The Friend pops the collar of her khaki puffer and checks her watch: forty-five minutes until they need to be at the coach station. Her backpack rustles with supplies for the journey home: packs of Rib & Saucy Nik Naks, bottles of Oasis Citrus Punch, a family-sized bar of Galaxy. Her head throbs. She much prefers beer, but it seemed easier — more hen — to have what everyone else was having.
Soon the Friend finds herself combing through the junk with fervour. It seems important she finds something to take home with her. A keepsake from the weekend. In amongst the penis-shaped sticks of rock and the bagged candy floss that sweats in its plastic shroud, the Friend sees something glistening. She reaches into the gloom. A red pout that’s obscenely large, suggestive even, with rows of imitation rubies affixed to two stainless steel lips. It is attached to a chain and a tightly bound split ring you would lose a nail over. Yanking it out, she feels a celebratory surge, as if she has crossed the finish line. Is it horribly tacky? Or maybe tacky in a cool way?
“Oh, I LOVE this.” Aurora grabs it from her hands. The bleak sunshine casts an insipid halo above her reddish-brown hair. “We should get matching ones. Like friendship bracelets!”
“It’s the last one, I think.” The Friend knows this instinctively, but together they paw the rails, trying to find its twin. To no avail.
Aurora grips the keyring in her hand, the glitter tattoo flashing red. The look on her face says she has decided it is hers.
“You keep it.” The Friend swallows a few times, smiles brightly. Aurora smiles benignly and trots to the cashier. She returns with a different expression on her face.
“For you.” Even though the Friend had found it, wanted to buy it for it herself, Aurora presents it as a gift. So, she accepts with the requisite gratitude. In her pocket, she feels its warmth through the lining of her trousers.
___
The week passes without event. In a single work day, the Friend drops off her boss’s dry cleaning (a suit she couldn’t afford, even if she saved for a year) types up the changes to the script, prints 17 copies, distributes them to everyone on the List, runs to Pret for multiple boxes of crayfish and avocado salad and dark chocolate rice cakes, watches the read through, notes down the next round of changes, types them up, prints 17 fresh copies, distributes them to everyone just as they’re packing up for the day, runs back to the dry cleaner’s just as they are about to pull the shutters, then drops off the dry cleaning at her boss’s flat, on her way home. Even though it isn’t on her way home at all.
Then it’s the weekend and her obligations change. On Saturday night, just as they are about to leave for the bar, the Friend roots around in the bottom of her handbag for her lipstick. She grimaces as her fingers pick over debris of cereal bar crumbs, sticky humbug wrappers and then something large and metallic. The lips keyring from Blackpool. She turns it over in her hand, admiring its garishness. She affixes it to her keys and, as predicted, she is left with a split fingernail. But it’s barely noticeable on her unmanicured hands. She tucks the keys into her tiny purse. It means she must forgo her lipstick — no great loss as she never remembers to reapply it anyway.
“Got your keys?” Aurora asks. They both know that if anyone is going to be home first, it will be the Friend. Aurora never takes her own keys, barely even needs her wallet. She carries a tiny, bejewelled clutch bag, only just able to accommodate her phone and her lipstick, which is always freshly applied, shimmering on her full lips.
This is the way it usually goes: Aurora scans the room, sees the Crew sitting in a leather booth or on a sticky sofa. She merely has to lift her hand to make them aware of her presence. They sit to attention like peacocks, jostling for position, waiting to see who she will bless with her presence. Aurora will turn to the Friend, casting a half-apologetic, half-helpless expression over her shoulder. The Friend will understand that it is her role to go to the bar where, to the soundtrack of raised voices, incessant bass and clinking bottles, she will be ignored for at least half an hour. Everyone else at the bar will be served and well libated, over-quenched even, when finally, it is her turn to order two vodka tonics. She will repeat this routine every thirty, every forty-five minutes.
This is the way it goes tonight: the Friend makes a beeline for the bar before Aurora has even given her ‘the look’. There is a her-sized space in the middle, right in front of the wife-beater-wearing bartender who is energetically shaking a cocktail mixer over his muscled shoulder. He immediately makes eye contact with her. The Friend loudly and confidently delivers her drinks order. She doesn’t have to repeat herself or lean forward over the damp and sticky bar, staining her chiffon shirt with the marks of other people’s beers. The drinks are mixed quickly, heavy on the vodka, extra slice of lemon, placed reverentially in front of her with a wink. Just as she reaches for her purse, a guy with a mod cut and long sideburns reaches over.
