My Fake Wedding (Red Dress Ink (Numbered Paperback)) (3 page)

‘They steadfastly refuse to fuck off,’ I explain. ‘The only way to really get rid of them is to have them killed.’

‘I mean,’ Janice lights another cigarette and gulps more wine, ‘we should all think of something really life-changing we’d like to do this year.’

‘Like what?’ I ask. It’s OK for her. She has a proper career. So does Sam. The PR company he works for is probably one of the top three in the country. Even George has a better job than me. And he doesn’t need one. He has a trust fund that’ll keep
him in DKNY knickers for the rest of his life. But his work as a researcher on the TV show—
Ready Steady Shag
,
Can Shag
,
Will Shag
, something like that—means he gets to meet lots of people to have sex with. Which he likes. Hence the Steve and Barry story. He picks off the cream of the gay contestants, ruts them senseless over the urinals then drops them like a hot shit sandwich. He doesn’t even seem to actually do any real work, judging by the number of emails he sends me on a daily basis.

Mind you, neither do I.

I have a crap job. I just drift through life expecting that one day I’ll find out what I want to do for a living.

It hasn’t happened yet.

‘Do you want to hear what mine is then?’ Janice asks. ‘Or not.’

‘Not,’ George says.

‘Yes we do,’ I say. ‘Don’t we? Sam?’

‘Yes.’

Janice takes a deep breath, puts both hands palms down on the table and looks at us intently.

‘This year,’ she breathes, ‘I’m marrying a rich man.’

‘How do you know?’ George asks.

‘Because I’m going to have a bloody good try,’ she says. ‘That’s how I know. I’ve had enough of pissing about with men my own age.’

‘You mean the kind who boast about how many pints they can neck in a session and spend their spare time fantasising about shagging Lara Croft and lighting their farts?’ I say.

‘Exactly.’

‘That counts you out then, Sam.’ I giggle.

Am I imagining it, or is that a flicker of relief I see pass across his face?

‘Don’t worry.’ Janice slaps him playfully on the knee. ‘I’m going older this time. ’S the only way. I’m going for gold.’

‘Old gold,’ I say thoughtfully.

‘I don’t even care about looks,’ Janice drivels on. ‘Although I don’t want a fat one. Or a ginger.’

‘Thanks.
’

‘Sorry, Katie. No offence.’

‘None taken.’

‘I’m interested in finance, not romance,’ she carries on. ‘It’s hello hard cash, goodbye hard cock from now on in. You can’t have it all. These days, you have to look at a relationship as an alternative PEP. Or a TESSA.’ She giggles. ‘Transferring Expenditure to Someone else’s Savings Account.’

Sam looks shocked. As well he might. Janice is just like him and George. Known for working her way through men like a fly through shit. She needs regular and varied sex like I need fags, chocolate and beauty products in nice packaging. Her last three boyfriends have dumped her because they’ve caught her boffing someone else. How on earth is she going to stay faithful to one man? Particularly one who’s old enough to be her father.

‘You’re not going to go really old?’ George looks worried. ‘Not, like, incontinence and dribbling?’

‘I might.’

‘Jesus.’ He rolls his eyes. ‘That is soooooo Jerry Springer.’

‘Sod off.’ Janice nudges Sam. ‘What about you, Sammo? Any resolutions? Apart from becoming your own boss?’

‘I don’t know.’ Sam looks embarrassed. ‘I’m thirty this year. Perhaps it’s time to settle down with that special person.’

‘Yeah, right,’ I snort. ‘Likely! If we saved the condom from everyone you’ve humped and dumped, we’d have enough rubber to bungee jump from the top of Canary Wharf. Don’t pretend you want to change now. You couldn’t if you tried.’

‘What happened to Pilaff?’ asks George.

‘Pia,’ Sam corrects him.

‘Poor Paella,’ I say. ‘He dumped her.’

‘She dumped me, actually,’ he says.

‘Only because you made it quite clear the contents of her knickers no longer interested you,’ I say.

Pia was just one more in a long, very thin line of Sam’s silly bits
of fluff. She lasted three months, and I hated her with a passion. Partly because she was gamine and chic and really suited short hair, whereas I am none of the above, but also because she would keep on insisting she came from Tenerife. Which, as I’ve tried to tell Sam, time and time again, is nigh on bloody impossible. You don’t come from Tenerife, for fuck’s sake. It’s a holiday destination.

