by Jenny Colgan
“Me and my sister,” she explained. “We’re looking after my gran’s flat.”
“That sounds nice,” he said.
“It does, doesn’t it?” said Lizzie. “It sounds nice.”
“But it is not?”
“Well, it’s tricky getting started. It’s not the friendliest of areas.”
The man nodded. “Well, let me say hello. I’m Georges.”
“Hello, Georges. I’m Lizzie.”
“What do you think, Lizzie?”
He placed a plate in front of her with a sizzling hot langoustine on a bed of linguine with olives, chilies, and little red roasted tomatoes that burst their flavors onto her tongue.
“Oh, my goodness!” exclaimed Lizzie, trying it before it had even had a chance to cool down. “This is absolutely delicious.”
“You like, huh?” Georges said. “I like a woman who enjoys her food.”
Lizzie swallowed abruptly. “Are you saying I’m fat?”
“I’m saying nothing, very grumpy girl!” said Georges, looking offended. “I’m saying you look like you’re enjoying the food I cooked for you!”
“I am,” said Lizzie.
“Now me, I am very fat,” said Georges, but he didn’t sound too sad about it. In fact he sounded quite jolly.
“No you’re not,” said Lizzie, who had a lifetime’s experience of telling Penny she didn’t look fat and was therefore convincing under all circumstances.
“But yes, of course I am, can’t you see this?” he said, extending his large wobbly belly. “What is this, then? Am I having a baby?”
“It would eat very well if it was a baby,” said Lizzie, wiping up the last of her sauce with bread. “That was amazing.”
The man smiled. “I’m glad you liked it. And now . . . I must get back.”
The clock on the wall struck twelve, and almost immediately people started coming through the door. Georges greeted them cheerily, many by name, and started dishing up great tongsful of pasta into polystyrene boxes. A small chap appeared behind him and started dashing about at a hundred miles per hour, dishing up teas and sandwiches and filtering through as many people as possible as they yelled out requests and grabbed their white paper bags. It was engrossing to watch and, having nothing better to do, Lizzie sat and enjoyed the atmosphere. Steam rose and mingled to form condensation that ran down the inside of the windows, making the place feel even cozier and protected from the damp and hostile world outside. Slender blond girls ordered salads, or the langoustine without the pasta; local workmen just asked for “Whatever, Georgie;” businessmen signaled what they wanted without looking up from their telephones. Occasionally, Georges would glance over at Lizzie and give her a wink, and she’d try not to smile and feel all pleased.
Suddenly the view from the window was totally blocked, and the entire sky went dark. Lizzie leaned over to see what on earth it was. It turned out to be a huge holiday coach, too wide for the road, the type prone to knocking off cyclists while a sleep-deprived driver on the left-hand side tries to decipher a Hungarian road map from 1964. It appeared wedged on the pavement of the narrow street.
Everyone looked around as a small bus driver walked through the door.
“Ah, I have a coach here,” he said, looking almost apologetic, “they’re all very hungry . . . do you think you could do some takeaway for them?”
Georges looked around at his already bustling café.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “I’m very busy . . . how many?”
“Sixty?” said the man. Georges looked disappointed. “Oh. Then I don’t think . . .”
Lizzie leapt up so fast she nearly knocked the table over. Here was her chance! She could help! OK, it wasn’t stamps but surely she could dish stuff up—she’d watched Georges for nearly twenty minutes now and it certainly looked easy. She could show how useful she could be, then she could work here, and Georges seemed nice and . . .
Oh. She had indeed knocked the table over. A large glass sugar pourer smashed onto the floor into a thousand shards. Lots of ladies yelped and lifted their elegant ankles out of the way of the smashed glass.
Both Georges and the bus driver turned their heads toward her, Georges with a flash of irritation.
“Uh, sorry,” said Lizzie.
“It’s all right,” said Georges. “Benoit!”
The younger boy dashed over with a dustpan and brush.
“We’re too busy,” said Georges to the bus driver. “I’m sorry. It’s impossible.”
