Ashleigh and Remy Brett 1982 Aged 20 #2
‘Don’t be like that!’ Her mother tutted. ‘Be pleased for her. It’s the circles she mixes in now.’ Remy shared a look of amusement with Tony, who was the circle she mixed in. ‘She’s got a black taffeta off-the-shoulder frock with a big bow at the back. I bet she’ll look beautiful.’
‘She will.’ At least on this Remy could agree.
‘And did you see the picture of Princess Diana and the new baby?’ This Ruthie addressed to Tony, knowing he was as much of an admirer as she was.
‘I did. I loved that green on her,’ he enthused.
‘Oh, me too, and I said to Den, someone’s done her hair. It was gorgeous. She looked tired, mind.’ Her mother spoke as if it were her concern to have.
‘I said the same.’ Tony sighed, as if he were Ruthie’s companion, not hers! ‘But I guess she has an excuse, having just given birth to the little prince!’
‘Ah, yes, William! Lovely name. What a smashing, happy little family they all are. Her and Charles, a real-life fairy tale!’
‘Really is.’
Remy bit her lip rather than express her bemusement at just how these two people she adored could be so interested in the lives of complete strangers.
‘Righto. Well, I’ll leave you to it.’ Her mum retreated, smile fixed, and closed the door behind her.
‘Which lipstick?’ Tony ran his hand through their shared make-up bag, selecting their favoured Rimmel lippy in Heather Shimmer, which they liked to top off with a clear lip gloss, the applicator stick of which was a rather curious shade of red/pink, and the once transparent contents of the tube were now decidedly murky.
‘Yes.’ She nodded her approval. ‘If ever there was a night for Heather Shimmer, it’s this one.’
As they made their way downstairs, excitement fizzed in her veins, as it always did at the prospect of a night out.
‘Don’t get separated,’ her mother instructed over her shoulder as she scrubbed baked-on mash from the shepherd’s pie tin, her orange Marigolds going like the clappers.
‘We won’t,’ Tony replied.
‘And don’t be too late, Remy. You know I don’t like you being out when we’re asleep in case you need anything.’
‘You go to bed at nine o’clock!’ She pointed out the obvious. ‘If we have to be back by then we might as well not go out at all!’
‘You know what I mean.’ Ruthie gripped the Brillo pad and scrubbed harder.
‘If you need picking up, anywhere, anytime . . .’ Her dad abandoned his newspaper, laying it flat on to the kitchen table, offering his services, as he always did.
It was clear that despite his promotion to manager, now able to sit at a desk all day in the head office of the concrete company in Trowbridge, he missed the days of repping with his car as his chariot, the open road ahead and as many Little Chef breakfasts as he could wangle on expenses.
‘Thank you, Mr Brett, but I’ve got Mum’s car.’
She caught Tony’s gaze and rolled her eyes: how many times was he going to have to say it!
‘Well, the offer’s there, son. The Escort likes a run out, and I always have the keys within reach.’ As if to prove his point, her dad patted the pocket of his slacks, and they all heard the jangle of the keys.
‘He thinks more of that bloody car than he does of me!’ Ruthie huffed.
‘And I’ve told you countless times,’ her dad replied without missing a beat, ‘that if ever you want an oil change and a quick run around the block, I’m happy to oblige!’
‘Idiot!’ her mum spat, but her face still split with a smile that made her look almost girlish.
‘See you tomorrow. Love you.’ Remy walked over and kissed her mum’s cheek.
‘Love you too, and don’t accept drugs from strangers!’
‘What?’ Remy let out a peal of laughter.
‘I don’t . . .’ She didn’t know how to respond.
‘I don’t do drugs, Mum. I never have, they don’t appeal to me in the slightest, but if I did want to do drugs, I cannot think of a single close friend or family member that might be able to supply them, which kind of suggests I’d have to get them from a stranger. ’
‘You know what I mean.’ Her mum paused from her scrubbing.
‘I really don’t,’ she confessed.
‘It was on my mind, that’s all. They were talking about it in the hairdressers’. Mrs Butterworth was saying that her son lives in London, and everyone there is taking drugs.’
‘Everyone in London?’ she asked for Tony’s benefit, knowing it would make him laugh.
‘Yes, pretty much.’
Even her dad shook his head and returned to his paper.
‘I’m just thinking about the millions of people who live in London, including the Royal family, Margaret Thatcher, Denis Thatcher, the Bishop of Westminster, Felicity Kendal.’ She could go on.
‘Well, obviously none of them!’ Ruthie tutted.
