who now make furniture sale adverts and appear in films on Channel 5 after midnight on wet Thursdays,’ said Arthur.
‘And we loved them.’
‘Why?’ asked Colin.
Everyone looked at each other.
‘They had HUGE apartments,’ said Ellie. ‘Not flats, apartments.’
‘And they went to cool dances at school.’
‘And they started out unpopular, but then got really popular.’
‘And they had makeovers.’
‘And they were going to be friends for ever, despite their class and intellectual differences.’
‘And they were all going to be famous and successful and live happily ever after for ever!’
Everyone sighed.
‘That sounds complete shit,’ said Colin.
‘As opposed to what?’ sniffed Ellie. ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?’
‘Oh, Hedge,’ said Arthur, rubbing her head affectionately. ‘I don’t think we can get you what you want for your birthday. Although your chiropodist left you some peppermint foot lotion.’
Ellie had been known as Hedgehog since she could talk. Ellie’s mum had started calling her it because she was such a prickly little thing, and it had stuck, because the more you called her it, the pricklier she got. After her mother ran away with an chartered accountant called Archie, Ellie got pricklier still.
Whilst Julia was blonde and angelic as a child – she was still blonde now, although it took a little bit more effort, and she was certainly angelic bordering on martyrdom as far as the Hedgehog was concerned – Ellie was wild-eyed and had kinky black hair and sticky pink cheeks and looked as if she’d just run away from the circus. Their teachers in public had called them ‘Snow White and Rose Red’, in private, ‘Good and Evil’.
Ellie’s mother had skipped town without warning the year before the girls sat their GCSEs. It shocked their friends and neighbours in the respectable suburb, and no-one ever mentioned it to Ellie ever again, no matter how many tantrums she pulled. Julia, and her parents, had made sure that, when Julia sat down to study for her exams and, eventually, applied to university in Sheffield, Ellie did exactly the same, and they had gone up together. Which usually meant that they just felt like very old best friends, although occasionally it could feel that they were yoked together unto death. Julia looked out for Ellie, and it seemed to Ellie that the trade-off was Julia got to be blonde and gorgeous-looking and pick up the nicest guys.
They’d met Arthur at college. Ellie had marched up to him in the student bar and declared that she fancied him. She’d found as a student that this method worked amazingly well on desperate teenage boys away from home for the first time. She would find in later life that it worked well on some older men too, but that the quality was definitely deteriorating year on year.
‘Tough,’ Arthur had replied lazily.
‘Why? What’s wrong with me?’
He looked her up and down.
‘One … two … ehm, three things,’ he said. ‘Adam’s apples I can take or leave.’
‘Oh,’ said Ellie. ‘Ohhhh,’ she said again as the ramifications sunk in. ‘I’ve never met anyone gay before.’
‘Really?’ Arthur had said. ‘How is Mars?’
‘I’m Ellie,’ she had announced sticking out her hand. ‘From Esher. Do you have any brothers who look exactly like you?’
‘No, Ellie from Esher,’ he had said, taking it. ‘Do you?’
‘Pardon me for asking …’
‘I’m not sure I like the way this is going.’
‘But aren’t you supposed to be really stylish and stuff?’
‘Clearly,’ said Arthur who was wearing satin smoking trousers and had his cigarette in a holder.
‘Well then, why do you hang around with Annabel and George?’
He shrugged. ‘To be honest, I like to keep a constant reminder around me of what I’ll never ever have to be. That and the sponge cake.’
‘Really! Me too! That’s me exactly! Would you like to be my partner in crime?’
Arthur had considered it for a second.
‘Yeah, alright then.’
‘My life,’ said Ellie now, sitting up on the bed, ‘is like one of those adverts for soup. You know, when someone has a really horrid, cold, rainy, bad day but it’s all right because at the end they sink into an armchair with a big cup of soup. WITHOUT THE SOUP.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Arthur. ‘There’s nothing wrong with your life that a little scooter wouldn’t sort out. Let’s go shopping on Sunday.’
‘No, it’s not that,’ said Ellie. ‘I mean, just, why do I just feel so bleargh? I mean, is all I have to look forward to squeezing massive foreign objects through my own tissues?’
‘You know, you really don’t have to have a baby if you don’t want to,’ said Julia.
‘We’re going to have to go,’ said Arthur, looking at Colin who was snoring sweetly in an armchair. ‘Come on; why don’t we forget tonight and go out tomorrow and drink the cocktail alphabet?’
‘Uh huh. Maybe. Okay,’ said Ellie. ‘You might as well go now. I’m wearing fifteen layers; it’s going to take me half an hour to get undressed.’
Julia kissed her on the head. ‘Don’t worry. There’s nothing to be worried about. Not really.’
‘Oh, I know,’ said Ellie wistfully. ‘That’s why I’m so worried about why I’m worried.’
‘You looked lovely tonight,’ said Loxy to Julia as they left.
‘Uh huh,’ said Julia. They picked their way through the party detritus and the old Classix Nouveaux LPs.
Ellie didn’t sleep. Or she thought she wasn’t sleeping, but found out she was when she fell out of bed. Having been dreaming of doing something rather disconcerting with Anthony Michael Hall, she bounced and shuddered awake with a yelp and scuttled about on the carpet, noting as she did so how filthy it was. It was grey outside, inside, on the floor, and especially under the bed.
‘Aargh!’ she yelped. ‘The first yelp of my thirties,’ she thought. She paused experimentally, in case the landlord she shared the flat with might get up to make sure she was alright. Her landlord was a bastard and it was a horrible flat, but she’d picked it because it was within walking distance of all her friends.
‘Shut up, Hedgehog!’ came a sleepy voice from next door. He’d come in late the previous night and eaten the remaining sausage rolls
