West End Girls

by Jenny Colgan

  The dark-haired woman was growing ever closer. Lizzie felt her heart in her mouth like she was being sent to see the headteacher. This was ridiculous. Penny’s earrings twitched as she approached the podium. The woman barely glanced up.

  “Minty de Lougis,” she announced, in her very best “I’m not from Essex” voice.

  “Oh yes, of course, that’s here,” she said. “Minty! How’s Brooke?”

  Penny jumped back into the shadowy doorway and turned her head away in a bored fashion so that all that could be seen was her long blond hair.

  “Yah, fine,” she said.

  “Wait a minute,” said the woman, as the bouncer was pulling across the red velvet rope. “You’re not—Krystanza!” she exclaimed suddenly, as, to their right, the most ridiculous thing Lizzie had ever seen got out of a stretch Hummer.

  It had long skinny legs colored easyJet orange and balanced on a pair of six-inch heels made of Perspex and feathers, wore a tiny miniskirt made of denim and lace, and, juddering above this, floated the most absurd pair of balloon breasts imaginable. Two huge footballs were stapled to a chest above a tiny waist. They were so plump and bouncy on the top you could let kittens use them as trampolines. Barely held in with a tiny piece of stretchy pink tiger-skin fabric, they cast their own shadows over the waiting crowds, who drew back oohing. It was like the spaceships landing in Independence Day. Above the robo-bosoms, which were at neck height, was a vast mane of blond hair that looked to be made of several types of synthetic fiber, crowning a shiny mahogany face swimming in at least half a kilo of lip gloss. The apparition batted her eyelids.

  “What is that?” said Lizzie, standing stock-still before Penny grabbed her by the elbow and pushed her through the double doors while everyone’s attention was still diverted by the huge top-heavy apparition who was clunking past the bouncers; a horde of voices yelling, “Pull your top down, love,” and flashbulbs popping behind her. “And who are you? Did you just pass yourself off as our downstairs neighbor?”

  “Well, I knew she’d be on the list.”

  “How?”

  “She seems like the kind of person who’d be on the list. And I nicked her surname from the post. Right, let’s go.”

  “OK, Sherlock Holmes,” said Lizzie. Behind them came gasps as Krystanza tottered carefully down the lit-up stairs.

  “Is that a man in drag or what?”

  “No,” said Penny, glancing behind her. “That’s Krystanza. I think she’s fantastic. For a dirty old slapper, of course. She’s slept with four premiership footballers and most of her record company.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Lizzie. “I just didn’t think she’d look so . . . weird up close.”

  Penny looked around. “Now, where were we?”

  The club was already jam-packed, and people in the room—it was much smaller than Lizzie had been expecting—looked up hopefully as they descended the staircase, only to look down again dejectedly when they realized that the new arrivals did not play for a football team or star in Hollywood movies.

  There were girls draped everywhere, up against pillars, over the bar, here and there huddled in small groups around men, who were laughing and smiling indulgently as the women fluttered and twittered over cocktails. On the dance floor were girls with fabulous figures grooving with one another and showing off their moves, which were, to Lizzie’s unpracticed eye, bordering on the obscene.

  “Are they lesbians?” she asked.

  “No, they just pretend to be to get the blokes to notice them,” said Penny.

  “That’s moral. What are we going to do for drinks?”

  Penny tried to look like she knew what she was doing but she didn’t really.

  “Uh, well, I think we just hang around looking decorative.”

  Lizzie swallowed. “Look, I brought twenty quid. It’s all I’ve got, but we should at least get a couple of drinks if we’re going to be here.”

  “I thought there’d be more men around,” said Penny. “This looks more like a—”

  “Bordello?” said Lizzie.

  “No. No.” Penny looked around. “It’s nice really.”

  A huge girl with a massive Afro elbowed them out of the way to get to Krystanza, whereupon she started showering her with kisses.

  Finally they compromised; Lizzie bought one cocktail (she’d asked for beer, but they didn’t serve it—it was champagne cocktails or nothing), which used up almost all of her twenty quid, which almost made her weep but didn’t—and they found a tiny space by the toilets where they crouched, sipping it morosely. Every so often Penny would announce she was going to do something—get up, dance, introduce herself to some people—and Lizzie would nod encouragingly, then Penny would hear the squeals and giggles of everyone greeting each other like old friends and yelling with glee and change her mind.

