Low Expectations (25 page)

After ten minutes of careful removal and reapplication and then a further ten minutes spent sitting on Scott's couch in what I hoped was a nonchalantly sexy pose, I tired of waiting and went downstairs to investigate. Joy was leaning against the wall at the entrance as if waiting for me and looked me up and down with a cool and cruel amusement.

‘Hey … have you seen Scott?'

‘Yeah. He's outside kissing Alice.'

For a moment I felt a deep pain, as if someone had pierced my spleen with a long needle, before a degree of coke-delusion reasserted itself and I flatly stated that I didn't believe her. In response, Joy lifted one long finger and flicked it towards the window on the opposite wall. In a trance, I walked forward, pressing my face against the glass to witness what I had always been convinced would happen. Though Scott's back was to me, it was clear they were locked in a passionate embrace. After a moment the handsome couple broke apart. Alice's beautiful face bathed in moonlight, she murmured something to him; he tenderly kissed her forehead. Numb, unable to watch any more, I walked back towards Joy.

‘He's always loved her, you know,' Joy said matter-of-factly.

Her sneer was gone. Seeing me vanquished, she appeared almost bored. With one quick jerk of the hand, a single cigarette emerged from Joy's pack of Marlboro Reds.

‘I know,' I said as I took it. As peace offerings went, it was as toxic as Joy herself.

From then on in, the night became wilder and worse. Disguising my pain with abandon in case Scott should see me (he didn't; they had fucked off somewhere), I ate a pill, took a dab, danced on tables, attempted to stuff my nose further despite the dry rust encrusting it and when that failed, settled on rubbing the next gram on my gums. Rose being otherwise occupied in a flirtatious tête-à-tête with an
ugly-sexy artist type, this terrible waste was noted by two girls who insisted on helping me out with my surplus drugs.

I was easily persuaded, once I realized that in return they would listen to my inchoate misery-guts rambling about how there was a girl (me) who would never love nor be loved in return, and had the decency to feign intense interest in my mutterings in between lines. These intimacies were shared with all three of us crouched over a toilet basin for forty-five minutes, though the entire point of a lock-in is that there is no need to hide. Habits, and cold tiles on which to lean, are comforting in times of stress. Once finished, we all exited the toilet and like pool-balls, immediately ricocheted to opposite sides of the room without a word to each other. I was having a gripping conversation around 7 a.m. about the probable existence of aliens with Toothless, when Beardy finally arrived.

‘Babe! I called you a billion fucking times. What the fuck happened to your face? I saw you all being dragged out by security. Very rock and roll.'

Beardy looked more annoyed that we might have stolen some of the Tin Can Bang thunder than concerned for my wellbeing. However, he was handsome, present and, crucially, not snogging Alice. I threw myself at him with drugged-up abandon, stroking and cooing at his face in a manner most unlike me. For some reason, I even extravagantly complimented his heinous leather jacket, which will now probably be a constant feature. I also, in an act of untrue neediness,
told him I love him. Don't do drugs; they lead you to make choices that, in retrospect, are poor.

Staring at me as if for the first time, he smiled in a twisted sort of way and then pushed me up against the wall, kissing me passionately.

‘I've been waiting for you to say that,' he bit out when he finally released me. ‘You're my woman now.' I briefly thought this was kind of a weird response. Perhaps due to subconscious conditioning from reading one too many erotic novels as a teenager that featured violent (but secretly tender) Vikings, I went with it.

‘So, you mean – we're a couple?' I cringe to remember that these words actually left my mouth, in a pathetically clingy tone, but they definitely did.

‘Yes, my little idiot.' Beardy kissed me again, savagely, before looking around shiftily and growling, ‘Let's get out of here. I had an argument with Tim; Alice made a scene over some stupid misunderstanding.'

Being fit to do nothing but follow commands at this point, I made hurried goodbyes to Rose and grabbed my coat as Beardy stalked out to wait for me on the pavement. As I was opening the door to leave, I felt a hand grab the back of my fur collar and jerk me back. The night had been full of manhandling one way or another and it belatedly infuriated me. Slapping the hand away, my eyes spitting fire, I reeled around to meet Scott's stricken glare.

‘What are you doing, leaving with that fucking scum?' He spat out the words. I had never seen him discomposed, let alone in a rage. Rather than cowing me, it fuelled my own.

‘W-what do you mean, what am
I
doing? I'm leaving with my boyfriend. What were
you
doing? After that display of … of – whatever, you ran off to be with Alice!'

