One of the assistants comes over, laden with clothes on hangers, and starts fawning over this girl as if she were Madonna.
‘Katia darling, try this piece with the sequins,’ says the assistant. ‘It’s totally you.’
The girl slips on the black sequinned dress and twirls at her own reflection. She tips her head to the side, then scoops up her long silky hair on top of her head, pauses, then shakes it down again in a shimmy. She pulls at the back of the dress and sighs. ‘The eight’s too big,’ she says.
The eight’s too big
. A phrase I have never said. A phrase I will never say.
‘It’s swimming on you. We’ll see if there’s a six, Petra! A six!’ she barks, at her colleague. ‘And try the Carven and the Rodarte pieces,’ she says, holding up two equally beautiful dresses.
She slips on one of them, a tiny tomato-red silk slip with a lace trim at the bottom, and poses in the mirror, hand on one hip, one leg turned out to the side.
‘You look amazing in everything,’ says her friend.
‘Yeah,’ says the girl, her voice a stranger to doubt. She stands gazing at herself with her hands pressing down on her non-existent belly, then moves her palms onto her hip bones. She turns sideways and looks at herself over her own shoulder in the mirror.
‘Stunning …’ says the assistant. ‘There isn’t a six downstairs in the sequins, but we’ll get one in for you mid-week. Is Wednesday OK?’
‘Sure,’ says the girl.
‘Great.’ She pauses for the perfect moment. ‘Shall we start ringing you up then?’
I take the dress I’m holding and hang it back up on the rack, but I’m too nosy to walk out just yet, so instead I hover near the till pretending to look at the overpriced necklaces that all have pistols or birds on them. I catch sight of my reflection in an ornate Venetian mirror on the wall. I really shouldn’t leave home without make-up on any more – I’m too old. These dark, almost purple circles under my eyes never seem to shift. And I have these deepening frown lines above my brows that now seem permanent, not just when I’m frowning at work …
‘I can’t decide whether to head to New York in May for six months, maybe write a screenplay,’ says the girl to her friend. ‘Ray-Ray’s got a place in the Hamptons so we could go there at weekends. Or I could go to Brazil, maybe Ecuador …’
‘Ladies, sorry to interrupt,’ says the assistant, ‘but that’s coming in at one-seven with your discount. Shall I bill as usual?’
‘Yeah,’ says the girl, sounding suddenly bored. ‘What time’s Roka?’ she says to her friend. ‘Do I have time for a massage?’
The girls leave the shop, laden with bags. For some reason the whole incident has left me miserable. That girl has triggered a horribly jealous reaction in me. Maybe it’s the fact that she doesn’t have to work? Just like Leyla, she’s probably got rich parents who bankroll her every whim. Wouldn’t that be nice, not having to work? But actually I’d be bored. Well, after a few years of doing nothing I’m sure I’d be bored.
Maybe it was her figure? She had the sort of body that you’re either born with or you’re not. And I’m not. Still, I thought I’d more or less made peace with my body over the years. It’s not perfect, but it does the things it’s supposed to. Though these last few years it’s started sagging and wrinkling and even developing age spots. I had only just stopped hating it and now I have to start hating it all over again, but in different ways.
Actually I think it’s simple. She’s young and rich and beautiful and has her whole life ahead of her. She can still afford to make a thousand mistakes. Time is on her side, and it isn’t on mine.
I come away feeling so disheartened that my legs sub-consciously walk me over to Melrose and Morgan where I buy myself a consolatory pear and frangipane tart. Ridiculous, I think, as I bite into the crumbly sweet pastry. You’re thirty-six, not ninety-six. Besides I don’t even need a new dress anyway. I have that lovely jade one from Anthropologie that I wore for the last wedding I went to. It’ll do just fine, more than fine – it’s a perfectly good dress … Oh, sorry – ‘piece’. And I don’t wear it nearly enough. It’s not like there are going to be any single men at the wedding anyway.
When I get home the flat still has a faint smell of golden warm banana bread, but it is being drowned out by something toxic coming down from Caspar’s flat. No doubt he’s laying on a mackerel fest to avenge our earlier argument …
I go into the kitchen and wrap a thick slice of the banana bread in foil for Sam for the morning. I consider taking some over to Marjorie but I can’t handle a further downer this weekend. Instead I wrap up two more chunks, one for her and one for Terry, and pop them down to him. He can give it to her tomorrow when he’s doing his rounds. Cowardly I know, but it’s better than nothing.
