so she really doesn’t want people asking too many questions.
‘We went to Spain,’ announces Mindy, with a predictable,‘Olé!’ Then she climbs onto the table, much to the delight of the waiters who gather round to watch this drunk woman in a very short pink skirt negotiating the climb. ‘Viva L’Espana,’ she shouts, while clicking her invisible castanets. She begins to undo the few buttons that are not already open and throws back her pink Pucci blouse to reveal a bikini full to the brim with fake breast.
‘Good lord,’ says Suzzi, as the Slag Wags cheer. They’re all used to this behaviour on the youthful side of the table, except for Helen—the new girl in the group. To her credit, she is open-mouthed and looking very uncomfortable with the way the lunch party is developing. Mindy is simply unable to whisper discreetly, ‘I’ve had my breasts done.’ She has to put on a strip show at the ladies’ lunch.
‘Anyone for melon?’ asks Mich.
‘No, you mean anyone for football?’ asks Suzzi, and they fall about laughing. Suze is so funny. Actually, though, in all honesty, each of Mindy’s new breasts is roughly the size of a heavily inflated football.
My caesar salad comes, without croutons, cheese, anchovies or dressing, and I move the lettuce around the plate. Pudding arrives. I didn’t order it. I haven’t eaten pudding for years, certainly not since I started wearing a bra. The pudding is clearly part of the sabotage techniques of the Slag Wags, designed to test my willpower. I delicately smash up the creamy-white mound sitting in the centre of an icing-dusted plate and move it around without tasting it. I don’t even know what it is, I just know that it’s full of calories that I cannot possibly consume. I wonder whether Mindy has realised that I changed her order so she’s drinking sweet white wine and normal lemonade! She doesn’t seem to have noticed that it’s not diet, not the way she’s throwing it down her throat.
Julie’s noticed, though. She’s making funny faces as she drinks her cocktail. I guess it wasn’t subtle to request it loaded with double cream. The sad thing is, though, that a few extra calories isn’t going to make a difference to those girls—they’re young, skinny and pretty…unlike me. I suddenly feel so obsessed by the thought of the passing years and the desperate, wrinkle-filled, grey-haired world towards which I’m clearly on a fast train, that I can’t think properly, or take any joy from their sabotaged drinks.
In the end, I resort to testing myself by guessing the number of calories in every item on the menu. I work out all the various combinations. Christ, I can do calorie calculations in my sleep. I often think to myself that if they’d done sums at school in calories, I might be lecturing at Harvard now, instead of devoting my days to ensuring I look ten years younger than I am.
I’m so absorbed in the calorie-counting business that I don’t see a burly man in a fluorescent jacket enter the restaurant and indulge in a heated exchange with one of the restaurant’s waiting staff. The waiter walks over to the table, but I’m too busy wondering how much vanilla and caramel custard you’re likely to get with the cinnamon whirl, and thus how many calories it’s likely to be, to hear him ask,
‘Does anyone have a four-by-four?’
Everyone at the table simultaneously says, ‘Yes.’
‘Is anyone’s car parked illegally?’ asks the waiter.
‘Yes,’ chorus the women.
He walks away, shaking his head, and tells the man in the fluorescent jacket that it’s impossible to identify the driver.
‘You’re quiet,’ Suzzi says to me, her voice full of concern. I’m normally the life and soul of these things.
‘Sorry, just a bit tired,’ I reply. ‘Looking forward to the season, though.’ I try, valiantly, to pull myself out of my morbid daydreams where the wrinkles and creases on my forehead are coming alive and starting to eat me up. ‘I’ve got some fabulous new clothes. I went up to Liverpool for the weekend.’
‘Ooooooooo,’ they all coo, because they know what ‘going up to Liverpool’ means. All except Helen, our token newcomer—poor girl. She’s sitting over with the Slag Wags, but she’d be better off over here with me so I could have a word with her about her clothing (her skirt’s so long it’s covering her knickers!!).
‘What’s in Liverpool?’ she asks, her big blue line-free nineteen-year-old eyes twinkling like crazy.
‘Cricket,’ says Mich, leaning in to join the conversation.
She’s two years younger than I am, but everyone thinks she’s four years older because she’s been honest about her age. It’s a shame because she could get away with saying she was much younger. She’s got these incredible pale green cat-like eyes. She’s not as skinny as the rest of us (she’s a size 8-10), but still manages to look great because she’s very curvy and has these full, sensual lips that men seem to adore.
Helen is looking at Mich with such confusion on her face, you’d think Mich had just announced that she was planning a sex change.
‘What—like bowling and batting and that?’
‘Cricket’s the ultimate Wag’s shop,’ Mich explains, delighting in the ignorance of a Slag Wag. It’s clear that Helen is providing us with an open goal, and I can see Mich preparing for the kick. ‘Fab clothes there. Have you really never heard of it?’
‘No,’ says Helen. ‘To be honest, I really don’t know anything much about this whole Wag thing.’
Not only does that make it 2-2, but the happy turn in the subject of the conversation means that I find myself on comfortable ground now and so I feel myself relax. There is nothing—NOTHING—that I don’t know about being a Wag. It’s my thing. I threw myself into the world as soon as I met Dean. When he played for Arsenal there was no one watching who was more tanned or more blonde.
‘Yes, I got loads of new clothes at Cricket.’ I’m peacocking now. ‘I even got the Roland Mouret Moon Dress—you know, the limited-edition one that Posh wore when she and David arrived in Los Angeles.’
‘No way,’ says Julie, clearly impressed. Julie is wearing a tight leather corset dress in caramel, which is completely wrong for the time of year. As Suzzi said: ‘She must be sweating like a pig.’ She’s wearing quite funky calf-length, shaggy-haired boots with it, and has a tan so orange it would put David Dickinson to shame, so she’s redeemed herself in that department, but the dress itself is not at all Wagalicious. It certainly didn’t come from Cricket, let’s put it like that.
‘If you’ve got a Moon Dress, why aren’t you wearing it?’ asks Mindy.
‘It’s being delivered,’ I explain.
‘Oh,’ says Mindy,‘so you haven’t actually got a Moon Dress then, you’ve just got one on order like everyone else.’
Bitch.
‘And guess what?’ I say quickly, pretending not to notice Mindy’s spiteful comment. ‘I had a red-carpet facial—you know, the one with the six-month waiting list and the oxygen injections.’
Helen’s mouth has dropped wide open so I can see that she has absolutely no fillings—just beautiful neat pearly-white teeth. She has perfect alabaster skin and a little upturned nose. She looks like a young model, just about to take the world by storm. No surprise there, really, because