“Hey. Let me get these.”
She watches as he swipes his card, shakes her hand, bends his head towards her. He stares at her lips as she speaks, listening with the attentiveness of a therapist who is paid to be interested. Except he was the one who paid. The Friend forgets about her role, the drinks, her obligations. Until Aurora appears, the disco lights casting a smoky halo behind her huge blow-dry, an irritated-but-trying-not-to-show-it expression on her face, reminding the Friend that they are all over there, waiting for her. The Friend apologises to her, then to the man with the mod cut. She is about to leave when he places his hand on her arm. His sleeve is rolled up past the elbow so she can see the sinewy veins in the forearm, the thick hair. He holds up a business card, the words say he is a sound technician. The Friend tucks it into her purse where it feels warm, like a fresh cookie wrapped in kitchen roll.
Over at the sofa, there is a space for her. The blond girl, with delicate doll-like skin and lively blue eyes, who usually ignores her, asks her a question about her job. The Friend tells her about the show she has watched the writers build word by word: the premise, the characters, the meet cute. Then the one with the diamond nose stud overhears and chips in with another question. Before long, more of them are listening, leaning forward on their elbows to nod when she says something clever, leaning back to chortle when she says something funny. Her drink is replaced again and again. She feels imbibed with a kind of magic.
Now they are dancing, and she is in the middle, like a pop star surrounded by groupies. A man with tattoos on his neck and a buzzcut dances into her orbit, closer and closer, until they are hip to hip. She whispers words into his ear, words that have never even crossed her mind before, and with every syllable he presses her closer, his hands moving thrillingly lower down her back. When she leaves, dragged away by the Crew, who want to go to a proper club, not just a bar with a makeshift dancefloor, he scrawls his number on the back of her hand with a blue biro. When he kisses her, he slips his tongue into her mouth, not caring that there are eight pairs of waiting eyes on them.
It is only the third time she has been kissed in her life. That is, if you count the first.
___
The next morning, Aurora is already in the kitchen, spreading Sun Pat thickly on Warburton’s toast, when the Friend comes downstairs. Her head is throbbing slightly. She considers taking a pint of water and two aspirin back up to bed with her.
“That was funny,” says Aurora, her words muffled by a mound of masticated bread and peanut butter, without a trace of humour.
“What was?” The Friend says, reaching for the big pint glass on the very top shelf of the cupboard.
“Last night.” Aurora blows cooling air across the top of her teacup. Usually when she does this, it looks seductive. “You holding court.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The Friend doesn’t know why she is pretending but something tells her to hold firm.
Aurora’s eyes narrow and then widen, as if she’s suddenly spotted something in one of those magic eye posters they used to be obsessed with. Without answering, she gets up, deposits her plate in the sink with a sharp clatter that rings through the air, and leaves the room.
___
The next day, the Friend rises at her usual time. Her slot for the bathroom is 7am to 7.20am; Aurora’s is 7.20am to 8.15am. She needs the additional time to wash and condition her long hair so she can tease it into perfect cascading waves. Some days, Aurora wouldn’t wake until past 7.30 instead using dry shampoo to revive the styling she’d done the day before. The Friend didn’t know when these days would fall. She sticks to her time, just to be on the safe side.
On a whim, the Friend reaches for the peach-coloured bottle that sits on Aurora’s side of the bathroom cabinet before stepping into the bath. With it, she exfoliates every inch of her body's mainland, from clavicle to pinkie. She carefully shaves her legs and armpits, applies a mud mask to her face while waiting the requisite time for the conditioner to do whatever it is supposed to do to her mousy brown hair.
When she leaves the bathroom, Aurora is waiting outside, her plush dove grey towel folded over her arm, a wrinkle between her eyebrows. The Friend smiles goofily to signal an apology but says nothing. She closes her bedroom door to the awkwardness; the clock on her bedside table reads 7.42am.