‘Have you any idea how upset she was? That bastard—'

‘He explained everything to me. I love him. You love her. Let's just leave it at that and be happy for each other,' I said in a fit of hurt pride, not entirely sure what had happened between Alice and Beardy. I was quite certain in my ego-cloud of resentment that it couldn't possibly be worse than the crushing of my idiotic hopes hours before.

‘You are a
fool
, Georgie.' I hadn't thought that the word ‘fool' could possibly be articulated with such a mixture of disgust and anger, or that it could cut me so deeply.

‘Just-Fuck-Off!' I shouted, rushing to open the door before my throat could constrict in bands of gnarled sobs, an oesophageal slinky of pain. I slammed it on my way out. I presume at this point he doesn't expect or want me to turn up for my shift the day after tomorrow.

By the time Beardy and I made it back to his, I was already experiencing a splitting headache, burning nose and the general wretchedness of the first stages of a sleepless comedown. After a half-hearted attempt to get into my pants, Beardy had passed out fully clothed on the bed, with the corpse-like peace
of the wasted. Silently contemplating him for fifteen minutes, chain-smoking and hating myself, I left him a cheery note devoid of the true state of my emotions and called a minicab to take me home.

So there you have it. Sarah's broken Henry's heart and possibly her own; I've lost my job and gained a boyfriend I don't actually want; the only man I've ever loved is with another woman. The only upside of this whole thing is that I genuinely believe that Scott and Alice will be happy together. I really want him to be happy. Her too, I decide, after a moment's consideration, too long to actually be gracious. They deserve each other; I am too polluted to deserve that kind of love. Or any love. I deserve the callous possession of a Beardy, who now that he has been led to think he has me, will probably lose interest, cheat and give me an STI.

After what seems like hours, I fall asleep with a brilliant idea in mind for an invention that will make me a multi-millionaire before I turn thirty. It is – dun dun dun – The Ice Balaclava. Basically, it is an ice-pack in the shape of a balaclava, which you can pull on after particularly rough nights to bring down facial swelling. It may even (based on my research of freezing procedures for fat reduction) be beneficial for those like me who suffer from chipmunk cheeks, engorged lower eyelids, overhanging wattle and the like.

An American-style voiceover will introduce it on telly – ‘Do YOU suffer from Fat Face? Do you drink too much? Did
you forget your gum at a rave and chew your cheeks off? We have the solution for you! The Ice Balaclava is here! Just slip it in the freezer before a night out, wear it as you sleep and wake up refreshed, with skin as tight as Joan Rivers'! Left at room temperature, it can also function as a form-fitting, post-modern paper bag when you are feeling especially ugly. Buy now or regret for ever! At only £24, including postage and packaging, it is truly a steal!'

A small kink to work through is the potential skin necrosis that could result from repeatedly freezing your face, but nonetheless I dream of high-ceilinged vaults full of money, which I finger on a hard gold throne, naked and alone.

I once read, without fully understanding, an article on how quantum physics was a possible gateway into proving the existence of God. Something about subatomic particles reacting in ways beyond our current comprehension – thought seems to will them into being. Apparently consciousness reacting with matter suggests some sort of larger connective life force within the universe.

I tried to use this information to shape my destiny in the days following New Year's Eve by willing Scott into calling me, before giving up the ghost and accepting my lot. Maybe it didn't work because I was sending out mixed messages – ‘He will call me and beg for forgiveness' versus ‘He will call me and forgive me', alongside ‘Fuck, what the hell have I
done, this is all my fault' just to confuse matters. Eventually, my denial lifted. Resigned to the consequences of events (the event being, I've fucked up, the consequence being, I've fucked myself over) I called up the Newt with my heart in my throat, spoke to Gary and quit. He sounded incredibly off with me on the phone, but unsurprised.

The upside of being unemployed is that it's left me with far more time to focus on my degree. I spent the first few weeks of January dementedly working on my final collection. My range plan was finalized, with technical specification drawings alongside coloured illustrations and tacked-on swatches of the fabrics for the seventeen looks in my collection. Of these, six will be made up as garments. Zelda and I will choose in my final design selection to best display the aesthetic of my range, my tailoring capabilities and that all-important fashion-forwardness.

We decided to include two showpieces – the extreme styles that are created to draw the eye and promote the brand's craftsmanship, luxury and creativity but are less likely to be worn outside of a photoshoot or red carpet event. Balancing the range between design stories that hang together cohesively but are not repetitive, with price points suited to the individual clothes, the quality of their fabric and the time it takes to sew them is difficult. Without drifting into ludicrous mark-up territory, at any rate. If you create a stunning party dress that will be sold at £5,000 by the time it gets to the shop
floor, you had better have an established brand owned by the Gucci Group, a trust fund or a raft of Arabian princesses as customers.

