Jane Green - Bookends

Sitting on the tube, I lean my body slightly to the right, so that I’ve got an almost clear view in the reflection of the black glass, and, though I have never been a vain person, it’s definitely not too late to change, and I can’t believe how I look!

I love this new hair. No, I don’t just love it, I think I may well be completely in love with it. I can’t stop stroking it, marvelling at how soft it feels, how it feels, in fact, like hair , rather than like pubic hair that had accidentally been planted in the wrong spot.

And the only reason I’m late for Portia’s now is that I spent so long marvelling at my reflection in the mirror, I didn’t realize what time it was. That and the fact that once I’d dressed in my new clothes and shaken my hair around a bit, I realized that the finishing touch would have to be a bit of make-up, the only problem being that it’s been so long since I wore any I didn’t even know what I had.

Luckily, lurking in the back of the bathroom cabinet was an old brown eyeliner and an old lipgloss that I vaguely remember being stuck to the cover of one of the glossy magazines that I must have bought aeons ago.

I dragged the eyeliner across my upper lid, and then a bit underneath, but I completely overdid it and a rather messy Cleopatra stared uncertainly back at me, so I grabbed a cotton bud and smudged it, after which it actually looked pretty good. In fact, I was astonished at how my eyes suddenly seemed double the size.

Hmm. What else could I do with the eyeliner? I decided to use it as a lipliner, and very slowly outlined my lips, before doing the cotton bud trick again, then filling it in with the lip gloss.

I smiled at my reflection, and then, lacking mascara and blusher, I did what I remember the girls at school doing when we were eleven years old, too young for make-up, but desperate to look grown-up and impress. I pinched my cheeks until they were red, and then licked my fingers, carefully brushing them against my eyelashes and holding them to try to curl the lashes. Not a fantastic curl, but a discernible difference, certainly.

And by the time I grabbed my coat and ran out the door, I was already fifteen minutes late, but what did I care? I looked the best I’d looked in ten years, and that, quite frankly, was the only thing that suddenly seemed important.

‘Cath, you look wonderful.’ Portia comes to the door of her apartment, air kisses me on each cheek and beckons me inside, through a wide, airy corridor to an enormous living room with huge windows overlooking communal gardens off Sutherland Avenue.

Several scented candles are dotted around, and the air is filled with the sweet scent of orange and cinnamon. On the glass coffee table, next to the enormous bowl of white lilies, is a bottle of champagne, already opened, and two glasses.

There isn’t a colour to be seen, and everything looks terrifyingly expensive. The sofas are so white, I’m almost loath to sit down just in case I should have some sort of ghastly period leakage or something, which of course would only happen if you were to find yourself sitting on an immaculate white sofa.

It is exactly where I would have expected Portia to live, the sort of apartment that you only ever normally see in the pages of a glossy interior magazine, the sort of apartment that I’ve never set foot in, in my entire life.

Portia pours me a glass of champagne and collapses elegantly on the sofa next to me, her knee-length skinny skirt more than adequately showing off the length of her legs, helped somewhat by high strappy sandals.

Portia looks rich. She looks as if she doesn’t have a care in the world. And, although I am in my new grey flannel trousers, my new pink cashmere-mix sweater, with my glossy locks sitting sleekly on my shoulders, next to Portia I feel even more frumpy than I did this morning.

There is something about her appearance that looks effortless. If you look closely you will see that she is wearing make-up, and quite a lot of it at that, but unless you are standing nose to nose, she looks naturally beautiful, as if she has just fallen out of bed, brushed her hair, slicked on some lip gloss and run out the door.

And her whole look, the pencil-slim skirt, the elaborate brocade skin-tight top, trimmed with lace and thin velvet ribbon, the high-heeled sandals that cling to her feet with wisps of leather, screams Vogue . It screams super-expensive understatement.

She raises her glass to mine and smiles. ‘Cheers,’ she says, and then sips some champagne, sighing and sitting back, looking for all the world as if she should be in a film or, at the very least, a television advert.

‘Your flat’s amazing,’ I say. ‘I can’t believe how huge it is, how high these ceilings are.’

‘I know. The first time I came to see it, it was in the morning and light seemed to stream through every window. The minute I came into this room I just fell in love with the proportions. Do you want the guided tour?’

I nod, and she leads me through into the kitchen, the dining room, points out the terrace at the back, and shows me the bedroom. All of it is beautiful, and at the last door Portia hesitates and grins before turning the knob.

‘This,’ she says, ‘is the real me. It’s the room I never show people because it’s in such an appalling state, so here goes. Tah dah,’ and she opens the door. ‘My study.’

No wonder she manages to keep her flat immaculate. All the junk, all the papers, all the books, are in here. The walls are lined with bookshelves, and every available inch is crammed full of something. An enormous desk takes up one side of the room, and again piles of papers, letters, scripts, are threatening to topple over on either side of a state-of-the-art computer.

‘This is my real home,’ she says with a smile, gesturing around. ‘It’s the one room in which I feel really comfortable.’

Which of course doesn’t surprise me, because the rest of the flat is like a museum. In here there’s a navy blue sofa, the cushions squashed flat, and Portia flops down on it with a grin.

‘I do all my read-throughs on here,’ she says. ‘My favourite place in the world,’ and for a second I catch a glimpse of Portia before she felt she had to play a role, before she became the sophisticated adult she is today. Portia was always sophisticated, of that I’m sure, but at university it was far less well honed. You knew she came from a wealthy family, but you didn’t know .

Now she wears it like a coat of armour, and it occurs to me that if I were in Portia’s shoes, if I had developed an armour of sophistication to present to the world, I too would probably get in touch with friends I hadn’t seen for ten years because surely those would be the only people with whom I could drop my guard.

We go back to the living room and I ask her. I ask her whether she is comfortable playing this role, and for a second she looks hurt, but she swiftly regains her composure and lets out a small laugh.

‘This was a role I was always destined to play,’ she says. ‘And Christ, it could be so much worse. Far rather the single girl-about-town than a country housewife stuck in some crumbling pile in the middle of nowhere, with just the children, the Labradors and the horses for company.

‘Anyway,’ she says, peering at me closely, ‘what sort of role do you think I’m playing?’

‘God, I’m sorry, Portia, I didn’t mean to offend you. It’s just that everything about you is so perfect, so polished, and nobody I know lives like this. I mean, if this were my flat these sofas would be grey by now, and nothing would match, and there’d be washing-up all over the kitchen, and it just looks like it must be such hard work, living like this.’