The Go-To Girl Read online

  I didn’t go back out there. Maybe I should have, maybe I should have gone and found one of my friends and hung out with them defiantly and made witty, cutting remarks about everybody else. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything except crawl inside one of the stalls, sit down on the loo, and cry.

  I stayed inside that loo for four hours, hearing the disco booming in the dance hall, listening to other girls gossiping as they came in to refresh their blusher and giggle about the boys they were pulling. When it was five minutes before ten and the coach was ready to leave, I walked out straight to the car park and got on the bus. I was the first girl on board and when my best friend Clara Bryant came on, all breathless and smiling, she took one look at me and didn’t say anything because she didn’t know what to say.

  That was the night I learned my lesson. I wasn’t pretty, I wasn’t striking, I didn’t look anything like Princess Diana. It had been so easy to believe my parents, especially my daddy who always told me I was beautiful and that all the boys would be fighting over me. And I believed them, despite the evidence of the mirror. I believed them through all the boys who didn’t ask me out and the few who did who dumped me. It was always them, never me. I believed Daddy right up until the night of that dance.

  Never again, though. I adjusted immediately. I shoved all my fancy clothes straight to the back of my wardrobe and wore the plainest things I had. I threw away all my high heels and fire-engine red lipsticks and little tubs of body glitter. I didn’t live near a Gap when I was a teenager, but if I had, I’d have shopped there permanently, for plain tees and basic jeans and khakis, dull, straight-up clothes that nobody would ever notice. But I did my best at Marks and Sparks and Top Shop. When I was older I found a few classic ‘don’t notice me’ dresses and bought four in different colours, and so I go from the office to dinners to the occasional disastrous date, all in clothes expertly designed to conceal me.

  I will absolutely never look like Janet or Lily, not even after major plastic surgery, which I can’t afford. I’ve got a Nose Job Fund box, and I had a look in there recently. I’ve saved a massive ninety-eight quid and thirty-four p. There used to be more, but I did take that weekend CityBreak in Bruges six months ago, when it rained the whole time.

  ‘Anna, what’s your date of birth?’ Lily asks suddenly, not looking around from her screen.

  ‘Why?’ I ask.

  ‘Just for fun,’ she persuades. ‘It tells you what day of the week you were born.’

  ‘July the third, nineteen seventy-one.’

  Lily’s long talons peck over the computer, one letter at a time.

  ‘Monday!’ she says.

  Janet looks over at me. Janet is wearing a teeny, body-hugging pale pink dress that looks incredible against her olive skin. Filigree gold bangles run up her arms and make a chinking sound as she moves.

  ‘Monday’s child is fair of face,’ Janet says.

  Lily sniggers. ‘Sorry,’ she says, clasping her bony hand over her mouth. ‘It slipped out! Honest!’

  ‘Anna can take a joke, can’t you, Anna?’ Janet says.

  I sigh. ‘No problem.’

  And it really isn’t. I mean, it’s not like I haven’t heard it before. Primary school is probably the worst; after the first ten years, you get used to it.

  Being ugly, that is.

  I don’t deceive myself about my looks. Even my granny stopped saying, ‘It’s a just a phase. You’ll see,’ when I reached fifteen. And now I would prefer not to talk about it. I’ve tried various things. Flat shoes, plain colours. Make-up tips to ‘minimize’ my nose, shading and highlighting, but nothing helps. It’s still huge. It’s still there. And just in case I might be tempted to forget about it, I tend to get helpful reminders from male members of the public.

  ‘Bloody ’ell! Packed yer trunk, Nellie?’

  That was delivered last week by a drunk teenager as I walked home from Tesco’s. I thought it was rather imaginative of him.

  ‘Don’t worry, Anna, I think you’re, like, totally beautiful,’ says Janet.

  ‘Because real beauty is on the inside,’ lies Lily. ‘And that’s what counts.’

  ‘What’s that on the end of your nose?’ asks Janet.

  ‘What?’ Lily asks, concerned.

  ‘It’s a bit red. It might be the start of a spot,’ Janet says, ominously.

  ‘Oh my God!’ Lily shrieks in horror. She rushes to the mirror over the mantelpiece and examines the infinitesimally small pinkish area. ‘Oh my God! I’m hideous! And I’m working tomorrow!’