Drafting patterns is no easy thing; it is the transformation of a visual idea imprecisely drawn, into a functional, wearable, flattering garment, perfectly fitted to the body. Changes are often made in the process, as it is a vital time to experiment with a product so it is better adapted to a woman's shape when it falls flat – or worse, fat. Thus far, the six toiles – the first drafts, so to speak – are in various states of readiness, but are going smoothly enough to leave me one step away from a gibbering wreck.

I tempered the relentlessness of my schedule by spending the occasional night with Beardy, with whom I felt little emotional satisfaction but who filled a hole, as it were. He distracted me from my depression at an incredibly stressful time. Bringing a creative vision into physical being is much like giving birth. After conception, gestation and nourishment you force it into the world through blood, sweat and tears. In moments of exhilarated hope, you are convinced your creation is the most perfect specimen ever to grace the planet. In other moments (vortexes of despair), you are convinced it is wretchedly deformed, unlovable, best left to the wolves. Clearly, my ideas of motherhood are so warped that I should never procreate.

Insurmountable though my workload appeared to be
at times, Julian managed to persuade me to help out at Schrödinger for the week leading up to the show. One of their key interns had most inconveniently been in a cycling accident and ended up in A&E with a broken pelvis. Despite her enforced bed rest, they equipped her with a computer to work on prints from the hospital; still, qualified manpower was required on the front lines.

Trigger is nervous about this collection, hoping that it is well received enough to launch him to Paris Fashion Week. Technically, anyone with enough cash can show; but like all rich people, he wants to feel that he has made it purely on the strength of his genius. It is the step-up he has been striving for the past two seasons, which leaves no room for fuck-ups. He wants someone he trusts, with previous experience in the studio, knowledge of his process and crucially, someone who also doesn't expect to be paid. Enter me.

Normally, the first day on the job at a fashion house would find me waking up an hour earlier than usual to try to dress myself in a way that is at once cool, practical, flattering and not try-hard. This is nearly impossible. Having a woman's body, with tits and arse as well as all the other bits no one cites when promoting their ‘curves' (wobbly thighs, small pot, disproportionately fat band of armpit flab) anything that is nonchalant, effortless or cool generally looks shit on me. I sometimes try to wear these things anyway and end up in the on-trend but unbecoming zone of the lumpy-sack wearer.
Vintage is flattering for hourglass girls, but can look like a pastiche if you wear too much of it.

This morning, I don't care about any of that. I throw on some baggy jeans, craggy old boots, a fisherman's jumper nicked off my dad and a sheepskin coat that has seen better days, my unwashed hair in a ponytail. Note: this could look cool if I was very thin but as things stand I am one cardboard sign away from looking like a homeless person of dubious gender. It is very cold and miserable out, but even if it were summer I would have not bothered too much with my clothing, as I know most of the team already. There is no particular need to impress them and I will actually fit in better looking slightly hellish.

You are far more likely to bond with your co-workers in the weeks leading up to a show arguing over whose eye-bags, Haribo-addiction and stress-related acne is worse, than in a love-in over platform boots. If you want money, success, fame, glamour, or at least to look like you have these things, do not go into fashion design. Do PR or fashion journalism instead. The entire studio, save the front-of-house press girls, are bound to look like zombies, having worked solidly for the past two months. They survive on crisps, fags, Pret à Manger sandwiches, diet Coke, adrenalin, cuticle skin and the occasional late night booze-up for morale, bitterly rued the next morning.

I arrive on Monday morning at 10 a.m., as requested. The
studio is tucked away on a side street in Bethnal Green that from the outside looks like any anonymous, dilapidated East End building. Only a subtle gold plaque beside the steel entrance with the name, logo and address emblazoned on it distinguishes it from the other blocks. Once inside, the difference is striking. The interior rooms have all been gutted and renovated into three floors of large, light studio space. The first-floor reception, front office and showroom have managed to retain the original goal of airy minimalism, with black and burnished steel tables displaying rows of shiny MacBooks. Angular leather chairs support thin and polished young marketing girls and the walls display a projection of the last show on a continuous loop. It is Spring/Summer 2013, the one I had been working on – overexposure makes me eye the video now with a curious mixture of pride, anxiety and hatred.

As I take the stairs up to Julian's open-plan office on the second floor I can see that the usual chaos has asserted itself. Rails of toiles and rolls of fabric are lined up on the far side of the room, with inspirational images tacked up on every inch of the wall behind them. On the left side of the room the drawings for the collection are grouped in stories – i.e. cohesive styles – arranged in order of outerwear, dresses, tops and bottoms. Two long tables have rows of interns sitting at them, hunched over their laptops with the beady focus of drug-stimulated research chimpanzees. Every available surface is covered in research material, abandoned fabric
swatches, large plastic bags full of patterns and paper with specification sheets in various states of finality.

