West End Girls

by Jenny Colgan

  “You strip in public for a bottle of champagne.”

  “Don’t mention that.” Penny flicked a perfect line of black eyeliner to the very corner of her eyes.

  “Don’t mention it? Isn’t that why Brooke’s invited you? Because you’re the amazing naked party girl from upstairs? I think you’re the professional entertainment.”

  Penny put down the liner pen. “Well, that doesn’t matter, does it? They’re not going to get it, and I am going to get a lovely boyfriend whom I actually like for a change, so butt out, would you? You bloody hate seeing me happy.”

  “That’s not true,” said Lizzie, wondering about it. She’d occasionally like her to be a little less troublesome, that was all, surely.

  “Well don’t ruin it for me,” pouted Penny. “Oh, I forgot, you did already, you’re bringing Ape Face.”

  “Don’t call him Ape Face,” said Lizzie. “It’s just five o’clock shadow.”

  “Chins and chins of it.”

  “Anyway, maybe everyone will think he’s a shipping magnate or something.”

  Penny raised her eyebrows. “A shipping magnate that smells of cooking oil? Let’s have a drink.”

  Lizzie obediently fetched two Bacardi Breezers out of the fridge.

  “Where are you meeting him?” Lizzie asked.

  “Down there,” said Penny, looking around. “I don’t know, I’m just not sure he’d enjoy the taxidermy collection.”

  “I’m sure that’s a rat,” said Lizzie, looking unhappily at the small furry stuffed animal in the corner. “But why would anyone stuff a rat? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Plus, he thinks I’m rich,” said Penny. “He might not get too involved if he knew the truth.”

  It was nine before the girls felt they’d heard enough doorbells and screamed greetings to feel they could risk heading downstairs. Penny looked slightly odd. She’d shrugged off her Jordan-style micro mini, and stuck to a fuchsia pink minidress she’d worn as the winner of Butlin’s lovely legs competition five summers ago. But to make it look not too tarty she was wearing jeans under it, with stiletto shoes. Lizzie could see what she was aiming for, but she wasn’t entirely sure she’d succeeded. This wasn’t like Penny. Parties were her lifeblood. Which could only mean one thing—who was this chap? Despite herself, and the Bacardi Breezer for Dutch courage, she even felt a little nervous herself.

  She was in her black crossover top that Trinny and Susannah decreed was the right way to go if you had “wonderful big handfuls of cleavage,” which she knew actually meant “are a big fat pig.” She was equally doubtful about the cheap bottle of rosé they’d bought, but who’d notice?

  “Just chill, OK? It’ll be fine.”

  “I know,” said Penny irritably. Then she softened. “Do you really think so?”

  Lizzie nodded. “You’re irresistible.”

  Lizzie’s buzz disintegrated the moment they pushed open the large heavy door into the noisy thronged apartment. Two gorgeous specimens were chatting each other up in the doorway, and looked absolutely insulted to be interrupted just because some people wanted to walk through the door. The huge sitting room was full of tall, attractive, confident people, sipping drinks and laughing loudly. Lizzie suddenly felt as dumpy as a wombat in a deep submarine.

  Penny swallowed loudly and tilted her head up.

  “Right,” she said, and marched straight ahead. There was, amazingly, a small woman there holding a tray with glasses of champagne on it. Lizzie stared at her. She didn’t know people actually did this outside of Sex and the City. Penny immediately swept up two as if this was the most natural thing in the world, and handed one to Lizzie, before she took off into the throng. Not having the faintest clue what to do, Lizzie rather apologetically followed her.

  “Brooke!” said Penny, marching up to her. Brooke’s hair shone in a long tawny mane. Her backless top showed off her flawlessly even tan. She had the cutest, most petite nose Lizzie had seen.

  “Hello!” said Brooke, looking slightly surprised as Penny launched over to kiss her on both cheeks. She stood back from the two tall men she’d been whispering to.

  “Sven . . . Rob . . . this is my upstairs neighbor I was telling you about . . .”

  The boys’ eyes widened.

  “Well, hello there,” said Rob, the darker of the two. “Hey, you’ve forgotten to take your jeans off.”

  “Maybe later, eh, Penny?” said Brooke. “She is such a party girl.”

