Would Like to Meet. Polly James
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noticing. Then her comments come thick and fast.
“Ooh, look, guys,” she says, to no one in particular. “Hannah’s tarting herself up to meet a man!”
All the HOO staff dutifully turn round from their desks to look at me, and then turn back again, without saying a single word. For one delusional moment, I think the worst is over, but then the Fembot adds,
“I guess it takes a lot longer once you get to your age, Hannah. Filling the cracks, you know?”
She giggles to herself, twirls around on her toes a couple of times, then says, “There’s some Polyfilla in the cupboard where the vacuum cleaner’s kept, if you need it. ’Bye, everyone!”
There’s a deathly silence for all of thirty seconds and then a series of dutiful grunts by way of response. (It’s a mystery why the Fembot is always the first to leave when she claims the place can’t run without her.)
I sit and glare at her back as she click-clacks her way out of the office on her Louboutins, and breathe a sigh of relief as the door slams shut behind her. Then Esther pops her head over the screen that separates our desks.
“Sometimes, I really hate the Fembot,” she says. “The other day, she told me all my allergies were in my head.”
“I sometimes think she’s got Asperger’s,” I say. “Then, other times, I just know she’s evil. Oh, shit!”
I’ve just looked at my watch, and I’m going to be late if I don’t hurry up. I aim some red lipstick at my mouth without bothering to put my glasses on, then freak out when I check the outcome in the mirror. By then, the lipstick has already sunk into all the tiny lines around my mouth, so I have to wash it off in the staff-room sink, which removes half of my already ill-applied foundation in the process. I dry my face under the hand dryer (which causes an immense hot flush), chuck some more blusher, eyeliner and mascara on, and then revert to my usual nude lipstick instead of the red. That seems a safer option for someone whose upper lip appears to have lost all definition overnight, but whose wrinkles haven’t.
I put on my still-creased dress, my nose-wrinkling shoes and, finally, my padded coat. It’s freezing cold, so I zip it up to the neck, then add a thick woolly scarf.
“Ready?” says Esther, as she comes into the staff room to collect her belongings and walks straight into the cloud of perfume I’ve just squirted up into the air. (I was planning on spinning around in it, but she got in the way.)
“Where are you meeting Eva?” she says, rapidly rinsing her face to get the perfume off.
“At the Habanero bar,” I say. “Wherever the hell that is. We’re having drinks and tapas before we head for a club. Oh, bugger, I’ve forgotten to shut down my computer.”
“I’ll do it,” says Esther. “You go, in case Eva’s waiting. I’ll meet you there a bit later on, once I’ve been home to change.”
My face must be a picture, as then Esther adds, “If that’s okay with you?”
* * *
Luckily, Eva’s fine with Esther having invited herself along – “the more the merrier”, she says – but there’s a reason I haven’t been clubbing for so many years: it’s horrible, and I am the world’s most useless flirt.
It’s not too bad in the pub, although the heating’s broken down so we have to sit there trying to look sophisticated while bundled up in our coats. Eva pulls it off with her usual panache, but Esther and I look like rolled-up sleeping bags. I’m also starting to regret the gins I had while I was trying to think how to tell Eva about Esther, as I think they’re giving me palpitations now.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” says Eva, when I mention my fluttery heart to her. “It’s just because you’re shivering. Have another drink and let’s get this party started.”
Esther and I look over at each other, and – although we don’t say anything – I get the impression she’s almost as tempted to make a run for it as I am. It’s scary going out when you’re not used to it, especially when everything’s changed so much. Although Dan and I used to go to our local pub every now and then, the bar Eva’s taken us to looks more like a nightclub. Most of the women inside are wearing barely any clothes, despite the heating problem, and they’re all wearing loads more make-up than me. There are a lot of those drawn-on, squared-off eyebrows, and everyone’s covered in tattoos. Some of those are spectacular, but others look as if their owners sketched them on the backs of envelopes while they were pissed.
Eva points in the direction of one girl with a shock of dyed black hair and the heaviest eye make-up I’ve ever seen in my life. It makes her look half-asleep, though in a sexy way, and I’d be quite tempted to slap on the make-up myself if I didn’t think I’d just end up looking knackered and ancient, instead of appealing. The girl must sense I’m looking at her, because she turns towards us, revealing a large tattoo beneath her collarbones. It’s a life-size (and very lifelike) portrait of her own face.
“She’s going to regret that in another twenty years,” I say, “when she looks in the mirror and spots the difference.”
“She ought to regret it now,” says Eva, “seeing as she looks as if she’s got two heads, especially from a distance. Whatever was she thinking?”
I can’t imagine, and the tattooed girl’s starting to look a bit irritated by our staring now, so I suggest we go and get another drink before we accidentally cause a fight.
There are people queuing ten deep at the bar, so getting served takes forever. Most people don’t even walk away when they’ve been served, as they’re all drinking shots, so they just chuck those down their necks and order more straight away. We’re never going to get served, and I’m beginning to feel claustrophobic. A huge group of girls has just surrounded us, most of them with the kind of voices that make your ears hurt, and they all smell strongly of vanilla.
I like vanilla in food, but not on people.
“Why do all modern perfumes smell like some sort of foodstuff?” I ask Eva, as she waves a fifty-pound note above her head in an attempt to attract the bar staff’s attention. “If it isn’t vanilla, it’s mango or chocolate.”
“It’s because the EU banned all the ingredients that used to make perfumes smell sophisticated,” she says. “That’s why there’s such a market for vintage scents.”
If only there was a market for vintage women – real ones, not the fakes. There are plenty of those in here, ranging from young women dressed like burlesque dancers to those who’ve obviously spent hours creating victory rolls with their hair. I’m starting to feel less pathetic about the half-hour I took to get dressed and made-up now, even though Dan listed “taking ages to get ready” as one of my most annoying habits.
The trouble is, the effort these young women have put into getting dressed up has (largely) paid off, whereas I’m pretty sure I’ve wasted my time. I know I have, once we walk into the club and remove our coats.
“What’s this?” says Eva, pulling a face. “Have you two come as Siamese twins?”
Esther’s wearing an identical dress to mine. She claims it was an accident, but when Eva corners me in the loos a little later, I have to admit I’m sure I showed it to Esther straight after I bought it.
“It’s all a bit Single White Female, isn’t it?” says Eva, as I try to work out if I can get away with wearing my dress back to front.
I can’t, so Eva rummages in her gigantic bag and pulls out a selection of what she calls “statement necklaces”. They all weigh a ton, but the largest one does succeed in making my outfit look marginally different to Esther’s, even if its weight pulls on my neck so much that I feel like a hunchback.
“You’ll be fine, as long as you don’t bend forward too quickly,” says Eva, as I do exactly that to check my make-up in the mirror – at which point the necklace swings