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      ‘Oh, I know.’ She displayed the ring on her perfectly manicured finger. ‘He says I just swept him off his feet! Hee hee hee!’

      Swept him off his feet? Or ran him over with a steamroller? Fraser didn’t even like being swept off his feet, I thought mutinously. Fraser liked striding about in the hills and reading Viz magazine and failing his engineering exams.

      ‘I remember him,’ said Fran, ‘… a couple of times when I came up. Lanky bloke. Lank. He didn’t seem like your type …’

      ‘Yes, well,’ simpered Amanda.

      ‘How did you meet him? Chess club?’

      ‘No, actually, it was the funniest thing … I was purring …’

      ‘What?’ I said.

      ‘Oh, my job, darling, you know.’

      Grrrrr.

      ‘I was working for these clients from Edinburgh who are launching some ancient castles guide. Anyway, who should I see in the portfolio brochure but my old friend from university, Fraser.’

      I didn’t point out that she can’t have said two words to him the whole time, as he blushed a lot, and wore the same pair of Converse trainers every day for three years.

      ‘Anyway, so I thought I’d go see him for a drink –’

      ‘Hang on,’ interrupted Fran, ‘what the hell was he doing in a brochure? Was it a brochure for Converse trainers?’

      Amanda tinkled her tinkly laugh. ‘No, actually – and you’ll think this is just mad: me, little Amanda Phillips from Portmount Comprehensive …’

      Uh-oh.

      ‘What?’ demanded Fran.

      ‘Well, actually … he’s a laird!’

      ‘A what?!’

      I knew, though.

      ‘Oh, I know, isn’t it cute? Well, it’s like a lord – only Scotch!’

      ‘Is this true?’ Fran looked at me.

      ‘Ehm, I knew his uncle was. Maybe if his dad died, I suppose …’

      Amanda looked at me in shock. ‘Melanie, you knew all that time and you didn’t tell me!’

      ‘Amanda, you met him once at a party, and you said he smelled funny.’

      ‘No-o, that can’t have been me.’ She laughed again. ‘Anyway –’

      ‘Did he smell funny?’ Fran asked me.

      ‘Only when it rained.’

      ‘Darlings!’ said Amanda, with an edge in her voice. ‘This is my BIG NEWS!’

      We settled down, and her coy smile came back.

      ‘Anyway, by sheer coincidence I spoke to the castles people and they gave me his mother’s number, and she had his home number and it was just across London, so we got together and we had so much in common; we laughed and laughed … Then we went off to look at his land deeds, then one thing led to another at the Caledonian Ball …’

      ‘What a coincidence!’ said Fran.

      ‘… and now I am going to be Lairdess Amanda Phillips-McConnald!’ finished Amanda, all in one breath.

      There was a silence.

      ‘Hey, his name’s Phillips too?’ said Fran.

      ‘No, no! You see, I’m keeping my name and taking his name. It’s a feminist statement really. Didn’t you see me in Tatler?’

      Fran said later my eyes were like saucers. So she asked, ‘Is he rich?’

      ‘Don’t be silly, darling. What’s in Scotland?’

      ‘History? Great natural beauty? Mel Gibson?’

      ‘Sheep and alcoholics, darling. No, he hasn’t a bean … and there’s a “castle” to do up – he couldn’t pay for that looking at bridges all day long.’

      Then Amanda went completely off on one about her interior design plans for the castle. I’d been there. (Fraser had asked a bunch of us along, but I’d tried to pretend it was a private outing for me alone.) It was really just an impressive exterior, two habitable rooms, and a Calor Gas heater, but she clearly didn’t know that yet, given the lengths she was prepared to go to to put metal walls in it.

      ‘I thought we’d go for a cutting-edge, post-industrialist look,’ she was saying.

      I knew I had to say something – anything – at this point. So I followed my time-honoured rule of saying the first thing that comes into my head:

      ‘Wow, so really it’s like a class-weds-money type of thing! That’s practically …’

      I was going to say Hogarthian, but too late. I got a look that could peel an apple whole, and a very long pause. Eventually:

      ‘Well, of course, us Phillips can trace our ancestry back pretty far.’

      ‘What, to Woking?’ said Fran.

      ‘Ha ha, very funny.’ She turned. ‘Are you getting married, Fran? Oh no, I forgot, you’re not seeing anyone, are you? Because maybe, if you ever do, we could make fun of you for a change.’

      Fran raised her eyes to heaven and headed back to the bar for more drinks.

      Tantrum over, Amanda leaned in chummily. ‘So, you and Fraser were quite close, weren’t you?’ She smiled, as if to show that this didn’t mean ENVY ME! ENVY ME!

      ‘Not really,’ I said, meaning: Well, I fancied him and he completely ignored me.

      ‘Oh, you must come to the wedding. It’s going to be absolutely wonderful. Daddy simply insists on making a fuss.’

      Amanda’s dad had been married about four times since we were sixteen. He got a discount.

      ‘I’d love to.’ I would be generous. She was the first of my friends to get married, and to a lovely bloke. Why shouldn’t I be happy? Without warning, a thought of Alex popped into my head, and I winced.

      ‘Great! Oh, I’m sorry I can’t make you a bridesmaid, but Larissa and Portia are such good friends from varsity, I just had to ask them.’

      ‘Oh, right …’

      ‘You will meet someone, Melanie, you know. Someone nice. Such a shame about Alex dashing off like that. He was a bit of a one, wasn’t he? And of course so terribly well connected.’

      Meaning what exactly? I put my drink down, rather too emphatically.

      ‘Well, I don’t care about that, and I don’t care about Alex.’

      ‘No, of course you don’t,’ she said, patting me on the hand in an infuriating manner.

      I was constantly forgetting Amanda’s true potential for sheer malice. Revising my earlier estimate, I hoped she’d have a poxy marriage and get divorced before we’d finished the cake.

      Fran came back with the drinks, but Amanda immediately hopped up and said she had to be elsewhere. She shook back her blonde sheet of hair – rootless – and sashayed her pert little leather-trousered arse out the door to her latest-model convertible, mobile phone already clamped to her ear, waving merrily behind her, off to somewhere infinitely more glamorous and exciting than the pub on a Friday night.

      Fran and I sat in silence for a bit, till Fran said, ‘Sod that, then!’ and we drank her white wine as well as ours. Then we had another one to cheer ourselves up, and then a couple more, and before long we didn’t care that Amanda Phillips had found her handsome – if scruffy – prince and was going off to live in a castle. Much.

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