Lol, Ana soon realized, was a complete lunatic. She was thirty-three but looked about twenty-three and had more energy than a hyperactive six-year-old on Red Bull. She was also disarmingly honest.
‘You’re not going out like that, are you?’ she said, pointing at Ana’s lank hair and grimy clothes in disbelief. ‘Get in’t shower, lass – I’ll meck us some drinks.’
Lol’s bathroom was a tiny damp tomb of a room with mildew on the ceiling and the widest array of beauty products Ana had ever seen. She encased herself in the shower cubicle and felt an overwhelming wave of relief as warm water ran from the crown of her head, down her face and over her tired body. She washed her hair with a fruity shampoo, scrubbed at her face with a grainy unguent that smelted of grapefruit and soaped her entire body with a translucent tablet of apple-scented soap.
Lol forced a drink into her hand as she emerged from the bathroom; a pale, lemon-coloured drink in a long-stemmed glass rimmed with glittering salt.
‘Oh,’ she said, staring at the drink, ‘margarita. That’s what Bee used to drink, isn’t it?’
Lol nodded and took a slurp, her tongue snaking around the rim, collecting grains of salt. ‘Sure was,’ she said, ‘andyou’re looking at the woman who taught her how to make them. Cheers,’ she said, holding her glass aloft. ‘To Bee. The greatest bloody girl in the world, the best friend I ever had. May her poor, beautiful soul rest in peace and may there beriversof margarita flowing through the valleys of heaven …’ They brushed their glasses against each other’s and exchanged a fragile look. Lol was smiling, but Ana could see tears shimmering in her eyes.
‘Right,’ Lol exclaimed, putting down her drink and starting to unfurl Ana’s towelling turban, ‘what are we going to do with you then, eh?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I wanna do you up,’ said Lol, picking up strands of her wet hair and scrutinizing them. ‘You’re a pop star’s sister – d’you know that? You should look like a pop star’s sister. I’ve got two wardrobes full of beautiful clothes, and this is the first time I’ve ever met anyone I could lend ’em to. And besides – you look fucking awful, if you don’t mind me saying. When was the last time you went to a hairdresser’s?’
‘Yes – but, I don’t want to …’
‘Don’t worry,’ Lol smiled, ‘I’m not going to do anything over-dramatic. I’m not going to make you look like me or anything. Heaven forbid! I just wanna – polish you. D’you know what I mean. I wanna make youshine …’
She slathered a load of slimy stuff on to Ana’s split ends and blow-dried her hair for about a quarter of an hour with a huge round brush until it lay gleaming on her shoulders like a black satin cape.
‘Yasmin le Bon – eat your heart out.’
Then she applied some subtle make-up and forced Anainto a brown, strappy chiffon top sprinkled with gold beads, which showed her midriff, a pair of very distressed vintage jeans with the waistband ripped off, and pointy-toed alligator-skin stilettos. ‘Ooh, it’s so nice not to feel like the only woman in the world with size eight feet, for a change,’ she said, as she slipped Ana’s long, thin feet easily into the shoes.
Ana watched her transformation in the mirror with wonder. It had never occurred to her that she could be scruffy and glamorous at the same time, that she could look so chic in a pair of jeans. Back home, girls either dressed down in student attire or dressed up in spangly New Look dresses and four-inch heels. You were either grungy or trendy. She liked this look, which was neither one nor the other. Her bony shoulders looked graceful under the barely-there chiffon, her pale stomach looked almost erogenous peeping between her top and trousers, and her legs looked shapely encased in pale denim on tiny, dainty heels. Lol had mascaraed her bottom lashes as well as her top lashes, making her eyes look enormous, and her hair looked shiny and wispy in a Patti Smith, Rock Goddess, kind of a way.
‘And you cannot carry your stuff around in that.’ Lol pointed disdainfully at her grubby tapestry rucksack. ‘Here.’ She chucked Ana a little gold clutch-bag. And then Lol stood and appraised her for a second or two, a smile spreading across her face. ‘One last thing,’ she said, walking towards Ana. She gripped Ana’s shoulders and yanked them up, then she walked behind her and put a fist into the small of her back.
‘What are you doing?’ said Ana.
‘I’m making you stand up straight. Your posture, Ana, is appalling. God has given you this fantastic, elegant, sophisticated body. Act like you’re proud of it.’ She backed away and appraised her again. ‘That’s better,’ she said, ‘now you like a propah Lundarn bird, like. Bee would be so proud of you.’ Her eyes glazed over again and for a second she stared into space. ‘Right.’ She snapped out of her reverie and picked up her door keys. ‘You and me, girl, we’re gonna go out and be tall and skinny and black and white and scare the pants off all these poncey southern men. What d’you say?’
Lol took Ana to a members’ club, a painfully, impossibly trendy series of distressed, shabby-chic rooms in an old factory in a decidedly insalubrious Ladbroke Grove back-street. Walking in with Lol, Ana noticed that for the first time since she’d arrived in London, she was being looked at – she was no longer invisible. And not just being glanced at but being stared at – with genuine interest – by men and women alike. And by some seriously stylish men and women, too.
‘This,’ said Lol, ‘is about as London as London gets. Look at ’em – stylists, designers, retailers, restaurateurs, journalists, models, broadcasters. These are – I’m afraid to say – the people who make London what it is. Without these people, London would just be, you know … Leeds.’
Lol bought them a couple of margaritas, and they headed for a dark corner, spotlit through coloured gels and furnished with big brown leather sofas. Groovejet played quietly in the background, while opposite themtwo posh girls in Seventies throwback clothes made self-conscious roll-ups from mild shag and Rizlas.
‘So – how did you and Bee meet?’
‘Clubbing,’ said Lol, simply, ‘In the early Eighties. I can’t remember a precise moment, though. We just sort ofmerged.She were wild back then, she really were. We were both part of the same scene for ages, all that New Romantic shite, Steve Strange, Philip Salon, Blitz and all that. But we became proper friends a few years later, after she asked me to work with her on “Groovin’ for London”.’
‘So – what d’you do?’
‘I am the world’s least successful pop star.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean – I left stage school fifteen years ago, I’ve worked non-stop since. I’ve been around the world about ten times, I’ve worked with some of the biggest names in the business, I’ve been credited on some of the most successful albums ever released. And I’m still £500 overdrawn and living in a grotty flat, just like I were the day I left college.’
‘What’ve you been doing?’
‘I’m a session singer, love. You know – the jobbing actors of the music industry. The faceless, anonymous providers of soulful harmonies, the unsung performers of those background noises that drown out the fact that the lead singer can’t sing. Oh – and naff music for adverts, too, of course.’
‘Adverts?’