Love by Clare Naylor Page B

videos:
Carry On at Your Convenience
(the one about the toilet factory),
Cyrano de Bergerac
, and
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
. She cried at all of them—she even cried at the
Carry On
, because she thought Sid James was lovely and he was dead. She ate her coleslaw out of the tub and munched her way through the Pringles. At six o’clock she was filled withself-loathing and fortified herself for an evening of Cilia Black and
Inspector Morse
repeats. Not a terrible prospect ordinarily, but with seven hours of viewing under her belt and enough sloth and greed to make the devil himself recoil in horror she thought maybe she should go for a run or something. As she contemplated going to her room to find her trainers the phone rang. In her apathy she let it ring until, answerphone … 
beeeep
:
    â€œAmy, pick up the phone, I know you’re there.” The strident tones of Lucinda. “Amy, I mean it …” Amy tripped over the mess and lurched toward the phone.
    â€œLucinda, what on earth do you want?”
    â€œI’m coming round in half an hour to pick you up. Pack your case, I’m taking you to my mother’s.”
    â€œLuce …” Whine, whine.
    â€œJust shut up and get ready.”
    Half an hour to get ready may be a spur when a famous actor’s coming for a curry, but when it’s your best friend the motivation isn’t quite there, especially when she’s taking you to her mother’s. Amy wondered what on earth Lucinda’s mother could be like. Lucinda’s received pronunciation and sergeant-major qualities should denote an army background, but rumors abounded that life was nothing of the sort chez Luce. Oh well. Amy packed her little suitcase, the one she’d last used for her (in her pining eyes) ill-fated weekend in Dorset. I wish I’d never met bloody Orlando Rock.
    Amy had avoided mirrors for a few days now, but collecting her toothbrush from the bathroom, she was confronted with the horror that was her face. It was the same face she’d always had, she supposed, only todayher eyes looked smaller, those lashes a bit more stubby. And her eyebrows didn’t arch in a come-hither fashion as she’d come to imagine. And the lips—nothing rosebud about them, fast-fading geranium, maybe. But she knew what the problem was: she’d spent so long in magazines over the past few days—studying the face of the inhumanly nubile Tiffany Swann, and scouring the visage of Orlando’s ex-wife for something as deeply unattractive as laughter lines (to no avail, I’m afraid)—that she felt that she should be on a par with these divinities, that somehow her own facial misfortunes would vanish under the Midas gaze of Orlando Rock. Not so, babe. She took a step back and was about to examine her body but the Spirit of Self-Preservation spoke up. “You’re not even gonna go there, honey,” she warned. Instead Amy stabbed her toothbrush into her soap bag crossly and balked at the packing of shampoo, but for decency’s sake she thought it better that she did. All Lucinda’s fault, she thought petulantly. Bloody bossy cow.
    The bloody bossy cow rang the doorbell. Trog trog down the stairs.
    â€œAmy, you look a fright. My mother will wonder who the troll is I’ve brought home.”
    â€œFine, then I’ll stay here.”
    Lucinda pulled Amy’s arm.
    â€œDon’t you dare, come back here.”
    The ill-matched pair squashed into the car, Lucinda looking like a packet of opal fruits in the latest spring colors, all glossy hair and fruity lips. Amy looked like something she’d salvaged from a skip. They sat in silence most of the way … heaven knows where.
    â€œWhere are you taking me?”
    â€œTo my mother’s.”
    â€œWhere does she live?”
    â€œNorfolk.”
    â€œOh.”
    Scintillating. Eventually, and not a moment too soon for either party, they pulled