Page 17 of The Way We Are Now

‘Cleaner and spook?’ Fliss laughed, opening a packet of biscuits. ‘That should wow whoever you’re trying to impress.’

A few days later, Katy, Clare and I were back watching Dynasty, when Fliss appeared in the sitting room.

‘Bloody hell.’ Katy whistled. ‘Where the hell are you going, all dolled up like that?’

Fliss, always a pretty girl, now looked particularly ravishing. Her auburn hair was piled high on her head, eyes heavy with kohl, full mouth red and pouting.

‘Hot date.’ Fliss pouted some more, giving a provocative twirl in order to show off her little black dress and heels.

‘Not with Theo Mandeville?’ Clare stared, her slice of the pizza the three of us were sharing stilled halfway to her mouth. ‘You are, aren’t you?’ She turned to Katy and me. ‘Honestly, Katy, Fliss wasn’t exaggerating when she went on and on about him. You should see him!’

Fliss’s eyes gleamed. ‘Might be. Don’t wait up.’ And with that, she was off.

‘Well, he doesn’t seem to be coming in,’ Clare said, as we heard the revving of a car engine. ‘I wanted another good gawp at him. And he must be taking her somewhere lovely if she’s so dolled up.’ Clare pulled a face. ‘Aw, I bet it’s Low Hall in Horsforth.’

While I knew I’d be totally out of my comfort zone in a posh restaurant – would I be using the right cutlery and know the best things to order? – I felt a build-up of envy at Fliss, not only utterly confident of the nuances of eating in this Horsforth restaurant but doing it with Theo Mandeville to boot.

‘She’s a real chameleon, isn’t she?’ Katy mused, interrupting my thoughts. ‘One minute she’s out in her scruffy student get-up, with you, Anna, on one of your protests; the next she’s Mrs Mop, not fazed about cleaning horrible latrines and then, if she doesn’t appear looking like something out of Vogue, for heaven’s sake. You can bet she didn’t buy that dress at Chelsea Girl…’ Katy’s tone was disapproving.

‘Must have blown all her cleaning money down in Schofields,’ Clare said. ‘And you know, Theo Mandeville won’t be in Levi’s and a uni sweatshirt,’ she added sagely. ‘Ooh, the lucky thing,’ she went on dreamily. ‘Wonder if he’s got any friends…?’ She chewed somewhat hopefully at another slice of pizza, wiping her hands down the pyjama bottoms she seemed to never have off her backside, whatever the time of day or night.

‘Why didn’t she tell me?’ I asked, putting my own pizza down uneaten.

‘Are you going to eat that?’ Clare asked, reaching for the last slice of pizza.

‘No, you have it.’ I suddenly felt left out, depressed. All right, envious. Oh, this was ridiculous. Why was I losing my appetite over some preppy bloke just because he’d lent me his gloves and noticed my cold hands? ‘Yes, I am,’ I said, changing my mind and taking the pizza from Clare’s hand.

‘I can’t believe she didn’t tell me she’d finally run him to ground,’ I said again. I liked to think that Fliss and I shared more than a house and, on occasions, the one hot water bottle in the place. We took it in turns to either start off with the bottle, warming up the freezing cold duvet, before handing it over to the other for the rest of the night. I was always glad when it was my turn to hog it through until morning. ‘I bet that’s why she’s been off down the road to the phone box every two minutes,’ I said. ‘She’ll have been ringing Theo up at Bodington Hall. I just assumed it must be her getting on better with her mum and dad.’

Katy pulled a face. ‘I wouldn’t have thought so. Does Fliss even know where the pair of them are these days?’

I shook my head. ‘Her mum’s gone off to the Caribbean, I think she said.’

‘Jamaica?’ Katy asked.

‘No, gone of her own accord.’ Clare started laughing and Katy threw a cushion at her.

‘And her dad,’ I went on, ‘well, her dad really is too busy sorting out his businesses – keeping them all afloat, according to Fliss – and then off sniffing after women. Fliss told me her dad had a nickname: Sniffer Sutherland.’

‘Yes, she told me that too,’ Clare said. ‘I thought it was because he had a coke habit.’

‘Both, I think,’ I said, nodding in agreement.

‘I’m quite glad my mum and dad are a bit, you know, boring,’ Clare nodded. ‘At least I know where they’ll be, back home in Dewsbury. Mum in the front room hoovering, and Dad in his garage tinkering with his car, covered in oil. Rather than Mum hoovering up a line through a rolled-up fiver. And my dad making a fool of himself with my friends from school. Fliss said her dad had been out with some girl she’d actually been at boarding school with. Can you imagine? Anyways, they might be a bit, you know, a bit boring, my two, but at least they’re there with a Sunday dinner and a lift to the station when I need them.’

Katy and I nodded in agreement. ‘Poor Fliss never knows where home is,’ Katy said. ‘I mean, when we have reading week in a couple of weeks, I can’t see her heading off to her dad’s pad in Chelsea, can you? She says he’s got yet another new girlfriend who’s not much older than us.’

‘She can come home with me,’ I said. ‘She’ll have to share my bed…’ I laughed, ‘…but at least we can have the hot water bottle between us all night for once.’

‘Did anything come of that contact from that girl on your course, Anna?’ Katy now asked, obviously bored with the conversation about Theo Mandeville and Fliss’s wayward parents. ‘For your year out in London?’

I shook my head. ‘Problem with not having a phone here in the house is them contacting me back. I rang, I got the address of Brian Sykes’s office and wrote a sycophantic letter.’

‘Sycophantic?’ Clare looked at me. ‘I thought it was Fliss who knew all the big words?’

‘A begging letter basically,’ Katy said, clearing up the pizza detritus.

‘I didn’t mention Jilly, thought it best not to – but nothing, no. No letter’s come for me?’ I went on hopefully, looking round as if any amount of mail was about to descend out of the ether. I’d dashed home from lectures and the library every day that week, hoping there was something.