I go to bed early. I didn’t think I’d ever find myself looking forward to a Monday at NMN merely because it meant that the weekend was finally over. Just as I turn the lights out my phone goes off – a text. I wonder if it’s Dalia apologising for yesterday … Maybe it’s Jeff? Please let it be Jeff from Fletchers … Urgh. Bloody hell – it’s from Fletchers alright, but it’s their marketing round-robin, announcing twenty per cent off sandwiches tomorrow. I don’t even subscribe to these texts, but they send them to me anyway. I delete it in a rage, and am about to turn my phone off when it beeps again. What now, twenty per cent off plastic bags too? Leave me alone!
But no! It’s from that guy I met in the pub last week. I’d almost forgotten about him. ‘Fancy dinner this week? Seb.’
About time too …
Status report:
Things are beginning to look up. I have a date on Sunday night with Seb at a gastropub in Camden. He’s texted me several times already. His texts are quite amusing, if a little long, though he does seem to text quite late at night. And so far this week I have had eight emails from Jeff Nichols – and it’s only Wednesday. Some of his emails are just sweet and chatty and about food:
‘Do you know what is smaller than a petit-four?’ he wrote.
‘A petit-two?’ I replied, wondering if he was trying to make a joke.
‘No, a mignardise. Just been to a seminar on bite-sized snacks. Good word, isn’t it?’
And then some of his messages are ragingly flirtatious – in my opinion at least.
‘Wish you worked with me, that’d be fun. Can’t you apply for a job as my sous-chef??’
However, none of them has brought me any closer to a date. For example, this latest one:
‘Having a day from hell! Sexy Chick pizza now has no actual chicken, just re-shaped chicken-flavoured pieces. Do you ever think about running away from it all? Have you ever been to Costa Rica? I think you would love it. I can imagine you, sitting in the shade wearing a large hat, sipping a tropical cocktail.’
Suggestive, surely? Does he imagine sitting in the shade next to me? Surely that’s the sub-text. I’m currently at my desk pondering how to reply and move things on when Robbie’s PA, Alexis, calls.
‘He wants to see you,’ she says. ‘But hurry up, he’s due in Creative Autopsy in five.’
I rush up to his office where I find him sitting behind his cherrywood desk lining up three small amber glass bottles of Bach Rescue Remedy in a line to the right of his notepad.
‘Blossom,’ he says, looking up suddenly. ‘Isn’t that an amazing word?’
Not as amazing as ‘script’ or ‘here are your mega-strategic urgent scripts’ …
‘Hear the resonance,’ he says. ‘Blossom, blossom, blossom. Melodic. Extraordinary. I can lose myself in words for hours, like Rothko in paint.’ He smiles at me. He has one of those rare faces that is less attractive when he smiles – all gums.
‘Have the team shown you scripts yet?’ I say.
Robbie turns his head to study his bookshelf on which are stacked rows of awards – Perspex squares, bronze statuettes, yellow D&AD pencils. He nods his head at all fourteen of them individually, then turns back to me.
‘Susie: do you know how long the Sistine Chapel took to paint?’
I do actually! Because it’s a Trivial Pursuit question, and I have a brother who memorised every answer on every card when we were kids so that no one else could ever win. Robbie is about to tell me but foolishly I can’t keep my mouth shut.
‘Just over four years,’ I say.
His smile falters. ‘OK. Ergo …’
Please don’t tell me you’re heading in
that
direction
…
‘… Da Vinci didn’t paint the Sistine Chapel in seven days, so please don’t expect Karly and Nick to give you the scripts by Friday,’ he says.
On one level of course Robbie is entirely correct. Da Vinci did not paint the Sistine Chapel in seven days. In fact he did not paint it in four years. He did not paint it all; Michelangelo did. I sit, still as a statue, as the urge to point this out sweeps over me, then eventually passes. To be fair, if it wasn’t for my brother becoming obsessed as a kid with the Ninja Turtles, and giving me those lurid slippers with Michelangelo Ninja Turtle on them that I still wear, I would not have retained this fact.
I contemplate what it must be like to make statements like Doggett just has with a straight face. I mean, why stop at the Sistine Chapel? Why not compare the agency’s latest leaflet for haemorrhoid cream to
Hamlet
while you’re down there?
