‘Look, princess, it’s half three in the morning, you’ve had a crazy day. Just sleep over, okay…?’ His eyes lit up, grinning. ‘Come on,’ he beckoned her.
Isabella tongued the roof of her mouth. Then she kicked off her pumps, put her phone in her back pocket and attempted to climb the mess mountain. Aerials, radios, an alarm clock, roller-blades, monopoly, biscuit tins.
Stoo pulled her up by her worthy little paws and there she was. Looking down, in Cornwall, with a stranger, in a room piled sky high with mess, on a mattress, on top of it. Ridiculous. Ridics.
‘I know it’s not St Lucia but it’s all right.’
Isabella laughed, and for a moment thought about maybe kissing Stoo. Just for jokes. Then she reminded herself of the fact that he was a pikey.
‘Okay, so see you…maybe not in the morning because I usually don’t wake up till one, but I guess I’ll see you when I see you.’
Then he hopped down, as though he did it all the time, waved and turned off the light, leaving Isabella alone under the fairy lights, practically kissing the ceiling. Oh my God! she thought. She was like Tinkerbell, and they were her lost boys. And that actually made everything seem quite magical.
During the night, as she slept, Stoo let himself into Isabella’s makeshift bedroom, tiptoeing, tight-lipped, and stole her coat. Aubin and Wills–nice. Downstairs he fumbled through the pockets, MAC receipt after Urban Outfitters receipt and then her bankcard. ‘Isabella M. J. Bumpington-Brown.’
‘Jesus,’ he nudged Bill. ‘She weren’t lying, look.’ He showed the card to his friends.
‘I’ve got this feeling,’ he laughed in triumph, ‘it’s her!’
Woken up by birdsong, Isabella stirred and stretched. What a sleep. My goodness, what a beautiful sleep. Her body felt electric, recharged, reset, alive, buzzing. She let herself slide halfway down the mountain, past a notice board, spray glue, an office chair, and to the window. She pulled back a crack of the scruffy curtain and saw the sweetest bird singing on the sill. She rubbed her eyes and climbed the rest of the way down.
‘Mockingbird,’ Stoo said as he opened the door, pleased to see Isabella still there.
Isabella slept at Barnaby’s house for the next thirteen nights. Separate from the world in their fantasy land of rubbish she became a Snow White (except without the cooking, although she did order them plenty of takeaways). She taught the boys about coffee and they got ‘buzzing’ off it. She made them watch The OC and Mamma Mia!. She cut open an avocado and fed Stoo the mushy pear innards. She made them taste real chocolate and taught them how to count to ten in French. And they took the piss out of her iPod playlist. Stoo taught Isabella how to eat chips, beans and gravy, the significance of hip-hop and Family Guy. On the fourteenth day she spent the entire afternoon under the Cornwall rays (well, a sun bed at the back of a local salon, to, you know, at least make it look as though she had been away. The deluded woman behind the counter rang the Sun, to inform them that Paris Hilton was in town).
Then she got her bag ready and prepared herself to say goodbye to Paulie, to J and to Bill but didn’t quite know how she’d manage to leave Stoo.
‘I guess I should go now,’ she said at the door. Her taxi beeped from the road outside.
‘Do you have to?’ Stoo asked, unable to look her in the eyes. It was strange seeing her with make-up on. She had been herself when she was with him. ‘Take this,’ he said and slid his beaded bracelet down his forearm, wrangling it at the wrist, he let it scrape his skin and handed it to her. And she kissed him.
And then the house turned into a magical palace, Isabella transformed into an elegant princess, Paulie, Bill and J became handsome princes, the taxi became a beautiful silver chariot and Stoo…
No, Stoo was just Stoo. Happy, gormless and cute, that wicked, charming look in his glittery eyes. The house was obviously still just Barnaby’s shitty house, the crap still lodged in the hallway. And of course Paulie, Bill and J were not princes, they were just stoned and ripping the piss out of each other. And the taxi…well…yes…it was still just a taxi with an angry, fat, red-faced man inside it, commenting on the youth of today. Snogging apparently costs time and a half.
You see, a kiss is just a kiss. They didn’t need the earth to gobble them up and shoot them to the stars, they didn’t need to pretend they were in a film; a handsome, tanned, blonde prince and an anorexic lead role with long, red, tumbling locks. They just needed a charming chav and a lonely toff.
The taxi was waved off. He beeped his horn in rage and sped away. Isabella allowed her prince to carry her suitcase back inside the house, Paulie, Bill and J staring, confused to see her back,
‘I have sisters, you know…’ Isabella giggled as she slid Stoo’s bracelet onto her bony wrist, tying it in a knot at the end.
Together they began to shift the mess mountain in the room. If she was going to sleep here more often she would need a space for her wardrobe, darling.
‘What’s this?’ Isabella said, plucking a tiny green bit of gunge off the floor.
‘Ugh, it looks like…I dunno…a squashed pea,’ Stoo said.
‘Yuck, how long’s that been there?’
‘I dunno. Throw it away.’
Isabella threw the matted flat pea into the open mouth of the bin bag, the mockingbird squawking outside, the fairy lights twinkling. This was the beginning of her fairy story. That was seriously, ever so, utterly, superbly…random.
Caitlyn was fat. Not plump, not chubby, or curvy, or voluptuous, or bubbly, or broad, or chunky or big boned. According to her GP, her sister and her sister-in-law, her ex-boss and herself, she was fat. She stood in the mirror and pulled at her flabby rolls, she dragged her tummy forward and inspected the pimply, neglected hunks of fat, she turned around and felt her squashy arse, the magnificent flap that swung in front of her pelvis. The skin was so taut it had gone almost transparent, blue and purple in patches, covered in silvery lines that travelled like silk worms up the shiny rivers of her stomach, her thighs and the two sandbags that hung so effortlessly in that hammock she called a bra.
She had had enough. She plugged in the tea stained, yellowed computer wire into the plug socket and waited in silence for the twelve minutes it took to come to life. The computer finally churned on and the screen lit up the dingy sitting room. After finding her bearings she managed to source the Internet button, her left hand sifting through a sharing bag of cheesy crisps, sprinkling orange fairy dust all over the mouse