Lily stopped laughing when she saw how serious Gail looked. ‘Oh, you’re a worrier, I can tell. The one thing we both have on our side right now is youth, and it’s an advantage that will never come again. We can do whatever we please because we have none of the expenses that come with age and responsibility. Ask yourself honestly: what do you have to lose?’
Gail often thought back to that night: the lights, soft and yellow in the trees like glowing fruit, the slender waiters darting across the cobbles with trays, the darkness of the river beyond, and Lily so young and full of electricity. Nothing could frighten her, and Gail knew that if she stayed close by, nothing could frighten her either.
‘You don’t like it.’ Gail turned her head, worried. ‘It’s the cut, isn’t it? I was told it’s very fashionable.’
‘Now you sound like Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby,’ Lily said, tipping her head to the other side. ‘Blonde makes you look washed out. Are you feeling all right? You’re not pregnant or anything? I hope not, because that’s your third Martini and the baby will come out all stunted.’
‘You’re dreadful.’ Gail pretended to be shocked.
Lily waved the idea aside. ‘Oh, I can’t be doing with that toujours la politesse malarkey.’
The pair still chucked bits of French around in honour of the way they’d met all those years ago. And they were still best friends who told each other everything. Lily always said if you can’t tell your best friend everything, then you’re not best friends. Of course, this was before she told Gail she was looking older. Gail said, ‘Well, I’m not quite ready to start presenting baking programmes.’ Lily was always far too honest to be considered polite, but you could trust her with your life. If you felt sick at a party she’d barge everyone out of the way to get you to the bathroom.
They argued from time to time, of course. Usually it was over something Lily had thoughtlessly said or done. Volatile storm clouds would suddenly appear and flash about them. Afterwards Gail would write out her anger in letters she never sent, and the sky was clear once more.
When Gail was dating the Brazilian DJ who could stand on his hands in the shower and suddenly announced that he wanted to abandon his hedonistic lifestyle and fertilize her eggs, Lily was the one who told him Gail wasn’t ready to settle down. But a best friend does more than save you from a life of salsa, handstands and babies. Lily looked after Gail when her father died and the stress of caring for her mother had brought on shingles; then Gail tried to take care of Lily, which was harder because she was so independent that everyone first thought she was a lesbian.
‘Seriously, you do feel fine? Because you’re looking your age when you should be aiming for, oh, five to seven years younger. Mind you, I’m thirty-eight, I’ll always be slightly ahead of you. I’ve seen what’s around the next corner. Men who talk about damp courses and Pink Floyd albums.’
‘You still look like your old photos.’ Gail meant it, even though she was wounded by the thoughtless remark. She had always been thin-skinned, lacking in confidence.
‘You’re being polite again. You’re lucky, you have supple skin; mine is so dry I can practically hear it drinking when I whack moisturizer on it.’
As it was Lily’s birthday they were having a drink on a rooftop in Shoreditch that had, ridiculously in London, a swimming pool. Like all London bars it was overcrowded to the point of unpleasantness, and had none of the exclusivity one might expect from a private members’ club. But they were both earning good money these days and could afford their overpriced cocktails; Gail was running an online fashion company, and Lily was now the only female director of Afternoon Delight, the homewares store where she had begun her design career, now rebranded. She had been propelled into the upper echelons of the company, but the last three years had been punishing.
Lily’s camera fetish had truly blossomed in the age of the selfie, and she now photographed everything around her, from meals to friends to flower arrangements. At first she said it was company research but Gail knew she loved Instagramming it all and counting her followers. This meant that having a drink with her was now like watching a network TV show with all the commercials in it. Every time they started to discuss something serious, Lily broke off to rearrange the table and photograph it. She often put herself in the shot using one of her preplanned facial poses, and was discreetly tilting her phone at the crowd standing next to them when she suddenly stopped.
‘My God, look to your left, four o’clock. Sophie What’s-her-name – Stewart – almost unrecognizable. Don’t stare.’
‘Where?’ Gail asked. Her eyesight was terrible but she hated contacts and kept a rather old-fashioned pair of glasses in her bag.
‘She’s right in front of you, in the Orla Kiely-ish thing with the big poppies all over it.’
Gail tried to remember who Sophie Stewart was. Something about a double first in English literature and humanities, and a critically lauded book on British social history. She now extracted sound bites from politicians on breakfast television, making a fortune as the nation’s favourite working mother, although her press agent struggled to keep it that way, given that her twin penchants for alcohol and unsuitable younger men sometimes coincided disastrously. Gail wondered if Ms Stewart had been held back by her somewhat maternal looks, which caused men to underestimate her abilities. The unpalatable truth, she suspected, was that the nation liked to see her as mumsy, and her disenchantment with the role was the reason for her bouts of bad behaviour.
While Gail poked about in her bag she tried to stare surreptitiously. She could see the woman Lily was theatrically attempting to indicate, but this couldn’t be Sophie Stewart, surely? Around fifteen years younger, with narrow hips and long red hair? ‘There’s a faint resemblance,’ she admitted, ‘but it has to be her daughter.’
‘She doesn’t have a daughter. That’s her, I swear. She’s been telling everyone she’s been on sabbatical. She’s had work done.’
