Size Matters

by Judy Astley

  It was a difficult season to buy for. Late spring could be as freezing as February or as flaming as June. Delphine stalked ahead of Jay through the Harrods halls of designer wear, occasionally flicking a rail or two here and there and tutting at what she saw.

  ‘Should have brought you something from home,’ she said, dismissing with a sniff the top-flight couturiers of all Europe. Eventually, Jay persuaded her to go along to Harvey Nichols and guided her surreptitiously in the direction of the Ghost concession.

  ‘They’re doing the colour you’re looking for this season,’ she told Delphine. ‘I happen to know. Let’s just see if there’s anything . . .’

  And, oh joy, there was. Jay tried on a selection of peachy dresses and jackets till she found the perfect (to her) combination of bias-cut dress and an embroidered jacket that nipped in and out at the waist and had delicate fluted sleeves. For choice, she’d have gone for the dress in a less pound-enhancing colour but Delphine liked it though she tweaked and twitched at the fabric, hauled up the hem that trailed almost to the floor and deplored her cousin’s shortness, plumpness and general lack of posture.

  ‘It’s being a cleaner,’ Delphine said loudly. ‘All that stooping with a mop.’ The assistant, who’d been counting on a sale, tittered and went to help another customer, leaving the two women squaring up to each other in the changing room.

  ‘What’s wrong with cleaning?’ Jay demanded.

  ‘Nothing! Don’t get in an egg about it!’ Delphine said. ‘All I mean is . . . I know exactly what you need. Quick, get changed. You need to try this on with Magic Pants. We’ll go get some.’ Jay hauled the clothes off, handed them to Delphine who told the assistant to keep them for her, and allowed herself to be hustled down to the underwear department.

  ‘We’re supposed to go to Agent Provocateur,’ she told Delphine, reminded of Charles’s knicker request. Or did he want Delphine in a velvet basque? Or a pearly thong like a . . . lap dancer. Don’t even go there, she thought, as Delphine pointed her in the direction of some decidedly non-exotic pants.

  ‘I’ve got plenty of fancy underwear already, thanks,’ Delphine said, rifling through a rack of big, functional knickers.

  ‘There! That’s what you need under that dress!’ she declared, hauling out her choice. ‘They’ll take pounds off. It’ll make all the difference. Buy at least two pairs.’

  Well it was worth a shot, Jay thought, though she did wonder where the flesh actually went. Would it squelch over the top of the pants, or squidge unappealingly out beneath the legs? Or did it go inwards, pressing against her internal organs so that she absolutely wouldn’t be able to eat? If that was how they worked perhaps she should wear them all the time. Leaving no room for a fully functioning digestive system would certainly solve the problem of how much to eat. Putting even a tiny morsel of sustenance into her mouth would simply be out of the question.

  ‘So how’re you two getting on?’ April, on the phone, sounded gleeful for gossip.

  ‘OK, so far. The odd tetchy moment but we’re surviving,’ Jay told her sister. ‘Are you coming down for the do?’

  ‘Wouldn’t miss it for anything. I want to see how the Club King is with Delphine. Do you think he’s one of those people who has two completely separate lives?’

  Jay laughed. ‘Well if he does I hope he’s good at keeping them separate.’

  ‘Hey but,’ April sounded halfway serious, ‘don’t you think you should say something to her?’

  ‘Me? Are you mad? What could I say? “Oh, by the way Delphine, did you realize that bloke you’re marrying, he’s got an interest in the kind of dancing that would melt your collection of formation medals.” And suppose we’re wrong?’

  ‘Wrong? He’s inviting your cleaners to audition for him, how can we be wrong?’

  ‘True, true, but . . . Delphine’s happy. Maybe she always will be. How can we spoil it for her?’

  ‘How? Come on Jay, she’s spoiled things enough for you over the years . . .’

  ‘Yes . . . but that was then. Honestly, unless she does something really, really terrible then I’m not going to be vindictive.’

  ‘OK, your call. But I’d say . . .’ and April giggled, ‘I’d say that making you wear pale peach could arguably come under “really, really terrible” . . .’

  It was going OK so far. No real arguments, no more than a few fizzing comments. You weren’t sure till later if they were bitchy or not. Maybe that was what ten far-apart years had done to the two of them. Jay and Delphine had grown up enough to get on reasonably well together.

