‘Shit,’ Leanne hisses into Julie’s ear. ‘What’s she doing here?’
The party hasn’t gone well so far. One of the waitresses – they are all wearing themed outfits, although Julie can’t tell what the theme is – has tripped over, dropped a tray of canapés, sprained her ankle and had to be taken to Casualty by one of the cocktail waiters. Chantel’s mother has had to start handing things out herself. A DJ organised by Leanne hasn’t shown up. And now Charlotte’s walked in wearing a long lacy skirt, a bra top, a fake-snakeskin jacket and an old pair of Dunlop tennis shoes. By the look on Leanne’s face, her arrival is the biggest setback so far.
Everyone is mingling in the new sitting room – redecorated by Chantel’s mother and the man in turquoise who’s been hanging around Windy Close the last week or so. The old sitting room had just a sofa, a couple of armchairs, a mantelpiece, a stereo and a TV. The new one has a leather floor, a water feature, a curved, waiting-room-style seating arrangement, also in leather; some hanging shelves with glass ornaments, plants sitting in coloured glass rather than earth, and silver blinds.
‘Hey, Jules,’ says Charlotte, walking over.
‘Hiya,’ says Julie.
Leanne sighs loudly.
‘Hello, Leanne,’ says Charlotte.
‘How did she know about the party?’ Leanne hisses.
‘Julie invited me,’ says Charlotte.
On the far side of the room, a large man is setting up a karaoke machine. Meanwhile, someone’s put Smash Hits Mix ’97 on the large silver CD player, and in the centre of the large room, some little girls in sparkly dresses and big earrings are dancing to ‘Wannabe’ by the Spice Girls, bouncing on the leather floor, doing a routine that must have taken hours to work out.
‘Who are they?’ Charlotte asks.
‘Cousins and stuff, I think,’ Julie says. ‘From Dagenham.’
‘You’d better not cause any trouble,’ Leanne says to Charlotte.
‘Which one’s Chantel’s mum?’ Charlotte asks Julie.
Julie looks around. ‘I’m not sure,’ she says. ‘I don’t really know what she looks like.’
‘There’s her,’ says Leanne, pointing to a slim woman with a blonde bob, a black dress and a plate of prawn dim-sum. ‘But don’t talk to . . .’
Charlotte walks off in the direction of Chantel’s mother.
‘For God’s sake,’ Leanne says to Julie. ‘She’s so going to mess everything up.’
Julie smiles. ‘She won’t. She’s just winding you up.’
‘She’d better be.’
As Julie predicted, Charlotte doesn’t talk to Chantel’s mum at all. Instead, she takes a dim-sum from the silver tray, then walks straight past her and out of the sitting room.
‘See,’ says Julie. ‘She’s just winding you up.’
‘Hmmm.’ Leanne sips some white wine. ‘How’s Luke?’
‘He’s fine. You know. Normal.’
‘Upset that he can’t come to the party?’
‘No, not really. He’s used to it.’
‘I suppose he is. Oh – there’s David.’ She waves. ‘Hi, sexy.’
David comes over. ‘Where’s Chantel?’ he asks.
‘Dunno,’ Leanne says. ‘Maybe she’s still getting ready.’
‘How are you feeling?’ Julie asks David.
He gives her a shut-your-mouth look. ‘Fine,’ he says. ‘How about you?’
‘See!’ says Leanne. ‘I knew there was something going on between you two.’
‘Leanne!’ says Julie.
‘Fucking hell,’ says David. ‘Jesus.’
‘You do fancy each other, though, don’t you?’ says Leanne.
‘No,’ says Julie and walks off.
The kitchen, like everything else in the house, is different. A long time ago, Julie used to come in here to cook Findus Crispy Pancakes with Charlotte. She would stand there trying not to get in the way or be noticed, while Charlotte got in Mark’s mum’s way – usually on purpose – making a mess. When Charlotte and Mark lived here they paid board to Mark’s mum in the form of small amounts of cash and large amounts of housework. They cooked for themselves because food wasn’t part of the deal. They had their own half-shelf in the fridge, a corner of the coffin-style freezer and their own plates, mugs and glasses in half of the highest cupboard in the kitchen. They did their own shopping most of the time although sometimes Mark was allowed to add a few items to his mother’s list. Charlotte never was. If Charlotte was working, or away, Mark’s mother would cook for him – some ‘it’s your favourite’ extravaganza involving frozen peas and gravy – as if he’d been away for a long time, possibly in the wilderness, and had just returned home. At that time Charlotte never seemed to eat anything but microwave food and Findus Crispy Pancakes.
