Venus Envy

‘Alan Pell’s coming round in five minutes,’ Keisha announced.

‘Lucky you,’ I said grumpily.

‘Yeah.’ Keisha preened, stretching her elegant black back like a prizewinning Siamese. ‘He says there’s a job going down at Up and Running.” She tugged her tiny Gucci cardigan disapprovingly round her polished-ebony shoulders and flung an expressive glance al; my work station. Bits of clay and sweet wrappers from my latest avant-garde creation littered my side of the room. ‘Maybe if you carry on like that he’ll recommend you for something at Blue Peter.’

‘I’ll clear it up,’ I said gloomily. It did look like a reject from the Play School arts department. ‘And yourself,’ Keisha said not unkindly. She spoke in the tone of someone addressing a poor unfortunate

fellow creature. ‘I can lend you my black Ghost dress.’ ‘What’s wrong with this?’ I snapped.

Her glance at my tattered jeans and paint-spattered shirt was eloquent. My nails were broken, my hair was straggly, and my clothes were a style-free zone.

‘He works in the record business.., he knows lots of people in TV,’ Keisha said temptingly. ‘Interesting people … with money. And power.’

‘I don’t care about people with money and power!’ I lied furiously. ‘I only care about Oliver.’

My latest greatest love had just dumped me yesterday. By fax. From the set of his new movie, although obviously he hadn’t had time to do it himself. I must

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be the only girl in the history of dating to be dumped by a secretary. ‘Oliver was a loser. And so will you be, if you keep dressing like a refugee from the bypass protests,’ Keisha insisted. She opened her wardrobe and pulled out a black scrap of nothing, immaculate in its dry cleaner sheath. ‘If you get this dirty you’re paying for it.’

‘How much was it?’ I asked grimly.

Keisha blushed. ‘Two eighty.’

‘Two hundred and eighty quid?’ I gasped. Keisha gave me heart tremors, the fortune she spent on clothes. Without wincing. She never had any money, but by God, she was flash. We’re talking about a girl who once spent a month’s dole cheques on an Armani jacket. Men only had to look at Keisha to go running to the nearest Prada store or Rolex outfit. Maybe she sold all the superfluous Rolexes to feed her designer habit. It was one of the mysteries of the ages, how she paid for it.

I.felt guilty if I bought an M&S sandwich instead of making my own.

‘I could take you down to Neville Daniels,’ Keisha suggested cheerfully, ‘drag you round to Liberty’s and fix you up … we could get to first base with about three hundred quid.’

‘Three hundred!’ I gasped.

‘Four hundred, maybe,’ Keisha admitted.

I thought gloomily about that idea as I slipped on her dress. Four hundred quid would get me looking presentable. Great. And how was I supposed to find that, three months into London life with my parents still paying the rent, no boyfriend to pay for taxis or dinners, and a miserable future as a typist looming over me?

The door opened. It was Gail, my little sister, carrying a bunch of health-food bags and lo.oking

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radiant and fragile in her pure wool organic dress. I still couldn’t believe I was sharing a flat with Gail, but when push came to shove, I’d submitted to my parents’ dictates. I was sharing this flat rent-free. I was taking the steady job in the City.

Two years ago you wouldn’t have caught me dead here.

I was the great Alexandra, Wilde by name and wilder by nature. Failed in school - especially compared to Miss one hundred per cent A-grades Gail Wilde, but so what? I was creative. Making mud sculptures in the sandpit since I was about one, entered all the Young Artist competitions and won six national awards. I had a sunny life lined up as the next Dame Elizabeth Frink. Damien Hirst would have nothing on me. I scraped a C in Maths and English GCSEs, and went to. Oxford. Not to do anything academic, as such. Bachelor of Fine Arts - painting and sculpting. With a little art history thrown in.

Oxford was too good to be true. I’d found The Tbornbirds heavy going, let alone Middlemarcb, and here I was in some Merchant Ivory film, punting down the Isis and eating strawberries in Christ Church meadows with Japanese tourists. All my friends were patronising, smug Student Grant types from Viz. I didn’t care. I bought Socialist Worker and went on rent strikes. I was going to be like Vanessa Redgrave or Tony Benn - radical, but somehow still rich. Selling my mice arid birds for a small fortune in smart London galleries.

