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Authors: Jenny Colgan

Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend (17 page)

BOOK: Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend

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‘Hang on,’ I said, queuing up outside and banging on the door. ‘Until I came along you were living in three feet of soil.’

James opened the door. He was gelling his usually soldier-neat hair up in spikes, which looked phenomenally dated, but I didn’t want to say anything in case it had come back in again whilst I wasn’t looking, seeing as I’d kind of let my
Vogue
subscription lapse.

‘Exactly!’ he said. ‘Now you’ve given us somewhere nice to bring ladies back! So our odds are
much
better. Thanks!’

‘It doesn’t seem to bother Cal,’ I said. I wasn’t really looking forward to my time in the bathroom, especially since I’d shone up the mirror. It had, I now realised, been better a little murky. My hair had an inch of dirty-looking roots; my legs were hairy; my eyes had big dark circles under them from having to get up every morning; my hands had a rash from the cleaning products; my skin looked dingy from missing regular facials and I’d put on nearly a stone having neglected my previously efficient regime of never eating solids unless I totally couldn’t help it. Could I pull it off? My slinky black vintage Azzedine Alaia no longer fitted, and I wasn’t 100 per cent sure about the zip on the Stella McCartney, which had never really suited me anyway. But I had a delicate, shimmery red chiffon dress, which was just the right side of go-go girlish (or, at least, I hoped it was, particularly now my stomach protruded over my hip bones), and some seriously dangerous-looking shoes. I just wanted to show people - well, Cal, if I was being brutally frank - that I didn’t actually spend
all
my time crawling along the floor on my hands and knees picking up feathers. (I had demanded to know why there were feathers all over the house. Nobody would answer me, which meant they’d been at the conceptual art and absinthe again.) Nope, I was going to wow this party.

Eck came up to me in the corridor. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘If you were choosing a shirt . . . for a bloke . . .’

‘Uh-huh?’

He held up two, one a pale green, one with little blue flowers on it.

‘Oh right. I thought it was a hypothetical question.’

‘OK. Please would you choose a shirt for a bloke.’

‘A bloke? What kind of a bloke?’

‘A devastatingly debonair and creative one with the strength of ten men and the heart of a lion.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I don’t know any like that.’

‘OK. Me then.’

‘The flowers,’ I said. ‘Definitely.’

‘You don’t think it’s a bit fruity?’

‘Eck, you’re at
art college
. It’s too late to be worrying about all that. Anyway, women love a man in pastel colours. It shows you’re in touch with your feminine side but comfortable in your masculine side.’

‘That does sound fruity. James!’

‘Don’t ask James, for crying out loud! He’s wearing a boot-lace tie. Look. Fruity is quite good. You’ll be Just Gay Enough.’

‘Look, I don’t want to be prejudiced or anything, but I haven’t been to a party for ages. Being gay enough is really not what I’m trying to get across.’

I smiled. ‘Are you on the pull?’

Suddenly the mood shifted and there was tension in the air.

He looked at me, with a serious look suddenly. ‘Are you?’

There was a long pause as a look passed between us, ruined only by the loud sound of the flush going off, and rattling through our completely antiquated plumbing.

‘Get out the bathroom, James!’ I hollered. ‘That’s an order.’

‘Oh, OK,’ he said, appearing at the door. James responded well to orders. The spell was broken.

‘Hey, look, some feathers!’ said Eck, pointing down the corridor. As I turned to follow his finger, he slipped into the bathroom ahead of me.

Peering in the tiny mirror in my bedroom I realised I hadn’t even bothered putting mascara on for weeks. That was amazing; I’d never been able to go down the street for a copy of
Grazia
without a full lipgloss session in my life.

In fact, as I examined my face, I realised it was worse than I’d ever thought. My eyes were horribly bloodshot from cheap beer and, I had to admit, some nights of crying; my skin looked like it had been hiding under heavy clouds - I wondered if north London got more sunshine than south London. Maybe that’s why it was so much more expensive. My hair was a total mess. It had always been my crowning glory, long and pale gold. Recently I’d just been washing it under the tap and leaving it. It didn’t look, as I’d on some level been hoping, like sun-kissed easy-going Sienna Miller beach hair. It looked like a witchy mess. Seeing it properly - all frizz and dark roots - for the first time in weeks nearly made me cry. They didn’t talk about this in the grief manual.

So, well, all those eighty-quid blow drys had been worth it after all. This was a disaster. I was going to look like a completely hopeless old hag in a too-tight nice frock. It wasn’t going to work at all. I stifled a small sob, but there was a huge lump in my throat. I couldn’t go to the party. I just couldn’t. I’d just stay in here and they could throw the coats on me. The more the better. Hide me away.

Sniffing, I pulled up the ever-tightening waistband on my sweatpants when I heard the phone ring. My new phone, that is. My lovely silver one was gone. I’d managed to get hold of the cheapest pay-as-you-go model they did. It was pink. I had a sneaking suspicion it was actually for children.

The built-in ring tone was ‘Glamorous’ by Fergie. It wasn’t glamorous.