Even Julie would eat Findus Crispy Pancakes – not that she’s eaten them since Charlotte left – and after they were cooked, she and Charlotte would take them into the garden where they’d sit on the grass by the pond and break them in half, opening their mouths wide to catch the long strands of melted cheese. Charlotte, as always, was less inhibited than Julie, who always looked for wasps and wished she was inside. But it was still fun; more so as a nostalgic reflection than at the time, of course. The past is always more fun for Julie than the present. The one thing Julie knows she’ll always survive is the past.
In those days the kitchen floor was tiled in mint-coloured lino, and powered by practical, function-over-form white goods – a fridge, kettle, microwave, chip fryer and toaster that looked like they had been entirely moulded from the same piece of cheap plastic. But now these items have been replaced with expensive-looking chrome versions. The fridge looks like a spaceship or some kind of nuclear weapon. The kitchen surfaces are now finished in marble, and the breakfast bar – which Mark’s family used as a place to store letters, old copies of the Daily Mail and seedlings – is now a tasteful collage of tiny silver-and-white tiles.
Chantel’s mother is poking around in the fridge and a waiter has just left the kitchen with a tray of drinks. Julie suddenly gets the feeling that this kitchen is out of bounds; that this isn’t one of those parties where you help yourself to beer from the fridge and hang around listening to people talk about drugs, sex and how the party’s so crap and embarrassing and the music so shit that they have to stand in the kitchen to get away from it. Julie’s head is starting to spin. It’s raining hard outside again.
‘Are you all right, love?’ Chantel’s mother says to her. ‘Are you lost?’
‘Oh, sorry . . . No. I was looking for . . . It doesn’t matter.’
Chantel’s mother shuts the fridge and walks over to Julie.
‘Are you sure you’re OK, love?’
Julie grabs the breakfast bar with both hands. She can see she’s leaving fingerprints on the little tiles but that doesn’t really matter now she’s dying. Her head feels like it’s swelling. Oh, shit. Her hands go numb, then her forearms, then her neck.
She tries to smile at Chantel’s mother, pretending that nothing’s wrong.
I’m not dying. I can smile. If I can still keep up appearances, I’m OK.
‘Sit down, love, come on, at the table.’
But she thinks I’m ill. Maybe I look bad. I must look bad, and this is going to be it. Is this a brain haemorrhage? What should my last thought be?
‘Come on, love.’
I want my mum. I want my mum. I want my mum.
‘Would you like a glass of water?’
Julie shakes her head. She sits down at the table and puts her head in her hands, her eyes closed. Everything’s still spinning and the music from the other room sounds like it’s been slowed down or distorted. Still keeping her head down, she runs her sweaty fingers through her hair.
‘I’ll make you a nice cup of tea, then.’
The dying feeling starts to pass, but Julie’s still shaking. Now that she’s not dying, she notices how much she’s shaking, and she feels stupid, and washed out, and exhausted. I’m not going to die, she thinks. Then she thinks: touch wood. And then she does – she touches her little wooden lion keyring that she’s had since she was about ten or maybe longer: she had it when her family first moved to Windy Close. It doesn’t even look like a lion any more, it’s been touched so many times.
Julie doesn’t believe in fate but she started the touch wood thing before she realised that. And it’s always worked, which makes it almost scientific. Then again Julie isn’t into that sort of science. Not since she learnt about Bertrand Russell’s Inductivist Turkey. Just because you observe something happening the same way over a period of time doesn’t mean it’s always going to happen that way. The turkey thought because he was fed every morning at nine a.m. he always would be. And he was, until Christmas Eve. Still, Julie’s carried on touching wood because it makes her feel better, and because it takes her mind off feeling like she’s going to die. In that sense, it does work.