Still, I can’t help feeling a bit sorry for the poor cow. Anyone could see Sam didn’t really love her. He took me out for dinner on her birthday because I’d just been dumped. She must have been a bit doolally in the first place to have been so totally sucked in by him.

‘She sensed he was cooling off so she asked him to go for a walk on Wandsworth Common,’ I tell the others. ‘Wanted a chat.’

‘Actually—’

‘Shut up, Sam. I’ll tell it. I know it better than you.’

‘That’s because you make half of it up.’

‘Shh. Anyway, they drank a bottle of wine in the pub first. Then, when they sat down to talk, he fell asleep. The silly bitch waited an hour and a half for him to wake up. And when he did, guess what?’

‘He gave her the old “it’s not you, it’s me” bullshit and left?’ Janice hazards a guess.

‘Spot on. What a waste of a Saturday afternoon. She could’ve gone shopping instead.’

‘You bastard, Sam,’ Janice says. But she bats her eyelashes at him as she says it. His eyes widen in terror and he shifts away from her slightly.

‘You are a bastard, Sam,’ I tell him. ‘You’re a Quick Erection, Instant Rejection merchant just like the rest of them.’

‘I’m not.’

‘You are. You wouldn’t have got away with that with me, you wanker,’ I tell him, in no uncertain terms. ‘I’d have got your knob out and left you there with it lolling out of your flies. Not that anyone
would have noticed, what with you having a dick like a bit of Heinz spaghetti.’

‘And how would you know?’ Sam grins.

He has a point. I might have known him all my life but Sam could have a willy like a lump of baloney sausage for all I know. I change the subject. ‘What about you, George? What’s your New Year’s resolution?’

For a second, George looks uncharacteristically wistful.

‘A baby,’ he says firmly. ‘I’d like to get a baby. My maternal instincts are kicking in. I could hardly dance in the club last night because my biological clock was drowning out the beat of the music.’

Oh good giddy God.

‘And I saw a lovely one the other day in Harvey Nicks.’

‘Clock?’

‘Baby,’ he says despairingly. ‘Great cheekbones for one so young. And it was wearing this gorgeous little Gucci cashmere thing with poppers. Don’t suppose you’d care to oblige, would you, Katie? Provide the oven if I supply the bun, sort of thing?’

‘Fuck off,’ I tell him. ‘I wouldn’t bonk you if you were the last man on earth.’

Actually that’s not true. George isn’t the sort of man you’d kick out of bed for farting. If he were straight, he’d be quite a catch. I, for one, would shag him like a shot. It’s my personal tragedy that he is, as my mother puts it, ‘riding the other bus’. If he offered me the chance of a quick bunk up I’d leap at it like a Jack-in-the-box. But it’s not very likely, I’m afraid. George has always preferred to go in the back door. Gusset-wise, he’s as safe as industrial-strength Durex.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he scoffs. ‘You haven’t got a penis. Why would I want to shag you?’

‘What then?’

‘I thought we could baste one,’ he says. ‘Like Max and Jacqui did in
Brookside
. You’ve always said you don’t want your own kids.’

‘Too
bloody right,’ I mutter. ‘Giving birth gives you Stilton cheese veins in your legs and bunches of grapes dangling out of your bum.’

‘We’re eating,’ says Sam, rubbing a hand through his shock of hair and making it stick up even more.

‘What’s your point?’ George asks innocently.

‘My point,’ I tell him sternly, ‘is that I’m blithered if I’m widdling the equivalent of the Empire State Building through a drinking straw just so you can satisfy your ego by carting it around like a Prada handbag. The answer’s no, George. N bloody O.’

‘You wouldn’t be able to cope with the birth,’ Janice points out.

‘Neither would Katie.’ Sam shovels in doughballs.

‘The blood and the stitches would make you barf,’ I remind George.

‘Probably wouldn’t need stitches, the men you’ve had,’ Janice jokes. ‘Be like waving a finger of fudge round the Lincoln Tunnel.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ I say. ‘I’m not the one who stakes out haulage companies in search of nice bits of rough. What if you didn’t like the look of it?’ I get back to George’s and my imaginary basted baby. ‘You wouldn’t be able to send it back. You can’t just order a baby as if it’s a pizza and then return it if you don’t like it. What if it comes out dog ugly?’

