by Ali Harris
I raise my wine glass to toast her new job and take a sip. She’s so happy. I don’t want to spoil it by saying that I’m not sure working in a club environment is going to be the best place for her.
‘Now, how about you get changed and we go out and check out the competition? I can call it research!’
‘What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?’ I say, gesturing at my ankle-length black dress and boots that I wore to work today.
‘Let’s be honest, what’s right with it? You’re twenty-two and you’re dressed like a nun!’
‘Freya, the fashion editor, says this is very fashionable right now, actually Case! Long is the new short, you know.’
Casey adopts a posh voice. ‘But “Fraiya the Fashion Editah” doesn’t live in Essex, does she? Come on,’ she pleads. ‘Get out those fantastic legs of yours, put on some heels and let’s go clubbing! Come on, it’ll be a laugh, just like the old days, you know, when you used to be fun . . . ’
The Bittersweet Kiss
Just like creative people always say you only remember criticism not praise, I’ve discovered that in times of distress it’s the bad things that stay with you longer than the good. Just like I could (will) never shake that bad first kiss between Ryan and I, now I can’t shake the bad memories. It’s so bloody frustrating. All I can think about are the arguments I started, the times I nagged him unnecessarily, or administered one of my stony silences when he’d done something to annoy me. They’re all there, etched on my brain. I’m like a self-harming teenager: I know I should stop, but I don’t want to. Each pain-inducing memory feels good, like I deserve all of this because really, I didn’t ever deserve him.
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I squeal as The Verve’s ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’ comes on in the student union bar and accidentally spill my Snakebite over my Converses.
‘I blurrey LOVE this song, girls!’ I slur, throwing my arms around Casey and Mia.
‘Thanks for coming down, Case and makin’ my nineteenth birthday so brilliant! It jus’ wouldn’t have been the shame without you!’ I lift up my camera and take a snap of the three of us above our heads as I know it’s always a more flattering shot. Especially when you’ve drunk as much as we have. Then I close my eyes, throw my hands in the air and begin to jump up and down. Although this proves to be hard as my trainers keep sticking to the beer-soaked floor and my drink keeps slopping over me. I open my eyes again. All around me students with long hair, wearing dark baggy clothes and with extra bags under their eyes, are dotted around. I fit in here. For the first time I belong. Only my friends seem to stick out. Casey in her black PVC miniskirt and baby-pink T-shirt and Mia, my new best mate who I met here on the very first night. She is wearing a white tailored shirt with black crease-fronted, boot-cut trousers and pointed red Karen Millen boots. We literally couldn’t look more different if we tried.
I wave at Mia and she lifts her white wine and shakes her blonde Posh Spice-inspired bob.
‘Chin chin!’ she laughs.
‘Hey, Mi,’ I shout, staggering forward a little.
‘I’m hot!’ she yells. In her posh voice it comes out ‘haught’.
‘WHAT?’ Casey shouts but we ignore her.
‘Yes, it is a soupçon too hot in here, isn’t it what!’ I shout back, hamming up her posh accent. She puts down her wine and comes over and we look at each other before shouting, ‘No, I’M hot!’ and then crack up laughing. Mia is holding her sides, practically on the floor with laughter.
Mia was the first person I met in the student union six weeks ago and I was instantly drawn to her. She stood reading Vogue at the bar, clutching a gin and tonic. I walked up to her, ordered myself a vodka and Coke and then turned to her. Before I could say a word she waved her hand across her face and said, ‘I’m hot.’
‘Yes, it is a bit hot in here, isn’t it?’ I’d politely replied, not knowing quite where to take the conversation, my social skills still being somewhat underdeveloped.
Then she beamed at me, a full-throttle, gleaming Mia mega-watt smile and said, ‘No, I’m hot,’ and then we both burst out laughing, the ice well and truly broken.
Six weeks on and it’s our signature saying – and is now accompanied by a waggly-armed chicken dance.
Casey looks at us both blankly and then shrugs before striding off. When we’ve finished embarrassing ourselves Mia goes to pick up her drink.
‘Hey, it’s gone!’ she says. And then she looks across the room and sees Casey has got her face attached to the guy Mia was flirting with earlier – and she’s holding Mia’s wine glass out like a trophy over his shoulder.
