Seductive Viennese Whirl (4 page)

Or maybe she just doesn't want to. Even I find it hard to reconcile the present Eva with the one I knew at school. You remember what she looked like, don't you? At fifteen Evangeline, as she was then, was all flat chest and pimply forehead, with a mouth full of braces and an almost six foot frame. I came across her in the locker room one day, being chanted at by Hayley Evans and her acolytes. They wore fake tan and blue eyelinder on the inner rim of their lower lids and had orange-blonde highlights. In short, they were goddesses. I was in awe of them, but not so much in awe that I didn't realize their poetry stunk. I mean, couldn't they come up with anything better than:

"Evangeline, Evangeline. Gonna boil you up for dinner like an old string bean."

"Hey, cut it out," I said, shoving my way through the circle. Eva looked up at me through puffy eyes.

Folding their arms over their perky bosoms they turned their attention to me. Five blonde fringes were simultaneously flicked out of eyes. I cringed as they began to chant.

"F.A.T.T.Y, you ain't got no alibi. You're fat."

Once they had rushed off giggling hysterically, I sat down beside Eva. They'd hidden her netball knickers and she knew she'd be in big trouble if she went to her games lesson without them.

"Don't worry about it. The other day they stuck my head down the toilet, after they'd all taken a leak in it. Want to share this?" I handed her a Mars Bar, she took a bite, and after that we started hanging around together.

Then came our gap year, the year after school, which she spent, at her mother's insistence, at a Swiss finishing school, while I slaved away at a delicatessen in Kentish Town. When I picked her up for the drive up to Brighton to start at Sussex University, I almost didn't recognize her. The braces were gone, her pimples had disappeared, she'd filled out where it mattered and I realized with an acute sense of loss that she was now on another level. I feared she'd drop me once we got to college, but she remained loyal, although the ups and downs of her many love affairs took up much of her time.

Silly old me, instead of playing the field I swotted hard and fell in love just before the end of my stint at university. With good old Ben.

After college we drifted apart for a bit. My life was all about him for four years, I didn't have much room for friends. I was always worrying if I was good enough, thin enough, funny enough for him.

She kept herself afloat with modelling jobs but was fond of saying of the modelling world, "It's all bollocks, honestly Kate, if it wasn't such easy money I'd walk away tomorrow."

In the end it was the photographers, sick of her uppity attitude and inability to get to shoots on time, who walked away from her. When the work finally dried up I got a call.

"I'm almost twenty five," she said casually. "Time I had a real job. Anything going in the ad industry?" I stuck my neck out for her and helped her land the account exec job. Soon after, it all fell apart between me and Ben. She let me move into her flat and was there for me while I licked my wounds.

To distract myself from going down that particular memory lane, I shove two pieces of toast in the toaster while waiting for the egg to finish.

"Other than the five minutes thing, everything else going well with ..?" I say, nodding in the direction of her bedroom.

"Oh yes, couldn't be better," she answers, while I butter the toast. "Sorry about the mess. We'll be out of your hair next weekend. He's invited me up to Glynverstowe." You may have read about Glynverstowe in
Hello!,
McManus' prized seven hundred acre Perthshire estate.

"Good for you," I say, picking the egg out of the water with a spoon and sliding it into an eggcup.

"You're not jealous are you? I mean, you've got this hot little Ricky thing going on haven't you? He's keeping you, um, satisfied?" But before I can answer that we haven't even got to second base, McManus' Scot's brogue is bellowing down our tiny hall.

"Where's breakfast? I'm starving!"

"The master calls!" she says, grabbing the plate of food. I'm not at all sure she's joking. I've never seen Eva be subservient to a man. She usually tosses them out like yesterday's trash.

Yes, I'm jealous. Not of her going out with McManus. It's difficult to be jealous of someone who has sandy coloured hair sprouting from his nostrils. It's just that Eva and I used to do everything together. It's silly, I know, but I feel like I've lost the old Eva, the one who was always on hand to put me back together. Pre-McManus all my problems could be solved with a night out, a drink and a huge kebab on the way home.

The phone rings. I have no intention of answering it and peer into the fridge. There are a few rashers of bacon, some tomatoes and eggs. I get those out while my stomach rumbles in anticipation.