All my mates laughed, but I had faith. I was wrong.

Nobody wanted to buy my sculptures, and six months in bedsit land with cockroaches and broken radiators had crushed my spirit. I wasn’t cut out for life on the streets. My bohemian director boyfriend, Oliver, had dumped me for a Californian Barbie doll

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the first job he got out there. I had no support except Mummy and Daddy. As I was finding out, a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a set of funky clay statues doesn’t get you very far in the big city.

‘God, you look tired, Alex-Palex,’ Gail said annoyingly. She always used our baby nicknames in front of my cooler friends. ‘Your b-complex vitamins need boosting.’

‘Your face needs flattening,’ I growled.

‘Great dress,’ Gail said airily. ‘Pity about the rest of you. Oh, I hope you haven’t nicked all the hot water, Keisha, my muscles are cramping, I’m sure it’s extreme stress. Maybe I should try Prozac.’ She gave her waif like, doe-eyed reflection a smug glance and flounced ,into the bathroom. Gail was a hypochondriac and a health-food nut, but she got away with it because she was so fragile and lovely. Even her stupid organic clothes somehow seemed attractively rustic and simple. And, like Keisha, Gail had a job: she was an editorial assistant at Organic Food Weekly, making no money and waiting happily for Mr Right to come along and spirit her to a big Gloucestershire estate, where she could satisfy her need for nature by fiddling with a small herb garden, or something.

Gail also fancied herself as the next Martin Amis. She was writing something she called ‘the Great Nature Novel’, but refused to tell me the plot - like I cared! - in case I nicked it off her. She didn’t trust me at all, which was ironic, since when I was at Oxford, Gall, who read sociology at Reading, used to come over all the time and date all the eligible men. Except Tom Drummond, who wouldn’t give her the time of day, but I’ll tell you more about Tom later.

Keisha was signing on when I first knew her, but her effortless self-confidence had got her into radio and then TV. She did things I would never dream of. Like driving her Mercedes coup to the dole office, or

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making up her CV. Radio had needed experience, so Keisha calmly invented some experience. Now she was about to go for her first major job: Alan was putting a word in over at Up and Running, the BBC cult Saturday kids’ show. Thousands of people went for the researcher posts there every year.

‘When Alan comes over, will you write my letter, Alex?’ Keisha wheedled.

I sighed. I wrote everyone’s letters in this house. Letters of complaint, job applications, thankyou notes, the bloody lot. It was the only thing, apart from sculpting, I was any good at.

Great, I thought as I looked in the mirror. Gail was right: I didn’t look cool at all, I was just plump, scruffy Alex wearing a smart black dress.

Tomorrow was my first day in paid employment. I was still dependent on my parents. I was boyless. I was a failure. ‘

I was twenty-seven years old.

Keisha mistook my silence for anger. She should have known better, I never got angry with anyone. I had the spine of a jellyfish.

‘Come on, hon, I’ll get your hair fixed for you,’ she wheedled,

I needed the help.

‘OK,’ I said.

The door buzzed. It was Alan Pell, looking sharp as a tack. Another urban star fresh from another promotion. They were all zooming down the fast lane while I was wrecked on the hard shoulder.

‘All right, Keisha babe,’ Alan said looking her Gucci shift over admiringly. ‘Hiya, Alex, hon.’ He kissed me warmly on the cheek. ‘You look really tired. Great dress though.’

‘Thanks,’ I said wearily. I racked my brains for some Snappy comeback, but nothing.

Keisha locked in smooth pro chat-up mode. Foe

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such a class-A bitch, she can certainly turn on the charm when she feels like it. Alan was basking in the intense interest radiating from her chocolate eyes.

I stomped out of the flat and spent ten pounds on five Four-Play scratch cards. Then I went round to McDonald’s and bought a Big Mac meal with real Coke and extra fries. I won two pounds. I was just stuffing a great fistful of fries into my cheek when Gail, weighing bugger-all and with some smooth, tanned City type on her arm, walked past the window and gave me a cheery wave. The City type looked amazed. Gail was related to that?

I told myself tomorrow was another day.

