‘Don’t play smart mouth with me young lady. Now, any other business?’
Ellie sighed and ate another fusty custard cream. Rooney & Co. specialized in ripping the guts out of proper, useful buildings and turning them into Lifestyles for young single professionals; identical rough-walled wanker machines that sold for hundreds of thousands of pounds. As well as it being horribly dull, Ellie always had the sneaking feeling that there was something actually totally wrong with what she was doing, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Arthur had patiently explained it was post-modern and at least they weren’t ripping up the countryside, but the niggling feeling remained, alongside the budding repetitive strain injury.
‘What’s up?’ she remarked to her sullen and uncommunicative temp as she wandered into her cubicle after the meeting.
‘Three churches, six cotton warehouses and a shipyard some wanker wants to offload. Did you have a nice birthday?’ said the temp without lifting her head from Take A Break magazine. What was worse, Ellie wondered: inviting the temp to her birthday party or the temp not turning up?
‘Not really,’ she said. ‘You’re not meant to enjoy your own birthdays, are you? Too fraught.’
The temp shrugged.
‘Can’t remember. I’m always too lashed out of my head.’
‘Maybe that was my big mistake,’ said Ellie. ‘Actually remembering being there.’
What was worse, Ellie wondered: playing patience at work or caring about it enough to change the design on the back of the cards?
Thank God she had something to look forward to after work. Elms, their Clapham local, looked lit up and busy that evening. There was a band playing in the corner with a saxophonist who fortunately wasn’t Billy, friendly waiting staff with aprons, who let you run tabs, and long red-checked-tableclothed tables. Siobhan and Julia were joining them, to see if they could remember what a good night out felt like. As she walked in, Ellie was disappointed at how relieved she was that her friends had found a place to sit and the music wasn’t too loud. She plucked off Arthur’s red hat and sat down.
‘Hey! Where are we up to?’
‘B,’ said Arthur.
‘Perfect. I’ll have a Bloody Mary.’ The waitress nodded and headed off.
‘How are you?’ said Julia tentatively.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Ellie. ‘I’ve had the crappiest day in the universe. I just can’t … God, do you ever feel you’re getting into a big fat rut?’
‘Aha! The middle class Olympics!’ said Arthur.
‘G2 does,’ said Siobhan, handing over the newspaper. The headline read, ‘Are You and Your Twenty-Something Friends in a Big Fat Rut? Why not Experiment With Scented Candle Sticks, Scatter Cushions and Cocaine, Just Like Everybody Else Is?’
‘This is EXACTLY what I mean,’ said Ellie. She picked the paper up. ‘I don’t feel I can have one tiny original thought in my head. And if anything goes wrong I’m just supposed to go and buy something taupe and put it in the right corner of the living room.’
‘Thatcherbaby,’ said Arthur.
‘I know. But I didn’t ask to be a Thatcherbaby!’
‘Well, you are.’
‘I mean, is this it? Is there really nothing more to life than getting your gold card?’
‘Oh, I got mine!’ said Siobhan.
‘Really! Let’s see. Ohh. God, I’m so shallow.’
‘Of course you are,’ said Arthur. ‘Your number one fantasy in life is to kiss Andrew McCarthy in a pink dress. Although world peace runs a close second.’
Ellie sipped her newly arrived Bloody Mary. ‘I think I’m unhappy. I need an adventure. Maybe I should change jobs. Or career. Or dye my hair?’
‘You’re affluent, you have no responsibilities, you have plenty of free time … you are making up INVISIBLE WESTERN PROBLEMS,’ said Arthur. ‘Go see a therapist. They love invisible problems.’
‘It’s just thirtyangst,’ said Julia. ‘I got that too. Don’t worry about it.’
‘Easy for you to say,’ said Ellie. ‘You’ve got your own flat AND a devoted love slave.’
Loxy smiled and put his arm around Julia. She shrugged him off and raised her eyes to heaven, whereupon his smile faded. Loxy was aware at some level that the more uxoriously he behaved the less attention he received, but was too nervous to put any lovebastard techniques into practice. In short he was universally referred to as Sweet with a capital S, never the epithet of choice for strong-armed love gods, unless your name is Eric Cartman. This often puzzled Loxy, as he was six foot two, built, had a fairly difficult responsible job as a prisoner’s advocate and was never normally like this around women. In fact, before he’d met Julia, he’d never done a sappish thing in his life. However he’d never met a woman before who did such a convincing job of combining Felicity Kendal and Ulrika Johnson.
There was no point in envying the fact that Julia got all the great men though, as Siobhan, checking her watch for the hundredth time, was well aware.
‘Where the hell is Patrick?’ she said. ‘He’s so unreliable. I wish he wouldn’t work so late.’
‘Actually, Shiv, Patrick’s incredibly reliable,’ pointed out Julia. ‘He’s always working late.’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Siobhan. ‘Christ. He can’t even be annoying in an interesting way.’
Siobhan had been Arthur’s landlady at college, when they’d taken it in turns to argue about furniture and have immaculacy competitions. No-one liked to go round there too often, particularly not Ellie, who had a bit of a conflict going on between her love for red wine and her red wine’s love for other people’s carpets.
‘What I’d really like,’ said Ellie, ‘is for something really dramatic to happen. An earthquake or something. Hmm, no, a non fatal earthquake. Oh God, I don’t know. Just something.’
‘How about you fall out with your boyfriend in public at your own birthday party have a yelling match with him then lock yourself in the bathroom?’ said Arthur. ‘Oh, no, hang on …’
Ellie’s mobile rang.
‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘Maybe this is it. Maybe somebody’s seen me in the street and wants me to go to Hollywood and become a movie star!’
‘I bet that’s who it is,’ said Siobhan. ‘Or maybe it’s Prince William telling you he’s in love with you.’
‘Could be anything,’ said Ellie, peering at the phone. ‘Oh. It’s my dad. Oh no! I take it all back! I don’t want anything to happen at all.’
Ellie’s dad lived alone. Ever since Ellie’s mother had left he drank rather too much whisky and relied on seeing his only child often, otherwise he tended to live in string vests and eat