‘It won’t,’ he says confidently. ‘Luckily for me I’ve got an exemplary gene pool, sweetie. No one eats cheap beefburgers and oven chips in my family.’

I look longingly at his snake hips, six-pack abs, chocolate-brown eyes and jet-black hair, cropped close to his scalp to show off an immaculately chiselled jawline.

‘I’m sure you have,’ I tell him. ‘But I’m a bit of a ginge, in case you hadn’t noticed. And you wouldn’t want one of those soiling your precious gene pool, would you?’

‘You
can’t tell for sure what it’ll look like until it comes out. It’s a bit like a genetic tombola in that respect,’ Janice tells him. George looks blank. He clearly hasn’t got a clue what a tombola is.

‘Not true actually.’ Sam waves his fork around and tucks into more pizza. He’s chosen the one with the egg on top, I notice. Typical bloke thing to do. ‘We’ll soon be able to choose exactly how our children look.’

‘How fabulous.’ George puffs himself up. ‘They’ll all come properly accessorised. The world will be full of beautiful people. Just like me.’

‘It sounds awful,’ I say. ‘We’ll be overrun with Mail Order Infants. Embryos To Go. Delivery will take on a whole new meaning.’

‘You’ll even be able to order a whole stock of spare parts for the baby in case something goes wrong with it,’ Sam says knowledgeably.

‘Shut up, smart arse,’ I tell him.

‘Yuck.’ Janice drinks more wine and drunkenly lights the wrong end of her cigarette. ‘Like a Foetal Exchange Mart.’

‘I’m not having your baby, George, designer or otherwise,’ I say. ‘In nine months’ time the novelty will have worn off and I’ll be stuck with it. You can’t take babies to nightclubs, you know. Even if you do dress the poor little buggers in leather and sequins.’

‘What about you, Katie?’ Sam, shovelling in garlic doughballs, wants to know. ‘What’s your resolution?’

Everyone turns to stare at me.

‘Yes,’ Janice says ‘What is yours?’

For a second, I’m stumped. Then I remember my Vow of Singledom.

‘To have a nice time,’ I announce.

‘What?’

‘Yep. On my own. I’m giving up on relationships altogether,’ I
inform them coolly. ‘Can’t be buggered any more, if you must know.’

‘You’re what?’ Janice looks astonished.

‘Oh God,’ moans George. ‘You’ve come over all lesbian, haven’t you? You’re a ruddy great carpet muncher and you’re too afraid to tell us.’

‘I said I was giving up on relationships,’ I tell him. ‘Not men.’

‘What about sex?’ Janice looks horrified.

‘Janice, you’re the last person to try to tell me you have to be in a relationship to have sex with someone,’ I say.

‘True,’ she admits.

‘The men I meet are about as useful as chocolate tampons,’ I say. ‘So I’m going to follow the BLAB principle. Behave Like A Bloke.’

‘What?’

‘Fuck ’em and chuck ’em. Hump ’em and dump ’em. Blow them off then blow them out. I’m going for a one-night stand record.’

‘But you’ll be crap at that,’ Janice says. ‘You’ll end up doling out charity fucks like there’s no tomorrow. Shagging people you feel sorry for. Look at that computer spod you bonked at college. What was his name? Bruce?’

‘Bryan,’ I mutter through gritted teeth. ‘His name was Bryan.’

Wine comes out of Janice’s nostrils. Even Sam’s trying not to piss himself laughing.

‘Bryan,’ Janice snorts. ‘He wore mustard Y-fronts and—’

‘Yes, yes,’ I assure them. ‘It was all absolutely hilarious.’

I spent a week in the bath, scrubbing myself down with shame, after Bryangate, and I still haven’t been allowed to forget it. Oh, he seemed handsome enough when I snogged him over the pool table in the Union bar. But by the time we got back to his black ash bedroom, the effects of the seven pints of Snakebite and black I’d consumed had worn off enough for me to notice that his hair was lank and greasy and he was speckled with
whiteheads. But, being the non-confrontational type, I figured it was probably less hassle just to brace myself and let him get on with it.

God, perhaps they’re right. I’m completely shit at shagging around.

But then I won’t know unless I try, will I?

D
id I say
how much I hate my job? I write for a glossy lifestyle magazine, which isn’t as glamorous as it sounds. Office life isn’t really my thing, for a start. Oh, it’s OK for nicking stamps, making long personal calls, slagging off the outfits in
Hello!
and comparing sandwich fillings, but apart from that, I don’t see any advantages from where I’m standing.

