Love Him to Death

  While Sizal plaited and twirled her hair into place, Kelly related her entire life story. It wasn’t particularly gripping but it passed the time. After a while she began to ask Sizal about his work, and all of a sudden eavesdropping got a lot more interesting. Smiling at him in the mirror, she said, “You do all the stars’ hair, don’t you? I bet you’ve got a few stories to tell.”

  Sizal Bouffant grinned, flashing his perfect teeth. “Oh yes, darling. I’ve had them all in my chair, so to speak.” He winked suggestively at me and Graham. “You should see me on Oscars night. I’m doing extensions faster that Bob the Builder!”

  They chatted about various celebrities, Sizal relating a whole series of hair-related titbits about which actors were going bald and who’d had a bad dye job and whose split ends were a disgrace and whether the fashion next season was going to be long or short. Then he sighed and remarked, “Of course all that’s probably behind me now. If what I’ve read is true, I’ll be dropped like a pair of hot tongs when people find out I’m doing this wedding. I may have just committed professional suicide.”

  I couldn’t help myself. “Why?” I asked.

  Sizal looked at me and pulled a face. “Angelica’s friends. I don’t suppose any of them will want to use me now. That’s probably half my A-list clients down the plughole.”

  “So why did you agree to it?”

  “I’m a hopeless romantic, darling. I never could resist a wedding.”

  Kelly didn’t like being upstaged by a kid and her eyes narrowed. “You used to do her hair, didn’t you?” she asked Sizal. “Back before Bill met Josie.”

  I saw Graham’s back straighten and knew he was paying attention too.

  “I did, sweetie. The last time I touched up her roots was January. She looked lovely then.” Sizal smiled, and his expression softened as though he had fond memories. “She was radiant, you know? In love. Glowing with happiness.” Then he pursed his lips and added, “Different story now, though. The poor woman seems positively suicidal.”

  Kelly dropped her voice. “You know she’s here on the island?”

  “Yes, darling. I’ve seen her.”

  “People are saying she’s gone mad.”

  Sizal looked uncomfortable. “She does seem a little … how can I put it? Delusional.”

  “It must be embarrassing for Bill,” Kelly went on. She couldn’t quite disguise the tremble in her voice as she said his name. Interesting, I thought. So Kelly’s got a crush on him too, has she?

  “Bill?” echoed Sizal. He shrugged. “Oh, I expect he’s man enough to cope. It’s Angelica I feel sorry for. She’s in pieces!” The hairdresser spun Kelly around in her chair and said, “You’re done, sweetie.” Then he added, “You know Angelica asked me to have a word with Josie?”

  “With Josie? She never!”

  “Oh yes, she did. Wanted me to stop the wedding. As if I could make any difference!”

  Graham caught my eye in the mirror. We were both eager to hear more, but just then a wasp flew in through the open window and suddenly all hell broke loose.

  I’ve never seen anyone react so hysterically to a small, stripy insect. Sizal screamed – a terror-stricken, ear-splitting squeal – then dropped his comb and started flapping his hands in front of his face in a way that only made him more likely to get stung. His breath came in wheezing gulps, as if he was about to have an asthma attack, and for a second or two I thought he might pass out in sheer fright.

  But Graham – always surprisingly quick to react in an emergency – grabbed a glass and cupped it over the wasp the moment it settled. Sliding his ever-useful library card between glass and wall so he had the intruder trapped, Graham then carried the insect across the room and released it before pulling the window tight shut.

  Sizal sank down on to a chaise longue, hand on heart trying to soothe its rapid beat, “Thank you,” he muttered faintly. “Darlings, I’m sorry to make such a fuss. Oh dear, dear, dear, I do hate the things.” Before he could explain his extraordinary outburst, the door opened once more and this time Josie came in.

  “The blushing bride!” cried Sizal, quickly leaping back to his feet. “The star of the show! Come here, come here, come here! Sit, sit, sit! It’s your big day, darling, and I’m going to make you look so beautiful, the gods themselves will weep with jealousy. Now be off, all of you! I need to give Miss Diamond my complete, undivided attention.”

