by Jenny Colgan
“So I like to take the car to the strawberry-picking fields.”
Oh God, did this man never talk about anything other than food? No wonder he was so gross.
“Wow,” said Penny. “That sounds fabulous.”
Suddenly her eye was caught by a movement near the door. Someone was skirmishing with the black-clad bouncer. Inclining a little toward the noise, she could hear a familiar voice.
“I’m on the list! I’m sure I’m on the list.”
She moved nearer the door.
There, struggling his way through the revolving doors, looking very gaunt, still wearing the beaten-up leather jacket, his handsome face looking strained, was Will.
The gold-digging fink had been pacing the pavement for a long time. He’d heard of the party on the grapevine, and knew he had to see her, had to see Penny. He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, and, most important, he couldn’t paint, which meant his loss of appetite was about to become less of a problem when he couldn’t afford to buy any food.
Finally he scrambled through and, conscious of the entire room staring at him, instantly tried to dust himself off and look inconspicuous.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” said Minty loudly.
Will stared at the crowd until he found Penny.
“Penny,” he said.
Penny leaned back into Georges.
“Penny.” He strode toward her. A waiter offered him a cocktail, but he waved it away angrily.
“Penny.”
She stared at him. He looked gorgeous, and so tired. Her heart felt as if it was cracking in two.
“I’ve been thinking,” he started, “I know . . . I know we’re two of a kind, you and I.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Penny, considering whether to take Georges’s arm.
“You know . . . looking for an easier life. But Penny. I’ve never . . . I’ve never felt about anyone the way I feel about you. It’s different.”
Lizzie heard Minty give a large tut.
“Please. Come back to me. We’ll . . . I don’t know. Live off canapés or something. In fact”—he turned around to the still-hovering waiter and grabbed two of his prawn concoctions off the tray, proffering one to her—“come to dinner with me?”
Penny stared at him, taking in the glowing ambience of the restaurant; the chink of expensive glassware; the scent of expensive perfumes. Then she looked into Will’s kind, desperately worried-looking face and thought about love.
“You’re hesitating a long time,” said Will nervously.
She knew she was. But . . . could she change everything and settle—settle for less, even, than she’d left behind before? Could she trust him to? She thought of everything she’d longed for and everything she’d dreamed of. Then she looked into his face and . . .
Minty couldn’t take another second. “I’ll tell him,” she screamed. She threw her cocktail into his face. “How dare you dump our friend just because she was pregnant!”
Will looked comically outraged, covered in sticky stuff.
“What?” he bellowed.
“You chuck her because she’s pregnant and she might cost you money you don’t have. Well, she doesn’t need you, so you can just piss off.”
“How was that?” she said to a shell-shocked Penny, patting her on the arm.
“Uh . . . unexpected,” said Penny, staring at Will, who was staring back at her. His forehead was creased, trying to understand it all.
“But. But . . .”
Then his face hardened. He’d misunderstood. This had all been a complete waste of time. How could she do something like that? Just because of money?
“Not good enough for your baby, was I?” said Will coldly. “Knocked it on the head as soon as you saw I wasn’t quite the meal ticket you’d been hoping for?”
“Of course not,” said Penny. “Of course not.”
He looked at her with narrowed eyes.
“I’d thought maybe we were just two of a kind,” he said. “And that, you know, I loved you, so it wouldn’t matter as much as all that. But now I see . . . I don’t . . .”
His face seemed to crumple. Will trying to be an ice-cool man of punishment wasn’t something he could sustain for very long.
“A baby . . .” he said. Then he turned around and pushed his way out through the crowd into the bustling street beyond.
Penny immediately turned to follow him, but Minty held her back.
“He’s not worth it,” she said. “Let him go.”
“No!” said Penny. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
And she dashed after him, elbowing past women who tottered on their needle-thin heels and turned their sharp eyes to watch as Penny pushed at the heavy gold crossbar of the door.
“Will! Will!” she shouted on Fulham Road, which was full of dressed-up women, drunk men, confused-looking foreigners, smoking waiters, youths trying to look hard, couples worrying about starting times, European students knocking one another with backpacks: everyone in the world, it seemed, except the one person she was looking for.
Chapter Eleven
Summer flattened into its dog days. Chelsea, Lizzie discovered, went quiet in August as everyone took off to their yachts, or their other houses, she supposed, or went on their international grand tours, or to the moon perhaps.
Georges was gone; back to Portugal to see his family. On the one hand, Lizzie was pleased. It stopped Penny hanging around and asking after him all the time. On the other, she missed him horribly. He’d left her in charge of buying, and she couldn’t even feel an aubergine without remembering him yelling, “Baby’s bottom, Lizzie! What must it feel like? Hairy camel bottom? No! Big monkey bottom? No! You must listen to me. I am good teacher. And also, you must teach me something. For good balance.”
“I don’t know anything,” Lizzie had protested.
“Lizzie!” He was shocked. “You must do. I wish to know how much is one stamp to Por-too-gal, please?”
“I don’t know,” Lizzie had giggled, blushing as usual.
“Uh-huh. My stamps experts. Now, you must tell me then, what is happening in EastEnders. I must know.”
