Authors: Kate Eberlen
‘Because I was wearing pearls the first time we kissed,’ I said.
‘Weren’t those my pearls?’
‘They were.’
‘So, anyway,’ said Doll, impatiently, as if I was the one who’d interrupted the flow of the narrative. ‘You said yes?’
‘Sort of.’
‘Sort of?’
‘It’s complicated, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘I mean, would he move in here? His flat’s not big enough for all of us. I’ve got to think about Hope.’
We were sitting in the kitchen because Hope had
Pop Idol
on in the living room.
‘Dave is great with Hope,’ Doll said.
‘I know. It’s just . . . I thought marriage would be different, not the same,’ I finally admitted.
‘You’re weird, you do know that?’
‘That’s what Dave always says. I didn’t say no. I just want to think it through.’
‘If he sticks around. You want to think about that!’ Doll warned. ‘Dave’s good-looking and he’s lovely. He’s a kind man, Tess! Your mum would be so
happy!’
Would she, though? I didn’t know if that was true. And I didn’t think it was for Doll to say, to be honest.
Anyway, she’d forgotten the first bit Mum had said about finding a man who understands who you are. I didn’t doubt Dave loved me. But he didn’t even know about the bit of me
that wanted to live in London and learn about stuff, and discover what I liked and what I was capable of.
‘Who’d have thought you’d be the first?’ Doll said so sadly that we sat there in silence for a moment or two. ‘Me and Fred have split up.’
So then I understood, and appreciated Doll making the effort to talk about my good news first.
‘Shall I make us a cup of tea?’ I asked.
The way our friendship worked, I was always more comfortable listening to her problems than having her giving me advice. Maybe it was something to do with being a big sister rather than the baby
of the family.
‘We had a row about me working,’ Doll began. ‘And I said, “Well, I’ve got to look out for myself, haven’t I, if you’re not going to marry me?” And
he didn’t say, “Let’s get married,” he just said, “Please yourself!” Four fucking years, Tess!
Please yourself!
“I will then,” I told him. And
that was that. Four years! Can you believe it? I don’t need that shit any more. I’m sick of being on Fred’s arm, like some bloody . . .’
‘Appendage?’
‘Whatever,’ said Doll. ‘What have I got to look forward to with Fred? Babies and Botox, that’s what.’
If I was meant to say, ‘But what about . . . ?’ like she’d just done with me, I couldn’t think of anything, because I hated the way that Fred had been increasingly
dictating what Doll was and wasn’t allowed to do.
‘You’re sure, then?’
‘I’ve moved all my stuff back home.’
I knew it was selfish, but I felt pretty happy that she’d be just down the road again. ‘So are you going back to the salon?’
‘Not exactly . . .’ Doll gave a strange little smile. ‘I’ve seen the future, Tess, and it’s nails.’
‘Nails?’
For a moment, I was thinking metal spikes you hammer into wood, but then I noticed that Doll was proffering her hand. Each fingernail was pale glossy pink, with a diagonal flash of
diamanté stones.
‘Everyone needs a haircut, right?’ she said. ‘Now everyone needs their nails done too. Except a nail salon is cheaper to set up, because you don’t need a lot of space and
equipment, and you don’t need people who can cut hair either.’
‘Do you know how to run a business, though?’
‘Tess, I’ve met a lot of business people through Fred, and you’d think they’d be clever and educated and stuff, but they’re not. Fred’s agent says
there’s two ways of making money. You have one big clever idea, like Bill Gates, or you have a little one and you do it over and over. So what I’m going to do is nails, and only nails,
and do them well and at a price people can afford. I’ll be the first in this area.’
‘Isn’t having your nails done just a passing fad?’
‘Trust me, Tess, I’m a trained beautician. There’s no going back with this one. It’s like Halloween.’
I couldn’t see the connection.
‘When we were kids, we didn’t have all the cards and presents and dressing-up and trick-or-treat, did we? You can’t not, now, can you?’
She had a point. We even had a Halloween-themed week at St Cuthbert’s.
‘What are you going to call your business?’ I asked.
‘I was thinking Maria O’Nail’s. What do you reckon?’
‘How about The Dolls’ House?’ I suggested, sparking off her enthusiasm.
‘That’s brilliant, Tess!’
