Material Girl by Louise Kean Read Free Book Online Page A

under my make-up, my hairspray starting to scratch at my head. I don’t think I have ever been this mortified. Gavin isn’t talking to me. Maybe he and the dwarf are really good friends, although they’d look ridiculous walking down the street together. In my mind I can only picture the smaller guy sitting on one of Gavin’s massive shoulders, perhaps in a jaunty hat and eating an apple … but I know that’s wrong. I decide to break the silence with a change of subject, terrified of how Gavin might choose tointroduce me to the rest of the crew, especially if there are any more … electricians.
    ‘So Gavin, pretend you have a girlfriend …’
    He stops and glares at me again.
    ‘What?’ I ask.
    ‘I do have a girlfriend,’ he says.
    ‘Oh. I didn’t mean anything by it, Gavin … Okay, well, moving on, what if you and your girlfriend were just sitting on the sofa one night, watching the TV, and she said to you, “Say something nice to me”?’
    ‘Why?’ he says, and I can’t decide if he is just irritated, or if he already hates me like Greenpeace hate Shell. Either way I carry on regardless – I can’t make it any worse.
    ‘Because she’s just had a miserable day, her feet really hurt because she’s been breaking in new sandals, she’s had a row with her dad about the importance of correctly filling out cheque-book stubs, and she needs somebody to say something wonderful. She needs to feel special …’
    ‘I mean,’ Gavin says, pushing a door open then turning back to address me, ‘why haven’t I said something nice anyway?’
    ‘Oh …’ That’s floored me.
    He steps back to allow me to walk through the door before he does.
    ‘Exactly,’ I say. Exactly. I think my voice might have just broken.
    The stage is in front of us, and all of the house lights are up. It is smaller than I anticipated, and apologetic without a spotlight.
    ‘I’m not having this conversation if you are going to cry again.’ Gavin talks over his shoulder at me as we stride along the aisle. ‘Plus, do you talk about anything else? Have you tried cracking a few jokes? Or is it just constant relationship angst over a mound of self-help books and copiesof Cosmopolitan ? Because if that’s the case I don’t think I blame this guy …’
    I blink twice in quick succession. I am startled and affronted. I can talk about other things; I talk about other things all the time!
    ‘I can talk about other things …’ I say, sneering at him.
    ‘Well thank God for that,’ Gavin says, and stops walking abruptly behind a short Indian man who stands with his back to us while gesticulating wildly, his hands conducting an imaginary opera. Nobody appears to be paying him much attention, and a clove cigarette flashes wildly between the stubby fingers of his left hand, sprinkling ash and sparks onto his chocolate-brown suede loafers. He wears a dark grey suit and a black polo-neck, and has very thick and very high dark hair that seems to have been set in one of those old-lady hairdresser’s, an hour under the machine with a Woman’s Weekly and a word search, sucking on a boiled sweet, all clicking teeth and concentration.
    Young people in jeans and Sergeant Pepper and Mr Brightside T-shirts mill around in front of him paying him no mind, while every couple of seconds somebody completely new appears and carries a large plank of wood precariously from one side of the stage to the other. Everything that could possibly be covered in material has been – a dark-red brushed velvet with a grey and brown pattern of twisted leaves. The stage needs sweeping. It is insulated with a thin layer of dust, broken up by discarded McDonald’s wrappers. I count at least five Starbucks cups that have toppled onto their sides like the drunks on Tottenham Court Road.
    Gavin says, ‘Tristan’, but the little man in front of us doesn’t turn around. He is shouting in a low, thick theatrical voice that he has shoplifted from the men’s floor of a 1950s