This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain
by William Heinemann 2003
Copyright © Freya North 2003
Afterword © Freya North 2012
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
‘The Tears of a Clown’. Words and Music by Stevie Wonder, William Robinson and Henry Cosby © 1967, Jobete Music Co, Inc./Black Bull Music, Inc., USA. Reproduced by permission of Black Bull Music Inc., Jobete Music Co., London WC2H 0QY. All rights Reserved
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Source ISBN: 9780007462254
Ebook Edition © June 2012 ISBN: 9780007462261
Version: 2017-11-28
FIRST EDITION
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‘There’s really not that much difference between lap dancing and doing what I do,’ Pip McCabe proclaimed in a very matter-of-fact way over a robust but imaginative dinner that her uncle Django had spent the afternoon preparing in celebration of his three nieces’ weekend visit home to Derbyshire. Django spooned a large portion of something alarmingly beige on to his plate and appeared to contemplate it at length. In fact, he was considering his eldest niece’s words, wondering if he’d misheard, wondering if Pip had changed jobs; wondering, basically, what on earth he was going to do with her. Pip’s two younger sisters, Fen and Cat, sniggered into their semolina. Django had proudly called it ‘polenta’. But that was imaginative both with the truth and with the ingredients of the dish itself.
The three sisters tactfully referred to it as ‘polenta’ because they, too, were being imaginative with the truth as well as heedful of the chef’s sensitivities. Having been brought up single-handedly by their uncle Django, the McCabe girls were well accustomed to his eccentricities and loved him all the more because of them. He devoted the same imaginative attention to idiosyncratic detail in his dress sense as to his cooking. The sisters saw nothing untoward about pea soup with tuna and stilton, or rhubarb crumble with Jelly Babies instead of rhubarb. They had never gone hungry and their taste buds had developed a commendable and valuable robustness. Nor did they think it odd that a man in his late sixties should dress in the souvenirs of his colourful past. Today, as Django dolloped polenta on to his plate and enlivened it with a hearty slosh of Henderson’s Relish, he tucked his paisley cravat (he’d partied with the Kinks in the 1960s) into his cambric shirt, and loosened the enormous buckled belt he’d acquired at some free festival or other, currently holding together a pair of jeans Clint Eastwood would have coveted for a Spaghetti Western.
‘Philippa,’ he said, chewing thoughtfully, ‘I implore you to elaborate.’
‘Not much difference at all, really, between lap dancing and my line of work,’ Pip mused whilst masticating. ‘Same attention to make-up, same use and abuse of one’s body. Strutting one’s stuff for money. Having often ghastly punters to deal with. Always being gawped at. I’m pretty much a painted lady, too – quite literally.’
Her family regarded her. Everyone chewed. They all thought to themselves that they were sure polenta was meant to melt in the mouth, not glue the hinges of the jaw together. If Jamie Oliver was to be believed. It tasted good, though, and surely that was the point.