Chapter 4
Amanda stares at Jasper in disbelief. ‘Is that all you can say?’ she splutters.
‘What, that you’ll get something else?’ He turns away from her in the bright and airy bedroom of their east London flat.
He’s checking his hair in the mirror now; never mind that Amanda is upset and wants to talk things through.
There’s a daub of rust-coloured paint in it, she notices.
When they met, Jasper was an actor but ever since he’s been ‘waiting for the right part’, he has pivoted. Pivoted towards his art .
‘You’re talking as if I’ve left a scarf on the train,’ she retorts.
He frowns. ‘It’s just a job, babe. And jobs come and go. We both know that.’
‘Yes, but they want someone younger . That’s what’s so hard to take.
’ In truth, all of it is hard to take. Presenting Look for a Lifestyle has been, if not Amanda’s most prestigious, then her steadiest job in years, with the added bonus of copious free outfits, plus complimentary cuts and colours at John Frieda.
Jasper’s earnings are minimal and, still with a hefty mortgage on her light-filled Bethnal Green flat, they certainly need the money.
‘There’s loads of work for people like you,’ he says, clearly tiring of the subject already. ‘You just have to hang in there.’
‘Well, thanks for that.’
He spins – pivots – towards her and his eyebrows shoot up. ‘I’m sorry, darling. I really am. But what else d’you want me to say?’
‘Nothing,’ she says quickly as her eyes well up. ‘I’m fine. Really. I knew this would happen at some point.’
‘Yeah, and look at it this way. You’ve had a good run!
’ He reaches for her hand, and as she snatches hers away, he makes that irritating huffy noise.
A sort of whinny , like a horse, accompanied by a toss of the bouncy dark hair that he’s so proud of and is always tweaking. She almost expects him to stamp a hoof.
Although there’s a significant age gap – at thirty-three, Jasper is a decade younger – Amanda had been under the illusion that Jasper was a proper grown-up when they first got together.
He’d charmed her, bombarding her with messages and flowers, and she’d been swept away by his chiselled looks.
And how wonderfully youthful he made her feel!
No longer edging through her forties, worried about her future on TV, but on a par with her boyfriend and his beautiful friends with their boundless energy and perky bodies and peachy skin.
‘I’m going to the gym,’ she announces.
‘Great! Enjoy yourself. See you later.’
She glares at him, aware of a sharp tang of distaste, then grabs her gym bag from the hallway and leaves the flat. Yet as soon as she’s outside in the cool morning air, she decides she can’t face Reformer Pilates today.
Instead, she marches briskly to the park, picking up a coffee on the way, with the intention of finding a bench and just sitting there, away from Jasper, with the time and headspace to think.
That team meeting they had yesterday, when they talked about ‘shaking things up’ with the morning show – she had no idea they were planning to shake her off it.
‘They said they want to keep things fresh,’ admitted Ollie, her agent, when he called her first thing this morning. ‘It’s a bugger, but there you go. So sorry, darling.’
She was aware that her contract had ended.
However, she’d reassured herself that they would renew automatically as they always had these past few years.
Now Amanda realises that she is clearly not fresh.
At forty-three she has hit that ‘tricky in-between stage’, according to Ollie.
Too old to be young, yet not old enough to join the bevvy of glamorous silver-haired women currently whipping up a storm in the fashion world.
What does an in-between person do next?
It was raining earlier and it’s unseasonally chilly for May.
Amanda wishes she’d put on a jacket. As it is, she’s come out in a fine-knit sweater, yoga pants and Birkenstocks and all the benches are damp.
With a shiver, she pulls out her phone and flicks dolefully through her contacts as she walks, wondering who she can call.
Once upon a time she had so many friends in London that she’d established a system in order to see them in groups.
Although it was never as satisfying as a one-to-one, she’d reassure herself: That’s a batch of five who’ve seen me .
She had fallen into that way of thinking; that, in granting friends a few hours of her company, she had ticked several boxes and therefore no one would think her rude or up herself.