My one saving grace is that I’m allowed to work from home sometimes. Which isn’t actually all it’s cracked up to be either. It’s not all lounging around on designer sheets with a state-of-the-art laptop, dressed in wisps of powder-blue and drinking out of big cups to make your hands look dainty, like they make it look on American TV shows. I have motivation issues. I hate having to chain myself to my geriatric Mac with nothing but a box of fondant fancies and a walnut whip or two for company, forcing myself to write something intelligent and witty, when I’d far rather be slumped in front of the telly in my friendly old PJs, posting in Pepperamis and watching Judy ‘WishIwasthinagain’ discuss teenage bulimia.

Until
now.

Recently, I’ve found myself actually enjoying going into work on the odd occasion. Just before Christmas, the
Suki
magazine office acquired its very own Mr Diet Coke Break. Fresh from the land of kangaroos, koalas and Kylie, David—or The David, as he’s been nicknamed, due to his striking resemblance to Michelangelo’s equally luscious masterpiece—is over on a sabbatical from Sydney, and he’s had everyone’s La Perla in a veritable twist since he wandered through the door of the features office. He sits opposite me, which gives me lots of opportunity for bashful flirting, and I have to say the view has improved considerably since all I had to stare at was Fat Claire’s Cute Cats calendar on the slightly grubby stretch of wall between my desk and the coffee machine.

Because of this, I make more of an effort with my appearance than usual, pulling on clean, black bootleg trousers and a pale pink V-neck, which reeks only slightly of fags from its last outing. I even do make-up, disguising the luncheon meat effect of last night’s bottle of red wine on my cheeks with a layer of tinted moisturiser I’ve had knocking around the bathroom for yonks, and sweeping shell-pink blusher over the place where my cheekbones were last spotted, circa 1992. Then it’s off to the tube, where I spend an unhappy forty minutes jostling along on the Misery Line with my nose jammed into someone’s beef stew armpit. Personally, I think travel on the London Underground should be gratis. There’s nothing enjoyable about it, after all. And there’s nothing worse than shelling out the best part of a hundred quid a month for the pleasure of getting to work, when I’d far rather be cocooned under the duvet with a bag of Jelly Babies and a good book. Especially at this time of year.

I emerge at Sloane Square and walk the long way to the IBS Magazine building so I can have a calming fag before I go in. The familiar tsunami of lethargy washes over me the second I drag my heels up the steps and I illegally grind out my fag on the
wall by the front door. There’s something acutely depressing about the smell of our building, new carpet mixed with stale coffee grouts, that makes me want to spin on my clumpy boot heel and run for the hills.

Or the shops at least.

Marsha, the toxic receptionist, glances up from painting her talons purple as I slope in, wincing at the cheerful vase of fat crimson poppies and hot pink peonies on the reception desk.

‘Good Christmas?’ I ask, more out of politeness than anything else. Actually, I couldn’t care less what sort of sodding Christmas she’s had. She’s so up herself I doubt she even noticed anyone else was
having
Christmas. She probably thinks the whole damn festive season was laid on just for her.

‘The best,’ she purrs. ‘Did I tell you we were going to the Maldives?’

‘About a thousand times.’

‘My Bradley proposed on the beach. Sooo romantic.’

She waves her hands around a lot as she speaks, so that I can’t fail to spot a rock the size of Gibraltar winking away in the shaft of sunlight that comes from the window. Still, if she actually thinks I’m jealous she’s even thicker than I thought. I’d drink sick before I’d touch Her Bradley with a ten-foot pole. Marsha’s Bradley is about as attractive as school mince. He wears too much aftershave and he looks twelve. In fact, the only reason Marsha herself is interested in him is that he’s seriously loaded. He works on the LIFFE floor in the City, which suits him down to the ground. Marsha’s Bradley is a LIFFE. A Loud Ignorant Fucker From Essex. A Bish Bash Bolly Boy. A Lobbo Yobbo.

‘Late again,’ Marsha singsongs as I shuffle miserably towards the lift. ‘And you had a lot of time off before Christmas as well. Missed all your deadlines. Imogen was reely furious.’

That’s a very bad habit of Marsha’s, mistaking me for someone who gives a toss.

‘I had gastroenteritis,’ I lie.

