Beads, Boys and Bangles (16 page)

There are no pictures of her swanning around inside the studio, insisting on fresh, warm water with a hint of lemon every thirty seconds and wondering if it wouldn’t be possible to have ‘just a
little
bit more to say’ in every speech.

Jim, the actor playing Jenny’s father, hates her to bits. He is mostly left to nod and look amazed and adoring as Sigrid drones on with her new, expanded part. He and Jenny have completely bonded, which is strange since he plays a man we all find impossibly irritating in real life.

Everyone else, though, finds Sigrid adorable. The director dotes on her. The other actors want her autograph and love the anecdotes about Hollywood life and going out with Joe Yule, the Not-So-New Teenage Sex God. They even love it when she gets a text in mid-scene and STOPS REHEARSING TO READ IT, in case it’s from Joe. And the stagehands and other backstage people keep going on about how thoughtful she is, arriving every day with a box of fresh doughnuts and asking after their pets. Only Bill, Jenny’s friend, looks slightly grumpy each time he’s asked to rewrite a scene to make the stepmother part younger, prettier and more centre-stage.

‘The thing is,’ Jenny says, ‘they all know the play will be a success because of her. They all think I must be so incredibly grateful she wore one of my friend’s dresses at the Oscars last year. They’ve all gone to see it at the V&A, you know. She took them there. It was like a little tour
party. It was sickening. And because I know Joe, she thinks I’ll want to hear all the lovey-dovey things he’s doing, like sending flowers to her hotel every day and making playlists for her and tweeting about her on Twitter.’

‘Ew,’ I say. There is no other word. ‘Ew’ captures it exactly.

Despite ourselves, we look up the tweets.

Still missing darling @sigsantorini. Just sent her a little something to say ‘Happy Monday’
.

‘What was it?’ I ask.

‘The letter S made out of twenty-seven diamonds on a platinum chain,’ Jenny sighs. ‘And a matching charm bracelet.’

We read on.

Thinking about @sigsantorini in London. Her play’s in two weeks. She’ll be dynamite. Check it out
.

At this point, Joe gives the website of the Boat House.

‘Their site crashed, obviously,’ Jenny points out. ‘Took a day to fix it. They were thrilled.’

We make ourselves miserable for a while longer, then Jenny remembers to ask me about Alexander.

‘So? Is it true love?’

I was in fact just about to tell her about the fake swollen ankle, but her tone is so mocking that I’m instantly furious.

‘It might be,’ I say. ‘We’re going out again next week.’

Which means that unfortunately I have to text him
and suggest a date. He accepts instantly and sends round a big bunch of flowers to say ‘Happy better ankle’. It must be a star performer thing. Now I understand how florists and jewellers stay in business.

W
ith Jenny’s opening night just over a week away, Edie calls us to a lunch-break meeting in the cafeteria.

‘I’ve made a list of all the main health hazards of visiting the Indian subcontinent,’ she says, as if that’s a perfectly normal thing to do, ‘and it’s not too bad. But the important thing is not to drink the water or eat salad.’

‘Cool,’ I point out. ‘So we can live on burgers and Coke.’

Edie looks as though she’d love to disagree with me from a nutritional point of view, but is forced to admit that from a healthcare perspective, yes, that would be a good idea.

‘Or what?’ asks Jenny. It’s always details with Jenny.

‘Or bugs,’ Edie says. Her eyes go so wide she looks like a bug herself. ‘Bad ones. You spend your whole time on the loo.’

‘Lucky I’m not going then,’ Jenny smiles.

Edie looks shocked. ‘Not going? Why?’

Jenny and I look shocked back.

‘Because of her play, silly,’ I say. ‘It’ll be transferring to the West End when we get back. Of course she can’t go.’

Edie still looks amazed. ‘But this is India. The chance of a lifetime.’

‘So’s the West End,’ I point out. Jenny’s still too shocked to speak. ‘It’s the biggest deal you can get. Huge. She needs all the practice she can get. Everyone in theatre will be watching. It’ll be a major event.’

I’ve been thinking about Edie’s dimness all this time, not about Jenny’s nervousness. Then I notice Jenny’s gone green.

‘Excuse me,’ she says, and rushes out.

It looks as though it’s not only bugs that make you need the loo. Sometimes your friends can too.

After my quick text about going out, Alexander texts me back with lots of suggestions. One of them is going to see a comedy horror movie that’s had great reviews. He says he’s going with a bunch of friends. This sounds fun and bench-free, so I’m happy to say yes.

We meet up at a cool cinema in Notting Hill. I’m back in my pixie boots and remembering to limp slightly. All his friends turn out to be incredibly thin, pale and beautiful. They stand with straight backs and their feet turned out, or drape themselves elegantly on available surfaces. They are clearly ballet dancers and don’t even
need to wear linen scarves to prove it.

They are all very nice to me, even though I’m by far the youngest, and they like my new fake fur mini-dress (I miss the pink polar bear). One of the boys is from Belgium and insists on chatting to me in French while we queue for our tickets. So I chat in French back.

I am metropolitan and multilingual and totally amazing, basically. Once again I have made a good dating decision and I wish Jenny could be here to see me. All I need now is for the movie to be as good as everyone says it is and this will be a near-perfect evening.

But I never find out how good the movie is because I don’t get to see it.

Just after the bit where they tell you to switch off your mobile phones, Alexander turns round in his seat and lowers his sweaty face onto mine. FOR FIVE MINUTES. Well, it might be a bit less but it feels like fifty years so it’s probably about that. Then he breaks for air and I manage to watch a couple of funny set-up scenes until he turns round and DOES IT AGAIN.

