by Jenny Colgan
Penny didn’t think it was anything like getting a haircut.
“I can’t believe you got knocked up. Will is such a bugger.” She stifled a chuckle.
“Although of course if he’d been a bit more of a bugger you wouldn’t be in this situation! Haaw!” said Minty.
“Minty, that’s not very helpful.”
“Of course not, darling. OK, hang on, I’ve got the doc’s card in my purse . . .”
Penny squeezed her eyes shut, horrified that they both carried an abortionist’s card in their wallets.
“Ah, here we go, darling.”
Penny wrote the number down on a piece of paper and stared at it.
Lizzie came in from the kitchen area with a freshly mixed jug of cosmopolitans. Grainne stood by her side like a suspicious toddler waiting for a vaccination.
“This is Grainne, everyone.”
The girls couldn’t have looked her up and down faster if she’d been a piece of dust.
“Hmmm,” said Minty, possibly the lowest form of actual conversation ever invented. The other girls saw this as good enough to cover them too and didn’t say anything at all.
“Can I sit here?” said Grainne, making Lizzie wince.
“Course you can,” Lizzie said quickly. “Make yourself at home.”
“This sofa is bigger than my entire flat,” said Grainne.
“Really?” said Minty. “That’s a shame for you. Are you terribly poor?”
“Well, you know, London’s so expensive,” said Grainne, purple with embarrassment at being singled out.
“So it’s actually smaller than the sofa,” said Minty wonderingly. “Do you have to curl up really small to sleep? How do you wash?”
“Well, it’s nice really,” said Grainne.
“It’s very nice,” said Lizzie.
“Oh, sorry,” said Minty. “I thought you just said it was really squat and tiny. My bad.” She helped herself to more cosmopolitan.
“So, D&G have started doing a baby line!” said Brooke tactfully. “That’s exciting!”
“It is,” said Penny. “Oh, I hope I get a little girl. So cute to dress. If I have it . . .” she tailed off.
“Little boys are cooler, though,” said Minty. “Look at Liz Hurley.”
“Little boys are definitely the way to go,” said Brooke. “You can take him everywhere and dress him up and let him help with your makeup and he’ll grow up gay and love you forever and never leave you. While girls, I mean”—she lifted her hands—“I can’t stand my mother, to tell you the truth. And she’s always bursting into tears when she can’t fit into my clothes.”
“It’s true,” said Minty. “My mother’s on her fifth facelift but her neck is a complete mess. She’s holding on to Belgravia by the skin of her teeth and I just don’t think husband number four is going to turn up anytime soon. But she cries every time I mention this stuff. You’d think she’d be happy to know the truth.”
“Little boy it is, then,” said Penny. She reached out and popped a bit of Lizzie’s precious salami in her mouth. Grainne had also been absentmindedly stuffing it away in a completely oblivious way, which went a long way to explaining her figure and her constant state of amazement at her size. (“But I hardly eat a thing.”)
“You’ll have to watch, though,” said Brooke, looking pointedly at the salami. “Victoria Beckham managed to get back into her size six jeans this time in thirty-eight minutes.”
“Gwyneth’s still fuming,” said Minty. “Took her nearly an hour and a half.”
“I’ll worry about that later,” said Penny, licking her fingers.
Brooke glanced at her Cartier Tank watch. “Oh! Charles has been waiting . . . twenty minutes. Do I have time for another cocktail or not?”
“I’d better go too,” said Minty. “Although if he hasn’t got me an expensive present, he can whistle for that blow job.”
“You give blow jobs?” said Brooke. “Ew, I can’t believe you still do that. That is a very, very needy thing to do. It’s so vulgar.”
“Of course I don’t give blow jobs,” said Minty, standing up and tossing her long blond hair over her shoulders. “I suggest that I might and use it as a lure for gifts.”
“God, your friends are so lovely,” said Lizzie as she finally shut the door.
“They’re all right,” said Penny, letting her stomach out and kicking off her shoes.
“They’re not all right! Grainne’s a shaking puddle on the sofa!”
