Read Online Spin Cycle by Sue Margolis - Free Book Online Page B

like a blinkin’ tap. I must be allergic to it or something.”
    “No, Mum, I don’t think you’re allergic—that’s what it does to most people.”
    “Really? That’s outrageous. I mean, it could be dangerous. They should be forced to take it off the market.”
    “What do you mean, ‘off the market’? It’s not exactly
on
the market.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous. I bought it in Waitrose in Buckhurst Hill.”
    “What?” Rachel said incredulously. “You bought it in the supermarket?” She had a sudden image of her Jewish mother and some Tommy Hilfigered geezer with wraparound shades skulking next to the fish counter.
    “Yes,” Faye said, nodding slowly as if to a visiting Venutian. “Come in planet Rachel. That’s where we Earthlings buy Shake ‘n Vac.”
    “Shake ‘n Vac?” Rachel repeated. “That’s what’s in the little bag?”
    “Yes,” Faye said with a puzzled laugh, “what did you think it was?”
    “So it’s not . . . ?”
    “Not what?” Faye asked, giving her daughter a bewildered look.
    “No, er, nothing. Forget it.” So her mother wasn’t some bizarre new breed of suburban smackhead. Rachel’s relief was almost palpable.
    “I was Hoovering upstairs,” Faye started to explain, “and I dropped the Shake ‘n Vac container on the marble hearth in the bedroom and it burst. Bloody stuff ended up all over the bed, the dressing table and me. At least I managed to scoop up some of it.” She took the plastic bag out of her pocket and put it down on the counter.
    “So where are you off to, dressed up to the nines?” Rachel said, anxious to get the conversation back on track.
    Rachel noticed Faye hesitate before answering.
    “Oh, I’m not off,” she said. “I’ve been and come home again. An old school friend took me out for an extremely posh lunch in town. We got to talking, went out for tea and I only got back when I called you.”
    “Who were you seeing?” Rachel said, giving her mother a bemused look. “You’ve never mentioned before that you keep in touch with anybody from your school days.”
    “Haven’t I?” Faye said. She sounded distinctly agitated, Rachel thought. She was also starting to color up.
    “No, you haven’t,” Rachel said. She watched her mother pick some mail up from the counter and pretend to glance through it.
    “Oh,” Faye said, without looking up, “I’m sure I must have mentioned my friend Tiggy Bristol . . . Goldberg that was.”
    “No, I don’t think so.”
    “Yes, I have,” she persisted, laughing nervously. “I’ve talked about her hundreds of times. Her husband’s a millionaire. Made his money in paper. I tell you, Rachel, for them it really does grow on trees. . . .”
    “Mum,” Rachel said emphatically, “I think I’d remember a name like Tiggy Bristol, don’t you?”
    Faye shrugged.
    Rachel sat thinking. She was absolutely convinced that her mother had never mentioned the name Tiggy Bristol. She couldn’t be certain, but she was pretty sure Faye was lying. Her edginess said it all. First there was the bikini line waxing, now she was inventing stories about whom she was meeting for lunch. Rachel was positive her mother was up to something. Precisely what, she had no idea.
    “So where’s your father?” Faye said, clearly needing to change the subject.
    “Dunno,” Rachel said vacantly. She was still mulling over the Tiggy Bristol issue. “He was on the phone when I arrived.”
    Faye went back to the mail.
    Just then Jack came into the room singing “Everyone’s a Fruit and Nut-case / Crazy for those Cadbury’s nuts and raisins. . . .” He gave Rachel a don’t-breathe-a-word-about-the-opera wink.
    Rachel smiled back. She looked at him with his paunch and fawn polyester slacks with the elasticized waistband and then back to her mother with her size ten figure and exquisitely cut suit.
    “So, Jack,” Faye said, looking up, “have you been yet?”
    He grimaced and waved his hand in front of him as if to say