always dreamt of (although, to be honest, she hadn’t exactly foreseen that the high life would carry a faint whiff of antibacterial cleaning spray and that she’d witness all the activity from behind a desk).
Roxy had always thought it was an aberration that she’d been born in Farnham Hills. She’d decided at an early age that the stork had obviously been on its way to a four-storey, three-million-pound townhouse in Belgravia when it was cruelly struck down by a shot from an armed robber’s rifle (yes, she had a very vivid imagination, even as a child) and forced to drop its precious bundle in an environment in which she clearly didn’t belong. When her classmates were splashing their pocket money on Just Seventeen, she was buying Vogue. When, at sixteen, they were fantasising about a fortnight in Faliraki, she was dreaming of a weekend in St Tropez. And when they were imagining their future husbands, children, and three-bedroom semis on the new housing estate on the edge of the village, she was imagining tunnelling to freedom and spending the rest of her life shagging an obscenely rich bloke, surrounded by walnut panelling in the master suite of his custom-built yacht.
And okay, so she wasn’t quite there yet, but when she was offered the job at the Seismic she instinctively knew that she had opened the door to the world she belonged in.
And the bonus was that, as receptionist, she only had to meet, greet and keep the customer records up to date. The money was great, the tips were outstanding and, unlike the rest of the girls, her pay packet didn’t come at the expense of cystitis.
She loved it–at least to start with. But over the last couple of months it had all seemed a little too repetitive. The same faces week after week, the endless stream of girls (who invariably quit once they’d earned enough to buy a flat, finished university or received an irresistible offer of marriage from a blue-blooded, upper-class, Eton-educated arms dealer), and the rising scepticism after yet another client did an ‘At Home with the Happy Family’ spread in Hello!. Roxy had to admit it–the job was wearing down her trust in men and turning the loving act of sex into a business transaction. Did you enjoy your ejaculation, sir? Oh, lovely–now would that be Visa, MasterCard or American Express?
She just wanted to be like normal people (porn stars and penile-implant specialists aside) and experience a daily life that wasn’t controlled or influenced by actions of the male reproductive organ.
She could probably have struggled on for another couple of months, but the latest devastation in her love life had tipped her over the edge. She winced. She still couldn’t believe that after two years of devotion Felix was history. Gone. Past tense.
But after spending three days submerged in hysterical mourning she had decided that no man was worth a forty-five per cent increase in wrinkles caused by perpetual sobbing–even if he was the first and–penis-embargo withstanding–last love of her life.
She would never, ever mention his name again.
Ever.
Except in a blatant ploy to get help and sympathy from a bored, indifferent best friend…
‘God, Ginny, you’re so self-absorbed. Since Felix betrayed me I’m experiencing such an overwhelming trauma that I’ve put off having my roots done, I can’t face going out and I’m so bitter that my karma has gone all to fuck. I mean, how would you feel if you were not only unemployed, but you’d caught the love of your life shagging the local florist?’ she wailed. ‘And he didn’t even have the decency to send me a bunch of bloody flowers.’
Ginny nodded in what she hoped vaguely resembled a sympathetic expression. It lasted about three seconds before the truth made a break for freedom.
‘He was a twat anyway.’
‘He was not!’ Roxie protested.
‘Was.’
‘Was not.’
Ginny sighed. ‘You do realise that we’re twenty-seven? Apparently we should have given up on childish, petty, pantomime dialogue somewhere around puberty. Remind me again why we’re friends?’
She had a point. Almost thirty years of friendship, based on having absolutely nothing in common other than the fact that they were born on the same day and their mothers were distantly related. Speaking of which…
‘Hellooooooooooo, girlies.’ The sing-song shriek came from downstairs and was accompanied by a slamming door and the smell of chow mein.
Said girlies groaned. ‘How can you be related to someone who sounds like that? You know, you really have to move out of your mother’s house, Gin–it’s obscene that you still live here at your age.’
‘And is my favourite girlie still up there too?’ screeched another voice, which to the untrained ear sounded very like the first one.
Roxy sighed. ‘And how can I be related to someone who sounds like that?’
Then, louder, ‘Yes, Mum, I’ll be down in a minute.’
‘I’ve got your favourite here, sweetie–prawn crackers and crispy chicken. We thought we’d all have dinner together.’
‘Gin, do you think our mothers are having a lesbian affair? I haven’t seen them apart since about 1974. Urgh, mental image, my mother muff-diving…don’t think I can face those prawn crackers now. And I’m not buying that my mother moved in here just for the companionship.’
Gin giggled. ‘You have a sex-obsessed, twisted mind. They’re not lovers, they’re cousins.’
‘About third cousins, four times removed. I’ve met people in public toilets who are closer relations than that. But think about it. Since your dad popped his clogs and my dad popped Mrs Fleming from the fish shop, they’ve been joined at the hip. Urgh, another mental thought that I could live without.’
‘They’re cousins!’ shrieked Ginny, smacking Roxy with a threadbare, heart-shaped pink pillow, and still her perfect hair didn’t move an inch out of place.
‘There should be a law against parents having sex. Come on then, let’s go join them. But when we’re finished you have to help me update my CV and find a new job, Gin–you know I’m hopeless at that kind of stuff.’
‘And what am I, a careers officer?’ Ginny replied indignantly.
‘You work in a library! There are loads of job information advice thingies in there.’
‘There are also several editions of the Kama Sutra and a whole bloody shelf on the menopause, but I know sod all about those either.’
Objection overruled.
‘Come on, hon, please. I really need you to help me decide what I’m going to do. Maybe I should take a year out and travel a bit. Or go back to university. I only had one year left to do, before…well…before…’
‘Before you got caught giving the philosophy professor a blow job. Under a podium. During a lecture.’
‘Girlies!!!’ came another shriek from downstairs.
Ginny groaned. ‘You know, Rox, you’re right–I have to move out of here. I need to stop wearing clothes with “sweat” in the title, and I need to shred the apron strings.’
Suddenly,