‘That girl is trouble, you know,’ Mia says darkly, and goes to the bar.
Mia’s not as ice-maidenlike as she can appear. She’s fun to be around but she is a force to be reckoned with, too. She’s an only child like me, and her parents are both successful lawyers, so she was brought up by a series of nannies. She only hears from her parents about once a month but it doesn’t seem to bother her. She’s got a long-term boyfriend at home but she lost interest in him soon after we got here.
‘I’m too young to be tied to one man – unless it’s in bed,’ she said to me on the Sunday morning at the end of Freshers’ week, when we were lying on mine watching Ruth snog Kurt Benson in Hollyoaks. ‘From now on I’m going to have my men how I have my alcohol . . . ’
‘Um, short and straight up?’ Mia likes hardcore liquor, no mixers for her. She’s always the one downing tequila shots at the bar – and still standing at the end of the night.
‘Nope. Try again.’ She smiles.
‘Er, on the rocks . . . and with a twist?’ I say again.
‘No, Molly,’ she’d added with a sassy smile, ‘super-strong and disposed of in seconds. In fact,’ she says, sitting up, ‘I think I’m going to phone him right now and tell him it’s over between us.’
‘Are you sure?’ I’d said, pulling my ancient The Smiths T-shirt over my crossed knees. ‘I mean you’ve been together three years, you lost your virginity to him.’
She’d looked at me with a wide-eyed, innocent gaze. ‘Oh yes,’ she’d said emphatically. ‘I always knew it wasn’t going to be forever.’ And she’d picked up her Nokia 6160 and curled her feet underneath her as she quickly struck her fatal blow to her first ever relationship.
I was shocked, but I related to her emotional detachment too. Not with any actual relationship experience – I hadn’t had a boyfriend yet – but I felt the same about the guy I’d lost my virginity to, aged sixteen. It was utterly premeditated on my part and utterly crap too.
The problem is, I haven’t quite got around to going there again either. I mean obviously I had plenty of opportunities during Freshers’ week, but after being so reckless that first time, I thought maybe this time, you know, I’d try saving it for someone who I actually like.
I spot him across the room staring at me as I’m trying to restrain Mia from pulling Casey by her hair off the guy she’s snogging. A tall, reed-thin, dark-haired Richard Ashcroft lookalike leaning against the wall, cigarette dangling out of his mouth, his skinny arms hanging down almost to his knees. His eyes are blue, bright blue, and his lips, whilst thinner than I’d like, are really nicely defined. He waves at me, well, either that or he is clearing a viewing hole through his sheet of middle-parted greasy hair and then looks down, another big clump of his hair falling over his eyes again. Fuelled by alcohol and my newly found confidence of being a proper grown-up 19-year-old university student, I nudge Mia and mouth, ‘Watch this,’ and then I stumble over towards him, swinging my hips whilst pulling up my charity-shop-bought, satin mini dress so that it reveals the holes in my tights, and pulling down my sleeves on my sloppy mohair jumper so that it falls off my shoulder.
We don’t talk for long. Only enough to exchange names (‘Marcus’ – but he pronounces it Marcoos), where we’re from (him: Buckinghamshire, me: London – I just couldn’t bear to say Essex), A-level results (me: three As – I know, so much for
rebelling, huh?, him: three Bs), and our degree courses (me: Photography, him: Fine Art). Then he bends his neck down to get to my face level, which is hard, given our height difference, kind of like a pelican trying to get a fish, and he kisses me.
It’s a curious sensation. Curious because for those five minutes when I saw him, approached him and then talked to him, I really, really fancied him. He’s just my type, according to the list I’d drawn up before I came here:
Things I Want From a Boyfriend
• Clever
• Cool
• Not from Essex (V. IMPORTANT)
• Must have nice lips
• Blue eyes
• Not be emotionally retarded
• Or culturally challenged
But his kiss is disappointing, not because it’s bad, but more because this image of Ryan Cooper pops into my head, and I feel like I’m being haunted by this memory of him kissing me in The Grand. And even though it was terrible and humiliating, I can’t help but wish that Marcus was him. Which is unbelievably annoying. Seriously, I haven’t thought about the guy for weeks. Well, days anyway. Apart from earlier when we were at the bar getting drinks and Casey mentioned that she’s seen him around town with his little boy band of merry men. Well, she mentioned it because I casually asked . . .