___
It is Monday’s status meeting. The Friend enters five minutes after everyone else, carrying two trays of takeaway coffee cups, precariously stacked atop each other, weaving her way through the gaps in between the chairs, stepping over legs, brushing past elbows. English Breakfast tea with milk over here. Double shot cappuccino just there. The trays are emptied, ditched into the wastepaper basket, so she sits on the stool next to the cupboard to take notes. Her pen floats above her jotter pad, awaiting the first change.
The obnoxious ginger man speaks in his trademark vocal fry. Something about overplaying subtlety. The need to tell, not show. He makes a crass statement about the audience, their age, their social class, their lack of intelligence. He sounds so sure of himself. That’s the problem, along with the fact that he’s a senior creative. No one has the status or the spunk to disagree with him.
Except today. There is a voice, quiet but authoritative, saying words where usually there are hums of agreement and erudite nodding. Whatever happened to giving the audience some credit? After all, that show that they all loved, the one on HBO, it didn’t beat them over the head with subtext; it had the confidence to let them work it out themselves.
The voice stopped. Someone more senior, her boss with the blue-black hair cut into a sharp bob, spoke up in quiet agreement. She rarely speaks, usually letting her team steer the debate, only weighing in with the occasional carefully judged questions. When she is finished, in come the hushed murmurs of agreement, eyes turning towards the origin of dissent.
At this point, the Friend realises they are looking at her.
___
The week passes with multiple unprecedented events. The Friend is asked for her opinion, which she gives, to the soundtrack of clarifying questions and follow-up points, and then changes are made. Because of what she says. She is invited to meetings where there are smaller groups of people, behind doors that are closed to others. She is given her own desk with a chair, and no longer has to perch on the stool next to the communal table. She is added to group emails and SMS chats and pub invites. Every day her world opens like an unfolding paper snowflake.
The Friend no longer buys coffee or does the lunch run. She is now handed her coffee (skinny latte, extra hot) by a new girl who has nervous, darting eyes and a grown-out fringe. The Friend sees her around quite often, bowing her head towards the kettle in the kitchen or emerging from a stall in the loos, sniffing and wiping her nose. She means to say hello, to ask how she is. But her name evades her, so she says nothing.
___
Thursday is the new Friday — or so she is told by the ginger man who, after initially giving her the silent treatment, decides to bring her into the fold. The Friend accompanies the others to the local boozer. It’s her first time, but they act as if she’s a regular. Someone buys her a drink while she squeezes into the booth. She helps herself to the communal salt and vinegar McCoy’s, she tells jokes that the others belly-laugh at. Her knowledge of nineties boyband fall-outs helps them secure a win in the pub quiz. Before she knows it, they are drinking celebratory tequila shots, wincing at the salt, baring their gums over the lime.
It is only when the taxi pulls into the space in front of her house, seeing the light on in the upstairs bedroom, that she remembers her usual Thursday routine: drinking happy hour Mai Tais at the tiki bar round the corner with Aurora. By the time she finds her keys, weaves her way inside, pours herself a pint glass of water and tiptoes up the stairs, the light has been switched off.
The Friend passes out on top of her duvet in her clothes, mascara smudged under her fluttering eyelashes, keys still clenched in her fist. The red jewels glow in the streetlight that shines through the gap in the curtains of the bedroom window.
___
The Friend is promoted. Now, she has her own business cards, her name typeset in a serif font, bang in the centre of the bisque-coloured rectangle. She is given a BlackBerry, on which she keeps track of a steady stream of in-jokes and pub plans. She shares an office with two others, from which she looks out onto the bank of desks on the other side of the pane. Her days are long with meetings; her mind preoccupied with notes and preferences and comments. She does most of her actual work on the top deck of the bus. Here, she scribbles on printouts, circling clichés with a fat black marker, penning fresh dialogue in the yawning margins around the lines of type.
She doesn’t see much of Aurora. On the weekends, Aurora decamps to see her cousins who are in town or to visit her brother in Edinburgh. This, she scrawls on a post-it, which she leaves stuck to their overcrowded fridge door. The Friend doesn’t mind. She watches much-touted new shows — texting witty observations, actor spots, script critiques back and forth with her work friends. On Saturday night, she goes to the bar, as usual, flirts with men, sees how many drinks she can score, lets one of them feel her up, his hand moving from the barstool to her leg, as he mashes his tongue against hers. She wonders where the Crew are.