Eva comes running into the kitchen with the cordless phone pressed against her chest.

"It's the Weasel."

The nerve of the guy. That's the fourth time he's phoned. I mean, what the heck does he want? Does he think I wanted a repeat performance? Or does he just want to tell me he doesn't fancy me? Like I care.

"Tell him I'm out."

"If he calls again I'm telling him you're blinking well in. I'm sick of this." She storms off and I set to preparing myself a great big English breakfast.

After I've demolished the lot the phone rings again. This time it's Ricky. He wants to go ice skating. Isn't that sweet? It's like being a teenager again, maybe because, well, maybe because I'm actually dating a teenager. Don't freak, but I found out he's only eighteen.

I grab my scarf and a woolly hat and dash out the door, quite prepared to feel 'Like a Virgin, touched for the very first time.' I feel terribly light-headed and positive. Do you think there's a chance, even a tiny one, that Ricky could turn out to be my true love?

Oh, before I forget, do thank Basil for the drawing of me, won't you. While brilliant, it isn't exactly flattering is it? I mean, he's got the flyaway hair down pat, but I ask you, do I really have red eyes set vertically one over the other?

Lots of love,

Gherkin

The Canter Agency

28 - 32 Greek Street

London W1 5UJ

England

20 February 2011

Dear Egg,

This morning on the way to work with Eva we get off at Leicester Square Road Tube as usual, only to find that the escalators are bust. I'm all for taking the Tube another stop to avoid having to climb the seven squillion steps up to the exit. It's what I usually do in this kind of crisis. But Eva insists it's no big deal. No big deal? Maybe for her with her long, long legs. In any case there's no chance of turning back now. I'm being shoved up the static escalator by an army of grey suits. Here I go.

"Have you ever thought about joining a gym?" says Eva as we reach the top of the third broken flight of escalators. "You look a little worn out."

"There's …" Puff. "Nothing." Puff. "Wrong with me. It's just these shoes. They're incredibly difficult to walk in."

We exit into filthy, litter draped Leicester Square. I'm fuming and panting beside Eva all the way to the agency in Greek Street. Join a gym indeed. The very idea! Besides, gyms are for losers, for weirdoes who pop steroids. Besides, I respect my body too much to consider abusing it on those exercise machines. No, my body is a temple. And right now my stomach is howling with hunger inside this temple. When we get in I go straight to the tearoom and help myself to a couple of apple doughnuts from a pile on the counter and carry them back to my desk.

As I sit down a button pings off the waistband of my skirt. I figure the button was just loose. It's not like I'm fat or anything. I bite into a doughnut. Bliss. I go into the post room to drop off some letters and spend ten minutes liplocked with Ricky while he runs his hands tentatively over my bra. His chest is so hard and sexy and well, so young. I'd really quite like to give him a good going over. The last couple of weeks have been unbelievably frustrating, if you want to know the truth. The heady bouquet of lust that ran through me every time I saw Ricky is ebbing a little. Truth be told I'm getting a bit bored of snogging on the Tube platform before he takes the train home to South Woodford (he lives with his parents and they don't allow girls to stay the night. Don't ask). Why don't I drag him back to my pad and devour him there you ask? Well, I did suggest it, but he said he couldn't get a wink of sleep unless he was tucked up in his supersized one at home, which had been specially purchased to accommodate his 6'3" frame.

Once I've finished snogging Ricky I go to my desk and stare at my computer screen for half an hour trying to compose a magazine ad for mascara. The other doughnut's sitting there, in all its powdery glory while I start looking in my drawer for a safety pin to hold up my skirt. Finding hundreds of paper clips but no safety pin I get up and walk over to Eva's desk to continue my search. I'm trying to tug open her drawer, which is jammed shut, when I realize with horror that my skirt is being held up by my squidgy bits and that I don't need a safety pin after all.

I turn to Eva who's deeply immersed in her copy of
Harpers & Queen
and give a heavy sigh. I know when I'm beaten. "Okay, you win, I'll join the gym today."

"Hmm, I'll believe
that
when I see it." She looks pointedly at the doughnut.

I pick it up with a look of disgust on my face, like it was a dead beetle rather than a soft, yielding, thing brimming with apple jelly, and toss it in the bin. I then blow my nose and throw the tissue on top, otherwise I know I'll fish the doughnut again later on, when I'm feeling peckish. Coasting on a sugar high, I start churning out copy for mascara.

