All stories

Green green grass of home

She had it all. Perfect teeth; perky tits, clothes that clung effortlessly to an hourglass figure; a hulking beefcake in tow, all fake tan, gleaming teeth and back hair as thick as a shagpile carpet.

And she was everywhere: in the gym, perspiring daintily into a white monogrammed towel while BackHair stood nearby, holding her water bottle, while I huffed and lumbered and sweated on the cross trainer.

Or ordering wine at my local, perching effortlessly on a tall barstool, practically batting off admirers, nibbling diced kale leaves or whatever from her Chanel handbag while the rest of us guzzled our filthy pork scratchings.

I sulked in the corner of the bar with Tom, who watched me failing to not watch her. I took a swig of my unsophisticated, run-of-the-mill pint disconsolately and stared at my scabby daps.

“Cheer up” said Tom “your hair’s nicer’n her’s.” I punched him, but shook it loose anyway. It was nice hair. Tom liked to run his hands through it when we spent Sundays in with a box set. Then I glimpsed her highlighted, tumbling locks - not a grey hair in sight - and scowled again. Maybe I could pop down the hairdresser’s, get them to spruce this old mop up a bit this weekend…?

But, then our chips arrived and I cheered right up. We shared a large portion between us and squirted ketchup over the lot, the way we both liked it. Tom talked with his mouth full, bits of chip flying everywhere. He was on form tonight, telling me all about his day. If anyone else had told those stories they’d have been dull as ditchwater, but Tom made everything sound funny and I laughed at him till ketchup ran down my chin.

“Pure class, you are” laughed Tom, kissing my head and wiping off the ketchup with the back of his hand. His breath smelled like vinegar. I burped then giggled.

“I have to go for a wee, let go, oaf man”

As I sat on the loo I heard the door to the bathroom open and tiny delicate steps totter over to the sink; the splash of water, the unzipping of a makeup bag.

I opened the toilet door and of course it was her. She stood, wide-mouthed, applying mascara. Under the strip light she looked tired. Brittle. I smiled at her thinly in the mirror, but she didn’t smile back. I washed my hands and left her alone to touch up her makeup for the barman’s approval, feeling somehow buoyed now.

“Come on Tom, let’s get back. I fancy jammies and telly. You in?”

“Always”

On the way out I saw her perched alone on her high stool sipping her wine, and batting her freshly mascara-ed lashed hopelessly at the barman, her admirers absorbed by the telly, or the pool table, or their wives now.

I took Tom’s workstained fingers in my grubby, nailbitten ones and we headed out into the rain and our own brand of comfortable imperfection.

Evie twirled a little in the middle of her morning sitting room. Everything perfect, not a rare hand painted object d’art out of place. Oh, and the feel of the new carpet beneath her stockinged feet was of clouds topped with angels.

She soared into the kitchen where Julian was spooning hand roasted Guatemalan beans into the grinder.

‘Within a fortnight, you mark my words,’ Evie said.

Marjorie at her bouffant best, a faint cloud of perfume topped with golden tresses and robed beneath blue and gold silks. Morning coffee between friends but it was ever thus when one of them had a “little surprise” waiting.

‘The dining room?’ Marjorie murmured. ‘This is something new.’

Not the only thing, but it could wait. Let the tension grow, feed it on small talk until Marjorie was fit to burst and only then make the idle suggestion, let’s slip through to the lounge, but oh, let’s take our shoes off first, shall we?

The look on Marjorie’s face, the way her lips formed a perfect round O. Evie glowed from the inside to the out.

Marjorie said, ‘But it’s not Arabian lamb’s wool, is it?’

It was a Cumberland blend, five hundred thread count, almost the very finest.

Almost.

Evie’s heart sinking as they crossed the cul-de-sac to Marjorie’s ever so slightly bigger house, up the steps and in through the front door flanked by stone lions in a manner reminiscent of Evie’s stone elephants.

In the hallway Marjorie’s husband was coming down the stairs, light silk dressing gown belted loosely around the waist.

Marjorie stopped abruptly. ‘Oh, finished with Lizbeth?’

‘Dicey moment with a ketchup bottle,’ Victor said. ‘So I took a shower, just in case, because…’ He smiled, and nodded to the lounge.

‘You’re a darling,’ Marjorie said, and ushered Evie forward.

Marjorie said, ‘Elizabeth is another one of his pHD students.’

It was Evie’s turn to close her eyes and slip off her shoes. The feel in the lounge was as though the angels themselves had lain down on the floor beneath her feet.

‘Arabian lamb’s wool,’ Marjorie said. ‘The very finest hand woven deep shag pile carpet available across Europe.’

Evie waded deeper into the lounge.

