Suckers

'And you always pretended to be my friend,' she was saying. 'I was always so nice to you. And now here you are, trying to steal him away as soon as my back is turned. I always knew there was another woman. I just didn't realize it was you, Dora.'

'But it wasn't me,' I murmured, trying to remember what I'd done with my crucifixes. There was garlic in the kitchen, but Lulu was standing between me and the kitchen door. There was garlic in the pocket of my jacket, but that was somewhere on the bathroom floor. At least, I hoped it was somewhere on the bathroom floor. I tried to remember whether the jacket had been part of the bundle of clothes which Duncan had shoved into my arms, or whether I'd left it hanging in the hall.

'…and you're wearing my bathrobe,' she said in an outraged tone. 'You think you can waltz right in and steal my boyfriend and wear my bathrobe. But you can't. You look terrible in pink, Dora. It doesn't suit you at all. You should wear black, like everyone else.'

All this time I was edging backwards, and as soon as I found I'd backed into the bathroom doorway, I scuttled inside and slammed the door, shooting the bolt across, but even as I shot it I saw how flimsy a bolt it was. The door shuddered as something crashed against the other side — it sounded much too heavy to be Lulu — and there was a loud splintering as the bolt casing began to part company with the frame. I scrabbled around amongst the clothes on the floor, trying to find garlic, crucifixes, anything. I finally found my jacket, but the only things in the pockets were an old receipt and a couple of mangy paper tissues.

There was a second juddering blow, and the bolt casing flew across the room, and the door was hurled open with so much force it swung free from one of its hinges. 'Look what you made me do,' said Lulu.

I started to gabble. 'We saw your picture in the paper. You looked great.' I thought if I could keep her talking, perhaps she wouldn't get a chance to do anything else with that big red mouth of hers. 'How do you manage to put your make-up on without a mirror?'

'I don't need mirrors any more.' She raised one of her hands and ran it through her hair in a parody of one of her favourite model-girl gestures. 'Mirrors and I have parted company. I'm beyond the world of mirrors now.'

'But you don't eat meat,' I said hopefully.

She smiled and for the first time I had an unrestricted view of her brand-new teeth, which were pearly white and ferocious looking. 'Bugger that vegetarian lark,' she said. 'This is the first time they've let me out on my own, and I'm starving.'

'What about Duncan? You came for him, not me. You could finish him off, and let me go.'

She shook her head. 'You don't know anything. Duncan's special. They said I could come here, as a present. I wasn't supposed to kiss him, not yet, but I was so pleased to see him I got carried away.'

'What was a present? They said? Who said? Violet?'

'Violet? No, no, I'm talking about Rose. She said Duncan would know exactly what to do. Because he's done it before.'

'Done what?' Lulu's teeth and dietary habits may have changed, but she was as stupid as ever. 'But Rose is Violet, you fool. And if she sent you, she had a reason. I know what I'm talking about, Lu. See this?' I held up my left hand and waggled what remained of my little finger at her. It was hardly a threatening gesture. 'I've been here before.'

A faintly perplexed look skittered across her face, as though an ancient race memory had stirred somewhere in her head, but then it vanished and she was stretching out towards me. 'I'm so tired of talking,' she sighed. 'And I'm so bloody hungry. Now are you going to come to me or do I have to come and get you?'

'Oh hell,' I said. 'Come and get me.'

She stopped being Lulu and started being something else.

She tried to overwhelm me with her eyes, but she had a few hundred years to go before she mastered that technique, and I was wise to it. I concentrated on the teeth and the soft red flesh of her lips. I was groping around the basin, trying to find something — anything — to use as a weapon, but Duncan's electric razor wasn't much use, nor was his aftershave. I threw a can of hairspray and it bounced uselessly off her arm. Lulu feinted playfully, and I jumped, and my elbow sent a clutch of toiletries crashing to the floor. The plastic bottles bounced and rolled, a couple of glass ones smashed. The air was suddenly fragrant with vetivert, and aquamarine jelly oozed out over the shiny white tiles. She advanced purposefully through the wreckage, heels making a crunching, squelching sound, and carefully stepped from the shiny white tiles on to the fluffy white bathmat. As she did so I ducked and grabbed the edge of the mat and tugged it up as hard as I could.

If she'd been wearing sensible footwear she would have regained her balance easily. But this was Lulu, and she was wearing flamboyant fuck-me shoes with lizard-skin trimming and four-inch spikes. So when the earth moved beneath her feet she teetered back and forth in a dainty cha-cha movement, one arm windmilling into the bathroom cabinet; one corner of it came away from the wall and sent more jars and bottles crashing across the room. The smell of vetivert was now mingling with verbena and bergamot and Rive Gauche. I put my head down and butted her, and she fell backwards with a surprised grunt, and the rim of the bath caught her behind the knees and she landed in the water with her legs in the air.

For one brief blissful moment, I thought that was it, I thought she was going to lie there quietly, and it would all be over. I was standing there thinking that when she came up screeching and clawing. I pushed her back again but her fingers fastened on to the sleeve of the bathrobe and pulled me down with her. For a few seconds our faces were only inches apart. Her teeth gnashed shut, just missing the tip of my nose, but I managed to push her under the gushing tap, and she twisted her head from side to side and made an enraged burbling sound, letting go of the bathrobe and scrabbling at my forearms so that fine threads of blood dribbled into the water and uncoiled there, turning it pink like dentist's mouthwash. I tried to hold her down, but she was too hot and slippery. My nose and mouth were filled with fragrant steam, but I caught a whiff of something spicy and unpleasant lurking beneath the overlay of perfume. Lulu's face was coming out in large shiny blisters which burst, one after the other. She sat up suddenly, shaking her head so that drops of water flew in all directions, and shaking me off as well. It caught me off guard and I felt myself tumbling backwards.

My feet were cold. I couldn't work out what I was doing on the bathroom floor, but it would have been comfortable enough had it not been for the cold feet and the nagging thought there was some other matter to which I should have been attending. I tried to get up but everything tilted. I slapped my hand down to steady myself, and felt broken glass sink into the palm. I said, very crossly, 'Oh, shit,' as it started to sting. My hand wasn't the only part of me which was hurting; the back of my head was throbbing where I'd cracked it against something, and now everything was going hazy, and the steam and the smoke swirled up and made it even hazier. Through the haze, I saw someone stand up in the bath, and her black dress was clinging to her figure and I recognized Lulu, even though her face was red and shiny. She didn't seem to mind about the mess her face was in — she was laughing as if this were the most fun she had ever had in her life. It was all so deja vu that I knew I had to be dreaming.