Material Girl (42 page)

‘Ben?’ I ask, and two grains of sticky rice fall out of my mouth onto the table. ‘Well, it’s a bit more complicated than just “dumping” him.’

‘Why?’ Her eyes swell whenever she asks a question.

‘It just is. You’ll see, when you’ve lived with somebody, and your lives become … entwined. Somebody owns the computer, and the car, and, you know, the sofa …’

‘Oh, like, just stuff?’

‘Yes, but it’s more than that …’

‘Yeah, because that’s just stuff. Like, it’s not a life. It’s just things.’

‘Well it’s more than that – you’re used to having them around and – you’ll understand soon enough.’

Isabella looks like she doesn’t believe me.

‘Okay, but when my mum and dad split up it was just because he said “Araminta, I’ve been seeing somebody else and I don’t love you any more”, and she said, “Okay, have you thought about this?”, and he said, “Absolutely”, and so she said, “Leave tonight”, and he did. And they had, like, the house in Fulham, and the house in the Cotswolds, and the chalet in Courchevel, and Poppy – that’s our mare – and, like, two cars and, you know, the business. And me and Jez
and Minty and Georgie as well. But my mum still told him to leave because he didn’t love her.’

‘Okay. Well, that was very brave of her, but also, and no disrespect to your parents of course, but if you are that wealthy then you have a safety net and you don’t have to worry about bills and things like that, and it’s easier.’

‘I don’t think so. I mean my mum hadn’t worked since she was a model, since she was eighteen, and she didn’t even have, like, typing skills or anything. She couldn’t even use Excel. And the business had taken some hits, and we certainly weren’t loaded.’

‘You have a mare,’ I say, ‘you’re loaded.’

‘Not any more. Mum had to sell her to pay for Minty’s nose job.’

Isabella takes a slug of wine to numb the pain of her lost mare or her sister’s plastic surgery, I am not sure which.

‘So where is he tonight? Your boyfriend?’ she asks me, forking up another meatball and forcing the whole thing into her mouth at once.

‘I don’t know.’ I shake my head.

‘God, you guys sound close.’

‘I know it sounds bad … but …’ I shrug and smile.

‘Do you love him?’

‘Yes, unfortunately.’ I take a hit of red wine.

‘You see, now that’s the complicated part,’ she says, chewing on meat, sucking the tomato sauce off her grubby fingers. ‘But I don’t think I could love somebody who didn’t love me back.’

‘Oh my God, of course you could. Of course you could!’ I say.

‘No, I mean, I couldn’t stay with them. It would be too depressing. And it would make me all, like, needy, and wanting to talk to them about it all the time, you know? You know when women get like, all, why doesn’t he love
me, blah, blah, cry, cry? How fucking depressing! I would hate that. Like, you know, a victim?’

I don’t say anything, because I am nearly choking on the vine leaf in my mouth.

‘You know what? Us being here, it, like, completely makes sense. I’ve seen you every time you’ve come in, I think. And I couldn’t believe it when you said we should go out, because you are so glamorous. You are so beautiful.’ She touches my face with a tomato-stained finger.

I wince.

‘Don’t you like me doing that?’

‘I’m just not used to it,’ I say, shrugging stiffly.

‘You mean from girls?’ she asks, doing it again. I force myself to keep my eyes open and not pull backwards.

‘No, I mean, at all.’

‘Doesn’t your boyfriend tell you you’re beautiful?’

‘No. Although he did describe me as his Jag XK8 once.’

‘Like, a car?’

‘Not like a car. It is a car.’

‘Why did he call you a car?’

‘He was being nice. It’s his favourite car. It’s his dream car. He was being lovely.’

‘Like, when rappers say that girls remind them of Jeeps, like that?’

‘I don’t know, Isabella, but I think he was being nice.’

‘Why couldn’t he just tell you you’re beautiful?’

‘You know what, he really was being nice. I can’t attack him for that.’

‘Okay, but I think you are expecting way too little. If that was the nicest thing that my boyfriend said to me, well. He wouldn’t be my boyfriend.’ She leans back and rubs her belly, bloating out her cheeks, without vanity.

