Nic took a swig of her water. ‘You say that like it’s a bad thing.’
It was Monday night and they were power walking on the treadmills at the gym under Nic’s apartment block. Lizzy was struggling to keep up, even though she was only on gradient three and Nic had hers hoiked up to Mount Everest levels.
‘Would
you
ever do online dating?’ Lizzy asked.
‘I haven’t got time to see you guys, let alone waste it going out with some random doofus.’ Nic glanced cursorily at a man on a nearby chest press. ‘Maybe I should start going to BMF again.’
Lizzy’s legs and lungs felt like they were on fire. It was horrifying how unfit she was. She gazed at her wild hair and red face in the mirror. She would never meet her Mr Right in the gym, fact.
‘By the way,’ Nic said after a few minutes of focused concentration. ‘Remember I’ve still got your five hundred quid. Let me know when you want it back.’
At first Lizzy thought she’d misheard her over the music. ‘What did you say?’
Nic threw another jab at her reflection. ‘The five hundred quid you drew out from the cash machine. It’s lying on my kitchen worktop. I’ll go up after this and get it for you.’
Lizzy slammed her hand on the emergency ‘stop’ button. The machine ground to a halt. ‘I thought I’d lost it, or given it away to a homeless person! Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I thought you knew. We had a conversation about it in the street.’
‘Did we?’
‘Yeah, you were trying to feed it back into the machine for ages and then some dodgy guys came over, and at that point I said I’d take it for safekeeping. Don’t you remember?’
‘No!’ Lizzy cried. She’d got three white hairs from the trauma of all this!
A skinny blonde in top-to-toe Lululemon came over and stood in front of her treadmill. ‘How much longer are you going to be?’
Lizzy was still recovering from the fact that she hadn’t lost five hundred pounds of her hard-earned money after all. ‘Um, not long.’ She quickly pressed ‘start’ again.
‘You’re only allowed on for twenty-five minutes at peak times,’ the blonde said haughtily.
Nic looked down from her gradient-fifteen vantage point. ‘We’ll be on for even longer if you keep interrupting us. If you don’t mind, my friend and I were having a private conversation.’
Skinny Blonde’s eyes narrowed. ‘If you don’t get off I’ll tell the manager.’
‘Do that and I’ll key that nice little Mini of yours,’ Nic said pleasantly. ‘Apartment 42B, isn’t it?’
Lizzy watched the girl stomp off. Being friends with Nic was like riding a thrilling and occasionally terrifying rollercoaster ride. Lizzy had once watched Nic take off her own lace-up brogue and throw it across a pub at a man who’d pushed Poppet out of the way at the bar. Nic’s parents had split up when she was eleven and she had been sent to a counsellor by her mum, who was worried about the effect the divorce was having on her daughter. Once there, Nic had proceeded to run intellectual rings around the woman and had told her what she actually thought was that her dad was a lazy slob and that they were better off without him. Nic saw the world in black and white: people were either twats or they weren’t. Cross her at your peril, but if you were her friend she was generous to a fault and had your back for life.
Money drama over, they got back to the matter in hand. ‘So do you think I should go for a drink with him then?’ Lizzy asked.
‘With Foxface? Course you should.’ Nic turned up the speed on her treadmill.
‘Remember the penis thread!’ she yelled as she started to sprint.
Two nights later Lizzy found herself on her way to meet
Foxy698
. Toby – that was his real name – had chosen the venue, which turned out to be a bistro-cum-bar on the edge of Sloane Square. When she arrived there was a man sitting at one of the tables outside. He looked familiar, so Lizzy took her chance.
‘Toby?’
She didn’t know what blinded her first: the dazzling veneers or the bright red trousers. ‘Hello darling,’ he said, getting up and kissing Lizzy rather clammily on both cheeks.
‘I’m Lizzy,’ she said.
‘Hope so, otherwise I’ve just kissed some random bird in the street, hahahahaha!’
Next door’s table looked up at the foghorn laugh. ‘I took the liberty of ordering you a G & T,’ he told Lizzy.
She sat down. ‘Fab, thank you.’
Toby flashed her another toothy smile. He looked a lot older than he did in his pictures, and his blond hair was alarmingly bouffant. Lizzy had a horrible suspicion he might have blow-dried it.
Toby crossed one red chino leg over the other. ‘My workmates were quite impressed when I said I was going out with Headbutt Girl tonight. One of them said, “You’d better not be late, mate, or she’ll break your nose as well, ha ha ha!”’
Lizzy managed a feeble smile. ‘I don’t normally go round doing that sort of thing. And technically I think it was more of a bang than an actual break.’