“What if I help?” said Lizzie desperately.
Georges’s smile was strained.
“You would probably help best by not standing up.”
“I could help!” said Lizzie indignantly. “I’ll pass things out and you can take the money.”
“But when you drop things on the floor I’m afraid I lose money,” said Georges.
“Well, I won’t do that,” said Lizzie. “I promise. And if you turn down this coach party, you’ll lose a lot of money.”
Georges sighed. “Can you heat things up and make sandwiches?”
“Do you lick the back of them and stick them in a book?”
He pointed her toward the back of the shop.
“Put an apron on. And wash your hands. Benoit will show you what to do.”
For the next two hours Lizzie cut bread, dunked pasta, wrapped things (not terribly well), got drinks out of the fridge, ran up and down to the tiny cellar for more tomatoes, and was generally run ragged. As soon as she’d finished one thing there were plates and pots to wash in the tiny sink out the back. Georges shouted instructions overhead and handled the money, Benoit flitted to and fro like an extremely helpful mouse, and Lizzie kept her head down and got on with things. It was exhausting but slightly exhilarating too, the way it never stopped.
By two-thirty the rush had begun to die down and Lizzie finished washing up the last big pot. Exhausted, she took a cloth to wipe the surfaces with and headed back into the café.
Georges was standing behind the counter with a big smile on his face.
“We are done! We have sold everything in the shop! We even used that catering margarine.” He frowned. “Which I said I would never, ever use. Ah, well.”
Benoit dashed around picking up every coffee cup he could find.
“Benoit! Coffee for the lady, please,” shouted Georges. Then he straightened up and looked at Lizzie properly. Lizzie smiled hopefully at him, but his face, briefly, looked concerned.
Lizzie knew exactly why. Her carefully applied job-hunting makeup of that morning was, she could feel now, halfway down her face. She wiped under one eye and it was black with melted mascara. Her hair, which had taken ages to tame into submission with Penny’s ridiculous straighteners, was now bouncing around her head like a crunchy straw helmet. Beads of sweat prickled on her upper lip and she remembered she hadn’t gotten around to bleaching her moustache . . . oh, fucking hell. This is why she hated going out.
Lizzie wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “I must look terrible,” she said.
“Not at all,” said Georges. “You look . . . you look like you’ve been working very hard.”
With a mouse-like squeak Benoit delivered a tiny cup of dark espresso. It didn’t taste like the Nescafé Lizzie was used to but she sipped it nonetheless, feeling enervated.
“So, uh . . .” said Georges, looking at her from the table where he was sitting. He looked a little nervous and shy, for the first time.
“Yes?”
“I wondered if maybe you’d like to . . .”
Ridiculously, her heart suddenly thumped in her chest. Was he going to ask her out? Maybe he’d think she was an amazing woman with nice child-bearing hips who didn’t mind a bit of hard work, i.e., exactly the opposite of everyone else he’d meet around here.
“. . . take a job here.”
Oh, of course. A job. Exactly what she was after, of course.
“Oh, now I realize,” said Georges, noticing her slightly
disappointed-looking face. “You are looking for places that can more fully satisfy your stamp-sorting requirements.”
“Doing stuff like I did today?” she said.
“Yes,” said Georges. “Apart from knocking over the sugar thing. Benoit wants to leave. He is aiming to become a rugby international.”
Lizzie glanced at Benoit, who couldn’t have weighed more than eight stone soaking wet. He gave her the thumbs-up.
“OK,” said Lizzie, nodding slowly. “OK.”
It was only as she was leaving the café that she caught sight of herself in the glass door and realized she hadn’t calmed down her hair or reapplied her lipstick. She was amazed Georges had given her the job at all in her customer-frightening state. But it wasn’t as if he was looking at her like that, of course. Men didn’t, on the whole.
Penny knew she looked good the moment she stepped out of the house, a good hour or so after Lizzie. She was wearing her red PVC raincoat and her high boots that put a strut in her stride. She jangled the big key—oh, the bliss of having a big key—so that anyone walking past would know this was hers, her house, her part of the world, and be outrageously jealous.