‘That’s more than just work.’ Gail located her spectacles and took another look. ‘She’s completely different.’
Sophie Stewart 2.0 had cheekbones and a jawline. Even her neck looked longer. She had gone from a mother goose to a swan, but without the stretched artificiality that so often accompanied surgery. The effect was so startling that Sophie had chosen to rein it in a little by wearing black-framed glasses, which just made her look even more alluring, like a Technicolor movie star from the 1960s.
‘If I could look like that …’ Lily began. ‘What is it they say about men? As they age they either become toads or lizards. Women vanish.’
Gail wondered if this introspection had been triggered by the arrival of another birthday. ‘It’s not just about looks, Lily. She’s well connected. She’s smart. But if she can reinvent herself like that she can do anything. You should go up to her and ask her how she did it.’
Lily gave her friend a crooked smile. ‘You dare me?’
‘Ask her for her secret.’
She pushed back her chair. ‘All right. Watch this.’
Gail watched in something close to awe as Lily bounced through the crowd at the bar, apologized to the man Sophie was talking to and brazenly introduced herself. She was one of those people in whom complete strangers took delight. She was gone for twenty minutes, during which time Gail could only sit fiddling with her phone, trying to look like she hadn’t been dumped. When Lily finally came back Gail found herself craning forward, desperate for answers.
‘So what did she say?’
‘Oh – I promised her I won’t tell anyone else,’ Lily said.
‘But you’ll tell me, right?’
‘Not where she can see. Later.’
But Gail forgot to ask and Lily did not offer to tell her.
The first time they were insulted, or at least conscious of someone being rude about them, Lily and Gail were having a few glasses of cava in celebration of Lily’s promotion. They were on their second bottle in a Notting Hill wine bar when Lily accidentally d
ropped her door keys down the side of the very high bench seat from which they were dangling their legs. It was dark in the corner of the pub, so she got to her feet and tried to move the bench aside.
‘They’ve gone behind the panel.’ She pointed to the hardboard sheet that lined the bottom of the wall. ‘I can’t reach them. You’ll have to stand up and give me a hand.’ She bent back the panel and held her phone torch over the gap. ‘I can see them. They’ve gone behind some wiring. Hold this end.’
Gail held on to the corner of the panel and Lily reached behind, but the panel came away in Gail’s hands and Lily pulled up a dusty cluster of cables instead of her keys and the music went off and the lights went out, and the barman shouted, ‘Ladies, don’t touch anything, let me do it,’ and came over and did something that got the lights and the music working again, and handed Lily back the keys. Under his breath he said something about housewives not being able to hold their alcohol.
‘What did you just say?’ Lily angrily snapped back.
The barman was Australian, about twenty-one, lean and attractive. He studied her with amusement and said, ‘You pulled the bloody wiring out of the junction box.’
‘We’re not housewives,’ Lily said. ‘We could drink you under the table.’
‘You’ve already had two bottles, love.’ He nodded knowingly at his mate behind the bar. ‘Maybe you should eat something.’
‘Really? Eat this.’ Lily reached down and pulled the cables clean out of the wall, killing everything. Power, lights, all off. And then she was off out of the door, heading down the street with Gail following in horrified admonishment.
The next time they met up Lily sat opposite her in Balthazar shredding a napkin into teardrop-sized pieces, and Gail knew there were going to be problems aired before either of them could settle down.
‘I’ve broken up with Bruno,’ said Lily. ‘He’s supposed to be finishing his documentary but he just sits around playing video games and smoking dope. Anyway, who’s going to watch another angry diatribe about factory farming? I caught him stealing from me. I noticed my purse magically emptying out whenever it was left in his flat and confronted him. End result, he decided I was too old for him.’
‘He was very cute,’ Gail said, desperately searching for something positive to say.
‘So is my shower curtain, and that has a practical function. I should have listened to you. I want to be equal partners with a grown-up, not mother to a man-child.’
‘Me too,’ Gail agreed. ‘At least you had someone. I’ve given up looking.’
‘Oh, did I tell you? My boss just announced that he’s looking for a new team member to head the European store roll-out.’ She always did this when she was stressed, skipping subjects or picking up on something they had been talking about when they were last together.
Gail thought it over. ‘He’ll have to offer you the job first, won’t he?’
‘He doesn’t have to do anything. He’ll bring someone in on a trial basis, and then decide who gets the role. I speak business French and Italian so I should land it, but …’ She let the thought trail away. ‘So I bought a bikini to make myself feel better, but I know I look ridiculous in it because there’s this fold-thing above my navel.’
As Gail listened to her friend’s disjointed chatter she got the strangest feeling, as if she should be fearful for her, as if something terrible could happen and there wouldn’t be anything she could do to stop it.
‘What’s really going on?’ she asked. ‘You’re holding something back. You’re usually the most indiscreet person I know.’ It was true; they would go for a drink and Lily would gather acolytes simply by being open with them. When they were in their twenties Gail and Lily would go out on a Saturday night and Lily would end up dragging around a South American musician, a pair of gay Egyptian comedy performers, a Spanish graffiti artist, or some tortured writer with a chip on his shoulder. She collected exotics because she was smart and bored.
