Lucy Lord - Revelry

‘How very respectable,’ I laugh.

‘I know – seems unlikely, doesn’t it?’

‘By the way, Bella, big respect for what you said to Alison the other night,’ shouts Damian. ‘The look on her face when you chucked your drink at her! She started ranting about getting you to pay for dry cleaning after you’d left.’

‘Oh, she wants more than that. She wouldn’t contact me directly, of course. She told Andy to tell Max that her shirt was ruined and she wants me to replace it. It was Jil Sander apparently. Fuck knows how I’m going to afford that.’

‘They’ve got identical shirts in Primark for a fiver,’ says Poppy. ‘And you can cut the label out of my old Jil Sander coat if you want. Bet she won’t notice. Insensitive bitch.’

We all crack up at this. God, life is good.

‘So what’s this shoot Ben’s on tomorrow?’ I ask, unable to resist the temptation of talking about him.

‘Abercrombie and Fitch,’ says Damian. ‘He said the last one was great – the director got them all stoned, then just filmed all these pretty young things laughing unselfconsciously together. Money for old rope if you ask me.’

‘Yeah, like you work your fingers to the bone. Comparable to mining is the life of a Stadium columnist,’ says Poppy, as I try to banish from my mind the image of Ben getting stoned with a load of nineteen-year-old natural beauties. I really wish I hadn’t picked up that bloody magazine.

After a while we turn into a tree-lined street of semi-detached Edwardian houses with perfectly kept front lawns behind box hedges. It’s the sort of street where dads wash their cars on a Saturday morning.

‘This can’t be where Mark lives,’ I say in bemusement. ‘It’s so … so … suburban.’

‘Oh he’s all talk and no trousers, our Marky,’ says Poppy. ‘Underneath all the bullshit, he’s as conventional as they come.’

Mr Conventional swaggers out of No. 42. Bare-chested, he is wearing very tight, very faded jeans, a leather thong around his neck, Aviator shades and a cowboy hat.

‘He sooo waxes his chest,’ says Poppy under her breath.

‘Auditioning for the Village People, Marky?’ shouts Damian.

Mark grins. ‘You’re just jealous I can carry it off,’ he shouts back, and makes his way over to the car, pausing to say hello to a couple of little girls on tricycles.

He chucks his huge rucksack into the back seat as effortlessly as if it were made of foam, then saunters back inside and returns with a crate of Stella, which he throws in on top of the rucksack. Winking at me, he mouths, ‘Hello gorgeous.’ I smile. For all his manifold faults, there is something about Mark you can’t help liking.

We resume our journey and soon excitement is mounting again.

‘Beers, anyone?’ says Mark.

‘Better not mate,’ says Damian. ‘But the rest of you go ahead.’

‘Poor love,’ says Poppy, leaning over and helping herself. ‘I’ll drive on the way back.’

‘Yeah, when a drink’ll be the last thing you want,’ laughs Mark.

‘Dammit, you’ve rumbled my cunning plan.’

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