Penny hated working. She remembered a documentary she’d seen once about It girls. How they spent their mornings getting waxed and manicured and going to the gym, had lunch, then spent their afternoons shopping and their evenings going to the millions of parties they’d been invited to. So they had the time to look much better than everyone else, plus they’d meet lots of people at parties, therefore they had a much better chance of meeting a bloke who’d like to keep them living like that. It seemed entirely unfair, but a completely perfect arrangement.
She looked down the King’s Road. No more waitressing. It hadn’t gotten her anywhere in all the years she’d been doing it. And no shops. She’d hate working in a shop too, all that folding and turning up on time. What did that leave for someone without much of a CV and no qualifications?
Wandering in no particular direction, Penny fell into Barnes Street. Even smarter and more exclusive than the rest, it was lined with trees shading small exquisite shops selling art and furniture. It was a beautiful scene. Or rather, it would have been except that outside one of the galleries there was something of a commotion. Penny liked commotions, and slowed down.
A beautiful, extremely tall and slender blond girl in a fawn skirt and opaque tights was yelling.
“He pinched my arse,” she shouted, in a very loud clipped voice.
“Maud, Maud, Maud,” came a grizzled-sounding voice. “He was demonstrating Giotto’s interpretation of the beauty of the female form.”
“He pinged my thong!”
“Oh, come on, he’s not that bad. He’s ninety anyway. What was he going to do after that, ask you to take him to the toilet?”
“Right, that’s it. I’m off. And you’ll be hearing from Daddy.”
The girl stalked off down the street like a disgruntled giraffe. The man looked around vaguely, as if trying to pretend he’d just come out to take the air. Penny thought about it for two seconds, then sashayed forward.
“That sounds uptight.”
The man eyed her suspiciously.
“What, not liking getting your knickers pinged? Bit early for trade, isn’t it, love?”
Penny puffed up her chest. “Excuse me?”
The man looked at her more carefully.
“Oh, sorry, I’ve got the wrong glasses on. Or something.”
Penny looked at him. He wasn’t wearing glasses. “I am looking for a job though.”
“Really,” said the man, retreating into his shop.
“Yes.” Penny followed him. “What did Maud do?”
“She sat in here and looked pretty.”
Looking around, Penny realized she was in an art gallery, or, she supposed, shop. She’d never been in one before. It looked warm, dry, and quiet. She liked it already. The owner himself was a long, skinny, cadaverous-looking chap, with sunken eyes and cheekbones. He was wearing a three-piece suit in a Rupert Bear check.
“I could do that.”
The man looked at her again. “Hmm,” he said.
“What?”
“Oh, no, you are very pretty. I wonder . . . a girl like you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you wouldn’t mind a bit of, uh. Well, some of our clients, they’re a bit old-fashioned in their ways, and . . .”
“They’ll want to pinch my arse.”
The man waggled his head. “Not hard or anything.”
“It’s OK,” said Penny. She was used to it. A huge number of men she met in her life tried to pinch her arse, including her PE teacher. “I wouldn’t mind.”
“You know,” said the man, “sit on that chair there.”
She sat behind the desk.
“You just might work,” he said. “All the girls down here are exactly the same. Boring-looking really. Whereas you . . .”
“Great,” said Penny. “Can I start today?”
“I think,” said the man, “we should have a little lunch to get acquainted. I’m a great believer in the art of lunch. Gordon Ramsay?”
“Not there again,” said Penny, shivering.
The man raised his eyebrows approvingly.
“So, I will see you at eight tomorrow?” Georges was saying. He reached out and pulled open the door for her.
“Yup!” said Lizzie. “Bye, Benoit! Good luck!”
“Eep,” said Benoit.
As she emerged she nearly bumped into a tall blond girl who was with a tall man. They were both laughing hysterically.
“Excuse me,” said Lizzie.
“Whoops!” said the blonde tipsily, just at the instant Lizzie realized it was Penny.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Penny whizzed around.
