West End Girls

by Jenny Colgan

“See, there, that’s too friendly, spilling over into frightening.”

  Penny smiled to herself.

  “It’s my first day. I’m just trying to stay out of trouble.”

  Will looked at her.

  “Honestly?” he said. “You look like the epicenter of trouble.”

  The lunch rush went past so quickly Lizzie nearly forgot to eat a meal herself. She’d already forgotten her morning KitKat and prawn cocktail crisps. Oh well, she thought sadly at three o’clock, there was probably a coleslaw roll left over somewhere. She hadn’t seen a KFC in Chelsea.

  “Ta-dah!” said Georges, plonking a plate of risotto in front of her. “I saved you some.”

  Lizzie looked up at him gratefully.

  “I thought we would not see you today but you did a good day’s work.”

  “This is delicious,” said Lizzie. “I don’t think I’ve ever had it before.”

  Georges looked utterly shocked. “You’ve never eaten risotto?”

  She shrugged sadly.

  “But what do you eat?”

  “You know,” said Lizzie.

  “I do not know,” said Georges.

  “Well. Quick things mostly. Stuff you can microwave. Pizzas and things.”

  “You can’t microwave a pizza,” said Georges.

  “You can, kind of,” said Lizzie, mumbling a bit.

  “What else?” said Georges.

  “Curry and things.”

  “You microwave this curry too?”

  Lizzie nodded. “And lasagne.”

  “Ah. The easiest thing to make. You can’t make that in a microwave, can you?”

  She nodded again. Georges looked absolutely aghast. He sat down beside her.

  “Ooh, Lizzie, Lizzie.”

  Lizzie was blushing furiously. She knew her eating habits were terrible. There never seemed any point in cooking as Penny didn’t eat anything. So she’d grab something and heat it up. On the pictures on the packets they’d usually have a serving with something green or some lettuce next to it, but she never bothered with that. Her mum had always just brought home some bland leftovers from school and heated it up, and they’d never progressed really. She kept telling herself she’d lose the weight when she was ready, when something happened that would be worth losing it for. So far, nothing had happened like that.

  Not unkindly, Georges reached out and pinched a little of the wobbly flesh on her upper arms. Then he took her hand and placed it on his big belly. Lizzie flinched. She knew Mediterraneans were more touchy-feely than Brits, and she knew she was more uptight than most. This was the first time a man had touched her, she thought suddenly, in over a year, and that was a regrettable accident, after she’d run into Felix in Coasters. She hadn’t been entirely sure he knew they’d broken up. Georges felt warm, and more solid than she expected. She felt her face turn scarlet.

  “Now this,” said Georges. “This tummy. You feel it?”

  She nodded.

  “This tummy is made from good chèvre, good goat’s cheese, and calamar, and baklava, and tagliatelle with a wild boar sauce, and best chorizo, and potato cakes fried in the new oil, and good wine, yes? Every kilo of me is made from quality food and happy days and nights. So I am fat but I have many friends and much good food inside me. But Lizzie, you eat slop, yes? You heat up slop and eat it and taste nothing and watch television and this is not good, is it?”

  Lizzie suddenly felt as if she was about to cry. She put down her fork.

  “Thanks, Gillian McKeith,” she said.

  “I do not know who this is,” said Georges. “Come now, eat.”

  “I don’t feel like it.”

  “Of course you do. This is good Parmesan and good rice and good squids and—”

  “Squid?”

  “Calamar. Squids. Yes, of course.”

  “I’m eating a squid.” Lizzie peered at it. “Isn’t there supposed to be ink everywhere?”

  “You’ve never eaten squids?”

  Lizzie shook her head. “It was on a menu when we were in Spain once and we thought they were joking. We thought it was a right laugh, like eating donkey or something.”

  Georges looked pained. “But you are eating it and finding it good, yes?”

  Lizzie looked at her plate. “Well, I suppose.”

  Georges winked at her. “You have a long way to go.”

  “Is it time for my lunch now?” said Penny a tad sulkily, when Sloan rolled up at ten to five. He was clearly pissed as a fart and in a terribly relaxed mood.