‘Ooh,
lucky you,’ she breathes. ‘I bet you lost loads of weight. Just in time for the party season too.’

‘Er, right.’

The office is already humming with activity. There’s Melanie the Mouth. Spreads office gossip like cheap margarine and is about as harmless as a redback. Delilah, who has neck cords from too much dieting and always looks as though she’s knocked back a petrol and floor polish cocktail. Audrey, who’s just popped out a pair of twins and has breasts like nuclear war-heads. Men swarm round her like flies round a fresh cowpat and she says it has done wonders for her sex life. Hilary, who never speaks but spits in her boyfriend’s sarnies every time they have a row. Fat Claire, her flabby chip shop arms on display as usual. She’s into all that holistic claptrap. Aromatherapy. Reiki. All manner of herbal hocus-pocery. I don’t know why she bothers. It’s obvious it doesn’t work. Otherwise she’d have managed to feng shui her cellulite or something by now and her double-decker arse would be a thing of the past. There’s Serena Bum-lick, the office brown nose. Her tongue is permanently wedged so far up the editor’s bottom, I’m surprised she ever manages to get any work done.

Jabba the Slut, all fifteen stone of her, wedging in an iced bun.

And so on.

‘Hi, Katie,’ calls Audrey, dabbing at a milk spot on her silk blouse.

‘Hi,’ I say. ‘Did the twins enjoy their first Christmas?’

‘Oh, they did.’ She immediately starts talking in a stupid goo-goo voice. ‘Ickle wickle Theo and Toby had a wonderful time. Loved the fairy lights. I said to Jim, “They’re taking it all in.” ’

‘Lovely,’ I say. Ickle wickle Theo and Toby have been ‘taking it all in’ since the nanosecond they were born. I’m already longing for the day one of them comes home shitfaced. Or sky high on glue. Audrey and Jim will be ‘so disappointed’.

Of course, I realise that even by my reckoning, ickle wickle Theo and Toby’s drinking days are a good fifteen years away. So
hopefully I’ll miss their first night out on the Blue Nun. Surely to God I won’t still be slogging my guts out for 10p a word at
Suki
by then. Something life-changing is bound to have happened to me before that.

I put down my raspberry latte and park my bum on my swivel chair, pondering the possibility of a sausage sandwich from the canteen downstairs. I’ve already had an industrial sized pain au chocolat, but there’s something about work that makes me just want to jam food in my face all day.

‘Hi, Katie.’ Fat Claire’s thick, cakey voice oozes out from behind the photocopier. ‘Did you have a good holiday?’

‘No,’ I mutter, switching on my grape-coloured iMac. ‘You?’

‘Fantastic.’ She smiles fatly. ‘I found my Chi.’

‘How lovely.’ I grimace. ‘Was it lurking at the bottom of a bag of chips?’

‘What?’ she wobbles.

‘I said you must be fucking thrilled to bits.’

‘Oh.’ She looks surprised. ‘I am. You really should try it. I feel so…so…’

‘Well, that’s lovely then.’ I turn round purposefully and bury my head in a sheaf of papers.

God, this is depressing. I hate the hum of computers, the constantly shrilling phones, the irritating buzz of chatter. Actually, the chatting wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the fact that everyone who works here is a complete Humour Eunuch. This place is about as much fun as AIDS. The only person who has ever laughed at a single one of my jokes is David. Gorgeous, sexy David. At ten thirty, he wanders in, positively ambrosial in a Daz-white T-shirt and a pair of faded Levi’s, which cling seductively to his cute-as-a-cupcake bum. David gets away with being even later than me every day because he’s a bloke. We haven’t had a man in our office since Maurice the janitor left. A man as eminently bonkable as David has never before crossed our threshold, so there’s no protocol regarding male lateness or couldn’t give a toss-ness in general. Consequently, David could stub
fags out on our editor’s eyeballs and people would smile indulgently. Sometimes, if he’s feeling especially tired, he puts a Post-it note on the back of his head which reads, ‘Please wake at 2 o’clock.’ Then he kips at his desk for the entire lunch hour. The rest of us think ourselves bloody lucky to
get
a lunch hour.

Watching him plonk down his caramel macchiato and his double chocolate muffin, I heave a gigantic sigh. Despite David’s gorgeousness, I can’t help feeling downright miserable at being back at work.

‘Hi, David,’ trills Melanie the Mouth.

‘Hi.’

