Maybe it’s punishment for me shoplifting a packet of Jelly Tots from the newsagent’s in 1982?
Shelley
You can’t allow this Leen. You’ve got to put your foot down.
Lena
No choice seemingly. Too early to start drinking?
Shelley
Never.
Lena
Hope we’re still on for Tuesday night girls. PLEASE SAY YES!
3
EIGHT DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS
‘So, are you all ready for the big day?’ the bartender asks. Shelley looks round at Lena and Pearl and the three women laugh. ‘What?’ He grins. ‘What did I say?’
‘Three champagne cocktails please,’ Shelley announces.
‘Oh, like that, is it?’
‘D’you do pints?’ Lena asks, leaning forward over the bar. ‘Pintsof champagne?’
‘Tense time of year then,’ the neatly bearded young man remarks with a smile. They perch on stools as he makes their cocktails, taking in the glamour and opulence of the Rivoli Bar at The Ritz.
It’s an annual tradition, coming here. Just one cocktail each; it’s all they can afford. But they soak it all in: the polished walnut and glistening chandeliers and Christmas trees decorated in silver and gold.
From there, they stroll happily onwards to Soho where they squeeze their way into their favourite pub. It’s noisy and scruffy, its gloss-painted walls deeply nicotine stained and hung with ancient tattered theatre posters. It has terrible loos and the burgundy patterned carpet is rather sticky. However, althoughthe cocktails are always fun to kick off their Christmas night, here is where the friends really feel at home. Miraculously, as Shelley is served, a tiny table in the corner becomes free, and Lena bags it.
Soho has changed a lot since Shelley, Pearl and Lena worked together just a short hop away on a women’s magazine in the mid-nineties. Chain coffee shops have proliferated, squeezing out the celebrated greasy spoon where they often converged for hungover lunches. Madam Jojo’s has gone, and the piano bar next door, where they’d perched on stools at the piano and laughed away many a night. It hardly seems possible that thirty years have whipped by since they met in that cheerful buzzy office, filled with music and chatter and clouds of Shockwaves hairspray.
Lena was features writer and Shelley the editor’s PA. Shelley had met Joel there. Joel the art director, loud and brash and wildly flirtatious with his risqué banter and bleached quiff. He’d slept with half the office before he and Shelley had got together. But he’d grown up by then, she decided. Got it all out of his system, she’d told Pearl and Lena, as if to convince herself as much as her friends.
Pearl was the magazine’s beauty editor and never 100 per cent sure about Joel. However, she too had met her future husband on the magazine, soon after landing in London from the sleepy Cheshire village where she’d grown up. Shy, lovely, handsome Dean, who everyone had adored. They’d been mates at first, as everyone was on the magazine: a riotous gang. Dean had been a designer, laying out pages and always taking extra care when working on Pearl’s beauty features. Dean always worked away quietly, in contrast to Joel, his boss, who liked toperformat work, showing off, making everyone laugh.
Pearl had always liked Dean, and it wasn’t just Lena and Shelley who’d teased her about what was obviously a mutualattraction.Pearl and Dean.It had been the office joke: the perfect coupling that had yet to happen; that unmistakeable music blasted out frequently, long after the joke had worn thin. It didn’t matter that Dean was three years younger than Pearl. They had fallen in love, and two years on they were married – Pearl in a vintage silk dress and Dean looking as if he’d raided his dad’s wardrobe for a suit. The whole magazine staff had attended, and Joel had created a celebratory mock magazine cover depicting Pearl and Dean smiling broadly, cheeks pressed together, to mark the day. Beautifully framed, it was presented to them on their big day.
Pearl + Dean Special Wedding Issue!
Pearl was thirty-two when their baby, Brandon, was born. They wanted more children but a year or so later, Dean became ill. There was a year of hell, through all the chemo and radiotherapy. And it seemed hopeful for a while, but then the cancer came back, and Pearl’s beautiful man faded and then died on his fortieth birthday. She’d lost the love of her life and Brandon, aged ten, had lost his much adored dad.
The years have spun by and finally, last year, Pearl started dating again, crumbling under pressure from Shelley and Lena to at least give it a go. After all, it had been over a decade. And three months ago, on Hinge, she met a handsome Belgian man named Elias.
‘So he keeps hinting that he’s planning this amazing present for me,’ she announces now.
‘What is it?’ Lena exclaims.
‘He won’t say! He won’t even give me a hint. He’s going home to Brussels for Christmas and he’s back on the twenty-seventh and says I need to pack a bag.’
‘A bag!’ Shelley grins. ‘I wonder where you’re going?’
‘I don’t know!’ Pearl beams at them, cheeks flushed in the overheated pub. ‘What d’you think Joel’s getting you, Shell?’