  “Excellent,” said Sven. “Another glass of champagne?”

  “No thanks,” said Penny. “Actually, my boyfriend’s coming. He’s an artist.”

  “Really?” said Brooke.

  “I’m your boyfriend?” came a voice behind her.

  Penny whipped around. Oh, bollocks, she’d messed that up fast. There stood Will, in that same beaten-up leather coat, looking absolutely gorgeous.

  “Will!” screamed Brooke. “My darling! How are you?”

  “Hey, Brooke,” said Will, suddenly looking a tad uncomfortable.

  “Oh. You all know each other,” said Penny, feeling her face flush.

  “Well, of course . . . Will here was up to all sorts of naughty business with Minty last year, weren’t you?”

  Will flushed too. And suddenly Minty was standing beside them, looking stiff and annoyed.

  “Hello, Will,” she said, in an elaborately casual tone. “Fancy seeing you here at my party.”

  “I didn’t realize it was your party,” said Will.

  “You just hate missing a Chelsea party, right?” Minty’s face was tight.

  “Uh, yeah, right,” said Will, staring furiously at the floor. Penny looked at him, momentarily discomfited.

  “Have a cocktail!” squealed Brooke. “They’re wicked!”

  Everyone immediately grabbed a glass from the passing tray and slugged it as quickly as possible. Penny slunk her way out of the group, making it extremely obvious she thought Will should follow her.

  “Do you know her?” she hissed, from the corner.

  Will shrugged. “Hardly.”

  “Look,” said Penny. “When I said boyfriend just then—”

  “You didn’t mean me? You meant your six-foot marine boy who’s on his way over to smash my brains out?”

  “No,” said Penny. “I just didn’t want those guys . . . you know.”

  “To hit on you? Quite right too. You look luscious.” Will glanced at Brooke and Minty. “Look, do you want to get out of here?”

  Penny looked around. The room was really full now, with girls laughing hysterically, men in Pink shirts, waiters balancing full trays of champagne; while the cigarette smoke and expensive perfume made the place seem hazy and slightly hyper-real. She wanted to stay, to become the life and soul, to be standing next to Brooke, throwing back her head and laughing at the nice, charming people who wanted to be her friend. In one room . . . here . . . this was the life she was after.

  “Can’t we stay for a little while?” she asked. “I’ve just got here.”

  “But they’re all idiots,” said Will.

  “How do you know? Have you been out with all of them?” asked Penny. “Is there a terrifying revelation about your past at every step?”

  “Maybe,” said Will, softening a little and taking a sip of his extremely strong drink. “Why don’t you ask your boyfriend, Andy McNab?”

  “Who?”

  On the other side of the room, Lizzie felt herself sinking in quicksand. She had, nominally, ended up as part of the group that included the two tall boys, Rob and Sven, but they were patently talking over her head as if she wasn’t there. Worse, they were speculating on the qualities of the other females present, as if she was a dog or something.

  “What about that one over there?” said Rob, pointing out a supermodelesque Russian-looking girl with legs as thin as pins.

  “Fat arse, wouldn’t you think?” said Sven.

  Woof, thought Lizzie sadly.

  “Do you know who I’d like a crac
k at? Saw her at Ascot.”

  “Who?”

  “Elle Macpherson.”

  “Ooh yes. Ding dong.”

  Lizzie made a quiet cough.

  “Are you wearing a smock?” said Sven suddenly, in a rude way Lizzie hadn’t encountered since the school bus. “Are you a lesbian?”

  “Yes,” said Lizzie, tongue-tied and short of something to say. Immediately she realized her mistake.

  “Are you?” said Rob, looking at her for the first time. “Cool. Do you, like, snog women and feel their knockers and stuff?”

  “Yes,” said Lizzie, feeling herself sinking into a deep hole with no clear way of escaping. “Obviously.”

  Sven looked fascinated too.

  “Very naughty,” he said in an approving tone of voice. “What else do you do?”

  “Oh, mostly we go to whole-food shops, that kind of thing,” said Lizzie, looking around desperately for an exit.

  “No, in the bedroom.”

  Well, this had backfired badly; now two strange chaps wanted her to talk dirty to them. Why couldn’t she just get over her shyness and be herself with people?

