She Just Can't Help Herself
‘Yeah, I’ll get Sophs to arrange it.’
‘What’s there to arrange? All you have to do is stand in front of the display of your books by the podium.’
Noelle scrunches up her face. The bones underneath don’t so much jut as project.
‘Thing is,’ she says, ‘Sophs, is a bit funny about who snaps me these days.’
‘Noelle, you snap yourself every day on a Hello Kitty phone. You’re not Nick Knight.’
‘Don’t get on my grill. That’s different. Insta, innit! Let me see what I can do. It is, like, you, after all. Wait there. I need a pee.’
She disappears into the toilet. I see the tips of her shiny patent brogues poking towards the gap beneath the cubicle door. Then she flushes and turns round. Now I can see the backs of her shoes and pompom-socked ankles. I know what she is doing. Sure enough, I hear the sound of a card being tapped quickly and violently on the cistern, followed by a long drawn-out gutteral snort, which she attempts to drown out by flushing the loo again. But frankly, she could have carried out that little routine by the Niagara Falls and still be heard. Also as expected, I gag.
Even after I had grown up enough to realise that my father had not been joking and that Class A and B drugs did in fact look like many sweets (Sherbet Dip Dab, Toblerone, Love Hearts etc,) but not fruit pastilles, I avoided them. Therapy had given me mental stability. Well, more of a plateau of not feeling anything, which suited me fine. I did not want to see where a pill or powder could ‘take me’. I did not want to go anywhere.
At college, people would question my lack of adventure and tell me I didn’t know what I was missing out on. But Dr Google gave me a pretty good idea: ‘A brief, intense high and rush of confidence that is immediately followed by depressive thoughts, anxiety, a craving for more of the chemical, heart palpitations, insomnia, hyper-stimulation and paranoia …’ And all that was only in the short term! Oh, and it gave you terrible diarrhoea; I witnessed both verbal and gastric. The latter of which I think Noelle is now experiencing because she is flushing the loo again. Either that or she is doing another line. I gag again.
‘Noo-Noo! Noooooooooo-Noooooooooo!’
A clipboard appears in the doorway, followed by the peak of a tweed cap and the enticingly punchable face of Noelle’s agent.
‘She’s in there.’ I point at the correct cubicle. ‘Testing out the efficiency of the plumbing.’
Sophie walks in and knocks on it. ‘Noo-Noo, we need to do one last circuit and then get you down to drinkalinks at the Serpentine. I want your arrival to be circa the same time as Paltrow or Palermo. And Harry. Styles not Windsor. We’re okay-ish for the moment, Loopy’s just radioed through … but we really should bloody chop chop.’
‘I think she’s already done that,’ I mutter.
Sophie ignores me. Noelle unlocks the cubicle door and beams at us. Her eyes are glassy and wide. Her top lip sweaty. Her smile skewed. As on the last few occasions I have seen her like this, there is part of me that wants to take her aside and tell her exactly what I am seeing. But then the other part of me speaks up to remind me that Noelle isn’t fussed by what I see. Only how she is seen … by people she doesn’t even know.
She goes to the sink and starts washing her hands. ‘Sophs, I’ve promised this honey …’ She nods at me. ‘… I’ll do a snap, yeah?’
Sophie crinkles her nose. ‘Eh? We’re not doing any pics today, Noo-Noo. It was part of the deal with Catwalk; they get the exclusive on all the party images to go up online overnight. I know nothing about any other requests.’
‘It’s for my own personal website,’ I explain. ‘I have a blog.’
‘A fashion blog?’
‘More of an on-going study about the relationship between women, image, marketing, reality, art and social media.’
The look on Sophie’s face tells me I may as well have asked, ‘WOULD YOU LIKE TO ROLL IN SOME FOX FAECES WITH ME?’
‘How nice,’ she says. ‘But not today. Maybe another time. Pending on your hit scores, we could tie it in with something for charity. I’m all about getting bad ass on bullies. And STDs, obviously.’ She adds nonsensically and passes Noelle a make-up bag. ‘Noo, blow your nose, get some slap on and meet me back by the bar.’
As Sophie departs, Noelle grimaces at me. Her pupils are even more dilated and blacker, like the liquorice swirls we used to love. She shakes the water from her hands.