‘You’re not scared, are you, Isabella. Of anything. Of being alone?’ I say, staring at her. She’s like a well of honesty.

‘No. I like being on my own sometimes. Like, sometimes I just have to be, for a while, to even think.’

‘But I mean of being alone permanently. Not getting married, not having kids.’

‘No, I’m not scared of that. Why should I be?’ she says, shaking her head.

‘I’m just trying to remember how I was, eight years ago. No, I still think I wanted babies and marriage.’

‘But why? Why them and not other stuff?’ she asks, considering the rice and meat remnants on the plates in front of us, deciding whether any of it is worth eating. She prods things with her fork.

‘Because that’s what I want. What I thought most women wanted. Or I thought I wanted … Or …’

‘Oh, okay, is that why you’re with your bloke, when he calls you a car, because you’re scared of being on your own?’

‘He was being nice. The car thing, he really was being nice.’

‘Well I think he should be able to say more than that. He’s not, like, eighty. Is he?’

‘No, he’s not eighty.’ I shake my head and sigh. Why does everybody keep asking me if he is ancient?

‘You should definitely dump him. And you shouldn’t worry, Scarlet, about being on your own, if you don’t want to be. Look at you. You’re beautiful.’

‘I don’t feel beautiful. I feel false, and made up, and unreal, and a fraud.’

‘Well …’ She moves a strand of hair away from my face, tucking it behind my ear. ‘I think you are glorious,’ she says.

‘And I think you’re lovely,’ I say back, and smile.

She leans forwards to kiss me.

I throw myself backwards so violently that I fall into the lap of a guy on the next sofa. My head lands in his groin, and I find myself staring up at his chin. I am flailing in a
strange position, my stomach muscles too weak to hoist me back up. The guy inhales on his strawberry pipe deeply, exhales through his nose, and says, ‘Either that’s a woman in my lap or I can’t take my hubbly bubbly!’

His table collapse into hysterics, and Isabella is in front of me, taking my hands, lifting me upright.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I say, to the guy and the table.

‘It was my fault, sorry boys,’ Isabella adds, winking at them all at once.

‘Don’t apologise, ladies, join us!’ the pipe-smoker says. He pants at us excitedly like a golden retriever.

‘A bit later, yeah?’ she says, winking again.

I shrug and mouth ‘sorry’ one last time.

Isabella waits for me to sit back down. She looks sulky and pissed off.

‘What?’ I ask.

‘Scarlet, you’re going to have to, like, relax a bit.’ She won’t look me in the eye.

‘I am relaxed, I just feel – it just feels weird for me!’

She turns to face me, and we are dangerously close. I have no personal space left. ‘Well then maybe you don’t want to do it!’ she says, edging closer still.

‘No, I do, I do, I do! Especially if everybody else is doing it! I need to make sure I’m not making some massive mistake. I just need to not be scared. Please bear with me,’ I say, squeezing her hand.

‘Okay then,’ she replies, smiling at me, inching closer.

I feel myself go rigid, like somebody just sprayed me with dry ice. ‘Okay, we’re going to need more drinks, and some of that strawberry stuff,’ I say, pointing at the hubbly bubbly pots. ‘Waiter!’

An hour later and somehow Isabella and I have managed to assimilate with the table of guys sitting next to us. The
red wine flows, and I feel myself getting higher and more drunk. The pipe gets passed around and everybody tries to blow puffs of smoke out of their nostrils. I keep saying to whoever will listen, ‘I can’t chase the pink dragon any more.’

The guy whose lap I fell into is called Howard. ‘Are you twins?’ he asks, studying me and then Isabella intently.

‘Thank you, but I am about fifty years older than she is.’

‘No you aren’t, you aren’t! You simply can’t be! You’re my age, surely. How old are you?’

‘I’m thirty-one,’ I say.

‘Fucking hell!’ Howard spits out the mouthful of wine he just took. ‘I thought you were the same age as me! And how old are you?’ he asks, leaning across me to address Isabella. ‘No, don’t tell me, you’re fifty!’

