Venus Envy (16 page)

‘Therapy’s rubbish. It’s for weak-willed Americans. Imagine paying someone to listen to your problems,’ I said waspishly.

‘I think it’d be great,’ said Bron, more honestly than me. I was very hostile to therapy because Oliver, my darling ex, had been such a fan. He’d been in therapy for over ten years. ‘Let me.ask you something. Are you better?’ I used to demand, and he would say shrew, ishly, ‘Oh, you just don’t understand.’ But I did, I understood that these people have a vested interest in you continuing to think you’re screwed up. Though in Oliver’s case, of course, he was.

When I got as low as I was now, though, it did sound tempting. Imagine something where the point of the exercise is to talk continuously about yourself. No wonder the New Yorkers are all such addicts.

I once knew a bloke who was married. I was his mistress for three years and he flatly refused to tell his therapist about me, because he said his therapist would kill him. It used to bug me to distraction that this man couldn’t see that his whole therapy thing was a total sham, if he couldn’t tell his shrink something that major. In the end I broke up with him because of it. Seeing your therapist as a father figure, and quailing at being told off, nice one. The shrink was also his wife’s shrink, but shrinks are bound by the laws of doctor patient confidentiality. It’s a death-knell for sexiness when you start seeing your man as a self-deluding coward.

And it only took me three years to get to that point? ‘How many shrinks does it take to cha.nge a

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lightbulb? One, but the lightbulb has to really want to change!’ Keisha laughed delightedly.

‘So when are we going up to the country?’ Gail butted in, bored with a conversation that didn’t centre on her.

I grimaced. ‘Next Thursday night.’ Friday was a holiday, and Mrs Drummond obviously wanted all her guests there for a big house party. I’d only been to their creaking pile once before, and imagined Bronwen and Keisha smoking and swearing amongst the topiary mazes and manicured lavender-lined walks. God, what an ugly bloody disaster.

Longing for Seamus suddenly gripped me like a pair of red-hot tongs.

How was I ever going to get through this?

Monday and Tuesday I spent in Personnel, trying not to breath while Gloria master-blasted her farts all round the office. In the end I went in there with Vick’s smeared under my nose. But I hardly noticed after a while, so desperate was I to think up excuses for cancelling on Tom. Maybe my granny could die? Too easily checked. Or I could get laryngitis? Mrs Drummond would put a nurse on tap for me. Or that flesh

eating bug? But then I would have to actually die… There was no fighting this, I was trapped.

And Seamus didn’t call. I couldn’t believe it. He’d been so persistent before, and now, nothing. It was as though I’d’ dropped off he face of the planet. Even though I kept making excuses-to go down to my old stomping ground, and made sure 1 was wearing the dress he liked the most, Seamus just looked right through me like I wasn’t there.

Even the sight of Rhoda Black’s vast bottom spilling out over my tiny corporate chair didn’t cheer me up at all.

‘I finally got somebody who can just concentrate on

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work,’ Jenny said to me cheerfully. She even gave me a conspiratorial wink. ‘Mr Mahon has to admit it’s done beautifully.’

‘He doesn’t make comparisons with me, I hope,’ I lied. I wanted to hear Jenny say he was moping pathetically for me day and night.

‘He doesn’t mention you. Sorry,’ said Jenny, not

fooled for a second.

I blushed.

‘It’s better this way, dear. Believe me,’ said Jenny in a motherly fashion. ‘That way you get over them quicker.’

It wasn’t ‘better this way’, though. It was bloody

evil. I felt like someone was eating my heart right out

, of my chest with a rusty spoon. Like being a junkie trying to get off crack, and the drug is all you can think about every second, it consumes you, that longing, like screw my self-respect, screw health, screw everything, I want my fix.

‘It’s Wednesday tomorrow,’ Keisha announced importantly.

‘Yeah, Einstein. It generally is after Tuesday,’ Brono wen said, throwing her copy of MixMag across the room. Bronwen was now reacting to her sorrow by getting furiously irritated by everything. Which w.as not a good idea when you live in our flat.

Snowy and Gall were lounging across the white leather sofa at the back of the room, Snowy showing off to her admiring audience the latest bauble she’d picked up at Garrard’s. God, Snowy annoyed me. She must have inherited a fortune from a long-lost aunt in Bolivia, or something. How could she be so impeccably turned out, day after bloody day, and flooded with men and never introduce any of them?