‘Look,’ Marjorie said. ‘Footprints!’

She twirled in the middle of the room and skipped back to Evie.

‘That’s the sign of a decent shag – the marks stay for hours! Now then. Tea?’

Evie left a sad trail of footprints as she trudged towards the striped Parker Knoll four seater that trumped even her hand stitched Italian leather. Ever the trendsetter, but no one in their circle of friends kept a diary of who was first.

The other side of the solid oak table were some curious marks, round dimples in pairs, close together. Not just footprints in this carpet, hand prints too, a pair of wide flat palms and in between these were marks from a daintier set.

Evie sat on the sofa and she began to smile.

Fred had dressed carefully for his first appearance at this year’s Annual Whistling Meet; he’d buffed his loafers, put on his sharpest shirt and waistcoat that he’d had specially embroidered with his trademark dice on fire, designating him as the wild card of the competition. He combed his moustache one final time and applied another layer of lip balm before taking the stage. Fred whistled his way majestically through John Lennon’s ‘Jealous guy’. On the final pitch-perfect note the silent hall erupted into applause, women fanned themselves, small children were staring wide-eyed, Fred ignored them all and sought out the inevitable scowl of his nemesis and 3-time AWM champion Nico Bondenberg. Fred smirked smugly as the judges awarded him a 9.6, the highest score in the competition so far.

On the second day of the AWM Fred sat in the conference centre canteen enjoying a plate of chips. Nico entered flanked by his usual hangers on. Fred sniggered to himself, Nico whirled around and glared at him. ‘Oh Fred’ he said, as if just noticing him, ‘It’s you. Managing not to throw yourself at anyone this year?’ Fred could feel his colour rising as he recalled how he had humiliated himself the previous year by dedicating a heartfelt rendition of ‘Three times a lady’ to head judge, Laura Spinkerlton, in the final. She had scored him a 7.9 in what he felt was a rebuff of his declaration and it had cost him the competition. Luckily Laura had retired as head judge for this year’s AWM, or so Fred thought. ‘Yes, I doubt you’d be privy, but it looks like the delicious Laura will be returning as guest judge for this year’s final.’ Nico stated casually winking at his cronies. Before Fred knew it the chip in his hand was flying across the canteen. It hit Nico’s cheek and slowly slid off, leaving a trail of ketchup. People watching the exchange gasped and stared. Nico wiped his face, whirled on his heel and stormed out.

Fred knew that Nico would be plotting his revenge and as the grand final approached he worried alternately between his showstopper piece, facing Laura Spinkerlton and what Nico had in store for him. The final had come down to Nico and Fred. Nico had wowed the crowds with a medley of soul classics, including, quite unoriginally Fred thought, ‘Sitting on the dock of a bay’, which the crowd had joined in with. Nico had scored an unnerving 9.8. They met stage right as Nico was walking off to a standing ovation. ‘Beat that!’ Nico laughed. ‘Oh I intend to’ smiled Fred. ‘I’ve got something to show you before you go on’ Nico said. Fred’s eyes narrowed, ‘what is it?’ Nico pulled out his phone, ‘A gift from me to you.’ before Fred could blink he was faced with an eye-watering image of Nico and Laura Spinkerlton, her ecstatic face pressed into his shagpile rug. Fred choked out a roar and launched himself at Nico. They rolled onto the stage like tumbleweed, wrestling, a ball of elbows and grunts. The crowd started cheering them on. This would be an AGWM they would not soon forget. They were both later disqualified.

Maura stood at the marble work surface, gripping the handle of the knife, trying to keep her shoulders relaxed. If Sophie didn’t stop talking soon, one of them was going to be scraping the other’s brains out of that luscious shag-pile carpet.

‘Of course, I want little Benjamin to be in the best possible school, but I’d hate to think that doing so would perpetuate social inequality’, she continued.

Fucking sociologists, Maura thought to herself, as she fought the urge to stick the blade in her sister’s self-indulgent, smug face rather than the chilli pepper. And if she didn’t dice the chilli pepper, the salsa would be sub-optimal, and who would want that?

‘Thanks soooo much for helping’ Sophie simpered. ‘I simply couldn’t have coped with all these guests on my own. I can’t believe that Trevor invited them all. I told him you and the girls were coming, and I wanted some time to catch up with you three, not compare babies with these golf wives’.

‘oh you love it’, Maura snapped. ‘How could you possibly expect me to believe that you didn’t invite all these mini-twinsets here with their CEO twat husbands and their little fucking Ruperts and Julians if it wasn’t to show off, again?!’

A small gasp from the doorway, and Maura turned to see Ella, her seven year old, clinging to the door-frame, mud on her knee and tears on her eyes.

