Prior Engagements

by Sarah Goodwin

  One thing that would never change, no matter the weather, the state of the economy or how many near death experiences I’d had that day – girls like me couldn’t afford to miss a day of work.

  You know, unless a gorgeous, awkward man appeared and offered them an invite to a fancy wedding. That was the unwritten exception that proved the rule. I also didn’t have to show up if the shop had burnt down, or been robbed, something which I prayed for every week (The closest God had come to granting my wish was a tiny incident one Friday night, where a stiletto had been hurled through the window at the back of the store. Nothing was taken. I wasn’t actually sure I could credit God with the little miracle, that shoe was definitely more Yvonne’s style).

  Dressed in my regulation nylon trousers and uniform blouse, I did my best to cover the few remaining allergy splotches with some (cat skin free) concealer, and packed my dress, shoes and cardigan into a bag so I could change after my shift.

  I walked to the station, took my usual train to Bath, and walked from there, up the main street (grabbing a McDonald’s coffee on my way – scorching and bitter, the perfect beverage to begin a day in retail) towards BHS.

  Not even Neil could distract me from my purpose, I was like a Terminator, sent to Bath to give Yvonne a bollocking. Neil turned to look at me as I bolted through the front doors of the shop and swept towards the escalators.

  “What the bloody hell happened to your neck?” He asked.

  “I’ve got rabies,” I shouted from halfway up the escalator.

  “Suits you. You’re a mad bitc-”

  I skipped off the top of the escalator and through the café, missing the end of Neil’s attempt at humour. I pushed open the door to the staffroom and rounded the dingy corridor to find Yvonne doing her nails.

  “Annie, what the fuck happened to your neck?” She asked, one hand hovering over her index finger, its pink leopard print pattern still incomplete. “Did you have a major change of heart on the Will front?”

  “What?”

  “It looks like someone’s been sucking on your neck darlin’”

  “No one’s been sucking on my neck, but there is a ton of cat skin stuck in it.”

  Yvonne gave me a look that was pure cluelessness, like a Jack Russell confronted with a biscuit with advanced calculus printed on it.

  “That moisturiser, the spa kit you gave me? I had an allergy attack, only, I’m allergic to cats, not anything that would be in quality face cream. Or even budget face cream. Where the hell did you get it from? I thought it was all Superdrug stuff.”

  “It was...mostly,” Yvonne said, putting her nail polish away. “I may have...bulked it out with some stuff I got from the CherryKiss rep in the bedsit over mine.”

  CherryKiss had been all over the news a few months ago, they were the cheap alternative to Avon, and had become really popular with teenage girls and dirt poor shop wenches like me. The only problem was, most of their stuff was illegal, untested, and full of things that no sane person would want on their face. After undercover investigators had found asbestos, unsafe amounts of a certain kind of acid, and multiple traces of...unsavoury bodily fluids, the CherryKiss empire had disintegrated.

  “Why is she still selling it?” I demanded.

  “She wasn’t exactly selling. I sort of...liberated it.”

  “You stole them?”

  “They were in the bin, round the back of the building.”

  Better and better, I’d smeared some legally banned cream on myself, that definitely contained cat skin flakes, and maybe some rendered corpse fat or Mexican slave semen. Only to discover that it had come from a bin round the back of some flats in the dodgy end of Bristol.

  Now I’d have to go to the doctors and get tested for everything under the sun (You might think I’m exaggerating, but I’d once caught the clap from a toilet seat in the Student Union bar. Will swore he’d picked up a case of crabs from a second hand copy of Batman Returns, but I wasn’t sure I believed him).

  “You owe me, big time,” I told Yvonne sourly. “Like, Body Shop gift basket owe me.”

  “How about I do your nails for your big meet-the-parents lunch?”

  I struggled with indecision, but, I knew Yvonne was as poor as me, and my nails really did need doing.

  “Fine,” I sighed, with the air of one making a great compromise.

  Yvonne painted my nails in our lunch break, and she bought me a plate of lemon chicken and egg fried rice from the canteen, so I decided to forgive her (Even if my Nails inc. manicure was a tad ostentatious for a lunch with the in-laws. She’d painted them peacock blue and added some diamond nail jewellery, with the result that my nails now looked like shards from that fancy necklace in Titanic).