  “Sorry,” said Lizzie. “I have to go over there to chat up a girl.”

  “Can we watch?” said Rob.

  Looking at Will, Penny realized how much she wanted to kiss him. Not marry him, or take him for a ride, or shag him—yet—or get him to take her out to dinner, or show off to Dwaneesa about who she’d managed to pull, or even tell Lizzie about it, which was usually half the fun. She wanted to kiss him, for hours and hours on a park bench, like they were teenagers.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” said Will. “You look like a wolf licking its chops.”

  “No I don’t,” said Penny, hastily finishing her cocktail.

  “So your place is just like this then?” he said.

  “Yeah, it’s the one above. Exactly like this,” said Penny, looking at the gleaming modernist chandeliers, huge paintings, expensive mirroring, and halogen lighting. “Just like this.”

  “Maybe you could show me around sometime,” said Will, and Penny cursed herself for falling into the trap.

  “Cheeky!” she yelled, in a tone that came out much louder and brasher than she’d intended.

  “Uh, sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,” said Will, backtracking desperately, as Penny hurriedly pulled another couple of cocktails off the tray. Free drink; who knew when it was going to run out?

  “That’s OK,” said Penny, her mind working furiously. Well, she’d just have to pretend to be very, very pure and make sure he never got back there. Plus, he must have some really funky pad in Hoxton, surely. Somewhere really cool, a big loft with all-white walls and huge blown-up photographs on his wall and polished floors and sunny spots for the cat to lie in.

  “What’s your place like?”

  “It’s all right, you know,” said Will, and he gave that self-deprecating grin that made her insides go all wobbly.

  Minty came up to them, her legs looking like a baby giraffe’s on long spindly heels.

  “Will,” she said, in a voice that she obviously thought sounded calm. “Could I . . . could I have a word with you, please?”

  “Uh, no, he can’t,” said Penny immediately. Her hackles rose. She wasn’t going to have this anorectic cow smelling of Diorissimo and gin slobbering all over him.

  “What’s the matter, Minty?” said Will, looking concerned.

  “It’s private,” said Minty, glaring at Penny with a barely hidden snarl in her voice.

  “Well, I can’t really . . .”

  “It’s very important. It will take only five minutes. I think you owe it to me, Will.”

  Minty was looking really tragic now.

  “Well, if she’s begging you,” said Penny nastily. She was giving Minty major evils, but she was clearly not a girl new to this. Minty immediately began examining a nail and looking coyly up at Will as if Penny had vanished into thin air.

  “OK,” said Will. “Five minutes.” He turned to Penny. “Then we really should go somewhere that isn’t full of people taking coke, vomiting up canapés, and telling each other how expensive their hairdressers are.”

  “Fine,” said Penny, only just resisting the urge to stick her tongue out at Minty. Not that it would have mattered, as Minty had immediately grabbed Will’s arm and was leading him somewhere Penny suspected was the bedroom. Penny checked her watch. Well, they really were getting five minutes, then she was going in. There were some circumstances where subtlety would get you nowhere, and this was definitely one of them.

  “Aha,” said Rob, appearing to her right with a fresh cocktail. “There you are. We’ve just met the most extraordinary midget lesbian.”

  This was more like it, Penny couldn’t help thinking. Now there were chaps around, who’d attracted more girls, and there was a big group around them and she was quaffing the absolutely delicious cocktails and having a hilarious time, telling stories about other nightclubs she’d been to and the third-division footballers she’d met—everyone seemed so impressed—and her fight with Krystanza and how you could see her fingernails in the paper. The boys in particular were laughing heartily and refilling her glass. Will was nowhere to be seen, but that didn’t matter because as soon as he came out he’d see how popular and pretty she was and be incredibly impressed and realize that she was a Chelsea girl; it was completely obvious that she couldn’t fit in any more.

  She’d forgotten about Lizzie completely.

  Lizzie was trapped in a corner. She’d gone to the toilet as usual, to give her something to do, and heard lots of whisperings following her, along the lines of “the new lesbian in the building.” When she emerged, an enormous woman wearing a purple hat and huge, flowing robes was blocking the landing.

  “DARLING,” she said, swooping down and giving Lizzie an enormous kiss that reeked of Poison. “I hear we must welcome you to Chelsea!”

