Dead Funny

  For Rod “Maestro” Burnett

  Biddy Ford – otherwise known as Baby Sugarcandy, star of stage and screen – was sick with nerves. She knelt beside the toilet bowl and waited for it to pass. She was always like this before an important occasion – movie premieres, opening nights, concerts. Every public appearance filled her with this awful, gut-churning fear. And today? Well, she couldn’t imagine a more important occasion. No wonder she felt queasy.

  The worst of it was over now, she thought: the nausea was subsiding at last. Putting both palms on the rim of the toilet, she began to push herself up.

  She didn’t hear the soft tread of feet behind her, or see anyone approach. Only when a hand grasped her head and forced it down did she realize that something was terrifyingly wrong…

  the invisible girl

  My name is Poppy Fields. I’m average height, average weight, average build, and I’m invisible.

  Not literally, of course. I’m not a superhero. It’s just that fading into the background is my speciality. At school, I’ve mastered the art of sitting in the teacher’s blind spot – not at the back with the troublemakers, or at the sides where people who haven’t done their homework try to sink into the walls, but slap-bang in the middle of the classroom. What you have to do is maintain an expression of polite interest – not too keen, not too bored – and that way the teacher’s eyes sort of slide over you as if you’re not there.

  At weekends I know exactly how to brush my hair and precisely which clothes to wear to remain unseen. I’ve got a wardrobe full of uninteresting garments in indeterminate shades of blue and grey that get me through most situations totally unobserved.

  It’s not because I’m shy, it’s because I’m fascinated by other people. My mum says I study their behaviour with the same curiosity that a scientist gives to the inner workings of a termite colony. She’s probably right. To pursue my hobby I’ve learnt to camouflage myself. No one ever notices Poppy Fields.

  So when I first set foot on American soil, why did I have the unnerving sensation that someone was watching me?

  It had been OK on the flight over. I’d been sandwiched between Mum and my friend Graham right in the middle of this massive aeroplane. For the whole of the journey from England to America I’d stayed nicely anonymous. In fact, I’d avoided attention so successfully that when I’d edged out to go to the toilet the steward handing out the lunches had tripped over me. The passenger sitting on the other side of Graham had been hit by several flying trays but he hadn’t glared at me even though I’d caused the accident. He hadn’t registered my existence.

  Collecting our suitcases and going through the no-man’s-land of passport control and immigration had been fine.

  But then we’d entered the brightly lit arrivals hall. Mum was looking for the person who had come to collect us when I experienced something strange.

  Eyes. Looking at me. Staring. I could feel it like the press of fingertips on my skin.

  Alarmed, I whipped around, spinning in a full circle to catch whoever was doing it. Yet everyone in the crowded airport seemed busy with their own concerns – noisily greeting friends, or running to catch buses and trains. No one was looking at me. So why were the hairs on the back of my neck standing bolt upright?

  “Someone’s watching us,” I hissed to Graham out of the side of my mouth. “I can feel it.”

  “That would be physically impossible,” he replied, flashing me one of his blink-and-you-miss-it grins. “But I gather that disorientation is a common sign of jet lag. I expect you’re suffering from that. The majority of people who fly across more than five time zones do, you know. And we’ve flown across eight.”

  “OK.” I nodded. I knew that California was eight hours behind London. Graham had explained all about Greenwich Mean Time and the earth’s rotation on the way to the airport – he knows about stuff like that – but I still found it peculiar. We’d taken off from Heathrow at ten o’clock in the morning and flown for eleven hours. Eleven hours! As far as I was concerned it was bedtime. But although Graham and I were yawning and our eyelids were drooping, everyone in Los Angeles was just having lunch. No wonder I felt weird. Graham was right. That was all it was, I told myself. There was nothing to worry about.

  Mum had started waving energetically at a woman clutching a sign with GREEN FIELDS AND FAR AWAY scrawled across it. “That must be Baby Sugarcandy’s secretary,” she said to us as we made our way towards her. “Sylvia Sharpe. I talked to her on the phone. She’s the one who made all the arrangements.”