  Jay was conscious of trying hard. She cooked meal after meal, pulling out all the stops she’d got as if she had something to prove. She told herself she was just doing her best to be a good, welcoming hostess, but it was a strain. Even Greg had started wondering if it was ever going to be all right just to slob out with a takeaway Chinese again.

  Jay took Delphine to the Swannery to have a look round.

  ‘I can’t believe you’re moving into somewhere you’ve never seen!’ Jay said as they drove over there. ‘It seems odd that I’ve been inside and you haven’t. I wouldn’t have thought it was . . . well wait till you see it.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ Delphine said as they wandered from room to stylish, minimal room. ‘It needs warming up a bit. A lot more colour perhaps but . . . no clutter, no bits.’

  ‘I just wanted to ask you though . . . these paintings . . .’ Jay led her cousin up the metal spiral staircase to the office area. ‘Are they actually . . .’

  ‘Original? No,’ Delphine told her as she admired the Picasso. ‘Charles was married before, to an artist. She specialized in exact copies, for people who have to store the real things for insurance purposes. Sad really, I mean if you’ve got a genuine version but you have to hang up a fake, it sort of cancels out the pleasure of owning the real thing.’

  She looked out of the top window, down to the outside terrace that ran all the way along the length of the sitting-room windows. ‘The outside’s a bit bare too. I’m going to fill it with plants. Tubs and tubs of traditional English roses and bulbs.’

  ‘Not hanging baskets though.’ Jay couldn’t keep her voice from showing how appalled she felt at the thought. Win, whose garden was a hymn to concrete and gravel, was keen on hanging baskets (cats couldn’t dig in them and they didn’t need weeding). She bought four fully planted, ready-to-flower ones at the garden centre each spring, two for the front porch, two for the back door.

  ‘Oh I don’t know, I can just see it. Six mixed baskets of petunias and fuchsias. Multicoloured.’ She looked at Jay’s stricken face and laughed. ‘Joke! You don’t know me at all now, do you?’

  Probably not, Jay conceded privately, but, looking round this gloriously minimal place, she’d be willing to put money on it being up for sale within six months, during which Delphine would be wheeling Charles round a selection of plushly carpeted show homes out in the various small towns of Surrey.

  SEVENTEEN

  Swimming

  The girls were coping very well without her, Jay realized. Dishing the Dirt was at last functioning exactly as she and Barbara had always planned. Strange that it had taken the reappearance of Delphine for that to happen. Just shows, she thought, organization is the better part of method. Anya and Katinka really could run the show almost on their own; each one, for this couple of weeks, had been designated to be in charge of two other girls and simply get on with the job with no fuss, no problems. She was in charge, but from a distance. She was, at last, not having to be ‘hands on’ as Charles would so succinctly put it.

  Delphine had gone to the Registrar’s office, to make sure that all the relevant official details were intact. There was only so much you could do from Australia and by way of your future husband. She had to take her various documents along in person and had made Win feel useful by taking her along as well.

  Jay lay on the sofa, relishing being completely alone in her own home for a couple of hours. Daffodil
and Cicely were thumping about in the kitchen, miaowing a lot and bickering away over a catnip toy. Rory and Ellie were at school, Imogen was at a lecture and Greg was out at a site meeting. Just before lunch she and Delphine were due at the Body and Soul spa hotel a couple of miles away for a weekend of pampering and pre-wedding bodywork. She closed her eyes, relishing the absolute relaxation. Then the doorbell went. Pat from across the road was on the step, looking keyed up and eager-eyed.

  ‘Pat! Hi, how are you? We’re not on for an extra Conley class this morning are we?’

  ‘No, not that . . . you know what you said about painting the “k” out of my name on the old school wall?’

  ‘Yes . . . but . . .’

  ‘Well I’ve got the paint! And a day off! And I’ve checked with the caretaker, there’s no-one in the hall this morning. If you’ve got a spare half-hour . . .’

  And so here they were. Two properly grown-up, otherwise responsible women sneaking into council premises with Waitrose carrier bags that concealed brushes, gold paint and sandpaper.