Chantel’s mother puts a cup of tea in front of Julie, along with a sugar bowl.
‘I’m Nicky, by the way.’
‘Thanks,’ says Julie, putting two sugars in the tea.
‘This must be weird for you. It must look so different in here . . . I heard you had to move out in difficult circumstances. I heard . . . Well, Chantel’s not supposed to know, but I found out about what happened here. You poor love.’
‘Oh, God . . .’ Julie realises that Nicky thinks she’s Charlotte. How embarrassing. Nicky thinks she’s upset because she’s Charlotte, and Charlotte has every reason to be upset, and Julie doesn’t have any reason and . . . ‘I’m sorry. I . . . I’m not . . .’
Nicky frowns. ‘You used to live here. Your boyfriend . . .’
‘No. That’s Charlotte. I live at number 18, down the road. I’m Julie.’
‘Oh. So . . . ?’
‘I’m sorry. I just wasn’t feeling very well. I was looking for Charlotte, actually. We’re friends. I just, sort of, um . . .’
‘You’re not on, you know . . .’
‘Drugs? No!’
‘Is it like an anxiety thing?’
Julie looks down at the table. ‘Maybe.’
‘It could be an iron deficiency,’ says Nicky. ‘You look pale.’
‘Could an iron deficiency make me feel dizzy and weird?’
‘Oh yeah, definitely. You should get it checked out.’
‘I will.’
‘Unless . . . You’re not pregnant, are you?’
‘I don’t think so.’ Julie sips some tea. ‘No. Definitely not.’
Nicky raises an eyebrow. ‘Definitely not?’
‘Definitely.’ Julie smiles. ‘Unless it was by osmosis.’
Nicky laughs. ‘Maybe you just need to get laid, then, love.’
Her laugh sounds like she just smoked a hundred fags, one after the other.
Julie laughs too. ‘Yeah, that’s what Leanne always says.’
‘Bless her. She thinks everything can be cured by sex or a manicure.’
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘Has she told you much about us? We didn’t used to be rich, you know. We lived in a bungalow that wasn’t much more than a shack, really, before we came here. One day Leanne came to visit – she only ever came once; no one ever came more than once – and she took one look at the place and our horrible rugs and how we had a goat inside, and she rushed straight out to the car for her manicure kit. “It’ll cheer you up,” she said. But that’s Leanne for you. She’ll never talk about her feelings or do anything that makes her uncomfortable, or do anything practical like washing up or ironing – but she’ll give you a manicure at the point when you’re so depressed you don’t care if your hands fall off. It did make me feel better, though. What? What have I said?’
Julie’s smiling. She likes Nicky. ‘A goat? In the house?’
‘Billy. Yeah, well, he didn’t like the cold. Rob, my ex – it was his goat. Rob used to live in a caravan,’ she explains. ‘They all had goats. Billy used to like cigarette-ends. He used to eat them when they were still alight. Ate the curtains – which was a good job, really; they were horrible – and anything you put on the washing line. In fact, even if it was warm it was better to keep him indoors so he couldn’t eat the washing. Washing out: goat in. Washing in: goat out. You get systems going in these situations.’ Nicky sips her tea thoughtfully. ‘I’ll bloody miss that goat.’
‘This is a really nice house,’ Julie says.
Nicky looks around as if she’s seeing it for the first time. ‘Do you like it? Yeah, I suppose it’ll grow on me.’
‘Don’t you like it?’
‘Yeah, of course. It’s lovely. I think I’m just a bit overwhelmed by it all. It’s too nice, almost. I mean, when Chan won the money, I was like, Oh my God, new curtains. But I never expected this. I’ll have to get used to living near my sister again, though. Might be a bit tricky. Me and Michelle don’t see eye to eye on everything.’
Karaoke’s started in the sitting room. Nicky pops a pill in her mouth and washes it down with her tea as someone sings the last few lines of ‘Angels’ by Robbie Williams. There’s some clapping, then the first few bars of another song. Oh, God, it’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. That means . . . Yep. The next thing Julie can hear is Charlotte’s voice, low, rasping and desperate, and several people shouting for her to shut up.