‘I wish I was Snowy and I didn’t have to work,’ I moped.

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Keisha gave me one of her wilting looks. It could kill an erection at eighty paces. ‘God, Alex, you are fucking stupid.’

I bridled. ‘What do you mean?’

‘What are you on about, you snotty bitch?’ Bronwen demanded angrily. ‘You’re sodding rude, Keisha, you know that?’

‘Give it a rest,’ Keisha said simply. Water off a duck’s back to her. ‘Now. Tomorrow is Wednesday

and we’re leaving on Thursday.’

‘So what?’

‘So, stick your hands up, who has suitable outfits for a wedding.’

Bronwen and I looked at each other and I groaned and dropped my head in my hands. God, not only was this going to be the worst weekend ever, I was going to have to bankrupt myself for it.

We set off for Knightsbridge on Wednesday evening. I had had the day to compose myself, to remind myself that life goes on even when you don’t particularly want it to. And that, no matter how heartbroken I was, I didn’t want to be seen at this wedding in some pile of old rubbish. My friends from college would be laughing hard enough at me as it was.

Besides, working at Hamilton Kane had changed my attitude to clothes. I used to think grooming was for poodles; now I saw it as armour against the world. I tried not to think about the amount I spend on that vital haircut at Neville Daniels, or that vital colour at Nicky Clarke. In fact, when I was still seeing Seamus, I actually booked myself in for a facial. I used a Kanebo moisturiser from Harvey Nicks that cost forty-five quid a bottle. And even though I hated her, I did use that La Prairie cream Snowy bought me. My heart may have been broken, but my skin was glowing.

It was this jones for beauty that had driven me to

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make the few demands of my working life. My title, in Glorious Thunderbum’s office, was now Human Resource Administrator. Yes, I know it’s a fancy term for secretary, but the point is, that word, or ‘assistant’, was not actually on my card. I was technically on the very bottom rung of the executive ladder. And I had Jenny Robins to thank for it.

‘You know, dear, you should take advantage of this,’ she lectured me during one of my trips downstairs. ‘Get a new title and a raise. I can certainly recommend you for an admin position, you’re actually quite organised.’

I stared at her, but then it occurred to me that in my misery, my mind had been very focused when it came ,to actual work.

‘Seamus would need to write me a recommendation,’ I muttered. And we’d all be eating green cheese from the moon the day that happened.

‘I rather thought you had some pull with Mr Mahon,’ Jenny said discreetly. Blackmail him, she was suggesting.

I looked at her and glowed with gratitude; I suddenly realised why young Melissa had told me I was lucky to be working with Jenny.

‘There would be many advantages to getting a promotion, and money would certainly be one of them.’

That decided me. Money, I needed. People who say money isn’t everything have never been poor.

I saw the coast was clear and marched into Seamus’s office.

He lifted his gorgeous head from the glowing screen on his desk and regarded me coldly. ‘What would you be wanting, Alex?’

‘Just to settle stuff. So we’re clear,’ I said equally coldly, although my heart was squealing, ‘Change your mind, sweetheart, don’t be like this.’ Tm. going

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upstairs to Personnel, and I want to go as Administrator. So you’re writing the commendation.’

‘Now you want a promotion too, is that it?’ Seamus asked nastily. The bastard, my entire new salary was

probably less than he paid Dolores’s chief maid. ‘That’s it,’ I said.

‘Well.’ He thought it over for a second, but we both knew he had no choice. Still, what came next was another kick in the shin, just when I was sure it could get no worse. ‘You’d best give me back the keys to the flat.’

I fumbled around in my bag, my Adam’s apple working furiously as I gulped back the tears. Oh fuck, this was so final. He .really wasn’t going to change his mind or beg forgiveness. I threw the keys in front of him with an almighty clatter, and in the jangle of metal on mahogany I felt the poems and flowers evaporate into thin air.

So that was how I got my raise and promotion. Not the world’s most triumphant victory, but the money landed in the bank just the same.

We descended on Harvey Nicks like Attila the Hun. Keisha went first, taking her Chanel products back to the counter with about an inch of cream left in the pots, then saying that her dermatologist had advised her they were causing, a rash and she wanted her money back. Bron, Gail and I died a thousand deaths, but by the time a browbeaten manager had retreated from the fray, Keisha was back-, waving her credit slips triumphantly.

