they would cut it. Finally, I dug up an old black summer dress which was so faded it could pass as grey, the colour du jour, apparently. It was too chilly, even in April, to wear it, and as I didn’t have a tan it gave me an air of being clinically dead, but it really was all I had, which depressed me more than I wanted to think about.
I teamed it with my favourite daisy necklace and twirled in the mirror. I looked nine.
I was meeting Kate and her gang at some posh pub over an ice rink near Liverpool Street station. It was mobbed and full of braying, identical young men, who had rather better skin than the young men I’d grown up with but were just the same old wankers – with money.
‘You’ve got to take it to the EXTREME!’ one rather red-faced young man was hollering to his chum, two feet away.
‘Quite!’ the other, equally stolid, chap bawled back. ‘That’s why I’m chartering a helicopter in the Canadian Rockies next season!’
‘Uh … yars! Me too!’
The women were all eerily like Kate: their hair was shiny, and their lips were pursed. In fact, it was quite difficult to track Kate down in the thicket of size-eight Nicole Farhi, but I spotted her eventually. She didn’t exactly appear overjoyed to see me, which pissed me off – I was feeling a bit off-the-beam as it was.
‘Thanks for coming,’ she said a little stiffly – reminding me that we were only forty-eight hours from wanting to murder each other. I nodded stiffly back, handed her a parcel and looked around. There were about eight guys in various stages of hee-hawing: my kinds of odds, I thought to myself. All around were champagne bottles and buckets.
‘Great!’ shouted one of the men. ‘More champagne!’
I realized they were talking to me, and I panicked. Meanwhile, Kate had opened my present – a furry penguin. I’d thought it would be funny, but everyone stared at it in disdain.
‘Oh, how charmante,’ said one of the blokes, before the company stared at me one more time, cottoned on to the fact that I probably wasn’t going to be buying them any champagne, then turned back to each other.
Kate gave me a half smile, and handed me a glass of champagne, then prodded the man to her right.
‘James, this is Holly.’
James grunted at me. Kate leaned over to the person he was talking to, and nudged him as well.
‘And this is James B.’
‘James B.’ I nodded.
‘And over there are Jamie Egbert, Jim, and, ehm, Finn.’
Only Finn heard and tilted up his head. At first sight he looked a little odd, and I couldn’t work out what it was. Then I realized that his tie was loosened, and he appeared to be wearing dirty spectacles. This reassured me, and I gave him a rather gushy grin, which clearly terrified him, as he instantly returned to staring at his glass.
‘So!’ said Kate brightly. ‘This is all very nice.’
‘Who are all these Jameses?’ I asked her.
‘Work colleagues, mostly,’ she said.
‘All of them?’
‘Err, yes.’
‘Birthdays can be horrid, can’t they?’ I said sympathetically.
‘What do you mean?’ she snapped.
‘Nothing! Lovely champagne.’
I played with the glass for a second, then tried to lean into the two Jameses’ conversation. They were talking ferociously about tax liability and the nastiness of the government for trying to extract money from their enormous pay-cheques to finance boring old services, and they managed to avoid looking me in the eye for ages whilst I tried to think of a ploy to enter the conversation.
‘I hate tax too,’ I announced when one of them paused for breath. ‘Mind you, I don’t pay more than ten pee in the pound.’
They raised their eyebrows at me. ‘Really? What do you do with it? Is it offshore?’ asked James 1.
‘God, I wish I could figure it out,’ said James 2. ‘Did you form a limited company? What’s your secret?’
‘Ehmm … actually, most years I, just, ehm, fall below the threshold,’ I mumbled.
Their faces registered shock, then instant embarrassment at registering shock – after all, they were terribly well brought up boys.
‘Oh, lucky you,’ said one of them, then clearly wished he hadn’t. I felt an absolute pariah; you really shouldn’t go drinking in the City unless you have at least one toe made of gold or something.
‘What do you do?’ asked James 2, regretting he’d ever bothered to focus on me.
‘Ehm …’ I thought frantically. This conversation, however demeaning, was the only thing I had going on, and it was about to finish two seconds after I said ‘florist’. And they may all have been wankers, but they were handsome, rich wankers, so a girl has got to try. Now, let me see: Astronaut? Philosopher? Nurse? Ooh, they loved that.
‘I’m a nurse,’ I said. It was worth it just to see their little faces light up.
‘Way-hey!’ shouted one of them. ‘What kind of nurse?’
I took another slurp of champagne. ‘I work in the … waterworks department.’
James 2 turned white.
‘Don’t worry, I’ve washed my hands.’
‘Oi! Jimmy! Egbert! Finn! Come and meet Kate’s flatmate – she’s a nurse!’
I hate boys.
Kate shot me a deadly look. I cringed at her. I’d only meant it as a laugh, but if she blew me out, I’d have to basically destroy myself with humbleness.
The other lads came over. They were a bit pissed, and up for ribbing someone they appeared to think was somewhat akin to a prostitute, but with an even kinder heart.
‘Do you have to, like, you know, rub ointment in, like Joanne Whalley-Kilmer in The Singing Detective?’ asked one of them, breathless.
‘Sometimes.’ I nodded sagely. ‘Usually when I’m on night shift.’
There was a collective groan.
‘Do, ahem, nurses still wear uniforms these days …?’ asked one of them, under the pretence of historical analysis.
‘Oh yes. At St Mungo’s our uniforms are white: it’s like a hangover from the days when it used to be run by’ – my pièce de résistance – ‘nuns.’
‘Ooh.’
‘What do you find most interesting in your field? I mean, aren’t you working a lot on prostate disease? Do you find this is becoming more of an environmental syndrome, or does it retain its genetic antecedence?’
Shite! This came from Finn, the one I’d noticed earlier, with the smeared glasses. Smart aleck bastard. A collective groan went up from the other boys. I wondered what a prostate was. I knew it was something to do with willies, but I didn’t know what.
‘Ehm … really, with the greenhouse effect it’s all getting pretty environmental,’ I stammered.
‘Really? Is that true? How fascinating! Where else do you see this type of phenomenon …?’
Annoyingly, the other boys were starting to turn their backs on me. They were obviously used to whoever this mega-nerd was, and sexy nurse was being replaced with scientist nurse. Boo. Kate was still throwing visual daggers in my direction.
‘Oh, all over the place,’ I said carelessly.
‘Really … oh, I know you’re off duty now, and I hate to bother you, but medicine is