Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend (16 page)

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Authors: Jenny Colgan

BOOK: Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend
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‘I’ll see you,’ I said. Then, my heart feeling lighter than it had in absolutely ages, I bounced up from the table and marched out the door, Wolverine following at my heels like a bodyguard.
 
 
 
Oh, wow, that felt good.
 
‘Thanks,’ I said to Cal.
 
‘Who were those terrifying things?’ he asked. ‘You looked like a dog that was about to get beaten round the head.’
 
‘They’re my friends,’ I said. ‘Or, at least, they used to be.’
 
Cal gave me a long look. ‘What on earth happened to you?’ he said.
 
‘Nothing,’ I said shortly. Then, ‘Why did you invite them to the party?’
 
‘I said they looked frightening,’ said Cal. ‘I didn’t say they didn’t look hot. Especially the blonde girl; yowza.’
 
Talk about giving out mixed signals. ‘What did you want to talk about?’ I said a touch sulkily. He obviously wasn’t about to beg me to go out with him if he was mentioning Carena.
 
‘Oh, yeah,’ said Cal. ‘Now this party’s really shaping up, I wanted to ask you - could you bring some girls along?’
 
‘Like those girls you just asked?’ I said.
 
‘Oh, no, that was just reflex,’ said Cal. ‘No, some
girls
. You know. Like the girls you work with girls. Dolly birds. Hot pop popsies.’
 
‘Glamour models.’
 
‘Yes, well, whatever they like to be called. Like you said. Can you bring some? There’s lots of lonely boys out there.’
 
‘Not you, then,’ I said.
 
‘No, of course not me. But look at Wolverine.’
 
Wolverine gave out a little howl.
 
‘And even Eck. The ladies like him, but he’s always getting his worried look on and scaring them off. Even James spends too much time crawling through mud.’
 
‘So you want me to procure some totty?’ I said.
 
‘Uh, yes. That’s it. Totty procurement patrol. Think you’re up to it?’
 
‘I think you’re a disgusting, sexist disgrace to pigs,’ I said, my perky mood evaporating instantly. ‘Why don’t you just hire a bunch of hookers?’
 
Cal looked genuinely wounded. ‘Oh, come on Tinsel tits. It’s just for fun.’
 
‘Well maybe not all girls want fun. Or like being talked about like that.’
 
Cal rolled his eyes. ‘Sorry, sorry. I should have known you were going lezzer from the trackie bottoms.’
 
‘I’m not going lezzer,’ I said, making a mental note to change my trousers. ‘And even if I was it would be none of your business. I just don’t like you talking like that.’
 
Cal raised his eyebrows and turned to go. ‘OK. Well, if you ever meet any girls who look like they might enjoy, you know, parties, and fun, it’d be nice if you could ask them because we know lots of guys, and sometimes guys and girls quite enjoy mixing together in social situations. But if this offends your high moral principles, don’t.’
 
And he gave me a look and headed off.
 
I was fuming. Horrible sexist pig! Arsehole!
 
At the junction he turned back, and my traitorous heart leapt a little.
 
‘Oh!’
 
‘What?’ I said crossly.
 
‘And we need more kitchen cleaner!’
 
 
 
I stomped into the studio ninety minutes late. Julius was standing there pointedly squatting at the foot of a well-endowed brunette, pretending to fix a light but looking up her skirt a bit. She was chewing gum loudly and looking unimpressed.
 
‘Is this part of it, right? ’Cause my geography teacher used to do this all the time. Drop a pencil, and—’
 
‘No!’ said Julius, puffing a bit and straightening up. ‘Oh, hello,’ he said to me. ‘Decided to grace us with your presence, have you? What happened, are you moonlighting for
Harpers and Queen
?’
 
‘No,’ I said. ‘That’s you. I’m really sorry. I got delayed.’
 
‘Well, this isn’t Mayfair,’ said Julius. ‘I’m not running this place as a loss-leader, OK? I didn’t hire you to hang around and look glamorous.’ He eyed me up and down. ‘Didn’t you used to look glamorous?’
 
‘Never mind about that now,’ I said, going over to the new girl. She really did look young.
 
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Are you new?’
 
The girl shrugged. ‘Yeah.’ She looked up at me suddenly. ‘It’s like my first modelling job, innit! Isn’t there, like champagne and stuff?’
 
‘If you’re Kate Moss,’ grunted Julius, moving some more lights back. ‘And you, darlin’, are no Kate Moss.’
 
‘Well, I’ve got tits for a start,’ said the girl, whose name was apparently Delilah. She was eighteen years old, and didn’t seem to be as phased by getting her breasts out for the first time in front of complete strangers, as I might have been.
 
‘I can get you some tea,’ I offered.
 
‘Neh,’ she said. ‘I’ve decided I’m going to start as I mean to go on. Champagne or nuffink.’
 
Julius and I looked at each other.
 
‘Nothing then,’ we chorused.
 
Delilah scowled. ‘OK then. Tea.’
 
Actually, she proved to be pretty good. What the papers want is, obviously, a pair of massive jugs, which she certainly had, but they also like a pretty face and a nice smile, as if to say, ‘Don’t worry, dirty old man, I’m loving this! It’s great!’ Delilah, for all her sullen attitude (and fair enough, she’d been hanging about in a draughty studio whilst Julius grubbed around her for an hour waiting for me), could turn it on when she had to, and it was looking to be a good session. The ‘twins’, who’d become extremely popular, were coming in at lunchtime, to shoot again. They were through to the last thousand for a new reality show and, despite being sworn to secrecy, were wildly excited about it.
 