She took a pink leather notebook out of her pink Mulberry handbag and wrote it down.
‘You’ve got the apostrophe in the wrong place,’ I pointed out. ‘It can either be Doll’s House, that is your house, or The Dolls’ House, which means for lots
of dolls.’
‘Sod the apostrophe!’ said Doll. ‘I mean, who cares? It’s not like Toys R Us is grammatical, is it? Hang on, though, doesn’t The Dolls House make it sound like
there’s only one?’
‘Not that you’re getting ahead of yourself, or anything!’
‘The Body Shop has loads of branches, though, doesn’t it?’ Doll mused. ‘And she started in a seaside town, didn’t she? What you have to do is build a brand . .
.’
Perhaps my friend
did
have what it took. She’d always had an eye for a buck. She’d got a Saturday job sweeping up in a hairdresser when she was only thirteen and was getting
tips for washing the customers’ hair within a few weeks. By fifteen, she was setting her mum’s friends’ hair for church socials at a fiver a time, and the day of our school prom
she’d organized back-to-back appointments for full hair and make-up in the O’Neills’ bathroom. So it kind of made sense that all this time she’d been a WAG, with nothing to
do except look good in photos, she’d been taking notes.
‘You need publicity, obviously, but I’ve got contacts in the magazines,’ Doll continued. ‘I’ve got to get a move on, though, because there’s only a couple of
months before “Following her split with footballing fiancé Fred, Maria O’Neill launches The Dolls House” turns into ‘‘Who?’’’
‘Only one problem.’ I tried to inject a note of realism. ‘Won’t you need some start-up money?’
I noticed she hadn’t given Fred the diamond bracelet back. I wondered how much that was worth.
‘So, I put on my Chanel and went to the bank, didn’t I?’ Doll said.
‘Number Five?’ In my head I could hear my mother saying, ‘If you marry a rich man, Tess, that’s the scent he’ll buy you!’
‘Not the perfume, you wally. My suit! You know the little black-and-white check collarless jacket and skirt that shows just the right amount of leg? Must have looked the part, anyway,
’cause he said it shouldn’t be a problem.’
I felt a bit left out, discovering that she’d already got so far in her new venture without me.
‘You’ll help me, won’t you, Tess?’ Doll asked, because she knew me well enough to see what I was thinking.
‘Course I will,’ I said. ‘If I can.’
‘You already came up with the name!’
I put a mug of tea in front of her.
‘This is the life!’ Doll helped herself to a Tunnock’s caramel wafer. ‘You know what, Tess, you think there’s this whole exciting world out there, but I’ve
been to Dubai and St Tropez and Florida and I’ve stayed in five-star hotels, and honestly, there’s nothing quite like sitting here in your kitchen, eating a biscuit if I feel like it.
Sometimes the best things are staring you right in the face, know what I mean?’
A few weeks into our Foundation One, Lucy booked us a minibreak.
‘I found this last-minute deal on the Internet. Four-star hotel in Brighton. We’ve got a sea view and everything,’ she said, when I returned on Friday morning from an all-night
shift.
‘Wow!’
‘We can have a proper dirty weekend,’ she said.
‘Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?’
She laughed.
‘So when are we going?’ I asked.
‘This evening, silly. It’s last-minute! Two nights for the price of one. We’ll arrive late, but we’ll have the whole day tomorrow and Sunday to do exactly what we
like!’
She gave me a knowing look. The dirty-weekend idea was so unlike Lucy, I felt slightly panicky.
‘What?’ she asked, seeing the expression on my face.
‘No, nothing,’ I said. ‘Charlotte had tickets for the theatre, but she’ll find someone else.’
‘Sure?’ said Lucy. It was a rhetorical question.
I gave her a quick kiss before she went off to work.
Charlotte wasn’t answering her phone when I called, so I left a brief message, and when I pressed
disconnect
, felt a rush of relief. It was her birthday. She would
not be pleased and that would be the end of it.
I’d decided to mention Charlotte to Lucy a few weeks after it happened, describing her as a friend of the family. To be honest, I may have made her sound rather a forlorn figure, someone
who it was my duty, almost, to accompany to the occasional play or opera. If Lucy had met Charlotte, she might have been more suspicious, but, ironically, she actually welcomed the idea of my
‘opera buddy’, because I think she privately dreaded that I might suggest we go together.
