And Baby Makes Two - Dyan Sheldon [1]
Anyway, I didn’t care that there was no one there because I needed extra time to get ready. My mum and her boyfriend, Charley, were taking me to Planet Hollywood for dinner. This was a big deal, since Hilary and Charley’s normal idea of splashing out was to eat at Pizza Hut, damn the expense.
I’d wanted to go to Planet Hollywood since it opened. I reckoned you never knew who you’d bump into in a place like that. The brainboxes at school all wanted to go to university and become professors or solicitors and stuff like that, but I wanted to get married and have my own flat and lots of children. That was my true ambition. As far as I was concerned, having a family was the outfit you wore in life and everything else – jobs and stuff – were just the accessories. I even went through a phase when I was younger of designing my dream home and family with pictures from magazines. I bought dozens of cheap photo albums and filled them up with pictures of houses and husbands and children. They were all still under my bed.
But I wasn’t stupid. I knew that before I could get married, I had to have a boyfriend. A real boyfriend. I modelled myself on the Alicia Silverstone character in Clueless: I didn’t go out with schoolboys. Schoolboys were pimply and immature. They played air guitars and had food fights that made them gasp with laughter and disgusted everyone else. But having a rule about not going out with schoolboys meant I lost out. So far I hadn’t really gone out with anyone.
That’s why I was pretty excited about Planet Hollywood. It was the kind of place where I might meet someone I could go out with. I knew from films that it was when you went somewhere you didn’t usually go that your life could change. And I definitely wanted my life to change.
I threw my wet clothes over the radiator and put on the stereo. My mother was still recovering from the break-up of Genesis. She thought the music I liked should be played just below a whisper and several miles away. So since she wasn’t there to complain, I put it on really loud. Mrs Mugurdy upstairs immediately started pounding on the ceiling, but, as per usual, I pretended I didn’t hear her.
I was really looking forward to my bath. I wanted to have a long soak and shave my legs and stuff like that in peace and quiet. Which was something I couldn’t do when the old bag was home. She’d be banging on the bathroom door all the time, shrieking at me to hurry up, didn’t I know that other people needed to use the loo, too?
I put the kettle on and went to run the water. It took me a while to go through all my oil balls and bubbles, choosing just the right one for the occasion. Normally I used Raspberry Ripple from the Body Shop, but tonight was special. Like the kid in the Garbage song, I was going to turn every table I could get my hands on.
I wanted something grown-up and sexy, so if someone interesting was at Planet Hollywood, he’d be sure to notice me. I finally decided on White Musk. I read that White Musk was Sharon Stone’s favourite. I reckoned if it was good enough for Sharon Stone, it was good enough for me.
The automatic switch on the kettle didn’t work, of course, so it was nearly dry by the time I remembered that I’d left it on.
“Thank you, God,” I said to the ceiling as I refilled it. If I burned out one more kettle my mother would kill me.
While the second kettle was boiling, I lit some candles and incense (to help me relax), and picked out a CD to play while I was in the bath. My nan sent me a voucher for Tower Records for my birthday. My nan loves music. She stopped listening to anything new in about