‘He was number three on
heat
’s “Hottest Gingers” last year, behind Eddie Redmayne and Prince Harry. There’s even a Facebook page set up for his right eyebrow, it does this sexy arch thing when he has an especially serious point to make.’ Poppet giggled coquettishly. ‘I’m a member actually.’
Lizzy put her head into her hands. ‘If Antonia finds out about this I’m done for. She’s got about three Amber de la Hayes handbags.’
Amber’s own-name fashion label was much in demand. Celebrities fought over her to dress them for the red carpet and the last collection at Selfridges had sold out within hours. She was a big animal-rights campaigner, and her use of ethically sourced materials made her a favourite of PETA and the fashion pack.
Poppet was poring over a photo of the couple. ‘That’s them at the BAFTAs this year. Don’t they look beautiful together? You can tell they’re made for each other.’
Lizzy made herself look. Amber de la Haye was smiling radiantly at the camera, stunningly elegant in a simple black gown. Lizzy gazed into the stony face of Elliot Anderson and thought he looked like a complete arse.
It was Saturday. Poppet was at her niece’s birthday party and Nic had gone up north to see her mum. Everyone else Lizzy knew seemed to be either doing couple stuff or training for half marathons. There were a million things she could be getting on with on her ‘To Do’ List, like looking at her pension options and cleaning the manky salad drawer in the fridge, but instead she called home.
Her dad answered. ‘Hullo, Lizard!’
‘Hi, Dad. I was thinking I might come home for the night.’
‘Excellent, we’re having a barbecue and your brother’s coming with Hayley.’
‘Why didn’t you ask me?’ Lizzy felt a bit hurt.
‘We just assumed you’d be out gallivanting with your glamorous London chums! It’s splendid you’re coming. We’re starting at two p.m. sharp, you know what your mother’s like.’ Her dad lowered his voice. ‘You’d better pick up another bottle of wine on your way over, Jacqui and David are coming.’
Lizzy’s parents had lived in the same semi-detached thirties villa in Bromley all Lizzy’s life. Despite the fact that Bromley was the biggest borough in London and had rail links to the city in under seventeen minutes, Lizzy’s mum regarded the capital as a dangerous, unscrupulous place that operated in an entirely different solar system.
‘That’s London for you!’ she would cry, whenever there was anything on the news, from rising house prices to knife crime to global warming and fox attacks. Lizzy had been frequently warned over the years that she was getting ‘London ways’.
It was gone one o’clock by the time Lizzy staggered up the front drive with bags of shopping. Her mother had called as she’d got off the train and asked her to pop into Tesco for a ‘few things’, which had included four large bottles of sparkling water and a multi-pack of kitchen roll.
Her hands had frozen into claws, so Lizzy banged her head on the glass until her dad answered.
‘Hello, Lizard! Have you forgotten your key again? Let me take those for you.’
Everyone was already in the back garden: her mother, the next-door neighbours David and Jacqui, and Lizzy’s older brother Robbie and his girlfriend, Hayley.
‘Uh-oh, here comes Bridget,’ David announced. Everyone fell about laughing.
‘I’ll think you’ll find Bridget Jones is an outdated concept,’ Lizzy said with as much dignity as she could muster. ‘These days it’s perfectly acceptable to be a singleton.’
Robbie got up and high-fived her. ‘DJ Lizard in da house!’
‘MC Robster on da decks!’
They took on suitable gangster poses as they fell into a rap. ‘Hey! Yo! Bromley bluds! We ain’t no pussies and our name ain’t muds! So look out when Lizard and the Robster are in town. Cos everybody is gonna get down!’
Jacqui looked impressed. ‘I really like it. Is it Kanye’s new one?’
‘It’s just this silly song Robbie and Lizzy used to do when they were younger,’ Hayley said, sounding annoyed. She stood up and physically wedged herself between them. ‘How are you?’ she asked Lizzy. ‘I was
so
embarrassed for you.
Everyone
we know has seen the video.’
Robbie gave his sister a wink. ‘I don’t think it was
everyone
we know.’
Mr Spellman appeared with a tray. ‘Long Island Iced Tea, anyone?’
They sat down with their drinks and Hayley gave Lizzy a pitying smile. ‘We all thought Justin was a keeper,’ she said in the same faux-concerned tone. ‘You must be
gutted.