I told myself I wasn’t really lying when I said Charlotte was ‘much older’ than me, or that I thought she was quite a lonely person. Like cigarettes, taken up on the same day,
Charlotte had become an addiction that was much harder to quit than I’d thought.
Lucy had been horrified when I ran out of excuses as to why I smelled like a pub.
‘Since when?’ she’d asked, when I’d confessed to smoking.
‘Since 9/11,’ I’d told her disingenuously. I’d become quite good at telling half-truths by then.
In the beginning, I couldn’t believe it was happening; as it continued, my rationalization went something like this: Charlotte could not be seriously contemplating a relationship with me.
I was five years younger than her and, more to the point, the little brother of her former boyfriend. Compared to Ross, I was callow, inexperienced and weedy, so my role in her life must simply be
as a temporary plaything until a real contender came along.
I’m not trying to deny my responsibility, but to a callow, inexperienced, weedy member of the male gender in his early twenties, the offer of sex with someone as out-of-your-league and
up-for-it as your older brother’s stunningly beautiful girlfriend was impossible to turn down.
On several occasions, I did try to stop, once managing to survive nearly two weeks by running twice a day, fast, round Regent’s Park. But when I bumped into Charlotte, also running, at six
in the morning, the sight of her normally smooth fringe waywardly plastered across her forehead, her perfectly sculpted shoulders glistening with sweat, was too much. We did it there, in the park,
against the back of the coffee shed just near the formal gardens, her sweet stale morning breath in my ear, her long, smooth thighs clamped around mine, the silky wet readiness of her as I slid in,
my forehead banging against splintery slats of wood that smelled of creosote.
I was absolutely sure that sooner or later she’d decide she’d had enough. I somehow convinced myself that in the meantime there was no more damage to my relationship with Lucy than
had already happened, so my sin was more opportunism than treachery.
By the time Lucy and I arrived on the south coast, it was late. We took a cab from the station. Small extravagances were still a novelty after so many years on a student budget
and I could feel the tingle of Lucy’s excitement across the fug of Christmas-tree air-freshener.
The hotel had a faded Victorian glamour. As we approached the reception desk, I whispered, ‘Are we supposed to check in as Mr and Mrs Smith?’
There was a flash of enquiry in Lucy’s eyes and a slightly awkward giggle. We’d been together for almost six years by then, and were on our way to earning decent salaries, but we
were still skirting the question of marriage.
I threw open the French windows and stood on the balcony. The breeze was fresh and salty, the pier glittering with coloured lights. Occasionally the wind carried a snatch of pop music or a
distant scream from one of the rides over the soft crash of waves. I could feel the pressure of the city lifting from my shoulders.
‘Do you have to smoke?’ Lucy said as I lit up.
Her face was all frowny with concern for my health and made me think, as I did several times a day, how lucky I was to be with her, and what a shit I was. I stubbed out the cigarette decisively,
grinding it into the concrete floor of the balcony, telling myself that was my last one, ever, but not promising out loud, because I’d done that so many times before, as Lucy would remind me,
and then I’d feel like a failure and the whole cycle of need would start again.
We stood together, looking out to sea, her body fitting comfortably against mine, and I felt as fond of her as I had on the first day of our relationship, and almost as nervous about the
prospect of having sex, which was the reason that we’d come here. How could I have thought that she wouldn’t notice the diminishing frequency of our lovemaking, or told myself that she
probably preferred it that way?
In the morning, we walked along the slatted boards on the pier, hand in hand, with Lucy chatting about the rides she’d been on at funfairs, and whether it would make her
feel sick to go on a Waltzer so soon after eating a full English breakfast, and just about anything to avoid the possibility of a silence in which the question of my impotence the previous night
might acquire some greater significance than me just being tired.
My mobile phone vibrated repeatedly against my thigh as Charlotte called to remonstrate. I suddenly realized that we had stopped walking and Lucy had just asked me a question.
‘Sorry?’
‘Have you got any change for the token machine? Honestly, Gus, it’s like you disappear sometimes! Do you think you get enough oxygen up there?’
I exchanged ten pounds and we wandered around the various rides before deciding which to go on. The Booster was the most dangerous. With four seats at each end of a high rotating arm, it made
the others look like kids’ stuff.