Ben: Darling!
Claire: My darling!
Ben: There is only one thing standing between us and perfect happiness.
Claire: Yes. Ellie.
Ben: We will have to tell her eventually, darling.
Claire: Yes, darling. But not just yet. She’ll be so hurt.
Ben: Poor Ellie. It’s hard for her, being overshadowed all the time by Rose. And of course by you, my darling.
Claire: Poor Ellie. It’s not her fault she’s plain and awkward and, well, a bit dull really.
Ben: Let’s not talk about her, darling. Our time together is too precious.
Claire: My darling!
And so on.
“They’re going out,” I said to Rose.
“Ben and Claire? No way! When did they tell you?”
“I saw them together,” I said. “I haven’t talked to either of them for ages. They’ve shut me out. It’s not like when Ben got together with Nina, and he couldn’t stop gushing about it.”
Although, I realised, I felt a bit the same as I’d felt when Ben got together with Nina. Quite a lot the same.
Ben first told me about Nina on what looked like being a perfectly ordinary Tuesday night down the Latchmere. We used to do the pub quiz there, before the Duchess cleaned up its act and started having one too, with a slightly lower standard and more generous prizes (a less vinegary bottle of Pinot Grigio for second place, which was usually the height of our attainment). I’d got there at seven as usual in order to bags us a table, get a drinks order in, peruse the menu and make the tough decision between the vegetarian platter and the mushroom burger and chips. I’d polished off a pint of Stella and was sending ‘don’t even think about it’ looks at other quiz-goers who had designs on the six chairs I’d appropriated, wondering whether Alex or Tim would be first to show up, when Ben sort of floated into the room on a cloud of happiness, with a gormless beatific grin on his face. Of course I knew straight away that something was up.
“Pint,” I said, shoving his glass across the table. “Now tell me why you’re looking like a spaniel puppy that’s just won Best in Show. Lotto jackpot? Surprise nomination to a safe seat in Islington? Collision en route here with a van carrying Krispy Kreme doughnuts?”
“Oh my God, Ellie,” Ben said, “Do you believe in love at first sight?” No word of a lie, he did.
I sparked up a fag – you were still allowed to smoke then – and in between puffs I told Ben in no uncertain terms that love at first sight was a load of delusional bollocks, in common with love of any other kind, but that it was better out than in, and the sooner he told me what the fuck was going on, the sooner I could cure him of this madness. And quite uncharacteristically Ben, who’s normally restrained to the point of constipation about his feelings, spilled the beans.
“I’ve met a Pre-Raphaelite angel, Ellie,” he gushed. “My dream woman.
Beautiful, original, ethereal. And I have her mobile number!”
I told him to get a grip and start from the beginning, and he duly did, after a few more asinine burblings about her remarkable beauty and charm, which made me lose all enthusiasm for my coleslaw.
He’d been on the Victoria line, it turned out, on his way from Highbury and Islington station to Green Park, where he would change on to the Jubilee line to go one stop to Westminster and work. At King’s Cross the goddess had fought her way on to the rammed train, along with the hordes of tourists that blight the lives of Londoners using the station. He’d been impressed by the naked aggression with which she’d elbowed aside a group of German students, Ben said, nabbing the only seat in the carriage and flopping gleefully into it with – and here he went all misty-eyed again – her violin case nestled in her lap.
“It’s a Strad, Ellie,” he said, “Although I didn’t know that then, I only found out later.”
“From the top, I said, Benedict,” I told him sternly, and he apologised and returned to the back story.