  ‘If we were blokes no-one would bat an eyelid,’ Pat said, peering into her bag and searching for the right brush. ‘We should have overalls and a ladder, just to be on the safe side.’

  ‘We’re righting a wrong,’ Jay reassured her. ‘They can’t argue with that.’

  The two of them worked at the name. It wasn’t as easy as they’d first thought. Changing ‘Patrickia’ to ‘Patricia’ meant a lot of moving of letters. Somehow, over more than an hour’s careful concentration, they removed the ‘k’, then obliterated the ‘c’ and the ‘i’, replacing them carefully with the gold paint so they took up the right amount of space.

  ‘Not a bad morning’s work,’ Pat said, standing back and admiring their efforts. ‘We could almost set ourselves up as calligraphers.’

  ‘If there was any call for it that was at ground level. I’m not going up beyond first floor. But you’re right, it’s not bad at all.’ Jay agreed. ‘We’ve done you proud. But a whole morning – oh God.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Look at the time!’ Delphine would have been back at least half an hour. No-one was home. She’d be sitting on the doorstep fuming.

  And she was. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ Delphine said as Pat screeched up in her car and dropped Jay off. ‘I was only gone an hour and you didn’t think to leave a key, did you?’

  ‘Er . . . sorry about that. Been painting the local school hall.’

  ‘Oh, you do that as well, do you? I’ll keep you in mind for the flat. I’d love to see you up a twenty-foot ladder. That ceiling – I’d rather like it pink. Now – are we going to get ready for my wedding or not?’

  This was going to be harder than he’d thought. The house was full of people all the time. Mum had gone into domestic-efficiency overdrive in the days since Delphine had got here. She was either doing unusually fancy things with food or she and Delphine were all over the house surrounded with magazines, talking about wedding outfits and the best place to get shoes. And even if he had the place to himself he could hardly stash all this food away in the kitchen fridge. Someone was going to notice four boxes of Marks and Spencers chicken in white wine sauce, a big bag of rocket and Parmesan salad, two packs of dauphinois potatoes and four individual sticky toffee puddings. Worse than that, someone was very likely to eat them and then he’d be stuffed – this lot had cleaned out his bank account.

  In the end, after hiding the food under a rhododendron in the front garden where it would stay more safely chilled than if he hid it under his bed, he retrieved it quickly for fear of foxes and cats dragging it all out, and went down to the basement to see Imogen.

  ‘What’s it for?’ she asked, eyeing the contents of his carrier bags with a look that was too much like sheer greed.

  ‘I’m doing a sort of dinner. Not here, at someone else’s house. I just wanted it all to be out of . . . well out of Mum’s way, you know?’ He trusted she’d get it, understand that whatever he was up to she was being asked to keep it to herself. She knew what it was like – it wasn’t that long ago that she was starting to go out with Tristan and sneaking him into her bedroom at all hours of the night, and then out again before the house got under way in the mornings. He’d known about that and never told, and she knew it. She owed him.

  ‘OK. For Friday is it? Tris and me’ll try to keep our hands off it all, but you know, sticky toffee pud . . . well that’s going to be tempting.’

  ‘Oh Moggie, please just don’t, right?’

  She laughed. ‘Don’t panic. I’ll keep it safe for you. Hope she’s worth it.’

  Rory grinned at her, feeling embarrassed. ‘Oh she is. Well, I don’t know. I think she might be.’

  Oh God, Samantha looked fantastic. Rory didn’t think she was wearing a bra – how could she be with a halter-neck dress, unless it tied up round her neck and got tangled up with the dress-strap bits? If she was, and he was required (well he could dream) at some point to delve about inside the clothing, he hoped he’d be up to sorting out the underwear thing. The great naked swathe of skin on her back was just so gleaming and strokable he was finding it almost impossible to stop himself running his fingers across it. Shelley had, as Hal had so inelegantly put it, scrubbed up nice as well. She didn’t seem to mind his clumsy compliment and both girls had gone giggly and swung in towards each other as they laughed, the way they always did. Why did they do that, he wondered, as he slid the dish of chicken into the microwave? Why did they always lean against each other as if they might fall over? Or did they do it for effect? Their hair, both of them with plenty of the long blonde stuff, it sort of swung together for a moment, like something you just wanted to get hold of.