  After that my shift ran pretty much as usual; Neil gave me the stink-eye every time he saw that I wasn’t talking to a customer, various older men asked me about tog ratings and non-stick pans, and I helped clueless grannies pick out housewarming presents for their sickening adult grandchildren. I liked to make a game of this. For example, if said grandkid was named Georgina but had decided to be known as ‘Jorg’ and had black hair with pink bits in it, I persuaded dear old Gran that a pink Magimix was the perfect gift. Similarly, for grandspawn most accomplished at the cello, and a great fan of Shakespeare, I picked out bedding with a Tart’s boudoir theme – lots of velvet and fake ostrich feathers. Strangely enough, I’d never known any of these gifts to be returned. Perhaps the mothers of those studio flat bound students were keeping them to spice up their suddenly empty nests.

  As the day slowly crawled to an end, I trailed upstairs to the staff room and did my best to wedge myself into the boltless toilet with my change of clothes. I emerged, creased, but at least looking better than I had in my uniform to find Yvonne in the staffroom, brandishing her make-up kit.

  “That better not be Cherrykiss stuff,” I warned her.

  “No, it’s all from when I worked at Debenhams,” Yvonne said, slyly.

  “Is there anything you won’t steal?”

  “I never stole from Ann Summers.”

  “Only because you owned everything already.”

  Yvonne threw me a cat-like smile and put her bag of tricks down on the table.

  “Come on, let me fix whatever you did to yourself.”

  Yvonne did manage to fix my face, replacing my botched attempt at applying concealer with a cover-up worthy of the FBI. I lost count of the number of things she was applying to my face, but the end result was worth staying painfully still as she daubed at my skin. I actually looked human again, like I was having a ‘good skin day’. OK, so my hair was still immovable, but things were definitely looking up.

  “Is that what you’re wearing,” She asked, doubtfully.

  “Yes.”

  “Bit cheap, isn’t it?”

  “Well it is, but it wasn’t meant to look that way.”

  Yvonne tried to back track. “It does look nice.”

  “No it doesn’t, I look like a colour-blind Glee extra.”

  “Why didn’t you find something else, then?”

  I didn’t want to get into what had happened with Will and the saga of the dress, so I just shrugged. Yvonne sighed.

  “Give me a sec, I’ll see what we’ve got in the reject bin.”

  Hardly inspiring words, but the reject bin could sometimes work miracles. I’d salvaged a whole outfit from it for my mum’s Christmas bash. Basically, the bin was where reject clothes went- shirts with missing buttons, trousers with dropped hems. Returned goods with rips or marks. Lucky us, we were allowed to take whatever we wanted, and we did, on the rare occasions that there was something worth taking (a dove grey evening dress had actually caused a fight- Yvonne had won, and Sheena the stockist had gone to A&E to have three false nails pulled out of her leg).

  We went downstairs, then on down into the basement floor (men’s wear and kids’ stuff – a deathly silent section presided over by Maggie and Andy, both of whom looked like hand puppets, and had zero s
ense of humour about it.

  The reject bin was behind the customer service desk, tucked behind a bright white partition (the Hallway of Doom effect applied here too – grim posters, mucky fingerprints on the walls and carpet scuffed to buggery). Yvonne pulled the lid off of the pink plastic tub and rummaged through the bits and pieces bundled up inside.

  “Not much,” she admitted, “but... I think we can work with it.”

  God bless friends, I thought to myself as I waited for Dorian in the cobbled street down the side of BHS. God bless friends who can conjure up an outfit halfway decent (and who didn’t suddenly decide to fall for you and kiss you into a hormonal whirlwind).

  I had to forget Will. Today, and my future, was all about Dorian.

  A sporty, buttercup coloured Mini came around the corner and stopped in front of me. Dorian stepped out, looking, it had to be said, about a million times more attractive than I remembered him being (which was still pretty gorgeous).

  “Nice car,” I said.

  “My sister’s,” he said, with a smile. “You look lovely.”

