Chapter 6
It was a week later, the following Saturday, and my flat was no longer quiet, no longer empty, and no longer tidy. In fact I don’t think there had ever been as many people in it as there were that night. As many girls.
Normally, I’d call myself out for using that word – these were all adult women, after all. But there was something about my sister and her hens, that night, that was pure, one hundred per cent girl. My kitchen counter was strewn with make-up compacts, stacks of brushes, bottles of nail varnish, magnifying mirrors and even a ring light. The air was thick with the smell of hairspray and perfume. Half-drunk bottles of fizz and cans of hard seltzer were leaving sticky rings on every surface. Music blared from my speakers, almost drowned out by gales of giggles.
It was Amelie’s hen night, and my flat had been chosen for the rendezvous and getting-ready point, owing to it being closest to the bar in Shoreditch where we were heading. And maybe owing to me being chief bridesmaid, I guess, although I’d had very little to do with the arrangements for tonight’s festivities.
Originally, Zack had offered to pay for us all to spend a week partying in Ibiza. But, to my surprise, Amelie had put her foot down – it was too much time to ask all her friends to take off work, and besides what she really wanted was a good old-fashioned Saturday night out. Zack, apparently, had told her that whatever she wanted was what he wanted too, and so it had been settled.
The moment my sister had set up the WhatsApp group, posted, ‘I’ll leave you girls’ See? Girls, ‘to it then, see you all on the 24th!’ followed by a slew of emojis – pink fingernails, chinking champagne flutes, cocktails, hearts and of course the dancing lady – Amelie’s friends had begun building up to a fever pitch of excitement.
Most of them were just names I’d seen on the WhatsApp group. I had no idea whether the tall redhead or the curvaceous Asian woman was Miranda. There were two dark-haired twins who’d introduced themselves as Caitlin and Bryony, but I couldn’t for the life of me identify which was which. A group of four stunning blondes, almost as indistinguishable from each other as the twins, had arrived together and dashed, shrieking, into the flat to greet their friends, barely glancing at me when I opened the door.
I knew Amelie, of course. And I knew Nush, her best friend since primary school. Rosa and Eve were university friends of my sister’s who I’d met at various parties and dinners over the years.
But that didn’t make much of a difference – the whole vibe was so unlike anything I normally experienced, they might as well all have been fragrant, blow-dried aliens flown in from another planet for the occasion.
Evidently, there was a theme. What exactly, I couldn’t put my finger on – angels, maybe, or unicorns, or sparkles, or perhaps just pink. Whichever it was, the girls were attired in thigh-high slinky dresses, cerise glitter trainers, fluttery white feather boas, and tops so skimpy they looked like they’d nicked a hanky from somewhere and stuck it over their chests with a couple of bits of sellotape going round the back.
I hadn’t got the memo – literally. Once the WhatApp chat had started to escalate, I’d muted the group, only checking in once a week or so to ask if there was anything I could do, other than hosting the before-party, and I’d been assured it was all under control. So I was wearing black jeans, purple Docs and a baggy charcoal vest top with the Metallica logo on the front.
Actually, thinking about it, it was me who looked like an alien, foreign and abandoned on their shiny pink planet. Even Astro had taken disgruntled refuge in his favourite shelf in my wardrobe, where his furry form was half-buried by jumpers. Amelie was doing her best to look out for me, but it was her night, and understandably she could only give me regular ‘Are you okay?’ glances, or comforting squeezes on the shoulder, before flitting back to her friends.
Determined to conceal – or ideally drown – my awkwardness, I poured yet another glass of fizz and set to work ferrying empties to the recycling, wiping up spills and crumpling empty crisp packets.
‘Is it time to go?’ the tall redhead asked, checking her reflection in her phone’s camera and topping up her lip gloss.
‘Our table’s booked for seven thirty at the restaurant,’ said a twin.
‘And then ten at the club,’ said one of the blondes.
‘We’re getting an Uber, right?’ asked another. ‘There’s no way I’ll make it further than down the stairs in these shoes.’
‘But Lucy’s not ready yet,’ Rosa pointed out.
