Polly James - Would Like to Meet

It’s not too bad in the pub, although the heating’s broken down so we have to sit there trying to look sophisticated while bundled up in our coats. Eva pulls it off with her usual panache, but Esther and I look like rolled-up sleeping bags. I’m also starting to regret the gins I had while I was trying to think how to tell Eva about Esther, as I think they’re giving me palpitations now.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” says Eva, when I mention my fluttery heart to her. “It’s just because you’re shivering. Have another drink and let’s get this party started.”

Esther and I look over at each other, and – although we don’t say anything – I get the impression she’s almost as tempted to make a run for it as I am. It’s scary going out when you’re not used to it, especially when everything’s changed so much. Although Dan and I used to go to our local pub every now and then, the bar Eva’s taken us to looks more like a nightclub. Most of the women inside are wearing barely any clothes, despite the heating problem, and they’re all wearing loads more make-up than me. There are a lot of those drawn-on, squared-off eyebrows, and everyone’s covered in tattoos. Some of those are spectacular, but others look as if their owners sketched them on the backs of envelopes while they were pissed.

Eva points in the direction of one girl with a shock of dyed black hair and the heaviest eye make-up I’ve ever seen in my life. It makes her look half-asleep, though in a sexy way, and I’d be quite tempted to slap on the make-up myself if I didn’t think I’d just end up looking knackered and ancient, instead of appealing. The girl must sense I’m looking at her, because she turns towards us, revealing a large tattoo beneath her collarbones. It’s a life-size (and very lifelike) portrait of her own face.

“She’s going to regret that in another twenty years,” I say, “when she looks in the mirror and spots the difference.”

“She ought to regret it now,” says Eva, “seeing as she looks as if she’s got two heads, especially from a distance. Whatever was she thinking?”

I can’t imagine, and the tattooed girl’s starting to look a bit irritated by our staring now, so I suggest we go and get another drink before we accidentally cause a fight.

There are people queuing ten deep at the bar, so getting served takes forever. Most people don’t even walk away when they’ve been served, as they’re all drinking shots, so they just chuck those down their necks and order more straight away. We’re never going to get served, and I’m beginning to feel claustrophobic. A huge group of girls has just surrounded us, most of them with the kind of voices that make your ears hurt, and they all smell strongly of vanilla.

I like vanilla in food, but not on people.

“Why do all modern perfumes smell like some sort of foodstuff?” I ask Eva, as she waves a fifty-pound note above her head in an attempt to attract the bar staff’s attention. “If it isn’t vanilla, it’s mango or chocolate.”

“It’s because the EU banned all the ingredients that used to make perfumes smell sophisticated,” she says. “That’s why there’s such a market for vintage scents.”

If only there was a market for vintage women – real ones, not the fakes. There are plenty of those in here, ranging from young women dressed like burlesque dancers to those who’ve obviously spent hours creating victory rolls with their hair. I’m starting to feel less pathetic about the half-hour I took to get dressed and made-up now, even though Dan listed “taking ages to get ready” as one of my most annoying habits.

The trouble is, the effort these young women have put into getting dressed up has (largely) paid off, whereas I’m pretty sure I’ve wasted my time. I know I have, once we walk into the club and remove our coats.

“What’s this?” says Eva, pulling a face. “Have you two come as Siamese twins?”

Esther’s wearing an identical dress to mine. She claims it was an accident, but when Eva corners me in the loos a little later, I have to admit I’m sure I showed it to Esther straight after I bought it.

“It’s all a bit Single White Female , isn’t it?” says Eva, as I try to work out if I can get away with wearing my dress back to front.

I can’t, so Eva rummages in her gigantic bag and pulls out a selection of what she calls “statement necklaces”. They all weigh a ton, but the largest one does succeed in making my outfit look marginally different to Esther’s, even if its weight pulls on my neck so much that I feel like a hunchback.

“You’ll be fine, as long as you don’t bend forward too quickly,” says Eva, as I do exactly that to check my make-up in the mirror – at which point the necklace swings into my face and almost loses me an eye. That’s still weeping by the time we rejoin Esther, who’s found us seats in a corner. The Siamese twins impression is now even more marked than it was before, seeing as Esther’s obviously allergic to the perfume I accidentally sprayed into her face. She’s covered in blotches and both her eyes are running continually, so we both sit sipping our drinks and dabbing our eyes with bits of tissue, while Eva concentrates on making eye contact with men – or boys, to be more accurate, if being Joel’s age still counts as a boy.

“I’m going to circulate,” she says after a while. “It’s never a good idea to go hunting in packs, and you two look like wounded animals.”

Apparently, we look less like wounded animals than employees of the club. As soon as Eva walks off, Esther and I are approached by five people in quick succession, who all want to know why women’s handbags are being searched when none of the men’s pockets are. Then some drunken bloke staggers backwards and falls over Esther’s extended leg, spilling his drink onto her dress.

“Watch out, you clumsy idiot,” she says, which turns out to have been the worst thing she could have said. Never insult an 18-stone man who’s drunk his own body weight in beer.

Mr Flobby glares at Esther, and then looks over at me. His vision must have cleared temporarily, because – somehow – he manages to spot our matching outfits. Then he moves closer to Esther, until he’s almost nose-to-nose with her.

“Well, love,” he says, his mouth distorted by a sneer. “I might be clumsy, but at least I’m not fucking ugly. You might dress like your friend over here, but with that horrible spotty face of yours, you sure as hell don’t look like her. You’re fatter, too.”

Then he lurches off to annoy someone else, while Esther stands silently, watching him go. She looks absolutely stricken, and I feel incredibly angry on her behalf as well as horribly guilty. I know I didn’t make that absolute git say what he did, but if I hadn’t sprayed her in the face, she wouldn’t have been blotchy. And she isn’t “fucking ugly”, either – or fat. She’s just got a bigger bosom than me, that’s all, and shift dresses were created for those of us who are flat of chest.

I tell Esther this, several times, but she just raises her eyebrows at me, and doesn’t bother to reply. The whole thing’s getting more stressful by the minute, especially as Eva’s still on the dance floor getting up close and personal with a young guy who looks familiar – and now an attractive man has come over to ask if he can sit next to me.

I have NO idea what to say in reply – and these horrible sensations are definitely not shivers. It is boiling hot in here.

* * *

Well, this is going well. Eva’s still dancing, Esther’s disappeared, I’ve drunk too much and the good-looking guy keeps trying to talk to me, even though I can barely hear a word he says. Have I suddenly developed early-onset deafness or something? There’s a weird roaring noise in my ears, so maybe it’s my blood pressure rising.