Handbags and Gladrags by Maggie Alderson

Author:Maggie Alderson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2004-09-02T04:00:00+00:00

11

As soon as I got back to London, my life settled down into its usual pattern with almost spooky ease and after all the excitement and drama of the shows season, heightened further by my dangerous liaison, I was perfectly happy about that.

Ollie and I resumed our usual round of work, parties and work parties – some together and some apart. He couldn’t come with me if I was going along to keep Frannie company at the launch of a new eyebrow gel by one of Slap’s major competitors, so we would meet for dinner afterwards and I would tell him all about it. Every detail. He loved getting the inside scoop on his competitors like that.

But if it was a fashion launch he always came with me. They were perfect networking opportunities for him and he also really enjoyed them. Ollie was far enough on the outside of fashion to remain seriously impressed by it. I found his disingenuous enthusiasm very endearing and it stopped me from getting too jaded about it all. Some of my colleagues were so spoiled they would chuck their party goodie bags into the nearest bin, within full sight of the venue, if they thought the gifts weren’t lavish enough. Ollie always opened his with the excitement of a child with a Christmas stocking.

‘Ooh, look, Em,’ he would say, bringing out some garish tube of hair gel to add to the legions already stuffed into our bathroom cupboards. ‘More product! Excellent.’ He kept the carrier bags too. He still thought getting something free was the most terrific lark.

As well as tagging along on my calendar of events he also had a lot of work things of his own to go to, some of which I had to attend as the executive wife, but many – sales person of the month etc. – I was all too happy to miss. Between all this and occasional more normal social outings with non-work friends, we were only at home about two evenings a week. One of those was always Saturday. It was another of Ollie’s little quirks, but he simply refused to go out on a Saturday night. He wouldn’t even go to the cinema and if friends invited us over he would say we were busy.

It was some kind of atavistic hangover from the days when someone like Ollie would never have been ‘in town’ on a Saturday night and, indeed, if we weren’t having a Sunday salon the next day, we would go to the country, usually to his parents’ place in Hampshire.

Far from dreading the in-laws, I loved going to stay with Max and Caroline. Ursula was right, they were as straight and ‘uncreative’ as people could be – and that was exactly why I liked them. They weren’t dull in a narrow-minded suburban way, they were just very conventional for people of their kind, right down to the books of Social Stereotypes cartoons in the downstairs loo and the green wellies in the boot room.

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