Apocalipstick Read Online Free PDF Page B

seen.
    Although it was late, the pavements were still pretty crowded. Even so, Rebecca couldn’t help feeling uneasy. Every few yards, she would stop and look to see if the woman was following her, but there was never any sign of her among the scores of bent-over pedestrians battling against the driving snow. She checked again as she stood on the platform and once more in the train carriage. Nothing. By the time she got back to her flat just after half past eleven, she’d dismissed the woman as a harmless weirdo and pretty much put her out of her mind.
    She took off her coat, breathed heavily onto her red, frozen hands and flicked the switch on her answer machine.
    “Hi, Becks, it’s Dad. Listen, I know it’s short notice, but could we meet for a bit of lunch tomorrow? I’ve got some great news. I’m on my way out now. Phone me first thing.”
    Under normal circumstances she would have stayed awake for hours, wondering what on earth her father’s surprise could be, but because she’d gone to bed so late the day before, she drifted off almost as soon as her head hit the pillow.
    The next she knew it was half past seven. She decided to wait until eight to call him. Maybe at long last he’d found himself a girlfriend, she thought as she stood soaping herself in the shower. But she knew full well the idea was ridiculous.
    In the ten years since her mother, Judy, had died, Stan hadn’t shown even the remotest interest in dating. Naturally Grandma Rose had done all she could to remedy the situation. She would invite her son over for Friday night dinner and arrange it so that one of her friends’ divorced-and-desperate daughters would turn up unexpectedly. Over the years, a string of women had presented themselves at Rose’s on a Friday night—all of whom, according to Rose, “just happened to be passing.” Even the ones who lived in Birmingham and Leeds.
    Rose had also posted Stan’s personal profile on the
Lonely Jews
Web site and signed him up to countless dating agencies without telling him. Each time he found out he was furious, but when she finally resorted to employing Minnie Mann, an octogenarian matchmaker from Stamford Hill who turned up at his house unannounced carrying a rolled umbrella, a Gladstone bag and an album full of photographs of ultra Orthodox widows in wigs, he didn’t speak to his mother for a month.
     
    Stan always said that his twenty-five years with Judy had been the happiest of his life. When she was killed in a car crash, his world fell apart. Afterward he simply threw himself into his business. Stan owned a chain of lingerie shops called Lacy Lady. He and Judy had set up the first one in the seventies. Today there were twelve. While his female staff and managers served the customers, he took care of the business side. Lately, though, Rebecca had noticed him coming out of himself a bit more. He had joined the gym and a book club.
    “But, you know,” he often said to Rebecca as they took one of their Sunday morning strolls, her arm through his, “that feeling of loss never goes away. You just learn to live alongside it.”
    Of course, he wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know.
    “So, Dad, come on, what’s the deal?” she asked excitedly the moment he picked up the phone. “I know, you’re floating Lacy Lady on the stock market?”
    He chuckled. “I wish. No, it’s nothing like that.”
    “OK, you’re in the England squad for the World Cup?”
    “That goes without saying. I’ll tell you the real news over lunch.”
    They arranged to meet at Zilli’s in Soho at one.
     
    She stepped out of the lift—carrying a cappuccino from the place over the road—just as Max Stoddart was about to get in. He was wearing chinos and a lightish blue open-neck shirt. He’d clearly adopted the
Vanguard
dress code.
    “Hi, how are you?” he said.
    She smiled, told him she was fine and asked if the police had found his car yet. He shook his head.
    “Oh, I’m sure it’ll