehead. 'You know what my grandad says? He says it reminds him of the Weimar Republic.'

I'd met Ruth's grandfather once. He had struck me as a senile old codger, but before the war, apparently, he had been something of a mover and shaker in artistic circles. Then the Brownshirts had come along and put a stop to his career by smashing his Stradivarius and most of the bones in his right hand. Friends and colleagues had urged him to leave Germany, and so he had, but he had not gone far enough. He had survived, but only just; his wife, parents, sister, and three out of four of his children had not been so fortunate.

I didn't like the turn our conversation was taking. 'What do you mean, highly strung?'

Ruth continued to play with her hair. 'You know what I mean. You always know a lot more than you let on, Dora. People are changing.'

'Like who?'

'Like Lulu. When I saw her the other night, she acted like she hardly knew me. It was like she was a different person.'

'Maybe she'd had her nose done.'

This was a low blow, and Ruth ignored it. 'She was sort of… blank.'

I relaxed. 'Well, that's nothing new. Lulu's always been a bit of a bungalow, in case you hadn't noticed. Not an awful lot upstairs there.'

'No, it wasn't like that at all,' Ruth said. I realized she was blinking back tears, and for a horrible moment I thought she was going to cry on my shoulder. Ruth snivelling all over me was the last thing I needed. But she shook it off and got a grip on herself. 'Some of the people here tonight are good friends, people I've known for years, but they're different, too. Like they're all caught up in something exciting, and they're not telling me about it.'

'Invasion of the Body Snatchers,' I cackled. 'It's the Pod People!'

Ruth suddenly looked very cunning. It was the expression she wore whenever she was about to get someone else to pay for the cab they'd been sharing. 'I think you know more than you're letting on again. I think maybe it's not entirely unconnected with what happened to you and Duncan when we were at college.' She looked meaningfully at my little finger. 'You never did tell me how you lost that.'

'Yes I did,' I sighed. Ruth had tried this ploy on a number of occasions. Normally I didn't rise to it, but now I was getting impatient. 'I told you, I was chopping paper.'