‘Don’t get ants in your pants, honeeeeey,’ she shouts. ‘I’m as, like, gutted as you are. I, like, really mean that, yeah? But I guess, if I’ve learned anything from this situ it’s that I’m now at a point in my career where the smaaaaa-llest request has to be, like, put through my agent? Bonkers, I know, but then everyone knows where they stand and I’m not disappointing anyone. Espesh peeps who I like, really care about, yeah? Because you know that’s not who I am. I’m a people-pleaser not a, like, people-letter-downer. I mean, yeah, if the request gets like turned down, they’ll still be disappointed, but Sophs will do the disappointing for me, you know? It means I don’t have to carry that, like, burden.’ She does a ducky-mouth pose in the mirror and captures the moment on her Hello Kitty mobile. ‘But, hey, at least you got to come down and get a little taster of how cray cray life is for me right now, huh … I mean, that bitch out there was just jealous of my success, right? My fans still love me. Like I give a, like, fuck about the haters.’ She shrugs off their imaginary hate. ‘It’s always women who are having a pop at me. Remember that show I did in the States … Check Me Out, Sista!? Feminist wackos basically said that by making over lonely teenage girls using fashion, make-up and haircuts inspired by the most popular celebs that we were like, not only taking away their individuality … but moreover underlining the homig-homug- …’
‘Homogenisation?’ I interject, only because I want to correct her.
‘Yeah, the homogeni-wotist of, like, female youth erm … culture, yeah. That’s it. I was like, “Whatever, go laser your bikini line …” It sucks! I really don’t need those negative vibes.’
‘Not when you’ve got a book to sell, eh?’
‘I’d also like an MBE … at some, like, point.’
‘I’m going to go home now, Noelle.’
‘All that way? Bit of a trek, honey. Why don’t you crash in my hotel? We could hang tomozz … I’ve got fittings for fashion week at Tory Hambeck—I’m doing ‘da c-walk’ for her—but that’s, like, it. I would invite you to the Serps but it’s totally invite only. I mean, I could ask Loops if she could get in contact with the peeps running t’ingz, see if she can track down a spare ticket, but I can only i-mag-ine the waiting list. It starts in an hour.’
‘I imagine it would be easier to locate, purchase and install a new lung before then. Not to worry. I can’t stay in London, anyway. I’m going to a gig … at The Croft.’
‘That old pub by the station?’
‘It’s been revamped.’
‘Sweet! Awww, I can’t do gigs any more, they remind me of Troy too much. Coachella was like twisting a, like, Sam-Sam-Samo- … a big knife in my heart. Sometimes I wish Loops had screwed up my Access All Areas pass for Reading so I’d never met him. It probably would have been better …’ She sniffs loudly with dual purpose; to halt her runny nose and demonstrate how upset she is at the memory. ‘So your boyf is still singing? That’s cute. God loves a try-er!’
‘Yes, he is still singing … because he is a singer. I emailed you a link to his most recent demo. It’s an acoustic set …’ I cringe at those two words. It find it impossible to use music terminology without sounding pretentious. ‘I thought that maybe you could help, with your connections …’
‘Email it again, honeeeeey. Probably landed in my junk. I permanently have major storage issues.’
I can’t help laughing. ‘Sure you do. Bye, Noelle, it was great catching up. I’m glad I came all this way.’
‘I’m glad you came too! Hey, you know what …? I think Sophs is right. I should do more charity work.’
‘Well, you know where they say charity starts …’
‘Who does? Where does it?’
Add inability to detect sarcasm to the paranoia in short-term effects of cocaine. I hug her goodbye and go out into the foyer. The room where Noelle had her launch is still buzzing. The guests will all be ‘going on’ somewhere soon. Either to that do at the Serpentine or some other bash for more customised cocktails and loosely themed finger food. On the steps of the hotel, I bump into the man who sprayed the macaroon crumbs. He is holding a bag from American Apparel.
‘Excuse me,’ he says. ‘My name is Fitz Martin … I work at Catwalk.’
‘Get you.’
He squints at me, confused at my reaction.
‘My friend, the one who … with the Wang. Is she in there?’ he asks, worriedly, as if he was arriving at hospital to witness her last rites. ‘Can’t believe that top was Wang. Unworn Wang.’
‘I know. It was a shame. But …’ I pause and look up and down the street on both sides, pretending to gauge the activity. ‘… thank goodness, the world is still turning.’