  “Thanks.” I tucked a strand of hair behind one ear and smiled shyly in a way people always assume is fake (it’s not, I’m just terrible at receiving compliments). I actually felt pretty; my yellow dress now had a pleated chiffon skirt in white over the top, giving it a sweet, more expensive look. I also had on some swish, 1950s-ish white lace gloves, and Yvonne had dragged up a more respectable looking tan leather handbag – my one was a white crochet one from Oxfam.

  Dorian opened the passenger door for me, which I found almost equal parts sweet and unnerving (just how posh was he?) Then we were off, and by off I mean ‘trapped in late afternoon Bath traffic’.

  “Where abouts are we going?” I asked at yet another zebra crossing that was chocca with French and Japanese tourists.

  “My parents’ house is actually that way,” he said, as if I needed the Royal Crescent to be pointed out to me, “but I have to pick up my brother from the airport,” Dorian turned slightly in my direction and shrugged, “for some reason, he refuses to use public transport.”

  “Why doesn’t he rent a car?”

  “That falls under the heading of “public transport” in Frederick’s book. As do cabs. Unfortunately, his driver was unable to pick him up; he’s had to take a doctor-recommended holiday – for the stress.”

  I digested this information, and realised two things. The first was that I was helplessly out of my depth, and the second was that Dorian’s brother must be a complete and total tosspot (still, with a name like ‘Frederick Foffaney’, you were either born a tosspot, or had tosspottery thrust upon you by the relentless teasing of your peers).

  While we drove to the airport, Dorian filled me in on the last week in New York. His emails had lacked the human depth of conversation, so even when I’d already heard the story he was telling, I didn’t mind getting the extended version. Apparently he was working on a new set of illustrations for his employer, and they required a whole new style of anatomy, which he was only just getting to grips with.

  I, of course, said nothing about Will, but I relayed the police/mother saga. It was Dorian who said, quite unexpectedly:

  “While I’m in Bath, do you think I could meet your mother, and your friends, of course?”

  I actually felt the panic bubble up like fluid blisters on my throat. There were Oh-So-Many reasons why that could not happen at any cost. The top three being:

  1. WILL. Will in burning capitals writ large upon my loins. Will and his hands on me, and his lopsided smile, and the dress in my wardrobe, that smelled vaguely of his flat still- toast and vanilla, backed with lethal cheap incense (yes, I’d smelled it. How could I not? Will had carried it to my door, he was all over it).

  2. Yvonne would probably offend every decent bone in Dorian’s body in every conceivable way before she’d even taken her coat off.

  3. My mother was a total psycho, who’d been spoon-fed BBC misery for years, dressed like a combination of the Queen and Freddie Mercury, and spoke like a terrified Womble.

  In short, I couldn’t imagine anything more dangerous than getting Dorian, Will, Yvonne and my mum all in a room together. So, of course, I said:

  “That’d be great.”

  Because I was English and therefore incapable of decent subterfuge (sometimes I wish I’d been born French, all sneaky and excellent at glamorously navigating my web of cunning deceptions and affairs. Not that I was going to have any affairs. My idea of French women came from various old films, and for years I’d wanted the perfect dark bob, a winsome-but-bored Claret coloured smile, and a passion for smoking and silk stockings. Alas, my damp, limey DNA had other ideas).

  Dorian drove us to the airport, and we circled around to the pickup point. I looked out of the window at the assembled late afternoon travellers. A harried looking woman with three children and four wheelie suitcases, a man in flip-flops and shorts, wearing a cricket jumper (who we thankfully drove past) and clumps of businessmen all nattering into fancy smart phones and looking incredibly boring. Dorian pulled up outside the airport and raised a hand to wave at someone via the rear view mirror.

  “Just don’t mention Miliband, Glasgow or the poor and you’ll be fine,” Dorian said lightly. “But whatever the topic he is still an insufferable arse.”

  “Great,” I sighed, “why didn’t you tell me that before we drove out here?”

  “I was afraid you’d bail out at the first zebra crossing.”

  “I wondered why you locked the doors when you told me about his driver.”

