‘Elisa WhatsApped Lexi, apparently, and it seems she can.’
I would sweep my fancy notebook to the floor with irritation if the desk wasn’t so chock full of stuff that it would take at least two piles of mail with it.
Elisa, with herpeanut-sized brain, has outfoxed me. This explains how jellyfish are still a species.
‘I will kill the bitch,’ I hiss.
‘Freya,’ says Dan, clearly startled.
‘Meet Freya the Slayer,’ I say. I am sounding unhinged.
You go, girl,shrieks Mildred.Bet you’d get a nail gun in Lidl! They have everything. We should go now!
‘Freya, we have to do this, for Lexi’s sake.’
‘Yes, I know, for Lexi,’ I say and I grind my teeth. Myteeth-grinding is increasing too. At this rate, I won’t need a nut cracker. I’ll be able to crack any nut myself with my teeth.
That’s the recipe thinking session over for this morning, I decide. I will worry about it next week. Now, I just have to worry about Saturday.
*
I haven’t seen Elisa in the flesh for some time and when I do, the whole early Saturday morning of Lexi trying on every item she owns gets pushed to the back of my mind. Because Elisa is, and there is no other way of saying this, agreen-tinged tan colour. I don’t mean her clothes. Her clothes are perfectly OK if you like that sort ofI’m atwenty-fouryear-old going to a night clublook (Elisa is nottwenty-four and is not going to a night club, but I am not here to be bitchy, oh no).
However, Surella appeared to have created, among their other products, a newhigh-speed fake tan that turns the wearer bronze with an unmistakable hint of green. I had the same problem myself once with a very famous tan that made other people a glowing brown and made me look like I was a troll’s love child.
I wonder if it’s a trick of the light, because these Surella people are clearly spending money on the marketing and launch. Would they have let Elisa out if she was channelling Shrek? Or have the chemicals in tan affected their minds? Too long in the lab, and all that ...?
The launch this Saturday morning (for brunch with Prosecco!!!as the invitation gushes) is in a very glamorous hotel called The Mercer where a large and achingly trendy room has been rented out.
And then Dan moves closer to me and whispers: ‘Is she, like, green?’
I love him fiercely at that moment. We are a team again, which we have not been for the past few days since he broke the news of this meeting.
‘It could be the lights,’ I say, trying to be someone kind and nice. I mean, Ihaveto sometimes.
We both look up.
The lights in The Mercer Hotel are a subtleoff-white, perfect for the launch of a new product. The lights are not at fault.
From the lack of othernon-Surella people and the scurrying around of two assistants puttingneon-pink Surella bags on a long table and adjusting the flowers alongside a big cardboard Surella stand, it is obvious that we are not there for the launch as such.
It appears that Elisa has organised this so that Lexi, Dan and I are there for thepre-launch. In other words, the bit before anybody gets there. Her mother isn’t even there yet, for which I am grateful.
The thought of Adele Markham descending upon me like a designer vulture, all clattering genuine Chanel pearls and diamonds that would take the sight out of your eyes, is enough to give me a headache.
Elisa has invited us along early so that Lexi can look around, marvel at how terribly beautiful and glamorous it all is and then leave.
I figure that this scheduling plan is because of two things: one, which I have always suspected, is that nothing will age the endlessly ‘youthful’ Elisa faster than having it made obvious that she actually isthirty-nine and has given birth to a nowfourteen-year-old daughter. And two, she doesn’t like sharing the limelight and I’m a lot more famous than she is.
None of this is apparently affecting Lexi, who is looking around the way she used to walk around Santa’s grotto at Christmas in those early childhood days when there were sometimes real reindeer, or sometimes just fluffy big ones that she wanted to bring home with her.
Once, memorably, there was anover-refreshed Santa who reeked of whiskey. It didn’t matter – it was all magic. There is a lot less magic today in watching Elisa wandering around with big heated rollers still on the top of her head to get thatever-important crown lift. She is shoehorned into alizard-print stretchy fabric that would be a dress if there was more of it, and it has to be said, she’s thin.
Not-eating thin? Liposuction thin? Vodka, cigarettes and cocaine diet thin?
‘It’s all beautiful,’ Lexi breathes.
Finally, Dan and I chance another glance at each other. We are on the same page on this one. We don’t want our little girl to get hurt. That’s all that matters. And if Shrek hurts her, the bitch inside me will emerge pretty quickly.