As something of a celebrity, Amanda has always prided herself on remaining unaffected and lovely to work with; true to her down-to-earth Glaswegian roots.
However, as time went on, Amanda started to find these group gatherings trickier to arrange.
‘Who else is coming?’ someone would ask, and she’d rattle off a few names.
‘Oh, right. D’you know, I think I’ll leave it this time? ’
There became more I-think-I’ll-leave-its and Amanda wondered if her friends had started to mind being batched.
If, in fact, it felt insulting. Yet, with so many people in her life, how could she possibly spend time with everyone individually?
And, crucially, where have all those people gone?
At some point over the past eighteen months or so – since she met Jasper, actually – Amanda has started to realise that, in a city of over eight million people, she is actually bloody lonely.
Lonely and jobless – although of course the latter is only a temporary state of affairs.
She is confident that Ollie will call again soon, with good news this time. She just has to hold her nerve.
Having finished her coffee, she drops the cup into a bin.
Without thinking where she’s heading, she has emerged from the other side of the huge, sprawling park and is now in Hackney.
Twenty-five years ago, this was where she first landed when she’d moved to London.
She’d been desperate to get here, and was thrilled to gain a place on a fashion journalism course.
She’d left her devoted and devastated parents (‘Look after yourself in that London!’) and her so-called best friend who clearly wasn’t her best friend any more.
Once upon a time, Amanda and Celia had shared everything.
Clothes, shoes, secrets and dreams: there was almost nothing that hadn’t flowed freely between them.
All those nights they’d spent dressing up and dancing, up in Celia’s bedroom while her mum had those crazy parties!
All the garden picnics and camp-outs, the nights spent chatting until dawn.
They were still close as teenagers until suddenly Celia had become guarded, scurrying off to meet someone Amanda didn’t know. ‘Just a boy,’ was all she’d tell her. ‘Just someone I met.’
Then, just before Amanda left Glasgow, news came through that Celia was pregnant. She hadn’t even told her herself. Amanda’s mum had heard it through local gossip, and wasn’t it shocking? ‘Poor Celia!’ she said. ‘That sweet girl. My heart breaks for her.’ Amanda was doubly glad she was moving away.
She switched her focus to her own future.
However, the aunt she was lodging with in London seemed to be under the impression that she was a child , and not a fully grown woman who knew everything at the age of eighteen.
Outrageously, she even tried to impose a curfew on her.
All hell would break loose whenever Amanda tottered in after a few drinks with her new, party-loving crowd.
She moved out of her aunt’s and into a riotous house-share in Dalston, and from there she never looked back.
These were real friends whom she could rely on.
Not strange ones obsessed with gardening like an old person.
Amanda’s new crowd did not spend their Saturday afternoons dragging a decrepit lawnmower up and down.
Instead, they all clustered around a giant table in the pub.
Visits home to Glasgow were rare and brief, occasional meet-ups with Celia more of an obligation than a pleasure.
For one thing, she’d got together with Geoff Bloom from school and Amanda had no idea what to say about that.
Obviously, he wasn’t Celia’s son’s father and there was still no information forthcoming about that – who the guy was, whether he was sending her money or any of that.
Celia had become this closed book, and that made being with her feel rather pointless and sad.
Plus, she always had her little boy with her.
Weird, fearful Logan, forever sucking on a blanket and clinging tightly to his mum, as if Amanda was planning to rip him from her arms and throw him into the back of a van.
She knew enough about children to realise that you couldn’t leave them unattended, but what about Geoff?
Couldn’t he have looked after Logan for an hour or two?
As it was, she had to watch Celia wiping his nose and bum – so many emissions pouring out of the kid!
– while wondering how quickly she could get away.
Now, as Amanda stops to buy a second takeaway coffee (she’ll be over-caffeinated, but fuck it), she remembers the one time the three of them – Celia, Geoff and Logan – came down here on a trip.