‘It didn’t scare me off, I like strong women.’ He rested on his elbows and leant in. Lizzy got a faceful of pungent aftershave. ‘What did you do to make Justin do a runner like that? There must be more to it than meets the eye.’
‘Well um, I really don’t know. I guess we weren’t right for each other.’
‘Whatever you say.’ Toby shot her a knowing look. ‘I bet you’re a right handful.’
Lizzy changed the subject. ‘Have you been on the site long?’
‘A while,’ he said breezily. ‘You?’
‘This is my first time.’
‘A virgin, then! Don’t worry, I’ll be gentle with you.’
‘Ha ha,’ she said. He
was
joking, wasn’t he?
Toby ran a hand through the bouncy hair. ‘I don’t want to sound boastful, but I’ve had a pretty good success rate.’
‘Oh really?’
Lizzy’s ironic tone was completely lost on him. ‘You get a lot of lonely women on these kinds of sites.’ He gave a wink. ‘Let’s just say they need plenty of love and attention.’
What a charmer! Lizzy was just wondering how soon she could leave without appearing rude when Toby grabbed her hand.
‘You look like a woman of the world; can I be upfront with you?’ He fixed her with what was clearly meant to be a penetrating gaze. ‘Shall we just forget about the drinks and go and screw?’
Lizzy thought she’d misheard him. ‘Sorry?’
‘I’m bored wasting time on all this wining and dining bollocks. You and I have a strong sexual connection, Lizzy. Why don’t we just cut the crap and get down to it? My place is only round the corner.’
Lizzy wrenched her hand away. ‘I’m sorry, but you’ve got this all wrong. I’m sure deep down you’re, er, a really nice guy, Toby, but you and I are definitely
not
having sex.’
‘Really?’ He looked crestfallen. ‘But my apartment is really nice.’
‘It’s still a no, I’m afraid.’ Lizzy picked up her handbag. ‘Thanks for the drink but I’d better get going.’
‘Was I too full-on with all the sex stuff?’ he shouted after her. ‘We can start again if you like. What’s your star sign?’
‘Hello, Haven!’
‘Lizzy, it’s Tam.’
‘Hey Tam!’
Tamzin was Lizzy’s friend from another PR agency. ‘Are you free tonight?’ she asked Lizzy. ‘We’re doing this new photography exhibition on the Kings Road. It’s bound to be full of pretentious dickheads, but we can catch up and have a few glasses of bubbles.’
Lizzy looked longingly out of the window. It was another gloriously sunny day. ‘I’m meant to be going to hot yoga.’
‘Oh don’t give me that. There’s free booze!’
Sod it, her exercise regime could start tomorrow. Lizzy reached for a pen.
‘What’s the address?’
‘You do look funny,’ Bianca chortled when she came off the phone. ‘Like you’ve just come back from some mega-sick mash-up eighties rave.’
Lizzy was still wearing her Happy Halo round the office. She’d got used to the post boy and the man who came to refill the water cooler bursting into hysterics every time they saw her.
‘How is your aura?’ Antonia boomed across the office. Despite wafting round in Antonia Land most of the time, she had the ability to develop dog-like hearing when she wanted to.
Lizzy swivelled round in her chair. ‘If you want the truth, I’m feeling slightly nauseous.’
‘You’re probably hungover again,’ Antonia snapped.
The phone started ringing again. ‘Hello, Halo! I mean hello, Haven!’
‘Ken Dennings here!’
Ken was Lizzy’s exuberant constipation client. The man behind A Helping Hand (suppositories, laxatives and organic fibre drinks), Ken’s sole aim in life was to get a story about bowel movements on the front of the
Mail
.
‘I see they didn’t go with that feature idea we pitched them.’
‘Did you see all the new stuff on Syria?’ Lizzy said tactfully. ‘I think that probably took precedence over coverage of the explosion of men over sixty-five suffering from haemorrhoids.’
‘Ha ha, good laxative joke there, Lizzy!’
‘Was there?’
‘You said “explosion”. Anyway, I see your point. Keep me posted.’
Lizzy said goodbye and hung up. She couldn’t fault Ken for his blind optimism.
The exhibition was in an old lemonade factory. A group of tanned men in loafer/blazer combos and wafer-thin women in ankle boots and minidresses were standing outside smoking furiously. For one horrific moment Lizzy thought she’d spotted Toby, but thankfully it turned out to be a false alarm.
The gazelle-like creature on the door looked down her nose at Lizzy. ‘Sorry,’ she said, not sounding it at all. ‘Your name’s not on the list.’