Does the man have no shame? Do his friends not care? Am I supposed to come back and actually watch the movie some other time?

The third time, I open my teeth a bit just to see if the tongue-in-mouth thing is as bad as I feared. And it is. His tongue is hard and pointy and although I guess it can’t be sweaty, it feels as though it is. This is so awful I’m suddenly living a horror movie of my own, except this one
isn’t a comedy and if you close your eyes you can’t block it out.

At which point I finally realise that I DON’T FANCY ALEXANDER. I should have known ages ago.

I like the floppy hair. I like the Robert Pattinson overtones – anyone would. I like the long fingers and the muscly legs, but I don’t like being called Boots and I don’t like not knowing if I can eat chips or not and I don’t like HIS FACE COMING ANYWHERE NEAR ME.

Which is not ideal in a boyfriend.

Suddenly I think of Crow and it’s easy to know what to do. I wait for him to finish, trying not to picture the last horror movie I went to, where a giant spider landed on someone’s face. Then I pull away, give him a gentle peck on the cheek and say, ‘Sorry, got to go.’ I get up and walk out of the cinema and don’t look back.

It was a lot easier than I expected. And I feel so relieved, I know I’ve done the right thing. I’m also very glad that Jenny isn’t here to see me on my date after all.

She’d be laughing so hard she’d probably rupture something and not be able to do her play.

I
make sure I’m not around when Jenny finds out. I tell Edie and Edie tells her, but Edie then tells me how hysterically funny Jenny found the whole thing, so I might just as well have told her myself.

Somehow the story gets out at home. Harry finds it so amusing he stops playing sad Russian folk songs for several hours. Mum tries to be sympathetic but you can tell she saw it coming.

I hate it when mothers can see things coming. It’s a deeply irritating trait of theirs and they should pretend very hard that everything’s a big surprise.

Only Crow is suitably shocked and sympathetic, so I talk to her about it for ages while she works on the new dress for Sigrid. She nods and doesn’t say much, which is ideal (apart from reminding me not to come too close). Also, watching her work, it’s occasionally possible to forget about Alexander and sweat and cinemas. Sometimes, it’s just about fashion.

*  *  *

I avoid Jenny for a couple of days, but in the end, she begs to meet up and as the play’s about to start, I can’t really say no. Jenny doesn’t have too many friends at school because lots of girls don’t really know how to behave around someone who’s been in a blockbuster movie and on a TV chat show and who’s ‘best friends’ with the girlfriend of a Teenage Sex God. (The answer is ‘normally’, by the way, but that doesn’t occur to them, whereas ‘meanly’ often does.) And Edie’s usually busy doing clubs or telling people not to buy clothes, so if I don’t talk to Jenny, there’s a danger nobody will.

We make our usual date at the V&A café on Saturday, after Jenny’s rehearsal. She arrives in her Vuitton scarf again, and she’s taken to winding it round her face so she looks a bit like a copper-haired Michael Jackson. She sits down and I spot two separate tables of people taking photos of her on their mobile phones. For the first five minutes she has to keep stopping to sign autographs. Then she takes the scarf off so she can do proper justice to her smoothie, and people seem not to notice her so much any more. We get the chance to chat.

‘I don’t want to say I told you so,’ she says, so that the words ‘I told you so’ linger over the table.

I sigh. Might as well get it over with.

‘You mean about Alexander?’

‘Who else?’

‘OK. But he wasn’t exactly horrible. He didn’t
two-time me or anything. He just wasn’t . . .’

‘What? Sexy? Interesting? Nice?’

‘My type,’ I say lamely.

‘Oh yeah,’ she grins. ‘Well, you see what they’re like now. Sorry you had to learn the hard way.’

She doesn’t look remotely sorry. And I’m not convinced she’s right. I don’t think
all
men are like that. Harry’s lovely, for a start, when he’s not teasing me. And my dad. It’s not my fault if Jenny’s unlucky. But I’ve promised myself to be nice. The only answer is to change the subject.

‘How are you feeling? Are you ready for the first night?’

The colour drains from her face. ‘As ready as I’ll ever be. Anthony says he thinks we’re not
total
disasters.’

Anthony Lyle is the director of
Her Father’s Daughter
. Jenny’s movie director used to make her miserable by complaining about everything she did, including the way she
looked
at people. From what she’s said about Anthony, he’s the opposite: he hardly says anything to her at all.

‘Has he been any more helpful recently?’

‘No, not really,’ she mutters glumly. ‘He’s too busy taking Sigrid through her lines and making sure she’s happy with her water and asking whether Joe Yule has texted recently. He let us go early today so he could stay behind with her and sort out something that was bugging her. He usually does. I have to rely on Jim to make sure I’m doing everything OK.’

Jim is the one playing the dad character. He and Jenny have formed the SIRTQOE society, which stands for Sigrid Is Really The Queen Of Evil. So far they’re the only members. They don’t dare ask anyone else, in case they mysteriously have to ‘spend more time with their families’, like Caroline – the woman who originally had Sigrid’s part.

‘I’m sure you’re brilliant,’ I say loyally.

Jenny smiles a sad, wistful, actressy smile. ‘I hope so. I want to be. I mean, it’s lovely on that stage. I really enjoy it. It’s just the audience bit that worries me. You know . . . after . . . everything.’

She means after being compared to dining room furniture the last time she performed beside a Hollywood star.

‘Anyway,’ she sighs, ‘here are the tickets. You can see for yourself on Wednesday.’

She hands over an envelope and I can feel the tickets inside it. For a moment, I feel vaguely sick myself. The last time someone gave me tickets it was my soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend and we all know what happened next.