Not only was the show a cult classic, but it also happened to serve a vital public service for certain members of society. Take, for example, a woman who might be home alone stuffing her face on a Friday night, feeling guilty about having opened a bottle of wine that she would almost certainly drink all by herself, made all the worse considering the bottle was a gift from a friend who came for dinner, back in the days when she still had friends over for dinner.
Or, another example, picked at random: a woman who catches a look at herself naked in the mirror after stepping out of the shower and feels that it’s absolutely absurd that she’s still single . . . and then makes the critical error of lingering too long in front of said mirror, and realizes maybe it’s not so absurd after all.
For that woman, and others like her, Ab Fab’s Patsy and Edina were absolute lifesavers. Genuine saints. Late at night, they come to your rescue, easing your drunken shame by showing you that it could be worse, and giving you another strong dose of reality the next day when your morning hangover reminds you that real life is nothing like TV.
In this episode, Edina and Saffy—her daughter—are arguing, which reminded me of all the fights I had with my own mum. In walks Saffy’s grandma, who calms everything down. I never knew my grandparents, and never would, since Mum grew up in an orphanage. The fog around her backstory suddenly seemed to have grown a lot thicker in light of current events. Struck with a thought, I rushed over to grab the troubling letter from my bag.
All we can ever see of our parents is what they wish to show us . . .
But Mum never wanted to show us a single thing.
As I held the letter in my hand, I had a closer look at the stamp on the envelope. I nearly slapped my forehead—what an awful detective I was! The stamp bore an image of the Queen, but the color was different—it wasn’t an English stamp at all. Squinting, I could make out a word written in tiny letters beneath Her Majesty’s glowing smile: Canada. Of course. How could I have missed it? The postmark said Montreal, and it had been right there under my nose the whole time. It begged the question: Just who was this poison-pen writing to me from the other side of the world?
It was only the first of many questions.
The next day, I was flipping through a magazine and watching my laundry in the washing machine spinning around in a dizzying dance when I received a call from the archivist friend I’d contacted. She hadn’t found a single trace of a weekly Independent in all of England. Thinking of the stamp, I asked her to extend her search to the other side of the Atlantic.
One hour later, I opened up my postbox down in the lobby and made another discovery. There, standing out amongst the fliers and ads, was a second letter. I recognized the beautiful handwriting immediately. I stumbled out of the lobby—straight by a worried neighbor, who told me I looked pale—and returned to the flat, still light-headed as I tore the envelope open.
It contained nothing more than a single sheet of lined paper bearing a short and cryptic message:
October 22, 7 p.m. Sailor’s Hideaway, Baltimore.
It was the nineteenth. That left less than three days.
I began rushing about, throwing my toiletry bag and other essentials pell-mell into a carry-on bag before realizing I hadn’t even bought a ticket yet. I ran to my computer, hunted down a last-minute ticket, and hit “Buy Now.” Insufficient funds. Shit. With my heart racing in my chest, I called Maggie up in the hope she could lend me the cash.
“About that . . .” I could hear her wincing. “It turns out there’s some truth to the story I told Dad about problems with overdraft at the bank.” Being an absolute expert on all my sister’s shortcomings, I knew for a fact she wasn’t a cheapskate, so I took her at her word.
“How about you tell me why you need two thousand pounds so desperately?” she asked. “Are you in deep shit or something?”
I told Maggie about the strange new letter. She immediately flew off the handle and started ranting and raving about what a mistake it was. What the hell was I thinking, putting myself at the mercy of a lunatic, just to get kidnapped and murdered and have my ravaged corpse thrown into the sea? Why else would the poison-pen set up a nighttime encounter at a place called Sailor’s Hideaway?
Maggie has a wild imagination that concocts outlandish things, most of which tend to be macabre. My counterargument far from convinced her: If a maniac were really trying to lure in his prey, wouldn’t he lay the traps a bit closer to home? It seemed like a whole lot of trouble making his victim cross the ocean, with perfectly decent murder victims just next door. A logical point.
“Aha!” Maggie exclaimed. “Not so fast. You disappear so far from home, there’s a better chance no one would ever realize.”
“It’s not like the poison-pen asked to meet in the middle of the woods somewhere,” I pointed out. “It’s Baltimore!”
Maggie went silent and gave up. She knew me well enough to know that I had made up my mind and would stop at nothing to see this through.