Though it looks completely disorganized, I'm sure there is an underlying method to the madness, which it will behove me to discover as quickly as possible. I am to help Trigger with the model fittings; I feel a frisson of fear. I will need to familiarize myself with the collection in a matter of days, with no prior knowledge of the little details that make fittings run smoothly. What fabrics are being used and from what mill? What is each garment named? What colourways are currently being finalized? These are the things that everyone else has lived and breathed for months.

Julian is by the window, gulping down a grande Starbucks (a sugarless, milkless Americano, if I remember correctly – he is one of the few to maintain a rigid pre-show diet), smoking furiously and screaming down the phone at someone in broken French. It is clearly not a good time. I decide to make the rounds, taking orders of tea or coffee as I go, always a good method to re-ingratiate myself with the harried staff. I haven't seen most of them in several months and they look at me with blank incomprehension, before crying – ‘Darling! It's so good to see you! Let's talk later; I'm swamped. God, I'd love a cup of tea, thanks'. Standing around like a log is always a poor plan, as is acting like any job is beneath you.

‘Georgie, God, sorry, I've been on the phone trying to get a last-minute stretch georgette addition through before Friday
and those bloody frogs are so pedantic about getting an outstanding payment through before I do. Christ, they know we're good for it, eventually, we've used them for five seasons. Let me take you through things.'

As Julian runs me through the mood boards, designs and completed garments for Autumn/Winter 2014 I try desperately to remember the references he is making. Which fabrics are aligned with what styles, what might change and go in, what needs to be completed … the list is endless and confusing but not such a departure from last season that I feel incapable of getting a handle on it. The usual astrological points of inspiration have been changed this season in order to get closer to what Julian describes as, ‘Our original source material – human cells and DNA. But, like, with an edge, so it's about darkness, death, entropy. Imagine the Bloomsbury Group with HIV. That's obviously not going into the press packet, but do you know what I mean?'

This has manifested itself in images of platelets and diseased organisms (heavily derivative of a Gilbert & George exhibition I saw a few years ago; I suspect Trigger did as well) that have been reworked with portraits of decaying flowers. The illustrations are disturbing and delicate. The colour boards have been drawn from an obscure Finnish film from the forties; cool, muted oyster neutrals and deep greyish blues juxtaposed with rich Bordeaux, soft violet and accents of sunflower orange.

About three-quarters of the collection has been finished and it looks beautiful. Soft, sleek coats in lambskin and nappa with a loose tailoring recalling nineties grunge are hanging alongside high-waisted jacquard hobble skirts, sheer blouses, deconstructed jumpers and Marlene Dietrich trousers. It has a
Blonde Venus
meets Poirot vibe, yet somehow minimalist – stripped down to the bare bone and then topped with fur. Luxe feminine pieces are contrasted with those that have an androgynous, off-duty-model chic. The shoes, which apparently arrived yesterday to a collective squeal of joy, add the weird factor with their foot-binding style in futuristic matte metallic leather. It's impossible to describe a collection without sounding somewhat idiotic, so suffice to say that it looks ‘Ah-mah-zing!'

Trigger has gone AWOL today in a cloud of nervous stress (much preferable, I remember, to him staying when in a fit of nervous stress) so the fitting has been abruptly cancelled. I send the fit model, Katinka, home with a tin of Waitrose biscuits by way of apology. They are sure to remain uneaten; her job depends upon retaining the exact sample size measurements to the millimetre. She is expendable in a way the catwalk models who are pencilled in for castings tomorrow are not. Once the models are selected, all the finished garments will be grouped into one to two looks per girl for the show by the superstylist, Paloma Stone. Afterwards, the absolute final fitting will take place. Needless to say, they are
extremely petite, with the exception of their feet, which run to the freakishly huge at size forty-three.

With no design work they can set me at the moment, I am given the sort of dogsbody tasks that are the bane of any intern's life but are also the supporting skeleton necessary to keep a business up and running. I am relieved to have a chance to spend time familiarizing myself with the collection, helping out in the pattern cutting room cutting last-minute garments for the seamstresses and later, printing and organizing the latest specs – technical specification sheets, the ideally idiot-proof, completely clear images of garments that are sent to factories and are worlds away from the glossy, artistic fashion illustrations you see in magazines.

At half past eight in the evening, Julian wearily trudges up to me as I sit on the floor organizing a huge box of zips. Someone had dumped all the smaller boxes together so it is a mess of different colours, sizes and manufacturers. He runs his hand through limp hair.