Can We Still Be Friends (7 page)

The front door of the flat banged and Flick bolted out of the bathroom, where she had been investigating the toilet bowl. ‘Sal?’ called Annie, hauling herself out of the water and wrapping herself in a towel. She walked into the hall, where Sal stood, pale and tearful, with what looked like a nasty bruise under her eye. Her thin white dress was crumpled and she was bereft of her usual bounce. ‘What’s happened?’

Annie let her towel fall to put an arm round the shaking frame of her friend and guide her to the sofa, where she stood beside her, naked. ‘Let me put something on,’ she said.

‘It’s OK. I’m OK. Just thick,’ said Sal, fumbling in her bag for a cigarette.

‘I think I’d better have one too,’ said Annie, now wrapped in her gown. ‘So tell me. What’s happened?’

Sal recounted her evening; the boredom of the quiet day, her excitement at being taken somewhere glamorous.

‘I just thought it would be fun to go for a walk. Stuart and I seemed to be having a great time. I guess I should have known right from the start. I mean, what was he doing round here anyway? I suppose I could have got away from him less violently. But Annie, I was frightened. I promise you, he was holding me so tight. It could have been rape. What a wanker.’

Annie knew that attack was always Sal’s chosen form of defence. Tempered negotiation had no part in her make-up. It never had been, whether she was dealing with people or with inanimate objects. Another person would no doubt have been able to extricate themselves in a less combative manner. But then another person might not have found themselves walking drunk through Hyde Park with a married boss late at night. Sal’s usual bravura had disappeared, and tears had begun to streak her face, her nose now red with crying. ‘I don’t know why they do it. I mean, can’t they tell we’re not interested. I’m so pleased you’re here.’ She paced around, walking over to where Annie sat. ‘I just feel terrible. How could I be so
stupid
? And what am I going to do about work? I don’t want anyone to know.’

Annie gave her a hug, wrapping her small bony frame. Sal could smell her friend’s bath essence. ‘You’ll be OK. You know what? I don’t think he’s going to want anyone to know about this either. He was just drunk. Keep your head down. It’ll pass.’

‘But only the other day Doug was telling me about how it’s always the girls who get fired. This kind of thing happens all the time,’ Sal wailed.

‘You won’t get fired. Trust me. Come on. Let me tuck you up. Make you a cup of tea.’

Annie spoke from a position of total ignorance but, if she or Sal were to get any sleep tonight, Sal had to feel secure about her job. Sal Turner,
Sunday Herald
. That was who she was. It was not, she decided, the right time to ask Sal if Jackson had called. Nor even to mention that she’d met him. She would have to wait till the morning, when Sal would hopefully be feeling better. Annie’s good news
would not gain the response she felt it deserved from her friend in her current state of mind. She wanted to present it in all its glory, uncontaminated by one of Sal’s messes. Even if she learnt that Jackson
had
called, she wouldn’t be able to bask in the knowledge when she was having to deal with Sal’s misfortune.

As Annie surveyed her options, she could hear her mother’s voice, with its faintly nasal cadence, as if the surface had been ever so slightly scratched: ‘Darling, I always think that
blue
’s your colour. I regard myself as a pink person, but you’re definitely a blue girl. Pink does you no favours.’

Hanging on the open door of the built-in wardrobe was a bright-blue dress threaded with silver strands, the deep V of the neck leading to a high waist. It was Annie’s lucky dress. She had found it on a crowded rail in a Christian Aid shop a year ago when she had seen the silver glinting and pulled it out to discover a dress that fitted perfectly. She always felt the better for wearing it. She couldn’t remember a time when it had not exerted its lucky charm, but perhaps putting herself in the hands of such superstition would be tempting fate tonight.

The untidy heap of clothes on the floor was evidence of Annie’s excitement. She started to pick them up, looking anew at their possibilities. Her collection of belts and necklaces was tied to the white ironwork bedpost and on the corner of a pine dressing table stood the cache of antique perfume bottles which had travelled with her since before university. She’d started collecting them at school, loving the way that even their names invoked sophistication – Je Reviens, Mitsouko, L’Heure Attendue – luxurious with their bevelled edges and cut-glass stoppers. She sprayed her wrists and neck with Cinnabar, noticing that there were still several inches left in the oriental-looking bottle that Sal had bought her, as asked, in Duty Free.

