Do You Remember the First Time?

couldn’t make at home.’
    ‘You don’t sew at home,’ I said crossly.
    ‘I know, but I could. Just as well as they do at Gap.’
    I let this go and followed them inside dutifully, as my mother fingered racks of elastic-waisted slacks and tried to tempt me into the plainest pair of jeans (which she called denims) she could find, to show she wasn’t completely not down with the kids.
    Stanzi and I had a dimly formulated plan to bump intoeach other in Bentalls at noon or so, and try and encourage our parents to go and have coffee together. Apparently they all got on very well, although, of course, this was completely news to me.
    However, as I struggled in and out of different shirt and cardigan combinations I started to doubt the wisdom of this plan.
    ‘You’re being very well behaved,’ observed my mother. ‘Usually by this stage you’re swearing blue murder and insisting on those combination trousers.’
    Combination trousers? Had I missed something monumental in alternate universe fashion?
    ‘Like those ugly things,’ said my mum, pointing to a girl my age with a full Christina Aguilera going on – dreads, parts of which were blue, pierced nose, shredded top exposing navel, and short combat trousers.
    ‘The worst thing you think about that girl is her trousers?’ I said. ‘Whatever.’ I’d heard Charlotte Church say this, so I reckoned it was down with the sixteen-year-old lingo.
    ‘Quite right,’ said my mother. ‘Try on this nice poloneck.’
    As I was struggling to get my head through the very small hole at the top of the poloneck, I heard a familiar shrieking.
    ‘Mrs Scurrison! Mr Scurrison! Hello! What a surprise!’ screeched Stanzi, in possibly the worst reading of a line requiring ‘surprise’ in the history of the universe.
    I finally popped my head through and looked over. With Stanzi were two chubby parents, to whom she was clearly related.
    ‘ Bella, buon giorno! ’ said her dad, engulfing me in a huge and somewhat sweaty hug. ‘ Come stai? ’
    Everyone looked at me as if I was required to say somethingat this point, which was a little awkward as I didn’t speak a single word of Italian.
    ‘Ah … sì ,’ I said
    ‘Sì? Sì? Oh, your daughter,’ he said to my mum and dad. ‘She no play any more, no? She grow up so, she think?’
    My mother nodded. ‘Well, you know how it is, Gianni. They’re always going through one of those phases.’
    ‘I know. My daughter, she is marrying a pop star now, yes?’
    ‘Da-ad,’ squealed Stanzi.
    ‘They too old to be teased by their daddies? Never!’
    And he pinched my cheek hard, which made me wince, particularly as everyone was looking at me as if I’d done something terribly rude, even Stanzi.
    ‘Just joking,’ I said brightly, and quickly moved the conversation on before anyone could enquire what that meant. ‘Coffee?’
    ‘Oh, coffee,’ said Stanzi’s dad. ‘They say “coffee”; they mean “old parents please sit down out of the way and let us buy things with your hard-earned money”, yes?’
    Stanzi grinned. ‘ Prego, Papa .’ And she stuck her hand round his waist and pulled out his wallet.
    ‘Do you always act like a nine-year-old round your dad?’ I asked her when we were safely away.
    ‘It always works, doesn’t it?’
    ‘Yes, but that’s not—’
    ‘I didn’t see you complain before …’
    True enough, as I looked down I reminded myself that I was holding an enormous ice-cream cone.
    ‘What about this?’ she said. We were in Topshop – of course! In fact, I know Kylie Minogue and Davina and other cool-looking thirtysomethings are always saying they shop there, but personally I can’t handle it. It may say size twelve, but it certainly never looks it. Plus, all the teenage girls swanking about, looking groovy in the communal changing rooms … too depressing. Shopping with people younger and slimmer than you, no matter how much time you may spend thinking: ah, but you’ll end up a lumpy-thighed accountant too, is just not fun.
    ‘Let’s try on one of everything,’ I said.
    OK, it was Topshop, not a Rodeo Drive boutique, and OK, I had pocket money, not Richard Gere’s credit card. But I have never felt more like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman than I did then – a movie, I was almost unsurprised to learn, that Stanzi was only dimly aware of, it having been released when we were both three years old.
    I could wear everything . Well, not those Atomic Kitten white catsuits, because nobody can