“I’m still here,” said Grainne. “And my flat is bigger than the sofa, actually, it’s just that it’s a studio, that’s all, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s sixteen by twelve, I remember from the plans. I’d be very amazed if you had a sofa that was sixteen by twelve, ha, ha, ha!”
“It’s OK, Grainne, we didn’t think that,” said Lizzie gently.
“I mean, OK, so my sofa is like my sofa and a bed as well, and I don’t always remember to fold the bed back into the sofa,” said Grainne, “and OK, so you have to climb over the sofa to reach the sink. But it’s not the same size as the room, no way.”
She shoved the last piece of salami into her mouth.
“Shh,” said Lizzie, patting her on the shoulder.
“And it’s cozy, you know,” said Grainne. “In the winter I don’t really have to turn on the heating, cause I can feel my neighbor’s radiator through the wall.”
“Grainne,” said Lizzie. “You bought your own place. With your own hard-earned money. They’ll never do that. You should be really proud of it and really proud of yourself.”
“Neh,” said Grainne. “I hate it. Can I come and live here with you?”
“I don’t want to go,” Penny was saying.
“Well, you have to.”
Monday morning and Penny was, if anything, worse. The visit from the girls had perked her up briefly, but when they’d dashed out on their glamorous assignations, leaving her in with Lizzie and the television, her misery had grown and grown. Also, the salami had made a speedy reappearance. She hadn’t been able to keep anything down all weekend and looked terribly thin and weak and now Lizzie was sending her to the doctor’s.
“You are taking the day off and you are going to the doctor’s,” said Lizzie. “Shut up.”
“But I have to go to work,” said Penny. “Sloan’s got some big lunch on.”
“He always has a big lunch on!” said Lizzie. “As far as I can tell, that’s all he does.”
“This one’s really important, though,” said Penny. “He’s got to renew the freehold on the building or something, blah, blah, blah. I didn’t really listen when he was telling me, but apparently it’s absolutely crucial he takes them to Sketch and gets them mortal, otherwise he’s going to lose the shop.”
“Oh, Penny,” said Lizzie. “Why didn’t you mention this before? You must have known you’d have to go to the doctor’s.”
“Well, madly, I’ve had one or two other things on my mind,” said Penny. “I forgot. Also, I thought . . . I thought I’d be better by now.” She winced to herself. “I keep thinking I’ll wake up and it’ll all be better, you know?”
Lizzie nodded. “So, what are you going to do?”
Penny looked up at her. There were huge dark circles under her eyes.
“Well,” she said.
“Oh, no,” said Lizzie. “Oh, no. No.”
“Lizzie, please.”
“I’ve got a job, too, you know.”
“Yeah, but you can twist that bloke around your little finger, can’t you?”
“No!”
“And you haven’t had a day off in ages. Jeez, when I worked in catering you were considered pathetic if you didn’t dog it at least twice a week.”
“I can’t leave him in the lurch.”
“You found him in the lurch. And Lizzie, if you don’t . . . if you don’t help me out the shop will go under and I’ll lose my job anyway, and . . .”
“Could you be any more pathetic?” said Lizzie.
“Nope,” said Penny. “God, I hate this.”
Chapter Eight
The sun came up huge and warm as Lizzie paced her bedroom. She couldn’t believe she’d agreed to this. And she realized, picking up the phone at seven-thirty, that she hadn’t spoken to Georges for weeks. Not properly, nothing beyond “we need extra peppers” or him passing over a recipe before he sped out the door. Not since the stupid night of the party when he’d made her feel like the world’s biggest, most introverted idiot. Which, she noticed, she’d managed to change about herself, by doing nothing but staying in and sulking for the last two months.
Well, she had to do it. Her sister needed help.
“Yes?” He sounded gruff on the phone, harassed. She wondered what on earth he did when he wasn’t in the café. Maybe some weird European thing she didn’t understand, like marching in a saint’s parade.
“Georges, it’s Lizzie.”
His voice softened straightaway.
“Hello, Lizzie. How are you? I feel I hardly see you, no? But you are doing a very good job of looking after my restaurant.”
