Faking Friends by Jane Fallon

Author:Jane Fallon
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781405933117
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2017-10-28T00:00:00+00:00

25

Woman in Pub eludes me, just as Woman in Park did. Maybe I’m just not cut out to play a generic woman. Maybe casting people take one look at me and think, I just don’t believe that woman would ever be in a park. Or a pub. Or anywhere else, for that matter. There’s something intrinsically wrong with my womanness. My very womanosity. It’s just not womanish enough.

I pester Sara enough so that she puts a bit of effort in and manages to get me two more auditions: Nancy in a touring production of Steaming which will be playing the smaller community venues rather than the prestigious Theatre Royals, and ‘Mum’ in an advert for washing powder. I attack them both with the enthusiasm of a child on Christmas morning, but it’s to no avail. I actually get a call back for the commercial but, in the end, it’s a no. Still, I tell myself, that’s two more directors I’ve met, two more people who might remember me in the future.

Simon calls me a few days after our date. The end of the evening had been both awkward and surprising. I had just assumed we’d end up somewhere together. I’d even tidied up in case he wanted to come back to mine, although his place in Barnes sounds infinitely nicer. Plus, I’d plucked and shaved and had bits and pieces of me waxed, buffed up my skin till it glowed, moisturized with mango-scented body cream. I couldn’t remember making this much effort since, well, since the early days of Jack, I suppose. In the bathroom, I’d stared resentfully down at the pouchy pockets of cellulite on my thighs. It wasn’t terrible, but it was there. I’d barely even noticed it before, but now I couldn’t imagine anyone seeing anything else if I stood in front of them naked. Okay, so no standing. Horizontal, it looked better. ‘Remember not to take your skirt off till you’re lying down,’ I’d said to myself like a mantra.

Anyway, as we left, he’d put his arm round me, pulled me close to him and said, ‘Can we do this again?’

‘Definitely. I have to pay you back.’ He had insisted on paying after all, citing the fact that the restaurant was stupidly expensive and he knew that I was, as he put it, ‘in a bit of a transition period’. I knew I should have protested more. I wanted us to start off on an equal footing, but the truth was my half would mean my having to do two extra days at the call centre and even my staunchest principles gave way at the thought of that.

‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘Otherwise, there’ll be compound interest and in a few weeks you’ll owe me a fifteen-course banquet.’

The doorman had waved a cab over. I was just trying out the sentence, ‘Do you want to come back to mine?’ in my head when Simon said, ‘You take this one.’

‘Oh, okay.’ I must have given myself away because he screwed up his face and said, ‘Early start.

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