shimmer of the polish next to my bitten down, bleeding cuticles.
Jules steps back, her arms folded and eyes narrowed. ‘It’s quite loose. God, I’m sure this was the smallest size they had. For Christ’s sake, Olivia. I wish you’d told me it didn’t fit properly – I would have had it taken in. But …’ she frowns, moving around me in a slow circle. I feel that breeze through the door again, and shiver. ‘I don’t know, maybe it works a little loose. I suppose it’s a look, of sorts.’
I study myself in the mirror. The shape of the dress itself isn’t too offensive: a slip, bias cut, quite nineties. Something I might even have worn if it was another colour. Jules isn’t wrong; it doesn’t look terrible. But you can see my black pants and my nipples through the fabric.
‘Don’t worry,’ Jules says, as though she’s read my mind. ‘I’ve got a stick-on bra for you. And I’ve bought you a nude thong – I knew you wouldn’t have one yourself.’
Great. That will make me feel a lot less fucking naked.
It’s weird, standing together in front of the mirror, Jules behind me, both of us looking at my reflection. There are obvious differences between us. We’re totally different shapes, for one, and I have a slimmer nose – Mum’s nose – while Jules has better hair, thick and shiny. But when we’re together like this I can see that we’re more similar than people might think. The shape of our faces is the same, like Mum’s. You can see we’re sisters, or nearly.
I wonder if Jules is seeing it too: the similarity between us. Her expression is all odd and pinched-looking.
‘Oh, Olivia,’ she says. And then – I see it happen, in the mirror in front of us, before I actually feel it – she reaches out and takes my hand in hers. I freeze. It’s so unlike Jules: she is not big on physical contact, or affection. ‘Look,’ she says, ‘I know we haven’t always got along. But I am proud to have you as my bridesmaid. You do know that – don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I say. It comes out as a bit of a croak.
Jules gives my hand a squeeze, which for her is like a full-blown hug. ‘Mum says you broke up with that guy? You know, Olivia, at your age it can feel like the end of the world. But then later you meet someone who you really click with and you understand the difference. It’s like Will and me—’
‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘It’s fine.’ Lie. I do not want to talk about any of this with anyone. Jules least of all. She’s the last person who would understand if I told her I can’t remember why I ever bothered to put make-up on, or nice underwear, or buy new clothes, or go and get my hair cut. It seems like someone else did all those things.
Suddenly I feel really weird. Sort of faint and sick. I sway a bit, and Jules catches me, her hands gripping my upper arms hard.
‘I’m fine,’ I say, before she can even ask what’s wrong. I bend down and unfasten the over-fancy grey silk courts Jules has chosen for me, with their jewelled buckles, which takes ages because my hands have become all clumsy and stupid. Then I reach up and drag the dress over my head, so hard that Jules gives a little gasp, like she thinks it might tear. I didn’t use her pillow.
‘Olivia!’ she says. ‘What on earth has gotten into you?’
‘Sorry,’ I say. But I only mouth the words, no actual sound comes out.
‘Look,’ she says. ‘Just for these few days I’d like you to try and make a bit of an effort. OK? This is my wedding, Livvy. I’ve tried so hard to make it perfect. I bought this dress for you – I’d like you to wear it because I want you there, as my bridesmaid. That means something to me. It should mean something to you, too. Doesn’t it?’
I nod. ‘Yeah. Yeah, it does.’ And then, because she seems to be waiting for me to go on, I add, ‘I’m OK. I don’t know what … what that was before. I’m fine now.’
Lie.
I push open the door to my mother’s room into a cloud of Shalimar perfume and, possibly, cigarette smoke. She better not have been smoking in here. Mum is sitting at the mirror in her silk kimono, busy outlining her lips in her signature carmine. ‘Goodness, that’s a murderous expression. What do you want, darling?’
Darling.
The strange cruelty of that word.
I keep my tone calm, reasonable. I am being my best self, today. ‘Olivia is going to behave herself tomorrow, isn’t she?’
My mother gives a weary sigh. Takes a sip of the drink she’s got next to her. It looks suspiciously like a martini. Great, so she’s already on the strong stuff.
‘I made her my bridesmaid,’ I say. ‘I could have picked from twenty other people.’ Not quite true. ‘But she’s acting as though it’s this big drag. I’ve hardly asked her to do anything. She didn’t come to the hen do even though there was a room free in the villa for her. It did look odd—’
‘I could have come instead, darling.’
I stare at her. It would never have occurred to me that she might have wanted to come. Besides, no bloody way was I ever going to invite my mother to the hen do. It would, inevitably, have morphed into the Araminta Jones show.
‘Look,’ I say. ‘None of that really matters. It’s in the past now, I suppose. But is she at least going to try and look happy for me?’
‘She’s had a difficult time,’ Mum says.
‘You mean because her boyfriend broke up with her or whatever it was? They were only going out for a few months according to what I’ve seen on Instagram. Clearly a romance of epic proportions!’ A note of petulance has crept in, despite my best intentions.
My mother is now concentrating on the more precise work of outlining her Cupid’s bow. ‘But, darling,’ she says, once she has finished, ‘when you think about it, you and the gorgeous Will haven’t been together all that long, have you?’
‘That’s rather different,’ I say, nettled. ‘Olivia’s nineteen. She’s still a teenager. Love is what teenagers think has happened when actually they’re just stuffed full of hormones. I thought I was in love when I was about her age.’
I think of Charlie at eighteen: the deep biscuit-tan, the white line sometimes visible beneath his board-shorts. It occurs to me that my mother never knew – or cared to know – about my adolescent affairs of the heart. She was too busy with her own love life. Thank God; I’m not sure any teenager wants that kind of scrutiny. And yet I can’t help but feel that this all proves she and Olivia are much closer than we ever were.
‘When your father left me,’ Mum says, ‘you have to remember that I was about the same age. I had a newborn baby—’
‘I know, Mum,’ I say, as patiently as I can. I’ve heard more times than I ever needed to about how my birth ended what definitely, probably, maybe would have been a highly successful career for my mother.
‘Do you know what it was like for me?’ she asks. Ah, here it comes: the same old script. ‘Trying to have a career and a tiny baby? Trying to make a living, to make something of myself? Just so I could put food on the table?’
You didn’t have to continue trying to get acting jobs, I think. If you’d really wanted to put food on the table that probably wasn’t the most sensible way to do it. We didn’t have to spend your tiny income on an apartment off Shaftesbury Avenue in Zone One and not be able to afford to eat as a result. It’s not my fault you made some