‘Julian told me I was stupid for having keptchup on my keen-waw. Mummy, what’s keen-waw and why are you shouting at auntie Sophie?’

‘Oh sweetheart I'm sorry! You know how sometimes you and Suzie fight when you're tired? That's all it is’

I thought you didn't believe in lying to your children?’ snapped Sophie. She turned to Ella. ‘Honey. It's not quite like that. It's more like when you have a toy which you got given for being a really good girl and Suzie thinks you're just showing it off to make her broken Barbie look even worse, when it's her own fault the leg fell off anyway!’

‘you BITCH’, shouted Maura, throwing herself across the work surface and bowling Sophie over. ‘How DARE you say that to me! You didn’t EARN all this, you just spread your legs to the richest twat who’d have you. Everyone knows he’s shagging his secretary anyway’

The bundle of arm and legs which was the two siblings spiralled and rolled across the floor, knocking over the bin, the kitchen stool, poor Ella, and the bowl of water put down for Sophie’s Chihuahua, Rapunzel. What a stupid name for an almost hairless dog anyway, thought Maura as the tepid slobbery water splashed over the pair of them. She dragged herself free from the tussle, hauling herself up and calling Ella over.

‘Come of sweetheart, we’re leaving. Suzie? SUZIE! Car, both of you’

The battered old VW pulled out of the driveway, tyres squealing, almost but not quite drowning out the yelp as Rapunzel slipped beneath the threadbare rubber and Sophie’s accompanying howl.

Joanne had been my best friend forever. It started at primary school, where we’d been paired up on that first day, me choking back the sobs of abandonment, her laughing and twirling her ponytail between her fingers. Even when we were five, she was everything I wasn't - clever, pretty, able to do a cartwheel when I could barely manage a forward roll. She had a Charlie’s Angels lunchbox, and I nagged my mum to get me one. One finally appeared under the Christmas tree that year, but when I proudly walked into school with it at the start of term, Joanne had upgraded hers to a Bay City Rollers one. It set the stage for a childhood spent one step behind. She got the role of the Virgin Mary in the school nativity the year I was a camel. She came first in high jump at sports day, whereas I bumbled along in last place in the sack race. I didn’t care though, our addiction to Smash Hits magazine and Hubba Bubba bubblegum (she always blew the biggest bubbles) were just some of the things that kept up permanently Best Friends Forever. We moved onto secondary school, where she was the first to get a bra, her period, Boots 17 lip gloss, a Princess Di haircut, a love bite (which to this day I believe she did herself with the nozzle of her mums Hoover).

I trotted along quite happily in her shadow, watching her blossom into the coolest kid in the lower sixth. Thanks to her elevated status we got ourselves invited to THE party of the year, Richard Macnamara’s seventeenth birthday party. We spent weeks preparing for it, and when the night of the party finally arrived, we were blushered and backcombed to within an inch of our lives. I was rocking a Madonna inspired crop top and Joanne lent me a pair of dangly earrings in the shape of little plastic dice, which clattered gently against my neck whenever I flicked my hair. I had more reason than usual to be excited. I’d heard on the school grapevine that Paul Jenkins was going to rig spin the bottle so that he could kiss me. Me!! For all the things Joanne had done before me, snogging the face off an upper sixth boy was not one of them.

The party was in full swing when we arrived, Duran Duran blasting from the stereo, and we helped ourselves to plastic cups of White Lightning cider.The lounge was crowded, inebriated teenages lolling on Mrs Macnamara’s cream shagpile carpet, sharing a tray of hotdogs. Paul Jenkins was sitting with his legs stretched in front of him, his back against the white leather sofa. Seeing me, he smiled and gestured for me to sit next to him. I obliged, pulling my too short ra-ra skirt down to cover my thighs. He slipped his arm from the sofa and placed it around my shoulder. ‘Nice earings’ he said, as he leant in to kiss my neck. Before any contact with my skin was made, I heard Joanne’s voice booming above the music ‘Hey, what’s going on?’ Her cheeks were flushed, her pupils dilated thanks to the 20% proof cider. I must have looked confused, because she continued ‘Don't look all innocent, you bitch. Keep away from him’ She lurched at me, attempting to push me away from Paul. Paul grabbed her arm ‘Calm down, Joanne’ he said, but she pushed her face up against his ‘I thought you liked me,’ she spat ‘not her.’ Joanne grabbed a bottle of tomato ketchup from the tray of hotdogs and sprayed it all over Paul. And me. And Mrs Macnamara’s cream shagpile carpet.

Best friends forever? Those dice earrings turned my ears septic, and I never spoke to Joanne again.