‘Every penny. What are you looking at me like that for? It’s free money, honey,’ she crowed, so loudly that I had to drag Gail out of the Shu Umera counter and up the escalator.

Bronwen selected a moss-green dress by Jil Sander at eighty per cent off. It was a bit last season but t

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suppose the discount was just too tempting. She made up for that by learning it with a three-quarters, single button burgundy jacket by Ralph for Ralph Lauren, which was so expensive I nearly fainted when I saw the price. The overall effect was very dandified, but just sober enough for a country wedding.

‘You look great,’ Gail purred. Keisha nodded and I wished my thighs would fit into that boob-tube of a skirt. Bronwen, like Gail, had the ass of a ten-year-old boy.

Keisha selected a mink silk suit with a silver detail on the cuffs. Anna Sui and very expensive.

‘I didn’t know they paid that well at the BBC,’ marvelled Gail. , ‘They don’t,’ said Keisha, who never worried about incurring debt when it came to style. The suit clung to all her curves and looked stunning against her sable skin. I knew she’d be planning to wear it with the string of Mikimoto pearls Lennox had come up with for her birthday. I felt proud: she was going to look like a black swan wearing moonbeams. Say what you like about Keisha, you could take her anywhere. She could even be polite if she was having a really good day.

Gail threw a fit when she saw a rack of furs and made us all schlepp over to Liberty’s. Liberty’s isn’t as good for make-up, but it does have the big advantage of a room full of Ghost. Ghost is a secret uniform for London working women, it’s more forgiving than a priest. We had to talk Gail out of a long white coat over a white strappy dress.

‘Only the bride wears white. And no black either,’ I insisted, when Gail flounced over to the rows of black.

‘Oh, nobody pays attention to that old-fashioned crap.’

I started to panic, thinking of Gail inviting herself to Tom’s, then showing me up at the wedding.

‘Look, pick the mint or the sky-blue, or the grape.

You’re not bloody coming if you go in white or black.’ ‘Fuck!’ Gail shouted. ‘No wonder you’re such a miserable failure at everything, Alex. I’m not surprised you can’t keep a man. All you can do is whinge and nag at everybody, you think you’re such a saint. And you needn’t think that Tom will be interested in you any more, either. You’re so fat even the extra-large dresses won’t fit you.’

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‘Shut up, Gail,’ Keisha said, looking daggers at her.

‘It doesn’t bother me,’ I lied. It was true: even the large dresses in here hadn’t hung very well round my comfortable ass.

Not that I’m fat. I know I’m not. I mean, the average size in Britain for women is a sixteen, you hear that in ,the magazines all the time. But the trouble is, the average size for my mates is a ten.

I’m a ten on my top half, and a twelve on my bottom half, that’s if we’re talking about a skirt. If it’s trousers, then I’m a fourteen. And they’re gaping loose at the waist. Why do garment manufacturers do this? Surely I can’t be the only woman in England with shotputter thighs, as Mummy has it, and a narrow waist. Why can’t they mix and match the stuff, like Salon Selectives shampoo?

Or even better, why can’t I be thin like Gail?

She really knew how to hurt me. I stood there blushing like mad. God, how I wished for a boyfriend then, because I had no comeback at all to sniping like that.

‘When was the last time you got a promotion?’ Bronwen said acidly. ‘Or went to Oxford?’

‘Yeah, and a fat lot of good it’s done her,’ Gall sniped.

‘At least she doesn’t date men for their bank accounts,’ Keisha snapped.

‘At least I don’t date men for their column inches,’ Gail retorted.

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‘This is getting us nowhere.’ There I went, peacemaker again. ‘I think I’ll try this on.’ It was a discounted Donna Karan dress in soft brushed caramel, with a fitted jacket. I ducked inside the curtains to face the mirrors, only I didn’t do that ‘til I was dressed. Best trick I ever learned for dealing with changing room trauma: don’t! Why upset yourself for a week? Have a look once you’ve put the clothes on. If God had meant us to be naked he wouldn’t have created fig leaves. Or the naked male body, which is the ultimate proof that God has a sense of humour.

I liked it, I have to say. It draped heavily enough to look good on me, it pulled the eye to the thinness of my waist and opened in a V-cut that sort of looked designery. There was a vogue a couple of years back for stuff that looked natural, but then why spend all the money? You might as well go to Gap.