Happily Ever After

‘Eleanor? Wow!’ someone said in her ear. ‘I didn’t realise you lived round here!’

Elle turned. ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘Hi there!’

It was a girl she’d met at some point in the day. Elle stared at her blankly, and then she remembered her: buck teeth, short blonde hair, unfortunate sparkly grips in her hair and too keen. She was assistant to Handsome Jeremy, the saturnine marketing director; Elle remembered him, he’d smiled and said, flirtatiously, ‘How very lovely to have you here.’ This girl had been bobbing around next to him, and she’d kept saying, ‘Another girlie! Brill!’ Shit. What was her name?

‘I’m Elle,’ she said, hoping to buy time and prompt a response.

‘I know that!’ the girl said. ‘Durr! Can I get you a drink? Are you with some friends? I’m with my boyfriend Dave, shall we join you?’

‘Sure!’ said Elle. ‘Um – I’ll just get these.’

By the time she’d taken the drinks over, the girl and her boyfriend Dave had sat down at the table, and had introduced themselves to Karen and Cara and Alex, who were ignoring them and whispering in each other’s ear again.

‘So how long have you been at the company?’ Karen was asking.

‘I’ve been there a year,’ the girl said. ‘It’s a marvellous place! Miss Sassoon is amazing, last year she gave us all a five-pound Marks voucher for Christmas. When I phoned Mum to tell her, she was like, that’s what the Queen gives everyone at Buckingham Palace! Amazing.’

What the hell is your name? Elle smiled. ‘It seems like a nice place to work,’ she said.

‘Oh, yeah,’ said the girl. ‘It’s great. Dave says I go on about it all the time, don’t you, Dave!’ She nudged Dave, who said nothing and went back to staring into his pint. ‘So where do you live, Eleanor?’

‘Just round the corner, for now,’ said Elle. ‘But it’s only temporary, I need to find a place.’

‘Seriously? That’s so weird.’ The girl sucked on her straw. ‘My flatmate’s just moved to South Africa, it was all really sudden. Really sudden – like she went last week, only told me the week before that.’ She stuck her tongue out. ‘Dave said she was sick of me, but it wasn’t like that! Anyway, you should come and see it. The flat, I mean.’

‘Wow, that’s – where is it?’ said Elle. She didn’t want to commit, but then she caught Alex’s eye, and he gave her a cold look.

‘It’s at the top of Ladbroke Grove, above a cab company, right by the Sainsbury’s. You know that big sign appealing for witnesses for that assault? Right there. It’s actually really safe round there, that’s not a problem, honestly.’ She smiled her toothy smile. ‘Anyway, I’m looking for someone, and the rent’s like eighty quid a week each which is amazing, so—’

A shadow fell over the table. ‘All right, mate?’ Alex said, leaping up.

‘Hi, mate. Hi, everyone. Hi, Elle.’

‘Hi, Fred,’ Elle said, her heart thumping in her chest. ‘How’re you?’ she said nonchalantly, flicking her hair and sounding uninterested – this was something she’d picked up from observing Cara, who had men flocking round her like bees round honey.

Fred nodded. ‘Good, good. It’s nice to see you, Elle, how’s the first day been?’

‘Good,’ she said, pleased. The girl from work was grinning expectantly up at her. ‘Yeah, this is one of my new work colleagues,’ she said. ‘Um –’

Fred waited, as Karen stared at her.

‘I’m sorry,’ Elle blurted out eventually. ‘I can’t remember your name. I’m really sorry. I – I met loads of people today.’

‘That’s OK. It’s Sam!’ Sam stood up. ‘Hiya! This is my boyfriend Dave. I’m Sam! What’s your name?’

Fred smiled at Elle. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘What’s my name?’

‘Er –’ Elle couldn’t believe it, but she had to think for a moment. ‘God. It’s Fred. I’m going mad.’

Fred sat down, next to Alex, who slapped him on the back, while Cara smoothed her short Afro back from her forehead, and took another sip from her drink. Karen smiled at Fred ingratiatingly, while Elle, thoroughly flustered now, stared at the ground, thinking she’d better go to bed early, and then remembering with a sinking heart that the bed that awaited her was orange and green seventies acrylic, and had fag butts stuck down its back. She was so tired all of a sudden, all she wanted to do was sleep, get into work and attack this job properly. Tomorrow is another day, as Scarlett O’Hara would say.