The number wasn’t one I recognised. No. Why would it be. Probably a misdial.

‘Hello?’ I said, trying to keep any evidence of sobbing out of my voice.

‘’Ello!’ came the voice back. ‘Is that Sophie?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thank fuck. It’s Delilah.’

‘Oh, hello,’ I said. That’s all I needed to hear from right now, some gorgeous eighteen year-old with massive knockers who would look fabulous - well, trashy-fabulous, which I suspected would do - in a bin bag.

‘What am I going to wear to this bloody party then? Is it posh or what?’

‘Anything you like,’ I said. ‘You’ll look great, I’m sure.’

‘But aren’t they like students or something? What do students wear?’

‘Just wear a nice dress,’ I said. ‘You’ll be fine. You’ll be better than fine. You’ll be unbelievably popular.’

‘Oh, I know that,’ she said dismissively. ‘I just want to fit in.’

There was a pause. She obviously wanted me to ask her over. I didn’t think that was a good idea right now. No, definitely not, seeing as I was actually going to hide under the bed for five hours. No. No she couldn’t come over.

‘Can I come over?’ she asked.

‘Oh, all right,’ I said. Then I sighed.

‘What is it?’

‘I don’t really want to go,’ I said.

‘Why not?’

I paused. ‘I’m having a bad hair day,’ I said. ‘Very bad.’ ‘Oh, you should have said! I’ll be right over!’

‘Uh, no, it’s all right . . .’

‘Neh, I did two years at beauty school, didn’t I? Hairdressing and everything. I’ll bring my bag.’

‘No, really, it’s—’

‘And I’ll bring a bunch of clothes and you can tell me what to wear. OK? Get some voddy in and tell me where you live.’

I think maybe having spectacular knockers can give your confidence a real boost.

Twenty minutes later I was having a cup of tea and listening to the boys compete with each other as to what the party music was going to be. James had some military marches going. I had the horrible thought that he probably had sex in time with them.

Cal had some kind of weird esoteric stuff blaring out which sounded like someone hitting a tin dog on some aluminium piping, and Eck was playing The Killers. I wished I had some Madonna to even things out a bit. There was already a large pile of empty beer cans in the kitchen and a huge whiff of hair gel hanging around the place - gosh, they
were
taking this seriously.

‘Hello!’ Delilah bellowed cheerfully. She appeared to be carrying more kit than I’d moved in with. ‘Christ, look at you. We’ve got our work cut out.’

‘OK, OK,’ I said. She was wearing spray-on tight jeans with a pink fluffy top.

‘Are the jeans OK?’ she said anxiously. ‘I can’t change them now, I’d need metal-cutting equipment.’

Delilah clomped up the stairs. She didn’t seem the least bit bothered by the big damp stains on the ancient wallpaper, or the fact that the only pictures on the wall were of motorbikes ripped out of magazines.

‘Got any voddy?’

‘No,’ I said, apologetically. ‘But we can steal the boy’s beer. Or there’s some filthy—’

Delilah wrinkled her nose. ‘It makes you fat, beer. And it doesn’t get you pissed fast enough. Here . . .’ And she handed over what appeared to be a bottle of wine originating from more than one country.

‘Great,’ I said, genuinely pleased to see it. If I really was going to have to go to this thing, the wine was going to prove very helpful.

Delilah turned round to face me and her brow furrowed. ‘What’s up wiv your hair? Why don’t you get your roots fixed and that?’

I didn’t know how to tell her that I was scared of every hairdresser who wasn’t Stefano, and that I couldn’t afford to get my hair done.

‘OK,’ said Delilah, pulling a large pair of GHDs out of her bag. ‘I hope nobody is arriving early, because this is going to take a while.’

She turned me round so I couldn’t glance at myself in the mirror as she began her transformation. Two large glasses of wine and a lot of pulling and tugging later, Delilah let me have a look at the end result.

My first inclination was to laugh. I looked nothing like myself at all. My long blonde hair had gone; it was now styled in a kind of big beehive, coiled around itself in a way that made my head look gigantic (but did hide my roots). I had bright green eyeshadow that followed the shape of my lids, and lashes thick with black mascara, and my lips were a bright coral pink. I looked like a slinky backing singer for a Sixties band. It was a bit peculiar, but, ‘I like it,’ I said. And I did. I didn’t look like me at all - I’d always aimed for low key, sleek, expensive. All of that was gone. I looked a bit hard and up for a laugh, but in a fun way.

‘’Course you do,’ said Delilah. ‘You owe me a pint. What are you wearing?’

I opened up the half-swinging cupboard door and showed her the contents. Her eyes went wide immediately.

‘Shit!’ she said. ‘Is this stuff all real?’

I shrugged. ‘Yeah.’

‘What did you do, steal it to order?’

‘No!’

‘Were you, like, a posh man’s mistress and he bought you loads of presents and that?’

‘No!’

‘So where did you get it?’

I decided to merely distract her. ‘Do you want to try something on?’

BOOK: Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend

6.42Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub