My Fake Wedding (Red Dress Ink (Numbered Paperback)) (10 page)

‘Just goes to show, darling,’ George remarks spitefully. ‘You can take the slag out of the council estate but you sure can’t take the council estate out of the slag. I’d watch it if I were you, darling,’ he comments to Zac, as I pray for the parquet to swallow us up. ‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised if her wedding lingerie turns out to be crotchless.’

Then, with a parting, ‘Nasty dress, by the way,’ he tugs on my hand and we stagger, cackling and hooting with deliciously bitchy laughter, into the night.

T
he first grown-up dinner party Janice and I attended together was in Sixth Form. I smothered my hair in Sun-In and wore wraparound shades and a disgusting dress with a gingham puffball skirt. I thought I was the dog’s bollocks. Janice hired a frock specially: a stunning fifties number, ink-black with a pinched-in waist, acres of gauzy netting and trillions of tiny jet beads. Then she shagged the school heartthrob, got sperm all over the dress and made me take it back to the shop while she sat outside in my mum’s Austin Maxi with the engine running.

This time, she’s adamant that
everything’s going to be perfect. Gone is the girl who changes her men as often as she changes her g-string. Jasper is the start of her grown-up life, and she’s buggered if she’s letting on she’s really the type to go round dishing out blow jobs to sundry blokes with runaway egos.

If I’m honest, the thought of her giving all that up makes me depressed. It signals the taking on of responsibility. Adulthood. It reminds me I’ve got to do something with my life before it’s too late.

Of
course I don’t have to. I could always opt out. I could open a sunbed centre or do a course in teaching aerobics. I wouldn’t have to sit in an office then. I could dress permanently in sports wear and drive round in a Jeep. But before I really have a chance to decide whether or not I want to start my own catering business, Janice has organised her dinner party and sent out the invites. We meet in the Moon Under Water on Sunday to drink pints of shandy (doesn’t really count as drinking as it’s half lemonade and so entirely suitable for a school night) and discuss the menu.

‘I thought carrot, coconut and cumin soup to start,’ she announces bossily. ‘Followed by roast rump of lamb with a minted polenta crust and seasonal vegetables and then a rich chocolate mousse cake with marscapone to follow. I got it all out of the Sugar Club cookbook. What d’you reck? Will that look as though it took me bastard ages?’

I don’t know about that. But I do know that it’s going to take me bastard ages. Any normal person would be happy to settle for pasta and pesto. Or spag bol at least. I’ll give her flaming minted polenta crust.

‘Oh, and look glam,’ she warns me. ‘I’ve invited quite a few other people as well. And I’m dressing up so you’re going to have to at least stick a bit of slap and a frock on. I don’t want to look as though I’ve made some sort of pathetic effort, do I? What I mean is, I want him to think I’m like that all the time.’

What she means is that she doesn’t want me showing her up.

‘Can’t I just cook it?’ I ask her. ‘And then sod off? I could even do it all here and send it round to yours in a taxi in those little foil dishes you get down the Chinky.’

Apparently I can’t. Janice won’t hear of it. After all, I’m going to be cooking the food, she reminds me. So I can bloody well sit there and eat it if it damn well chokes me.

I’m pissed off, to put it mildly. A meal like that will take hours to prepare. I’ll probably have to get going on Friday before the end of
Celebrity Ready Steady Cook
.

‘But
you’ll do all the shopping, right?’ I ask.

‘Will I buggery,’ she snorts, spraying me with lager top. ‘I rather thought you’d be doing that, having sod all else to do except loll round the flat with your finger up your bum. I’ve got a fulltime job to hold down until I get married, remember?’

Well, that’s just great, isn’t it? I’ll probably miss most of
Trisha
as well if I’ve got to whip round Sainsbury’s first.

‘I will leave some wine in the fridge though,’ she says. ‘So you can crack it open when you get there and I’ll join you when I’ve finished shovelling shit for Wasp Bum. Not that I’ll be much help, I’m afraid. I’m in for a busy week. I’ll be pretty much shagged out come Friday.’

‘Right you are then.’

‘And Katie?’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m really sorreee but…’

‘What?’

‘You couldn’t tidy the bathroom a bit and have a quick flick round with a duster, could you? I probably won’t be home very much between now and then and the place is a bit of a sty.’

‘Cheeky bitch,’ George snorts, when I call him to tell him I’ll have to miss our lunchtime bitching session in Café Flo because I’m going to have to plan the whole thing properly now I’m catering for loads of Jasper’s friends.

‘She’s not a cheeky bitch,’ I say.

‘Oh?’

‘She’s a cheeky fucking bitch.’

‘So she is. With knobs on.’

‘She’s so worried about showing Filthy Rich what a great executive wife she’ll make that she couldn’t give a toss about the rest of us. God knows why she’s so taken with him. He’s nearly seventy, for Christ’s sake. He’s got a face like a gnarled walnut.’

‘Ooh yes,’ George says delightedly. ‘Like a badly griddled pancake, all screwed up.’

‘All
I can say is he must have a dick like a baby’s arm clutching a grapefruit.’

‘Oooh.’

‘He’s still working though. So he might not be that ancient. But I mean she doesn’t even know what he does for a living. He could be a toilet cleaner for all she knows. Or a dustbin man. Nothing very executive about that. But from the way she goes on, you’d think he was Richard bloody Branson. She’s so busy counting pound signs that she’s forgotten all about me.’

‘And she bleaches her hair.’

‘Anything could be happening in my life right now and she wouldn’t even notice. My boyfriend could be beating the shit out of me.’

‘You don’t have a boyfriend,’ George points out. ‘He dumped you months ago.’

‘I dumped him actually. And only because he preferred dirty nylon knicker girls to normal girls like me.’

‘Darling, if you’re normal, I’m the Pope.’

‘But hypothetically speaking, I could have a boyfriend, couldn’t I?’

‘I suppose you could, yes. If you did something with your hair.’

‘And he
could
be beating the shit out of me.’

‘He could be using your head as a dartboard,’ George says gleefully.

‘And my bum as a knife block.’

‘Stubbing fags out on your arms,’ he shouts happily.

‘Exactly,’ I say. ‘And Little Miss Biddy Bonker wouldn’t even notice. As a mate, I’m practically neglected. I could report her.’

‘You could,’ he agrees.

‘She’ll be laughing the other side of her lipliner when “luxury travel” means packing into some National Express biddy wagon for a day trip to Clacton,’ I point out.

And that’s not all, I think to myself, wearily dusting down my collection of recipe clippings. What’s going to happen in ten
years’ time, when her carefully maintained home starts to stink of old people? All wee and boil-in-the-bag cod. I don’t think she’ll like that very much. She won’t be able to redecorate in case the paintwork clashes with the stairlift.

Sometimes, I doubt whether she’s actually thought about the future at all. To her, the wedding ceremony is the future. And after that—nothing! Janice is so wrapped up in her fantasy, she’s yet to realise that marriage is, in all probability, very much like the female condom. Vastly overrated. If she actually stops to think further than the honeymoon, she’ll realise that a girl who, until very recently, didn’t even bother swapping first names before happily exchanging humungous quantities of bodily fluids, will probably find the challenge of coping with incontinence pants so early in life pretty hard to take.

On Friday, I stubbornly wait until
Trisha
’s finished, then strop round the supermarket in five minutes flat, grazing happily on Skips as I go. When I’ve bought everything I need, I waddle home to feed Graham and Shish Kebab. Graham winds himself around my legs, purring like a motorbike as I squidge a sachet of duck-flavoured slop into his bowl. Until recently, they’ve eaten out of tins, like every other moggy, but these sachet things are so convenient. The feline equivalent of an M&S lasagne for one.

When I’ve watched both furry bundles poke the lot down their greedy fat faces, I lug the shopping round to Janice’s flat and unlock the door, catching a waft of her smell as I do so. It’s weird. When we shared a flat together, I never noticed her ‘other person’ smell. But now I’m a visitor, I can’t miss it. And 152 Calbourne Road smells of a mixture of CK One, Dettox, Elnett hairspray and fresh paint. It’s so damn clean it screams ‘One Careful Owner’. You see, whereas my rented hovel hasn’t seen so much as a lick of paint since I’ve been there, Janice is constantly in decorating mode. In fact, when it comes to her flat, she’s so anally retentive, she could probably do without a Hoover.
She could trot round the place sucking up crumbs through her bum instead. In the last six months, she’s gone interior design mad. She’s Anna Ryder Wotsit the second. Except she’s a blonde version, with much bigger tits. She’s forever painting this and varnishing that. Everything has to coordinate. She’s been known to march into Homebase brandishing a violet resin ashtray someone at work bought her and demanding an entire colour scheme based on the bloody thing. The only item I’ve ever bought for my flat is my lovely squishy sofa. And that’s only because Jake sprayed the last one with sperm as I gave him a post-prandial hand job—his last, as it turned out—and I couldn’t so much as glance at the stain without getting rushes of nostalgia. Otherwise, I prefer to leave major purchases like that for when I grow up. Or when I actually manage to buy my own place. When that’ll be, precisely, as I keep telling my mum, I’m not entirely sure. When a mortgage lands in my lap, I expect. I’m a Property Virgin, for God’s sake. I don’t have a clue how it all works. And don’t get me wrong. I have tried. I asked George a few months back if he knew about mortgages. But he looked utterly horrified. ‘Mortgage?’ he screeched. ‘What mortgage? Jesus Harriet Christ, sweetie, just what do you think I am? I live in Islington, I’ll have you know. That’s N bloody One, darling, not Albert flipping Square. I own that house outright.’

I dump the bags of shopping on Janice’s kitchen table and have a quick snoop round. As usual, everything is cool, calm and elegant. Shortly after moving in, she had an attack of open plan-itis, knocking down certain walls and making egg-shaped holes in others. The floor is now an ice rink of highly polished beech and the whole place looks as though it has jumped straight from the pages of some glossy interiors magazine. I suppress a sigh of envy and tell myself she deserves to live somewhere beautiful, bless her nylon pop socks. She’s worked bloody hard to escape the council estate in Walthamstow where she grew up, sitting in front of a one-bar fire with a packet
of Garibaldi for her tea and an Asda ski-panted mother for company.

Wandering into the bathroom, with its fresh lilac walls, seamless stainless steel bath and pale mosaic floor, I pick up several clean outfits, unable to keep from smiling, as I envisage my best friend in the world trying them all on for a night out with Filthy Rich. I can see her in my mind’s eye, twirling briefly in the full-length mirror by the door then casting each garment aside with mounting exasperation as she deems it highly unsuitable. I count four black tops, two white tops, an inviting little number in apricot lace and a slinky purple and pink spotted dress with a tantalisingly low back. Three bras, two thongs, four pairs of slingbacks and a pair of killer stilettos litter the floor by the mirror and I grab the whole jumble and shove it into her wardrobe, rescuing other assorted scraps of clothing, which are scattered across the landing like tickertape, as I go.

Then I stomp down to the kitchen to unpack the groceries and cook supper. I chop carrots and onions, simmer creamy coconut broth and tear up bunches of fragrant coriander. Whizz the whole lot through the blender and roll the most astronomically priced piece of lamb I’ve been able to find in freshly macerated mint. I boil potatoes then rough them up with a fork so they’ll be deliciously crispy when I roast them in heaps of chopped rosemary and lashings of sizzling hot oil. Slice courgettes into razor-thin strips and pod peas. Melt prime quality chocolate over a saucepan and whip egg white into Everestlike peaks. As I do all this, a wave of contentment washes over me and I almost switch off from real life completely. I always feel like this when I’m cooking for friends. It soothes me, somehow. I used to love cooking for Jake. Every Friday night we’d have wonderful slap-up feasts, after which he always enjoyed nothing more than an evening of crap game shows rounded off with a blow job of distinction. I cooked that ungrateful sod everything under the sun. French. Italian. Indian. Thai. Chinese. Unfortunately, as it turned out, the only thing he really appreciated in the
end was Red Hot and Dutch, but it’s some consolation to know that Fishpants Fraser is doing the cooking now. Which means egg and chips will be about the limit. And it’ll doubtless be downhill from now on in. Soon, he’ll be living off carrot purée and Tubby custard.

And serve him bloody well right.

By the time Janice gets home from the office, stripping off her suit jacket as she waltzes into the kitchen and declaring that she needs a hot shower and a good half-hour of pampering, everything is practically ready. The lamb is roasting to pink perfection in her sparkling Smeg and all that remains is for her to stick the veg in boiling water for a few minutes when the guests have arrived. Surely even she can manage that. As I wait for her to come out of the shower, I slip into my own boring LBD, pull on a sheer pair of black tights to conceal my corned beef legs and flop down on her suede ottoman to neck a glass of wine. She slaps on a bright blue face mask, exfoliates her legs, douses herself in perfume and pours herself into a backless silver chainmail thing she’s bought specially.

‘TA-DAA.’ She wafts down the stairs in a cloud of D&G and gives me a quick twirl. ‘What do you reck? Do I look gorgeous or do I. Look. Gorgeous?’

‘Erm…’

‘It needs a bra, doesn’t it?’ she says irritably. ‘Needs. A fucking. Bra. I knew it. And I don’t have a sodding backless one.’ She practically hyperventilates. ‘Shit piss fuck. What am I going to do? Whywhywhy do I have to have tits like bloody balloons?’

I pass her a paper bag to breathe into. Luckily, I know just how to deal with this particular crisis. Janice’s big, bouncy boobs are the bane of her life. She’s simply too well-endowed to go bra-free. For years now, she’s aspired to a crop top, but to no avail. No matter how much weight she loses, her boobs steadfastly refuse to shrink. I’m the total opposite. I don’t have a washboard stomach, I have a washboard chest. I’ve got a torso like a xylophone. And she’s jealous. Of me! The mad cow. I’ve tried
pointing out that my boobs are so small they practically poke inwards, like two piss holes in the snow, but she’s having none of it. It means I can wear teeny vest tops and backless frocks to my heart’s content if I want to, and that’s what’s so galling apparently. It’s a classic case of ‘grass is always greener’. I’ve yearned for boobs in the past. Great big udder-like boobs I’d be able to squash together to make a cleavage. One that looks like a huge bottom. Like the Edwardians had. I’d happily swap places with her any day.