‘The thing is …’ I say, getting out my timing plan on the basis that he will be entirely disinterested in facts or my problems but at least it will move us away from the whole Karly-and-Nick-are-genii conversation … ‘Scripts are urgent. We’re going to be late otherwise. The airdate’s in six weeks and there’s really no fat in this timing plan.’
‘Don’t make your problems into my problems. Work around it.’
‘The airdate is fixed,’ I say. ‘When I briefed this in, the team were clear they could deliver on time …’
‘Things change,’ he says. ‘Karly now has a medical condition that needs to be addressed.’
I’d hardly call getting a B cup bumped to a D cup a medical condition. Then again, Robbie probably doesn’t know that I know about this. Of course I do! Sam told me about it jubilantly last week: ‘It’s Dr Redfern, same surgeon who did Robbie’s eyelids! When he’s doing a boob job he goes in under the muscle, minimal scarring. You can be back at your desk the next day,’ he’d said, putting me right off my chicken schnitzel sandwich.
‘Karly’s in today though,’ I say. ‘They must have done the bulk of the work already?’
‘Do you think she needs harassing at a time like this?’ he says.
‘Can’t Nick take me through the work? Devron will go mental if we don’t show him something this week.’
‘You’ll have to buy some time. Now, chop-chop,’ he waves his hands at me. ‘Go hustle.’
Buy some time indeed … The minute I tell Devron he won’t see the scripts till next week, he’ll pull rank, pick up the phone and have a tantrum down the phone to Martin Meddlar. Martin will then shout at Berenice who will shout at me. And then Martin will take Devron to lunch and all will be forgiven, temporarily …
I have got so many better things to do than sit in the middle of this crossfire: like plan what to make for dinner on Saturday. I have six friends coming round and I’m debating whether to serve Italian lamb stew with risotto. Then I could try making arancini the following day with the leftover rice. I love arancini – deep-fried crispy golden rice balls with melted cheese in the middle. Once a year I manage to persuade my mum to make them. She sets up her deep-fat fryer on the patio and stands in her garden like some lesser-spotted mythical frying fairy. She then turns magician, making them all disappear – for five minutes anyway, to cool down so that my dad doesn’t demolish them instantly.
And maybe for dessert I could make a chocolate bread and butter pudding. If there’s any left I could make it into a trifle on Sunday night. Would that work, I wonder? Maybe the texture of the pudding wouldn’t be dry enough to soak up the sherry …
Actually, what am I talking about? I can’t stand around deep-frying balls of rice on Sunday, or making trifle. I won’t be doing any cooking on Sunday because I have a date. With Seb. An actual, real, live date.
I’ve ended up making lasagne. It’s a total labour of love, but when I woke up this morning it was so cold and damp outside it felt like winter again – and I thought it would be ideal. I know it’s not posh but it’s one of those dishes that everyone loves.
I’ve got about eight lasagne recipes in the file – one with spring veg and ricotta, one for later in autumn when the first Jerusalem artichokes are unearthed, and an excellent winter vegetarian one with butternut squash and sage. But tonight I’ve made the classic – actually a twist on my grandma’s version. She’d have turned her nose up at dried sheet lasagne, but you have to draw the line somewhere.
Along with Polly and Dave I’ve invited Debbie, who used to live in my block, and her husband Sean. I’d rather have just invited Debbie, but you can’t choose your friends’ partners. The last time I saw her she’d drunkenly confessed that they hadn’t had sex for nearly two years and ‘because of this’ he’d had an affair with a girl at work. She thinks Sean’s infidelity was her own fault. She’s thought about leaving him but would never do that
for the sake of the kids
. I sort of understand this, and I sort of don’t. Do children really want parents who don’t like each other, don’t talk except in resentful accusations, and are way past affection?
And then there’s Andrew and Franny, who are a little too affectionate at this point, certainly in public anyway. Andrew has been my friend since I was seventeen and I love him dearly and, thankfully, only platonically. Thirty-six, handsome, solvent, tall, fun, he listens and has no hideous sexual tics. Every woman wants an Andrew: he is a Willy Wonka Golden Ticket in the London dating game, hence he also gets to be a kid in a sweet shop. He has so many lovely girls to choose from that he simply doesn’t bother choosing. He can live in this perpetually adolescent state of honeymoon dating for years to come: six to nine months of bliss, then find a few flaws and go on a quest for someone perfect. Though Franny might be the one – she’s sweet and funny and they clearly adore each other: joined at more than the hip. We’ve christened them Frandrew.