Fur Coat
I’m not at the pub quiz. I’m in a car with Lace. I had every intention of going, but Lace was waiting for me by my bike in the school’s bike shed. At first, all I could see was a figure in the dark.
‘Lace, what are you doing here? At my school?’ I laughed nervously.
‘I’m surprising you,’ she says in a matter-of-fact tone.
‘Surprising me? What? How did you know where I worked?’
‘I’ll explain in the car.’
‘In the car?’
‘We can’t be late.’ We walked towards the school gate.
‘What do you mean in the car?’ I persisted. ‘I can’t go with you. I have a pub quiz.’ I stopped talking when I saw the black Mercedes and the driver in a suit standing outside of it. ‘What the hell is going on?’ By this point, I felt a little scared. How much did I really know Lace, after all?
‘Like I said, Amy, it’s a surprise,’ she says, before pulling me closer to the car.
‘I have a pub quiz to get to,’ I protested.
‘I go every week, I’m part of this team with Josh, Nina and Pete.
We’re called Petey and the Brains. We were on a winning streak, but last week we were disqualified, and this week Nina can’t go.
So, I really need to be there or else there will be no chance of the team redeeming the crown .
. .’ We were standing in front of the black car.
‘What a depressing little story,’ Lace said, as the driver opened the back-seat door for us. ‘You won’t want to miss this for anything, especially for a pub quiz.’ She ducked down into the car and waved her hand from inside. ‘Get in, Amy.’
‘This feels like a kidnapping,’ I joked.
‘It’s not a kidnapping, it’s a rescue,’ she says. ‘Get in.’ I looked around to see if anyone was there to witness my last known sighting, but everyone had gone home. Oh well, I thought, and got into the car.
*
We are driving out of Clapham and have just passed The Cock and Bull.
The quiz starts in five minutes. There is classical music blaring out from the car’s radio.
I ask the driver to turn it down because I can’t think of how to word my text to Josh with all those violins making a racket.
The driver mutes it, but Lace carries on humming the tune.
I recognise the song but don’t know who it’s by.
Mozart is always my guess, but I’m no good at naming the living artists, let alone the dead ones. When was Mozart even alive?
Sorry!! Not going to be at the pub quiz. Lace is surprising me. Sorry! Good luck!
‘Please, can you tell me where we’re going?’ I ask as soon as the message is sent.
Lace carries on humming the tune and then says, ‘Isn’t life more exciting when you don’t know where you are going?’
‘No, not at all. I like to know exactly where I am going.’
We drive over Blackfriars Bridge and my phone buzzes. It’s Josh.
***
It’s a fair response. I would be livid if he had done this to me.
Sorry. Will explain later. Xxx.
The car heads down The Strand, making a right towards Covent Garden and stops outside the Royal Opera House.
‘Ready for some Tosca?’ Lace says, unbuckling her belt.
‘Toss . . . what?’ I ask.
She ignores my question and gets out of the car, so I get out of the car. There is a swarm of people dressed up and heading inside. Lace’s fur coat suddenly makes sense.
‘I can’t go in there,’ I shriek. The driver gets a red-covered garment from the boot and hands it to Lace. ‘What’s that? Lace, if you think I’m going in there . . .’ I call out to her as she walks towards the doors.
‘Come on, doll,’ she says.
‘But I’m rubbish at musicals.’
‘It’s not a musical. It’s op-er-a.’ She spaces out the word as if I’m stupid.
‘I didn’t even like Les Misérables. And, and . . . look how I’m dressed’ I pull on my black wool knee-length dress that has bobbled over the years. She shakes the covered garment.
‘What do you think this is?’
‘I don’t want to know.’
‘Amy Elman!’ It’s the first time I’ve heard her raise her voice, and it makes me jump. ‘Trust me. You need this right now,’ she says.
I search around as if there will be something, anything to save me, but even the car has driven off.
*
‘How does it look?’ Lace says from the other side of the cubicle door.
I look down at the long, figure-hugging red dress. Red. The last time I wore red was when I dressed as Red Riding Hood for my sixth birthday party. As glamorous as the dress is, there is no way I can pull off something so bold, so sensual, so not me.
‘Come on, doll, I want some champagne,’ Lace says.
I look up at the ceiling panel above, wondering how possible it would be to escape.
‘Amy?’ she knocks again. I unlock the door and take half a step out.
I’m wearing heels that feel like stilts.
A step wrong, and I will be face-planting the toilet floor of the Royal Opera House. Lace makes a dramatic orgasmic sound.
‘Isn’t she marvellous?’ she says, tightening one of the spaghetti straps. ‘I found her in the King’s Road Oxfam. Only needed a few pinches. Come.’
I grip her hand, and she walks me to the mirror.
I see myself. Red from head to toe, cleavage on display, my curves being shown off.
There is no way I can hide in it. The dress is screaming for attention.
I can’t decide whether I look incredible in it or like a dog in a tutu.
I hold my elbow across my body like a safety belt. Lace pulls my arms apart.
‘Please can you just pretend to like yourself?’ she says.
‘I do like myself,’ I say faintly at my reflection.
‘One day, you’ll believe it, but it’s a start,’ she says. ‘Now, let’s get some fizz.’
I’m feeling a little better about my surprise because of the champagne.
The bar in the Opera House is a giant classy conservatory.
With the men in their tuxes and women in their dresses, it’s as if we’re at a James Bond-themed party.
Lace has taken her fur coat off and is in a black silk dress that sits like oil on her skin.
Her tight hair is making her wide eyes even wider and her plump lips, plumper.
A man at the bar is blatantly staring at us, and he’s not the only one.
They’re all looking at Lace, no doubt, probably thinking that we’re an odd pair.
Pete talks about this a lot. He says hot girls always have an ugly friend with them to make them look even better.
The ugly girl is called ‘a tug’. They come into the bar first, ‘tugging’ along the hot one. I’m the tug.
A bell goes, and everyone starts putting their glasses down and vacating the conservatory.
Lace tells me to leave my champagne because nobody is allowed to drink in the theatre, which sabotages the only thing about seeing this opera that I was looking forward to.
The wine in my plastic cup was what got me through Les Misérables, so goodness knows how I’m going to survive a two-and-a-half-hour opera without alcohol.
We go up the red-carpeted stairway. I’m aware I’m being dead slow, but these heels are a death trap waiting to happen.
Once I (finally) get to the top, we go away from the crowds and down a corridor to the last door on the right.
It’s an actual opera box. I thought only royalty could sit in these.
‘How much did this cost?’ I ask.
‘Ask Frankie the next time you see him,’ Lace says as she sits down and peers over the edge.
‘Frankie? Why would Frankie pay for me to be in a box?’
‘He didn’t. He paid for me,’ Lace says, and then gets me to sit down next to her.
Below us is a sea of grey hair sitting in red velvet chairs.
Random instruments are playing odd notes above the chatter of the audience.
I can just about see the drummer in the corner of the orchestra, standing above a big bass drum.
She’s beating it rapidly with sticks that look like campfire marshmallows.
‘What does Tosca even mean?’ I ask, but as soon as I do, the lights dim, the audience applauds and the velvet curtain rises. Lace takes my hand, and we sit with our fingers intertwined.