Plum has always been sunnier and more easygoing than me, though the recent months or is it years? of man troubles are getting her down. She's also very pretty, with a smile so perfect, it's almost American. I've had braces twice and my teeth still retain a certain kookiness.
'Anyway,' she continues airily, backcombing her light brown hair with her fingers and pouting in the mirror. 'I told her that was silly. I mean, maybe he lost his phone. Or maybe he saved her number incorrectly. A hundred things could prevent him from calling her. That's what I always tell myself when I'm in that situation.'
I nod, unsure what to say. When I was in a relationship I didn't really see this side to her. The man-hunter side.
'Perhaps I'll just go back to Yorkshire,' she says glumly. 'I'm running out of men in London. My mother would be thrilled.'
'Don't be a dick,' says Sophie gently. She's the only person I know who can call someone a dick and still sound nice.
Sophie is two years younger than me. As children we were both very shy and spent a lot of time reading and drawing in intense, creative silence. But then, at 12, she developed this calm confidence while I remained quiet and prone to inner panic. For a few years I was jealous of her she went to more parties and no matter what she did, was unable to keep platonic male friends where I was depressingly capable of it but that soon faded. And now I just adore her. (Which is fortunate, as her engagement coinciding with my break-up could otherwise have been difficult.) We look very similar: straight, dark brown hair, slim but utterly un-athletic, with blueish eyes. Her teeth are better than mine too.
'Easy for you to say, you're the one who's getting fucking married at the age of 25,' says Plum.
Sophie doesn't say anything to this. She told me once that she feels embarrassed about jumping the marriage queue ahead of us both. That is typical Sophie. She's kinder than anyone I know.
Plum is now trying on the trench I just had on, and is gazing at her reflection in the mirror in that detached, assessing way that all girls have when they're shopping, like they're examining fruit in a market. 'I look like Inspector fucking Clouseau,' she says. (Plum has to be extremely 'on' for her job in PR, which I think is one of the reasons she swears like a sailor with Tourette's when she's with us. Another is that she's just really good at swearing.) I pick up a dark-blue mini-dress. 'Good? With a belt?'
'I'm over belts,' says Plum. 'Actually, I'm over dresses. They're so un-versatile. It's all about separates now. But that would be OK with some drop earrings and some chic little flats.'
'I don't own drop earrings or chic flats,' I say sadly. 'How can I have been shopping my whole fucking life and still have nothing to wear?'
I take out my notebook and write 'Flats, earrings' in a page I keep specifically for sartorial learnings.
'How's this?' says Sophie, coming out of the changing room. 'It's not revealing, it's informative.' Her dress is cut to well below boob-crease.
'When the fuck are we going wedding dress shopping, by the way?' says Plum, perking up considerably.
'We?' repeats Sophie dubiously.
'You need me, I'm your other big sister,' says Plum firmly, putting her arm around Sophie and shepherding her back to the changing room. 'I'm not leaving the Wood sisters alone with that decision.'
'Fine. After work next week,' calls Sophie through the changing room curtain. 'I know a vintage wedding dress company. We did a shoot there once.'
Sophie is an agent for photographers that you've almost heard of and soon will. She discovered she loved photography temping in a gallery in San Francisco, then rang 20 London agents every week till one of them gave her a job to shut her up. Another person who knows what she wants and makes it happen. Argh. Did I miss a Figure-Out-YourLife-Day at school or something?
'Right, stick a fork in me, I'm done,' says Sophie, handing the rejected dress back to the saleswoman with an apologetic smile. 'It's lovely, I'll probably come back later, thank you so much for your help!'
She once told me that she feels bad when she doesn't buy something. It's why she owns eight identical V-neck black jumpers.
'Let's go to Zara for non-basic basics,' says Plum decisively. 'That's what Abigail's missing.'
'How are you so good at this stuff?' I ask as we head outside.
Plum shrugs. 'My brain automatically co-ordinates outfits. Like that magic fashion computer in Clueless. I can even do it with things I haven't bought yet.'
With Plum's help, Zara is a success. I find a sexy nude pencil dress, a slightly-longer-than-any-of-my-others-and-therefore-apparently-completely-different black skirt, and some totally inappropriate green high heels that I just want. Plum tells me how I should wear all these things, and I take out my notebook and write everything down till she starts laughing at me.
'How are you getting along with Robert, by the way?' says Sophie.
'Fine,' I say. 'He's not around much. He gave me some good "surviving singledom" tips the other night.'
'He'd be good at that,' says Sophie. 'He's a total ladykiller. One of London's premier playboys.'
'Description, please,' says Plum.