  We stopped in front of a solid woman who was wearing a severe dark suit, tightly-laced shoes and heavy black-rimmed glasses. Her hair was scraped back into a ponytail so tight that it pulled her eyebrows up and made her look as though she was unpleasantly surprised by everything she laid eyes on, including us. She reminded me of my PE teacher at school – strict, efficient and completely devoid of soft edges and sympathy.

  “You must be Miss Sharpe!” said Mum warmly. “Hi! I’m Lili Fields. It’s really nice to meet you.”

  “I’m glad your plane was on time,” Sylvia Sharpe answered crisply, giving Mum a brief, tight-lipped smile. “The car’s this way. Follow me, please.”

  Just as I was beginning to relax into a happy state of invisibility, Sylvia glanced over her shoulder and flashed an unnaturally white set of teeth at me. I’d been reading a new book about body language on the plane and couldn’t help noticing that her grin didn’t reach her eyes. That’s not a real smile, I thought. But then the one I gave in reply wasn’t exactly sincere either. How could it be when we’d only just met?

  “You must be Poppy,” Sylvia Sharpe said briskly as she led us across the arrivals hall towards the exit. “And I guess you’re Graham. If you need anything while you’re here, you come to me. Burgers, fries, magazines, movies… If you want it, it’s yours. Nothing’s too much trouble for Miss Sugarcandy’s guests.”

  Graham and I exchanged a quick look. My mind was fuzzy with tiredness but I couldn’t help finding this sudden generosity a little strange. We weren’t guests, after all, we were employees, or at least Mum was. Did Americans always make such a fuss over people who came to work for them? And if they did, why didn’t Sylvia’s words quite match her manner? It was like she was delivering a speech that she hadn’t rehearsed often enough to make it sound sincere. Odd, I thought, very odd. I’m going to keep an eye on her.

  We were in the States because my mum Lili runs her own landscape gardening business, Green Fields and Far Away. She won a bronze medal at last year’s Chelsea Flower Show for outstanding garden design, but she still spends most of her time mowing old ladies’ lawns and digging vegetable plots for people who’ve put their backs out. Then, out of the blue, she’d had a phone call from America and the next thing we knew she was invited to make over the Hollywood estate of Baby Sugarcandy. Mum was dead impressed but I didn’t have a clue who Baby Sugarcandy was. I had to look her up on the internet. She turned out to be an actress and singer who’d been part of the Sugarcandies, a British girl band who’d made it big in the States years and years ago. (“Their first single ‘Go Baby Go’ spent a record number of weeks at number one,” Graham informed me on the plane.) The other girls in the group – Lady, Gypsy and Queen – had sunk without trace when the band split, but Baby had gone on to star in several films. (“She won an Oscar in 1989 for her performance in Shoot Me Dead, Honey,” according to Graham.) She’d now decided that she wanted to be surrounded by an English country garden, even if she did live in the middle of Beverly Hills. The day Sylvia had called I’d come home from school to find Mum exploding with excitement. She’d given me such a violent hug that she’d almost cracked my ribs. “It’s my big chance!” she’d yelled. “Who knows where it will lead? I’ll be garden desi
gner to the stars! This is where my career takes off!”

  Sylvia had told Mum that Miss Sugarcandy was not only paying megabucks for the design, but she was also happy for Mum to bring me along. “She even said you could invite a friend to stop you being bored. I’ll be working all day – you’ll need someone to keep you company. She’s going to pay for our flights and everything. Who do you want to invite?”

  “Graham.” My answer had been instant.

  “Graham?” said Mum. “Are you sure? Don’t you want to bring someone a bit more … well … fun?”

  But yes, I was absolutely sure. No amount of persuasion would make me change my mind. True, Graham was generally reckoned to be a bit of a geek, but I knew that his nerdy exterior concealed hidden depths. His head was stuffed full of useful information, and he was capable of sudden, surprising bursts of courage. He’d saved my life when we were on holiday in Scotland and we’d been friends ever since. Plus he was perfect company. I didn’t have to talk to him unless I wanted to. He could be relied on to get totally immersed in the Guinness World Records for hours on end, leaving me the time and space to pursue my favourite hobby of people-watching.

  So as soon as the autumn half-term had started we’d got on the plane, really looking forward to what lay ahead.