  ‘You look fine,’ I offer.

  ‘What would you know?’ Lily wails, tossing her fountain of flaxen strands about like a Timotei commercial.

  Janet shakes her head sagely. ‘I told her not to go with that foundation, I really think it clogs the pores.’

  ‘What day were you born, Lily?’ I ask, in a vain attempt to distract her.

  ‘I’ll look it up,’ Janet says. She strolls over to the computer, sticking out her perfectly firm, rounded bottom. Janet has a J-Lo fixation. She watches all her videos religiously and favours lots of gold jewellery and real fur, which she steals from shoots. She also has an unfortunate tendency to say ‘Bling bling’ and likes to be called ‘Jay-Me’, which she prefers to her real name, Janet Meeks.

  ‘Wednesday,’ Janet says.

  ‘Wednesday’s child is full of woe,’ I say, a touch more cheerfully. Who knows? Anything could happen. Lily could come down with a disfiguring bout of adult chickenpox, or have a terrible reaction to a collagen implant. That would be fantastic!

  ‘It’s a stupid rhyme,’ Lily says dismissively. ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘Not like astrology then,’ I suggest.

  She looks at me disdainfully. ‘Astrology is totally proven.’

  ‘By who?’

  ‘By everyone,’ she says, triumphantly closing down my argument.

  ‘I have to get back to work,’ I say, reaching for another red paper-bound script. My glasses are heavy on my nose and my eyes are watering, but it’s Sunday already and I have to get coverage typed up for five more screenplays, all of which will, without a doubt, be as dreadful as the last sixteen I’ve read this weekend.

  ‘Oh, take a break, Anna. Live a little!’ says Janet brightly. Janet works maybe two days a week and makes three times what I do. She looks languidly into the camera for three hours and goes to look-sees and auditions. I type my fingers to the bone all weekend writing ‘coverage’ for crappy scripts that will never get made, then during the week I run errands, type letters, answer phones, make copies, walk dogs, and generally act as an office slave for a total bitch named Kitty.

  Janet and Lily make about forty grand a year.

  I make sixteen.

  They are twenty-eight and twenty-three.

  I am thirty-two.

  And yet, and I know this is stupid, I keep thinking things are going to change for me. I mean, I’m in the right industry. It took me four years to find a job as a script reader, and now I have one at a proper production company with fancy Covent Garden offices. I even have a pension plan and health insurance.

  It could happen, right? I could find that needle in the haystack, that one great script I could recommend. I could get made into a development executive like Kitty. I could be a producer and make millions and win an Oscar …

  It has happened before. It happens all the time. Sometimes I think I should take stock of my life, try and get a better-paying job somewhere else, but doing what? It wouldn’t be in the film business. They pay us bugger all because they know they can. There are forty little Annas out there, fresh-faced from film school, who would kill for my job. And anyway, I don’t have time to take stock of my life because I’m too busy. I save a bunch of money by paying only three hundred a month for my room in this flat. Instead of money I give Lily and Janet all the invitations and tickets that come my way – the movie premieres, the industry parties, the VIP passes to the members-only clubs.

  T
hat works out well because I wouldn’t bother with those parties anyway. The people who go to them are all varying combinations of rich, beautiful and successful. I’m none of the above, so I just stay home and read more bad scripts.

  ‘We could try a makeover on you,’ Janet says.

  ‘I don’t think so, but thanks.’

  ‘Come on. I know I could do something,’ Janet says, encouragingly.

  ‘It’s not all about looks, OK?’ I tell her. ‘I’m fine like I am!’

  ‘I wonder if Brian thinks that,’ Lily says archly.

  Brian is my boyfriend. He works for Barclays as a teller. He’s a bit skinny and has some problems with sweaty armpits and bad breath, but I’ve been working on those, subtly. Brian’s always telling me he ‘doesn’t care’ about my looks because ‘real beauty is on the inside’.

  I hear that one a lot.

  Brian is no prize himself though. He’s all skinny and he breaks out from time to time, doing a good impression of a pepperoni pizza. Plus, he’s shorter than me – but who isn’t? Still, you have to have a boyfriend, don’t you? I mean, especially if you’re ugly. A boyfriend is great camouflage. He stops people from making pitying comments, and stuff like that. So I cling to him.