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The radio switched itself on merrily. Bastard. Mark Radcliffe and Lard braying unfunny jokes into my shattered head. Then they put on Metallica. I dragged myself from my comfy, parentally paid-for white sheets and stumbled across the. room to hit the off button.

‘Rise and shine, rise and shine,’ Gail yelled, poking her head through the door. She was wearing a wispy Lainey Keogh web cardigan today, over a neat silk jumper. ‘It’s seven alreadyl’

‘Seven?’ I asked blearily. Did people really do this every day? It’s against my religion to surface before ten.

‘Yeah, hurry up, you’ll be late,’ Gail said bossily. ‘Mummy wants you. to make a good impression today. You know she pulled strings to get you this job.’

The sad thing was that this was true. With no formal qualifications, even this.shitty job was really beyond me. But, rejoicing that their black ewe had returned to the middle-class fold, Mummy and Daddy had made phone calls all over the shop, cashing in goodwill chips from years of tennis tournaments and letting the local riding school hack over our scrubby field. I had a prompt letter from Personnel at Hamilton Kane, the private investment bank, offering me a job as second secretary to one Seamus Mahon, in Corporate Finance. Mrs Kane played women’s golf with my mother once a month. Even though, since I was about to do this, I

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clearly had no guts at all, Mummy would still have them for garters if I failed her in any way.

‘OK.’ I headed for the bathroom, which was sealed

tighter than Oliver Brown’s cheating little heart.

‘Keisha …’

‘You can wait ‘til I’m finished.’

.’When …?’

‘When I’m finished,’ Keisha shouted superbly. There was no way I was getting a shower now. ‘You’ll have to be quicker than that,’ Gail said silkily, ‘and there’s no breakfast cereal left. Bronwen just got back and she’s been on the grass all night and she had the munchies.’

Bronwen was our other flatmate. She was Welsh,

, lithe and supremely funky. A photographer’s assistant, she went on fashion shoots all day and raved all night. She was on first-name terms with all the bouncers down he Ministry of Sound and knew more about drugs than our local chemist. Her clothes were so hip she made the Face look like Woman’s Weekly.

knew my life was radically changed if I was in the

flat the same times as Bronwen. She sat in our kitchen, scenting the whole thing with acrid marijuana smoke so thick I felt I’d be spouting Beatles lyrics any second. She was wearing tight-ass white leather jeans and a pink Spice Girls T-shirt, with ‘Girl Power’ emblazoned across her impressive chest. Oh, why did everybody else in this place make me feel like Fergie, only less stylish?

‘All right sister,’ said Bronwen, ‘bore da,’ then dissolved into giggles. She was certainly having a good time if she was dropping in Welsh phrases. Bron.wen staggered over to give me a boozy hug, and before I could swerve away she’d spilt black coffee all over my carefully ironed blue suit.

‘Oops,’ said Gail, hugely amused. ‘Better find something else to wear.’

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I flounced back into my own bedroom and yanked open my wardrobe. My trouser suit was in the laundry, my navy dress had a toothpaste stain on it. It was amazing, I could almost hear my own blood pressure rising.

Keisha stuck her head round my door. She was a working fantasy in Nicole Farhi, with Rouge Noir Chanel lipstick and nail polish perfectly coordinated.

‘Black dress. Only option,’ she said succinctly. ‘Black says - grace and strength,’ she pronounced. ‘

I tugged on my black jersey dress. It had a roll-neck collar and was quite forgiving to my unworked-out, McDonald’sloving bottom. Keisha was right, it was the only option. And in autumn it would have looked quite smart.

Except today was the fourth of August, and it was seven thirty, and it was already blazing hot.

Hamilton Kane was in Threadneedle Passage. I knew this very well. And right now the address was emblazoned on my overheated heart, because it took me forty minutes of frantic tramping and hyperventilating over my cruelly mismarked A-Z to find the bloody alley. I mean, have you ever tried asking suited City brokers for directions in the morning rush hour? Might as well ask a teeming piranha to stop and chat. The stares were incredulous. And the women were worse. One gorgeous female in Prada, with baby blonde hair and pouting lips, snarled something that might not have been ‘Fuck off, fatso’, but then again, it might have.