LITMIR.BIZ

       G Girl Friends

      It is a good idea never to go shopping for clothes with a girl friend. Since she is often an unwitting rival as well, she will unconsciously demolish everything that suits you best. Even if she is the most loyal friend in the world, if she simply adores you, and if her only desire is for you to be the most beautiful, I remain just as firm in my opinion: shop alone, and turn only to specialists for guidance. Although they may not be unmercenary, at least they are not emotionally involved.

       I particularly dread these kinds of girl friends:

       1. The one who wants to be just like you, who is struck by the same love-at-first-sight for the same dress, who excuses herself in advance by saying, ‘I hope you don’t mind, darling, and anyway, we don’t go out together very much, and we can always telephone beforehand to make sure we don’t wear it at the same time, etc. etc.… You are furious but don’t dare show it and you return the dress the next day.

       2. The friend with a more modest budget than yours, who couldn’t dream of buying the same kind of clothes as you (the truth is that she dreams of nothing else). Perhaps you think it is a real treat for her to go shopping with you. Personally, I call it mental cruelty, and I am always painfully embarrassed by the role of second fiddle that certain women reserve for their best friend. Besides, her presence is of absolutely no use to you at all, because this kind of friend always approves of everything you select, and will agree with even greater enthusiasm if it happens to be something that isn’t very becoming.

       3. Finally, the friend who lives for clothes and whose advice you seek. This spoilt and self-confident woman will monopolize the attention of the shop assistants, who are quick to scent a good customer. You find yourself forgotten by everybody, trying to decide what looks best not on you, but on your friend.

      Moral: Always shop alone. Women who shop with their friends may be popular, but elegant they are NOT.

      I’m on my way to Notting Hill to see a friend I write with, Nicki Sands. We began working on a screenplay together about a year ago. Neither of us is really a writer, which is probably why we aren’t making a lot of progress on the project. We meet up religiously twice a week, loitering around in a kind of career cul-de-sac. However, writing does provide us with a useful alibi, instantly deflecting any embarrassing questions such as, ‘So, what do you do?’

      Nicki used to be a model in the late seventies and early eighties and now she lives with a record producer in an enormous double-fronted house in Notting Hill. They openly despise one another. Neither one of them is obliged to work, so they while away the hours wandering from room to room, looking for new ways to torture each other.

      I arrive around 10:30 to find Nicki and Dan milling about in their Santa Fe style kitchen. They own a cappuccino machine that neither of them can work and are standing in front of the faux adobe woodburning hearth and indoor barbecue unit holding their empty cups.

      Every once in a while, one of them will have a go and the other will provide a running commentary.

      ‘That’s right, put the coffee in and turn the knob … No! No, no, no, no, no!’

      ‘Shut up!’

      ‘Jesus, you’re doing it wrong again!’

      ‘No, I’m not!’

      ‘Steam, there’s meant to be steam!’

      ‘Shut up! What is it with you?’

      ‘What is it with me? What is it? I’ve been up since six and I still haven’t had a fucking cup of coffee!’

      Reading the instructions is considered cheating.

      After a while, Dan gives up and makes a Nescafé. The three-hundred-pound triumph of Italian engineering has won again. Nicki and I decide to go out for coffee and discuss plot development. But what we really do is sit in Tom’s, a café and organic food shop around the corner, and hash over Nicki’s failing relationship in detail.

      ‘He thinks he looks young!’ she hisses at me, leaning dramatically across the table, as if discretion were a consideration. ‘I mean, he said to me the other day, “I don’t think I look a day past thirty-five.” I nearly choked on my cappuccino!’ (They must have been out.)

      She’s speaking to me but her eyes never leave the door, just in case someone thinner, prettier, or more chic walks in. This almost never happens. I’m just beginning to confide in her that I think maybe my husband and I might have a serious problem too, when suddenly she screams, grabs my arm violently and yanks me across the table. ‘My God! Louise!’ she gasps. ‘That’s the handbag I was telling you about!

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