So this girl – he didn’t know at the time that she was called Nina – had sat down opposite Ben, and he’d immediately noticed her not only because of her seat-obtaining skills and her violin case, but because she was wearing a black evening dress at nine in the morning, and because she had waist-length rippling hair the colour of autumn leaves, according to Ben, and skin like a pearl, and the body of a gnome. Or he may have said a fairy, I’m not sure – anyway, she was evidently small but perfectly formed. So Ben did what all men do when a girl they fancy gets on the Tube and sits opposite them: tried to check her out whilst appearing indifferent. As luck would have it, the bloke sitting next to Ben had a copy of that day’s Independent that Ben ought to have read himself before work, so he sort of craned his neck and scanned the leader column over this man’s shoulder, whilst surreptitiously checking out the red-haired girl across the aisle.
Before long, he realised that he wasn’t nearly as subtle as he’d thought, and that the ginger goddess had realised she was being checked out and was pissing herself laughing at him.
“She just radiated joy, Ellie,” said Ben. “Do you know how unusual it is to see a person smile on the Tube at nine in the morning? She wasn’t just smiling, she was properly corpsing, leant over her violin case with her hair cascading down on to the floor like she didn’t even care if someone’s old chewing gum got caught up in it.” And he looked momentarily distressed at the idea of such desecration befalling the copper locks of wonder.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” I said, “Less of the mooning, more of the story. What did you do?” I needed him to hurry up, because the quiz was due to start in fifteen minutes and soon our other friends would turn up and then Ben would be sure to lose the narrative thread.
“I froze,” he said. “I met her eyes and froze like Odysseus tied to the mast when he heard the Sirens sing.” And he sighed a ridiculous, wafty sigh. “But then the train pulled in at Green Park and I saw that she was getting off at the same stop I was and I knew that this was my chance. So I spoke to her.”
“Great!” I said. “And you got her number?”
“I did,” Ben said proudly, “and it only cost me twenty quid.”
“What?” I squeaked. “There’s a name for people who do that, you know, and it’s…”
“Busker,” said Ben. “She’s studying at the Guildhall and plays her violin in Tube stations sometimes to make extra cash. I listened for about half an hour, I was late for the morning briefing because of it but I just couldn’t leave. I gave her a fiver and then another, and then she told me her name – Nina,” his voice fell to a reverential hush, “and then her number. 074…”
“Stop!” I said. “Stop right now! You might be stalking her but I’m not ready to add her to my address book just yet.”
“But you will, Ellie,” Ben said, “because she’s coming here tonight. Here! Tonight!”
By this point my veggie platter had lost all its appeal, and I muttered something along the lines of, “Oh, wow, great,” and then Erin turned up and Alex and the rest of our mates followed shortly afterwards, and we got another round in before the quiz kicked off. Then, right in the middle of a critical question about Middlesbrough’s FA Cup record, which we’d normally have relied on Ben to crack, he totally zoned out and gazed, mesmerised, at the door.
“Nina is here,” he declared, and stood up so quickly he almost sent twenty quid’s worth of perfectly good lager crashing to the floor.
At first I couldn’t see Nina as she walked into the pub, but that was because she was so tiny – even in her retro cork-soled clogs, the rest of the Latchmere’s clientele towered over her dainty five foot nothing frame. But Ben had clocked her straight away, by some sort of radar, and he fought his way through the milling crowds and ferried her back to our table with the same gloating pride I’ve since observed when Winston brings a limp, half-chewed squirrel in though the cat flap.
“This,” he said, “is Nina.”
There’s no pretty way to say it, she reminded me of an insect. An exotic, hi
ghly coloured wasp, perhaps, with her fragile limbs and filmy, fluttery clothes, but an insect nonetheless. And there was something faintly repulsive about the way she alighted on each of us in the group – Alex, then Erin, then Tim, then me, bestowing little kisses on us with her crimson proboscis – and saying how lovely it was to meet us and how much Ben had told her about us. I told myself that Ben and I were just friends, just fuck-buddies, that I had no right to be jealous. But still, I loathed Nina on sight.
“But you must have known he’d get together with someone else sooner or later,” Rose said, snapping me back to the present. “Or did you think maybe you and he…?”
“Not after Nina,” I said.
