West End Girls

by Jenny Colgan

  Stunned, feeling drunker than ever, she sat there trying to regain her equilibrium, the chortling of the photographers ringing in her ears. The heel of her shoe had broken off. She noticed it had fallen in a dirty McDonald’s cup. This was possibly the most excruciating night out she’d had since her and Penny’s joint twenty-first, when she’d pulled a virgin and they’d sat on her single bed for four hours drinking Nescafé with milk that tasted slightly off.

  Maybe she should just stay here, in the gutter, and go to sleep. Maybe she could lie down and put her head in a puddle and find some more fast-food wrappers and stick them to herself to keep warm. She didn’t think it could be any more humiliating than the way she felt already. After all, nothing could get any worse.

  “Uh, hello?” came a voice from above her. It sounded kind and concerned. This wasn’t what she wanted right now. Kind and concerned was bad, in fact, because it implied she’d done something ridiculous that required patience and pity. Grudgingly, she looked up . . . and her night deteriorated even more.

  “I thought that was my new employee. I was right!” said Georges. He held out a helping hand. “Are you OK? Have you been mugged?”

  Lizzie realized how she must look, with the evidence of two fights all over her. She shook her head. “No.”

  He shook his hand at her and she took it and scrambled up. “Having a good night?”

  Lizzie swallowed, suddenly feeling very drunk and awful. She wobbled a bit in only one shoe and had to lean against him. He held her elbow.

  “Are you OK?”

  “I am absolutely fine,” said Lizzie, concentrating on not slurring her words. “Are you?”

  “Me? Yes, I am great. I go to the fish market, there may be some lovely red snapper. Early bird catches the fish, yes?”

  “But it’s the middle of the night.”

  “Or very early in the morning. It’s good. You should come, er, sometime.”

  “What about now?” said Lizzie. Penny could still be heard yelping behind her, and she felt like getting away.

  Georges looked pointedly down at her missing shoe.

  “I think you should probably get some sleep . . . I hear you start very important job tomorrow, no?”

  Lizzie hung her head and leaned into him a bit. After all, he’d seemed to like her today, hadn’t he? For a bit at least.

  “Please?” she said, trying to sound a bit flirtatious.

  “No,” he said, gently extricating himself from her boozy hold. She felt him pushing her away.

  “Go home now,” he said. “Get some sleep.”

  “I didn’t want to get off with you anyway,” she said, upset.

  Georges coughed and looked startled. “Er, excuse me?” he said.

  “You’re not my type,” said Lizzie, thinking in her befuddled state that this would make her seem cool and unbothered. “I just don’t have enough money to get home.”

  Lizzie bent down to fish her shoe out of the McDonald’s container. For a second it looked like she was about to topple over again, but Georges grabbed her by the waistband—sadly elasticated. She wavered for a second before righting herself.

  Georges smiled at her, concern in his eyes. He stuck up his hand and hailed a taxi, handing the driver a tenner.

  “Is this enough to get this lady back to Chelsea?” he asked the cabbie.

  “I don’t know, is she going to be sick?” asked the driver.

  “Are you going to be sick?” asked Georges.

  Lizzie shook her head miserably.

  “Off you go then,” said Georges.

  “I have to get my sister,” said Lizzie. “I have to get her.”

  “Where is she?”

  But Georges didn’t have to wait long to find out. Able to sniff out a free cab from five kilometers away, Penny was flying down the steps, with what looked like half a wig in her hands.

  “Fly! Fly!” she yelled, as she hit the pavement. “Who’s this?” She looked at Georges without the faintest flicker of recognition that she’d met him less than twenty-four hours previously.

  “It’s Georges. I don’t fancy him,” said Lizzie.

  “Oh, that doesn’t matter. Is he rich?”

  “Goodnight, ladies,” said Georges. And he shut the taxi door and marched off down the street.

  “Well, what a fantastic night,” said Penny. And, like a cat, she stretched herself out on the back seat of the cab and promptly fell asleep.

