What became of us

her arm, and access to her purse. After a moment’s struggle she felt a surge of blood to her fingers and the bag falling into the rustling mass of her dress. Panicking slightly, she gathered a sheaf of the dress over her arm and heard the purse slip with a dull thud onto the rubber floor of the taxi. The hoop of her petticoat seemed to have a life of its own. Just as she thought she had it under control it snapped up in her face.
    ‘Do you want a hand?’
    The driver’s voice sounded considerably brighter at the wonderful view she had afforded him of her cleavage as she groped around on the floor.
    ‘I’m fine,’ she called.
    Eventually, her hand touched her purse and she grabbed at it as if it were live and would wriggle away if she relaxed her grip.
    With all the dignity she could muster from a kneeling position on the floor, Annie released the cab door and manoeuvred her hoop through the doorframe and then herself, first to sitting, then suddenly to standing slightly surprised on the pavement. She couldn’t decide whether to tip the driver extravagantly, or not at all.
    ‘Come on, love, it’ll be daylight at this rate,’ he said with barely disguised mirth.
    That did it. She thrust a five and ten pound note through the window at him and told him to keep the change, hoping that he would drive off feeling rotten for being so impatient with such a generous passenger.
    ‘Wait a minute. Aren’t you the one from...’
    ‘No,’ she said, walking as steadily as she could up the steps to the front door of the stucco-fronted house.
    There was often a purely practical reason why clothes went out of fashion, she thought, and it probably wasn’t just coincidence that complicated crinolines had disappeared with the invention of the motor car.
    Wear something you’ve always dreamed of wearing.
    Why, Annie asked herself, in the chilly damp dawn air, as she tried to fit the key in the lock, had no-one else’s sartorial fantasy stretched further than a leather miniskirt?
    Everyone else was wearing something little and black, except one woman who had a short lavender nightie under a beaded cashmere cardigan. There had been no hiding place. The dress took up about a quarter of the space in any room, and it was impossible to skulk around surreptitiously near the food table without brushing through the dip or carrying trays of mini pizza along in her wake. But the worst thing was not the sheer bulk, nor the impossibility of joining in the disco, but the back-handed compliments from the other guests:
    ‘I do so admire you for taking all the trouble... I just didn’t have time... It’s so difficult when you’ve got kids...’
    It had made her feel as if she had nothing better to do than while away hours in fancy dress shops and twirly chairs having her hair and face done.
    At least no-one had been cruel enough to say Miss Havisham, I presume’ to her face.

    Still, she thought as her key finally slipped into the lock, at least the evening had provided the setting for the Christmas special of her show which she should have delivered several weeks before.
    In one of those moments of blinding truth that she sometimes had when drinking excessive champagne, Annie wondered whether she had subconsciously decided to go to the party in the ridiculous dress just to give herself something to write about. A cliché about life imitating art or the other way around hovered tantalizingly just beyond her mental grasp.
    Wearily she hitched up her skirts and made her way to her second-floor flat.
    There was a third of a bottle of champagne left on the mantelpiece. She picked it up to drink it from the neck. A stream of it missed her mouth and trickled over her powdered bosom. She watched the delta of rivulets funnelling towards her cleavage, knowing that she was too drunk to get the dress off before the champagne met the boned bodice.
    There were so many blinks on the answerphone that she lost count twice. She pressed playback, then went into the kitchen to get some water. Standing staring at the door of her fridge, she could hear the familiar rhythm and chirpy tone of her mother on the first message, and the second, and the third. The Evian was as cold as a mountain stream and felt like liquid silver in her throat. The messages went on, and so did her mother’s voice.
    Finally the tape came to an end and Annie returned to the large living room deliberating whether to press playback again and listen properly, but she couldn’t