‘Yes, babe, you’d better get changed,’ urged Eve.
All at once, a dozen pairs of eyes had turned on me like searchlights.
‘I wasn’t going to,’ I muttered. ‘I was going like this. I haven’t got anything pink.’
‘Don’t be mad!’ protested one of the twins. ‘You need to be in the theme!’
‘Hasn’t someone got something Lucy can wear?’ demanded her sister.
‘Come on,’ Nush grabbed my elbow firmly, her other hand clutching a squashy silver leather backpack. ‘I brought a spare outfit. I always spill food on myself and end up looking like I’d been in a fight with it. But you can borrow this. I’ll just have to tuck a napkin into my top, won’t I, Amelie?’
As she frogmarched me into my bedroom, I heard my sister say, ‘Only if you want to, Luce. You must wear whatever you’re comfortable in.’
But it was too late. The door had closed behind us, and Nush had produced a sparkly silver garment from her bag. It looked about big enough to fit Astro.
‘It’s stretchy,’ she encouraged. ‘And besides, you’re way smaller than me. I’d kill for your figure. Come on.’
Reluctantly, I perched on the bed and unlaced my boots, then pulled off my jeans and top and stood there in my underwear and socks, resisting the urge to cover my boobs with a forearm like some swooning Regency virgin.
‘I’m afraid it’s a bit of a braless wonder,’ Nush said, shaking the dress at me like a matador goading a bull. ‘I mean, you could wear a bra if you want, but it’d show. And you really don’t need to, you’re…’
‘Flat as an ironing board?’ I joked, trying unsuccessfully to conceal my awkwardness.
She tsked and shook her head. ‘Lovely and perky, you lucky thing. Try it. I won’t look.’
She turned away, as if this was a game of hide and seek and she was counting to a hundred. I unclipped my bra and frantically tried to figure out the dress, putting my head through first one armhole and then the other before I finally got it right. I pulled it down as far as I could, but it still barely covered my bottom. It was lurex, mercifully lined at the front, but with the back made up of little more than a series of criss-cross straps. There was no mirror in my bedroom, so I couldn’t see the full effect, but Nush looked delighted when she turned around.
‘Oh my God! It’s like it was made for you. Fabulous.’
‘What shoes will I wear, though?’
‘Your DMs are perfect. Pure rock chick. Come on, stick them on and we’ll get Miranda to do your eyes. She’s a genius with make-up.’
Seconds later, I was perched on a stool in my kitchen, Miranda (who turned out to be the Asian girl) fluttering over my face with brushes and sponges while someone else opened another bottle and everyone exclaimed over how amazing I looked in Nush’s dress.
‘You’ll want to do your own mascara,’ Miranda said after a bit. ‘I’m so cack-handed I’d probably poke your eye out.’
She held up a compact mirror in one hand and proffered a mascara wand with the other and, as if mesmerised, I slid the brush over my eyelashes, trying not to blink before it dried, my glasses clutched in my lap. Miranda wafted her hands in front of my face a few times, then said, ‘You’re all good. My work here is done.’
I slipped my glasses on again and the room came back into focus, but Miranda had already snapped her mirror closed, Amelie was putting the last half-drunk bottles of fizz back in my fridge, and everyone was shrugging into tiny cropped coats, oversized biker jackets and one long swishy trench coat, and heading for the bathroom or the front door.
I said a hasty goodbye to Astro, assuring him I’d be home as soon as I possibly could, and waited for everyone to file out before locking the flat behind us.
Dinner passed in a blur of small plates, smiling waiters and cocktail after cocktail. Nush settled the bill, saying she’d do a spreadsheet afterwards and share what everyone owed on WhatsApp, because obviously we were all picking up Amelie’s share. Then Eve produced a carrier bag and dished out shocking pink sashes emblazoned with ‘Amelie’s Hens’ for all of us and ‘Bride to Be’ for Amelie, and pink deely boppers with – of course – cocks and balls on the end of the springs.
‘No one – but no one – is to tell Zack about this until after the wedding,’ my sister shrieked. ‘I’d get dumped for sure – he still thinks I’m classy!’