  ‘Brian likes me for who I am,’ I tell Janet defiantly.

  ‘Sure,’ she says, brightly. ‘Whatever you say.’

  The buzzer rings and she leaps to her feet. Lily tears herself away from the mirror above the mantel. They adore the phone, the buzzer, anything. Always expecting something fabulous. And why not? For pretty girls, it mostly is something fabulous.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi, ’s Brian,’ Brian’s voice slurs.

  ‘Speak of the devil!’ says Janet, laughing lightly. She can’t help it, she flirts with everything in trousers, even men she wouldn’t be seen dead with. ‘We were just talking about you. Come on up.’

  ‘OK,’ he says, dully.

  I get up and check my own face in the mirror.

  ‘Well, it’s too late to do anything about it now,’ Lily hisses.

  A second later I hear the ping of the lift. Our flat is located above a feminist bookshop in Tottenham Court Road, one of those old Victorian buildings with an ancient, narrow lift. It fits one normal person, or two models, and feels like a coffin without the velvet.

  Brian opens the lift door and steps out. He’s wearing a white polyester short-sleeved shirt and saggy chinos, but I’m still glad to see him. He’s my boyfriend, after all. As in, I have one!

  ‘Hi, honey,’ I say, kissing him on the cheek. ‘Come in.’

  ‘Hi, Brian,’ coo Lily and Janet together, shaking their hair and smoothing their already tight clothes tighter round their bodies.

  ‘Hi,’ he says, staring. I do wish he wouldn’t drool like that. I mean, I am standing right here.

  ‘Would you like some coffee?’ I ask pointedly.

  ‘Oh. No,’ he says, continuing to stare at my flatmates.

  I cough. ‘Are we going out to dinner?’

  ‘I thought you had all that work to do,’ says Janet, innocently. She smiles cosmetically whitened teeth at him. ‘You know Anna, always work, work, work.’

  ‘I can take a break,’ I say. ‘For you,’ I add to Brian.

  He looks a bit awkward. ‘No, it’s not that … can we go in your room?’

  ‘Oooh!’ says Lily, widening her blue eyes and pretending to be shocked.

  ‘No rumpy-pumpy!’ says Janet, shaking her finger at him.

  Brian giggles. Which makes my skin go all bristly in distaste. ‘It’s not that either,’ he says. ‘I just need some privacy.’

  ‘Oh, don’t mind us,’ Lily reassures him. ‘We don’t have any secrets, do we, Anna? We’re like sisters.’ She bats thick black lashes at him.

  ‘Come on,’ I say, heading towards my ‘bedroom’. It’s really more of a walk-in closet with a bunk in it, but what can you expect for three hundred a month?

  ‘Oh no, don’t worry, we’ll go into the kitchen,’ says Janet. ‘Come on, Lily.’ And they head into the kitchen, shutting the door. I can hear the scraping and frantic muffled whispering instantly. They’re probably arguing over who gets first turn with an ear at the keyhole.

  ‘What is it, darling?’ I ask, with self-conscious tenderness.

  ‘Our relationship,’ Brian says. ‘I have to express myself on our relationship.’

  Oh God. He’s been at the self-help books again.

  ‘Could you do it over dinner?’ I ask hopefully. ‘We could always go to Pizza Express.’ Brian is a touch cheap.

  ‘Dutch treat,’ I hasten to reassure him, like it’s ever been anything else.

  ‘That wouldn’t fit my moral paradigm at this time,’ Brian says heavily.

  ‘Sorry, I don’t speak weirdo,’ I say and instantly regret it.

  ‘Oh yeah. That’s just typical,’ Brian snaps. ‘You’ve always stood in the way of my self-actualization!’

  I swallow. ‘Sorry. What was it you wanted to say?’

  ‘We’ve been in each other’s lives for some time now,’ he begins.

  ‘Three months.’

  His sandy eyebrows beetle together. Brian hates being interrupted. ‘Yes, well, and I think we have both gained a lot from the uniqueness of the experience,’ he says, offering me a brisk smile.

  Hey! Maybe he’s going to ask me to move in with him. Brian owns his own flat, a one-bedroom ex-council in Camden with its own scrap of patio. I could sit outside all summer and read my scripts in a deck chair.

