Number fifteen was a lurid grass-green with mauve woodwork. She took the steps to the front door, rang on the bell and was buzzed in. The tiny stairwell took her to the top floor, where she was greeted by an open front door and the sound of stampeding wildebeest.
‘Hello,’ she ventured.
The herd of wildebeest stopped stampeding for a second and then began again.
Ana glanced around nervously. ‘Hello.’
‘Fuckcuntbollocks.’
Ana followed the rasping and stampeding through the tiniest, messiest living room in the world to an even smaller and messier bedroom, where objects were being thrown, seemingly at the hands of a poltergeist, here, there and everywhere.
‘I’ve lost my cunting choker.’ The rasping was definitely coming from somewhere in the room. ‘It’s not even mine. It’s a Jade fucking Jagger. It’s worth about two squillion fucking quid and I’ve got to give it back tomorrow. Fuck.’
A head suddenly appeared from underneath the bed, and a black hand was extended towards her across the top of the unmade bed. Its fingers were tipped with the longest, whitest nails Ana had ever seen, like five magic wands.
‘Ana! Hi! Lol.’
‘Lol?’ repeated Ana, remembering the inscription in the Nigella Lawson cookbook.
‘That’s my name,’ she croaked. She sounded like shewas losing her voice. ‘Sorry about this. I’ve just done this live appearance on some kid’s TV show and the stylist lent me this fucking stupid choker, and I forgot to give it back to her, and now I’ve fucking lost it. And I’m gonna be dead, soooo dead …’ She grimaced.
Ana was too shell-shocked by the experience of meeting this dynamo of a woman and by the accompanying torrent of profanities to question what exactly it was she’d been doing on children’s TV.
As Lol talked she got to her feet. She had waist-length platinum extensions tied high in a pony-tail, golden-brown skin, a sapphire in her nostril and matching bright-blue eyes, patently purchased from an optician and not formed in the womb. She was wearing a soft-leather bustier, exactly the same colour as her skin, and matching leather jeans covered in rhinestones. And, most impressively to Ana, she was about six-foot tall and thin as a stick of linguine.
‘Oh. My. God!’ Lol said, staring in amused shock at Ana. ‘You look like my fucking negative!’ And then she started laughing. Louder than Ana had ever heard anyone laugh before.
She strode around the clothes-strewn bed and grabbed Ana’s hand, ‘I havegotto have a look at this,’ she said, and pulled Ana towards a full-length mirror. They stood side by side, and there they were – perfect positive and negative versions of the same person – exactly the same height, exactly the same shape, black hair, white hair, white skin, black skin. For a second they both stared at the reflection with their mouths ajar – and then Lol started laughing again. She slapped her thighs. She wiped away tears withthe sides of her long-nailed fingers. She bent herself double. She grabbed on to Ana’s arm and laughed a laugh so long and so silent and accompanied by so much painful arm-squeezing that Ana was beginning to worry that she might never stop.
Then Lol stood up straight again, pulled her face back into shape, shuffled around a bit, and eyed their reflections once more. Within two seconds she was bent double again, and this time Ana succumbed, too. It was one of the funniest things she’d ever seen, funny in the same way that seeing yourself distorted into a bulbous dwarf in a Hall of Mirrors was funny; funny in the way that wrapping elastic bands around your head was funny; funny in the way that blowing your cheeks up against a pane of glass was funny – just stupidly, childishly, unbelievably funny.
‘Oh fuck – I’m going to wet meself,’ wheezed Lol, now collapsed into a tangle of legs and arms on the floor. Ana was perched on the edge of the bed and had reached that convulsive, uncontrollable point when laughing stops being fun and starts to hurt. She looked down at Lol on the floor, at her abnormally long limbs and the bagginess about her tiny leather trousers, at the familiar impression made by her ribcage into her bustier and the lack of distinction between her calves and her thighs, and she suddenly thought, in the most overwhelming and entirely unexpected welling up of intense emotion that flickered around the sensitive lining of her belly like a feather duster, that she loved her, that she loved this girl who she’d known for less than five minutes, and with that shocking thought she felt the bruising in the back of her throat sort of catch and the tears in her eyes sort of tickle and suddenlyshe was crying. And the more she tried to stop crying the more she cried. She had no idea where the tears were coming from but they were thick and hard and they hurt.
Lol joined Ana on the edge of the bed and draped one extravagantly long arm around her shoulder. ‘Oh pet,’ she soothed, looking anxiously into her eyes, ‘what’s the matter, eh?’
Ana sniffed and wiped her nose against the sleeve of her cardigan. Whatwasn’tthe matter would have been a more useful question. She opened her mouth to speak but there was too much to say, so she closed it again. The reasons lined up in her mind, though, like a shopping list, to remind her.
I’m a gangling six-foot-tall freak who gets stared at in the street and laughed at by little boys with piercing voices.
My father, whose height I inherited, whose legs I have, died ten months ago and I still miss him every day of my life.
The only boyfriend I’ve ever had dumped me just eight weeks after my father died.
My mother is an agoraphobic lunatic who walks in her sleep and thinks the world revolves around her.
I have no friends and no social life.
My sister, the only person who made it look as if being alive was any fun, is dead.
I’m alone in a strange city and I know no one.
I’m scared, I’m confused, I’m dirty and I’m tired. And then you – you with the same arms and legs as me, the same bony torso and flat chest, you made me feel like a normal human being for a couple of minutes, like there wasn’t just Ana, but that there was Ana and Lol, and forthe first time in ten months I laughed and for the first time in ten months I felt the same as somebody else. That’s why I’m crying, that’s what the matter is. And the saddest thing of all is that I already know that that was just a moment – it isn’t the way things are going to be from hereon in, it’s just the way things were for a brief moment, and it’s those little tasters of normality that really, really kill me …
But she didn’t vocalize her thoughts, and Lol was left to look for the most obvious reason for her tears.
‘Oh pet,’ she soothed, tears brimming in her own eyes now, ‘I know. I know. She was my best friend, Ana. My best friend. I loved her more than anyone in the world. We were soulmates, the only people who really understood each other. Me and Bee – we were like sisters … we were … oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. I mean, obviously, you were her sister. But …’
‘It’s OK,’ said Ana, ‘I know what you mean, it’s fine.’