Cathy Kelly - Just Between Us

‘Thanks a million,’ Holly said, climbing out of the cab and slamming the door. She moved away and realised that her scarf had got stuck. The driver began to drive off.

‘Stop!’ roared Holly in panic. He slammed on the brakes.

Naturally, her scarf had somehow infiltrated the door locking mechanism and it took five minutes of fervent dragging to disentangle it.

‘Thanks again,’ she said weakly, holding the frayed ends of the scarf and hoping that she could cut off the destroyed bits. At least it hadn’t been the corset.

In the hotel, Donna had checked in and was about to race up to her room to leap into her party dress when Holly appeared. ‘Come on!’ she yelled at Holly.

While Donna’s hysteria mounted as she snagged tights and spilt glitter powder on her dress instead of on her shoulders, Holly sat in a chair by the window and looked out onto the wet streets wondering why she’d come in the first place.

‘Let’s go.’ Donna was ready, still panting from her last-minute rush.

Holly got to her feet, both the corset and her new boots creaking ominously.

She shook back her hair and breathed as deeply as was possible with several hundred pounds’ worth of designer corset glued to her.

‘I’m ready,’ she said.

‘That’s a fabulous outfit,’ grumbled Donna as they went downstairs. ‘I hate this old dress. You look great and I look like I’ve been out milking the cows all day and only stopped ten minutes ago to get dressed.’

‘You don’t have cows,’ pointed out Holly, smiling at Donna’s mad logic. ‘And you look great.’

‘You know what I mean. You have that city gloss about you and I look like a bumpkin.’

‘No you don’t. And I borrowed this,’ Holly confided, breaking her promise to Bunny. ‘I was so scared that I’d look awful and the rest of them would think I’d never changed from being boring, fat old Holly Miller.’

‘But you look beautiful,’ said Donna in astonishment. ‘You’ve looked great for years. Haven’t you got a fabulous life and everything? What have you to feel scared about?’

‘Are you on drugs?’ demanded Holly, mystified as to how her friend had this inaccurate view of her life. ‘I don’t have a fabulous life, I work in a shop, I live in a flat I can’t afford, if I didn’t do overtime, I’d never be able to pay the electricity bill and my last date was a disaster.’

‘How am I supposed to know these things if you don’t tell me?’ said Donna crossly.

‘I’m sick telling you but you’re convinced I’m lying. You seem to think that living away from Kinvarra is like magic dust that transforms your life. It doesn’t.’

Donna stopped walking. ‘Right, so. We won’t mention this, though. I told the girls that you were getting on brilliantly and had men coming out your ears.’

Holly goggled at this. ‘You did what?’

‘I thought you were having a great time. Ah forget it, we’ll say nothing. Caroline and Lilli are great fun, you know,’ she added.

‘I don’t know.’ Holly was ready to confide all her fears now that she’d started. ‘I never talked to them at school, they looked down on us for being quiet.’

‘We were our own worst enemies at school, Holly,’ said Donna firmly. ‘We should have joined in more. That’s why I’m pals with Caroline and Lilli now. I don’t want Emily to grow up being all quiet and mousy like us. She plays with Caroline and Lilli’s girls and when they’re older, they’ll look after her. Nobody will call my daughter Speccy.’

So Donna had remembered. Holly stared at her friend. ‘And all this time I thought you were suffering from selective memory syndrome.’

Donna grinned. ‘No, I’ve just reinvented myself. Like Madonna. I’m making up for lost time. Come on.’

Caroline and Lilli were on their third double each. The bar was humming and they’d been mingling like mad, but there was still no sign of Michelle.

‘Stupid bitch,’ said Lilli crossly. ‘I always said she was unreliable. And where’s that Donna?’

‘She’s here,’ crowed Caroline. ‘And omigod who’s that with her?’

They watched in astonishment as Donna arrived, breathless as usual, accompanied by this tall, voluptuously stunning woman, wearing what looked suspiciously like the original version of Caroline’s corset. The woman’s dark hair fell gloriously around her shoulders, as glossy as if several catwalk hairdressers had been slaving over it for hours.

She hadn’t needed a seaweed wrap to squeeze her body into the corset; like a modern-day Sophia Loren, her figure was a natural hourglass, with a waspy waist that was surely narrower than one of Caroline’s thighs. Caroline, who’d put on a stone since her school days, wished she’d stopped her mid-morning Mars bar now.

The dark-haired woman was carrying an exquisite beaded handbag and her necklace was definitely the same one that Posh Spice had been wearing in Hello! Confidence oozed out of her like expensive moisturiser out of Estée Lauder radiance pearls.

‘It’s Holly Miller,’ said Lilli, awestruck.

Donna rushed up to her two new best friends, who clambered out of their corner to greet her and Holly. This was true reunion gold. Looking round the room, most people looked almost the same as at school, just with better highlights, real jewellery and more expensive clothes. Pat Wilson had had her long dark hair cut into a bob, Andrea Maguire’s red hair was now dyed a startling blonde, and even Babs Grafton had finally had her teeth fixed and sported contacts instead of heavy glasses. But Holly was totally different, like someone who’d just stepped out of one of those six-month make-over things on the telly.

‘Holly, I wouldn’t have recognised you!’ said Lilli, determined to get the upper hand now that she was faced with this much improved Holly.

‘Isn’t she fabulous looking,’ said Donna.

‘You look wonderful,’ agreed Caroline. ‘That’s a real designer corset, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Holly, overcome with the urge to tell them it was borrowed, ‘although it isn’t…’

Donna interrupted before Holly could say ‘mine’. ‘Wouldn’t we all like a staff discount at Lee’s.’ She gave Holly a prod in the arm and Holly took the hint.

‘…full price,’ Holly amended. ‘It wasn’t full price. We do get a discount.’ She hoped that Lilli and Caroline couldn’t tell there was a lie in the midst of all of this. Holly told lies with all the skill of a devout nun.

‘Tell us all about yourself,’ said Caroline eagerly. ‘I’d love to work in Lee’s; it must be amazing, all those famous people dropping in and out, trying on Versace evening dresses.’

‘I work in the children’s department,’ Holly said apologetically. ‘We stock Baby Dior but we’re drawing the line at sticking toddlers into sequinned evening dresses. It’s hard to get baby sick out of sequins.’

Everyone roared with laughter and Holly felt herself relax marginally. Normally, she was too nervous to joke round other people.

‘Still,’ Donna pointed out, ‘you get a discount. I must come up and look for an outfit for Emily’s First Communion. They have lovely dresses nowadays, not like the terrible frilly things we had to wear. Do you remember mine, Holly? It was awful and my mother put curlers in my hair the night before and it went frizzy and stuck out at angles like I’d been plugged into the mains!’

‘I bet mine was worse,’ said Lilli, shuddering. ‘My grandmother had my mother’s old dress put away and she made me wear it. It was all yellowing and too tight. I was a sight!’

And they were off, comparing stories about how awful they’d looked. Holly realised that it wasn’t as bad as she’d expected. Lilli and Caroline seemed genuinely interested in her, and they weren’t the same arrogant schoolgirls she remembered. Lilli was still capable of being a bit sharp but Holly could cope with that now. And they seemed to think she was funny. Holly knew she’d been funny when she was at school too, it was just that nobody but Donna noticed.