  He hastily removed our curlers, squirted hairspray over us, then ushered Graham, Kelly and me out of the room with such speed that I snagged one of my fig leaves on the key that was sticking out of the door.

  Graham and I had been instructed to go down to the entrance hall next, where Tessa would be waiting. As soon as we appeared she confined us to yet another chaise longue and told us to sit, without moving a muscle, while Josie was primped and preened for the day ahead. We couldn’t scratch our noses or go to the toilet for fear of wrecking our clothes or make-up. All we could do was talk to each other in whispers – and the first thing we said was, “What was all that about?”

  the blushing bride

  By now the villa’s entrance hall was bursting with chattering nymphs, giggling dryads and laughing satyrs waiting to escort the bride to the ceremony. There was no sign of Angelica but we saw Bill leave for the chapel with Ruby and the other guests. Tessa was left in charge, making notes on a clipboard and issuing orders to the attendants. She looked stressed, which was hardly surprising: you could barely hear yourself think above the buzz of excited conversation. But the second Josie appeared, everyone fell silent.

  Her usual look was fresh-faced and make-up-free, and even in jeans and an old T-shirt she was stunningly pretty. By the time Sizal Bouffant, Lucia and Hazel had finished with her, she looked beautiful beyond belief. She materialized in the entrance hall like a goddess and all the bridal attendants gasped. Her face was literally glowing with joy.

  Kelly, on the other hand, looked almost sick with jealousy. “You look great,” she said insincerely. “Nice dress.”

  “Oh, thank you!” said Josie. Her voice wobbled a bit as if she was nervous. “Bill chose it. I wasn’t so sure about all this, but he wanted to do something really special, you know?” She looked over to Tessa. “Are we ready?”

  I nudged Graham carefully, so as not to jog his fig leaves, and hissed, “She seems happy…”

  “So she should be,” Graham whispered back. “She’s been wishing for this since she was a child.”

  “Be careful what you wish for,” I murmured, suddenly remembering an old saying of my gran’s. “Have you ever heard that phrase?”

  “For it might come true,” Graham finished for me. Then he added, “But Josie doesn’t seem to have any reservations about achieving her life’s ambition.”

  We didn’t have time to say more because Tessa was rounding people up in earnest now and giving out orders. Our procession to the chapel was going to be a complicated affair. Half the satyrs, nymphs and dryads would lead the way, frolicking along the cobbled street to the tune of Bill’s first hit, “My One, My Only”. It was being played on pan pipes and lyres to fit with the Venus and Adonis theme, so it sounded a little strange, but that didn’t seem to bother Josie.

  Josie was riding side-saddle on a white horse that had been cunningly fitted with a pair of wings to resemble Pegasus. Graham and I were told to caper either side of it, holding our bows and arrows high. We would be followed by the rest of the attendants, who were going to sing along to the music and perform what looked like a complicated dance sequence.

  Thankfully, our own routine was fairly simple – two steps diagonally left, two steps diagonally right, twirl and bow and grin.

  Once Tessa had finished shouting instructions she left to join Bill and the rest of the guests at the chapel and we were off.

  We hadn’t gone more than a few paces when I got a stone in my golden slipper, but I didn’t dare to stop for fear of causing a mass pile-up. So my performance was more of a shuffle than a caper, bu
t Josie was so busy smiling at all the islanders who’d turned out to watch that she either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

  We paused and posed at various prearranged beauty spots so the Hi! photographer could take pictures. The whole thing might have been perfectly easy if the cobbles hadn’t been so uneven and the day hadn’t been so hot. As it was, the procession seemed to be taking for ever.

  Just as we reached the first of many hairpin bends in the road, disaster struck. Graham’s face was now gleaming with sweat and my wig was itching like mad, but that turned out to be the least of our problems because suddenly Angelica appeared from behind a large rock. She scrambled inelegantly onto it and shouted at Josie over the heads of the satyrs and dryads, “You have to stop this!”

