Read Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend Online

Authors: Jenny Colgan

Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend (2 page)

BOOK: Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend
8.77Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
 
He sighs. ‘Why?’
 
‘Because you have to look like a great artist eagerly awaiting inspiration for his next masterpiece. I’m taking some shots for your new brochure.’
 
‘Shh! Don’t jinx us. Can’t I just look like a cheerful artist eagerly awaiting his next cheque?’
 
‘No-oh. That’s a bad look.’
 
‘What about a starving artist who doesn’t know how he’s going to pay the water bill?’
 
‘Let me see it,’ I instruct. ‘Hmm. No. It’s a bit disappointed-looking. ’
 
‘I was very, very disappointed by our water bill.’
 
‘Shh! Look out to sea then.’
 
‘Oh, yes, that’ll be great. Then I’ll look like I’m about to start sculpting those stripy lighthouses you buy at the seaside. ’
 
I put the camera down. ‘There’s money in that! That could work!’
 
‘No! We’ll pay the water bill. Somehow.’
 
‘I quite like those lighthouses,’ I muse. Oh, yeah, that’s the other downside to being a freelancer - always being skint.
 
‘Stop! Stop! Please!’
 
‘OK!’ I say. ‘Deranged! Passionate! Look just like that!’
 
‘You do talk some binkety bollocks,’ he complains, but keeps his head still as I shoot frame after frame. With the calm line of the sea behind him, and the sharp lines of his profile, I reckon they should come up rather well in black and white and if this mooted exhibition of his ever comes off, my pics can go in the programme.
 
Eventually I think I’ve got my shot and we’ve both earned our proper breakfast, so he heads off over the dunes.
 
 
 
I settle down on the sand to wait. OK, it’s not luxurious Mediterranean weather, but that’s kind of nice; there’s a freshness off the sea, just in case you forget for one second you are in England. But apart from the waves, it’s so quiet. I feel like we’re the first people ever to discover this beach. I rest my chin on my hands and just stare out to sea.
 
Am I happy? Right here? Right now? Pff, it’s a big question, with a big answer.
 
Chapter Two
 
When I was eleven, my mum died. It’s all right, it wasn’t your fault - or
was
it? No, I’m kidding, sorry. It’s just people always look so upset. It’s now over eighteen years ago, and I still hate having to tell people. They always look really stricken and shocked, and I end up saying, ‘It’s OK,’ and somehow comforting them instead.
 
Up to then I was pretty normal, or at least I think I was. I was quite a shy girl whose main hobbies were beads, Barbie and playing schools. I suppose I lived in a big house but I honestly didn’t notice that at the time. I thought everyone had a maid and their own dressing room. Anyway, as far as
that
goes, I would have traded the dressing room, every Barbie ever made and anything else I owned not to have the memory of the day the head teacher came into the classroom and, in an odd, strangled-sounding voice, asked if she could see me in her office.
 
Here is how I try to remember her. One night, I must have been around seven, they were on their way out - they went out a lot, my mother loved balls and dancing and my father liked to indulge her. She was wearing my favourite dress - she had so many, but most she only wore once or twice. This one came out every year. It was a fuchsia-coloured silk (hey, it was the eighties) which she wore with her blonde hair curled up and a flower in it. My father would put the flower in. He would pretend it was a matter of utmost importance that only he could possibly get right, and would treat it like a serious operation, with lots of Kirby grips and hairspray. He would bend towards her, their profiles nearly touching, and carefully, fussily, arrange the orchid in her hair. Then they’d both turn to me, my mother’s eyes sparkling with excitement as she bent down.
 
‘Now,’ my father would say. ‘Sophia, you must decide. Is your mother acceptable to be seen in decent society?’
 
And I knew somehow that I had to keep my face very serious as if I was doing a proper inspection. My mother showed me her hair all over, and I’d check it carefully and say, ‘Hmm . . .’
 