’
Lizzy gritted her teeth into a smile. Hayley-bloody-Bidwell. Even though she’d been two years below Lizzy at school, Hayley treated her as if she were some sad sack of a soul who still hadn’t figured out what it was all about. In the winner’s corner: Hayley and her relationship with Robbie. In the loser’s corner: Lizzy and the pitiful ongoing saga that was her love life.
It wasn’t the fact that Hayley had been in the annoying gang at school, or that all the boys had fancied her. It wasn’t even the conflicting emotions Lizzy experienced on the rare occasions she saw her brother these days: the initial happiness, swiftly followed by the mild dismay that Hayley-bloody-Bidwell was always with him. It was the fact that now, as Lizzy looked at Hayley with her perfect hair and perfect skinny jeans with her perfect ballet pumps, she realized Hayley was one of those girls Nic had been talking about. The type that would get someone like Justin. And that made Lizzy feel really
sad
because her brother wasn’t like Justin. Robbie had always been smart and funny and cool and different. In fifth form his classmates had voted him ‘Person most likely to be in a famous band’. How the hell had he ended up living in a new-build outside Tunbridge Wells with Hayley-bloody-Bidwell?
Nic said Hayley’s appeal was that she had nice tits and because blokes never got over wanting that trophy of having the hot girl from school. Lizzy thought it was because her brother was laid-back to the point of being pathologically lazy, and when Hayley had come along and got her French manicure into him, Robbie had just gone along with it for an easy life. But she had to admit Nic was right on one point: Hayley
did
look good in a vest top.
Now they’ll get married and because Hayley is younger than me – something she never tires of pointing out
–
and because she doesn’t like the taste of alcohol, she’ll outlive me by decades and tragic Great Aunt Lizzy will gradually be erased from the Spellman family history. On my deathbed Hayley-bloody-Bidwell’s face will be the last face I see.
‘Why are you staring at my breasts, Lizzy?’
Lizzy snapped out of her daydream. The whole table was looking at her.
‘I was, er, just admiring your top. Mango, isn’t it?’
‘No, Zara.’ Hayley shot Robbie a look.
Great
, Lizzy thought. Not only was she a washed-up spinster, she was now a washed-up depraved lesbian spinster who was liable to attack Hayley at any moment.
Her mother came out of the house with a tray of nibbles. ‘Picky bits!’
‘P-p-p-picky bits!’ Lizzy and Robbie chorused, earning another look of disapproval from Hayley.
Mrs Spellman’s ‘picky bits’ were an institution in the family. They covered an astonishing array of culinary accomplishments, from crisps and dips to cakes and canapés, to leftovers, and things in the freezer that needed using up. Lizzy and her siblings had often been sent to school with packed-lunch combinations like cold broccoli and trifle. ‘Your father and I are just having some picky bits for dinner tonight,’ her mother would say when Lizzy phoned home during the week.
‘How’s work going?’ David asked.
Lizzy swallowed the last of her Thai fishcake. ‘Busy. We’ve just taken on a new account.’
‘Lizzy is practically running the place,’ her mother announced. ‘With any luck she’ll be able to retire on her pension in ten years!’
‘Are you all right?’ her dad asked, as Lizzy started coughing violently. ‘Oh crumbs, I think the sausages are on fire!’
By the time the sun had reached the furthest corner of the patio everybody apart from Lizzy’s mum and Hayley was drunk. Jacqui had fallen off her chair twice. David had just spent half an hour regaling them with tales of when he used to work in the music industry.
‘Top you up, Lizard?’
‘Go on then. Thanks, Dad.’
There were worse ways of spending a Saturday afternoon than in the sun being stuffed full of food and booze. Lizzy gazed fondly at her parents. They were pretty awesome. Why didn’t they all hang out more often?
Mr Spellman continued round the table with the bottle. ‘More wine, Hayley?’
She put her hand over the top of her glass. ‘No thank you. I’ve had enough.’
‘Very sensible.’ Jacqui sighed. ‘I suppose that’s how you keep your figure.’
Lizzy was suddenly feeling very light-headed. That was the problem with white wine. You could chuck it back until the cows came home and then you hit The Wall.
‘I just don’t think it’s very attractive to see a drunk woman. Men don’t really like it.’ Hayley gave Lizzy a patronizing smile. ‘Maybe that’s why you have problems settling down.’
‘Or maybe the problem is with the blokes Lizzy meets,’ Robbie said nicely.