  Chapter Five

  “Well, there’s no point in crying,” said Penny, already making herself up very efficiently in the tiny square of bathroom mirror that wasn’t completely obscured by boxes of pinned butterflies.

  “You don’t know how bad it was,” said Lizzie. “I’m not a hundred percent sure myself when it comes to it.”

  “How bad could it have been? Wasn’t he just sleazing you up a bit?”

  “No,” said Lizzie, through painfully hiccuppy noises as she tried to prevent herself from bursting into sobs. This was why she didn’t like getting drunk very often. “I was sleazing him up. Oh, Penny, I’m a disgrace.”

  “You threw yourself at your new fat boss?” Penny raised an overplucked eyebrow.

  Lizzie sniffled to herself.

  Penny looked at her pityingly. “So what are you going to do—move jobs?”

  Lizzie shook her head. “I can’t . . . it was hard enough to find this one.” She groaned. “I’ll just have to do the whole thing without looking at him. Unless he sacks me, of course.”

  “Is that a big zit on your nose or did you fall asleep on a Jammy Dodger?” said Penny.

  How anyone could look quite so perky when they’d been ten seconds off getting a police caution only a few hours previously was a mystery to Lizzie. Penny strode briskly up to the newsagent’s on the corner and picked up a copy of a tabloid.

  Sure enough, there she was, on page eleven. “Big Bust’s BIG Bust Up!” ran the headline. “Page Three stunner Krystanza’s night came to a shocking close at Boujis when she was set upon by a jealous fan. ‘This girl was making a real fool of herself all night,’ said a friend. ‘Then when Krystanza went to leave she couldn’t stand it anymore and jumped her. It was pathetic really.’”

  This was emblazoned over a large picture of Krystanza, breasts akimbo, twisting alarmingly on the steps. Penny’s fingernails could just be seen outstretched toward her bosoms.

  “It’s me!” said Penny. “I’m famous!”

  Lizzie studied it, momentarily distracted from her funk.

  “It says you were making a real fool of yourself all night,” she said. “I didn’t think it was all night, just the bit when you were taking your clothes off and that.”

  “Thanks,” said Penny. She studied the newspaper closely. “I don’t see a bit where it says, ‘The beautiful mysterious stranger is still being sought as she disappeared into the night.’”

  “Maybe they had to trim that bit for space,” said Lizzie.

  “Maybe I should call the paper and put in my side of the story.”

  “What’s your side of the story? She stood up and you tried to fight her.”

  “She tried to nick my champagne!”

  “She had the biggest tits in a ‘Who’s Got the Biggest Tits’ competition!”

  “She cheated!”

  Penny was still feeling mildly exuberant when she rocked up to the gallery. Sloan was outside, opening up.

  “Shocking hangover,” he said. “A few too many brandies at the Officers’ Club with an old guardsman, ahem, chum.”

  “Me too,” said Penny. “Well, similar.”

  She showed him the newspaper and he shouted with laughter.

  “You are a hoot,” he said. “What a girl.”

  Penny smiled happily. At least someone approved. Why couldn’t Lizzie understand she was only trying to have a little bit of fun, for goodness’ sake, and nobody had got hurt. Well, maybe Krystanza had got a little bit hurt, but she’d be grateful for the column inches—Penny had done her a favor,
really.

  “Right, a gentle morning then,” said Sloan. “You fire up the coffee machine over there and I’ll leaf through Harden’s and consider my luncheon options.”

  Penny went over and looked at the strange hissing contraption. She didn’t know where to start.

  “Don’t you have any Nescafé?” she shouted.

  “Are you sure you’ve lived in Chelsea all your life?” said Sloan.

  “Of course,” she said. “We just always had maids to make the coffee. And stuff.”

  “Of course you did, dear,” said Sloan, smiling. He couldn’t help it: wherever she was from, he admired her chutzpah. “Watch carefully.”

  As he started to talk about steam pressure and grinding beans, Penny looked around the gallery—she’d glanced at the paintings yesterday, but Sloan had seemed so interested in her false nails that she hadn’t really had time to take them in properly. Now as she did so, she realized they were actually rather nice. Large landscapes. They looked like photographs from a distance; only up close could you see the beautiful detail in every painting.