  But now we’d arrived Mum’s excitement was fading and she was looking slightly green with nerves. “I’ve never done anything this big,” she whispered as Graham and I climbed into the back of the huge car. “Oh, Poppy, suppose she doesn’t like what I do?” I squeezed Mum’s hand reassuringly, watched her climb into the front passenger seat, and then promptly fell asleep.

  It was the squeal of brakes that woke me. That, and being flung so hard against the side of the car that I cracked my head on the window. I blinked, wondering for a moment where I was and why Graham was sprawled across my lap. The car had stopped and was skewed sideways across the road about a hundred metres away from a huge pair of wrought-iron gates that had the house name SUGARCANDY HEIGHTS worked into the design. The Sat Nav had been knocked off the windscreen to the floor and the wrong button must have got hit because it was screaming with electronic enthusiasm, “1171 Orangeblossom Boulevard!” Sylvia was scrabbling around in a frenzy trying to find it but the address was repeated five times before she managed to silence the thing.

  “What happened?” Mum cried. “Why on earth did you brake?”

  “My apologies!” said Sylvia, dabbing beads of sweat from her forehead with a handkerchief. “A raccoon ran across the road and I had to swerve to miss it. Are you kids OK?”

  “A raccoon!” I said, looking out at the empty road. “Where?”

  “It’s gone. Ran into the trees over there. It’s fine, though – don’t worry – there wasn’t a scratch on it.”

  I was disappointed not to catch a glimpse – I quite like wildlife. “Did you see it, Mum?”

  “No,” she said, and her voice was tight with nerves. “I wasn’t really looking.”

  “We’ve plenty of raccoons on the estate. You’re sure to see one soon.” Sylvia turned and gave me another of her fake smiles before restarting the engine. She pressed some sort of remote control so the gates swung smoothly open and we entered the grounds.

  “We’re here,” Sylvia announced. “Ms Fields, may I present to you Miss Sugarcandy’s estate? It eagerly awaits your expert attention.” The words were addressed to my mum. But in the rear-view mirror, I noticed that Sylvia Sharpe’s eyes were firmly fixed on me.

  dressed to kill

  As we cruised along the drive, winding in dramatic hairpin bends up the hill, I was stunned by the splendour of Baby Sugarcandy’s estate. It was vast: an elegant series of terraces linked with flights of broad stone steps. Columns of tall, pointed cypresses were interspersed with strategically placed orange trees and huge cacti in beautifully crafted terracotta pots. It was difficult to see quite how Mum was going to improve on it and she was clearly thinking the same: I could feel waves of anxiety rolling off her. After the third or fourth bend we caught a glimpse of the mansion and even Graham gasped in astonishment. It was amazing: a construction of stone, glass and steel that looked incredibly modern but also seemed to blend so well into the landscape that it might have grown there all by itself.

  “What a remarkable piece of design!” enthused Graham. “Who was the architect?”

  I didn’t hear Sylvia’s answer because at that moment something else caught my attention.

  A man was sprinting across the terrace nearest to us and then down the steps towards the iron gates two at a time. I was used to seeing joggers – our local park was full of them – but this man clearly wasn’t out for exercise. He was dressed in crisp, white trousers, with a scarlet waistcoat and matching carnation that dangled precariously from the buttonhole of a red-and-white striped blazer. A once neatly knotted bow tie was rapidly unravelling, the ends flapping against his shoulder. Thinning grey hair was revealed when he stumbled and his straw hat fell onto the ground. He didn’t stop to retrieve it. When he saw our car, he froze for a second. But then he took off once more, his pace increasing even though his gait was lurching and uneven, and he had a hand to his side as if he had a stitch. He was some distance away, but I could hear what his body language was saying as clearly as if he’d shouted the words aloud. He was panicky, desperate. Terrified.

  Elbowing Graham in the ribs, I pointed to the man out of my window and then asked Sylvia, “Who’s that?”

  The secretary glanced at me in the rear-view mirror and then looked out across the grounds.

  “What the…?” she exclaimed, slamming on the brakes again. But by the time the car had come to a halt, the man had slipped through the iron gates just before they clanged shut and disappeared from view.