I lift my hand to hail a taxi. It’s a confident departure … which is the only way to navigate clearly out of a situation. Not ‘out there’ or ‘up for it’ or ‘in-your-face’ confident, but ‘quietly’ confident—which is more believable. Anything more than that is obviously a front. I am fascinated by how much ‘fake’ confidence people—especially women—project these days, especially on social media. It’s why I started my blog … to examine how women present themselves on the various portals. There is a lot of faking extreme confidence going on. You know that for every smug #nofilter #nomakeup ‘selfie’ posted, there are forty-seven rejected images—taken in umpteen different locations (ploughing on through successive breakdowns over choice of outfit) until the most flattering light is found—sitting on their camera roll. That for every ‘Woooooooooo! PARTY TIME!’ status update, there are double the amount of lonely nights in, spent reaching the depths of despair (and a carton of pecan-fudge ice cream) that never get flagged up. That for every sobering, wise and self-aware proverb ‘meme’ posted, there has been a spate of pissed, stupid behaviour that they live in fear of being reminded about.
But I understand. Truly, I do. Faking it is the only way to move forward. Pretend that everything is okay. The good news is that if you do this for long enough, you’ll start to believe it. Whatever happened in your past will not affect you any more. I never thought I would get to that point. But I have. A base line of aggressive therapy helped but, after that, it was all me. I didn’t quite realise how far past that point I was until about twenty minutes ago. But seeing her … how can I put it?
I loathe Disney animation. The heroines all have craniums bigger than their waists. It’s the first registration point for any girl wanting to sign up for self-esteem issues later in life. But today I am going to paraphrase Queen Elsa: I have let it fucking go.
And I never swear. She did. Not Elsa. Ashley. She swore a lot. But today it feels right. No, good.
Three
ASHLEY
Tanya Dinsdale. Tanya Dinsdale. Tanya FUCKING Dinsdale. She was never meant to factor in my life. I took one look at her and thought, ‘Nah, no way’ … even though I was actively on the lookout for a new best friend. I had been forced to ditch my last one because she’d developed a habit of stealing. When her parents found a load of clothes from a selection of mainstream mall brands under her bed, she stitched me up, saying I had nicked the lot and had forced her to hide them. I didn’t know what was more offensive … the fact her parents believed that I was a thief or that I would have thieved such a bland and impact-less array of ‘stretch jersey basics’. Within seconds of meeting Tanya Dinsdale in the school canteen, I could tell she was one of those girls who liked to act as if she was born with a silver spoon in her mouth, even though the cutlery in question was more likely to have been one of those plastic forks which come free with a Pot Noodle. Even worse, she was wearing Mary Jeans and culottes. No, worse, she was wearing them proudly. I should have walked away then.
I let myself in the front door, ignoring the photo on the sideboard, and walk into the lounge. Zach is layering a large cardboard box with bubble wrap. He is wearing his gym gear. I hadn’t realised he was working out again. He jumps up to hug me, but we end up giving each other a nervous head lock. I add a handshakey-matey-back-slap, as if I am welcoming him onto my own chat show. As he pulls away, I sense him scanning my face.
‘Sorry I had to drag you away from your work thing, Ash, but it’s imp—’
‘Yeah, so you said. Whatever. I wanted to leave, anyway. That magazine is doing my head in … and before you suggest I put my feelers out to see whether a decent position is coming up on another one, I would know if it was. No one wants to budge. The magazine side of the industry is getting smaller and that means it’s less fluid—not an environment you take risks with your income. Not if …’ I stop rambling.
I am about to say not if you have reproduced—as many of the women in the top spots have done—often multiple times. They need their solid salaries to pay for the painfully expensive day-care bills, that probably hurt more than giving birth itself. But I don’t approach this topic. Not in front of Zach. Shit, I forgot to buy any red wine.
‘… not if you can be totally sure that the magazine is secure, i.e., supported by other products …’ I continue. ‘And that would mean going to a publication which is part of an umbrella company and, trust me, those jobs are hard to come by because applicants for the second-job-down nearly always come from the inside.’
