by Jenny Colgan
“Well, when you put it like that . . .”
“And that noise.”
From the apartment below was coming the deep bass of Duran Duran being played extremely loudly.
“It’s doing my head in,” said Penny. “I think I’m going to go and talk to them.”
“Don’t,” said Lizzie. “It’s been a long day. Have you ever been confronted with an angry Duran Duran fan? I’m telling you, it’s not pretty. They slap you with bleached denim and spray Sun In in your eyes.”
“I don’t care,” said Penny. “My head is spinning, and I’ve got to go to work tomorrow.”
“With someone whose head will also be spinning,” argued Lizzie, “and don’t forget, it’s only seven-thirty in the evening. You can hardly accuse them of keeping antisocial hours.”
Penny rolled her eyes. “Well, anyway, I want to meet our neighbors. They might . . . be nice.”
“They might be minted, you mean,” said Lizzie. “You were never very interested in meeting our neighbors in Parkend Close.”
“That’s because I could hear them screaming, ‘Wayne! You’re a fucking wanker that slept with Shelley-Marie’ all night, every night, and I think I knew them about as well as I needed to.”
“Do you remember when Shelley-Marie turned up?”
“Do I? ‘I’m going to cut you, Wayne, cut you with this knife.’”
They were both silent for a moment.
Penny shivered. “And now I’m working in a Chelsea art gallery and I’m making lots of nice new West End friends. Fantastic.”
“Do you think telling our neighbors to turn the music down is the best way to make new friends?”
Penny shrugged. “You never know. There might be a nice man down there.”
“Listening to maximum-volume Duran Duran?”
“Maybe he’s a wild boy,” said Penny, heading out and slamming the door.
Forty minutes later, Lizzie was getting slightly worried. Maybe there was a New Romantic psycho downstairs, locked up listening to “Fade to Gray” and planning terrible tortures and murders. Oh no! She left her bedroom, where she’d been looking at the clothes she’d brought with her. They were almost uniformly black, with a couple of cheap suits she used to wear in the office. They wouldn’t be much use now, if she was going to get covered in grease every day. She really needed to wash her hair too, but was scared of that big bath. If she slipped in it she might never get out again.
Suddenly, she noticed Penny had left her mobile on the only bit of work surface not covered in antique cups and saucers. Oh, crap. She couldn’t even phone her to see if she was all right. By now, she had undoubtedly been tied up with leg warmers and dumped in a cupboard.
Carefully she crept into the hallway. It smelled of polish and fresh flowers, and much nicer than their flat.
She went downstairs and listened outside the door. The music was still going as loudly as ever. Maybe she should go and get a weapon. No, that was just stupid. Nothing was wrong with her sister. But just in case, kick in the crotch. The crotch.
She knocked on the door. “Hello?”
Nothing.
“Hello?”
No one. Taking a deep breath, she reached for the doorknob. It turned in her hand.
“Hello?”
She pushed the door harder and, slowly, it started to open.
Lizzie stood in the doorway and stared. The huge sitting room was spread out in front of her, an exact replica of upstairs. But this room was completely different; it was clear and white, and the huge windows were shiny clean, letting the evening light pour in.
Two red sofas, deep and luxuriant, sat on either side of the white wooden fireplace. Red-and-white-striped chairs provided extra seating. On the other side of the room, near the spotless stainless-steel kitchen, was a large circular table with a large bowl of green apples sitting on it. Large abstract canvases hung on the wall. Lizzie realized immediately it was how she’d like her flat to be, if she ever had a choice in the matter.
“Uh, hello, yeah?” came a drawling voice.
Sitting on the sofas, as she took in more than just the furniture, were three skinny creatures. Two of them were blond, including, she noticed, Penny, who was not, in fact, being held hostage in an eighties fan’s torture cellar after all. The other was dark and dusky, absolutely gorgeous in the manner of those who get off with married footballers.