  “Do you know him?” I asked.

  “No.” Sylvia’s smooth forehead creased in a puzzled frown that made her ponytail jerk. She said crossly, “That’s most peculiar. Miss Sugarcandy didn’t say she was expecting a caller today. I do wish she’d let me know when she changes her plans, it’s so difficult to get anything organized otherwise.” She shook her head, tutting. “I’ll take you all to the house to meet Miss Sugarcandy first,” she told Mum as she accelerated up the drive once more. “Then we’ll go to the guest wing. You’ll need to get some rest, I should think, before you begin work.”

  Mum didn’t answer. By now she had gone very pale. She turned and pulled a face at me and Graham. When Sylvia stopped the car in front of Miss Sugarcandy’s spectacular house and got out, Mum whispered, “I hope this isn’t a huge mistake. I suppose if she doesn’t like my ideas we can always go home again… But then I won’t get paid. Oh dear!”

  “It will be fine,” I said confidently. Even though I was really sleepy, I was excited about meeting Miss Sugarcandy. The prospect of studying a real life celebrity at close quarters was absolutely fascinating.

  But my eager anticipation didn’t last long.

  When we walked into the vast, marbled entrance hall I realized that I wasn’t going to get the chance to see the star in action after all. No one was. Ever again.

  Baby Sugarcandy lay in a crumpled heap at the foot of a sweeping staircase, and it was very obvious that she was dead.

  a fatal accident?

  I was the first person to reach the body, closely followed by Graham. Mum had frozen, standing with an open mouth as if emitting a silent scream. Sylvia was also fixed to the spot, but rather than looking upset she seemed annoyed at the interruption to her well-planned timetable.

  I’d seen corpses before – there had been a few of those when Graham and I had been on holiday in Scotland – so I wasn’t as shocked as Mum. Even so, it was still pretty distressing looking at that poor broken body and I had to take a few deep breaths to steady myself. Half of me just wanted to run straight back to the airport. But the other half was dead nosy. Remembering from television crime shows I’d seen that I shouldn’t touch anything, I bent over Baby Sugarcandy for a closer look.

&nbs
p; She was old but not very wrinkly. Small – not much taller than me and Graham, I thought – and she’d really taken care of herself. Her fingernails were beautifully manicured, her lips were neatly slicked with lipstick. She wore a long, white silk dress trimmed with a red-and-white striped sash that was tied in a great big bow on her hip. She looked like she was about to walk down a red carpet with a load of photographers clicking away at her. I noticed that the heel of one shoe had snapped and was dangling by a strip of leather from the sole. And the poor woman’s neck must have snapped too, I thought: her head was twisted at such a strange angle. It was a deeply disturbing sight. She was like a china doll that had been smashed by a spoilt child: delicate, expensive, fragile and now damaged beyond repair. No amount of superglue would put her back together.

  As Graham and I were absorbing the details, Sylvia Sharpe’s tightly-laced shoes padded over the marble floor towards us, closely followed by the soft thump of my mum’s trainers.

  “How awful!” gasped Mum. “Poor, poor thing!”

  “Oh no!” Sylvia said. “How appalling! I am so very sorry you’ve had to see this. Dear, oh dear. What a ghastly accident! I guess she tripped?”

  “I suppose so…” I agreed hesitantly.

  “I think her heel came adrift,” added Graham.

  I looked at the staircase. It was certainly steep enough to kill anyone. If her shoe had given way at the top and she’d fallen, she could easily have broken her neck on the way down. Broken all her bones, in fact.

  So why didn’t I quite believe it?

  I took another look at Miss Sugarcandy. She was immaculately dressed, from her dangly diamond earrings to her pedicured feet. But there was something not quite right. What was it?

  Her hair’s wrong, I thought at last. I remembered the photograph of her that Graham had found in his Guiness World Records. Baby Sugarcandy had styled her hair in a beehive, backcombing it, winding it round and piling it on top of her head until it looked like an enormous ice cream. But now it was a mess, squashed and crumpled like a badly-made bird’s nest. What’s more, it was slightly damp, as if she’d just stepped out of the shower. I sniffed. A faint whiff of bleach was coming from it.