It’s nice in the kitchen. The red Aga is warm. One of the cats is sitting on it, slightly wet, just in from the rain. Little lights illuminate the work surfaces. It feels like Christmas in here. Julie realises she’s taking up Nicky’s time and Nicky is probably only talking to her because she’s worried – and because she thought Julie was Charlotte – and that the polite thing to do would be to go back to the party and let Nicky get on with whatever she was doing.
Julie gets up and puts her mug in the sink. Nicky gets up too.
‘Thanks for the tea,’ Julie says.
‘Are you feeling better now?’
‘Yes thanks.’
‘Well you can help me clingfilm these, then,’ Nicky says. There are various plates on the breakfast bar; each one has a few sweaty-looking canapés left on it. ‘These’ll do for tea tomorrow. And then I want to show you something upstairs.’
The bedroom is fluffy and clean. It makes Julie feel sleepy. She sits on the edge of the peaches-and-cream bed and the cotton is so crisp she just wants to rub her face in it, and roll on it, and breathe the clean, new smell forever.
‘Here,’ Nicky says. She hands Julie a photograph. ‘That’s me.’
Julie doesn’t know what to say. ‘It doesn’t look like you. Wow.’
The thing in the picture looks like it’s on its way to suck up a small American town in a fifties B-movie. It looks barely human – let alone like Nicky.
Nicky looks proud. ‘Know how old I was then?’
Julie shakes her head. ‘How old?’
‘Fifteen. Two years before I had Chantel.’
‘God. You look twice that. This is incredible.’ Julie’s only recently understood diet-photo etiquette. It’s OK to say the person looks like a fat blob, as long as the picture’s pretty old, and they’ve had such a dramatic weight loss it’s impossible for them to ever gain that weight again.
‘Mad, isn’t it? Little me, used to look like that.’
‘Wow.’
‘Keep that,’ Nicky says.
‘Keep it? Thanks. I mean . . . Why?’
No one’s ever asked Julie to actually keep one of their diet photos before.
Nicky laughs. ‘I like you. Look, I’m giving you this to remind you of what I’m going to tell you now. Right? Now look – I did this. I went from that to this and it wasn’t easy but I did it. And I’m not exactly Miss Willpower. I drink. I smoke. I went out with a dodgy bloke who treated me like shit for years, so I’m far from perfect. But I solved the biggest problem in my life because I decided to. You can do that too.’
‘How do you know I’ve . . . I’m . . .?’ Julie asks.
‘You virtually collapsed in my kitchen, remember? And you’re not ill, are you?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’ Julie pauses. ‘No, I’m not.’
‘You’re fat, just like I was.’
Julie looks down at her stick arms and stick legs. ‘Thanks,’ she says, smiling.
‘Not fat with weight, but fat with anxiety, problems.’ Nicky taps her head. ‘It’s all in there. I’ve seen it before. So you take this photo and you remember that you’re as fat as I was, just not with weight but with fear. And you’re going to get rid of it all, just like I did.’
To be normal. To be thin and normal and attractive and have no baggage . . . For what? To be normal, so you can go to normal pubs and have normal experiences and dodgy blokes can fuck you and use you because you’re so pretty and normal and they just want to break you? Nicky looks like a Barbie doll that’s been barbecued, or put in the oven, slightly small and burnt, like you’d run out of Shrinky-Dinks and just done Barbie instead, because you fucking hated her and wanted to hurt her, and melt her perfect plastic skin . . . But Nicky’s nice, and what she’s saying not only makes sense, it’s also probably the most profound thing Julie’s heard all year. But Nicky would have been just as nice if she was fat.
‘How did you lose it?’ Julie asks. ‘The weight, I mean.’
‘Slim-Fast,’ Nicky says. ‘Milkshakes. It was easy.’
‘Shame you can’t get those for fear,’ Julie says.
Nicky laughs. ‘I like you,’ she says again. ‘You’re funny. Now, let’s go and find Chantel. I haven’t seen her for hours.’