Zach nods. In a few seconds, he will give me the same half-understanding/half-tolerating look he has been doing ever since I started to talk at him, as opposed to with him. He knows there is no point trying to engage because this is a rant, not a discussion. Everything I say to him I have already made up my mind on. He reaches back down into the cardboard box and straightens up a batch of records even though they are stacked perfectly. Zach used to own a ton of vinyl, most of which he stored along the walls of our flat—literally, sound insulation—but sold most of it in the New Year because we would be ‘needing the space’. I told him he would regret selling his collection (mainly rare remixes of classic pop songs) because he started it when he was a kid. But he went ahead and bunged pretty much all of it on eBay as a job lot. All those tunes he had meticulously chosen and added one by one over the years … gone in three days and seven bids. It made me uncomfortable. I felt as if he wasn’t so much preparing for the future, as forcing it.
He looks up at me. But the look I was expecting is not there. I can tell he is nervous.
‘Is Kat Moss okay?’ I ask quickly.
‘Yes, yes … she is fine.’
‘Still establishing her territory?’
‘Mmm … almost there, I think.’
‘But she’s getting back into her usual routine of late nights and sleeping all day?’
‘Yeah …’
‘Well, you’d still better not have a Chinese takeaway any time soon. Not until she’s totally settled in. MSG is feline crack. She might get involved in something she’d regret. I can only imagine what her police mugshot would look like, all dilated pupils and bushed-out tail …’
Zach manages a smile. ‘… and hanging from her mouth, the bloody remains of an urban rodent only identifiable from its dental records.’
I laugh. So does he, but then we both stop. Abruptly. Zach clears his throat again.
‘Ash, the reason I called you tonight …’
‘… was because you needed to show me your financial report for the …’ I don’t say it. The D word. I don’t call it that. If forced, I replace it with a generic term that covers the legal aspect, like ‘process’ or ‘arrangement’ or I simply trail off. ‘I heard you. Give me five minutes.’
I need to go to the off licence. The only booze in the fridge is my three-week-old half-drunk public ‘decoy’ bottle of Sauvignon Blanc that I keep there to pretend I can have it in the flat without drinking it.
‘No, no, Ash … I said that so that you would come back home as soon as possible. I need to tell you something.’
I blink hard. Six very average words. I need to tell you something. But how they are spoken makes all the difference. Quickly, short spacing … the something is Some Thing which may affect part of your day. Slowly, wide spacing … the something is The Thing which will affect your whole life.
‘Sorry?’
‘I.’ SPACE. ‘Need.’ SPACE ‘To.’ SPACE ‘Tell.’ SPACE. ‘You.’ SPACE. ‘Something.’
‘What.’ No intonation.
‘Your mother … she’s passed away.’
I look down at the box of records. The only visible one is an (I’m imagining appalling) house remix of Don’t Speak by No Doubt. I was never a big fan of Gwen Stefani’s fifties rockabilly look when that song came out. The overtly punk style that came afterwards lacked authenticity. And then the geisha thing was too … well, it had been done. (Madonna, Kylie, Janet Jackson … who hasn’t put their hair in a bun and sweated through a video in a silk dress with a dragon motif?) But now … wow. Stefani is a street fashion icon. Okay, it’s structured, expected, formulaic almost …
‘Ash?’
… but no one can deny that she hasn’t been hugely influential on the general look of girl groups from the Pussy Cat Dolls to Little Mix. Or as Fitz calls them, Wind in the Willows. Ha!
‘Ash. I’m so sorry. I don’t know any of the details but when I was here, a woman called and left a message on the answering machine about the memorial service. She must have thought you already knew.’
MOLE. BADGER. RATTY. TOAD.
Zach steps forward. I step back.
‘I didn’t mean to shock you but the last thing I wanted to happen was for you to listen to the message on your own and th—’
I interrupt him. ‘She had a husky voice … the person who left the message. Right?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Her name is Sheila. She ran the pub next to the block of flats where I grew up. She had white-blonde hair and always wore skintight shiny black clothes. Not leather … PVC. She always laughed—chestily, in fact, thanks to a forty-a-day Lambert and Butler habit—in the face of breathable fabrics. I lik—’
Now he interrupts. ‘Rewind. How can you be sure it was her?’
‘Because I already know.’
‘What? You know what?’ He manages a double intonation.
‘I know that my mother is …’ Another D word. Another one I—or anyone would—want to think about. Let alone, articulate.
‘And you didn’t tell me?’