‘But everyone apart from them?’ Remy knew she was winding her mother up, but it was too ridiculously rewarding not to.
‘Probably.’ Her mother shrugged. ‘And drive carefully, Tony.’
‘I always do.’
‘You read about those kids, don’t you, who are larking about in the car, and the next thing you know their mothers are laying plastic-wrapped bouquets by the side of a tree that came at them from nowhere on a bend.’
‘Erm . . .’ Tony stared at her mum, clearly as lost for words as she was.
‘Bye, Mum!’ Remy grabbed her friend by the sleeve, and they left the house, both committed to look out for trees on bends that came out of nowhere.
‘I love Felicity Kendal,’ Tony sighed as he got behind the wheel.
‘Everyone loves Felicity Kendal,’ she pointed out as she adjusted the front seat of his mum’s Allegro.
‘True.’ He turned the key and the little engine shuddered to life.
‘A ball?’ Remy scoffed; it had been on her mind, and she changed the subject with ease. ‘What does it even mean? A ball!’
‘Let it go!’ Tony shouted, as he navigated the lanes that took them into town, where they’d park near the pub.
‘Nothing to let go. I’m not bothered, I’m not!’
What did bother her, and the thing she found hardest to voice, was the further weakening of the bond between her and Ashleigh.
The blurring of the sharp edges of the shape of them.
Sharp edges that meant as kids they slid together forming a perfect one.
Now, they could get close, but never as close as they were.
They were altered, had grown into their own people in a way that she could not, as a child, have envisaged.
And it wasn’t only a physical thing, although it was always a little jarring, a surprise to see her blonde, straight-haired sister who from the back was nothing like her.
It hurt in a way that was as hard to reconcile as it was to explain.
Inevitable, of course, the ageing, the separation, the evolution, and yet that had been her thing, their thing, being special, one seed split in two.
They were now very different people. Very different people whose communication was sporadic and even a little awkward, as it was when you had very little in common with someone’s day-to-day.
One who went to Southend, the other Sardinia . . . It wasn’t that she wanted Ashleigh’s life, not at all, but equally, she didn’t want to be written off either. Maybe that law degree would redress the balance. A bubble of excitement rose in her gut at the possibility.
‘You sound a bit bothered.’ Tony kept his eyes on the road.
‘I’m not! It just irritates me. Only Ashleigh would go to a ball. It always has to be that bit more than anyone else does, a bit grander than you’ve experienced or seen, a bit more expensive than most of us can afford, and she’s a bloody student. I don’t know how she does it!’
‘A student with a full grant and a very wealthy boyfriend, according to what she was saying when she came home last. His parents were at their house in Italy, and he’d gone sailing. Sailing!’
‘I remember.’ She snorted and pulled a face. ‘But hardly a boyfriend – she’d only been seeing him a few weeks. What was his name?’ She clicked her fingers.
‘You know his name, Remy! Be nice! She is your sister, your twin.’ He shook his head, reminding her so much of her mother it made her chuckle. ‘I miss my brother. I’d give anything to have him close by.’
She knew this to be true; his brother Gregory had emigrated to Australia a couple of years ago and was living and working in Sydney.
It sounded brilliant, sunny, warm and, with a beach on his doorstep, what was not to love?
But so very far away. The furthest she had ever been was France on a day trip; they’d gone by hovercraft from Dover to Boulogne.
It had rained all day, but she’d got to eat a baguette and said ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ at passport control in French.
Job done. But who knew where she might travel in the coming years, or what her future might hold?
A qualified lawyer with a job in a sunny place . . . that’d do.
‘Archibald. Who is called Archibald?’ She changed the topic, not wanting the absence of his brother to be a downer on their evening. ‘Why can’t she have a nice normal boyfriend with a name like Jamie!’
‘At least she has a boyfriend.’ He pulled a face.
‘And as I’ve told you before, darling, we’re waiting for the right ones.
We are discerning, not desperate.’ This, her justification for their drought in the man department.
She’d had a couple of harmless flings at school, nothing serious, and more often than not went out with boys because they’d asked rather than because she really liked them.
University was, she reckoned, going to offer rich pickings when it came to boys.
Her virginity sat around her neck like an eye-catching weighty necklace.
She was aware of it, irked by the presence of it at times, and yet in no real hurry to whip it off.
It was, she had to admit, hard to meet fabulous and eligible men at the garden centre.
Well, that wasn’t strictly true, as she found herself propositioned with offers of afternoon tea or garden walks daily; what she meant was fabulous and eligible men under the age of eighty.