  “Of course, my dear girl . . . did you sell anything?”

  Actually, Penny had. It was rather embarrassing. A poised young woman had come in with two large men and pointed to a frame. The men had taken it down and the woman, with barely a word to Penny, had left a card on her desk. Penny was hoping fervently this was a regular customer Sloan could send a bill to rather than a thief with a gimmick.

  “Well done!” said Sloan overenthusiastically, spotting the card. “You must have perfect sales lady skills. This is one of our very difficult-to-please people. Russian oligarchs, you know.” He said the last bit in a murmur, as if someone could overhear.

  Penny emphatically did not know, but it sounded interesting. “I had to talk her into it. Do I get a commission, by the way?”

  Sloan snorted. “No! You get to sit in my nice warm gallery out of the cold and read Hello! magazine and drink free tea. The fact that I’m paying you at all is a bonus when you think about it. Now, darling, shall we go for a little cocktail hour drinkiepoo?”

  But Penny was already outlining her lips in the mirror. Having taken it off earlier, she had a shrewd suspicion that Will might rather like a slightly tarty look. Not that he’d admit it, of course.

  “I’ve got a date,” she announced. “You don’t mind if I pull one of your artists, do you?”

  Sloan looked slightly pained. “I’d rather you pulled one of our big spenders. No chance of that, is there?”

  Penny shrugged on her short jacket. “Introduce me to a few of those Russian Olive Marks.”

  Sloan raised a single eyebrow. “I shall.” He steadied himself and focused on her for a minute. “And go easy on that William now, won’t you? He’s a gentle soul.”

  “We’ll see about that,” said Penny. And she winked at her boss and hopped out into the crowded evening.

  Lizzie looked around her on the bus. They’d been in London three days: it was time to pay her respects to the architect of their good fortune.

  Barnet was as end-of-the-line as it was possible to go, endlessly long street after street of suburban houses. Their mother had sent the address, written on headed notepaper in a very theatrical handwriting full of loops and squiggles Lizzie had never seen before. But somewhere here, there was a nursing home. The good weather had not stayed; it was back to early spring drizzle. Conscious of not missing her stop, she squinted repeatedly at road signs and tried to follow her progress on the A–Z street guide. She was on the very top page of the A–Z; she hoped they didn’t make any sudden left turns or she was done for.

  No, that must be it, the building at the top of the road. Lizzie rang the bell to get the bus to stop, hopping up nervously. She suffered from a conviction that if she got on a strange bus in a new place, the bus driver would attempt to trick her and drive her all the way to the depot.

  “Uh, yes, stop here, please,” she barked.

  There was no one else on the street as she stepped down, just rows and rows of houses and parked cars, televisions casting blue shadows from behind the curtains. Lizzie pulled herself together and headed up the tilt of the road to the large building at the end.

  The Larches was a huge Victorian house with netted windows. On the brochure it was shot in bright sunlight with a lawnful of daffodils in front of it and it looked rather like a stately home where you might take tea in the garden. In the early evening gloom of a London March, however, it looked forbidding and chilly. The windows were lit, but with strip lighting, not lamps.<
br />
  Approaching the front door she smelled the nasty institutional smell of boiled veg and too much bleach swilled into too many corners, a smell masking a far nastier, occasionally whiffed undercurrent.

  “Hello,” she said to the grumpy-looking fat nurse sitting behind a reception grille. The foyer was sparsely decorated, with large emergency exit signs, six different types of fire extinguishers, and one gray chair with a defeated-looking potted plant next to it.

  “I’m here to see Mrs. Willis.”

  She nervously fingered the lilies she’d bought, half expecting the nurse to tut that she couldn’t come in without an appointment. The other half of her thought that the nurse might give her a radiant warm smile for being such a nice caring girl as to come out all this way to visit her mad old granny.

  The nurse did neither of these things, simply nodded and pressed a buzzer. The glass door separating the foyer from the rest of the house clicked open.

  “Uh, which room?” said Lizzie. The nurse looked up, completely confused, then started tapping at the computer.

