“’Course not. That’s why we have options. Costas!”
Costas, who was wearing a little pillbox hat with a face veil, began to produce outfits on hangers. “Casual day out.” This was knee boots, a suede mini, leggings and a black jumper with a scoop neck. “Show off your bosoms, Annie!” Another flourish, another outfit. “Date night.” (“Some chance,” muttered Annie.) This, a printed red tea dress with frilled sleeves, which Annie had to admit was lovely, to be worn with a leather biker jacket. “Make it more tougher,” he explained. “Like grrr, motorbike chick.” Annie had never had anyone describe her as a motorbike chick. “Day at the races.” A floral dress with wide straps, a stiff A-line skirt and nipped-in waist, in shades of yellow and pink. “Big hat also. Heels.”
“I’ve never been to the races in my life,” complained Annie. “What am I meant to wear for normal days? Work? Hospital?”
“Wear this red dress tomorrow,” Polly ordered. “With the jacket, too. And boots if you have them—no higher than midcalf. Hair up in a big ponytail. Red lipstick. I’ll show you how.”
Annie’s hair was set with big rollers. She felt like bits of her were being pulled off, changed and put back on again, like washing a dirty pair of curtains. But what was the point if you were exactly the same inside?
After some time, Costas looked as his retro Casio watch. “Time to go out!” It was half past nine.
“Oh, to be young again.” Polly sighed. “I used to love going to G.A.Y. on a Sunday night. Have fun, darling.”
“I can wear this hat?”
“Please. It looks fab. And you’re wasted in that coffee place—you really know about clothes.”
He shrugged. “Is just until I get something more. Bye, Polly, bye, Annie. Biker chick! Grrr.” He got down on the floor to kiss Buster between his dark eyes. “Bye-bye, cutie. Do not worry, Papa will be back to take you for wee-wee in the morning.”
Annie really hoped he wouldn’t get too attached to the dog. “I guess we should clear this up.” She started scooping up armfuls of clothes, distracted by the flashing gold of her nails. “Where did you get all this stuff, anyway? It’s not yours, surely.” Polly was much slimmer than Annie and about a foot taller.
“I have a stylist friend, Sandy. She has entire rooms of clothes—it’s ah-maz-ing. She says you can keep what you like. She gets sent loads of things from companies in the hope one of her celeb clients will get papped wearing them.”
“Thanks.” Not that Annie was planning to wear any of it. It was fun to play dress-up, but she wasn’t about to succumb to the cliché of a makeover changing your life.
Polly was sitting down, as if she’d suddenly run out of energy. “So. Now I have you by yourself, are you going to tell me what all that was about Friday?”
Annie froze, a floppy straw hat in her hands. “Um, what?”
“That guy you were running away from.”
Annie’s hands constricted on the brim of the hat. “I wasn’t running away.”
Polly paused. “Annie. It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me. But don’t lie, okay? Is it something to do with why you live here, and why you share with Costas?”
“I live here because I can’t afford to buy, and I can’t manage the rent on my own and I can’t get anywhere better.”
Polly examined her own nails, painted every color of the rainbow. “There’s a lot of can’t in that sentence, Betty Buzzkill.”
Annie flung the hat down on the suitcase with perhaps unnecessary force. “Look. My life wasn’t always like this, okay? I’m just...having a bad spell. I used to like clothes. I used to get dressed up when I went out—jeans and a nice top and heels and my hair done—and I used to buy decorating mags and bake cakes and stencil my own furniture. All of that. I did own a place once—an actually nice place, that I loved—but that was with Mike.”
“And Mike is?”
Annie sighed. She hated this bit. Hated the way people looked at her after they heard the story. “He was my husband.”
“You’re divorced! Chic. Or did he die horribly? Oh, God, I’m sorry if he died horribly.”
“No, he’s perfectly fine, as far as I know, and still living in our house with Jane.”
“Mike and Jane, sounds like a kids’ book. And Jane is...?”
“She was my best friend. Since we were five.” Annie-and-Jane. Primary school, secondary school, visits to Jane at uni, interrailing around Spain, Annie’s maid of honor. Until the day Mike came home and said, Annie, I have to tell you something. She’d only grasped snatches of that conversation; she’d been so in shock. Fallen in love...didn’t mean to...never meant to hurt you...
“Ah, I get it.” Polly beamed. “The guy at the hospital was Mike?”
“Yup.”
“What was he doing there? Is he sick?”
“I don’t know.” There was another possibility for why he was there, but it was so awful Annie didn’t even want to think about it.
“Sorry, it must have been crap, but I do love a good misery story. Your husband left you for your best friend! Does it get better? Meaning worse, of course. They got married?”
In response, Annie fumbled her phone from her pocket. She scrolled through Facebook until she pulled up a picture of a smiling blonde woman holding a pink cocktail on holiday. The bridge of her nose also pink—she never wore enough sunscreen, and Annie always used to nag her about it.
Polly peered at the phone. “Jane Hebden. It was his name? You didn’t change back to Annie Clarke?”
“No.” Annie wasn’t sure why. Thinking she’d lost enough, maybe. Some kind of spite, not wanting to erase every trace of their marriage. Jane had taken everything else.
“And you’re still Facebook friends with them both? So you can look at pictures of them and torture yourself?”
“Um, yeah.” It was pretty much Annie’s main hobby, stalking them online.
“Well.” Polly stood up, which seemed to cost her some effort. “I’ll hand it to you, Annie, that is quite the catalog of misery. Anything else? You better not have cancer, too, I warn you. That’s my thing. You better not be trying to beat me in the ‘world’s most tragic story’ competition.”
For a moment Annie thought about telling her all of it—the blood on Mike’s pajamas, the blue lights of the ambulance filling her living room, the sound of her own screams, coming from somewhere deep inside her—but she couldn’t. She didn’t think she could bear to say it out loud. “Just the crap job and flat and the divorce and the senile mother.”
“Good.” Polly stooped, helping her pick up the clothes, the chiffons and lace and silk and leathers. “We’re quite the pair, aren’t we, Annie Hebden? I’m dying, you probably wish you were dying.”
“I did, quite a bit actually.”
“Don’t blame you. That’s an almighty crapstorm. Question is...what are you going to do about it?”
“What do you mean?”