‘So –’ Sam leaned forward, speaking loudly into her ear. ‘Do you want to come and see the flat? I mean, I don’t want to pressure you or anything, but it’s pretty nice and cheap, and I’m going to be spending lots of time with Dave, obviously, so I won’t be around much, and it’s Ladbroke Grove, and you could move in right away, and we could go to work together and be like amigos, you know, look out for each other.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I think it’s actually amazing, in fact, don’t you? The universe is telling us it’s supposed to happen, otherwise why would me and Dave come in here the same night you’re in here?’

There were several things Elle could have said to this speech, and if she’d been older and more jaded she might have done, but she was sick of sleeping on a manky sofa, and she wanted to put her books out and her CD player up.

‘I’d love to come and see it,’ she said, turning to Sam. ‘When’s good for you? Tomorrow?’

‘Yeah!’ said Sam, clapping her hands together. ‘Amazing!’ She clinked her glass against Elle’s. ‘You’ll love it. What a day! Just think, this morning we hadn’t even met!’

This morning seemed to be a thousand years ago. All the things that had happened. It felt as if, finally, she was on her way somewhere. Elle pulled discreetly at the armpits of her raspberry sweater. Amidst the maelstrom of new faces and facts she’d learned something concrete today, at least. Don’t wear tight-fitting, pale-coloured, wool-mix knits when you’re nervous.

September 1997 (#ua305ba5f-4005-5ffc-9cb1-c1a8e2bb2585)

ON THE FIRST day of the month Elle woke early, with a pounding headache. Her throat was dry, her eyes puffy and sore from the crying she’d done the previous day. The room was too stuffy. She opened the window and lay on her back, looking up at the ceiling, blinking. Cool air blew in from the street, though Ladbroke Grove was quiet, and Elle knew suddenly that, even though it was only the first day of September, autumn was here. She sat up in bed, rubbing her tender eyes, as the memory of the previous thirty-six hours slowly returned.

She wished she didn’t have to go to work. Could she just call in sick? She’d drunk an awful lot over the weekend, which was partly why she felt so dreadful, but it was the crying too; she’d cried all day. She had forgotten how crying always made her feel rubbish the next day, as if she’d been beaten up and left for dead.

Elle and Libby had been at Kenwood House on Saturday night, listening to the open-air concert (on the other side of the boundary, so they didn’t have to pay). They’d taken a blanket, some crisps and wine, and though they didn’t have a corkscrew and Elle had had to jab the cork into the bottle with her hair clip, it had been loads of fun. It always was fun with Libby, whether they were eating pasta at La Rosa, the tiny Italian place in Soho that only bouncers and strippers frequented, or arguing drunkenly over books (Elle, at Posy’s recommendation, had just read the Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard, and thought they were the best books she’d ever read; Libby refused to touch them on account of their pastelly covers), or films (Elle wept through The English Patient, Libby snorted with laughter every time burnt-out Ralph Fiennes appeared on screen), or boys in the office (to Elle’s fury, Libby tormented her about her alleged crush on Rory, and Elle couldn’t come up with anyone in return for as Libby said, ‘Publishing boys are total losers, Elle, get a grip’).

They’d ended up at the Dome in Hampstead, and drunk even more. It had been a brilliant evening. When Elle had fantasised about the life in London she’d wanted it had been something like this, sitting in cafes discussing life and books long into the night, feeling the city under her feet, the still-terrifying but exhilarating sense of possibility out there. Daily life at Bluebird was alternately monotonous and scary: after four months she was starting to see just how far away was her dream of being a glamorous editor. You didn’t get to be a glamorous editor by sending faxes to important literary agents called Shirley that began, ‘Dear Shitley’. Glamorous editors didn’t leave prawn sandwiches in filing cabinets, stinking out the office for a week with a smell so awful Elspeth became convinced they were being haunted by the ghost of a disgruntled author. They didn’t photocopy four hundred pages of manuscript upside down, resulting in an entirely blank pile of paper, and they certainly didn’t pass out in a corner of the pub after too many house whites, to the amusement of their colleagues. Yes. Elle knew she had a lot to learn.