  ‘I know I have,’ I say, smiling back at him encouragingly.

  ‘Of course you have,’ says Brian as though this were perfectly obvious. ‘But my personal boundaries have been trammelled and I’m at a place in my life where I need fresh stimulus, which is not to say that we haven’t offered each other very real positivity.’

  I digest this for a second.

  Then light dawns.

  ‘You’re breaking up with me,’ I say slowly. I drink him in, all eight and a half stone, lanky ginger hair, pizza face, telltale grey underarm patch (I did warn him to at least wear dark shirts, but he wasn’t having it). Brian is, in short, one of the least attractive men I’ve ever seen. ‘You’re breaking up with me.’

  ‘Dunno why you have to be so crude about it,’ he says prissily. ‘I think of it as a growing experience.’

  Oh boy. This is a new depth of humiliation. ‘I don’t believe this,’ I say, trying for incredulity, but my voice wobbles and it comes out all plaintive.

  ‘Out of suffering comes strength, Anna,’ says Brian wisely.

  ‘You really are a total tosser,’ I blurt. ‘Just go away, Brian, would you?’

  But he stays rooted to the spot.

  ‘It’s not how you look,’ he says virtuously. ‘Well, that did have something to do with it. I need to be honest with myself. Looks are important to me because the body is a reflection of the spirit.’ He gestures at my pudgy tummy. ‘I think you should work on that. Just a friendly comment.’

  ‘A reflection of the spirit?’ I retort. ‘Let’s hope not, because looking at your face, I guess your spirit has measles.’

  He flushes a dull red. ‘Mildred says I’m very handsome, actually.’

  ‘Who’s that? Your new girlfriend?’

  He doesn’t answer.

  ‘Well, Mildred is either a liar or blind, and if she hasn’t mentioned your halitosis, her sense of smell can’t be all that great either.’ I stand up threateningly. ‘Now get out.’

  I have two and a half stone on him. Brian turns and flees.

  The kitchen door opens.

  ‘Everything OK?’ Lily asks carelessly.

  ‘Fine,’ I lie.

  I walk over to the window and look out. There is a girl loitering below, outside the bookshop. She has blonde hair and seems ordinary looking, which puts her out of my league, and Brian’s too. But of course, he does own that flat in Camden …

  Brian exits our building and greets the blon
de. Then he high-fives her in another pathetic attempt to look American.

  ‘Well,’ says Lily sweetly, ‘I’m glad he values you for who you are!’

  2

  God. I hate the tube.

  Every single day I tell myself I’m not going to take it any more. I could get up an hour earlier and walk. Or buy a bike and ride. That would be good for my bum as well as my bank balance. Imagine if I didn’t have to buy a Travelcard. I’d practically be rich.

  Yet somehow it’s Monday morning, eight thirty, and here I am again, squashed in between a fourteen-year-old boy who I think has an erection – anyway, he keeps suspiciously bumping into the girl in front of us – and a fifty-year-old drunk who reeks of stale alcohol and BO. The pathetic thing is that I feel almost affronted that the fourteen year old never tries to rub up against me. They aren’t supposed to be discriminating at that age, are they? They aren’t even supposed to care.

  Maybe I’m a little sensitive because of the Brian incident. After they had had their fun, Lily and Janet tried to be nice to me.

  ‘He’s not worth it, anyway.’

  ‘Surely you can do better,’ Janet said, without conviction.

  ‘He was too young for you,’ Lily said.

  I looked at her. ‘He was thirty-six.’

  ‘Aren’t you thirty-eight?’ asked Lily, innocently.

  ‘I might as well be,’ I said morosely.

  So anyway, it’s another dull Monday like any other except that I am now boyfriendless. I had the worst boyfriend in the world, and he dumped me.

  ‘Thank God,’ cries Vanna (her real name) when she hears. Vanna is my best friend. We met back when we were in college together and we’ve stayed best friends ever since, even though our lives have gone in slightly different directions: me, reader of bad scripts and dogsbody for no money, her, senior commissioning editor at one of London’s top publishing houses for about a hundred and fifty grand a year; me, now dumped by ugly, bad-breath reeking loser, her, blissfully married to Rupert, an investment banker, with two small children.