‘Nobody gets married,’ groaned Ellie.
‘… it’s you that said you didn’t want commitment.’
‘Yeah, I don’t need a lot of commitment to ME.’ Ellie found herself yelling. ‘But you can’t make a commitment to a piece of TOAST.’
‘Jeez, what happened to everyone being laid back?’ said Billy.
‘For fuck’s sake Billy. Just because I went to Red Wedge doesn’t mean that you’re allowed to get off with a trombonist, okay?’
He pouted. ‘I just don’t know why it’s such a big deal. It’s not like I’ve bought her her own handset for the playstation.’
‘Oh,’ said Ellie. ‘So she’s been round your house.’ She stared at him. He was idly brushing back his gelled hair. Fury welled in her.
‘It’s a studio, not a house, okay babe? Chill! It’s ironic really … you know … being found snogging by someone who says they don’t want commitment then them blowing a gasket.’
‘For once in your fucking life …’ she screamed at him. The chiropodist began to edge towards the door.
‘Just for once: this is NOT fucking ironic, okay?’
‘Not unless he did the same thing on her twentieth birthday in the same clothes,’ whispered Arthur to Julia, who nodded.
‘For fuck’s sake, you prick. You really hurt my feelings. Can’t you see that?’
Billy shrugged. ‘It’s like that movie …’
‘It’s not like ANY movie, Butthead,’ shouted Ellie. ‘You actually hurt me, and you seem chronically incapable of giving a fuck.’
She burst into tears and retreated into the bathroom.
‘Chicks, eh?’ said Billy in the bad fake American accent he affected much of the time. He looked closely at the bathroom door. There was no sign of life. He turned and slouched moodily out of the flat.
‘And how about another quick “Happy Birthday to You”?’ suggested Annabel.
Six hours later Ellie was still lying across her bed in something approximating despair, although she was coming to the end of the drama queen stage. Mascara was running down her face and she was clinging onto another empty bottle. Julia and Arthur were sitting on the bed, Colin was mooching around petulantly. Loxy was waiting patiently outside.
‘Oh God,’ she said dramatically. ‘That’s the worst party I’ve ever had. Or been to.’
‘Nonsense.’ said Arthur briskly. ‘What about that time at Annabel’s when you threw up on her mohair rug?’
‘It was round and it was white, okay? Looked like a toilet seat to me. Oh God. I can’t believe I’m thirty. I’m thirty and I have absolutely nothing.’
‘You have masses of things,’ said Arthur, rubbing her back soothingly. ‘Friends, and a flat and a job and everything. And your mobile phone is really, really tiny and silver. I mean, what did you think things were going to be like when you got to this stage?’
Ellie’s vision clouded over as she thought of what it was going to be like.
‘Let me see,’ she said, staring into the middle distance. ‘I’m wearing a beautiful pink dress.’
‘Oh no,’ said Julia. ‘Not this one again.’
‘And I’m in a big pink room with billowing curtains … and I’m dancing to Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark … and my handsome partner leans over and whispers something like …’
‘Don’t worry, I’m sure house prices will keep going up for ever,’ said Arthur, squeezing her tightly. ‘I can’t believe you thought that having an eighties party would make the Brat Pack happen.’
‘What are you all talking about?’ said Colin, who still lived with his parents.
‘God, Colin, what’s the first film you ever saw? Jurassic Park?’ said Julia. ‘Ellie was talking about a very talented group of young actors in the nineteen eighties …’
‘… who now make furniture sale adverts and appear in films on Channel 5 after midnight on wet Thursdays,’ said Arthur.
‘And we loved them.’
‘Why?’ asked Colin.
Everyone looked at each other.
‘They had HUGE apartments,’ said Ellie. ‘Not flats, apartments.’
‘And they went to cool dances at school.’
‘And they started out unpopular, but then got really popular.’
‘And they had makeovers.’
‘And they were going to be friends for ever, despite their class and intellectual differences.’
‘And they were all going to be famous and successful and live happily ever after for ever!’
Everyone sighed.
‘That sounds complete shit,’ said Colin.
‘As opposed to what?’ sniffed Ellie. ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?’
‘Oh, Hedge,’ said Arthur, rubbing her head affectionately. ‘I don’t think we can get you what you want for your birthday. Although your chiropodist left you some peppermint foot lotion.’
Ellie had been known as Hedgehog since she could talk. Ellie’s mum had started calling her it because she was such a prickly little thing, and it had stuck, because the more you called her it, the pricklier she got. After her mother ran away with an chartered accountant called Archie, Ellie got pricklier still.
Whilst Julia was blonde and angelic as a child – she was still blonde now, although it took a little bit more effort, and she was certainly angelic bordering on martyrdom as far as the Hedgehog was concerned – Ellie was wild-eyed and had kinky black hair and sticky pink cheeks and looked as if she’d just run away from the circus. Their teachers in public had called them ‘Snow White and Rose Red’, in private, ‘Good and Evil’.
Ellie’s mother had skipped town without warning the year before the girls sat their GCSEs. It shocked their friends and neighbours in the respectable suburb, and no-one ever mentioned it to Ellie ever again, no matter how many tantrums she pulled. Julia, and her parents, had made sure that, when Julia sat down to study for her exams and, eventually, applied to university in Sheffield, Ellie did exactly the same, and they had gone up together. Which usually meant that they just felt like very old best friends, although occasionally it could feel that they were yoked together unto death. Julia looked out for Ellie, and it seemed to Ellie that the trade-off was Julia got to be blonde and gorgeous-looking and pick up the nicest guys.
They’d met Arthur at college. Ellie had marched up to him in the student bar and declared that she fancied him. She’d found as a student that this method worked amazingly well on desperate teenage boys away from home for the first time. She would find in later life that it worked well on some older men too, but that the quality was definitely deteriorating year on year.
‘Tough,’ Arthur had replied lazily.
‘Why? What’s wrong with me?’
He looked her up and down.
‘One … two … ehm, three things,’ he said. ‘Adam’s apples I can take or leave.’
‘Oh,’ said Ellie. ‘Ohhhh,’ she said again as the ramifications sunk in. ‘I’ve never met anyone gay before.’
‘Really?’ Arthur had said. ‘How is Mars?’
‘I’m Ellie,’ she had announced sticking out her hand. ‘From