she was okay. I’m worried that she thinks I can’t meet her eye because I’m embarrassed about knowing a common butcher, but I don’t know what to say to make it all right. She’s desperate for me to say something friendly and I’m desperate not to say anything offensive.
I keep thinking of all the stupid things we used to get up to, like when we did highlights for the first time—using a plastic cap. We pulled the hair through the tiny holes with those little crochet needles, lathered on the bleach and left the lady for twenty minutes. Trouble is, we forgot all about her. The two of us had gone out to the pub for a lunch of crisps and cider when Romeo’s daft assistant from Czechoslovakia came galloping in.
‘Quick!’ he cried. ‘Mrs Johnstone agony is in.’
‘Who’s Mrs Johnstone?’ we asked.
‘Lady bleach head. Funny hat wear.’
‘Oh shit!’ We raced back over the road to be greeted by the sight of a lady parading round the salon with a scalp the colour of sun-dried tomatoes. Patches of beetroot-coloured skin were appearing on the top of her forehead and the sides of her face where the bleach had leaked through the cap. She was in considerable distress, and it wasn’t hard to see why. Sally pulled off the cap with an almighty tug and half the bleached hair came off with it. We had to tell Mrs Johnstone that she only had three blonde highlights and considerably less hair than when she had come into the salon because she’d made us take the cap off too soon.
‘Can I have some bacon, please, Sally?’ I finally ask.
‘Sure. How much?’
Sally starts slicing and I stop her when there’s a small pile. She wraps it all up, I pay her, tell her how nice it was to see her again and leave. I’m out on the street before I realise that I never once asked her how she was, where she lives or who with. I didn’t make any effort to try to see her again, take her number or leave mine. Shit. Shit. I run back into the butcher’s, throw my carefully crafted card at her and say, ‘Stay in touch, Sal.’
Sally strokes the lipstick-pink embossed writing and looks at me as if I’ve just given her my kidney. ‘I will,’ she whispers.
I run out of the shop and look around. There they are—V & G…wandering down the street arm-in-arm giggling and chatting like teenagers. Right, concentrate—back in pursuit again.
My targets have wandered into a shop calling itself Faux Fur. It looks predominantly like a fur shop, fake of course, but there are bags, shoes, jewellery and all sorts of other stuff in there. It looks gorgeous through the window. I’ll wait until their backs are turned before I go in.
There are gales of laughter as four assistants descend on V & G and I find myself bursting with envy—how can it take four assistants to help them? Three of the assistants appear to be just standing around laughing at their jokes, while the other is pulling clothes off the rails and hanging them up in a small changing room. Once V & G wander into the changing room (together—in the same small changing room—bizarre. I’m making a note of all this über-Wag behaviour. It takes going to the toilets at the same time to a whole new level…),I enter the shop, help myself to a couple of items (note—there are no assistants to help me!) and push my way through the heavy curtain into the changing room next to theirs.
There’s something really strange about coming so close to your role model. I find myself wanting to know all about her: what bag is she carrying (Chloé), what shoes is she wearing (Gucci), what size is she? She looks tiny, but it’s hard to guess whether she’s a size zero, or whether she’s made it down to that all-important double zero. On the floor of her changing room lies a camisole top. If I could just look at the label on it, I’d know what size she is. On hands and knees, I lean under the thick curtain that separates us and stretch out as far as I can. It’s no good, I can’t reach it. What can I use? The only thing I have with me is a large packet of streaky bacon. With the pig produce in my hand I can just about touch it, so I push the bacon out as far as I can, then drag it back along the floor towards me, pulling the camisole top with it. Things are going perfectly—the top is just within grasp, then—quite suddenly—there’s an almighty yapping sound and one of Geri’s dogs leaps from its basket and charges towards me, biting into the meat with his silly little gnashers. I realise, in that moment, how much I dislike Geri Halliwell—I think her solo songs are hopeless and her dress sense ridiculous. Now her dog’s attacking me just when I was about to see what size Posh Spice is. I yank the bacon back before anyone realises what’s going on, but I don’t realise just how attached the dog is and I pull the stupid, curly-haired pooch, too. He comes zooming under the curtain, attached to the bacon, causing me to stagger back, go tumbling out of the changing cubicle and straight into an elaborate display of clothes, shoes and bags. There’s a loud crunching sound beneath me.
‘Vic,’ screeches Geri.‘Look who it is! It’s that woman who was following us earlier. I think she’s killed my dog.’
‘Right,’ says the manageress, locking the door. ‘I’m calling the police.’
11 a.m.
Mum and Dean must have such sore necks. They haven’t stopped shaking their heads for almost twenty-four hours now. Mum’s the worst, though. ‘Bacon?’ she says. ‘Why did you even have a packet of bacon on you?’ So I go through the whole sorry tale again.
‘Faux Fur?’ she replies. ‘I don’t understand why you would have been in a shop called Faux Fur.’
So I tell her that bit again too. It’s like being interviewed by Jeremy Paxman. I feel like I’ve run through the whole sorry saga more times than is of any use to anyone. Now we’re awaiting the arrival of Magick PR—specialist celebrity PR agency to the stars—and I know I’ll have to go through the whole thing again…and again…Bringing in a PR firm was Nell’s idea (I ended up calling her last night when I tired of watching the nodding dogs failing to come up with any ideas of remote value or help to anyone).
It was such a relief to talk to Nell because, unlike anyone else I’d spoken to that day, she found the whole thing funny. Funny! Imagine how refreshing that was, after all the ‘Why does everything have to end up in such a total fiasco with you?’ comments. Take this as an example: Mum said, ‘You are shameful. You have embarrassed your man. There are times when I dislike you intensely.’
I know she doesn’t really mean it quite as nastily as it sounds. She’s always saying things like that—like she used to when I was little. All this ‘children should be seen and not heard’ has now become ‘a footballer’s wife should be seen and not heard’.
Nell, though, just collapsed into laughter when I’d finished telling her. ‘I love you, you great banana. That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. Tell me about the bit with the dog and the bacon again.’
I told Nell everything about ten times, and it never once felt like she was judging me.
‘Look, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘Just don’t worry about it. Things like that happen all the time.’
Perhaps they do in Sunnyside Sheltered Accommodation, but they certainly don’t in most people’s worlds.
‘You should have seen us in the war…’ continues Nell. ‘We used to have such a laugh. Did I tell you about the time we bricked up the air-raid shelter and five families nearly died?’
If you have a grandmother like Dean’s, you’ll know that any mention of the war, air-raid shelters or having a laugh is the beginning of a very heavily romanticised trip down Memory Lane that goes on for about three days. It’s a trip that involves Nell laughing in a high-pitched and quite hysterical fashion at some frankly very unamusing things like near-death experiences and the day that old Mr Simpson was bombed as he sat on the loo in the shed at the bottom of the garden on Christmas morning.
‘You