Through a haze of alcohol, as I slipped the headpiece behind my ears, I wondered whether this, rather than its proximity to Shoreditch, was why Nush had volunteered my flat as the getting-ready location. I tried to imagine Amelie’s friends giggling and dropping glitter eyeshadow and crisp crumbs all over her and Zack’s immaculate kitchen, and failed. I tried to imagine him watching benevolently from a corner, or making himself scarce in the bedroom, or making cocktails for everyone, and that didn’t work either.
But there was no time to try and jump-start my mind back into working order – the bill was paid and we were moving on.
All thoughts of my future brother-in-law vanished from my mind as we all piled, giggling, out into the street. One of the blonde woman, who was apparently pregnant and therefore designated The Sober One, got her phone out and checked the directions to our next destination, and after a false start (sober or not, clearly she was no Christopher Columbus), we set off on the short walk.
There was a queue outside the club, but we had VIP tickets so were able to swan smugly to the front and get let in straight away. Inside, I found myself battered by noise and blinking rapidly as my eyes fought to adjust to the sudden darkness.
I hadn’t been clubbing for a long time. Literally years. Maybe back when I was at uni it had been a regular thing – probably not, though, as I’d been too skint for anything much apart from beans on toast to be a regular thing. When I’d had my first job and been living in a house share, we’d had wild nights out in town sometimes. But I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been to a place like this – if I ever had.
The clubs I could remember had been dingy, sticky-floored warehouses with massive banks of speakers against graffitied concrete walls, lights suspended from steel girders on the ceiling and fearsome bouncers on the door. This, in contrast, was positively civilised. There were waitresses flitting about holding trays of cocktails aloft. Tall white leather stools were grouped around shiny-topped tables and, apart from the dance floor, which looked like it was made of glass, or some sort of translucent perspex, there was carpet on the floor.
I was willing to bet there’d be loo paper in the toilets, and probably even soap.
‘Shall I get a round of drinks in?’ I suggested, emboldened, turning towards the bar.
‘Don’t be daft.’ Nush lent in close so I could hear her over the music. ‘We’ve got a reserved seating area and table service. Come on.’
A woman in a black dress with a name tag let us through the crowd to the back of the room, where a roped-off area held two tables, each with a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket waiting on it. There was a great view of the dance floor and the bar, where two bearded guys and a woman with a full sleeve tattoo and scarlet undercut hair were doing complicated things with cocktail shakers. The bar was topped with beaten copper and rows and rows of bottles lined the illuminated glass shelves behind it. A small crowd of people were waiting to place their drinks orders, studying the menus, discussing the options with their friends, pointing at potential choices, then leaning in to give their order when they reached the front of the queue.
As I watched, a man in a white shirt reached the bar, leaned in to speak to the women with the red hair like everyone else, tapped his phone on the card reader, then turned to face the room while he waited for his cocktail order to be made, a long-necked bottle of beer already in his hand. He hitched his elbows on to the copper counter top, crossed one leg in front of the other and leaned back, relaxed and graceful, his eyes scanning the room.
I froze in shock and then turned around so quickly I almost fell off my tall stool. It was Ross.
Shit. Ross. Seeing him here shouldn’t have come as a surprise really – I knew he lived locally, and I knew he had a penchant for trendy bars as well as bargain-basement pubs. But seeing him out of context was weird – even weirder than seeing him carrying Astro down the road had been. This wasn’t a place where people rescued cats or checked each other’s work or swapped quotes from old sitcoms while they made coffee.
This was a place where people came to drink and dance and hook up.
A waiter was hovering by my elbow, and Eve nudged me and asked what I wanted to drink. Blindly, I ran my eyes down the cocktail menu and chose at random – something involving Grey Goose vodka and plum saké. Then I drank what was left in my champagne glass and filled it up along with everyone else’s, finishing the bottle.
When my drink came it was a clear, pale pink and lethally strong, but I drank it as if it was pop and ordered another the same. Around me, my sister and her friends were caning the booze, too – it was a hen night, after all, with no place for moderation. But as they got more and more giggly and raucous, groups of them leaving the tables to hit the dance floor, taking their handbags with them and putting them by their feet in time-honoured fashion, I found myself retreating back into my shell, longing for invisibility.