“Uhh . . . I’m from upstairs,” stuttered Lizzie, finding, annoyingly, that she was intimidated just because she was standing in front of such good-looking people.
“This is obviously our night for having the neighbors drop in,” said the brunette with a sleepy look.
“I think having the neighbors drop in is a bit common,” said the blonde, who had a pinched face and ridiculously long pin legs. “A bit EastEnders.”
“Shut up, Minty,” said the brunette. She made an inquiring face.
“Oh,” said Penny from the sofa, looking up at Lizzie for the first time, as if surprised to see her there. “Yah.”
“Yah?”
“This is my . . . my sister.”
The brunette gave a slight smile. “Oh, you didn’t mention her.”
There was an uncomfortable silence.
“Penny was just telling us she works for an art gallery?” said the brunette, who was obviously the only one with manners more advanced than that of a stick insect.
“That’s right,” said Lizzie. “She sells crayons.”
The girls didn’t even smile.
“I’m Lizzie,” said Lizzie, conscious that she hadn’t changed out of her stained top. If she tried to sit down on their beautiful sofa they’d probably shoo her off.
There was a momentary pause before the girls raised themselves from their exquisite longeurs to respond.
“I’m Brooke,” said the brunette. Araminta was the pinched-faced blonde who didn’t seem the slightest bit interested in suggesting Lizzie call her “Minty.” Penny looked a little bit uncomfortable and moved up from the sofa. Lizzie noticed they were all drinking white wine but hadn’t offered her any.
“Well, I’ve got to go,” said Penny. “Busy schedule.” She cleared her throat when they looked at her expectantly, and Penny thought of the newspapers she pored over, where celebrities were always getting into trouble for throwing punches at the paparazzi. “Boujis?” she ventured.
“Who goes there these days?” said the one called Minty. “It’s common.”
Penny bristled. “Really? I saw Prince William there last week.”
“We’ll see you there,” said Minty.
Penny nodded.
“You’re going where tonight?” said Lizzie as she trailed her sister upstairs.
“I don’t know, do I? I’ve read about it. The kind of place these nobs go and there’s photographers outside. It’ll be in gossip pages.”
“So you’re definitely going out?”
“Yes!” said Penny. “I’ve always wanted to go to these places. So I’m going to, and you’re coming too.”
“Are you sure they’re real places and not something you just made up?”
“Yes.”
“We don’t have any money.”
“We’ll share a soda.”
“How’re we going to get in?”
“I’m going to hide you behind my breasts. Would you shut up with these really stupid questions?”
“But we’ve got work tomorrow.”
“Yes, and forever, if I don’t pull Prince William.”
Lizzie sat down on one of the broken chairs back in their own apartment. It creaked ominously. “But I don’t want to.”
“Don’t be daft, Lizzie.”
Lizzie hung her head. “Why don’t you go with your real friends, rather than drag me along everywhere?”
Penny snorted. “I don’t think Kelly Anne and Dwaneesa would really fit in with Brooke and Minty, do you?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Lizzie. “They’re all horrible. Just Kelly Anne and D
waneesa are probably more inclined toward actual physical violence.”
“It was just that one time,” said Penny in a bored tone.
“That one time,” said Lizzie. “That one and sole time I had my first period and they flushed my head down the bogs.” Lizzie could never quite get over her resentment at having to hang out with Penny all the time, and the misery it had caused her.
“Well, that’s all over and in the past and ages ago and they’re not like that anymore.” Penny had never understood why Lizzie bothered trailing after her at school; it wasn’t like they let her join in. Penny’d never made the connection between Lizzie’s calming influence and the fact that she was the only one of her group not to be expelled.
“Dwaneesa’s got an ASBO!”
“That policeman was racist.”
“She threw a fox at his head!”
“Just get dressed,” said Penny.
“No!”
“Get dressed.”
“No.”
“OK, well, come in that dirty thing that makes you look retarded.”
“I’m not going.”
“Please.”
“No.”
“Please.”
“No.”