  The lyres pinged their last, the pan pipes faded like a dying breath and the dancers stopped gyrating. There was silence, apart from the sound of shuffling feet as Josie’s bridal attendants jostled each other for a better view. The Hi! photographer looked gleeful as he snapped the confrontation from every angle.

  Angelica looked a mess. Her hair was blowing wildly about her face, her eyes were glinting maniacally, the tendons in her neck were standing out stiffly. “You can’t marry him. Don’t you see? He wants me. Me!”

  The sight of Angelica looking so sad and so mad might have moved someone else to pity, but not Josie. Jealousy clearly brought out the worst in her and she did just about the cruellest thing she could have done: she laughed, long and loud and dripping with derision. Angelica visibly shrunk under the weight of it.

  “Hello?” Josie said sarcastically, waving an arm over the assembled bridal attendants. “What do you think all this is in aid of? He’s marrying me. Me. Get it?”

  Angelica shook her head despairingly. “Don’t you see? Why can’t anyone see? He loves me. You have to leave, go away, go home.” She was begging now, her voice desperate. It was embarrassing.

  Josie shook her head but said nothing more – as if Angelica wasn’t worth wasting her breath on. She smiled at her attendants, beamed at the photographer, reached down and smoothed one of Graham’s stray curls, then announced, “Let’s get on with it. My bridegroom’s waiting.”

  The way was steep and the sun was now directly overhead. It was absolutely sweltering. I’d removed the stone from my slipper but even that wasn’t much help. We were all exhausted when we finally reached the top. The pan pipes had become screechy and out of sync with the wearily-plucked lyres. The satyrs’ tails had drooped, the dryads looked like they needed watering and the nymphs were scarlet-faced and dripping with sweat.

  Josie, meanwhile, looked as fresh and goddess-like as she had in the villa – but then all she’d had to do was sit on a horse.

  Bill’s mother Ruby was standing just outside the chapel, rifling through her handbag as if she’d lost something. As we approached, she looked up at Josie and cried, “You look lovely, dear.”

  Josie smiled. “Aren’t you going in?”

  “Yes, in a second. I can’t seem to find my tablets. Now where on earth are they? I know I put them in here somewhere. You go on, dear, Bill’s waiting for you. I’ll slip in at the back. Won’t be long.”

  Josie didn’t wait to hear more. At the mention of Bill’s name her chin went up and her eyes sparkled. When the nearest satyr helped her off Pegasus, she looked as excited as a toddler on Christmas Eve who had received a personal guarantee from Santa that she’d get everything on her list and more. She nodded to the musicians and they struck up “All Time and For Ever”, another of Bill’s famous songs. Without another glance at her soon-to-be mother-in-law she was off, me and Graham skipping half-heartedly down the aisle behind her.

  The chapel was mercifully cool and dark but it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. I bumped into a couple of guests as I twirled, and Graham caught one man across the face with his bow, but no one seemed bothered. All eyes were on Josie as she glided like a ship in full sail towards Bill, who I have to say looked like he was wearing his mum’s nightie.

  I took Josie’s bouquet as she joined Bill at the altar, and Graham and I melted away to our allotted places in the front row. The ceremony went smoothly. Bill was as delighted by the whole thing as Josie – when he said his vows he sounded incredulous and looked at his bride as though he couldn’t believe his luck. Josie spoke clearly, never breaking eye contact with Bill, adoration rolling off her in waves and washing down the aisle until everyone was caught up in this great, romantic piece of theatre. Everyone but Tessa, that is. She seemed to have a bad case of indigestion.

  When the priest pronounced Bill and Josie man and wife there was a resounding cheer inside the chapel. People were clapping and grinning and dabbing corners of eyes with tissues.

  But I felt distinctly uncomfortable. I’d noticed that when Josie had uttered the words “Until death do us part” her lips had curled as if, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t suppress a self-satisfied smirk. And at that moment a shaft of sunlight had glinted off one of her incisors.

