Page 3 of The Good Part
‘You’ve worked your little butt off,’ Zoya says, picking up a sparkly hairband and laying it on my head like a crown. ‘You’ll be Queen of TV in no time. Which reminds me’ – Zoya reaches to pull a card out of a drawer and hands it to me. On the front is a sketch she’s drawn. It’s of me wearing a crown, holding a TV, surrounded by books and badgers. It says ‘Congratulations!’ in perfect calligraphy across the top.
‘This is amazing,’ I say, laughing. ‘A Zoya Khan original. This might be worth a fortune one day.’
‘It’s to put on your desk at work, to remind yourself where you’re headed.’
‘I love it. What’s with all the books and badgers?’
‘You like books and you like badgers,’ she says with a shrug.
I reach up to squeeze her hand, and mouth ‘thank you’ in the mirror.
Zoya has always been a stalwart supporter of my stuttering TV career. My parents were open-minded when I got my first job in production, but eighteen months later, when I was still a runner on minimum wage, they started to question what I was doing with my life. All my friends were moving up their respective career ladders, making good use of their degrees, while I was still languishing on the bottom rung, making coffee.
On the dressing table is a framed photo of our group of friends from school: me, Zoya, Faye and Roisin. The four of us talked about living together when we first moved to London, but then Faye’s parents bought her a studio flat, and Roisin, as a trainee lawyer, had a far bigger budget than Zoya and me.
‘How perfect would it be if we could swap Emily and Julian for Faye and Roisin,’ I say quietly, meeting Zoya’s eye in the mirror.
‘Roisin wouldn’t be able to handle the lack of en suites,’ Zoya says, laughing. ‘And Faye would probably make it her mission to tackle Stinkley’s antisocial behaviour with reflexology and herbal tea.’
‘Maybe we should set them up,’ I say, and we both burst out laughing.
Zoya’s room used to look like mine, posters Blu-Tacked to the walls and a clothes rail held together with duct tape. But now, looking around, I realise something has changed. Her room looks like the ‘after’ photo in an Instagram makeover reel. She has procured several lamps, a blue velvet armchair, scatter cushions, matching bed linen, framed art on the wall, and the biggest source of my envy – a dark, wooden bookcase that’s not even IKEA. So this is what a decent salary looks like.
‘You’ve made it so nice in here,’ I tell her, trying not to sound jealous.
‘Thanks, you can come and sit in my reading chair whenever you like.’
Zoya used to be a penniless creative like me, but then a few months ago, she dropped out of art school and got herself a job as an estate agent. It seems a shame because she’s an incredible artist, but then again, that bookcase is a work of art.
Squeezing my shoulder, she says, ‘There, done,’ as she puts the final pin in my hair.
‘Thank you. I don’t know how you do that.’
In the corridor, I hear a door open. ‘Bathroom’s free,’ Em yells as her door closes. I dash back into the hall, only to see Betty sneaking in there before me.
‘Sorry, just need to grab my bones,’ she yells, and I turn back to Zoya and make a murderous expression. Surprisingly she doesn’t laugh, but only says, ‘Luce, I need to talk to you about something. Walk to the tube with me?’
‘Sure. I don’t have time to shower now anyway. Give me five minutes to get dressed.’
My room feels even more depressing after being in Zoya’s. No one wants to live in the ‘before’ photo. My parents say I’m ‘living like a student’, but it’s actually worse than that. As a student I had furniture and a dry bed, I had access to a student loan and subsidised accommodation. Now, after tax, rent, bills, loan repayments and my travel card, I’m left with thirty-five pounds a week for everything else: food, booze, clothes, tampons, you name it. If I could only get promoted to researcher, I’d earn an extra eighty pounds a week. With that kind of money, I could eat, I could buy a nice big bookshelf, I could go back to using normal tampons rather than the two-sizes-too-big moon cup I got free in a party bag at my cousin’s hen do. But there is no point fantasising about such heady luxuries.
After passing a wet wipe beneath each arm and rolling on some deodorant, I throw on a pair of black jeans and a fitted T-shirt, then apply a lick of mascara and a dab of blusher. It’s enough to make me look passably fresh and professional. If only my life could be so easily rectified.
Zoya is waiting for me by the front door. In the hallway, she takes an exaggerated gulp of clean air, which makes me smile. Once we’re down the stairs and out in the street she says, ‘So, I wanted to tell you first.’
‘What?’ I say, immediately worried.
‘I think I’m going to move out, Luce.’
‘What?’ I can’t hide the horror in my voice. ‘Why?’
‘Because we live in a dump, and I’m earning money now.’ Her face contorts into an apologetic wince. ‘You know I adore living with you, but I can’t handle the others any more. Julian has had wet washing sitting in the machine for three days.Three days.’
‘So, you’re abandoning me?’ I say, making loud cartoon sobs to hide the fact that I genuinely feel like crying.
‘Oh come on, you can take my room, it’s drier than yours.’
‘I can’t afford your room. It’s twenty quid a week more than mine.’
