Looking for Andrew McCarthy

She smoothed down the ridiculous blouse, in which she was actually managing to look quite chic, and knocked again. ‘I’ve fixed Pass the Parcel!’ she said. ‘Second verse of “Never Ending Story!” Just hang on in there!’

There was silence from beyond the door. The front doorbell rang and Julia stomped off to open it.

‘Hello darling,’ said Arthur, kissing her on both cheeks and swanning in stylishly as usual. ‘You smell nice. I thought I’d come early.’

‘God, am I glad you did,’ said Julia with clear relief, indicating the bathroom door. Arthur was handsome, charming, kind and everyone was in love with him. He was also so gay you could bounce him like a basketball. He put down a gift and a bottle of champagne and went over to the bathroom.

‘No, really?’

Julia nodded. ‘Disappeared in there with a bottle of wine to get ready. Two hours ago.’

‘Huh, I don’t know why she’s so bothered. It’s only thirty. That’s, like, seventy in gay years.’

‘Oh, yeah, where is Colin?’

‘I left him tied up outside. Come on, darling, what’s the matter?’ Arthur hollered through the door. ‘I don’t know what you’ve got to complain about. I caught Colin eating from the sugar bowl again.’

‘I don’t know why you don’t just get a dog,’ said Julia. ‘Be a lot easier.’

‘But he’s so cute.’

‘Yeah, and wait to see how cute he is with worms.’

‘Come on missus!’ Arthur banged the door again. ‘There’s presents out here.’

‘Why aren’t you dressing up?’ said Julia, rummaging in her old make up kit for a blue eyeliner pencil.

‘I am,’ said Arthur, lifting his Tom Ford shirt to show a quick flash of an old “Frankie Says Relax” t-shirt. ‘That’s as far as I can go. Anything more eighties brings me out in a rash. I call it Banarama-isus.’

‘Ah,’ said Julia wisely as, through the open front door, she spotted a couple heading up the pathway of the run-down South London terrace. ‘Who’s that coming?’

Arthur peered over her shoulder.

‘I don’t know. Who else has been invited?’

‘Not sure. Ellie went through all her old address books and asked everyone she’s ever met in an attempt to have a big bouncing birthday party.’

A rather ascetic-looking young man and his even more disinfected-looking girlfriend stood nervously on the doorstep clutching a gift wrapped in a Body Shop bag.

‘Hello there!’ said Julia brightly. The couple smiled nervously.

‘… and you are?’

‘Ehm, Hi. Yeah. I’m Ellie’s chiropodist?’ said the awkward looking man. Behind them, alighting stodgily from a taxi, were two more people, who looked middle-aged unless you peered very very closely.

‘I can’t believe she invited George and Annabel,’ Arthur whispered to Julia.

‘I can’t believe I gave her free access to her own address book.’

Annabel was truly dressed up for the nineteen eighties only in as far as she hadn’t changed her style in her whole life. Her pearls smacked gently off her upturned blue-striped collar as she leaned in to try her hand at the bathroom door of fear.

‘Darling, do come out. I’ve got to tell you the hilarious thing George did at the golf club dinner.’

Annabel and George had been together since college and had married immediately after it, which surprised no-one as they’d both looked forty-five on the day they’d turned up for fresher’s week. He did the bad dad jokes, she did the baking, and they had been the first to buy a flat, settle down and start complaining about parking in garden centres on Sunday afternoons.

‘I brought some home made hors d’oeuvres!’

The chiropodist appeared to be picking up the cheese and sniffing it.

‘Where’s Billy?’ said Arthur, helping himself to a glass of wine, seeing as the party seemed likely to continue hostess-free.

‘Aha,’ said Julia. ‘That kind of explains the bathroom. They’ve had a little contretemps.’

‘Good.’ said Arthur. ‘Too much saxophone playing. I hope they split up: when you say their names together it sounds like Canterbury Cathedral.’

‘No,’ said Julia. ‘She caught him getting off with a trombonist. Apparently they do amazing things with their lips …’

‘Oh dear,’ said Arthur. ‘Things are bad. If this really was the nineteen eighties, we’d have to give her a makeover.’