“I’ve often wondered about that,” Rose said. “I mean, it was ages ago, and he’s been single ever since. It’s weird.”
“He doesn’t talk about it,” I said. And I realised that, in spite of our closeness, there was a side of Ben that I never saw any more: the side that waxed all poetic over Nina’s hair, the side that brought me tea and toast in bed, the side that was a great shag. I’d congratulated myself on our unique friendship, but really Ben had only let me know a fraction of himself. And now he was sharing the rest with Claire.
“Perhaps it won’t last,” Rose said, “and you’ll get another chance.”
“It’s not that,” I said vehemently. “It’s not. It’s… well, I was there first. They’re my friends, not each other’s.”
Even as I was speaking, I could hear how bratty and petulant I sounded. But Rose didn’t say anything about that. She reached over and gave my hand a squeeze, and said, “You know, Ellie, you’re looking so stunning at the moment.”
I said thanks, but a bit warily, because I knew she was trying to steer the conversation around to something else, in the subtle way she has that’s actually totally unsubtle. Sure enough, she said, “You should go and see Gervase.”
Rose’s mate Gervase – he of the spectacular handlebar tache and affair with the married man – is also her hairdresser. Rose has been following him around from salon to salon for about eight years – he started doing her hair when she was at university in Edinburgh, and I suspect Rose may have been partly responsible for persuading him to up sticks and import his talents to London. Anyway, after all this time they’ve become friends as well as stylist and client, and I dread to think what will happen if one day Gervase fucks up Rose’s foils or cuts an inch too much off her ends or something – World War Three I expect. But so far he has kept a clean sheet and every time Rose comes back from seeing him she looks swishy-haired and happy.
“Just a few highlights,” she said, “And maybe some layers through the front. My treat. You’ll look amazing, you’ll see. When I’m down about something, Gervase always makes me feel better, every time.” And before I could frame an objection, she’d whipped out her phone and texted Gervase, and informed me that he’d had a cancellation and could fit me in the next morning at ten.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
As I stood in the salon the next day, being swathed in a kind of nylon raincoat affair by one of Gervase’s much-pierced minions, I started to feel sick with nerves, and remembered why it had been so long since I’d darkened the doors of a hair salon. I’m sure it’s not only me who feels this way. Every time – every single time – you say you want just a couple of centimetres off, or a subtle colour to give it a bit of gloss, you get a pitying look, and end up leaving with hardly any hair, or bright ginger streaks, or a mullet. If the worst that happens to you is a bouffy blow-dry that makes you look like Kim Kardashian, you’ve got off lightly. My hair’s nothing to write home about – in fact its natural state is limp, mousy and either crackling with static or flat with grease – but at least I know where I am with it.
“Now,” said Gervase, once he’d given me a kiss on both cheeks, which felt a bit like being snogged by a fur coat, and sat me down in a chair and ordered another minion to bring me a cappuccino, “just look at yourself, Ellie. Look!” And he grabbed my jaw and angled my head towards the mirror. I was reminded of yet another reason why I hate hair salons – surely the only people who can bear to spend an entire morning gazing at themselves in a mirror are the deeply self-obsessed and the extremely short-sighted?
“The first time I met you,” Gervase went on, “I thought, my god! Those eyes! Those cheekbones! This girl has something special! I’ve been waiting years to get my hands on your hair, Ellie. Let’s find your inner goddess!”
I muttered something about taking just a few centimetres off the ends, but Gervase was having none of it, and because he’s Rose’s friend and such a sweetheart, I found myself meekly agreeing to highlights, layers, a conditioning treatment, a blow-dry and all the rest. Then I took a deep breath and immersed myself in Vanity Fair, forcing myself to read all the features, even a pretentious over-long one about Hilary Clinton that did that ridiculous and annoying ‘continued on page 148’ thing. It took three hours, but finally Gervase finished whisking around me with canisters of spray and dragging huge round brushes through my hair, and said, “There!”