___
It’s a weekday morning. The Friend is careering around her room, gathering up papers and pens and notebooks, sweeping them into her backpack, searching for the absentee Dr Martens sibling, retrieving her fluff-encrusted blusher brush from under the bed. Today, of all days, she is late. They have a meeting with the studio execs: a full read through. She has everything…except. Does a final circuit around the room, but it’s nowhere to be found.
She stomps down the stairs; sees a flash of auburn hair in the kitchen. Aurora is putting away the dishes that have been stacked on the drier for days now. She is wearing a tight black skirt, an oyster silk shirt tucked into the waistband. Black patent stiletto heels. It looks like has a big day at work too, maybe an interview. The Friend can’t bring herself to ask. There is a pang of sorrow, but she won’t let it take.
“Have you seen my keys?”
Aurora raises her shade-too-far plucked eyebrows, her green eyes wide and blank.
“My keys. With the lips keyring. From Blackpool.” The Friend’s words tumble out, one on top of another.
“Sorry.“ Aurora shrugs as she looks down at the dishcloth in her hands. “I think there’s a spare set in the hallway. In the drawer of crap.”
The Friend stands there for a millisecond longer than she needs to, on the verge of saying something. Nothing. So, she goes to the hallway and, as she yanks out the drawer, stuffed to capacity with takeaway leaflets and gutter cleaning fliers, she thinks she hears Aurora humming the intro tune of the show she watched over the weekend.
___
To say the meeting goes badly is an understatement. The Friend fumbles over her lines in the read through, but that’s not the worst of it. Every time a senior bod makes a baseless criticism or an incorrect observation, she cannot muster the words for a reply. Her colleagues turn to her in anticipation, for she has made these very rebuttals before. It’s as if she’s been put on mute and now no one can find the remote.
They stop short of extinguishing the flames of their script, but the feedback speaks for itself. Afterwards, they sit in awful silence. The boss flicks her blue-black hair, tells them it’s merely a setback, they’ll go again and smash it. Everyone is desperate to leave the room, escape the fumes of disappointment. It’s a Thursday, but no one mentions going to the pub. Not to her, anyway.
The Friend goes home and turns the house upside down. No keys.
___
The Friend and Aurora are home for the weekend, together, for what feels like the first time in forever. Initially, they dance a Paso Doble around each other, avoid rooms that the other is in. By late Saturday morning, the Friend feels exhausted by the effort required. When Aurora walks past the kitchen door, she calls out to her, her name sounding like cotton wool in her mouth. Offers her pain au chocolat, bought from the expensive French bakery in Old Town. Tells her there’s fresh coffee in the pot.
The frost thaws. By early afternoon, they are tidying the house to the Dirty Dancing soundtrack. Aurora is Baby, the Friend is Johnny. They attempt the lift, but the Friend drops Aurora into the cushions of their squishy sofa, underestimating the strength required to lift her above her own head.
Because the Friend knows Aurora prefers dusting, she pulls on thick, yellow washing up gloves to clean the bathroom and the kitchen. It is a peace-making gesture, although if she had to define what it was she was making amends for, she would struggle to do so.
In the afternoon, they go for a walk on the common, stopping for shandies at the old man’s pub on the edge of the green. It feels familiar, like a pair of leggings with the elastic all stretched out. Later, they order takeout from the nice Thai, drink the pricey Viognier from the supermarket down the road, watch season five of Sex And The City. Aurora is Samantha, they both know that. Aurora thinks that the Friend is Miranda, but she secretly sees herself as Carrie. For the first time, she feels the urge to say this to her, but she can’t seem to form the words.
___
Monday morning: 6.30am. The Friend has already vacated the bathroom. She is going to work early to rework the script. Maybe if she sends her ideas by email, it will be ok. She tells herself repeatedly that she can send her ideas by email, she ignores the fact that she will have to speak at some point. All she can focus on is gaining back lost approval. Aurora is still sleeping as she skips lightly down the stairs, moves quietly around the kitchen to fill her water bottle, packs a Belvita for the bus ride.
As she goes to grab her Eastpak from the hallway, something causes her to pause over Aurora’s imitation Fendi Baguette handbag. Her hand hovers. Eventually, she eases back the zip, and the dim light catches the red of the gemstones. The Friend takes her keys out, cradles them gently in her palm, before closing her fist around them.
