The Go-To Girl

by Louise Bagshawe

  ‘I need a man who’ll give me my own space and respect my routine.’

  ‘A pushover?’

  Lily shrugs. ‘I’m a princess, take me or leave me.’

  ‘He left you.’

  ‘So what?’ she says. ‘The only reason I haven’t hooked up with a man properly is because I wasn’t ready to. As soon as I set my mind to it –’ she snaps her elegant, fire-engine red talons – ‘I’ll have anybody I like reeled in. Not like you, letting Charles get away. I can be married within three months.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  It’s funny, but looking at her, so beautiful, all angry and sulky, I just feel pity.

  ‘I’m going to watch Big Brother,’ she says, flicking the television on. ‘I don’t want to talk about this with you any more.’

  ‘Fine with me,’ I say, taking another sip of champagne.

  * * *

  Janet comes back in the next morning after a catalogue shoot, and I tell her the whole Henry story.

  ‘I hope he’s not too upset,’ she says.

  ‘He didn’t seem to give a damn.’

  ‘Ed will be sorry. He thinks Henry’s wonderful.’

  ‘How’s it going with you two?’

  ‘Oh.’ Janet flushes. ‘Actually, really great. Can you believe it? He’s asked me to meet his parents next week.’

  ‘That’s fantastic,’ I say, beaming. ‘Do you think it might be serious, then?’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind,’ she says, shyly. ‘He offered to pay off all my debts. I was so surprised when I found out he had money.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I told him no.’ She looks sideways at me. ‘Was that stupid? Lily said I was being a moron.’

  ‘No. I think that’s cool.’

  ‘I mean, I’ve got a few of those catalogue shoots now. And it is paying.’ Janet looks determined. ‘I like Ed, but I want to do it myself. Whatever Lily says, I quite like it.’

  ‘I think that’s wonderful.’

  ‘But I don’t want to do the catalogues, not forever. It’s not because I’m proud, not just that, anyway. I remembered what you said about art.’

  ‘Don’t give up a paying job for a pipe dream,’ I say nervously. She’s only just started paying off those debts.

  ‘Oh, no,’ says Janet. ‘I wouldn’t. But it’s not just a pipe dream. Ed had a suggestion, he said I could go to work in a gallery. I could sell art. You know, for one of the big dealers.’ She blushes again. ‘He said I was so pretty that everybody would want to buy from me.’

  I stare at her. ‘But that’s brilliant.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘You’d be great at it,’ I say. ‘He’s right! How could any of those rich collectors resist you?’

  ‘Ed knows some people. He said he’d get me a few interviews.’

  ‘So will you move into his place?’

  Janet shakes her head, shyly. ‘I found another flat-share. In Camberwell. I thought I should have a place of my own, you know, until we get married. It’s cheap, it’s not as nice as this, but it is mine.’ She looks at me nervously. ‘Do you think I’m being mental like Lily says?’

  ‘Never mind about Lily, she’s just jealous.’ I hug Janet. ‘I’m really proud of you.’

  Janet scribbles her new number on a piece of paper for me. ‘And what about you? Where are you going?’

  I sigh. ‘I’m moving back with my parents. Till I can get another job. Or…’

  She looks at me quizzically.

  ‘Or, you know, until my script sells,’ I say. I feel stupid, but there it is. I said it.

  Janet hugs me back. ‘I think that’s brilliant and I bet you’ll be a wonderful writer.’

  ‘Thanks. You’ve always believed in me,’ I say. I can’t believe it, but I’m crying. Over moving away from a model!

  ‘Everyone who knows you believes in you, Anna,’ Janet says. ‘You just needed to believe in yourself.’

  * * *

  Two days later I’m out of there. My mum drives the Ford Fiesta all the way to London, to pick me up.

  ‘You can’t come on the train,’ she says firmly when I try to object. ‘All your things, darling. And anyway, you need looking after.’

  The sad thing is you can fit all my essential things into two small suitcases. One laptop, one case full of lovely new Janet-approved clothes, and one case full of books and scripts. Lined up by the door they don’t seem to amount to much for thirty-two years. The rest of my stuff is just papers, prints, pre-Janet clothes that I suppose I’ll be donating to Oxfam and other such rubbish.

  Lily is sitting on the couch staring at her fingernails, looking impossibly beautiful and impossibly bored at the same time.