I looked at myself in the mirror and gave my hair an experimental swish. Instead of flopping around my face like a spaniel’s ears, my hair framed it, making my eyes look bigger and my jawline cleaner. It had gone from a dull lightish brown to a lovely honey gold, and it was straight and shiny but somehow springy at the same time. I looked like me, only fabulous, and I happily paid the extortionate price and gave Gervase a twenty quid tip, trusting that he’d pass it on to the minions, because he probably earns more than I do.
I walked out into the street and stood there for a while, wondering what to do. It seemed a shame to take my lovely hair home and waste it on the flat, so I decided – just on a whim – to get on the Circle line and go all the way around to Moorgate and see what was on at the Barbican and perhaps have coffee there. It was an awfully long way to go just for a coffee but, to be perfectly honest, I wanted to put myself into Oliver’s orbit, just for a moment. Since the last time I’d seen him, when he’d been so wonderful to Pers and me, I’d been… I won’t say stalking him, but sort of keeping myself aware of him, reading his posts on Facebook and on Twitter – although they were still mostly incomprehensible to me, concerning the Markets and the cricket – and thinking and thinking about him: his face, his voice, the way his arms had felt around me, the smell of his skin. I haven’t had much experience of unrequited desire, but I suspect that it’s hard to keep it alive without encouragement – it would probably wither and die, like a bunch of roses left in a vase without water or that weird blue gel stuff florists use. Thankfully, in these enlightened times, people in my position are able to follow – okay then, stalk – the object of their desire via social media, thus keeping the flame of passion burning as strongly as when it was first kindled.
I was thinking all this as I trundled around the outskirts of zone one on the Tube, marvelling at my ability to channel the love-struck heroine of some bodice-ripper romance and occasionally giving my hair a swish to see if it still felt lovely, which it did. Pathetic though my sentimental ramblings were, they made the journey to Moorgate pass incredibly quickly. But by the time I got there, my idea of doing an Oliver-themed tour of London – an ‘in the footsteps of’, as if he were Samuel Pepys or someone – no longer seemed so clever, just childish and pathetic and even a bit psychotic. I was on the point of turning around and ducking back into the carriage and letting the train take me all the way on round to Victoria, but the doors made their insistent beeping noise and slammed shut behind me, so I let myself be swept along by the crowd to the stairs, and as I emerged into the relative brightness of the cloudy day, I heard running feet behind me and a familiar voice saying, “Hey! Rose!”
I stopped and turned around and there was Oliver, jogging towards me on the grey City street, and the tourists who’d got off the Tube with me had all scattered away and it felt like he and I were the only two people in the world. Except of course it wasn’t me he expected to see, it w
as Rose, and when he realised he had the wrong sister he skidded to a halt and said, “Ellie. My god, I’m so sorry. I thought you were…”
I said, “You thought I was someone else. Sorry I’m not.”
He just stood there, looking at me in a rather puzzled way, like Serena told me Dad did for about five days after she stopped wearing contact lenses and got her glasses – something about her was different, but he couldn’t quite figure out what it was. Serena and I laughed about it for ages when she told me the story – she told me it proved something about how men see the world as opposed to how women do, which I have of course forgotten and now wasn’t interested in because Oliver was staring at me quite intently, and he said, “Actually, I’m not sorry at all.”
We stood there for a bit, looking at each other. It was one of those blustery days you get towards the end of winter, and gusts of cold air were eddying around us, sending empty crisp packets and discarded travelcards skittering along the pavement and making my hair whip around my face and stick to my lip-gloss.
Then Oliver said, “Were you on your way anywhere?”
I said, “I’ve just been having my hair done. I thought I’d wander along to the Barbican and see if there was anything good on – I’ve been so busy at work I’ve been neglecting my cultural enrichment programme.” And I gave a little smile so he’d know I wasn’t as up myself as that.
It Would Be Wrong to Steal My Sister's Boyfriend Page 11