Hayley gave him a warning look. ‘You know, it might be a good idea for you to go and see some sort of counsellor,’ she told Lizzy. ‘My friend Sam went to see this woman after she kept getting dumped by blokes. She’s been with her new one nine months now!’ She shrugged daintily. ‘Anyway, it’s something to think about.’
Until now Lizzy had always managed to rise above Hayley’s jibes. But she had enough alcohol sloshing round inside her to sink a battleship, and she was fed up with people declaring open season on her love life.
‘Let me give
you
something to think about,’ she said, vaguely aware of a voice of reason frantically jumping up and down telling her to SHUT UP NOW! ‘You know I think you’re a great girl, Hayley. I’m really happy you’re going out with my brother. I really am. I am, Mum! Don’t look at me like that!’
In Lizzy’s bleary drunken state Hayley’s features seemed to be melting into a giant puddle of MAC make-up. ‘The problem here, Hayley,’ she continued, ‘is that you’ve always been defined by a man. And you can be so much more! You don’t need a man to be fulfilled in life! Amelia Earhart didn’t need a
man
to fly solo round the world! Florence Nightingale didn’t defer to a
male
doctor when she was saving thousands of soldiers’ lives! You think Sandra Bullock needs a
man
just because things didn’t work out with Ryan Reynolds? She didn’t hang about waiting for a
man
to get her pregnant, she went straight out and adopted a baby by herself!’
‘Hear hear!’ Jacqui cheered. ‘Bloody men! Shits, the lot of you!’
Hayley was glaring at Lizzy from across the table. ‘Because
you’re
single and such a big success?’
‘Hayley, Hayley, Hayley.’ Lizzy groped for her hand and knocked over the salad dressing. ‘I’m not trying to upset you. I’m just saying us women need to realize our full potential. You could be anything you wanted! Think about how good you were at netball at school!’
‘You’re suggesting I become a professional netball player?’ Hayley asked sarcastically.
‘If that’s what makes you happy, then yes! The point I’m trying to
make
is …’ She lost her train of thought. ‘What is my point?’
‘You were saying Hayley should retrain as a professional netball player.’ David’s eyes strayed over Hayley’s chest again. ‘I think it sounds like an excellent idea.’
‘The point I’m trying to make, Hayley, is that you need to get a life.’
‘Lizzy,’ her dad reprimanded.
‘I’m not being horrible! I’m just saying what’s in my heart because I want the best for Hayley. And because …’ Lizzy slurred, holding her glass aloft, ‘I am a modern
feminist
.’
The next morning Lizzy walked into an Arctic chill in the kitchen.
‘I was wondering when you might surface.’ Her mother didn’t look up from
You
magazine.
Lizzy shuffled over to the fridge to get the orange juice. It felt like she’d been in a physical fight.
‘Um, so what happened after …’ The evening was a blank past 8 p.m.
‘After you passed out under the table? Your father tried to make you go to bed but you refused and threw your shoe over the fence.’ Her mum’s lips were so pursed they’d practically vanished. ‘I said to your father, “She learnt that kind of behaviour in London! We didn’t bring our daughter up to crawl round blind drunk on all fours and throw her espadrille into other people’s gardens!” In case you’re wondering, it’s drying in the airing cupboard. David very kindly brought it round this morning, apparently it was in the bottom of their water feature.’ She shot her daughter another look.
‘I’m really sorry, Mum,’ Lizzy said miserably. ‘I didn’t mean to cause any trouble.’
‘Why do you always have to go over the top? Your father is just as bad for encouraging you.’ Mrs Spellman got off her bar stool. ‘You’re having milk thistle for your liver, no two ways about it.’
Lizzy watched her mum reach into the cupboard above the kettle. ‘Does Hayley hate me?’
‘I wouldn’t imagine she’s your biggest fan at the moment.’
‘She just got on my nerves. How come she’s allowed to say mean things and get away with it? Come on, even you must think she’s got Robbie under the thumb!’
‘Hayley is your brother’s girlfriend and we have to respect that,’ her mother said crisply. ‘Drink this.’
‘Urgh, it tastes gross.’
‘You’ve no sympathy from me. Are you staying for lunch?’
It was a tough choice; getting on public transport with the hangover from hell or facing her mother’s wrath. ‘I’ll stay if that’s OK.’
‘We’re having picky bits from last night and
no
alcohol. I’m not living in a house populated by drunkards.’ Mrs Spellman paused by the door on her way out. ‘And I’d think about sending Hayley a text to say sorry.’
Lizzy groaned inwardly. She’d thought the Happy Halo press release had been hard to write.