  “Actually this place is really past it,” she announced after an hour. “You can tell. It’s shit really.”

  “Isn’t that Will Smith?” said Lizzie, who as she hadn’t been asked to do anything embarrassing yet was actually having not that bad a time. It didn’t hurt that, for once, Penny was feeling just as uncomfortable and out of it as she was.

  “No,” said Penny without turning around.

  By one in the morning Lizzie was wondering if they’d mind terribly letting her have a little lie-down in the cloakroom.

  “Well, hello, you lovely ladies,” said the DJ. Everyone yelled. Lizzie had been trying to work out if DJ “lovely ladies” was being ironic or not but she didn’t think he was. It was obviously cool now to behave like you were about to put a Bros record on.

  “I’m about to put a Bros record on,” said the DJ. The crowd screamed. Obviously not as young as they were trying to look then.

  “But first, there’s a special prize . . . for tonight only . . . a bottle of champagne . . .”

  Penny’s ears pricked up.

  “. . . for the first girl to get them out and have a bit of a dance on the table.”

  A roar went up from the few men stationed around the room, most of whom looked disconcertingly seedy.

  Lizzie closed her eyes. No. No, no, no, no, no. Please. Just call the night a bit rubbish, then they could go home. Just hop on the bus and chalk it up to experience, and they could relaunch the central London experience again tomorrow. Please. When she opened them, Penny had gone.

  The first, familiar bars of “When Will I Be Famous” had started up. To Lizzie’s utter amazement, several other girls were already tearing at their thin bikini straps.

  “Help me with these goddamn buttons,” hissed Penny from a few feet away, striding toward the center of the floor.

  “No!”

  Penny took a panicky look around. Already a petite Tara Reid lookalike had nearly finished wrangling two big plastic melons out of her cerise Barbie top.

  “Bollocks to it,” said Penny finally, pulling off the rest of the buttons which scattered on the floor. “Grab my bra, Liz!”

  Lizzie tried to crouch down behind the nearest table as Penny tugged at the elastic. Mission accomplished, Penny hauled herself, in a most ungainly fashion, onto the nearest table, knocking over someone else’s glass in the process.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” came a female voice that was purest Essex. The man also sitting at the table, however, whom Lizzie recognized from her peeping vantage point as having once, many years ago, appeared in a soap opera, was clearly delighted.

  “Up you get, love,” he shouted, proffering a hairy arm.

  Red-faced and slightly out of breath, Penny finally succeeded in getting rid of the bra and threw it straight at Lizzie. It landed on her head.

  “Hold on to it,” she hollered and began swaying gymnastically, if not necessarily rhythmically. The people around started to clap halfheartedly. To Penny’s horror, though, there were at least four other girls dotted around the club, also with their tits out. And they undoubtedly outshone Penny in the mammaries department, as they universally had the exact same breasts, j
utting out of their emaciated rib cages at a ninety-degree angle, like they’d been swallowing apples whole.

  “And it’s a dead heat in the Zeppelin race!” chortled the DJ as if he was being incredibly witty. “So, girls, I guess it’s up to you to dance your way to that bottle of champers!”

  Immediately, Penny sprang into action. Lizzie wanted to cover her face with her hands. It was so . . . undignified. Was that the right word for writhing about half naked in front of washed-up TV stars for a bottle of bubbly? Actually, undignified didn’t really cover it.

  Penny had stepped up her game quite considerably and was shimmying up and down like she’d made an unexpected stop on her way to Stringfellows. The television actor was completely mesmerized. The girl whose glass Penny had knocked over was making loud sighing and tutting noises and mouthing “slut” to her friends, but Penny was oblivious. That champagne was going to be won. She stuck out her little bottom and swiveled her rump down to the tabletop.

  “Ooh,” said the DJ. “Looks like there’s a girl there that really, really wants it. So I think we’re going to have to declare a winner . . . And, I know you’ll find this hard to believe, chaps, but I think those might even be real!”