Penny pouted when it became obvious this wasn’t going to work.
“But we’re celebrating,” she said. “We both found jobs on our first day out. And we live in Chelsea! And it’s our duty to have fun and get to know the beautiful people and get our pictures in the back pages of OK!”
“You never recognize anyone in the back pages of OK!”
“That’s not the point, is it? I want to be someone people go, ‘Who’s that cow and why on earth is she always in the back pages of OK!?’”
“And that’s your life ambition, is it?”
“Well, yeah. Followed by ‘Royal Wedding Special Edition.’”
“Well, a fondness for old bags does run in that family.”
“Fuck off! And get changed.”
“No!”
Penny came up to Lizzie. “You know,” she said sincerely, “this is all I’ve ever wanted. Just a chance. Just a chance to change our lives and try and do a bit better for ourselves. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. For both of us. To have more than Mum ever got. To have our chance . . .”
“By going out to some overpriced nightclub?”
“It’s our new life,” said Penny. “It will be so good for us. Us, together, striving to make a new way of . . .”
“OK, OK, make it stop!” said Lizzie. Why was she so weak? But someone had to look out for Penny, otherwise who knew what she’d do? “I’ll come. For half an hour. Then I’m going to bed, I’m cream crackered.”
“Don’t say cream crackered,” said Penny.
“I’ll stop saying cream crackered, when you start saying thank you,” muttered Lizzie, stomping off to her own room to find her trusty mascara.
Lizzie realized, staring disconsolately at her wardrobe for the second time that day, that she had no idea what Georges was going to pay her. She tried to think of some kind of innovative mathematical formula that would allow her to earn a magnificent salary selling sandwiches and spaghetti in a box, but she couldn’t figure it out.
So it looked like she’d be sticking to TK Maxx and George at Asda for a while yet. There probably wasn’t a TK Maxx in Chelsea, she reflected.
Oh, well, what was it Trinny and Susannah always said? V-shapes to show off those big bosoms and generous waist. And wide hips and big bottom. She wondered what it would be like to buy something that wasn’t an act of disguise.
Next door she could hear doors and cupboards noisily being thrown open, with loud music being played. The wine seemed to have perked Penny up considerably, which was worrying and encouraging all at once.
“OK!” she shouted eventually, and Lizzie went out—in her black V-neck top—to see what was up. She gasped. “You’re not.”
“What?” said Penny. “Are you going to say, ‘You’re not going out dressed like that?’”
Lizzie knew Penny desperately wanted her to say it. Lizzie flashed back to all the occasions of this in their lives, from high heels worn to school when she was eight to the boob tube fiasco of the Year 7 Christmas party. Penny had a history of wearing things that made her look like she was walking out of the house with the distinct intention of getting pregnant. Why did Penny always make her feel so old?
“Are you sure the girls here dress the same as you do down at Coasters?”
“What?” said Penny innocently. “They’re worse here. You should see the girls who go to these places. They wear artillery belts over their nips and nothing else at all.”
“And that’s the kind of girl you’d like to be?”
“It’s just a bit of fun!”
“Slutty, slutty, slutty fun,” said Lizzie.
Penny was wearing a transparent black shirt—that had been designed to be worn over a tank top—without the tank top—and a see-through bra. Her nipples were obvious from almost every angle. She’d teamed it with a denim mini and pink cowboy boots.
“Penny, it’s illegal to walk about the streets showing your nipples.”
Penny rolled her eyes. “Well, I’ve got something for that, haven’t I? Look. I found it in one of the cupboards.”
She threw a fur stole around her shoulders.
“Oh my God,” said Lizzie, genuinely shocked. “You can’t wear that!”
“Why not?”
“Well, one, it’s not yours, and two, it’s not anybody’s, it belongs to an animal.”
“An extremely old animal,” said Penny. “Smell it, it smells like the Second World War.”