  “Not challenging,” Sloan barked when he noticed her examining them, “but they sell well and look gorgeous. The painter isn’t bad-looking either, which always helps. Much better than those chaps who bring in their stuff made from piss and monkey dung.” He shivered, while he did something complicated with some filter paper and a tube that whistled. “Practically sell themselves. So all you have to do, sweetheart, is sit pretty and smile widely. And I get my bloody lunch hour back. You know, I worried that when Maud left I would only get an hour or two!” He shook his head. “What way is that to get business done? See,” said Sloan, pointing at the newspaper. “I can tell you are definitely the right person. If someone tries anything, feel quite at liberty to challenge them to a fight. Nothing like a little bit of scandal. They’ll be flocking.”

  Penny wasn’t entirely sure that being allowed to fight sexism with violence was quite the way they ought to be going about things, but Sloan seemed thoroughly satisfied, and so far this job seemed to involve a lot more sitting on her arse than being pinched on it, so perhaps this wasn’t quite the time to bring up any human rights legislation.

  “Ah, lunch,” said Sloan, looking misty-eyed. “Now. Look here. If a painting has a red dot on it that means it’s sold and you can’t sell it again, OK?”

  Penny nodded.

  “However, if they really like it, tell them you might be able to have a word with Will, the artist. He can basically photocopy it and we’ll sell it twice. Bingo!”

  This wasn’t how Penny had thought the art world worked, if she’d ever thought about it at all. But she could probably get used to it, she figured, as Sloan wobbled out the door at quarter to eleven, and she sat back with the paper.

  Forty minutes later the door clanged open. Penny shoved her Daily Mirror under the desk pronto and tried to look smart. Lizzie had tried to stop her from using the lip liner this morning but she’d ignored her. Now she wished she’d listened; she felt far too pouty. Surreptitiously she tried to wipe it away.

  “Hello,” came a posh voice. “Are you eating a jam sandwich?”

  She looked up. A man had entered. He was wearing a beaten-up old leather jacket at least thirty years out of date that somehow conspired to look great on him. Fair, with floppy hair over long-lashed eyes and an equally long jaw, he needed a haircut and had a twinkle in his eye. Rogue, thought Penny immediately, cheering up.

  “I was,” she said. “But now I’m all yours.”

  The man looked around the gallery. “What are these pictures? They’re all crap.”

  Penny glanced down at her desk. Sure enough, there was his picture on the glossy folder that accompanied the exhibition; this was Will Brown, the artist.

  “I know,” said Penny. “We’re kind of selling them for charity. I think it’s for the mentally handicapped or something.”

  The man stifled a rather shocked snort. “That is a very strange thing to say,” he said, looking at her more closely. “Where’s Maud?”

  “I wanted her job so I had her killed,” said Penny, wondering if this mode of flirting was going to work or not. She figured that this cute-looking artist probably had women coming on to him all the time so she should probably look to stand out.

  “Well done,” said the artist, looking around. “So are you selling much of this rubbish then?”

  “We give them away, mostly,” said Penny. “Sometimes we use them as wrapping paper for other paintings.”

  The artist looked confused but slightly pleased, which Penny reckoned was probably the right way to go.

  “I’m Will Brown,” he said finally, holding out his hand.

  “Penny Berry,” she said, smiling and taking it. “Would you like a painting?”

  He looked even more confused.

  “I . . . er, those are my paintings. Do you talk to everyone like that?”

  Penny decided to let him off the hook sharpish before he had her fired. “I know.” She gave him the benefit of her widest grin. “We’ve sold loads. I think they’re lovely.”

  Will held her gaze a tiny second too long, then dropped his eyes. Bingo, thought Penny.

  “You’ve got lipstick on your teeth,” said Will. Bugger, thought Penny.