‘It’s there, I can see it,’ Lizzy said. ‘Look – SPELLMAN.’
‘Oh yeah, Headbutt Girl. You’d better not be here to cause trouble.’
‘Of course I’m not,’ Lizzy said. Would they be issuing her with an ASBO next?
Snooty Door Girl begrudgingly stepped aside. ‘Go on then.’ She might as well have added, ‘And don’t steal anything.’
It became immediately evident why there was such a rigorous entrance policy. Lizzy was probably the only woman in the place who’d ever seen the wrong side of a size ten, and who wasn’t dripping with thousands of pounds’ worth of jewellery. Waitresses were wafting through the glamorous crowds with platters of perilously assembled canapés that no one was touching.
The photography exhibition was by someone called Jay Aziz, who presumably was the little man in a full-length black housecoat who everyone was fawning over. Lizzy didn’t know much about art but she wasn’t sure about the portraits of screaming faces, all with perfect teeth and hair. It was a bit like looking at the ‘missing’ list after a mass breakout from the Priory.
‘Lizzy!’ Tamzin came rushing up. The two women air-kissed in an OTT way, taking the piss.
‘Sweetie! Mwah!’
‘Mwah! Darling!’
Tamzin swiped two champagne flutes from a passing waiter and handed one to Lizzy. ‘How are you, babes? I haven’t seen you since, you know …’
‘Since Justin dumped me on a karaoke stage and it went viral and I had journalists chasing me down the street, and
This Morning
devoted a whole show to what a psychotic nutter I am? Is that what you meant, Tam?’
Her friend frowned. ‘No, I don’t think it was that.’
They cracked up. ‘What a knob!’ Tamzin said. ‘
I
know you didn’t want to marry him.’
‘Thanks,’ Lizzy sighed. ‘You’re one of the few people who do.’
One of Tamzin’s colleagues came over and pulled her away, leaving Lizzy to wander round. No one paid her the slightest bit of attention. The women were dressed in various designer threads, Hermès bags slung over their shoulders and oversized Rolexes hanging off their skinny wrists. Lizzy’s cat-print T-shirt from H&M was a poor show by comparison. At least she had bonded with the canapé waiter, who had quickly cottoned on to the fact that she was probably his only customer.
A group was fawning over another close-up of a screaming woman, which was bizarrely entitled ‘The Ganges’.
‘Jay has totally captured it, hasn’t he? I totally had the same feeling of being unburdened from mass consumerism when I went to India in 04.’
The room filled up as more people poured in. Lizzy looked in vain for somewhere to put her empty flute. She should have gone to hot yoga.
Lizzy go her phone out and checked it, trying to look busy. No one had called or texted. As she stood there waiting for her Facebook page to reload a horrible smell crept into her nostrils. She sniffed and looked down to see a tiny chihuahua standing at her feet. How could such a small animal be responsible for such a stench?
By the disgusted looks Lizzy was getting, other people had noticed it too.
‘It’s not me!’ She pointed down at the dog. ‘Has anyone lost a dog?’
No one came to help, and Lizzy found herself standing in a space on her own. The chihuahua gazed up at her mournfully. It was wearing a pink T-shirt that said
J’adore Dior.
Lizzy couldn’t just leave it there. ‘Are you lost?’ she said, scooping the animal up. On closer inspection the poor thing didn’t look very well. Holding the creature out in front of her, she started to make her way through the crowd.
‘Um, hello! Has anyone lost a dog?’
Everyone studiously ignored her until a girl with mauve hair looked over. ‘Yeah, she belongs to Muffy.’
‘And can you tell me where Muffy is?’ Lizzy asked politely.
‘I don’t know, try the toilets.’
Lizzy had no idea where the toilets were, so she headed back towards the exit. ‘Lady with a small smelly dog coming through!’ she called cheerily, just in case people thought the noxious vapours that seemed to be permanently emitting from the animal’s nether regions were anything to do with her.
The dog shivered and Lizzy felt its stomach gurgle ominously. ‘Excuse me!’ she said more urgently. ‘We’ve got a bit of an emergency!’
At that point the chihuahua let out a small groan. In sheer panic, Lizzy shoved the dog into the hands of the nearest person to her. The man’s eyes widened in shock as a spray of brown liquid fell out of the dog’s bottom and splattered on to the floor and one of the man’s tan loafers.
A nearby woman gave a shriek. ‘Oh, that is gross!’
The man seemed to be in some sort of trance. He kept looking at the floor and then back up at the dog again.