Well, restaurant was pushing it. Sandwich bar just about passed muster.
“I’m fine.”
“You know, takings are up. I think the customers like you.”
Lizzie couldn’t help but feel pleased. She thought of her old job where, as far as she could tell, nobody at all had liked her.
“You gave me some good recipes.”
“Good food is not hard, Lizzie. Just some good ingredients, you know, a little bit of love . . .”
“I don’t know about love,” said Lizzie, feeling herself go slightly pink.
“No,” said Georges. Then his voice grew hearty again.
“Are you still using your microwave? And going to parties all night?”
“I’m not actually.”
Seeing as she was welcome to take home the leftovers, Lizzie had been eating from the café every day.
“No? You are eating better? Ah, you will look beautiful. The tomatoes will make your skin bloom, and the spinach will clear your eyes and enrich your blood.”
“You talk a lot of rubbish,” said Lizzie. But it was true. She was looking better. The mirror kept hinting at it, and her waistbands were loosening. The other day she’d bought a smaller size in tights. From extra large to large, but it had given her a huge frisson nonetheless. And she wasn’t sure, but she thought she was losing her microwave pallor a little too.
“Normally I am very serious,” said Georges, but he didn’t sound serious when he said it.
Lizzie steeled herself and dived in.
“Georges, I need to take a few days off.”
Immediately Georges’s light tone ceased. “I see.”
“I need to . . . it’s a family matter.”
“Your sister is in a scrape?”
“No! Well, ish. Well, it doesn’t matter, I just wondered if you would mind. Like, having a holiday.”
“I understand ‘a few days off.’”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, I think. Do you mean a few days off, or do you mean bye, bye, Georges, I am gone never to see you again?”
“The first one,” said Lizzie. “I just need to help Penny for a few days.”
Georges made a pff sound with his mouth. “This is not very convenient to me right now.”
“Me neither,” said Lizzie, quelling a very passing desire to say if it was convenient he could take his job and shove it up his portly bottom.
“OK. You will be back on Wednesday? When? I must come in and cover for you.”
“Are you always so cross when anyone wants to take a holiday?”
“I am not cross, Lizzie. That is you, huh? Now, I have to go.”
“Oh, Penny,” said Lizzie. “What am I supposed to wear? What am I meant to do? What are my duties? Does Sloan know I’m coming?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Penny from the bathroom. “You’ll be fine.”
“Penny! You need to help me!”
There wasn’t another sound from the bathroom.
“Pen!”
Silence.
“OK, I’m coming in.”
“No! No, no, no, no, no!”
Lizzie cursed manfully under her breath and headed back into her room.
OK. Deep breath. Not to worry about it. It was just Penny’s stupid job, that appeared to require the brain power of a four-year-old. No panic. What the hell was she going to wear? It didn’t matter to Penny, she spunked all her money on designer shoes and bags in the sale, then wore pure black and white the rest of the time. Anything looks OK in a size eight.
Usually at work she wore . . . well, an apron.
But this place—God, they practically sold paintings on the smartness of some ditzy girl’s buttocks. The keyword she was really looking for here was pert. Pert was not something ever applied to Lizzie. Pear, maybe.
OK, breathe. Black. That was it. Arty people loved black. Well, she had plenty of that. After a bit of rummaging she found a long black skirt she’d last worn to a Mission reunion concert with Felix. OK, fine. And maybe a white T-shirt . . . nope. It wasn’t that white, and she looked like a waitress. Black again. Not the ironic Iron Maiden, that was never going to work. And didn’t look ironic on her anyway, it made her look like one of those girls who follow heavy metal bands around the country in the hopes of finding a boyfriend through the law of averages. Which, it occurred to her, she should look into trying one of these days.
She finally found a basic V-neck top and slipped that on and stared at herself in the mirror. She didn’t look like an arty boho chick. She looked like a plump girl trying to blend into the background.
She stomped through to Penny’s room and used some of her expensive and patently shoplifted face cream.
“I’m just accessorizing,” she called out. There came a muffled grumble that may well have been discontented annoyance mixed with an inability to prevent anything happening.