Geoff had moaned about the prices of everything and the fact that the city was ‘busy’ and ‘very big’.
What had he expected? That London would turn out to be a little village with Postman Pat trundling about?
They’d stayed in some dreadful hotel that reeked of fried bacon, paid for by Geoff’s work.
‘Neither of you have changed a bit!’ Amanda exclaimed when she met up with them in the bar.
In fact, Celia had. She looked exhausted, Amanda thought.
But Geoff still wore his sandy hair in that terrible side parting, plus those aviator sunglasses she associated with perverts.
She’d caught him looking down at her breasts.
Do men think it’s undetectable when they do that? Don’t they think women have eyes ?
‘What d’you do again, Geoff?’ Amanda had asked.
‘I’m in pastry,’ he’d replied. ‘Savoury bakes. Pies, sausage rolls and all that.’
‘Mmm!’ Her stomach turned. Meanwhile, Celia looked stiff and uncomfortable, and the adolescent Logan had sat there fiddling with a Rubik’s cube, pale as a seashell. If you held him up to the light, you’d see through him , Amanda thought.
What had Celia ever seen in him? Not Logan – she guessed everyone loved their kids – but this plain potato-faced man with fleshy pink ears whom she’d decided to marry (fortunately it had been a tiny do and no invitation had come her way).
Geoff was a way out, she supposed. An emergency exit from that terrible family, if you could even call it a family – Mum addled with drink, Dad having run off to live with some woman in Wales.
No wonder Celia grew up odd, filling her bedroom with cuttings and plants instead of posters of pop stars and copious make-up.
That’s it, Amanda had decided after their London visit.
Some friendships have a sell-by date. Because when you only have ‘the old days’ to hold you together, is there really any point?
Amanda almost hadn’t invited Celia to her wedding.
Years had passed with no real contact between them, and she certainly didn’t want Geoff there, bragging about innovations on the sausage roll production line.
But then, when the guest list was finalised and she realised that Jasper would be inviting his entire boarding school year group, she realised it was somewhat…
unbalanced. As if Amanda didn’t have any history at all.
And one night, after a few cocktails with her colleagues, she’d discovered (to some surprise) that she still had Celia’s email address. Fuelled by several negronis, she typed:
Hey Celia hope all’s good! Exciting news – I’m getting married! To the lovely Jasper. We’d love you, Geoff and Logan to be there…
She stopped. Did she really want the strange, whey-faced adolescent at her reception? She retyped:
We’d love you and Geoff to be there to celebrate with us. No presents! Details below. Hope you can make it.
Love Amanda xxx
Soft rain is falling and a cool wind ripples her long, fine blonde hair. She should have brought a hat – her ears are chilled – and as she starts to make her way home, it hits her.
Her beautiful flat that she’d been so excited to buy.
She’d adored it before Jasper moved in, but she doesn’t any more.
She doesn’t want to go back – not with Jasper there, pouting and sulking and preening his hair.
She pictures her wedding – the glitterballs and her gorgeous silk dress, all the champagne and kisses and well-wishers.
And Celia. She pictures Celia staggering in, miraculously without Geoff, but dragging a battered wheelie case with a busted wheel.
Celia, her oldest friend, wearing a flowery dress with a cheap blazer and an old cardigan (so many layers!) and shoes that were quite startling, really.
Glossy red shoes that didn’t go with the outfit at all.
Amanda’s heart had twisted. It was hateful of her to even think it, but Celia really couldn’t carry off shoes like that.
Amanda meant to text her to say thank you for coming, and for the gift. That ugly beige vase that she had no intention of ever displaying, and which Jasper is currently using to store his dirty brushes in.
She could scrub it down and take it to a charity shop or just leave it where it is, in his ‘studio’, full of filthy water and splattered with paint. That’s not the main issue, currently. What to do about Jasper? That’s what’s churning in her mind as she finally turns back towards home.
And right now, Amanda has no answer to that.