By the time Jackson contacted Annie, she was convinced he would never call. The morning after the Stuart debacle, Sal had woken early and, quickly restored by the night’s sleep and several
mugs of coffee, had shared Annie’s news about meeting Jackson with exactly the right amount of enthusiasm – even attempting to eat one of the over-ripe peaches that still sat in their basket on the table in front of them as she questioned Annie on the details.

‘How old is he, do you think?’

‘I don’t know. Working it out from what Tania told me, I guess maybe thirty – something like that. Much older than us. He’s amazing-looking. You’d probably say he was too good-looking.’

At university, the girls had spent many an hour debating the appearance of each other’s admirers or fancies, concluding that there was something suspicious about textbook good looks, particularly after Annie had suffered an unfortunate one-night stand with a chisel-jawed boy blessed with the looks of a plastic Mattel doll.

‘You know how I love men’s forearms?’ Annie continued, conjuring up her memory of Jackson at the studios. ‘He had the best – long and tanned. I noticed them when he was unloading the car.’

Sal received this information with an amused grin. ‘I thought it was the hands that counted. Did you check them out?’

‘Don’t be gross.’ Annie got up and walked over to the telephone, lifting the receiver to hear the dial tone then replacing it in its cradle.

‘It’s working.’ Sal tilted her chair back against the wall, tapping ash into one of Annie’s large shell ashtrays. ‘Otherwise, how would Stuart have rung? Jackson didn’t call while I was there yesterday, Annie. He will. I promise you. He’s obviously obsessed.’

It was one of Sal’s winning qualities as a friend that she could be relied upon to look at any situation optimistically, always convinced that anything any of them would or could do was right. If plans were thwarted, it was always because of the actions of someone else. The fault was never theirs. Her loyalty was unquestioning.

And she was right: he did call. That morning at work, everybody was seated at their desks and the phones were permanently ringing. There was a bit of a crisis on, Lee informed Annie as soon as she got
in. Kremlin, a new vodka bar off Sloane Square, was holding its opening party the same night as the Torrington event for Chelsea Bridge.

‘Keep your distance from the Führer this morning, she’s in a right pickle,’ Lee had hissed over the desk at Annie.

‘Crazy idiot. We’ve had the date down on the Restaurant Register for at least two months. What does he want to go head to head for?’ Tania announced to the room, her palazzo pants flapping as she stomped around. She picked up the phone on Lee’s desk to call Mark Fitzherbert, the restaurant PR and near-certifiable alcoholic who handled many of London’s big launches and was masterminding the Kremlin bash.

‘Fitz, you and I go way back. We’ve got to work together on this, darling,’ Tania began. ‘It’s just not an option for both to open that evening.’ Her eyes rolled wildly, in a performance for her listening staff, silenced in anticipation of the outcome of the call.

‘Yes. Well. So have we lined up a great guest list. Of course we have, Fitz. What do you think I am? I didn’t fall off the back of the turnip truck yesterday. I’ve had the whole shebang in place for months now. We listed the date in the Restaurant Register. Don’t your people tell you anything?’ Cradling the phone in her neck, she pulled a cigarette from a packet on the desk, lit it and took a deep drag.

‘You don’t sound good, Fitz. Bit early for a drink, love, isn’t it? Maybe that’s what’s clouding your judgement?’ But Tania knew she had lost this round. She slammed the phone down.

‘He was always a rotten lay,’ she informed the room. ‘Who’s his special guest, then? Any of you lot know? I pay you to be eyes and ears, so I hope you’re not deaf, blind and dumb.’

‘Bryan Ferry? Maybe?’ Lee offered cautiously, aware that by handing over this titbit he was putting his head above the parapet.

‘Bryan Ferry? Christ. Where did you hear that?’

‘Someone mentioned it at Slum It In Style last night. But I didn’t know it was going to clash with Chelsea Bridge.’ Lee could feel the sympathetic eyes of the others on him. When Tania was like this,
they had learnt it was wise to keep quiet. Even so, if Fitzherbert really had got Ferry, they were going to be under pressure to trump that. And it was only weeks away.