'From the moment the wand touches your lashes you are transformed. Your eyes become darkly alluring, devilish. He has no choice … but to be drawn into your web of seduction. He is powerless against the pull of Diorella Vamp Mascara. Be careful how you wield your power.' And more in this vein until I've covered the whole computer screen and am feeling quite satisfied with myself.

But an hour later, after giving it a quick read through, it becomes clear that what I've written is total crap. So, staring longingly at the doughnut beneath its tissue shroud I delete the copy and try to think of some inspirational things to say about a mascara that supposedly thickens, lengthens and separates. Usually the Haddock just has to give me a glare from behind her pot plant before I'm frothing with rage and copy's flowing from my fingertips. But today her office is empty and I'm having trouble suspending disbelief about the magical properties of the mascara. In my experience, any mascara that thickens and lengthens also clumps like crazy. You end up walking around with these black fronds in your line of vision and walking into lampposts. Okay, maybe that's just me. But is it really worth it? I sigh and start hooking paperclips together. Before I know it I've created an oval. Soon my creation's grown to three dimensions. Hair, nose, eyes, mouth. You could almost call it a face.

"Where is Miss Craddock anyway?" I ask Sparky who's going past my desk, leaving a little trail of sparks in her wake.

"At a business meeting," she says, stopping to look at my handiwork. "Hey, that's brilliant that is. It looks just like Courteney Cox." And you know what, she's right.

Eva peers over her copy of
Harpers
. "More like Courteney Love after a drug binge."

"Cox," I spit back.

"Love."

"Cox."

"Love."

She goes back to her magazine.

Maybe I missed my calling. I could have had a career crafting celebrity busts out of paperclips. I'm holding Courteney Cox up, watching her glint prettily under the light, when I notice one of my co-workers is looking at me oddly. Her hair's drooping over her face and she's wearing big unflattering spectacles and a rainbow coloured jumper. I'm not sure of her name. Brenda? Brianna? Something like that. I haven't spoken three words to her since she started a couple of months back. All I know is that she's the Haddock's number one fan and just the type who'd get a kick out of informing her about my unproductive morning.

I walk across to her desk and give her a big smile. She glances down at the wooden frogs lined up on her desk, largest to smallest. "Hey," I say. "I've been meaning to come over and congratulate you on that ad you wrote for Piddler's Training Pants."

She blushes. "Thanks."

"You know, I wish I had your kind of imagination," I say, picking up one of the frogs and turning it in the opposite direction.

"It didn't take me long, actually. And it's not down to imagination. I have a certain methodology that I use in my approach to copywriting."
Fascinating
. "Maybe we could get together some time and I could give you some pointers?" She reaches out, grabs the frog and turns it back to its original position.

"Absolutely. That would be wonderful."

As I walk away I feel pretty guilty about our little exchange. I know it's wrong to mock the afflicted, but she was asking for it. Besides, I don't think she realized she was being mocked.

Later, when Eva and I go out for lunch I see something that makes me feel a lot less guilty – the Haddock perched in the window of a salon, head full of foils, leafing through OK! magazine. Business meeting indeed! Figuring she'll be tied up for another hour, we hit the shops and have a splurge, but on our return Sparky tells us we're wanted up in the fourth floor boardroom. By the Haddock.

"Any idea what this is all about?" I ask Eva after we've taken the lift up and are dawdling in the corridor.

"Um, now I think of it, she did mention something about a meeting last week. Now, who was it with?" But before she can dredge her memory any further a football flies out of one of the rooms, whacking me on the side of the head.

"Ouch," I yelp, rubbing my head, which is throbbing like it's just been hit by a ten pound hammer. I feel like a cartoon character with stars dancing about over my head.

"Is it really too much to ask you to keep your dribbling confined to your room?" I say, tossing the ball into the room at Simon, standing sheepishly beneath a basketball hoop. The room is covered floor to ceiling with childlike scrawls of heads talking in speech bubbles. Scrawling and dribbling, that's all Simon and the rest of the art department seem to do all day. He once explained that dribbling helps to get the creative juices flowing. Yeah, right.