Love Him to Death by Tanya Landman Page B

she said briskly, “that sounds more than generous. We’ll be ready and waiting. See you in Greece.”
    Twenty-three minutes later a stretch limousine pulled up outside and we all piled in. Sally hadn’t even had time to clean up the kitchen – we’d only just managed to dash over to my place to grab my passport and swimsuit. The last thing we saw as we left were her bloody fingerprints on the phone.
    If I’d been the superstitious type, I might have taken that as a bad omen.

mr nice guy
    Sun. Sea. Scandal. What more could anyone want? I was in seventh heaven by the time we reached the airport, and that was before I found out we’d be flying first class. The limousine dropped us off in departures and we stopped at the newsagent’s, where I bought all the celebrity magazines I could find. I also grabbed a few tabloid newspapers, all of which had photos of Bill Strummer plastered across them.
    “Background research,” I told Graham in response to his sideways look. “We need to know all we can about these people.”
    “We’re hardly likely to discover anything edifying from that kind of reading material,” Graham sniffed disapprovingly as he paid for his copy of
Computing Weekly.
    We checked in without any problems and were ushered through to the first class lounge, where pleasant music poured gently from concealed speakers in an attempt to soothe nervous passengers. It completely failed to work on Sally. She sat hunched over her laptop, frantically scanning the sixteen-page email Tessa had sent, muttering under her breath, “
Nuptial Nibbles
? Blissful Beach Barbecue? What’s
that
supposed to mean? For
how
many people? Oh lord, how am I going to manage that? I’ve only got one pair of hands.”
    “We can help,” Graham offered.
    Sally patted Graham’s hand absently and continued to scan the email. “That’s very kind, love…” She didn’t finish her sentence.
    Graham’s cooking skills aren’t exactly legendary. He can microwave a ready meal as well as the next person, but that’s about it. When we made scones once in food technology his batch emerged from the oven as hard and black as lumps of coal. (Admittedly mine weren’t any better, but I’m not the child of a chef.)
    “Maybe we could chop stuff up for you,” I said. “Peel cucumbers, shred lettuce, that kind of thing?” Surely even we couldn’t ruin salad vegetables?
    “Thanks,” smiled Sally. “But Tessa did say she had the right staff. I’m sure I’ll manage. Somehow.” She turned back to the laptop with an anxious frown.
    Graham and I sprawled on the comfy sofas and were served Coke and crisps by flight attendants with insanely wide grins. We’d just finished our second drink when the call came to board, and five minutes later we were installed in the first-class section of the plane. Sally carried on reading Tessa’s email, turning whiter and whiter by the second. Graham buried himself in his magazine and I settled down with the newspapers to find out all I could about our host.
    I knew that Bill Strummer was getting pretty old but that his music was as popular as ever. My mum played his stuff almost every time we went anywhere in the car. When Sally had called her from the limo to explain about our unexpected trip, she’d let out a squeal of envious rage. The she’d said with a sigh of longing, “He doesn’t want his garden doing, does he? Put in a good word for me, would you, Sal?”
    Even though he was a bit wrinkly about the edges, Bill was still spectacularly handsome. But it wasn’t just the hit songs and the movie-star profile that made him famous: he was the music industry’s Mr Nice Guy. Despite being an absolute megastar, he’d never forgotten his poor-lad-from-the-backstreets-of-London roots. He gave loads of money to charity, was famously friendly to journalists, polite to photographers, kind to his staff and, until very recently, blissfully happily married. He’d never had kids: his wife Angelica was