  “Four, eleven,” she said finally, annoyed to be caught out.

  “Thanks,” said Lizzie. “I’ll try not to steal any old ladies while I’m up there.”

  But the nurse didn’t respond, and Lizzie went through the door alone.

  To her left was a room wreathed in smoke, from which a television game show was blaring. Glancing in, Lizzie saw a roomful of old people, mostly in nightclothes, staring straight ahead, not necessarily at the TV. It was like Day of the Dead. A shiver went down her spine and she rushed to the lift, which was big enough to get a bed in and out of. For all the dead people, she supposed, getting more and more creeped out as it ascended.

  The room was down a winding corridor distorted by oddly shaped protuberances, like any old property adapted for a lot of extra plumbing it wasn’t designed for. The door was tightly shut.

  “Uh, hello?” said Lizzie, rapping her knuckles lightly against the wood. There was no answer. She gently pushed the door.

  The old lady was lying on the bed with her eyes closed. She was tiny, a little bird-doll. Lizzie remembered her, from her brief visits in childhood, as being big, big and smelly. But she couldn’t be, this tiny frail thing. Her hair was so thin Lizzie could see her white scalp.

  The old lady opened her eyes and fixed them straightaway on Lizzie, who jumped. “Who are you?” she said. Her voice was stronger than her appearance.

  “Uh, I’m Lizzie,” said Lizzie. “Your granddaughter.”

  The woman craned her neck, staring at her for a long time, and let out a sigh. “The little twin?” she demanded querulously before falling silent again. “You’re a bit of a chunky one, aren’t you?” she said finally.

  Lizzie let the door bang shut behind her. “Actually,” said Lizzie, “if I want to get insulted about my weight, I can easily do it at home.”

  The old lady grunted and slowly pushed herself farther up on the pillows. “I’m not being insulting,” she said. “I’d love a bit of weight on myself.”

  “Exactly,” said Lizzie. “Compared to you, Nicole Kidman looks like she should be cutting down on the pies.”

  The lady beckoned her over. “Who did you say you were again?”

  “I’m Lizzie. Penny and me are staying in your house.”

  A look of worry passed over the old lady’s face. “I want to go back to my house,” she said. “Why are you in my house?”

  “You told us to stay in your house. We’re the twins, Gran. Gran.” She realized she’d never said the word out loud. “You’re our gran.”

  “The little twins?”

  Lizzie nodded.

  “Someone’s let the little twins run my house?”

  “I’m one of the twins, Gran,” said Lizzie, starting to despair. “Here. I brought you some flowers.”

  The old lady looked less confused when she picked up the flowers. She buried her nose in them for a long time, breathing up their rich scent. Finally, when she looked up again, she seemed much clearer.

  “They give me lots of drugs,” she said. “I get mixed up.”

  “I know,” said Lizzie. “That’s why you’re here.”

  “Why are you in my house?”

  “You said we could stay in your house while you were in here.”

  “Why would I let the little twins stay in my house . . . Oh. Because you’re not little twins anymore.”

  “Would you like a glass of water?”

  “Are you looking after my house?”

  Lizzie nodded vehemently.

  “They’re terrible here, you know. They take the newspaper away as soon as you’ve read it.”

  “That does sound terrible.”

  “And they keep cleaning up after you.”

  “Awful.”

  The old woman looked around. “I’m not happy without my things about me.”

  She beckoned to Lizzie, who approached the bed. Her grandmother grabbed her wrist, holding on to it with surprising strength. “Don’t throw out any of my things,” she hissed loudly.

  “I won’t,” said Lizzie.

  The old lady’s eyes misted over. “Oh, I miss Chelsea. This place is a fetid shithouse. You should have been there during the war. All the bombs falling, but we still went out dancing all the time. Misbehaving, too. Not much time to be hanging about during a war. Not many men around either.”

  “I’m not sure life’s changed that much,” said Lizzie.

  “Hmm.”

  “How did you meet Grandfather?” asked Lizzie eagerly. She knew so little about this side of the family.

  “Who?” said her grandmother. “Sorry. Who are you again?”