  Dorian laughed, and someone opened the rear passenger door.

  “About time. I’ve been bored off my tits waiting around for you,” boomed a posh voice with a determined effort to sound winsomely common. “Nowhere to get a decent cup of coffee either, just Costa muck. Not a proper coffee pot in sight.”

  I turned my head a little to look at him, and very nearly jumped out of my skin. It was one of those moments of unpleasant recognition, like when you’re having a really bad hair day, and you’ve thrown on tatty clothes just to run to the shops for loo roll, and you run into someone you recognise from school (always someone who was prettier and cleverer than you). The man in the back seat was the velvet jean and deep V t-shirt wearing bastard from the café. One of the three poshos who’d absconded without paying.

  Dorian interrupted his brother’s diatribe on the lack of kopi luwak on British café menus, (a good thing too as the mere mention of ‘cat poo coffee’ had me ready to strangle him on Will’s behalf).

  “Freddy, this is Annie, my wife.”

  Freddy (who had somehow managed to make the name Frederick Foffaney even more ridiculous) gave me a look that contained 0% recognition.

  “I thought she’d be blonde,” he sniffed, “all the other ones were blonde.”

  “Funnily enough hair colour didn’t really play a factor in our decision to wed,” Dorian said icily.

  “Why ever not? You know mother would go spare if you brought home some stranger with a common dye job,” Freddy cast disdainful eyes over my hair, “you did that yourself I trust?”

  “Yes,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “Shame, if it was a salon I’d suggest suing.” He took out a black cigarette and lit up without opening a window. The already powerful smell of smoke that clung to him was renewed to a vomit-making level. It smelt like a liquorish and tire factory had been oil bombed.

  “Why’re we in Fifi’s God-awful motor anyway? I thought you’d had the Aston shipped over.”

  “Why would I do that, Fifi’s car is perfectly fine.”

  Freddy just made a derisive (and phlegmy) noise.

  There was a lot to think about on that drive back to Bath. What kind of crazy posho family had I married into? Dorian apparently owned an Aston Martin. A person named Fifi Foffaney actually existed in the world. Dorian’s mother was some kind of dye job hating old bag. My mind was officially boggled.

  Thankfull
y, once he’d fumigated the car with cigarette smoke and made a few arsey comments about the quality of independent cinema in Germany (where he’d apparently been for the last few days for a retrospective of niche, hipsterish horror films, which all sounded less ‘niche’ and more ‘utter shite’) Freddy turned his gaze to the window and ignored us entirely.

  I hoped against hope that the other two poshos from the café were not blood relatives of my new husband, but I’ve never been that lucky.

  When we arrived at the Royal Crescent, I was instantly intimidated by the tall, sandstone buildings and the enormous manicured lawn that they embraced. Each door was identical and painted white. The buildings had pillars and sparkling windows, and the scent of money (proper, old English pound notes, not the rusty penny smell that haunted my own purse) rolled off of the precisely placed bricks and neatly trimmed trees.

  I stood beside the car, dizzy with nerves and excitement.

  “You’d think she’d never seen a house before,” Freddy remarked snidely and not-so-under-his-breath to Dorian.

  “You’d think no one ever taught you manners,” Dorian snapped back.

  Dorian rounded the car, put his arm around me and kissed me on the cheek, murmuring “you’ll be fine.”

  Freddy made his disdainful noise again and went up to the front door, stabbing a finger against the brass doorbell.

  A maid answered the door. An actual, honest-to-Paxman maid. I was disappointed to see that she wasn’t wearing a little lace-bordered cap and apron (she had on a pair of black trousers and a cream blouse under a black sleeveless jumper). Freddy stalked past her and into the entryway, then on, into the house. Dorian smiled at her and said “thank you, Janine, and how is Leo doing?”

  “Better. The doctor put him on antibiotics so he should be back in school soon.”

  “That’s good.”

  Dorian took off his coat and handed it to Janine, who hung it up. Underneath it Dorian was wearing an untucked white shirt over his black trousers (very Mr Darcy, my mum would definitely approve). Janine took my bag from me and tidied it into an antique wooden cabinet to our left.