‘Hello, David,’ purrs Serena Bumlick, rewinding the tape in her dictaphone for some serious transcription.

‘Hi,’ he says politely, before turning his attention to me. I blush with pleasure, noticing that everyone else in the office, especially Serena and Mel, have turned the colour of mange-tout with envy.

‘Good Christmas?’ he asks me.

There’s a collective intake of breath as I give everyone that smug ‘Yes, he’s asked Me a question’ sort of look.

‘The usual,’ I reply. ‘Crap weather, crap presents and crappier telly. If I hear the theme tune to
Only Fools And Horses
one more time I’ll scream. What about you?’

‘What’s
Only Fools And Horses
?’

‘Never mind. What about you?’

‘The usual.’ He grins, showing a neat row of sparkling white teeth. ‘Gorgeous weather, great presents and no telly at all.’

‘You haven’t got a telly?’ I’m incredulous.

‘I was too busy sunbathing.’

‘It was back to the land of barbies, beaches and brilliant sunshine, was it?’ I treat him to my flirtiest smile, secure in the knowledge that everyone else in the office is watching, jealous as hell. ‘Thought you were looking sickeningly brown.’

‘Just for a week.’

‘Well, there’s no need to get cocky,’ I warn him. ‘You might get all the nice weather over there, but just remember, you guys are
responsible for giving us
Prisoner Cell Block H
and Rolf Harris. It can’t be all good.’

We chat on about holidays for a few minutes then David’s phone rings. Now, when this happens, I take it as my personal responsibility to ear-bog as much as I can. None of us have, as yet, managed to find out whether or not David has a girlfriend. But this time, disappointingly, he seems to be talking about work. And he’s taking ages about it, so I bang off a couple of personal emails and resign myself to writing the article I was supposed to have handed in before Christmas. A piece on
crème brûlée
. It’s my job to invent and test recipes for the Posh Nosh section at the back of the magazine. It’s the least prestigious section, of course, next to all the celebrity interviews and the reportage. It’s even lower down the ranks than the pages and pages of photos of spilt nail varnish and chopped-up lipstick, which pass for the Best Beauty Buys of the month. Actually, it’s not what I thought I’d end up doing at all. I wanted to be a chef when I was at school. But when I left catering college, I didn’t realise that if you wanted something badly you were supposed to go out and grab it, instead of waiting for it to land in your lap. So I drifted. And after months of temping, I ended up here.

Writing about food instead of cooking it.

‘Concocting the perfect
crème brûlée
is rather like building the perfect relationship,’ I type gloomily. ‘If the luscious vanilla custard goo on the bottom is not strong enough to support the brittle, golden caramel crust, the whole structure will cave in on itself like a floppy, flaccid…’

God, now that makes me think of penises. Must concentrate.

On second thoughts— I look longingly at David—who cares?

I spent so long over the holidays testing recipes, I’ve got caramel oozing out of my ears. But I think I’ve got the ingredients and the timing right now. Unfortunately, relationships are a tad more complicated. If I had a foolproof recipe regarding that
side of life, I’d be laughing all the way to Snatch West. But how could I? I can’t even follow in the footsteps of parental example. My own father buggered off when I was fourteen. I wasn’t surprised. The alarm bells of mid-life crisis had been ringing for months. It was 1984. He’d given up mowing the lawn at weekends and started wearing stretch jeans and leg-warmers instead. Howard Jones and Nik Kershaw records started to appear in our front room with alarming regularity. One Saturday, I arrived home from the cinema (
Ghostbusters
, if you’re interested), to discover he’d disappeared while he and Mum were out looking at chest freezers. He’d vanished into the ether just north of Finsbury Park with a mail order Filipino. Mum was devastated. She prided herself on never having bought anything from a catalogue in her life.

I finish writing the introduction to my article then ring Janice.

She’s depressed. Poor old Janice. She does work really, really hard. She lived in a shithole, went to school in a shithole and gritted her teeth through A levels so she could claw her way up and out to university. Where she met me. We got through our first year in halls together then shared an old Victorian house near Southsea seafront, where she really opened up to me about her past. Every week we’d have those silly girlie occasions, when we’d sit for hours, putting the world to rights with mudpacks on our faces, henna slathered over our hair and huge glasses of wine in our hands. Now, she’s so glossy and polished, you’d never know she grew up on a council estate rougher than a badger’s bum. And that’s just the way she wants it to stay.