feel a total loser compared to my friends in their high-flying careers, however tenuous such careers may now seem. The idea of Poppy binding is frankly laughable. But I just cannot contemplate what kind of ‘real’ office-bound career I might have chosen. Or what I could do instead. Become a tree surgeon? No, I decide grimly, if this is the price I must pay for my art, so be it. One day I’ll be able to support myself without stooping to this.
So I punch another set of holes into another sheaf of paper.
‘Bella,’ calls Gina, PA to one of the directors, ‘your phone’s ringing.’
I make my way back to my hot desk and pick it up.
‘Hello, darling. Can you think of anything that rhymes with erection?’
‘Hi, Mum. How are you?’ My mother writes erotic poetry and I love her to bits.
‘Rough as a badger’s arse, I’m afraid.’
I laugh. ‘Lovely expression, Mummy.’
‘I think it’s rather good – I only learnt it recently. Anyway, it sums up how I feel perfectly, but it’s entirely self-inflicted so I’m trying not to feel too sorry for myself.’
‘What have you been up to?’
‘Well, Tabitha and Valentine came to stay for a few days, which you know is always lethal. She’s done something quite groovy to her hair. Then yesterday that ghastly little man with the squint – I think he’s the new postmaster or something – wanted me to sign some horrid petition so I fobbed him off with a couple of large whiskies. And then Auntie Charlotte rocked up on her motorbike – and, well, as you can probably imagine, it all went downhill from there. Anyway, what was I ringing for? Yes … erection …’
‘Erm … deflection? Reflection? Rejection?’ I proffer.
‘Not really the mood I was after …’
‘Perfection?’
‘That’s it!’ she cries triumphantly. ‘Thanks, darling. Love you! Speak later.’
I hang up and laugh. Mum can’t really concentrate on anything else mid-poetry and I know she’ll call back later. We speak at least once a day.
They were fabulous tabloid fodder in the early Seventies, my parents. Dad, the boy from the wrong side of the tracks, shagging his way round London on the strength of his winning way with a camera; Mum, the outrageously beautiful but seriously impoverished posh bird dabbling in modelling to try and boost the family fortunes. There are some wonderful photos of her in my old home near Oxford, all sepia-tinted, doe-eyed, floppy-hatted early Biba and Ossie Clark stuff. I think they really did love each other, but no one in their right mind could put up with my father’s womanizing for long. Still, my childhood was happy enough. They divorced before I was old enough to realize what was going on, and Max and I had the fun of a dual existence, spending term time and Christmas with Mum in the English countryside and Easter and summer holidays with Dad in lovely, warm, beautiful Mallorca.
Forgetting all about the binding for a few blissful minutes, I decide to have a quick look at my emails. Ooh – a Facebook notification.
Ben Jones has tagged a photo of you on Facebook.
I click on the link with the usual just-been-tagged trepidation. Unlike my luminously photogenic mother, I either look absolutely horrific or surprisingly pretty in photos – nothing in between. People, even Ben, whom I’d forgive most things, shouldn’t be allowed to tag one without one’s consent, really they shouldn’t. Facebook opens and I see that he’s posted an entire album of holiday snaps. Christ Almighty. I click on the first one, which features Damian, Poppy and me sitting around our lunch table that day at Sa Trinxa, several empty bottles and ashtrays between us. Poppy and Damian are smiling into the camera, their usual shiny, gorgeous selves. I appear to be eating, drinking, smoking and cackling with laughter, all at the same time. My wet hair is plastered to my scalp and my halterneck bikini top has rucked up on one side, making my boobs go all wonky. It is quite hideous, something akin to a Hogarthian gin hag.
Frantically I detag myself, trying not to feel too depressed as I remember how attractive and confident I was feeling that afternoon. That’ll teach me. Aware of the possible damage limitation now necessary, I start to click through the rest of the photos, most of which, I can’t help but notice, are of Ben himself, unfailingly gorgeous in every one. Surely he didn’t keep asking us all to take photos of him with his own camera or phone?
An adenoidal whine punctures my musings.
‘Bella? Have you finished binding those presentations yet? You do know we need them for a meeting in ten minutes? Surely whatever you’re doing can wait till afterwards?’
It’s Stella, the other director’s PA. Thank fuck she can’t see my monitor from where she’s sitting. She’s right, of course, but I don’t enjoy being spoken to like that by someone five years my junior who is content to organize someone else’s diary for the rest of her life. Nor one who thinks, ‘Oooh I’m such a cheap date – a glass of wine goes straight to my head’ is an acceptable conversational gambit.
Gina gives me a sympathetic glance as I hurry back to the printing room.
Roll on 5.30.
I heave an enormous sigh as I walk out. Being stuck in that place on such a beautiful day really pisses me off. There aren’t even windows in my corner of the office. Last week Stella told me off for dressing ‘like you’re going to the beach. We wear smart business attire in this office.’ ‘Smart business attire’ – now there’s a phrase to strike ice into your heart in the depths of summer. I’ve compromised with my old black interview jacket over a pale pink shift dress with platform court shoes. God I’m a rebel. The black kills the baby pink stone dead but I’m buggered if I’m going to waste money on another suit jacket. Now I take it off and replace the uncomfortable platforms with a pair of flat leather sandals. It’s not exactly cutting edge but at least I feel as if I’m in the land of the living. The land of the summer living. I shove the despised items into my handbag, which now bulges so alarmingly I have to carry it in my hand rather than over my shoulder.
If my current place of work has one saving grace, it’s its Mayfair location, the majority of financial institutions being stuck in the City, or, worse, stranded in the vampirically bloodless no-man’s-land that is Canary Wharf. East London may be hip but the Square Mile depresses the hell out of me – except at weekends, when you can appreciate the buildings without the suits.
Not wanting to waste a moment of sunshine, I decide to walk home. It’ll only take an hour or so and I’m not meeting Poppy till 7.30. People are beginning to throng the pavements, spilling out of pubs and bars. I amble through the grand streets of Mayfair to Hyde Park and the rose gardens, whose overblown beauty at this time of year transports me to some far-off fairyland. Then the long walk past the Serpentine, teeming with ducks, geese, swans, gulls, runners, Rollerbladers and tourists. By the time I hit Portobello Road I’m thoroughly invigorated by the sheer buzz of London in the summertime, Stella and binding far from my thoughts.
When I first started coming to London with Poppy, in our teens, we’d always hang out on Portobello Road – initially to browse the market for 1920s and 30s memorabilia, then to gaze at cool boys in pubs and bars. Neither of us had the confidence to chat to them in those days. Anyway, I always loved the area, and was determined that it would be my home one day.
It wasn’t as simple as that, but a couple of years out of Goldsmiths, living in a grimy flat-share in Balham, I saw an ad in the ‘For Sale’ section of the Standard for a ‘tiny, run-down one-bedroom flat with balcony in the heart of Notting Hill’. Balcony? This was beyond my wildest dreams. So I hopped on the Central Line on a lovely summer evening and went, heart in mouth, to the address I’d scribbled down on a Post-it note. The location was perfect – a winding side street off the dodgy end of Portobello Road, with a row of pastel-painted terraced early Victorian houses. ‘Run-down’ was accurate enough, though. The pink stucco was peeling badly and it smelt as if the rubbish hadn’t been taken away for