And she’d giggled again, but oddly, had rather enjoyed telling him, and they’d both got quite engrossed in her retellings as they chopped the veg in the mornings (he’d started coming into the café again, more and more), and now Lizzie couldn’t put on the television without thinking of him, and instead tended to take long walks on the nights she wasn’t visiting Gran.
She’d never looked so healthy. So why did she feel so dull?
Penny was refusing to discuss Will in the slightest, but seemed to be dressing much more in her old style when she went to work. The skirts were getting shorter, the lips larger. It was with a certain sigh of relief that Lizzie felt the light winds of September come and the freshness in the mornings.
Gran, while always pleased to see Lizzie, seemed no better and no worse, and had stopped mentioning Redmond Street at all. As a result, Penny and Lizzie had gradually begun to feel that it was their own. They still didn’t dare throw anything out, but had started adding their own touches.
As the weather turned colder, Lizzie noticed that none of last year’s huge winter woollies seemed to fit her; they were massive, baggy black things. In fact, she thought, looking at them, they were horrible. She suddenly felt the urge to get moving, do something new with the way she looked. Georges had given her a pay rise too, and no longer having to pay even the tiny amount of rent to their mother definitely helped. Maybe she could get Brooke and Minty to help out . . . show her how to be a little bit more stylish. Obviously she hated stupid fashion and everything stupid that went with it but, she thought, looking at herself in the mirror . . . it couldn’t hurt.
She mentioned it one Saturday to Penny, whose face lit up. Lizzie’d been waiting for this for a long time. It was the most animated Lizzie’d seen her in weeks.
But Lizzie changed her mind just as Penny start
ed hustling her out of the house.
“No, no, no, no,” said Lizzie, clinging to the banister.
“Come on. It’s a makeover! It’ll be fun.”
“How will it be fun, again? Standing naked and being judged in front of a bunch of emaciated strangers. How will that be fun?”
“Because they’re going to help you look better. And feel better. It’ll be great.”
“Great as in undeniably humiliating?”
“Come on!” said Penny. “You need to be getting a life, stop staying in and watching Celebrity Partner Swap on a Crocodile-Infested Island.”
Lizzie stuck out her bottom lip.
“Oh, yes, what I’d much rather do is watch you parade around in a size six Footballers’ Wives outfit for three hours while nobody gives me any food.”
“Trying on designer outfits and eating lots of food just don’t mix, how many times do I have to tell you? If you’re that desperate, make like your friend Grainne and bring some crisps. But don’t get any greasy fingerprints on stuff.”
“I won’t do that,” said Lizzie, “because I don’t eat crisps anymore and because I’ve just decided I’m not coming.”
“Do you really not want to look glamorous just once in your entire life?” Penny said.
Of course she did. If she hadn’t looked like a pig in a wig every time she’d run into or worked for Georges, might things have turned out differently? She couldn’t stop remembering the way he’d looked at Penny that night at the restaurant. He was . . . bewitched. He couldn’t help it, even if he thought Penny was nuts in real life.
But getting there felt like it would be terribly hard work.
“Well,” she said, twisting her fingers around the banister.
“Course you do,” said Penny. “And you’ve got to start somewhere.”
“OK, OK,” said Lizzie. “I just meant, forgive me if I’m not totally in the mood for lots of harsh personal criticism.”
“Then why are you wearing your shirt buttoned up wrongly?”
“Oh, shut up.”
Where did Penny meet all these people?
“Beautiful,” Rodrigo, the worrying personal shopper said. “So curvaceous.”
Lizzie rolled her eyes. She’d been waiting for this. Next they’d say they didn’t have anything in her size, and would she mind heffalumping the hell out of their shop?
“What?” said Penny, who had perched on a high stool sipping champagne while Lizzie stood in front of the three-sided mirror in the beautifully swagged personal shopping suite, slumping her shoulders and trying not to catch glimpses of her graying bra and slightly scuzzy pants. She’d looked for nicer ones in her drawer and it had hit her with a shock that she didn’t have any.
Buzzing around them was a beautiful junior giraffe. Lizzie couldn’t imagine what being a trainee personal shopper could possibly involve—maybe you started off on socks and worked your way up, but she seemed to have the sneer down to a tee. Who knew personal shoppers even existed in high street shops?
Rodrigo eyed Lizzie sternly through his ridiculous 1950s women’s spectacles and leaned over and whispered something to Penny, who nodded her head seriously as if they were having a debate at the UN.
“What?” said Lizzie miserably. “Stop whispering about me.”
“It is nothing,” said Rodrigo. “Nothing which someone of your Rubenesque beauty should ever worry your lovely head about.” He stared at her. “You must embrace the sensual,” he said. “Feel the fabric. The rich, dark purples and deep jewel-green velvet.”
Lizzie recoiled in horror as the giraffe wheeled in a long rail of non-black items.
“I’ll look like a sofa,” she said, gazing at a leather burgundy skirt.
“You won’t,” said Penny. “You’ll be making a statement.”
“Yeah—‘I shop at DFS,’” said Lizzie, looking furiously around for her perfectly serviceable black skirt. She couldn’t help it. Tears sprang to her eyes.