‘Lord help me. Now I’m getting my feedback from Slum It In Style. Maybe that’s why you’ve had a bit of a style bypass today,’ Tania tossed back, leaning over Lee. He could see the line of foundation that had gathered around the joint of her nose, the small clots of mascara at the end of her lashes. She could be a right bitch sometimes. Yet despite knowing that her last comment was a missile she could have hurled anywhere, Lee suddenly worried that, possibly, it was true: his T-shirt might be ripped in some of the wrong places.

It was war.

‘Get on the phone and track down Jennifer Beals and that guy who’s with her in
Flashdance
: they’re over here at the moment. Her agent owes me one big-time,’ Tania commanded.

Annie had just put the phone down when Jackson’s call came through. Expecting another celebrity’s PA explaining that their boss would be out of town, she had answered half-heartedly.

‘Annie? Hello, it’s Jackson. Can I persuade you to come and have a bite with me on Thursday?’

Annie felt her stomach lurch. It was always that way, the call coming just when you weren’t prepared. Should she pretend she was busy? Was Thursday, only three days away, too soon for her to be free?

‘The peaches … they were amazing … thanks.’

‘My pleasure. You had to cart all that stuff around for us. It was the least I could do. But, from my end, the meeting was certainly lucky.’ His voice was deep, inflected with the drawl of a public-school education.

‘Thursday … was it?’

‘Yes, Thursday. I thought we could meet at Zanzibar about eight thirty?’

‘Ah …’ What should she say? Something, though. She was
sounding daft. ‘Lovely … thanks,’ she managed to get out. Annie replaced the receiver, glad that everybody else was too busy to have overheard her conversation. She went about the rest of the day hugging every word of the short call to herself.

Now the evening had arrived and the pleasure of anticipation was cut with nerves. She pulled a scoop-neck purple top out from the chaos of the bed and tried it on with a straight white skirt cinched in with a brown leather belt. It emphasized her figure, which managed to be simultaneously curvaceous and slim. Her pale long face was in contrast to the pneumatic quality of her body, her narrow back emphasizing her round breasts, a small waist broadening out to hips carried high on rounded legs. She was pretty, she knew, and could enter a room certain in the knowledge that she would be noticed, but her prettiness was not accompanied by confidence. Almost the reverse: it was as if she felt the decorative carapace of her looks disguised something lacking deeper.

Viewing the outfit in the long mirror inside the wardrobe door, she could see it looked acceptable, but she felt uncomfortable about the way it fitted. The skirt maybe, or was it the way the belt drew the eye to her curves? It was getting late. Quickly undressing again, she pulled the blue dress from the hanger, reaching behind her for the zip so that the fabric pulled tight across the bodice that flowed out from the high waist. She took a string of jade-coloured beads from where they dangled on the bedpost and clasped it around her throat, the beads hanging down to the start of the shadowy cleft of her bosom.

Annie saw Jackson standing by the famous curved bar as soon as she entered the deep room with its seductively dim lighting and noisy chatter above soft music. Halfway down its length there was his dark head, bent towards a girl with a spiky blonde crop who Annie remembered from the shoot, his red shirt standing out and clearly indicating his arm around her shoulder.

She pushed her way through the room, suddenly wishing that she were anywhere else but there. As she approached, Jackson looked up, his warm smile defusing her nerves.

‘What a great dress. Meet Patsy. She’s my everything on the shoots.’ And in one proficient manoeuvre he disengaged his arm from Patsy and kissed Annie in greeting. He pulled out a tall bar stool, helping her on to it. ‘Frank, let’s get some champagne for me and my friend,’ he commanded one of the bartenders.

There seemed, to Annie, to be mirrors everywhere. She couldn’t help seeing the reflection of herself and Jackson in front of her, and reflected again from behind, the effect intensifying the already crowded space. After a few glasses, they moved away from the bar, to a banquette on the other side of the narrow room. Jackson suggested they order some food and, although Annie was really far too excited to eat, she was aware that after several glasses of champagne she should get something inside her. She didn’t want to do a Sal.

Their conversation was endlessly interrupted by Jackson’s waves to passing friends, their table constantly being greeted by the social traffic.

‘Mungo, my man. Congrats on the Brillo account. Snatched, I hear, at the eleventh hour from under the nose of BBH.’ Jackson gave a stout, bearded man a squeeze on the elbow. ‘Good job too. John Hegarty’s getting far too big a slice of the action.’ Mungo wedged himself on to the edge of the banquette, pouring a generous slug of Jackson’s champagne into his wine glass.