The barely-there back of my dress made me feel horribly exposed, as if at any moment Ross would clock me, perhaps by recognising my shoulder blades. I felt like there was a target painted on my skin in between the criss-crossed silver straps. It was very, very important that I didn’t turn around.
So I didn’t. I sat there and drank another cocktail and then another. When Amelie’s friends came to talk to me and make sure I was okay, I made myself smile and nod and say how much fun I was having.
But all I could think of was Ross behind me. The way the line of his throat had looked when he lifted his beer to take a swallow. The breadth of his shoulders when he stretched his elbows out over the bar top. The easy way he’d crossed one ankle over the other as he leaned back, his legs long and lean in his faded jeans.
He was probably behind me on the dance floor right now, surrounded by his mates like they thought they were some kind of big deal. His hair was probably flopping down over his face and getting all sweaty. He was probably making comments about all the women in the room and he and his blokey coven were rating them out of ten.
He was probably dancing like he thought he was good at it.
And there was no way I was going to be able to pluck up the courage to go over and talk to him – not wearing a fuck-me dress and bobbing male genitalia on my head.
I glanced at my watch. It was half past midnight; I’d been sitting there for almost two hours and I realised I was absolutely desperate to wee. If I got up, Ross might see me. But the illuminated sign for the toilets – a male and a female figure, their legs crossed in discomfort – was directly in front of me. I could get up, walk straight there and then return to my seat – although admittedly I might have to do that backwards.
But either way, I couldn’t sit here any longer – the discomfort was too much.
I slid off my stood and then clutched the rim of the table as the room swooped and tilted around me. Shit. I was very, very drunk. Drunker than I could remember being in years. Getting to the loo was going to take some doing.
I took a deep breath, forcing my eyes to focus on the sign and my feet to move steadily forward, one in front of the other. And I made it.
Washing my hands at the basin, I saw that my face was swimming in and out of focus, my lipstick smudged by eyes still huge and luminous from the make-up, my skin glowing. I pointed a finger at myself in the mirror, and it connected with my reflection’s finger.
‘You okay, Lucy?’ Nush appeared next to me, concern in her face. ‘I was dancing and I saw you’d gone. I was going to ask if you wanted to join us – the DJ’s awesome.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’m okay. I don’t dance. But I think I need some fresh air – I’m feeling a bit…’
‘Come on.’ Nush assessed the situation in a heartbeat. ‘Some of the others are out vaping. Let’s get you outside.’
She took my elbow and guided me back out, past our table and through the labyrinth of others, towards a neon Exit sign. As we passed the bar and the dance floor, I looked for Ross but didn’t see him.
The cool night air hit me like a cold flannel to the face, and I realised with relief that I wasn’t going to be sick – not now, anyway. Nush guided me to the group where Amelie was, surrounded by one of the dark-haired twins and Eve and Rosa. My sister was wreathed in smiles, and when she saw me she flung her arms round me and whispered, ‘Thank you so much for coming. I know it’s not your thing but I hope you’re having an okay time. I love you, you know.’
‘Love you more,’ I whispered, feeling tears prick my eyes.
‘Bryony’s living her best life,’ remarked the twin. ‘Pulled some hottie on the dance floor and now look.’
All our eyes followed the discreet point of her finger. Separate from the crowd around the entrance, a few yards away, I could see the back of Bryony’s neon pink satin dress. Or some of it, at least. The rest was concealed by a man’s arms, wrapped tightly around her slender body. Her head was tilted upwards and his downwards, and they were kissing like they were exchanging life force.
I couldn’t see his face, but I didn’t need to. The glimpse I’d had of him at the bar had imprinted on my mind the exact shade of his jeans, the precise fall of his white shirt.
It was Ross.
Almost as if it didn’t belong to me, I heard a keening sound come from my throat, and without further warning I started to cry.
‘I think we need to get Lucy home,’ I heard someone say, then everything vanished and there was only the cold, damp pavement under my hands and knees.