Upstairs, Aurora lies awake in her bed, listening to the door click shut.
___
It takes the Friend hours to mark up the script. She copies out notes from the meeting in black biro, highlighting them in different shades of neon. Writes fresh dialogue in blue. Highlights that in corresponding colours. That afternoon, with exhausted eyes, she presents her revisions to the team. It takes forty-five minutes of non-stop talking. Afterwards, while her team give her a half-mocking-but-actually-quite-impressed standing ovation, her boss gestures towards the new girl and the well-thumbed script. The girl leaves for the print shop, head bowed.
Over the next few days, they trot on a treadmill of revisions and read-throughs. They finish so late on Wednesday night that they sleep in the office. The girl is dispatched to her house to collect fresh clothing, a towel, her make-up bag. The Friend wonders about the interaction between the girl and Aurora.
At the meeting, there is catering but the Friend cannot eat any of it. She is too busy reading the script, then fielding questions. The senior bods give measured nods, eyes narrowed. As soon as they leave, the Friend shoves three ham sandwiches into her mouth in rapid succession. Then she throws up in the ladies’ toilets. When she leaves the cubicle, the girl is outside, washing her hands and pretending not to have heard.
The obnoxious ginger man mentions that one of his roommates moved out last week. That night, she unfurls a sleeping bag onto the bare mattress, revels in the fact that the bedroom is large enough for her to get out of either side of the bed.
They get the good news on Friday, just after 3pm. The boss goes out for champagne, which they drink out of plastic cups. The Friend decides she prefers it to Prosecco, despite having proclaimed the exact opposite for the past three years. Everyone leaves early to go to the pub, knowing the boss will put her card behind the bar.
Everyone except for the Friend.
___
Packing takes less time than she thought it would. Most of her stuff is in her bedroom, save a few toiletry bottles in the bathroom, some towels in the cupboard. All the pretty serving platters, the embroidered cushions, the gilded candelabras: they belong to Aurora. She writes a note, which she plans to leave with her keys on the table.
She is waiting for her taxi, sitting on the bottom step of the stairs, when there is a noise at the front door. Aurora breezes in, stopping abruptly when she sees the Friend sitting there, her keys on the table, next to a torn piece of lined paper from a reporter’s notebook with her name on it. Only now does it occur to the Friend that she should have used nicer stationery.
“Thanks for the notice.” The words are spat in heavy sarcasm.
“I’ve transferred next month’s rent. You’ll find someone else in no time.” Her voice is pleading. It’s not how she imagined it would go.
Aurora says nothing. Slips out of her Kookai grey coat, steps out of her Dolcis platforms. Stretches out a hand, not for a handshake or a high five, but loosely cupped as if she is expecting a shopkeeper to hand her some change.
“The keyring,” Aurora says, when the Friend doesn’t react. “I did pay for it. Remember?”
“But you don’t need it.” There are many more persuasive things she could have said.
“So?” It’s a word the Friend has heard from Aurora countless times before. She still doesn’t know how to reply. So, she pulls the keyring out of her pocket, places it tenderly in Aurora’s hand, leaning forward as if to give her a hug.
“Fuck. You.” The Friend whispers into the mass of auburn hair, that head-turning hair, which she had always been so envious of.
After she slams the door behind her, the Friend runs down the path, pulling her wheelie suitcase with the squeaky wheel behind her, and leans into the open window of the taxi.
“48 Arborum Crescent.” Her words are just a shade too loud; so much so that the taxi driver recoils a little. But he nods, and as soon as she has clicked her seatbelt into place, he puts the car into first gear, drives decisively.
The Friend sits back in her seat. She grapples in her pocket for a stray mint or a stick of gum, but instead she finds the lipstick she left behind the last time they went to the bar together. It’s a vivid shade of cherry red, bought on whim in the Boots in Waterloo station, when she was travelling back from Devon that time. Not remotely her colour, as Aurora had told her repeatedly. Stealing a glance in the rear-view mirror, she applies it all over her lips, going slightly beyond the edges to exaggerate their shape.
She forms a pout with her lips, trying on this new look for size. She decides it suits her.