The two of them had stayed out so late that they were shivering in the night air as they said their goodbyes. As ever, Elle had felt guilty, creeping back to Ladbroke Grove at two in the morning, but Sam had been fast asleep. However, the next morning she woke Elle up by knocking on her door in floods of tears, her eyes huge, her fingers in her mouth.

‘Princess Di’s dead,’ she said, and Elle made her repeat it, because it just didn’t sound true.

They had spent all day crying, watching TV and listening to Capital play sad songs, going out in their pyjamas to the shop next door to get chocolate and Bombay mix and cheap wine and now it was Monday, and life was supposed to go on as normal, and of course it would, because it was stupid, Elle hadn’t actually known Princess Diana. But, like so many girls, she felt as if she had, as if she – not that she belonged to her, that was stupid. But as if she sort of knew her, that if they’d ever met they’d have been friends.

Tears pricked Elle’s eyes as she remembered the coffin coming off the plane, the Prince of Wales standing ready to greet it, his face lined with grief. ‘The breaking of so great a thing should make a greater crack’: that was Shakespeare, wasn’t it? Oh, how pretentious it was, quoting Shakespeare. If Libby could hear her she’d laugh her head off. Elle pulled the duvet over her, the Monday morning feeling of dread stronger than ever.

Suddenly, footsteps came padding loudly towards the bathroom, and the door was slammed with a bang. Elle winced, preparing herself. The radio came on, Chris Evans’s voice slow and clear.

‘It’s Monday and, well, look, it’s a hard day for us all, and we want to remember a wonderful woman, so here’s Mariah Carey and “Without You”. In memory of our Queen of Hearts.’

‘YOOOOOU …’ came Sam’s voice, shrieking tonelessly through the paper-thin walls. ‘… WITHOUT YOOOOOOOU …’

Sam was ‘a morning person’, as she frequently told Elle when Elle asked her to please not tunelessly wail ‘Mr Loverman’ at 6.45 a.m. Being a morning person, it seemed, meant not being bothered by the fact that you were totally tone deaf. Elle turned onto her stomach and screamed into her pillow, as she did every single morning. If she was ever called for jury service and there was someone on trial who’d killed their flatmate or neighbour for something similar Elle knew she’d have no hesitation in finding them not guilty. Every evening, she told herself Sam wasn’t so bad, that actually they had a laugh over a glass of wine and some trashy TV. And every morning she woke up to what sounded like a drunk tramp gargling with petrol and razor blades, and she felt murder in her heart.

She even blamed Sam for the break-up of her semi-relationship with Fred. They’d seen each other, admittedly rather half-heartedly – he’d gone away for two weeks and not told her – during the summer. The second or third time he’d stayed over, Sam had woken them both up by singing the Cardigans’ ‘Lovefool’ in such a painful way that Fred had left without having a shower, claiming he had an early meeting and needed to get home and pick up a suit. Since Fred was, as far as Elle knew, working in a cafe off Portobello while writing his screenplay that was going to win him an Oscar, this was clearly a lie, but she couldn’t blame him. He hadn’t called her since. Elle had tried to mind, but she didn’t, to be honest. Fred belonged to the era of sleeping on sofas, watching daytime TV and feeling totally hopeless, and that all seemed years, not months, ago.

Forty minutes or so later, Elle was showered and dressed. It was still early, just after eight, and as she stood in the kitchen, her hands wrapped around a mug of tea, she sifted through her feelings, trying to work out why she still felt she’d missed something. Was it Princess Di, throwing her off? Or was it work? The trouble was, she could never remember anything specifically she hadn’t done. It was the horror that there was another bomb, an uncollected urgent manuscript waiting in the post room, or another Dear Shitley fiasco, just waiting to explode, that she feared the most. In her darker days – and this was one of them – she wasn’t sure what the future held. How on earth was she supposed to show them she’d be a good editor when no one had the faintest idea who she was, except maybe vaguely as the idiot who’d ordered Rory a cab that took him to Harlow instead of Heathrow? She was still staring into space as Sam came in.

‘Hiya,’ she said. ‘What a strange morning. I feel very emotional still. Do you feel emotional?’

‘Yes,’ said Elle coolly, the post-shower-singing fury having not quite worn off. ‘It’s weird.’

Sam looked pleased. Her nose twitched. ‘We’re so similar. Ready for another Monday?’

‘Not really,’ said Elle. ‘I feel like crap.’ She sighed.