‘Aha,’ she’d said, her green eyes glittering as she sipped from her bottle of Hooch whilst simultaneously staking out the room for prey. ‘Still thinking about Ryan Cooper, even though you’re surrounded by all this fresh meat?’
‘Uh, like yeah right, no!’ I’d said defensively.
‘So you’re not interested to know that he asked after you when I saw him down at Tots the other night.’
‘Did he?’ I’d replied, nearly dropping my cider.
‘Only to try and get closer to me though, obviously,’ Casey had laughed wickedly and winked. ‘I mean, what guy can resist the charms of Casey Georgiou!’
And these days, it’s true. Casey, in true 80s chick-flick makeover style has gone all gorgeous. Last summer, the weight fell off and her Greek genes finally kicked in. Here at uni, where (apart from Mia) we’re all washed-out white, weary and wearing black, she is like a ray of sunshine. If Mia and I are ‘hot’, she’s sizzling.
And according to her, I can’t get enough of Ryan Cooper – even though I’m kissing someone else. Clearly I need to up the action to really get him out of my head once and for all.
I grab Marcus by the hand. ‘C’mon,’ I murmur. ‘Let’s get out of here.’ He doesn’t complain.
I wish I could say the earth had just moved for me in my halls bedroom but as I lie here, flat on my back being spooned by Marcoos, I think I’ve discovered the hard way that a posh arty type doesn’t necessarily make the best lover. It’s all been longing, heartfelt gazes and not enough action. Not nearly enough action, actually. I lift my wrist up and glance at my watch. God, did it last eight minutes? It didn’t feel as long as that. Oh no, hang on, the bit when he cried probably made it feel longer.
I look up at the upside-down image of John Lennon coiled around Yoko Ono pinned above my headboard, and then sideways at Marcus. His pale, skinny, shuddering body is wrapped around me and I watch as his breathing evens and slows and he falls asleep with his mouth open like a singing choirboy’s. I lie there, stiff as a board, wondering if I might have met the John to my Yoko and just not realized it. Maybe I should give him another chance? The passion might not be there yet but he ticks all the other things on my list. And he has had a hard time lately. His parents broke up while he was doing his A levels (which is why he only got Bs, he said) and they had to sell their French ski lodge to help pay for the divorce.
Oh Puhlease. Who am I kidding?
I look up again, not at Yoko and John but this time at my Before Sunrise poster. But instead of Ethan Hawke, all I can see is Ryan sodding Cooper. I think of our first – and last – kiss.
The Lost Kiss
‘A discarded kiss is a moment of love lost forever.’ (Molly Carter, today)
Imagine if you counted the kisses you’ve thrown away. You know, when you’ve presented your cheek instead of your lips, rolled over in bed after an argument, ran out the door without time for a goodbye. Annoyingly, when you’re not together any more those are the kisses you always remember. So many missed kisses – where do they go? I imagine them as a collection of crosses in the sand; a kiss graveyard full of buried treasure. Some stolen, some lost or overlooked, some carelessly thrown away, all waiting to be found.
FF>> 05/04/03>
I fling my bag down on my desk, take off my leather biker jacket and loosen the tasselled scarf I’ve wrapped around my neck before starting up my computer. The big, usually bustling office is eerily empty. Stripped of the fashionable people, music and gossip streaming through it, it suddenly occurs to me how grey, dingy and office-y it is.
I settle down at my desk and luxuriate in the silence. I don’t get much of it these days and I realize how much I miss it. Apart from my commute, I’m literally never on my own and standing in a packed train doesn’t really count as ‘me time’. So this is actually a treat for me. No one gets in to work before 9.30 a.m. at Viva so I know I’ve got the place to myself for at least an hour before my car comes. I’ve got an important celebrity cover shoot today – my biggest creative challenge since becoming picture editor nine months ago – at a studio in Kentish Town, and I wanted to come in to the office first to make sure I’m properly prepared. Suddenly I’m slammed by my younger self, berating me.
So bor-ing, Molly Carter! What happened to the girl who wasn’t going to conform? It’s like we’ve turned into MUM.
I haven’t! I haven’t turned into Mum. I look at my reflection in the mirror.
