Lucy in the Sky

bags.
    ‘Sorry, sorry,’ she says, in her broad Yorkshire accent. She’s from Hull, up north. ‘I just couldn’t resist,’ she says, plonking bags from French Connection, Oasis and Zara down at our feet. Then she leans in and gives us both big kisses, making loud smacking noises as she pulls away.
    Karen was always the boisterous one in our group and it used to drive us nuts when we’d go out to a quiet restaurant only to have her draw attention to us with her deafening voice. But now it just makes us smile.
    ‘How are you?’ Karen asks as she pulls up a chair. ‘No, I’ll just nick some of their rosé, thank you,’ she says to the hovering waiter. ‘Is that alright?’ She turns back to Reena and me.
    ‘Of course,’ we both insist. Karen grabs the bottle and pours wine into her waiting glass and then tops up both of ours. ‘Let’s order olives!’ she says, suddenly.
    ‘Go for it.’ I laugh. She’ll come back to us in a minute. She’s always like this; can rarely concentrate on anything for more than a few seconds.
    ‘How’s Paul?’
    Paul is Reena’s boyfriend. He’s also a doctor.
    ‘Good, thanks,’ Reena answers. ‘Busy.’
    ‘Well, he bloody would be, being a doctor.’ Karen laughs. ‘And what about the gorgeous James?’ She turns her attention to me.
    ‘He’s cool.’
    ‘How’s his work?’
    ‘Busy too.’
    ‘You girls and your busy men…Thank goodness Alan is a builder. Nine to five! Always got my man at home.’
    Karen is a hairdresser in Greenwich, south London, ten minutes’ drive away from where she and Alan live in Charlton. Sheand I did media studies together, until she decided it wasn’t for her and retrained as a hairdresser.
    ‘I like your new hairdo…’ I always feel obliged to say it, although actually I’m not overly keen on this one. She’s dyed it the blackest black and has spiky hot-pink highlights sprouting out everywhere. But it doesn’t matter if I like it or not; if her past behaviour is anything to go by she’ll change it in a matter of weeks. And she wouldn’t give a crap what I thought anyway. What it must be like to have her confidence…
    After the musical, our voices hoarse from singing along, we head for a quick drink in a nearby pub. Karen goes to the bar while Reena and I spot a couple of people leaving a table.
    ‘That was brilliant, wasn’t it?’ Reena says.
    ‘We should go to Dirty Dancing next!’ I suggest.
    ‘Yes! Why don’t we?’
    Karen comes over to the table with three vodka-lemonade-and-limes. ‘Do you fancy coming to see Dirty Dancing ?’ I ask her.
    ‘God yeah!’ she exclaims. ‘ Really ? After all this bloody time trying to pin you down, are we really going to get another date in the diary?’
    I look at her, a little taken aback. I know she doesn’t mean anything malicious by it, but it still hurts a bit.
    ‘Yes,’ I say, meekly.
    ‘Well, that would be bloody brilliant.’ She grins, and Reena smiles too, a tad embarrassed on my behalf.
    Karen has a point. These two catch up with each other practically every month and I’m usually snowed under with work or with James. He tends to socialise at City bars with his colleagues during the week while I’m out at launches or wining and dining clients, and occasionally we go out for dinner or clubbing with hismates from work on Saturday nights. But I’m never that comfortable around guys like Edward or Jeremy. Although Edward doesn’t say an awful lot, he always makes me feel like he’s judging me with his dark eyes and humourless face, and Jeremy, well, Jeremy is just a slimy git. They don’t feel like my friends, and they’re not: they’re James’s.
    I decide right there and then that I’m going to insist that James and I make an effort to go out with Reena, Karen and their boyfriends next time they’re planning a big night out.
    It’s good to see them again. I don’t have many friends in the UK, after coming here at the age of sixteen. I didn’t really bond with anyone at college in Somerset, where I did my A Levels, so Reena and Karen are my closest friends here. I think of Gemma and Chloe again and remember what fun Chloe and I had in Milan. I am definitely, definitely going to go out with those two next Friday after work.

Chapter 16
    ‘Hang on, hang on, I’ve got one for you. How many mice does it take to screw in a light bulb? Two. The hard part is getting them in the light bulb.’ I hear Nathan chuckle at my joke. We’ve been on the