  There was another loud holler. Penny raised her arms in the air and shimmied in triumph.

  “Come on down then, hot stuff.”

  The other girls slunk off their tables looking slightly shamefaced as Penny put out her hand for the actor to take it as if she were stepping down from a carriage. She demurely put her hands over her bosoms and picked her way toward the DJ station. The DJ was a ridiculous white man in his mid-thirties with long blond dreadlocks falling over his shoulders, wearing a pair of dungarees with nothing underneath them. He beckoned Penny over, gyrating in what he evidently thought was a pretty sexy manner.

  Just as Penny—reveling in the attention—nearly made it, there was a distinct whoo from the crowd as Krystanza strode off the dance floor and stood directly between Penny and the DJ.

  “Excuse me,” said Penny, but the DJ had already turned the music up.

  Slowly, desultorily, Krystanza lifted her arms above her head and brought them down behind her back. Winking one eye, that was drooping slightly from the weight of the eyeshadow on it, she ran her tongue over her lips. The men in the club were on their feet.

  Carefully, she unhooked the eye of her bra top. Lizzie screwed her eyes up, in case one of Krystanza’s mega bosoms sprang out and hit her in the face.

  Indeed, they popped out with an almost audible plopping, bouncing noise, as if they were full of jelly. The entire club went silent in awe. Like two enormous flying plum puddings they seemed to defy the laws of physics. The nipples alone were larger than Penny’s perfectly nice pert pair. It was impossible not to stare at them. Lizzie tried but absolutely could not discern the attraction for a man of getting stuck between two things bigger than his head.

  Krystanza was now fondling her two footballs with the same lazy uninterested air.

  “And it looks like we have a new winner, ladies and gentlemen,” announced the DJ. Krystanza extended an arm and grabbed the champagne.

  “Oh no you don’t!” shouted Penny suddenly, seeing all her efforts (and buttons) going in vain. “Give me that! It’s mine!”

  She launched herself at Krystanza in a feral leap, fingernails pointing outward.

  Krystanza merely turned around, ensuring Penny bounced off her huge mammaries without leaving a mark.

  “Rrr!” yelled Penny, plowing in for another go.

  “Fight! Fight! Fight!” shouted the crowd delightedly.

  Penny managed to get hold of some of the girl’s hair, but it came out without causing her any noticeable discomfort whatsoever.

  “Urgh!” shouted Penny. “What is this? Did you shave it off a starving Russian prostitute, you skank?”

  The DJ, while clearly enjoying the scene, realized something would have to be done as Krystanza turned around, slowly, like a ship.

  “How dare you talk to me like that?” she said poisonously. “Do you want a scrap? You’ll get one.”

  “Fantastic,” said Penny. “Have you seen Million Dollar Baby?” And she started bouncing up and down like a boxer.

  Lizzie hid further down behind the chair, until she was practically kneeling on the floor, burying her face into her knees. From behind her fingers she noticed Brooke and Minty enter, wearing white jeans and glittery little tops.

  “Nobody touches my hair, you bitch,” Krystanza was screaming.

  “You want a piece of me?” Penny was screaming back. “Do you? Give me my champagne, bitch.”

  Lizzie saw Brooke and Minty break into broad smiles as they saw Penny in the middle of the floor. Clearly their new friend was going to prove excellent entertainment.

  “Go, Penny!” shouted Brooke. Penny pushed her arm out again, grabbing another handful of Krystanza’s hair in the process. Krystanza went wild and ran for Penny, looking exactly like Miss Piggy, whomping her on the chin with her crystal-studded handbag.

  Lizzie rushed forward to see if her sister was hurt, watching her, feeling helpless as she cascaded through the air, completely off balance.

  As she fell, with Lizzie diving over to grab her, she managed to make a punching motion out toward Krystanza’s left leg. Fatally unbalanced, the blonde started to totter forward, just as Penny hit the floor and Lizzie landed on top of her. Like a tree falling (someone even shouted “Timber!”), with crashing slowness, Krystanza’s nipples, followed by the rest of her, collapsed on top of the girls.

  Lizzie felt as if she was being squashed beneath two giant bouncy balls as the place erupted into applause.