  ‘Fabulous place.’ Samantha wandered around, holding her glass of champagne and looking as if the flat was just made for her. She so fitted in. She’d so fit in if she was lying naked under the crisp white sheets on that huge bed. Then she said, ‘Whose is it?’

  Tricky one to answer, that. ‘Um . . . someone in the family.’ he shrugged. That would do. It wasn’t even a lie, well not exactly.

  ‘And don’t they mind you using it?’ Shelley chimed in. What was this, cross-examination time? Couldn’t they just sprawl on the sofas and look model-ish?

  ‘No, it’s cool. I told you.’

  Hal wasn’t saying much. He wandered round and had a look but then completely relaxed and just started in on the beer, seeming pretty much at home. That was the great thing about blokes, they didn’t have that stupid curiosity that girls had. Girls had to ask, had to probe, had to know every last bit about everything.

  ‘Can we smoke in here?’ Samantha asked, looking at the massive windows. ‘Or should we go out there?’

  Shit. One thing he hadn’t got, the key to the terrace doors. He wished he had, he really didn’t want to leave this place with the stench of fag in the air. That sort of thing stayed for ever. He’d have to look in the kitchen cupboards and find some air-freshener.

  ‘It’s fine,’ he had to tell Sam. ‘You can smoke in here, no problem.’

  They must be mad, Ellie thought. Completely stupid, stonking crazy. At first she’d thought it wasn’t true. It couldn’t be, Rory wouldn’t do anything as blatantly idiotic as that. But Tasha had that light in her eyes that always glowed when she was really believing the thing she was saying and there was no way Ellie could pretend to herself that they were wrong.

  ‘Everyone’s going,’ Tasha told her. ‘You have to come, it’ll be rad.’ And she did have to go. How else could she be sure they wouldn’t just wreck the place? She felt responsible, even though she told herself she definitely wasn’t. She tried to phone Rory but he’d turned his mobile off. She could, she thought, just stay at home, watch telly and go to bed. Homework was a possibility even, but no way would she be able to concentrate on it, not while she knew what was going on out there, this party up at the Swannery. Good thing Mum and Delphine had gone to the spa for the night, otherwise she’d have felt she ought to tell them. She wouldn�
�t have wanted to but she’d have felt she should and she’d have spent all evening being twitchy, waiting for the disaster that would have to happen and then the disappointed fallout. Instead, there was only Dad to deal with.

  ‘All right if I go round Amanda’s?’ she said casually over their pizza supper (which she could hardly eat).

  ‘Sure. Want a lift?’ Greg asked.

  ‘Nah, ’sfine. I’ll get the bus.’ He wouldn’t argue – there was football on Sky. He’d mentioned it that morning when he’d told Jay and Delphine that he wouldn’t have time to miss them.

  Ellie raced out of the house and round the corner before her dad got the chance to look out of the window and see that she was heading the wrong way if she really was going to Amanda’s. She wondered if she should have dressed up a bit. But what was the point? She was on her way to stop the party, not to join it.

  Side by side on loungers by the pool, Jay and Delphine lay wrapped in warm towelling robes and sipping champagne.

  ‘This is bliss,’ Jay murmured, closing her eyes. She almost wanted to swim but they couldn’t for another half-hour, till the fabulously expensive gloop plastered all over their faces had taken effect, knocked the promised ten years off them and been absorbed for a lasting assurance of money well spent.

  ‘Wonderful,’ Delphine agreed. ‘And so was the aromatherapy massage this afternoon and the pedicure. My toes are still tingling.’

  ‘And tomorrow – what have you got first? I’m on for an anti-cellulite holly and lime wrap at nine thirty.’

  ‘I haven’t got cellulite – I’m going for the Pilates class.’

  ‘What do you mean you haven’t got cellulite? Everyone our age has cellulite.’ Maybe she doesn’t know what it is, Jay thought. Surely every woman over twelve has got it? Just a little bit? She should have hung onto those patches, shown her what they were for.

  ‘Not me. It just seemed to . . . well it passed me by, that one.’ Delphine was adamant.

  We can’t argue about cellulite, that would be juvenile, Jay thought, finishing the last of her champagne. It would be really juvenile. It isn’t important. This sort of thing doesn’t matter at all.