  ‘Will you be OK?’ I ask her at the last minute, since she doesn’t seem to want to volunteer any Janet-style tearful farewells. Janet had an interview at the Arnsdale Gallery this morning, and went off red-eyed and red-nosed after thirty minutes of weepy hugs.

  ‘Oh, don’t flatter yourself,’ Lily snaps, flicking through the latest In Style. ‘I’ve already got people lining up for your room. And anyway, I won’t be staying here long. I’ve decided to get married.’

  ‘Oh, you and Henry are back together? That’s great,’ I tell her.

  ‘I wouldn’t get back with that loser if you paid me,’ Lily snaps. ‘No, I’m just going to find some very lucky man who can look after me properly and marry him. I’ve had enough of being by myself and sharing with … people,’ she says, making the last word sound really insulting.

  ‘Well, I’m off then,’ I say after a pause.

  ‘See ya,’ says Lily. She doesn’t bother to get up. ‘You might as well leave me your phone number.’

  I’m tempted to ask why.

  ‘Just in case you’ve forgotten something you need,’ she adds, reading my mind. I scrawl it down on the yellow Post-It pad by the phone, pick up my cases, and lug myself downstairs, not trusting the lift.

  Mum has the good sense not to say anything as we pull into the Soho traffic. She pretends to be busy looking at the road as I lean my head against the window, a fat tear trickling down my cheek. It feels like everything’s over. My lame attempt at a career, my friendships, and especially my love life. Although can something be over when it never really even started?

  When I get home darling Dad has made me tea and Marmite toast. My parents have cleaned out my old room, put fresh flowers in a milk jug by my bed. He tells me I did exactly the right thing (though Mum does look a bit disconsolate) and I have to wait for it to be exactly right. It’s an incredible weight off my mind that they don’t seem to care as much as I’d feared. And however I feel right now (like my heart’s been crushed into powder) I don’t want to upset them, so I put a brave face on it, as much as I can. I unpack all my nice clothes, put my scripts on a bookshelf, take out my laptop. And then there’s a choice. I can either start rewriting, like Mark Swan suggested. Not that I wanted to listen. Or I can listen to Mum’s plans to fix me up with Kevin Nealey, the recently paroled thug (‘Such a nice boy, Anna, it’s not true what they say about him’) who used to live next door and occasionally returns to get his laundry done or scrounge some more drug money.

  I start reworking my script. After all, there’s nothing else to do.

  * * *

  I settle back into my old life. I’m writing every day, going for walks around the village with our ancient dog Rover (a most unlikely name, as he’s as fat as a beer barrel and, prior to my coming home to lick my many wounds, has gone on about four walks a year) just to clear my head. Walking is supposed to do that. Clear your head. Funny, mine’s just as muddled, wrapped up in a blanket of cotton wool and pain. There seems to be nothing to say. Yeah, I’m writing, and it’s not going badly, but, I don’t know, that’s hardly a real job, is it? And I need one. I don’t have Charles any more. Thinking about Mark is so painful that it makes me want to die, but the bottom line is, I’m not going to. The sun will rise every morning, and unless I do some
thing drastic, it’ll find me in my old attic bedroom when I’m forty.

  I’m making plans to move back to London. I’ll take the advice I gave to Janet, borrow some money from my parents, put a security deposit on somewhere cheap, and then find a flatshare near a tube.

  I can’t chase my dream any more. I need a job, an actual job that pays. Otherwise I’ll never own a flat of my own. On my old salary it would have taken me about fifty years to save up enough for the down payment on a Zone 4 studio. Hey, maybe I should become an estate agent …

  It’s all incredibly depressing and I only have one remedy against it. Working on my script. I’ve grown up now, the hard way. I know I’m not going to get Mark Swan to help me, I know Frank Giallo isn’t gagging to read it. In fact, the odds against it getting noticed and read are tremendous. But I keep writing it.

  It’s the only dream I have left.

  ‘Anna,’ my mother says anxiously when I come back from my lunchtime stroll round the park with a huffing Rover, who glares at me reproachfully as I slip his harness off, ‘you’ve had a phone call. There’s a message on the answer phone from somebody called Jamie, but it sounds like a girl.’