  When they finally disentangled themselves, Krystanza was led off by an overly handsome man looking concerned, and the DJ was calming the crowd.

  “I think both these lovely ladies deserve a bottle, don’t you?”

  “Yah!” Minty was shouting.

  The DJ looked at Lizzie, who had managed to rip her top in the melee and was conscious that her hair was doing that frizzy thing again.

  “Uh . . . yeah,” he said, glancing past her. “Both our lovely catfighting ladies!”

  Penny retrieved her top, panting, red in the face and somehow looking devastatingly sexy. Already footballers and the sons of once famous footballers were beginning to circle around her.

  “You are crazy,” said Brooke, in a voice that sounded admiring.

  “Yah, Penny, you’re so wild,” said Minty. “That girl, fighting in public. So common.”

  “I started it,” said Penny happily.

  Bottles of champagne seemed to keep appearing from somewhere, but nobody had asked Penny for any money, so it was quite all right. Lizzie, a bit wobbly from her trip and long day, sat quietly in the corner with no one talking to her except every so often, when they’d say something and she’d perk up and try and look happy and interested and raise her eyebrows expectantly, and they’d ask her if she’d mind moving so they could go to the toilet. So she drank too much and wondered unhappily why, if this place was so incredibly expensive, they couldn’t spare some peanuts to put on the tables. She slurred this to Brooke before she left, who looked at her with an eyebrow raised and said, “Darling, you know, I have this little dietician fellow you really must meet,” and Lizzie had lurched backward like she’d been slapped. She couldn’t bear to have her weight mentioned.

  Suddenly it was after three-thirty: it was so late, and everything was winding down. Lizzie only just realized she was horribly drunk. People had been turning up with drinks for them all night and, madly, she’d just kept going. Their new neighbors had disappeared ages before—whether on to another club or just sensibly home to keep their perfect skin and glossy hair, Lizzie didn’t know. There was hardly anyone left when Lizzie finally managed to drag Penny off the dance floor, where she was half dancing, half swaying with an incredibly sleazy fellow with slicked-back hair and shiny shoes, who obviously thought his luck was in and looked annoyed at Lizz
ie dragging his pissed-up dancing partner away, until he saw the determined set of her jaw.

  “Home,” said Lizzie. If only they’d gone with Brooke and the others they could have cadged a lift in their cab, but Penny had been dancing and Lizzie had been standing up to let someone go to the toilet and they’d missed them.

  “I’ve had a fabulous time,” said Penny. “Everyone really liked me. And I’ve got . . . this!”

  As they fell through the front glass doors, she held up her trophy, a long blond lock of synthetic hair.

  “I’m definitely going to be a Chelsea girl,” slurred Penny. “I think I’ll just stick this in my hair right now.”

  Lizzie shook her head as she felt the cold morning air in her face, freshening her up considerably.

  “Look at me,” said Penny, lifting up the hair. “I’m Krystanza and I’m a great big fucking slut, slut, slut. Ooh! I’m a slut! I’m a slutty slutty slut . . . with my stupid big tits and my tiny wee butt I’m a skank, I’m a ho, I’m a slut slut . . .”

  Her last word, which Lizzie suspected might have been “slut,” never had a chance to escape her mouth as the woman in front of them, waiting for a taxi, turned around and pounced.

  “Hello, Krystanza,” attempted Penny, as the other girl tried to pick her up by the throat. In the next instant they were rolling around on the ground again, as the few remaining paparazzi started flashing away wildly with their cameras.

  “Oh God,” said Lizzie. “Will you two stop that?” And she waded in to try and separate them.

  “Get off!” shouted one of the photographers.

  “Yeah, get out of it, podge,” shouted another one. “We’ve got shots to get here.”

  Lizzie’s head shot up. They couldn’t mean her, surely?

  “Yeah, get out of it. Shit, that arse is obscuring my lens.”

  There was coarse laughter as Lizzie stumbled backward, face flaming, to try and get out of the way. She lost her footing a little on the step and fell horribly, inevitably, her ankle vanishing from underneath her as she catapulted downward and landed on her bottom on the pavement.