I couldn’t imagine getting through Christmas Day without my best friend. We’d spent it together every year for as long as I could remember, from being tiny tots skipping down to church with our families, right through to sneaking out while everyone was in a post-turkey coma and necking Baileys out of the bottle by the village pond. That tradition had lasted much longer than going to church ever did.
‘Christmas is still ages away,’ Amy added when I didn’t paste on my fake smile fast enough. ‘We’ll work something out.’
There wasn’t a woman alive who didn’t know that ‘fine’ never really meant ‘fine’. A man, maybe, but a woman? No way.
‘It’s only nine days away,’ I said, checking my half-eaten chocolate advent calendar as the terrifying prospect of having to spend the day alone with my family reared its ugly head. Nope, not worth thinking about.
‘Loads can happen in nine days, Tess,’ she replied, messing with her hair again. It had got so much longer since I’d left Milan that her shaggy fringe hung low over her big blue eyes. She looked gorgeous. ‘Don’t stress about it.’
‘I won’t stress about it,’ I echoed, stressing. ‘So, you’re busy even today then?’
‘I am. I’m busy every day. It’s mental,’ she said, eyes flicking up towards the top of my screen. ‘Cockmonkeys, is that really the time? Tess, I’ve got to go, I’m late.’
‘You’re always late,’ I reminded her. ‘It’s one of those wonderful annoying things I’ve come to love about you.’
‘I’m only late, like, half the time now,’ she said proudly. ‘I am the all-new and improved Amy Smith. Well, 50 per cent improved. Call you tomorrow?’
‘Of course,’ I said, giving her a swift salute. ‘Now, go on, before you’re any later.’
‘Yeah, yeah.’ Amy brushed at her hair one last time and blew a kiss into the camera. ‘Love you, skankface.’
‘Love you too,’ I said, waving before my best friend disappeared and the screen went blue.
My cheery smile faded. The suggestion that Amy wouldn’t be home for Christmas was worse news than the prospect of getting dropped by Agent Veronica. It was worse than my black-and-blue backside and Paige not telling me what was going on with her love life and never talking to Charlie any more, and it was almost worse than the fact I hadn’t heard from Nick Miller in nearly five months.
‘I’m pleased for her, I am,’ I said, stepping into the not-really-hot-enough bathwater fifteen minutes later. ‘It’s amazing, she deserves it.’
The rubber duck sat on the edge of the bath and eyed me with suspicion.
‘Don’t look at me like that.’ I shuffled around until I was somewhere near comfortable and tried not to knock a crusty looking bottle of Head & Shoulders off the side of the bath with my massive copper-coloured topknot. ‘She does deserve it.’
He still didn’t say anything.
‘I mean, yeah, I suppose if I really tried, I could be a bit annoyed that she’s never kept a job for more than three months and now she’s running all over the world with Al.’ I shrugged. ‘And she’s having this amazing adventure while I’m making tea and holding lights and letting a man pretend to ejaculate on my face but, you know, whatever.’
The duck wrinkled his rubber bill and I knocked him into the bath.
‘I hate you,’ I said, holding my breath and sinking underneath the bubbles, but there he was, all judgemental painted-on eyes, when I re-emerged.
‘I’m not jealous,’ I told him/myself. ‘She’s had so many shit jobs, this is amazing for her.’
‘Remember that time she got fired from the dog walking service for bringing the wrong dog back from the park?’ he asked.
‘I do,’ I admitted.
‘She took a Great Dane out and brought a Labrador home.’
‘She did,’ I admitted. ‘The owners weren’t that happy.’
And now she was more or less running the show at Bertie Bennett’s new label. My friend, Amy, working for my friend, Al. He was fashion royalty and she was a woman who couldn’t get a second interview at Topshop because she laughed when they told her she’d have to work Saturdays and every other Sunday.
The duck still looked sceptical.
‘She likes to have her weekends free,’ I mumbled. ‘But I think it’s nice that she’s finally found something she loves.’
Silence.
‘Maybe we could brainstorm some ideas that would help me, that might be more productive?’ I suggested, poking my toes up out of the water.
‘One, you could assume your flatmate’s identity and run away to Hawaii to shoot a feature for a fashion magazine,’ he suggested.
I gave him a level stare and said nothing.
‘Oh right,’ he said. ‘You’ve done that already. Two, go to Milan and shoot a retrospective of Bertie Bennett’s fashion archives and document the creation of his first designer collection.’
‘Come to think of it, that sounds familiar as well,’ I said. ‘What do you want me to say? Stop sulking, accept the photography isn’t working out, be a grown-up and get a proper job?’
The duck gave me the beady eye.
‘Or four,’ I finished. ‘Drop a little rubber duck into the toilet and wait for one of Amy’s flatmates to flush him?’
Before he could reply, the handle on the bathroom door began to jerk up and down.
‘There’s someone in here!’ I yelled, sloshing around in the bath water. The door was only held shut with one rusty old bolt and I wasn’t convinced it would hold.
‘What?’ a male voice shouted on the other side.
‘I said there’s someone in here!’ I shouted back.
Why would you keep trying the door when someone was clearly inside? Amy lived with idiots. Correction, Amy lived with Al and Kekipi in amazing houses and hotels all over the world. I lived with idiots.
‘Are you going to be long?’ the voice called.
‘As long as it takes for the hot water to come back on,’ I called back, trying the tap with my toe. Still freezing. ‘I need to wash my hair.’
And washing my ridiculous mop required enough water to cause a hosepipe ban in the Home Counties.
A loud sigh rattled through the wooden door. ‘I’ll have to have a shit downstairs then.’
I made a sour face at the duck and waited for the disgruntled footsteps to fade away.
‘I’m so glad I decided to take Amy up on her offer of a place to stay,’ I said to the duck. ‘I’m having such a wonderful time here.’
The duck sailed past my kneecap with a quirk of his little plastic eyebrows that suggested I could have come up with other options.
‘Maybe we could pack up and go and stay with Charlie?’ I suggested.
The duck gave me a death stare. He and Amy both had Charlie Wilder at the top of their shitlists.
‘Oh, wait. We can’t, he hates me.’ I paused. ‘So you can stop looking at me like that or we’re off up north to live with my mother.’