  “I’m one of the twins,” said Lizzie sadly.

  “The little twins? The little twins are in my house?”

  “So, apart from being bats?” said Penny. She was lying on the sofa painting her nails with a dreamy expression on her face.

  “Nope, that was it, mostly. Apart from fessing up to being a bit of a slut in the forties. Then I read her OK! magazine for half an hour.”

  Penny returned her attention to her nails.

  “So, aren’t you interested?” asked Lizzie.

  “In what?”

  “In whether Dad’s been in.”

  “Has he?”

  “No.”

  “Imagine not even going to see your old mum.”

  “Prick,” said Lizzie absentmindedly, from years of habit. Her father not exactly cutting the mustard as a family man wasn’t what you’d call news.

  “So anyway, aren’t you going to ask me how my day went?” said Penny, a smile creeping onto her lips.

  “I ate a squid,” said Lizzie, cheering up momentarily. “It was nice. Like a chewy fish finger.”

  “Ugh,” said Penny. “That sounds rank.”

  “Well, it wasn’t. It was nice.”

  “Well, I suppose I’m going to have to be prepared to eat lots of exotic foreign food from now on,” said Penny, rolling over on the sofa and pushing out her nails to dry. “Now I’m going out with an international artist and jet-setter.”

  Lizzie sat down. She was starving, but this news was too good to wait.

  “You’re what?”

  “Oh, you know. Dating the artistic aristocracy, that kind of thing.”

  “No, I don’t know. What kind of thing? Your last boyfriend owned fifteen lock-up garages. Spill.”

  Penny had been feeling good walking into the bar, despite the night before. She was made up, and she’d backcombed her hair so it bouffanted up high on her head, and tugged down her shirt a little.

  Once she entered the crowded noisy wine bar, however, she felt a bit different. The place was heaving with men in expensive-looking pin-striped suits and very polished shoes, and the women were tiny, frail almost, with flat, very straight, glossy blond hair—more honey color than the Barbie shade she favored. These women’s nails were done, but with short French manicures, not long fakes. And they all had perfe
ctly shaped, but quite full, eyebrows. Penny had been drawing on her eyebrows since she was fifteen.

  She suddenly felt out of place, and wondered if it was safe to tug her skirt down. It had been all right last night when everyone was dressed to impress, but here the women were in cashmere overcoats and cream shift dresses. Always fascinated by money, Penny found this was a new breed altogether.

  A few of the men started ogling her as she walked in on her three-inch heels. Normally confident, she almost stumbled as one of them leered at her. She remembered suddenly the extra layer of lip liner she’d put on to wind up Will. None of the women here were wearing lip liner like that. She looked toward the bar, where the barman lifted an eyebrow. Shit.

  From the corner Will watched the whole scene, feeling for her. Here she was, the little rich girl up in the proper city for the first time. What presumably ruled the suburban footballers’ nightclubs and tanning salons wasn’t working here at all. He went from imagining her as hard as nails to seeing the vulnerability in her and, somehow, he found it an incredibly attractive mix.

  “Over here.” He waved confidently. He stood up. “You look wonderful,” he said loudly. Some people next to him rolled their eyes and stared at him rudely.

  “This is a nice place,” said Penny, as Will brought back her vodka and tonic. Penny had wanted a Bacardi Breezer, but had forced down the impulse.

  “Come here a lot?” said Will, amused.

  “Oh, yes, all the time. I think their vodka and tonics are just to die for,” said Penny, wondering how Brooke and Minty got that kind of flick in their voices when they said “to die for.”

  “So. Tell me about you,” said Will.

  Penny had been dreading this.

  “Well, I live in Chelsea and I work in an art gallery. For fun, you know?” she added hastily.

  “But of course,” said Will. “Where were you born?”

  “Chelsea,” said Penny quickly. “Lived here all my life.”

  “Right.”

  Must be one of those self-made daughter types, thought Will. Cardboard-making dad gets lucky, that kind of thing. Probably a daughter of the much more attractive second wife. That accent was weird though. You’d think school would have rubbed it off a bit.

  “Where did you go to school?”