Elegance and Innocence: 2-Book Collection. Kathleen Tessaro
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8 pm. A matching coat and dress that is called a ‘cocktail ensemble’ in Paris, but in reality is often far too dressy for the occasion, although perfect for theatre first nights and elegant black-tie dinner parties.
10 pm. A long formal evening dress that can be worn all the year round (which means you should avoid velvet and prints).
9 am and I’m at the top of Whitehall, wearing a navy gabardine suit, with a brown V-necked knitted top from Kookai and a pair of black T-bar shoes. The Kookai top is beautifully form fitting but has a tendency to unravel under the arms. Must remember to keep my jacket on. Am popping into Sushi Express for my breakfast – a fruit smoothie and an order of green tea to take away. Part of my new regime. I will not eat sugar today. I will not. I buy an extra banana, just in case. The sun is blinding as I race across the street to catch the light. I’m good at running in high-heeled shoes now – I have to be. I’ve been promoted to manager in the box office and spend all day running up and down the stairs between the window in the lobby and the office upstairs. A bit of a wild-card candidate for the job, no one was more surprised than I was when I got it. It’s been a huge boost to my self-confidence. And the constant activity is a godsend. My husband and I have, as far as I can tell, stopped talking. The new job makes it easier for us to pretend that we are too busy or just too tired to communicate. Neither of us is ready to hear what the other has to say.
1 pm and I’m in the changing room of the gym, along with about thirty other women, all of whom have only an hour to squeeze themselves into their lycra ensembles, work themselves up into a sweat, shower, dry their hair and tear back to the office. Since I renewed my membership several months ago, I’ve managed, miraculously, to show up four times a week. Not since my dancing days have I pursued any form of fitness with this much success. And it’s starting to show.
The gym locker room is also where you learn about the reality of other women’s bodies and wardrobes. We all spend as much time surreptitiously examining one another as we do on the treadmill. Everyone freezes simultaneously as the tall, tanned blonde emerges from the shower. We pretend to be adjusting our hair but really … yes! She does have cellulite!
Life is full of surprises. Who would’ve guessed that the newsreader with the Armani suit and the mobile phone attached to her ear (‘I’m at the gym! T-H-E G-Y-M!’), would wear dingy white M&S knickers with a black see-through bra? But the surprise transformation of the week goes to the mousy-haired, be-fringed girl in the 1984 Laura Ashley floral ensemble who undresses to reveal a bright pink silk bra and knicker set with matching garter belt, stockings and a pair of legs that would make Ute Lemper weep. Even the tall blonde stands agape in the centre of the shower room. I pull on a bright blue crop top, a matching pair of stretch trousers and some hideously expensive Nike trainers. I’m sure I burn more calories just trying to squeeze myself into this outfit than the whole workout put together.
3 pm and I’m back in the office, showered, hair not quite dry (competition for the three blow-dryers is fierce) and back in my navy suit. The only difference is, I’ve given up on my black T-bar shoes. There’s only so long a woman can be expected to bounce around on the balls of her feet before someone has to die. The temperature has shot up and my jacket is hanging over the back of my chair, leaving the unravelling Kookai top in full view. I will repair it. I will. Tomorrow. In the meantime, I’ll just get rid of this stray thread that’s hanging down … I watch with a strange sense of detachment as half the remaining sleeve comes undone in my hand.
I’m meant to be completing a weekly sales report but have hit my mid-afternoon slump. This is a biological glitch that renders me incredibly depressed between the hours of three and four o’clock each afternoon without fail. My theory is that I’m genetically programmed to have a nap at this time but unfortunately don’t live in a climate that favours siestas. The consequences are dramatic. The will to live seeps away and, instead of focusing on figures and performance breakdowns, I’m visualizing various methods of suicide. Dangling from a rope, passed out on a bed, floating in a stream. Or a drastic haircut.
The phone rings on the desk opposite, and as I scramble to get it, my foot catches on an invisible snag in the grey carpet tiles. My stocking runs and I still manage to miss the call. Luckily, Colin puts the kettle on (he’s intuitive in this area) and magicks up a box of Jammie Dodgers. (‘Two for the price of one, darling. Only slightly crushed.’) I desperately grapple for my spare emergency banana and find it at the bottom of my handbag, beaten into a kind of brown pulp. Fuck it. Spirits rise with the sugar intake and Colin assures me that Sinéad O’Connor was a fluke; that most women would be unable to successfully carry off a shaved head with any real sense of style. Unless they had ambitions of a professional wrestling career.
6 pm never fails to bring with it an inevitable second wind. The malaise that immersed the office at 4:45 – that hopeless hour when going home seems like a cruel, unsubstantiated rumour – evaporates and at 5:55 is replaced by a carnival atmosphere. There’s dancing, singing, the telling of jokes. Colleagues pat each other on the back and hold the door open for one another as they run, laughing and singing, out of the office. The night shift takes over, looking like they’ve just been sentenced to life imprisonment. I’ve got just over an hour to go home and get changed before I’m due at the theatre for the opening night of my husband’s new play. He’s having dinner after the show with his agent and the director and they expect me to be there, proud and supportive in my role as ‘the wife’. I feel a headache coming on just thinking about it. I decide to take off my stockings, as the run is just too bad for public display, and force my swollen feet back inside the T-bar shoes. On goes the jacket and I’m tearing out the door, flapping my way down Whitehall towards home.
7 pm and I’ve had a quick shower and am reapplying my make-up. In an effort to look striking and sophisticated (I was reading Vogue on the loo), I’ve pencilled in my brows with kohl pencil and now look like I have Down’s syndrome. I try to compensate for my uni-brow by applying a thick coat of red lipstick and before I know it, am a dead ringer for Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?. As I’m frantically wiping it all off with wads of toilet roll, it occurs to me that ten minutes before you’re due somewhere is obviously a bad time to experiment with your look. I manage to tone my make-up down to a Joan Crawford level and am searching through my underwear drawer for a pair of matching hold ups. Will I ever get out of the habit of saving runned tights, ‘Just in case’? Finally locate matching pair and step into my new Little Black Dress, a strappy, short Karen Millen design in thick, black stretch satin, which was the very first purchase I made after my promotion. I’m Audrey in this dress and love it more than anything in the world. However, do NOT feel the same way about black T-bar shoes, as I slip them back on my aching feet. Grabbing a little black satin evening bag I found in the sales, I try unsuccessfully to cram the entire contents of my purse inside and then relent, telling myself that it’s OK, I probably won’t need my address book, a needle and thread, and seven tampons for a single evening out. (My period isn’t due for a week.) Force myself to make do with a lipstick, a compact and my change purse, but not before doing a brief visualization exercise I learnt from reading Feel the Fear but Do It Anyway. I’m only fifteen minutes late as I hail a cab to the theatre.
8 pm. I’m standing alone, like a total lemon at the theatre bar, when I magically spot two old friends, Stephan and Carlos. Stephan’s a set designer and Carlos works in the wig department of the RSC. They’re buying and suddenly things start to look up. After all, I’m going to need a few drinks to make it through the entire evening as half of the happiest, non-speaking couple on earth. The bell goes. Go on then, just one more.
God, that bartender is cute.
10 pm. Supper with husband’s agent and the director at The Ivy. A little bit tipsy. My husband is still not talking to me (this is Advanced Silence) but did rescue me from drowning in the tub. Don’t normally bathe this much but seems I kept missing my mouth at dinner.
May go back to acting. Flirted all night with the director, who couldn’t keep his eyes off me. Think I made quite an impression.
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