‘I’m twenty-three,’ she says.

‘Same age as me!’ Howard replies, banging the table with the palm of his hand, then leaning back against the sofa. ‘You look damn fine for a woman your age,’ he says to me.

I smile at him. These boys are babies. Isabella is a baby.

‘I’m going to leave now,’ I whisper to her, grabbing my bag and standing up.

She looks alarmed and stands up as well. ‘Don’t go,’ she says, but I am already edging myself out from behind the table.

I run quickly up the steps and open the door, breathing in the cool air. My head is full of pink clouds.

‘Don’t go,’ she says again, following me and taking my hand, pulling me back against the wall. She turns me around, pressing me into the darkness, and kisses me. This time I kiss her back. It’s soft, and strange. She smells nice. She feels small, and round, and fleshy. It feels equal, but not lustful. It feels like friendship, in a way. She almost feels familiar.
Her tongue moves in and out of my mouth slowly, and I do it back. I think of Ben quickly, and bet he wishes that he were here. But I don’t want to tear her clothes off, or feel any particular part of her body. I put my hands on her back, but when she squeezes one of my breasts with her chipped nail-varnish fingers I’m not intrigued, and I don’t grab the opportunity to do it back. Maybe I should, but I feel like I know how it will feel already.

As she kisses my neck and squeezes me, I realise that I am up against a wall, again, somewhere in W1 with somebody that isn’t my boyfriend. This is no different to kissing Tom Harvey-Saint, up against a wall, somewhere in W1. I just keep cheating, and it makes me hate myself. I don’t feel any better or different about doing it just because it’s a girl. Kissing a man is just like kissing a woman, if you know you shouldn’t be doing it. I feel suddenly, horribly ugly. Ben doesn’t deserve this, and neither do I. Maybe I should have done this ten years ago, ticked it off my list then, or done more. Maybe I should have had the courage to be Isabella. But not now.

I push her away gently.

‘Blimey. Do you want to come back to mine?’ she asks, tracing her fingers in circles on my thigh.

I shake my head and screw up my nose, smiling. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ I say.

‘Too much too soon?’ she asks with a laugh.

‘No, just not right really,’ I reply.

‘But you haven’t even got to the good bit yet!’ She gives me a dirty smile and grabs at the fleshy part of my thigh.

I reach down and pull her hand out from underneath my dress. ‘I love somebody else, though,’ I say.

‘Yeah, but this could just be, like, sex,’ she insists, her smile fading a little.

‘But I need to sort that out. And I need to sort my head out too. This is cheating, and I don’t want to do that any more.’

‘Even if he doesn’t love you?’ she asks, and I wonder if it is meant to sting.

‘Even if. It’s not just about him.’

‘Okay, but we should still go out again,’ she says.

‘I don’t know, Isabella. What with your gloss and my gloss, I don’t think it is ever going to work. We’d be a sticky mess. But I do think that you are wonderful. Wonderful. But then you know that already.’

‘Thanks.’ She glances at the door of the restaurant. ‘Are you gonna go now, then? Because if you don’t want to come back to mine, I think I’m going to hang out with those guys – that Howard guy is a riot! He keeps body-popping, did you see him? And he says he dates women, for, like, a living! How does that work?’ She smiles a huge and childish smile.

‘I’m sure there is a very reasonable explanation. Are you going to be okay, I don’t like leaving you here on your own.’

‘I’ve been in much worse places than this. Can you still get me free make-up?’

‘I’ll drop some of the good gloss into Grey’s,’ I say.

She leans forwards and pecks me on the lips. ‘I couldn’t believe it when you said you’d come out with me, Scarlet. You’re how I want to be, when I’m older.’

I say ‘Thanks’ and she smiles and sashays back into the bar.

Standing on a cold, bright London street, I feel strangely sober. Tonight, perhaps for the first time, I realise that one good thing about older is wiser. I don’t need to make Isabella another one of my mistakes.

I flag down a black cab.