Chapter Four
There were more than a few raised eyebrows on the bus but while Lizzie felt mortified, Penny didn’t seem in the slightest bit concerned; she was more worried that the girls downstairs would see them leaving to catch a bus. Not quite knowing the protocol with guest lists, etc., they’d decided to arrive at Boujis super early and sit and nurse a drink in the corner.
Even so, there was an early queue forming outside the club, the place Penny had chosen on the basis that according to the 3 a.m. girls it was a dead cert if you wanted to pull an ex-member of a boy band or a third-division footballer.
There were one or two boys, nervously tugging at their Ted Baker shirts, but overwhelmingly the queue was formed of girls; and girls whose clothes made Penny’s outfit look like a shelf-stacking uniform in Tehran. Tall girls, model types shouting loudly and cavorting around up the front, nervous fat girls, freshly bronzed, wearing the latest glittery halterneck from Morgan with their striped hair piled high on their heads; black girls and white girls in tiny little strips of dresses; girls from out of town who appeared to be wearing every piece of jewelry they owned simultaneously and more blue and green eye makeup than Lizzie had seen since secondary school.
Everything was tanned, squeezed, plumped, and primped to its very limits. Hair spray and heavy musky perfumes hung in the chilly night air like a dark velvet curtain. Across the road a small bank of photographers with huge lenses and heavy overcoats was limbering up for the evening in case they got lucky with a Page Three girl flashing her norks or a rap star out pub crawling. It wasn’t that different from Brandford after all—just, Lizzie suspected, a lot more expensive.
Lizzie realized she felt terribly nervous for some reason, almost as if she was about to be judged. Then she remembered that she was about to be judged, by some clipboard Nazi on the door who was going to bar her entry on the grounds that she’d kept her lip liner to the inside edge of her lips.
“Are you sure about this?” she moaned. She didn’t usually go to nightclubs. She went to pubs with Grainne, where they sat and ate a lot of dry roasted peanuts and prawn cocktail crisps. When they’d finished eating from their crisp bags, they’d fold them up into perfectly neat triangles and place them tidily in the ashtray.
In fact, she only went to nightclubs proper for their bloody birthday because Penny would ins
ist on a night out with the girls. They usually went to Coasters in Walthamstow because Penny knew the barman and they’d get free drinks. Lizzie supposed they weren’t exactly free because Penny would repay the bar staff by flashing them and dancing wildly on the tables of the “VIP” section, which had never seen anyone more famous than the roofer out of East 17, and was bookable by anyone who didn’t mind buying a bottle of horribly overpriced and revolting Jampagne (“It’s just like champagne,” the owner Billy was always saying, “except it comes from Japan”). Lizzie would sit in the dark and look after people’s coats for ages, then suddenly get pissed very quickly and jump up and dance her head off and the next day everyone would say, “Oh, Lizzie, you were totally outrageous,” and she’d want to disappear into a big hole and die.
She didn’t want to be outrageous. She’d just like to move as easily through the world as other people seemed to, without blushing and feeling as if her hips were too wide for the available space.
Lizzie heaved a big sigh.
“Just stand behind me,” ordered Penny, and she sashayed into the shorter queue. This was patently the queue to be in, with fewer bridge-and-tunnel-style ASOS knockoffs and a lower BMI.
At the front was a scary-looking but beautiful dark-haired woman with a severe expression and a large clipboard, which she was hugging to her chest. She looked extremely grumpy, except for when a young actress Lizzie recognized from Coronation Street, together with someone else from Hollyoaks (Lizzie made a mental note to watch less television now that she lived in Chelsea), flounced up to the front, wearing between them about three diamanté studs and some fringing.
“Hello, darlings!” said the scary woman, and the flashbulbs started going off. A little whisper of excitement went through the other queue, the one that didn’t think it was on the guest list. After all, Coronation Street already, and it wasn’t even half past ten!
“Have a few voddies on us!” shouted one of the photographers, “and we’ll see you later. Falling over, hopefully.” There was a nasty snigger, but the girls beamed big white smiles and waved chirpily.
