‘I’m terribly worried, it’s gone all sort of greeny-yellowy-orangey,’ she said.
‘Thank you for sharing that with me,’ I replied crisply. Actually, I didn’t say that at all, I simply said, ‘Poor little thing, what a terrible shame. Anyway, thanks for letting me know.’ Then at lunchtime Jane and Peter blew me out because their au pair’s bogged off with the boy next door, and even Lizzie – my best and oldest friend – even Lizzie can’t come.
‘Sorry, darling,’ she said when she called me yesterday morning. ‘I’m really really sorry, but I’d totally forgotten it’s half-term, and I want to take the girls away.’
‘Oh, well, never mind,’ I said, philosophically. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Birdwatching in Botswana. The Okavango’s divine at this time of year.’
Crikey – some half-term treat, I thought, beats a day out at the zoo.
‘I’ve just managed to pick up a last-minute package with Cox and Kings,’ she said, audibly drawing on a cigarette. ‘We’re flying to Gabarone tonight.’
‘Is Martin going with you?’ I enquired.
‘Don’t be silly, Tiff,’ she said with a loud snort. ‘He’s working.’ Of course. Silly me. Poor Martin. And then Rachel phoned last night to say she couldn’t face the party because she’s got terrible morning sickness (‘But my party’s in the evening,’ I pointed out); and two hours later Daisy rang to say she’s got funny pains in her lower abdomen and daren’t come out because it’s probably the baby arriving early. Then this morning Robert phoned to say his mother-in-law’s ill, so they can’t come, and then Felicity rang to say that Thomas is teething and won’t stop blubbing and so that’s it – now we are six. Six singles, as it happens: Sally, Kit, Catherine, Frances, Emma, me and, of course, Alex. My boyfriend. My chap. I may not have a husband but at least I’ve got a bloke. Which is more than can be said for my other single women friends. Poor things. Must be so depressing for them. Being single. At our age. Dreadful. And incomprehensible – after all, they’re so eligible. And so attractive. Especially Sally. She’s really gorgeous. And she’s loaded. But even Sally finds it hard to meet decent blokes. Luckily for me I’ve got Alex. Phew. And it’s serious. Actually I’ve been going out with him for quite a long time now – eight months, three weeks and five days. In fact, well, put it this way – I’ve just taken out a subscription to Brides and Setting Up Home.
I’d like to say it was an unforgettable party. And in some ways it was. It started quite promisingly. Sally arrived first, at seven-thirty, which amazed me as she works twenty-nine hours a day in the City, and OK I know she earns a fortune – I mean her half-yearly bonus is probably twice my annual income – but even so, she’s so generous with it – she’d bought me a Hermés scarf. Wow! You don’t spot many of those around here. That should bring the area up a bit. I can see the headline in the local paper now: ‘Hermés Scarf Spotted in Unfashionable End of Islington. House Prices Hit New High’.
‘It was duty free,’ she said with a grin, ‘I got thirty per cent off it at Kennedy Airport. Oh Tiffany, you’ve decorated in here – it looks lovely!’ She removed her pale-pink cashmere cardigan, revealing slender, lightly-tanned arms.
‘God I’ve had an awful day,’ she said, slumping into the sofa. ‘The dollar dropped ten cents in half an hour this afternoon. It was panic stations. Sheer bloody hell.’
I always find it hard to visualise Sally at work, yelling into her phone in a testosterone-swamped, City dealing-room, screaming, ‘Sell! Sell! Sell!’ at the top of her voice. That’s what she does, not every day, but quite often, and it’s hard to imagine because she’s as delicate and fragile-looking as a porcelain doll. Unlike Frances, who arrived next. Now Frances is by contrast rather, well, solid. Handsome, I suppose you’d say. Impressive, distinguished-looking, like a Sheraton sideboard. She’s alarmingly bright, too – she got a double first in law at Oxford. I don’t think this endears her much to men.
‘Happy Birthday, Tiffany!’ she exclaimed in her booming, basso profundo voice. It’s an amazing voice, deep and reedy, like a bassoon. She was looking smart in an Episode linen suit, dark of course, for court, her auburn hair cut short and sharp around her fine-boned face. Anyway, she’d brought me this lovely book, Face Facts – the Everywoman Guide to Plastic Surgery.
‘That’s really thoughtful of you, Frances,’ I said. ‘I’m terribly interested in all that, as you know.’
‘Yes, that’s why I’ve given it to you,’ she said. ‘In order to put you off. The photos are absolutely beastly.’
And then Catherine arrived, bearing a huge bunch of peonies, her fingers still stained with paint, a faint aroma of turpentine clinging to her long red hair. Catherine restores pictures, painstakingly swabbing at them with cotton buds and tiny brushes, eliminating the grime and dust of decades. Showing them in their true colours, I suppose you’d say.
‘Sorry I haven’t changed, Tiff,’ she said. ‘Hope we’re not too formal.’
‘Well no, it’s just the six of us,’ I said. ‘Everyone else has cried off.’
‘Oh good,’ she said, with a glance at the dining-room table, ‘all the more for us! Gosh those sausages look delicious!’
Catherine is very boyish. She usually wears jeans, and her lightly-freckled face is always shining and scrubbed. And I have never, ever, seen her wear make up. Not even mascara. Not even lip gloss. Whereas I – well, the thing I seem to use most of all these days is concealer. Industrial amounts of it actually, which I carefully apply with a garden trowel, filling in the widening fissures beneath my eyes.
Then at eight Emma turned up with a large box of Godiva chocolates. ‘School was a nightmare,’ she said. ‘I’ve had the most desperate lot of delinquents all day. TGIF, as they say – Happy Birthday, Tiffany – my God, what a lot of food, are you expecting an army?’
‘Er no, just a few regular troops, actually.’
Last to arrive was Kit. ‘Happy Birthday, Tiffany!’ he said, wrapping me in an enormous hug and planting a noisy kiss on my left cheek. Thank God for Kit. I often think I should forget about Alex – where was Alex, I wondered – and concentrate on Kit. My mother thinks I should marry him. My father thinks I should marry him. Lizzie thinks I should marry him. Everyone thinks I should marry him. Why didn’t I marry him? I suppose because the moment when it might have happened came and went years ago. But he’s still my other half – my creative other half, that is. I do the words, and he does the pictures. He’s my art director, you see. That’s how we met – on the Camay account at Gurgle Gargle and Peggoty. But now he’s my knight chevalier, my best male pal and, quite often, my colleague too. I love working with Kit. He’s freelance, like me, and we still collaborate on campaigns sometimes, though what he really wants is to direct TV commercials.
‘Did you get the Kiddimint job?’ he asked as we sat sipping champagne in my tiny garden.
‘Yes, I did,’ I said, picking a few late lilies of the valley to put on the dining-room table. ‘Blow, Coward Spank want the script in three weeks. Haven’t a clue what I’m going to do with it. Never done toothpaste before, let alone kids’ toothpaste. They want a cartoon. I might do something with Macavity, from Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.’
‘You