  For a second the innocent, fresh-faced Josie had looked at her husband with all the carnivorous relish of a very hungry vampire.

  natural causes

  Once all the formal stuff was over, the musicians struck up again and Graham and I skipped back down the aisle to open the chapel door for the happy couple. It should have been an easy enough task, but when I turned the iron handle and pushed, it wouldn’t budge.

  The chapel was tiny and Bill and Josie were approaching rapidly. Again I turned the handle, put my shoulder to the door and shoved. Nothing doing.

  “Hurry up!” hissed Graham.

  “It won’t move!” I complained. “You have a go.”

  Graham grabbed the handle. It turned smoothly enough, but when he pushed, it was as though there was some kind of obstruction on the other side. Graham looked at me and I looked at Graham. Suddenly I had visions of Angelica barring the door. What if she was about to hurl a petrol bomb through? We’d be burned alive!

  Bill and Josie were only a couple of metres away now, and Tessa was sending us one of her furious glares from the front of the chapel. If we didn’t get the door open – and fast – we’d be dead meat. Hurling ourselves at it, we both pushed with all our might. It budged just a few centimetres, but it was enough to see what – or rather who – was causing the obstruction.

  Through the slit we could see Bill’s mother lying on the ground. Her eyes were staring unblinkingly back at us and she was strangely twisted, as though she’d been wracked by violent spasms. The contents of her handbag were strewn across the ground like she’d been searching increasingly frantically for her tablets.

  And hurtling down the path – running away from the chapel as if her life depended on it – was Angelica.

  For the second time in less than twenty-four hours Bill carried an unconscious woman into the villa – only this time she wasn’t apparently lifeless, she was actually dead.

  Ruby had succumbed to a massive heart attack. While Bill had been exchanging vows with Josie, his mother had been exchanging life for death.

  According to Doctor Psychondakis, it was an unfortunate accident. The old woman had absent-mindedly left her medication in her bedroom. If she’d had her tablets with her, she’d still be alive. It was sad, but there was no one to blame: she had died of natural causes.

  The doctor’s verdict was passed from guest to guest within seconds. Everyone agreed that Ruby’s death was a bit of a downer, but nobody seemed unduly bothered about it – after all, it wasn’t like any of them had known her well. The only people who’d been remotely close to the old lady were Bill, Angelica and Josie – and even Josie hadn’t known her long. Bill was now sitting, distraught, in his mother’s room, keeping her corpse company. Josie was pacing up and down fretfully on the terrace. Angelica had disappeared.

  Meanwhile, the Z-list celebrities laid into Sally’s beautifully prepared wedding feast like a flock of seagulls. Every possible taste was catered for and every inter
national cuisine was represented: there were tables laden with everything from roast beef and Yorkshire puddings to chicken tikka masala, sweet and sour pork, green curry and pizza. But in the blazing heat neither Graham nor I felt particularly hungry. We took a small plate each and helped ourselves to a couple of chargrilled sardines and a bit of Greek salad. Then we headed for a quiet corner where we could talk.

  “Do you reckon the doctor was right?” I asked Graham quietly.

  He frowned. “He’s a medical practitioner. He ought to know what he’s doing.”

  “It doesn’t feel quite right, though, does it?”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  We’d come across so many suspicious deaths lately that we’d developed a fine instinct for anything dodgy.

  “I reckon someone might have stolen those tablets,” I said.

  “What makes you think that?”

  I remembered Ruby’s expression as she’d rummaged in her bag. “Well, it didn’t even occur to her that she might have left them back at the villa – that’s why she kept on fereting around in her bag. She knew she’d put them in there: maybe she even remembered doing it.”

  “Old people’s memories can sometimes be defective,” Graham pointed out. “Young people’s too, for that matter.”

  “Yes, I know – but she wasn’t exactly the daft-old-dear type, was she? She seemed pretty sharp to me. Suppose someone took them out of her handbag before she left the villa? Someone who knew she had a medical condition…”