‘No. Look, it’s not as if it wasn’t …’ Around the corner? Bound to happen? A matter of time? I pause, knowing I sound like an automaton, but I don’t want Zach’s sympathy because he feels obliged. ‘… you know the relationship she and I had. And let’s face it, you and I are in a difficult situation too.’
‘Come on, Ash. Don’t be like that. How long have you known?’
‘Two months.’
‘Two months!’
‘Yes, Zach, two months. That’s what I said. Look, you don’t have to feel guilty. You weren’t to know this was going to happen.’
‘Guilty? You think that’s why I want to be there for you?’
‘Well, it is, isn’t it?’
‘Ash, don’t be so brutal. I’m here because I care about you. This is a massive thing to have happened—irrespective of the timing and irrespective of your relationship with her. This must have—must still be—bewildering for you. I think “bewildered” would be totally understandable in this situation. How did it happen?’
‘All that coconut water. It’s a lesson to us all. Clean living gets to you in the end.’ I squirm at my wholly unnecessary joke. ‘It was liver disease, Zach. Sheila told me that there are around seven thousand alcohol-related deaths each year and sixty-five per cent are because those livers have just said, “Nope. No more. E-fucking-nough!”’
He shakes his head, sadly. ‘I can’t even begin to imagine how I would be feeling if it were my mother.’
‘Don’t make me look bad by personalising the conversation. It’s a slightly different situation. I have not seen mine once in the last decade. You speak to yours every day. At length.’
Zach’s mother has a lot to say about everything, but little of her commentary is necessary. It’s always coated with middle-class concern over what other people might think, even when she doesn’t need other people to know. She randomly emailed me the other week to say, ‘I’ve told Barbara and Tim from next door that it was decided shortly after Easter you would be going your separate ways …’ As if her neighbours had been glued to the Sky News ticker tape during the summer waiting for an update on mine and Zach’s marriage.
He sighs at me. ‘I know that Mum will be really sorry for you when she hears the news, Ash.’
I ignore this comment. He ignores my lack of response.
‘So, will you go to the memorial? Because if you do decide to, I’ll come with you. I can drive us there.’
He clears his throat. Another one of the mannerisms we both seem to have acquired recently. Whenever we are discussing something on the phone, either he or I or both of us suddenly seem to have something obstructing our oesophagus.
‘Don’t be silly. You’ve got that pitch coming up.’
‘It’s tomorrow. We finished the prep a couple of days ago, thank God. There’s been a lot of late nights in the office with Keith and … the team.’
‘Lucky you.’
Keith With The Bad Teeth is Zach’s business partner. He refers to women as ‘poontang’ and rides a pimped-up eighties BMX along the pavements of East London into work. As Noelle Bamford would say, ‘Nuff said.’
‘Seriously, I appreciate the offer, Zach, but I’ll be more than capable of handling this.’
‘“Handling this”?’
‘Yes. Handling this,’ I repeat. It sounds even worse third time.
‘Well, when you decide what you’re doing … you know how to get hold of me.’
‘Through your solicitor?’ I joke weakly. ‘Please, can we not talk about this anymore.’
He manages to smile too. ‘Okay. Hey … look, until I heard the news about your mother, I wasn’t planning on being here when you got back. You’d said you were going to be out late tonight, so I would have made sure I was gone by nine-ish. I want you to know I wasn’t breaking the agreement we made.’
That being whilst things are being sorted out on the legal front, it’s best we are not in one another’s company. We talk or text when necessary but we avoid face-to-face encounters, especially at our homes. I haven’t even seen the place that Zach has rented, even though it is only a ten-minute walk.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ I tell him. ‘It doesn’t matter if we crossover occasionally. Obviously, you’re going to need to pack up the rest of your stuff and, besides, it’s still your flat.’
‘Nah, it’s your flat now.’
‘Maybe we should refer to it how Prince might: “The Home Formerly Known as Our Flat”.’
We both emit a short burst of uncomfortable laughter again.
‘Well, I’ll, erm … finish off this box and then maybe we could grab some dinner,’ suggests Zach. ‘I know it’s also against the rules, but I don’t like the idea of you being on your own, thinking about all of this. Let me take you out for a Chinese. I won’t tell Kat Moss. Unless you’ve erm … got a hot date coming over later, then of c— …’