Ellie was sitting on the linen basket feeling utterly disconsolate and kicking her white-stockinged toes in the air. The problem about having a huff was it was kind of difficult to know when to stop. She could hear signs of activity outside and knew she ought to go and face them all, but instead she was back looking in the mirror at the amount of polka-dotted lace she’d tied through her curly black hair and thinking, ‘thirty!’ Okay. Relax. She was fine. She wasn’t unhappy. Okay. So she was living with the biggest bastard landlord this side of China. And she had a job which involved a mind boggling amount of paper shifting to no apparent end. And Billy. She didn’t even want to think about him. Okay, so he hadn’t been absolutely ideal – he worked all night and slept all day and wasn’t even anything cool like a vampire – and, okay, his hair was a bit on the mullety side, but she didn’t mind that particularly. But no. He still had to go and bag off with someone who looked like she carried around two ping pong balls in her cheeks. Was this fair? She rubbed roughly at a stubborn tear which had forced its way through several layers of Barry M crème eyeliner.

How on earth could she go out there? Half of her guests she didn’t even know. With a wince of embarrassment she remembered that she’d invited the postman. And, yet again, another birthday without a word from her mother, which made sixteen in all. She examined her eyes for wrinkles again and found plenty. ‘Not that it matters much from this point on,’ she thought gloomily. ‘It’s all downhill from here, fat arse.’

She touched up her beauty spot. Oh God. Maybe if she stayed in here all night they’d all go away.

‘Umm, hi,’ came a deep growly voice from the other side of the door. It was Loxy, Julia’s super-uxorious boyfriend.

‘Julia sent me over to … I don’t know what really. But here I am. And lots of other people are too. Happy birthday by the way.’

He coughed. Ellie closed her eyes. Loxy was lovely, and so in love with Julia it made Ellie want to puke.

‘So … Julia’s looking good, don’t you think? What are you wearing?’

Ellie glanced down at her hybrid 1984 Madonna/ Strawberry Switchblade/Cyndi Lauper outfit and winced a little. Perhaps it was a little bit over the top. She hoped everyone else was dressed up too. (This was to prove a vain hope, although the security guard from her office was wearing differently coloured neon socks, and her hairdresser’s assistant had got herself a wet look perm done specially).

Someone was singing about someone else being their favourite waste of time, and Julia glanced around the room. It had filled up quite nicely, although ‘Come Dressed for the Eighties,’ seemed to have been literally translated as ‘Well, In a Way Gap Did Actually Exist in the Eighties.’ There wasn’t a boiler suit in sight, despite the pictures of Tony Hadley on the invites.

Siobhan and Patrick were in a mood with each other, not exactly unusual given that they’d been a couple for five years and were both chronic workaholics who’d forgotten how to spend any time together. Patrick was pushing the ironic flying saucer sweets in his mouth with the same relentless mechanical motion he used to sell bonds and, Julia suspected, make love. He was staring straight ahead looking mournful. Siobhan, on the other hand, had turned into a parody of someone trying to pretend she wasn’t in a mood with someone; circulating, flirting, laughing loudly. The joys of domesticity. Julia had never lived with anyone, not that Loxy ever stopped dropping hints; in fact, even now as she turned round from pouring wine (Annabel had taken over canapé distribution) he was hovering about worriedly and asking her if she wanted him to break the bathroom door down. Caroline Lafayette was banging on about her gap year in Tibet yet again, despite it being twelve years ago. Colin was hopping from foot to foot, obviously desperate for the toilet. Were all parties always crap, or just Ellie’s? Okay, that was it. She marched out to the bathroom.

‘Hedgehog!’ she yelled. ‘I’m bringing out the cake. Everyone is here. We’re going to sing happy birthday. You are going to come out and be nice. Or we’re going to … ehm. We’re going to tell your Big Bastard Landlord that you fancy him.’

‘How come,’ said Ellie through the door, ‘when Oscar the Grouch is in a bad mood everyone’s really sympathetic, but when it’s me I get dire threats?’

‘He’s cuter than you.’

‘He lives in a bin!’

‘Come on everyone!’ said Julia as Loxy came out of the kitchen with the Dangermouse cake. She started singing ‘Happy Birthday’.