Lily remained silent for a long time, and finally mumbled something that Gail didn’t catch.
‘Say again?’
‘I said I cannot keep this up.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘All this – running around. I’m not young any more.’
‘Are you going to overreact to every birthday you have? Because it won’t get easier. You’re not even forty yet.’
Lily studied herself in her phone screen. ‘You know the biggest lie they tell you? That you can have it all. Nobody can have it all. Something always has to be sacrificed.’
‘What are you prepared to sacrifice?’ asked Gail.
‘I want to have children. I want to keep my job. I want a cigarette.’
‘You gave up smoking five years ago.’ Gail awkwardly changed the subject. ‘How’s your mother doing?’
After Lily’s mother retired from being a GP she grew difficult, and their relationship had become ever more strained. Three years earlier she had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
‘When I think back, it’s obvious now that she’d been suffering memory loss,’ Lily said, ‘but we both pretended it wasn’t happening. Now I’m the only one who can help her, but she’ll barely let me near her. She’s going to die telling the nurses I ruined her life.’
‘That’s not going to happen to you.’ Gail tried to sound reassuring.
Lily was hiding behind even more make-up than usual, as if frightened of letting anyone see who she really was. ‘I think there comes a point when you start to see the shape of your life,’ she said. ‘I have to stop pretending to myself. Bruno’s gone, I’ll take care of my mother until she no longer knows who I am, I’ll try to get a better job and fail. I won’t be the girl by the water lilies any more, I’ll be the woman at the window, the one who takes her time at the shops, the one who thinks of her television as a friend.’
‘I can’t take all this melodrama tonight,’ Gail warned impatiently. ‘You don’t believe any of this either. Stop feeling so sorry for yourself.’
‘I may have ovarian cancer. I had a pain in my stomach; I felt full up all the time. They found two lumps, one small, one larger. I’ll know in a day or so.’ Lily blurted it out, and Gail was astonished that she would share anything else, everything else, before this far more important piece of news.
She did not know what to say, and fell back on meaningless consolations.
Lily brightened a little later, and even ended the evening by coercing the waiter to be in their laughing photographs.
When Lily’s phone went straight to voicemail, Gail realized that she had been taken in for the operation. The urgency of the treatment presaged what was to come; although the surgery was successful, she would never be able to have children. Gail stayed with her through the healing process. Lily’s useless boyfriend returned and surprised everyone by briefly pulling his weight, but as soon as she felt better he found something more pressing to do that involved smoking industrial quantities of weed and blowing up soldiers on another planet. A few days later he disappeared to a music festival with a Scandinavian waitress.
Gail moved to four and a half rooms situated on the ground floor of a large terraced house in Dalston that had been subdivided into too many apartments. When she discovered that the previous owner had gone mad and died in the place she decided to have the interior ripped out and repainted, with pale wood floors and white walls. Just before the work began she invited Lily over, knowing that she would be full of ideas for the kitchen.
‘You’ve got enough room to put in a central counter with a hob and a breakfast bar.’
‘You really think there’s space for that?’
‘I’ve seen smaller, trust me. A white Corian sink over there, fridge-freezer in the corner. I can run a CAD and have you fixed up in no time.’
‘And how much is all that going to cost?’ Gail wondered.
‘I can get you a great discount. I’ll put you down as a family member.’
‘Won’t you get into trouble?’
Gail had some savings and the place was a good investment, plus she had a friend who was ready to help. Lily took the notes back to her office, and a few days later Gail got a call from her designers.
Lily saved her a small fortune. Gail was thrilled with the end result. She handled some of the painting herself and even got a rescue cat called Roger, then settled down for her first week living in isolated splendour. It was a week of spring rains and rolling thunderstorms. On Wednesday evening Lily arrived unannounced, soaked through.
‘Well, he did it,’ she said, accepting a towel from Gail and drying her hair. ‘David appointed a twenty-two-year-old girl to handle the European openings without even bothering to give her a trial. I’ve been handed the Midlands, which I’ve been looking after for the past year anyway. My career is pretty much finished in that company.’
Gail immediately headed for the fridge to open a bottle of white wine. ‘You’ve had the same boss for eight years, haven’t you? I thought you got on well. Can’t you fight it?’
‘It’s a done deal. The new girl is smart, posh and pretty, she’s got more followers than me, and our big buyers are nearly all male. So much for all that stuff about female empowerment and anti-ageism the company spouts at corporate events.’
‘Like you didn’t know that already,’ Gail said, filling her glass. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Remember that TV presenter? She told me what she did.’ Lily made sure her jeans were dry before tucking herself on to Gail’s new cream sofa.
‘You mean the one who changed her appearance?’
‘It’s an entire holistic makeover. Not a single treatment, a whole new way of looking at your life. Not everyone is suitable. It’s very exclusive and very expensive, but worth every penny.’
‘So it’s a health farm?’
‘No, no.’ Lily laughed and shook her head. ‘You go away for a month to a clinic just outside Vienna, and come back a whole new person.’
‘Oh.’
Bryant & May – England’s Finest Page 22