“Ah, you cry with the drama of fashion discovery. Happy tears, happy tears.”
The giraffe handed her a purple velvet skirt and a soft, small-looking gray top.
“Why don’t you try it on?” said Penny.
Lizzie did as she was told.
“Bravissimo!” said Rodrigo.
She risked a glance in the mirror.
It was beautiful. The skirt had chic little French buttons that fastened down the side; it was less purple on, she noticed, more of a dusky lavender which, with the soft woolen top, enhanced the grays in her eyes. It was . . . she looked . . . for the first time in her adult life, Lizzie thought, she looked nice. Better than nice. Pretty.
And she could see behind her in the mirror Penny, both thumbs up, grinning like a Cheshire cat.
For some reason, she wanted to cry.
They bought the lot. Lizzie felt sick; but Rodrigo kept murmuring “investment . . . investment . . .”
The hairdresser’s was even better. Or maybe, Lizzie thought, she was just more used to being insulted by hairdressers.
“Who cut your hair before?” asked the snotty uninterested stylist, although, as it was a smart salon Penny had modeled for for years, the stylist was rude but also gave Lizzie a glass of champagne.
“A badger,” said Lizzie. Her inhibitions about responding to London rudeness had vanished forever. “I think he was drunk.”
“He shouldn’t be cutting hair,” said the stylist, who hadn’t listened.
“He shouldn’t,” said Lizzie. “Animals without opposable thumbs should very rarely be cutting hair. Can I have another glass of champagne?”
“I’ll have to charge you for that,” said the stylist. Lizzie felt her traditional panic, like when she was on that cheap flight they’d taken to Ibiza and she hadn’t known whether she had to pay for the drinks or not so she had to get up and get her wallet out of her bag and pay for it in euros and everyone on the plane had been looking at her. But it was OK. She had a bit of money. She deserved to be here. She was fine.
Then she glanced at Penny, who was having new ultra-blond super-Gwyneth highlights put in. Penny waved over the bottle and put her thumbs up. Of course. It was OK to have champagne.
“Now are you sure you don’t want to go blond?” said the stylist. “Only, that’s kind of what we do here. For most people. Most people want to go blond.”
“I’m not most people,” said Lizzie proudly.
“Only, cause your hair’s a bit pubic, you know, and if we dyed it it wouldn’t look quite so frizzy, you know.”
“Well de-frizz it then,” said Lizzie, less proudly. But the stylist still stood there, hovering unhappily.
Penny came over to help. “They don’t know what to do without coloring,” she whispered to Lizzie. “Everyone’s got colored hair.”
“Everyone?”
“Everyone in the country. Every single person.”
Staring into the mirror, Lizzie realized uncomfortably that her hair was very mousy, really. She didn’t, she supposed, look in the mirror that often. Not that carefully anyway, otherwise she got depressed. She stared harder. For all this time she’d just thought her hair was a particularly flat color and everyone else’s was shinier, just as Penny had got the lovely straight hair and she’d got the frizz, even though their hair had been similar when they were children. Now she had an uncomfortable sensation.
“Everyone?”
“No,” said Penny sarcastically. “Everyone in the country has sun-lightened highlights and we’re a nation of natural blondes and shiny redheads. Oh, and burgundy hair is real.”
“It’s a lot to take in.”
Lizzie stared at herself.
“Oh, and everyone has really straight hair naturally,” said Penny.
“Well, you do,” said Lizzie.
Penny gave a do-you-believe-this? look at the stylist, who shook her own poker-straight scarlet locks.
“Eh, Lizzie.”
“Yes?”
“We’re twins, remember? We hav
e the same hair.”
“We’re not identical.”
“No. But, trust me, we have the same hair.”
Lizzie stared at her sister.
“Oh, God.”
“Do it,” said Penny to the stylist. “Just some light streaks, don’t scare the horses.”
Lizzie shook her shining, straight, gently streaked hair in the mirror. For the nineteenth time.
“Yes,” said Penny. “It’s lovely.”
“But how am I going to keep it this way?”
“With a bit of care and attention,” said Penny.
“I was afraid you were going to say that.”
“And some nice expensive hair products.”
Lizzie screwed up one eye and looked at Penny.
“Which you buy,” said Penny hurriedly.
“Hmm.” Lizzie went back to flicking her thick hair in the mirror. “So. That ‘invisible makeup thing’ . . .” she started.
“Yup. Tons of it,” said Penny.
“I thought as much.”
Lizzie couldn’t stop looking at herself all the way to work. She was wearing a neat little gray woolen jacket over a slightly gathered jewel-green skirt, with soft makeup and her new hair. Penny had grinned widely at her.
“Go now, Grasshopper,” she’d said. “My work with you is done.”
It was a perfect autumn day, and the red and brown leaves were lying on the ground for the four seconds they were allowed to in Chelsea before being swept up by smartly dressed roadsweepers. The sky was a bright chilly blue and Lizzie had an absolute bounce in her step as she marched toward the door of the café.
“Lizzie!” came a huge roar from the other side of the road. And standing there, looking as merry and bear-like as ever, was Georges, getting out of the back of a smart black car.