  ‘Jay-Me,’ I say, excited. Oh man, it’s good to hear from Janet! I wonder if she and Ed have set a date yet. Even though my life is shit, I’m so glad hers isn’t. She’s such a dear heart, she can’t help being pretty, can she?

  ‘She seems a bit upset,’ says my mother.

  My heart somersaults. When Mum says somebody is ‘a bit upset’ there has usually been screaming and wailing you could hear in Scotland. I rush to the answer machine, press the button.

  ‘Anna,’ sobs Janet’s disembodied voice. ‘Ed … left … Lily … aaaahhh haaahhhh…’

  She’s crying, really bawling, so bad I can’t make it out. I run upstairs, retrieve her mobile number. Nothing but voicemail. So then I try our flat.

  ‘Hello?’ It’s Lily.

  ‘Hi,’ I say. ‘What’s going on? Is Janet OK? I need to speak to her. She called me, she was in a bad way.’

  ‘Oh, Janet,’ says Lily, with more ice in her tone than usual. ‘She’s left. Moved out. You can get her on her cell phone.’

  ‘Already? The month’s not up.’

  ‘She wanted to leave right away and I thought it would be best,’ Lily says, nastily. ‘She’s got her deposit back, so she can hardly complain.’

  I have a sinking feeling.

  ‘Lily,’ I say slowly, ‘what happened?’

  ‘Oh, nothing.’ I can almost see Lily tossing her hair. ‘Just Janet thinking she owns people.’

  ‘Tell me,’ I say.

  ‘She thinks she owns Ed after four dates,’ Lily snaps. ‘They didn’t exactly have a relationship. They hadn’t pledged their undying love.’

  ‘Ed broke up with her?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Lily says. ‘He met somebody else, and as it turns out, Janet couldn’t be objective about it. She’s very immature.’

  Poor Janet, oh poor, poor Janet. I know she truly loved Ed, thought he was the one. Her rescuer. Just when her self-esteem was recovering from the collapse of the modelling. And Ed was so nice, and then he just dumps her?

  ‘Do you have any idea who the new girl is?’ I ask.

  ‘Well, of course I do,’ Lily snaps. ‘It’s me.’

  I blink. ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me.’

  ‘But you were going out with Henry,’ I say, stupidly. ‘You liked Henry. I thought you wanted to get back together with him.’

  ‘Henry’s not the right man for me,’ Lily says, airily. ‘I told you, Anna, he doesn’t have a bean. I can’t go for that. Plus, he was cold and controlling.’

  ‘You mean he wouldn’t take your crap,’ I say icily, because it’s beginning to sink in.

  ‘Ed’s different,’ Lily triumphs. ‘He understands me and my schedule. He knows how to treat a lady. And he’s far richer than Charles, by the way,’ she adds spitefully.

  Oh hell. I can just see it. Ed, so nice, diffident, just starting to really like Janet. But he always had that thing for Lily. Staring at her like a dog slavering over a steak. He’s obviously forgotten how she dismissed him when she thought he was poor. Either that, or he’s so blinded in lust he doesn’t want to see it.

  ‘And Henry?’

  ‘He’ll get over it.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘To me, nothing. After he stormed out that night he just stopped calling, which is the best way for all concerned,’ Lily says coldly. If there’s a touch of regret there, I don’t hear it. ‘But he harassed Ed.’

  ‘For going after you?’

  Lily laughs. ‘He says he doesn’t care what I do, but that Ed shouldn’t have left Janet. He actually told Ed it was beneath him and that he’d be miserable – we’d both be miserable. But that’s not true, we’re blissful!’

  ‘You don’t find Ed at all attractive, Lil. You wanted Henry.’

  ‘He had his chance and he blew it,’ says Lily.

  ‘How could you do this to Janet?’

  ‘Oh, please. Don’t lecture me,’ Lily says. ‘She has no right to block our happiness. She hasn’t even known him a month, she doesn’t own him—’

  ‘Lily,’ I say, ‘you’ve got problems. I have to go.’

  ‘When will you be leaving?’ she persists. ‘I really want you and the rest of your stuff out before the end of the month. I think Ed might move in with me while we choose a new house together, there are some nice townhouses in Mayfair I was looking at online…’

  ‘Later,’ I say flatly. ‘Goodbye.’

  I hang up and dial Janet’s cell phone again, but I still get her voicemail. Perhaps that’s just as well.