And Mummy would say, ‘Please! Please tell me, Sophia, have I done enough to pass your inspection?’
 
And Daddy’d say, ‘Yes, if we fail we will miss the party, and you know how your mother hates to miss parties!’
 
And my mother would make a sad face. After I’d waited as long as I could, I’d finally say, ‘Weelll . . . I suppose you pass.’
 
‘Hurrah!’ And my mother’d kiss me, leaving sticky fuchsia lipstick on my cheek. My father made out that he was incredibly relieved and they’d promise to bring me back the best cakes from the party. Then my father would lend me his precious Leica and I would take their photograph.
 
We’d always had these little rituals; the fuchsia dress is the one I remember the most. Later in life I thought how odd it was for them to go to every single party with a little bag and steal the
petits fours.
But they did, because they loved me, and because we were a family, and I think that’s when I first picked up my fondness for eating sweet things for breakfast.
 
 
 
After she went, of course, we fell apart. Even though I was eleven, it’s a blur in my head. I hadn’t realised how well and gently my mother had run the household until she left. Without Esperanza, who helped us, we’d have been eating cold beans out of a can within the week.
 
My parents’ many friends were very sweet, of course, and crowded round and brought casseroles and asked me over to play with their children all the time. Except, weirdly, I always felt that I had to be on my super-best behaviour, otherwise the mothers invariably started to cry, and I hated upsetting everyone.
 
And after a bit of time had passed, even if I felt a little better and wanted to smile or join in with games, I could see the other girls and their mothers looking at me, as if to say, ‘How can that girl play when her mum has died?’ And that would make me feel guilty and sad all over again.
 
Daddy coped with it all by throwing himself into his work. He ran some sort of personal investment blah blah fund blah thing. He’d tried to explain, but I’d never really listened. He hurled himself at it, in fact, and very successfully too, which meant he was always away from home. He felt I needed more structure to my life, and the best opportunities, so he made the decision to send me away to boarding school.
 
Daddy really did think it was the best way, even though he cried so much saying goodbye to me I ended up patting
him
on the back. The maddest thing was that Kendalls was only about half a mile from where we lived in Chelsea. He didn’t want to send me away, he just wanted me to be looked after in a safe environment, somewhere that didn’t have memories of my mother spilling out from every face; from every dress, and gate and lamp post.
 
I did have a romantic idea about boarding school that I personally blame on Malory Towers, and my mother’s favourite,
What Katy Did at School
. I wasn’t averse to the idea at all. Whilst I wasn’t exactly expecting anything to be fun, I thought midnight feasts, pony rides, and playing pranks on the teachers might be quite interesting. Plus, nobody had a mother while they were there, so I’d fit in.
 
Hmm. Boarding schools in books aren’t exactly like real boarding schools. I should have known that, shouldn’t I? Instead of lots of fun girls, there were lots of really pretty, quite fierce and frankly intimidating girls.
 
At first I was quite interesting - my tragic story attracted a lot of attention. As this flurry of interest died down, however, and it became apparent that I didn’t yet have an expense account at Harvey Nics, I was left more and more on my own. Being a quiet girl had never mattered before as my parents were always there to listen to me, and I never felt lonely or out of place.
 
Here, however, I was as lonely and awkward as could be. Until the day I caught Carena Sutherland giving her hamster a pedicure. Did you know hamsters are allergic to nail polish? Me neither. I was just looking for a cupboard to hide in while I ate my lunch by myself. I had absolutely nothing to contribute to the other girl’s conversations about diets, boys on television shows I hadn’t seen, or music I hadn’t listened to. If I’d been less bruised and awkward I’d perhaps have found it easier to meet people I clicked with. But I wasn’t, and I didn’t.
 
‘
Shit!
’ Carena was saying, looking at the clearly dead animal lying on its side.
 
‘What’s that?’ I asked timidly.
 