“Darling! It’s so good to see you! This is my twin,” she said to her companion, in a strange accent that sounded like posh socialite Tara Palmer-Tomkinson wrestling with a mouthful of chewing gum.
The tall, thin man looked at Lizzie, then Georges, who stood in the doorway behind her, up and down.
“How charming,” said the man. “Which one?”
“Oh, Sloan,” squealed Penny, “you are awful.”
“This is my twin, Penny,” said Lizzie to Georges. “And ‘Sloan.’ They’re both awful, apparently.”
“I see,” said Georges, wiping his hand on his apron and holding it out. Penny affected to ignore it.
“Darling, I have to tell you. I’ve got the most wonderful job! In Sloan’s art gallery! The first place I tried! Isn’t that utterly fabulous! We had to go to lunch to celebrate.”
“Well, it’s not every day an angel from heaven drops in to improve your life,” said Sloan elaborately.
Georges sniffed loudly.
“She’s so unbelievably foxy,” said Sloan. “She’ll attract all the old codgers with cash. She flashes that grin and that little arse and we’ll be quids in.”
“That sounds like a great job,” said Lizzie.
“Oh, I know it’s difficult for you, darling. Maybe Sloan knows of some more openings . . .”
There was a silence during which Sloan examined the particularly intricate pocket watch he had tucked into the breast pocket of his Rupert Bear yellow-checked waistcoat.
“I’ve got a job too,” said Lizzie finally.
“Congratulations! Oh, you should have called me. You could have come celebrating with us! Where is it? Ooh, please can it be somewhere hip where we can get into after hours. Or a private club! That’d be great, now I’m going to be moving in the art world.”
“Actually, it’s here,” said Lizzie, indicating the little café behind her. “Great, eh? You can come and have your lunch and . . . things.”
“Oh my God, carb central!” said Sloan. “Imagine.”
Lizzie decided the safest thing to do with Sloan would be to ignore him.
“And this is my new boss, Georges.”
Georges went to put his hand out, then decided against it.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello, Georgie Porgie,” said Penny, giggling drunkenly. “Is this a pie shop?”
Lizzie’s face was truly flaming now. She looked apologetically at Georges, who appeared to be politely biting his lip.
“Uh, I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said.
“Mmm,” said Georges. Lizzie scarpered before he could reconsider the job offer.
“Right. Cocktails,” said Sloan. “It’s after three. Let’s go to the Collection.”
“I don’t know what that means,” said Penny, “but I’m up for it anyway.”
“I think I’ll just go home,” said Lizzie, and she turned back down the Fulham Road, as Penny waltzed up it.
“Owwwwoww.” Penny was roaming the flat like a very slim bear with a very sore head. “Owoowwowow.” She’d had such a good day, she didn’t deserve this. She was going to be a proper Chelsea girl, she was on the way up, and she was sure Chelsea girls didn’t get nasty headaches as a result of overdoing the celebrations with the new boss, Sloan.
“Drinking in the afternoon?” said Lizzie. “How classy of you. Is that what people in Chelsea do now?”
“Shut up,” said Penny, gulping back an Alka-Seltzer. She’d got back about four and immediately fallen asleep for two hours.
“This is going to either work or make me really sick. Kill or cure.” She paused for five seconds. “Excellent. It’s down.”
“So you got a new job and immediately went and got pissed up with your boss? Are you sure that’s wise?”
“Are you joking? Sloan is incredibly influential in the London art world. It’s going to be fabulous for me.”
“How do you know that? Have you been keeping up with the art world, or did he tell you? And what kind of name is Sloan anyway?”
“A joke one,” said Penny seriously. “I asked him. All posh people have joke names. Maybe I should get one.”
“What about Pissed-Face?”
“Oh God, this place is depressing.” Penny looked around her, her gaze settling on the pile of Victorian photographs Lizzie had tidied out of her room and put up on a shelf. “Every single person in these photographs is dead, dead, dead. Dead, dead, dead, dead buried and gone. Dead. Doesn’t that depress you?”