They drove back from Dorset late at night, and Amy fell asleep in the back of the car, her head lolling on the Irish ex–pop star’s shoulder. She occasionally woke with a start to find her mouth hanging open and quickly closed it and dropped off again. When they pulled into her street it was past midnight and she barely had the energy to utter her good-byes.
Needless to say, another Monday morning found her feeling less than raring to go. But she tugged herself from bed and by nine o’clock was picking at a flapjack and diet Coke behind her desk. She was doodling ideas for a feature on Council Estate Glamour when the phone rang. In her best Judi Dench voice she leaped to answer it.
“Hello, fashion.” What a ridiculous thing to say.
“Amy, it’s me. Cath. Where were you this weekend, you dirty dropout?”
Her stomach plummeted. Not the actor. She’d known it wouldn’t be, but Cath. Oh God, what did she want?
“Cath, hi. I thought I’d told you I was going to Dorset.”
“Of course, sorry, forgot. Anyway, I’m having some people to dinner tonight, will you be around?” Amy wasn’t sure whether this question meant she was invited or expected to disappear.
“I’m in, I think, but don’t worry about cooking for me, I can just have cheese on toast in my room or something.”
“Oh, well, if my friends aren’t good enough …,” Cath joked. But she wasn’t joking. She was chippy.
“Cath, if you’re inviting me, I’d love to come. Shall I?”
“OK, I’ll buy extra broccoli then,” volunteered Cath grudgingly. That girl! fumed Amy. And broccoli, I hate broccoli.
Girl dyeing her hair in the kitchen sink. Two neighbors, mules and dangling fags, talking over the fence while hanging washing out. Lots of rollers. Amy was jotting down her view on Council Estate Glamour when Tash, the features editor, burst into the office in search of a thesaurus.
“Tash, I’ve been meaning to ask you, are you interviewing Orlando Rock?”
“Trying. He’s very elusive, I suppose I’ll have to go down to the set in Dorset to seek him out. He’s also avoiding journalists because of his divorce.” Amy winced at the mention of his wife, ex or otherwise.
“What’s he doing in Dorset?” Amy ventured, still doodling and trying to sound nonchalant.
“Hardy. Return of the Native, I think.” Tash pushed her cuticles back with a pencil and lost interest in the conversation and thesaurus and left. Amy returned to her brief. Model looking seductive in satin slip as man sits in vest with beer cans in armchair behind her. She chewed her Biro and daydreamed about having to return to Dorset for a photo shoot. Then she could wow him with her loveliness and convince him of her heterosexuality. Or at the least, bisexuality, she purred, still proud of her newfound status.
All day she sat at her desk with one ear listening for the phone, trawling the newspapers for snippets about her new paramour. But each time she came across one she was plunged into despair as she saw his leading lady. All raven locks and creamy skin. When Lucinda came to rescue her at lunchtime the trough of her depression was river deep.
“Lunch, darling?” Lucinda called up from reception, where she’d been gossiping with some girls from Homes and Gardens. Making sure the office answerphone was on, just in case, Amy went down to meet her. Huddling under the security guard’s umbrella, they headed through the swing doors out into the noise and drizzle of Hanover Square. It was much too wet to contemplate a lunch hour browsing in Bond Street so they opted for smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels in a café across the road. Amy slumped over her coffee. Lucinda, too, hung her head over her lunch. Benjy hadn’t spoken to her since last night when in a fit of tiredness she’d accused him of ogling a girl in the petrol station on the way home.
“I know I overreacted, in fact I’m sure he barely noticed her, but I couldn’t help myself, Ames, he barely looked at me all weekend.” She dropped another two sugar cubes into her coffee.
“Steady with the sugar, Luce. Look, anyone can see he loves you, but it’s not easy after so many years to be all over each other all the time.”
“I know, but sometimes I just have uncontrollable banshee moods. I just yell for no reason, and I quite enjoy it, it’s the only way of getting a response sometimes. I don’t think men are capable of loving as much as women.” Lucinda swirled her spoon in her still-untouched coffee.
“I know, you just have to look at literature. Anna Karenina couldn’t find anyone who’d love her enough, so she had to jump in front of a train.”
“And Eustacia Vye in Return of the Native, ‘To be loved to madness is my one desire,’ she said, and she ended up dead, too, because all the men in her life were hopeless.”
Amy winced at the mention of Eustacia Vye, and the delectable actress in Orlando’s film flashed into her mind. Oh God, I’m obsessed, she thought. I think I love him. The thought of Orlando sent her appetite scuttling for cover. The girls morosely picked the paper tablecloth apart, and Lucinda stabbed her fork into a huge piece of chocolate cake until she was about to pop.
“And I’ve got to go to one of Cath’s dinner parties tonight.” Amy stared out of the window onto the gray pavements slopping with rain.
“I’ve no idea why you don’t move out, Ames. Those girls are poisonous.”
“Yeah, but I was at school with them and they’re not so bad most of the time, they’re just pathological bitches.” She shrugged with resignation.
Cath’s party was hideous. More bankers than was necessary crammed around the small dining table dropping risotto and red wine on the tablecloth that Amy’s dead grandmother had made. Clever people who should have known better did their best to be boring and right wing. The house smelled of broccoli, and Amy was taunted because of her vapid job.
“Yes, I know but I just don’t think I’d enjoy working in the City,” she apologized. Why the bloody hell am I allowing these idiots to bother me, she fretted. But she knew it harked back to a long time ago, longer ago than she cared to address, and so she let them taunt her as they had done when she was the skinniest girl in the third form. She volunteered to wash up, as she knew that none of the Hoorays would set foot in a kitchen, and skulked to bed without saying good night, although she knew there’d be hell to pay for her “rudeness” tomorrow.