  I look at the clock by my bedside: 2p.m. I don’t want to think about any of these disasters, mine, Janet’s, Henry’s. But I have to. I can’t let things stand like this. Hastily I pack up a little overnight case.

  ‘Can I borrow fifty quid?’ I ask Mum. ‘I have to go to London.’

  * * *

  I catch the high-speed train into Paddington, and get a cab to the flat. I had wondered if Lily would have changed the locks, but she hasn’t – maybe she just hasn’t got around to it. Nobody is there, thank God. I let myself in with a spare set of keys I forgot to give back to Lily and take a shower, but don’t bother to unpack. I’m not going to stick around long enough to make it worthwhile.

  Then I call Janet at her new number.

  ‘Hi, how’s it at home?’ she asks, without enthusiasm. God, she sounds so down. As if she’s talking through a blanket of fog.

  ‘Never mind about that. I need to see you.’

  ‘Oh, God, Anna,’ she says. ‘I just can’t – I don’t think I can take it right now. Going over it all again…’

  ‘It’s not that. I need a place to stay. Just for a week while I sort myself out.’

  ‘But you’re with your parents.’

  ‘Not any more,’ I tell her. ‘I need to be in London. Job-hunting. I’m desperate. Please?’

  Janet is momentarily shocked out of her depression. I know she didn’t expect a cry for help.

  ‘Sure,’ she says. ‘It’s pretty grotty,’ she warns me. ‘One bed but I’ve got a sleeping bag.’

  ‘Luxury,’ I tell her. I scribble down the address, call another cab, and I’m over there in half an hour, knocking on the door of 2B in one of those ex-local authority blocks.

  Janet opens the door. She looks wrecked. Her lovely olive skin has gone sallow, her eyes are red and puffy from crying, and she’s got shadows under her eyes the size of watermelon slices. She’s wearing her favourite white jeans and T-shirt, but they’re hanging off her; she looks as if she hasn’t eaten in a week.

  ‘What happened?’ she asks.

  ‘I can’t face living at home any more,’ I tell her, part truthfully.

  ‘But why don’t you just go and stay with Charles?’ Janet asks. ‘You’re still friends, right? Not that you’re not welcome here, but Eaton Square,
you know.’

  ‘Yes,’ I sigh. ‘It’s very nice. But not right now. And I’m about to have a huge row with Lily and I need your help.’

  ‘Why are you going to have a huge row with Lily?’

  ‘Because she’s stolen some of my money,’ I lie, easily enough. Definitely getting better at that. ‘She won’t give back my deposit. And I need back-up from you.’

  ‘No way,’ Janet recoils. ‘I can’t go and see her again. Ever. Besides, he might be there.’

  ‘Ed?’

  ‘Yes, Ed,’ Janet starts to snuffle again. ‘He’s been calling here … my cell phone.’

  ‘Oh?’ I perk up. ‘What’s he been saying?’

  ‘I don’t take his messages,’ Janet says, drawing herself up and trying to look dignified. ‘I don’t want to hear it – oh, you weren’t the one for me, I’m really sorry, we should both move on, whatever. Maybe he wants to be friends,’ she says bitterly. ‘And I don’t want that either, so what’s the point?’

  ‘But you can’t let Lily steal my money,’ I plead. ‘I need my deposit back. And you can say I didn’t wreck my room.’

  ‘Is that what she’s saying?’ asks Janet, with a flicker of interest. ‘She’s such a cow.’

  ‘And Ed’s not in London,’ I lie. ‘He’s staying in the country with his parents. For the week. Lily told me. Please, let me call her and arrange something, and you back me up.’

  ‘OK,’ she says grudgingly.

  ‘I really need that money,’ I tell her. ‘You are going to help me, aren’t you?’

  ‘I honestly don’t want to,’ Janet says, miserably.

  ‘But I’m so poor,’ I wail.

  ‘Are you sure he’s not there?’

  ‘Positive. Look, only you were there when I moved in, only you can back me up about the condition of my room.’

  Janet wavers. ‘Well, let me just go and have a shower and put something on,’ she says.

  I call Lily when Janet’s safely in the shower.

  ‘Hi, it’s me.’

  ‘What do you want?’ Lily snaps.

  ‘Nice to talk to you, too.’