A scarf, Molly! I mean, seriously?
It’s a silk designer scarf! I reply in my head defensively. From a sample sale!
Designer schminer. Next you’ll be wearing it around your head.
I pull it off, feeling hot all of a sudden and I grab my Pret A Manger latte, taking a long sip while I’m waiting for my computer to start up, hoping the caffeine will work its rejuvenating powers on me quickly.
Coffee, Molly? We HATE coffee! It tastes rank, we’ve always said so!
I put it down and rub my eyes. It was so hard getting up at the crack of dawn this morning, leaving Ryan snoring contentedly in bed, but it’s an all too regular occurrence these days. I went to kiss him on the lips but he rolled over, grunted what I think was a goodbye, and sunk back under the duvet and into a deep slumber. He has this incredible ability to barely stir when I leave the house these days. Six months ago we’d manage breakfast, or at least a cup of tea in bed before I left and definitely a kiss (we swore we’d never say goodbye or goodnight without one). But his increased workload and my recent early starts have meant that this has fallen by the wayside. I miss them, I feel a bit lost without them. Without it I find that my morning cloud takes longer to lift and I don’t function as well. It’s weird to think that one person can be the sole arbitrator of your happiness. But he’s totally the umpire in our love match; the only person who can calm me down no matter how close to the baseline my mood has swung. He can make me feel like a champion when my confidence has taken a knock. He lifts me over the net whenever I’m feeling low. He—
Sport metaphors, Molly? We hate sport! We can’t hit a ball or catch one! We’ve never picked up a tennis racket in our life!
As I wait for my computer to start up, I resist the urge to phone him. He’ll be cycling to work now anyway. Sometimes I don’t think he appreciates how hard commuting is. He has it so easy in comparison. Mind you, I do get a nice home-cooked meal every night when I get home, so – as Casey keeps telling me – I don’t have much to complain about. He really is the perfect guy. Well, except for the snoring. And the relentless channel hopping. Last night I swear we watched four programmes simultaneously. Oh, and his socks, which he leaves everywhere.
I put thoughts of Ryan out of my mind and g
lance down at the call sheet resting on my desk, and take a deep breath to steady my nerves. This is going to be the most stressful day I’ve ever had at Viva. It’s my first big project since Christie promoted me to picture editor. We’re photographing eight new stars for a gatefold ‘Next Big Thing’ cover for our bumper August issue. The entertainment team have managed to secure the biggest new young names in music, film and TV and I’ve spent the last month liaising with their PRs to get them all in the same studio, on the same day and at the same time. Which, as anyone who has ever dealt with a celebrity will know, is no mean feat. To be honest, much as it all sounds glamorous, it’s the least favourite part of my job. I much prefer shooting real women who have achieved something or overcome some kind of odds. They’re the people who should be inspiring a generation of women, not a load of vacuous celebs. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt genuinely overawed by women we’ve photographed who have set up businesses, overcome health scares, helped others or started campaigns. The women who have done something worthwhile. And I like to think I’m good at making them feel comfortable in front of the camera. I love watching them relax, dropping their guards and their insecurities for me and the photographer. I can’t deny I wish it were me taking the pictures but, for now, I’m learning. On shoots I’m always soaking up what the photographer is doing as much as I am doing my own job. Sometimes it’s hard to be standing so close to my dream, but I know I’m lucky to be getting such practical experience. Anyway, because of this shoot I’ve come into work at the crack of dawn most days and have been staying late for weeks now, dealing with location changes, celebs dropping out, trying to get them back in, securing the best photographer, having meetings with Seb, the art director, and Christie about the concept. Fingers crossed the hard work will be worth it. That’s what I keep telling myself anyway, when my stress levels keep rising. I know Seb was particularly dubious about me being at the helm. He’s this really cool, experienced guy, but he’s also the silent, brooding type. I think he saw me as a glorified work experience and I’ve had to work really hard to gain his approval. But I think I’ve proved that what I lack in experience I make up for in creativity and dedication. And we’ve bonded over our joint hatred of the office music (we both love Jeff Buckley and Radiohead) and he’s been telling me about some recent exhibitions he’s been to see. I realize I might have misjudged Seb a bit. He’s not up his own arse and aloof, he’s just less . . . people-person-y than I’m used to.