‘It’s a very, very small orang-utan, what does it look like?’ she scoffed, then turned towards me. I shrank backwards. Carena was by far the prettiest, most popular and most frightening girl in our class. Her parents worked away all the time and she said her nanny was going to let her go to nightclubs when she was thirteen. We kind of believed her.
 
‘Don’t tell anyone about this, right?’ she said in a threatening voice. So I didn’t, and I could see her eyeing me approvingly when Mr Carstairs spent twenty minutes grilling us all. I kept my mouth shut.
 
Two months later, she spoke to me again. My dad had just bought himself a Lamborghini. I have no idea what was going through his head. He must have just woken up one day and thought, Well, I’ve lost the love of my life - perhaps a big shiny red car will do. Or someone at work recommended it. Certainly he let Brad, his assistant at the time, go and pick it up for him and, on a whim, sent him to pick me up too.
 
The car made an incredibly loud roar coming up the street. It was bright red and looked absurdly flashy. All the girls came to look at it and then out stepped Brad. He was tall, handsome, American, gay and extremely sweet to me. Dressed in a stripy shirt, hair perfectly gelled back and sporting big white teeth, he looked like the epitome of our twelve-year-old pin-ups.
 
‘Hey, pretty lady,’ he said. ‘Want to come for a ride?’
 
In fact, he just dropped me at my dad’s office and I waited an hour for my dad to get out of his meeting, then Daddy and I drove up the King’s Road in near silence. Finally, at the top, Daddy turned to me.
 
‘This is stupid, isn’t it?’ he said.
 
‘Well . . .’ I said.
 
‘I thought buying this car would make me feel better.’
 
‘Does it?’
 
‘She’d have hated it, wouldn’t she?’
 
‘It’s really, really tacky, Dad.’
 
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I should have guessed when Brad liked it so much. Want to go and eat pizza?’
 
‘OK.’
 
I don’t remember ever seeing that car again. It was the first time I realised that my family was quite rich.
 
And the next day, Carena casually strode past me at break time, pretended to look surprised to see me, then said, ‘Oh, Sophie, do you want to go to my house for lunch?’
 
Just like that. It was comparable, later, to the first time I was ever asked out by a boy (Marcus. Father farmed half of Shropshire. More comfortable talking to animals than girls. His kisses were like being licked by a large horse).
 
And from then on, we were friends, even when she found out Brad wasn’t actually my extremely glamorous and somewhat paedophiliac boyfriend, but an employee of my dad’s. She enjoyed my obvious admiration and I couldn’t help it - she was dazzling. So sure of herself. My world was confusing and I wasn’t sure of the rules, but Carena seemed to waltz through on an unstoppable cloud of self-belief that she would get everything she wanted and everything would stop for her. And it usually did.
 
We all smoked our first fags at Carena’s; cadged our first vodka. Her other best friend was Philly, a scholarship girl, and Philly and I vied to be Carena’s closest lieutenants. It was great not having to worry about what I was doing, because Carena always did. I started to adopt her ‘don’t care’ attitude, her slightly supercilious look at the world. Perhaps I got a little mouthier, a little harder. I like to think I was too timid to have tipped over the edge into really bad behaviour - but then Gail happened.
 
 
 
One Saturday night, Carena was staying with me - I was thirteen - and Daddy came home from a business trip to Prague. He’d been doing a lot of flying recently. He came in late, and I could hear from upstairs that he had someone with him. They were laughing. My dad used to laugh all the time. Lately, not so much.
 
‘Who’s that?’ asked Carena, putting on lipgloss in the large gilt mirror that hung next to the staircase and making a sexy face. We were making sexy faces quite a lot at the moment. They were probably not sexy so much as freakish, and scared a lot of our teachers.
BOOK: Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend
8.77Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Murder in Retribution by Anne Cleeland
Burial Ground by Michael McBride
The Omega's Mate: by E A Price
Control Point by Cole, Myke
Sixpence & Whiskey by Heather R. Blair
Highland Chieftain by Hannah Howell
yame by Unknown