  “Well, that’s nice,” said Lizzie, but her voice was muffled as she was still under the woman’s armpit, jammed next to her vast bosom.

  “Always lovely to get a bit more LOCAL COLOR,” the woman boomed, then held Lizzie at arm’s length—which meant Lizzie still had her head in her breast—and examined her. “Well, better than nothing, I suppose,” she said. “Now, sister, tell me. Did you know? Sylvia Plath used to live just around THE CORNER?”

  “I did not know that,” said Lizzie, looking around desperately for her drink.

  “Terrible story. Spent her life with a man, you see. Could have sorted it out MUCH BETTER, don’t you THINK?”

  There was no way past this lady. She was the only person at the party wider than Lizzie was.

  “Here,” said the woman. “Try this. I brew my OWN WINE.”

  Lizzie gave up and sank down slowly onto the chaise longue.

  Penny couldn’t quite focus on who she was in the bathroom with. That was confusing enough in itself. Also, the bathroom was massive, clean, white, and airy, with candles flickering along the window ledge and a claw-foot bath lined with Jo Malone smellies.

  “This one bathroom,” she pronounced with some difficulty, “ish nicer than my entire house. Was. I mean, a house. In a dream I had.”

  “Never mind that,” said the man, a rather foxy-faced character who had slipped into the group as Penny had been loudly debating whether or not to take her jeans off underneath her minidress, and the boys were voting vehemently in favor. “Here, try this.”

  Penny lurched around. The man had wracked out two lines of white powder on the toilet cistern.

  She’d seen it around, of course, but had never had the cash to indulge; nor the desire, come to that. Her vices usually ran to a few cheeky sodas, the odd spliff, and the occasional E at holiday times. But a different life . . . different tastes.

  The man proffered a rolled-up twenty-pound note. In for a penny . . .

  Lizzie realized she’d just agreed to apply for a shared allotment when she saw Penny reel out of the bathroom.
Her eyes were wild, her pupils huge.

  “Lizzie! Lizzie! My darling Lizzie,” she squealed. “Oh, I must tell you, I think you look absolutely fabulous. And I think isn’t this just the most amazing party? It’s just amazing, I’m having such a fantastic time and . . . do you like this lipstick? What do you think, I wasn’t sure, but . . .”

  “Stop chewing your lips for a second and I’ll try and tell you,” said Lizzie, annoyed.

  “Ooh,” said the woman, whose name was Beulah. “Is this your other half?”

  “My sister,” said Lizzie.

  “Whoo,” said Sven, passing through on his way to the champagne bin. “Sisters!”

  “Why don’t we go now?” said Lizzie, ignoring them.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Penny. “I’ve just started to have a great, really brilliant time. I need a drink. And a cigarette.”

  “You don’t smoke.”

  “And my bloody boyfriend. Where’s my boyfriend?”

  “Who?”

  “You know. Will.”

  “Are you sure he’s your boyfriend? You don’t seem to be spending lots of cozy nights in together.”

  “Well, I’m just going to find him right now. He better not be cheating on me.”

  “Your serious long-term boyfriend, whom you’ve known for all of ten minutes? Penny, no. Don’t. Let’s go home, you’re a mess.”

  Penny had discarded her jeans now, and her minidress was far too high in the leg and low in the breast for the tottering stilettos she was wearing, particularly coupled with her crazed stare and slowly meandering mascara.

  “Please, Penny. Come home,” said Lizzie, begging.

  “Shut up,” said Penny, tottering over. The foxy-faced man came up behind her. “Looking good,” he said, cupping her bottom quite openly.

  “Yeah, going to give us a strip?” shouted Sven.

  “Penny,” yelled Lizzie in exasperation. “No more stripping!”

  But Penny stepped away, letting the horrible foxy man keep on groping her, and did “ta-dah” hands. Lizzie looked around desperately for Will. If he saw this, he’d be out the door faster than a greased otter, and her poor sister would be mortified.

  “I’m having fun,” said Penny. “Will’s fucked off, hasn’t he? He’s back there copping off with his old girlfriend, isn’t he? No nice blokes for me.” She gyrated to the music playing. “But that’s OK, because I feel just fine.”