Boyfriend in a Dress. Louise Kean
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and conference in Naomi and Jules.’
‘Your mates?’ he asks, confused, even though he has done it a thousand times before.
‘Yes, you have their numbers. I’ll be back in five minutes.’
‘Get me a Twix,’ I hear him shout after me as I head for the lifts.
I sigh and hit the button for ‘ground’, and try desperately to ignore the mirrors on all sides of me in the lift, reflecting my shiny face back at me. It is too hot for May. I love it and hate it. If it holds until the weekend, I’ll love it. If it breaks on Friday, it’ll just be a pain in the arse. There is nothing worse than working in the summer. Actually, there are a lot of things which are much worse – torture with acid and sandpaper isn’t great, I’ve heard – but this is … frustrating.
I lean against the side of our building, with the sun pouring onto my eyelids, and inhale.
I was fourteen, dressed in my school uniform, and hiding behind a petrol pump. My exasperated parents drove up and down the road in front of me. I could see the car crawling back past the church, past the petrol station opposite. I didn’t want to go to my first confirmation meeting. My friends were all at the cinema, but I was ducking behind the four star. After too many arguments to go into, I had succumbed to being driven to St Jude’s, our church, because my parents didn’t trust me to get there on my own. I waved at them as they pulled away in our old Orange Datsun that my mum swore had ‘character’, and walked up the few steps to the door, but didn’t ring the bell, waiting for the car to recede into the distance so I could make a run for it. But the door suddenly flew open, and Sister Margarita sprung out of nowhere, grinning like the village idiot: she’d been at the holy wine … again.
‘Jesus Christ!’ was my unfortunate cry of shock.
‘Nicola Ellis!’ she managed to slur back in mock outrage – she’d heard worse, hell, she’d said worse herself, but she was obliged to at least seem offended.
‘Sorry, Sister,’ I mumbled and made a break for it. I dashed off down the steps, and stood, half excited, looking both ways deciding which new path to follow. Which is when I noticed the mobile baked bean tin handbrake turn at the end of the road, and suddenly my mum and dad were on my tail like the Dukes of Hazzard hit Kent. I managed to make it to the petrol station before they drove past – my dad may have been angry, he may even have done an illegal turn, but he wasn’t going to do more than thirty in a built-up area. So I ducked and dived as they went along and their sixth parental sense stopped them driving off in the other direction. They were going to track me down. It was a matter of principle, and it would make my nanny happy.
As they cruised past the church again, looking like a pair of terribly respectable kerb crawlers, I found my feet and dashed off in the other direction. The Datsun caught me as I sprinted towards the park, and I heard my mother’s voice say wearily from behind a wound down window,
‘Nicola, get in the car, please.’
There was no point fighting it. For me the compulsion to run has always been there, but when I am caught, as I am always caught, a tidal wave of guilt at doing what I want to do manifests itself in a desperate need to make amends. My dad walked me up the steps and rang the doorbell to the nuns’ house, as I hung my head in shame.
‘Don’t run off again – it’s getting dark, it’s not safe,’ was all he said. And I obeyed. Sister Margarita swung open the door again, still smiling like she had a Wagon Wheel stuck in her mouth. At the sight of me she managed to say,
‘Blasphemer!’ covering my father in a shower of holy saliva.
‘Sorry, Sister,’ I said again, as my dad eyed her nervously, and wiped himself off. Her cheeks were purple and riddled with veins, and her nose was bright red, her wimple lopsided, with an ear popping out of one side.
‘I’ll pick you up in an hour and a half. Be here,’ my dad said, and kissed me goodbye. I waved to my mum, who waved back, smiling that it would be okay. So I end up doing the thing I’m running from anyway, just with the added bonus of feeling like a bad person for daring not to please somebody else. I was the only latecomer, but I was already feeling guilty, so I was instantly top of the class.
I go back upstairs, and throw the Twix at Phil on my way past his desk, and he catches it with cricket hands and cries ‘Howzat!’
Phil follows me into my office mumbling ‘not out!’ as I slump at my desk.
‘We should throw more things in the office, it brightens my day,’ he says, and lingers near the door.
‘Are they on?’ I ask, ignoring him, looking at flashing buttons on my phone.
‘Yep, they’re holding. Is Naomi the fit one?’ he asks seriously.
‘They’re both fit, they’re my friends,’ I reply, wearily.
‘Yes, but not girl “they are both lovely and funny” fit, bloke fit?’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ I say, and hit the red button and mouth ‘shut the door,’ at Phil, who slumps out of the room. He really would prefer just to sit and listen to my conversation for twenty minutes.
When nothing happens – I can’t work this damn phone, it’s like something out of Star Trek – I press the button again, and instantly hear the girls talking at the other end.
‘Oi, I’m here,’ I say, and press some buttons on my keyboard, checking new emails for anything important.
‘“Oi”? How rude is that? She keeps us waiting, and then says “Oi”!’ Naomi is indignant.
‘Sorry, hello, I apologize for my lateness, I was in some stupid bloody meeting for hours, at the end of which we established we are going to put an old lady in fog to scare people.’
‘Like Last Of the Summer Wine?’ Nim asks.
‘Yes, just like that. Are we still on for tonight?’
‘I am, but I’m going to be late. I have to meet the Countess of Wessex.’ Jules is a fundraiser, she keeps meeting royalty; we don’t ask why.
‘What time are you going to be finished?’ Nim asks.
‘About seven.’
‘Cool, that’s good for me,’ I say, turning my attention to the photos on my desk that have been sent through by our agency of young wannabes to play our leading man. They are all useless. I wanted gritty and urban, I’ve got sons of Lionel Blair.
‘Shit, I’m finished at six, what am I supposed to do for an hour?’ Nim works in the City, meaning she works normal hours, unlike myself and Jules, who chose ‘interesting’ careers, instead of being well paid and working sociable hours. Nim has both, and even though she has to put up with banking arseholes all day, she has pots of cash, and wants to go out every night. I have to talk to her about that. I don’t want her to end up like Charlie.
‘Shop, write personal emails, go to the gym, whatever,’ Jules is saying at the other end of the phone.
‘I should go to the gym.’
‘Well, there you go, do that,’ I say, as an email entitled ‘Play this now!’ flashes up from Phil. I open it, distracted, and try and smack a monkey with a hand as fast as I can by pulling back my mouse and then whizzing it across my desk.
‘So seven? Dinner or drinks?’ I say, as I swing my mouse into my in-tray, sending papers flying everywhere, and swing it back.
‘Shit, hold on.’ I find and press hold, and shout out for Phil, who opens the door seconds later,
‘Phil, what’s your fastest smack?’
‘Four hundred and thirty-six miles an hour,’ he replies, and wanders over to stand behind my PC.
‘Bloody hell,’ I say and pull my