Inside Penny’s jewelry box was some cheap silver and gold and a couple of tiny diamond baubles given to her by the slightly less cheap, but still not exactly fabulous, dodgy men of her past. Lizzie picked out a large brooch and pinned it to her bosom. There we go; arty eccentricity, and it drew attention to her best feature, which would surely be a good thing to do in the world of paintings. Emboldened, she glanced around. What next?
Penny’s bedroom, over the rubbish, was a mishmash of clothes and sparkly things that attracted her like a magpie. Lizzie caught sight of a black fur beret hanging on top of the cupboard door. Aha! She grabbed it and clamped it down on her unruly hair, then squinted at herself in the large mirror.
There she was. If you squinted (quite hard) she looked boho, arty, and a tad frisky with the hat at a jaunty angle. This was perfect.
“OK,” she yelled. “I’m ready.”
“What are you wearing?” groaned Penny.
“Never you mind,” said Lizzie. “It’s perfect.”
“Oh, God.”
“What do I have to do in this stupid job again?”
“Just sit at the desk and look pretty.”
They both paused.
Lizzie checked herself out again in the mirror. Perhaps some bright red lipstick, she thought. She picked up Penny’s highly sought-after Chanel Red Bus, which Penny had always claimed to have found in the toilets at the All-American New York Diner, and started applying. Putting on lipstick wasn’t as easy as she thought; she’d always made do with gloss. Oh well, no matter. She made a kissing face at herself in the mirror.
“OK. OK. I’m going to do this,” she said. “Are you going to be all right?”
“Hhnnn,” groaned Penny.
“OK. Keep your phone on so I can contact you with any artistic emergencies. And, you know. Call me the second . . .”
“Uh-huh.”
Lizzie took a deep breath. She felt strangely excited. Maybe being an arty boho chick was the kind of person she really was after all. Maybe she could
bring lots of art into Georges’s café and turn it into a hip happening joint where people paid in paintings and got terribly famous.
“You know, I think I might even be glad you talked me into this,” she said. “And, Pen . . . I don’t know quite what this means, but—good luck.”
There was still no sound from the bathroom.
Lizzie had been to Penny’s gallery once before, for an exhibition where they had free wine. She’d stood beside Brooke and Minty, who’d practically ignored her, until Will had come up to say hi, whereupon Brooke and Minty had come over all friendly with her to freeze Will out.
Chelsea was coming to life all around her. Deliveries were being made to smart restaurants; beautifully dressed shopgirls hurried past; tall, smart-suited bankers stamped along briskly. Every single one of them glanced at Lizzie’s hat. Admiration, undoubtedly.
Finally she turned up the little cobbled street and found herself outside Penny’s workplace, the name of the gallery beautifully scripted in an elegant white font against a racing-green frontage. It was an ocean of tranquillity and breathed money and peace. Lizzie wondered why on earth she hadn’t considered working here earlier.
In the window was one of Will’s huge landscapes that Sloan had put on display. Oh God, what if he came in? What if she tried to say hello and accidentally shouted, “Penny’s pregnant! Penny’s pregnant! Penny’s pregnant!” straight in his face?
“Uh, excuuuuuse me,” came a ludicrously over-the-top voice interrupting her unhappy reverie. “Can I helllp you?”
Lizzie slowly turned around and found herself face-to-face with Sloan. He was wearing a large cream fedora hat and pastel bow tie that somehow contrived to look incredibly smart.
“Where did you get that terrible hat?” he said, then stopped himself. “Sorry, I really shouldn’t be rude. But in your case . . .”
“Terrible hat yourself,” said Lizzie, without thinking. “Uh, I’m sorry too.”
“No, no, no, no, no,” he said. “You’re missing the point.”
He took out a huge old-fashioned key and unlocked the heavy outer door to the shop.
“You see, my hat is beautiful, exquisitely tasteful and suits me. Whereas you have a dead otter on your head. Do you see the difference? Beautiful garment”—he indicated himself, then pointed to her head—“rotting maggot-infested carcass. Do you see?”