  Lizzie could feel herself beginning to sweat as she put her hand on the door to the café. Oh bugger. How could she have disgraced herself like that? She would love, love, love to blame it on Penny, but for once she couldn’t quite see how. She sniffed. Was that pure alcohol coming out of her pores? Oh bugger. So as well as being a shiftless party girl and part-time slut, she smelled of booze in the mornings. Her new life was going just great. It took quite a lot of Lizzie’s meager supply of courage to push open the door at all.

  “Uh, hello,” she said, staring at the floor and blushing furiously as usual.

  Georges peered out from behind the counter where he was deftly flaying fish.

  “Hello. Is that Paris Hilton?”

  “I’m very sorry about last night,” said Lizzie in a rush.

  “I am amazed you are here,” said Georges. “How is your head?”

  “Terrible. And I don’t remember a thing,” she said quickly.

  “Oh, well,” said Georges, still looking severe. “You have nothing to apologize for then.”

  Lizzie winced.

  “Would you like a coffee?”

  She nodded.

  “That is too bad. You’ve got lots to do. Come on then, get started. There’s the bread—I need you to make a start on the sandwiches, and slice up the new ham that is just delivered, and I’m making risotto so you need to grate the Parmesan.”

  Phew, thought Lizzie. She’d got away with it.

  “Oh,” said Georges, “and you must please scrub the bottom side of the cooker.”

  Lizzie nodded and resignedly pulled on an apron from behind the door.

  In a way, the hard work was helpful; cathartic. She still felt sweaty, but she was getting so unbelievably dirty it didn’t matter much anyway. She scrubbed the whole place down, washing up everything before she started on the food, trying to lay everything out in a good place to make it as easy as possible for Georges when the lunchtime rush came around.

  At eleven Georges popped his head around into the little washing-up area. He looked carefully at everything, quite impressed, then nodded.

  “Good job,” he said. “You can have a coffee now.”

  “Thanks,” said Lizzie huskily. “Do you mind if I have a Diet Coke?”

  He laughed. “You are far gone. Do your joints hurt?”

  She nodded.

  “You have a proper English hangover.”

  She followed him through as he tossed her a can from the fridge.

  “So every day you will be like this, Lizzie?”

  Lizzie shook her head. “It was—”

  “Your sister?”

  Lizzie nodded, surprised.

  “Very naughty sister. Do you blame everythi
ng on your sister?”

  “It was her fault!” said Lizzie, conscious she sounded about eight years old.

  “So do you have much experience in the art world?” asked Will, suspiciously looking into the terrible cup of coffee Penny had just made him.

  “Yes,” said Penny. “No,” she added quickly in case he suddenly decided to give her a quick quiz.

  Will smiled. “So Sloan didn’t take you on for your amazing history of art degree?”

  Penny shook her head.

  “Your marketing and design experience?”

  “Nope.”

  “Your brilliant financial acumen?”

  “Yes. It was that.”

  “Not your lovely smile and friendly manner?”

  “I was only pretending to be friendly at the interview,” said Penny. “I’m slightly worried about that.”

  “Do you think maybe your friendly skills need working on?” said Will. “Your coffee definitely needs improving.”

  “I’m a highly sophisticated art dealer, not a tea dolly.”

  “I forgot,” said Will. He scratched his ear. He hadn’t met many girls like Penny before—her hair spray alone was nearly choking him—and he was quite scared. But, on the other hand, he thought she was pretty sexy too. Very sexy in fact. She looked like the kind of girl who might wear a thong.

  Most of the girls Will met wore footless black leggings with gamine dresses over the top of them and headscarves and wanted to talk about Cartier-Bresson and Sartre. Which he would, drearily, until he managed to get them into bed, where they would usually want to talk about what a spiritual experience they were having. Sometimes they’d cry. The girls he usually liked wore Chanel earrings and expensive shoes, but they tended to be trickier.

  “So,” he said, mustering his best suave-artist manner. “Those friendly skills of yours . . . do you think they’d like a tutorial over lunch?”

  “I got hired so someone else could go to lunch,” said Penny, delighted. “So, no.”

  “See, you’re failing the tutorial already. That’s not a friendly response at all.”

  “What happens if I fail? Do I get punished?” She smiled a tad suggestively.