Delilah watched them, wide-eyed as they bustled in. Kelly was wearing a flamingo pink boa round her neck and a pink PVC mini. Grace was wearing the same, but in baby blue.
 
‘I can’t believe you took the pink again,’ Grace was complaining as they clip-clopped in. ‘You always do that.’
 
‘I do
not
,’ said Kelly. ‘It’s not my fault pink suits my complexion whereas yours is more . . . bluey grey.’
 
Grace sniffed. ‘Well, it makes you look tarty.’
 
‘You’re just annoyed because nobody wolf-whistled at you.’
 
‘There were hundreds of wolf whistles! All the way down!’
 
‘Yeah - for the bird in the pink, innit. Face it.’
 
Delilah jumped up off the sunbed we’d planted next to a big plastic palm tree to make it look as if she was sunning herself topless on a desert island.
 
‘The twins!’ she said in a breathless tone of voice, like you might say ‘Madonna!’. ‘Can I have your autograph?’
 
The twins looked unbelievably pleased (as well they might, I thought, while feeling secretly pleased it had been my idea to twin them up in the first place) and Kelly stepped up.
 
‘I sign first,’ she said. ‘As head twin.’
 
‘As fattest twin,’ said Grace, ‘you can sign first.’
 
‘So, now you’re models, right,’ said Delilah, adding, ‘This is my first day.’
 
‘Well, put your top on then,’ suggested Kelly. ‘No point showing off the goods when you’re not getting paid.’
 
Julius raised his eyebrows as if to imply he couldn’t care less, but he let the camera drop.
 
‘Do you get to go to lots of celebrity parties and things?’ said Delilah. ‘That’s what I want to do. Go to, like good parties and that.’
 
‘Oh yes,’ said Grace. ‘It’s brilliant. Last week we were paid, right, a hundred pounds each to go to Whispers in Crawley. And we got up on stage and everything! And there was a football player there!’
 
‘Ooh, who?’
 
‘Tilnsley McGuire. Wolverhampton junior thirds!’ said Grace.
 
‘Everyone has to start somewhere,’ said Kelly.
 
Oh God. How I longed to tell them about the time we went to Elton John’s White Tie and Tiara ball (actually it was quite boring, we spent the whole evening slagging off other people’s plastic surgery), or the opening of Shoreditch House, or the Cartier launch where Rio Ferdinand carried Carena out over his shoulder, tickling her mercilessly. God, I missed being rich sometimes.
 
I realised I had a stain from a sausage sandwich on my trousers (today’s? yesterdays?). Would they believe me? Probably not.
 
‘That sounds brilliant,’ said Delilah.
 
That’s how I found myself doing it. I couldn’t help myself, these girls seemed to think I was just some kind of invisible ancient creature, only there to service their needs for tea.
 
‘I’ve got a party you can come to,’ I said. ‘Lots of trendy artist types.’
 
Grace’s little forehead furrowed like a wrinkled tomato. ‘Artists?’ she said.
 
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘and musicians. People in bands and things.’
 
Well, I assumed as much. People at art school were always in bands, weren’t they?
 
The girls still looked doubtful.
 
‘There’s free booze.’ Even as I said it I was wondering if this were true.
 
‘Where is it?’ said Kelly, strapping on a pair of the thigh-high boots they were wearing for today’s shoot.
 
‘Hey! I want the pink ones!’ shouted Grace.
 
‘No fuckin’ way!’
 
‘Yes fuckin’ way, it’s my turn.’
 
Julius covered his hand with his eyes.
 
‘It’s not fair!’
 
‘Julius!’
 
‘JULIUS!’
 
‘Hey,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you wear one colour each. It’ll look like you share everything -
very
sexy.’
 
The girls jumped up and down and squealed with delight at this idea.
 
Julius half opened a red-rimmed eye at me. ‘Fanks,’ he said.
 
Chapter Ten
 
In my old life, arranging a party meant hiring a party planner and a designer florist. It meant little canapés, and inventing brand-new cocktails, and quite often a string quartet. I took after my mother: I loved parties.
 
Our party wasn’t much like that. Eck came home with seventy-two balloons, so we blew those up, then the boys hung the long ones with two round ones on either side so they looked like penises. ‘How old are you?’ I asked them, and they explained to me that it didn’t matter how old you were, boys always found balloons shaped like penises funny and would when they were eighty and I wondered if that were true of the boys I used to know and concluded that it probably was. And James came home with some jelly, and some vodka from the local no-brand supermarket that smelled pretty much exactly like the oven cleaner. But that was about the extent of our preparations.
 
‘Did you send out invitations?’ I’d made the mistake of asking. All the boys stared at me in complete disbelief.
 
‘Is that what they do in
Hackney
?’ asked Cal.
 
I shrugged. ‘No! I just wondered.’
 
And that was it. I was nervous. Would anyone come? Would anyone talk to me? Maybe they would come, chat me up, take me out, get into my knickers then go and marry my best friend. Oh, no, hang on, that had already happened. I groaned again. It was like pushing on a mouth ulcer with my tongue; it hurt, but I couldn’t seem to leave it alone. Nope, I had to move on. I was going to be at a party with a houseful of boys. The odds had to be in my favour.
 
And it was just as well the bathroom was clean, because it was well and truly hogged come Saturday. I couldn’t believe how vain they all were. I reflected, slightly sadly, that obviously none of them were considering pulling me, because I saw them kicking about in their grundies all day long and it didn’t bother them in the slightest.

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