At Bristol as an undergraduate I bought all my clothes at the Oxfam shop. As did Charlotte: we had a spectacular array of flapper dresses for our evening wear, and some very pretty cropped beaded cardigans and flouncy skirts for everyday. My Oxfam bargains amused James, my then boyfriend: ‘Ooooooh, a bit unconventional, isn’t it, to wear someone’s granny’s cardigan?’ But as I was doing English, with lots of Keats and Coleridge and the Gothic novel, and Charlotte, Art History, our romantic taste in clothing matched our subjects.
‘Who wants to be like those dreary Sloanes?’ Charlotte would pout prettily as she donned an Oxfam cardy and gypsy skirt. ‘All those silly Laura Ashley pastels and bright-coloured cords?’
Never in a million years did I suspect that I would continue shopping at Oxfam. It was fine for a cash-strapped eighteenyear-old, but the sight of shabby elderly women browsing among the bric-a-brac nowadays sends a little shiver of anxiety down my spine. Will I be the same in my sunset years? Badly dressed, hunched under the weight of debts and family burdens, myopically searching for something ‘nice’ to cheer up the house, or the grandchildren. Penury in my thirties is one thing, but I really don’t want to be still hand-to-mouth when I’m in my sixties.
Guy refuses to address the issue of our retirement. I’ve told him how Charlotte and Jack plan to buy a farmhouse in France when Jack retires, because the living is cheaper and the French state health-care better than the NHS; and how my mother’s neighbours have moved to Spain because of the sun and the fact that they can live in a villa by the sea for the price of their little house in Tonbridge.
But Guy infuriates me by refusing to even consider making plans. ‘Oh, Harriet, you needn’t worry: things are going to get better. Just you wait: I have a very good feeling about Rajput – it’s like Bollywood meets Dad’s Army.’
I, however, am not convinced that those bickering maharajahs are going to be our meal ticket.
I resign myself to the prospect of being a regular client of this hospice shop for many years to come. Apparently, this is not as shaming in Guy’s circles as it is in mine: Guy’s mother was very open about buying her tweed suits at the charity shops in Gosport. I had assumed the Carews would consider buying second-hand clothes as demeaning as buying their own furniture. Instead: ‘Spending money on frocks is such a waste.’ Cecily Carew eyes me up and down as if I were a clothes-horse. ‘School fees and the house: those are our family’s priorities.’
For my part, I don’t want to be caught scouring the racks of clean if slightly musty clothes that someone better-off has set aside for the ‘less fortunate’, so I plan each foray to the hospice shop with precision. A) Fold one of my oldest skirts into a carrier bag. B) Step into the shop with said carrier bag. C) Look around: if I see someone I know, I smile, hand in the cast-off, and retreat. D) If the coast is clear, I pick what I want and slip behind the curtain to try it on. Then I buy it and sneak out of the shop.
In this fashion I have bought a Donna Karan skirt (£8) a MaxMara jacket (£18) and a Whistles linen dress (£12).
From the cash register, a middle-aged woman, head nodding out of time with the Classic FM on the radio beside her, smiles at me: she recognizes me from previous visits. Depressing or what?
I stop the self-pity when I spot two coats in sizes 12 and 14. As I step into the makeshift dressing room, I ask myself who else knows about my struggle to keep up with my middle-class friends on half their salary? I look in the mirror. Well, does it matter if I can’t keep up the appearance of being self-confident and solvent?
It matters rather less, I decide, than the fact that the size-12 coat, a camel-haired and deliciously cosy number from Ronit Zilkha, is definitely too tight. I’m going to have to start the Modified Atkins that I read about in Vogue at the dentist’s last spring. Why did my mother have to burden me with her classic English pear shape? The coat fits my top but hugs my hips and bottom too snugly. Regretfully, I slip it off and try on the size 14, a navy-blue Jaeger in plain wool: it’s a perfect fit and at £24 it is a steal.
I walk my bargain to the cash register, and as the cashier gives me a complicit smile, I suddenly see, standing ram-rod straight in a boxy designer-looking twill suit, Mary Jane Thompson. She sees me too – and the coat.
‘Harriet! Find anything nice?’ My boss smiles condescendingly. ‘I’m just dropping off two jackets from last winter, a bit worn around the cuffs.’
Shame contracts my throat. Then inspiration strikes: ‘It’s for Alex. They’re doing Bugsy Malone.’ I beam. ‘The drama head at the Griffin couldn’t find anything that fit him.’ I wave. ‘See you in a tick.’
I step outside. Social humiliation avoided – just.
5
‘Oh, what do you care?’ Charlotte giggles when I tell her of the encounter. ‘Maybe if she thinks you’re really hard-up, she’ll give you a rise!’
We’re sitting in my kitchen, a teapot and two mugs on the table between us.
‘Ha! Mary Jane’s idea of compassion is to perform the Heimlich manoeuvre on you when you sneeze and offer you a hanky when you choke.’
Our eleven o’clock coffee has given way to a pot of organic tea. Manic Organic prefers very expensive organic green tea which she buys for me at Nature and Nurture and assures me will make me live longer.
‘I don’t want you to think I’m being ungrateful,’ I moan, ‘but who wants to live longer when you have no money, second-hand clothes, and soon three kids at public school?’
A piercing scream reaches us from upstairs. ‘No-no-no-no, Mr Caroo!’
‘Omigod!’ Charlotte’s eyes widen in alarm.
We hear Guy’s footsteps running down the stairs.
‘She’s barking!’ He comes into the kitchen. ‘Hullo, Charlotte. Our au pair is absolutely barking!’
‘What’s happened?’ I ask. I don’t care if she’s barking; as long as she doesn’t eat children, steal money, or shrink my one and only silk blouse, I want to keep Ilona as long as she’ll have us. ‘Why did she scream?’
Guy holds up his best white shirt, now a dismal shade of pink. ‘I told her if she doesn’t check the children’s pockets for pens, I’m going to ban the computer from her room.’
‘Oh, Guy, that’s cruel,’ I begin.
‘Is she into Internet dating, Facebook, or computer games?’ Charlotte asks.
‘So far we only have evidence of the former. We’ve had a catwalk of Essex men, Cubans, Poles, Russians and one very odd American who claimed to be the reincarnation of James Dean. But I’ve worked out that what she’s really interested in is their cars. Ilona doesn’t do public transport.’ Guy shakes his head. ‘Women are tricky beasts.’ He disappears back into his study.
Charlotte laughs. ‘He sounds like our Italian count, doesn’t he?’
I immediately re-live our trip to Italy when we were nineteen, and our encounter with the Roman count who, seeing us salivate over a menu card outside an expensive restaurant, bought us dinner – at the price of listening to his reminiscences of English girlfriends.
There was also the lifeguard who came to ‘save’ us when we were bathing in the Med, although we had never cried for help and all he did when he reached us was rub his hands up and down our bodies. By the end of our Italian trip, Charlotte and I had sealed our best-friendship, and were relieved to return to the relative safety of Bristol, and our boyfriends – Jack (Charlotte’s) and James (mine).
I study my best friend now, with her glossy dark hair, her carefully assembled casual look and bright eyes. We have different schedules, have married very different men, and see each other no more than once a week. But I cannot imagine life without Charlotte, and her living only a few minutes’ bike ride away has been one of the perks of this shabby house in this run-down area. Which is one reason why her