huh.’
‘OK, darling. Well, improvise as best you can. Must dash! We’ve got a Teletubby stuck in a lift! Bye, darling!’
By the following Saturday, I knew for a fact that everything was all right with the world and I was ready to hit Amanda’s engagement do. I had it all worked out. No doubt there’d be a lot of nudging. Someone might even say, ‘Hey, it’ll be you two next!’ and I’d blush modestly and do a shy smile, and Alex would look at me tenderly and say, ‘Well, you never know … maybe one day, if I’m lucky!’ and that’d get all round the party and I’d be the queen! By the time my imagination had supplied a huge circular staircase down which we could descend to mass applause, I had to pretend to be Fran and tell myself not to be so silly. But, oh – look how wonderfully compatible we were! We hadn’t fallen out once, all week. He’d grovelled, he’d done his bit. He was home again, he was beautiful, and he was mine. Everything was brilliant.
Amanda’s party turned out to be a pretty swish affair. Fortunately, what with all the shagging and healthy gourmet meals, I could get into last year’s grey silk frock. And if I kept my right-hand side to the wall, the wine stain scarcely showed. Alex had shoved on his usual T-shirt and jeans, but looked gorgeous anyway.
I’d begged Fran to come, but she’d absolutely declined, on the grounds that I would be snogging Alex all night and everyone else would be horrible.
The party was in an exclusive club on the Thames: all noisy gravel and ginormous bouquets of unnaturallooking yellow flowers clustered around a bunch of braying men and sharp-lipsticked women. Everyone was taller than me and knew everyone else, and before I was two steps through the door, my carefully groomed confidence started to plummet, until once again I was Melanie Pepper, unruly loudmouth of 2C, worrying about puppy fat and what would happen if George Michael didn’t want to marry me after all. (Well, who knew?)
This was definitely not my race, this mob of anorexic, complacent, poshtastic freeloaders. I caught sight of myself in the enormous gold-tinted mirror opposite, surrounded by the glitterprati. I looked like I was wearing my mother’s shoes, en route to the dentist.
I turned round for the consolation of having the handsomest man in the room on my arm. But my heart sank again. How could I forget? Alex’s hair flopped! He went skiing! His parents couldn’t remember his first name! He was One of Them! Even before I had grabbed my first free glass of champers (Don’t grab, Mel! You have a right to be here, remember?), he was practically being mobbed.
‘Al! Al, darling! Where have you been?’
‘Alex! Sara said she bumped into you in LA – had a few fantastic days, I hear?’
‘Oh, come over and see Benedict and Claire – we haven’t seen you since the pool party!’
I too had been at the pool party, having a thoroughly miserable time. I too hadn’t seen any of these poncey poseurs since then. I pretended to look politely interested and waited for Alex to re-introduce me.
‘Guys, you remember Melanie, don’t you?’
A blonde horse glanced at me cursorily, and I wished – for God’s sake! – that my name was a little less common.
There was a short pause in the conversation as they gave me simpering nob smiles and enquiring looks, then they fell back into loud guffaws as Alex recounted his adventures yet again, cast me one apologetic glance, then hurled himself into dissecting the rugby season and knocking back the ’poo.
So much for the grey silk dress. The entire circle, defying the laws of physics, appeared to have its back to me, and I felt out in the cold. Deflated, I wondered what had happened to my fantasy big night at Amanda’s party. I would have made my excuses and left, but there was no one to give my excuses to. So I wandered off, pretending to be in search of a toilet, and wondering whether or not to go and have a little cry by myself.
Weighing up my options, I spotted Amanda. After all, she was the hostess, she had to talk to me! I wandered up to her group in my best ‘I’m not at all desperate to talk to anyone at this party, ha!’ manner.
‘Hello, darling!’ air-kissed Amanda. For once, her shallowness was pitched at precisely the right level for me, and I was extremely grateful for it. She was wearing a Barbie doll-sized dress made of some pastel, girlie, lacy thing that was almost, but not quite, see-through. ‘That’s flaunting it a bit when you’re meant to be celebrating your union with someone you’ll love for the rest of your life,’ I thought nastily as a waiter did a full body-swerve trying to make out her nipples – but I decided not to mention it.
‘Ehmm … are you having a nice party?’ A stunning social opener from me.
‘Darling, it’s fantastic! There’s a Hello! photographer here.’
There was social success, and there was social success.
Amanda was looking even tinier and more cutesy than ever. Her sly little features glowed in the gold of the room as she checked her reflection again in the mirrors and – I swear to God – simpered at herself.
‘Ho!’ I said heartily. ‘Maybe he’d like to photograph me and Alex, back from the grave!’
This was meant to be a weak joke, but as I would so patently never be Hello! magazine material, it just came out as a bit sad.
‘So, tell me all about it!’ pouted the minuscule radiant one, while doing a quick scan of the room to make sure no one could see her talking to me.
I did start to try and explain, but other people’s happy love lives are so unbelievably boring – we shagged, we stared deep into one another’s eyes and, hey, we had this really funny private joke whereby we turned the pillowcase into a singing animal – and Amanda hid her boredom less than most. It also didn’t help that the other half of this indivisible team was guffawing his head off, miles away. I found my voice trailing off into a litany of hmm, so, it’s great, yeah, fine. Then there was a bit of a pause. My shoulder was being looked over. I knew I should have paid my homage and left by now, but I could hear big roars of laughter from Alex’s clique – laughter I simply could not share (I was tending towards the melodramatic by this stage) – and my options remained either clinging desperately to Amanda like a limpet or bursting into tears in the toilet.
‘So,’ I stalled, ‘where’s Fraser?’
‘Hullo thair,’ lilted the Scottish tones behind me. I turned round, with the only genuine smile of pleasure I’d felt all evening. He must have remembered me after all.
‘Frase!’
Despite the kilt, however, this character wasn’t Fraser. He wasn’t even looking at me – he was looking at Amanda, who returned a rather icy stare. I felt a complete fool.
‘Angus,’ pronounced Amanda beautifully, ‘have you met my old schoolfriend, Melanie? Melanie, this is Fraser’s baby brother.’
I looked at him like a surprised fish.
‘Hullo there,’ he said again.
A rather ruddy-faced boy stared back at me. He was as tall as Fraser, but didn’t share any of his features. His hair was reddy-brown, and he had freckles. Hmm.
‘Hello,’ I said casually. ‘Are you the best man?’