'Dark hair, dark green eyes, high cheekbones, chiselled jaw line, lips arrogantly curled into a perma-snarl,' says Sophie, as though she's reading the back of a Mills and Boon novel. 'Gorgeous, brooding and manly.'
'Frowny,' I add. 'Grumpy. Needs a shave. Hair's a bit messy. He's very tidy around the house, though. Thank God.'
'Good body?' says Plum.
'Yes,' says Sophie. 'You really don't find him hot, Abigail?'
'I haven't seen his body. It's not like I'm going to run into him coming out of the shower, we have separate bathrooms.'
'Shame,' says Plum wistfully.
'Anyway, when we met I was still in break-up recovery mode,' I say. 'I only ever saw him as a potential flatmate.'
'Domesticity breeds contempt,' says Plum. 'He sounds like just my kind of bedmate. Roll him in honey and bring him to me.'
'He's not the relationship type,' I say, shaking my head.
'Totally,' agrees Sophie. 'He's sort of unobtainable. Great guy, but . . .'
'Marvellous, another fucknuckle, that's just what I need. Hey, did you hear what happened to Henry?' asks Plum. 'He woke up this morning with a bite of unchewed kebab still in his mouth.'
Henry is my other best friend. He's a real boy: uncomplicated, very good-natured and permanently hungry. He shared a house with Plum and me at university. We went through a phase of calling him Miranda, but he said if he was anyone, he was Charlotte, so we stopped. He's not gay, by the way, and he has lots of guy friends (all mined by Plum a long time ago). But we've known him for so long, he's one of us.
We head towards Marylebone and sit at a table outside the first coffee shop we see, just as Plum's phone rings.
She pops her Bluetooth earpiece in her ear (she was convinced that her mobile was giving her blackheads), and trills, 'Henrietta! No, the BabyCare Show is the 25th this year, darling! Mmm. Righto. Byee!' She hangs up and rolls her eyes. 'You'd think we were saving the world, not launching a new fucking nappy range.'
Sophie frowns. 'Plummy. Language.'
'Well, she always panics on weekends and calls me from her boyfriend Sebastian's fucking Range Rover as they're off shooting yachts, or whatever it is they do,' says Plum crossly. 'I'm fed up with posh girls, I really am.'
Sophie and I look at each other and start to giggle. I wonder if people I work with do things like that. Then I remember work, and sigh deeply.
'What's wrong, kittenpants?' asks Plum.
'Do you love work?'
'I love my work friends, even the posh ones,' says Plum. 'But the pay is shit, I'm permanently broke and because the office is all women we all go on the blob at the same time, which is a fucking nightmare.'
'I do love my job,' says Sophie. Plum throws a sugar cube at her. 'Sorry, but I do! . . . It's stressful but I look forward to Mondays.'
'Fuck me,' says Plum in dismay. 'You look forward to Mondays? Honestly . . .' she turns to me. 'Why do you ask, sweetie?'
I sigh deeply. 'Work is basically somewhere I go for free internet access. I don't like it, I never laugh . . . But I don't know how to do anything else.' Oh God, I'm getting emotional. Tears, down boy.
'Remember it pays well,' says Sophie. I nod. I get paid more than Plum and Sophie put together, which I feel guilty about so I try to surreptitiously pick up the cheque whenever I can. For the record, I'm not the flash-your-cash bankery type: the idea of spending thousands on a handbag is obscene (practical and annoying, but hey! that's me). I've also saved quite a lot over the years without really trying. (I know how practical and annoying that is too.) 'I don't think that . . . I don't think that I care about the money that much,' I say.
'So you're in the wrong job,' says Sophie calmly. 'It's not the end of the world. You can change.'
'How can I have spent the last six years in the wrong fucking job?' I exclaim. 'Then again, I spent the last seven years with the wrong man. I clearly have a talent for ignoring things.'
'Isn't it time you bought a house?' says Plum. 'You should get a mortgage while you still have a good job. Then you can quit and do what you want.'
I wince. The buying-a-house conversation comes up with my parents every year. I always fudge it. The idea of committing to something so huge makes me feel sick. I can't imagine it, I don't want to imagine it. So I ignore it.
'Maybe you shouldn't worry about it just now,' suggests Sophie quickly. She can read me so well.
'And remember, you are recovering from breaking up with the man you spent a quarter of your life with,' says Plum, slipping straight into supportive-friend mode. 'I mean, I need fucking months to get over relationships that didn't even last as long as a season of The City.'
'But . . . I am fine about Peter,' I say uneasily. I really do feel fine. Perhaps I'm in denial. 'Never mind. It's too late to change careers now.'
'It's never too late. What would you do, if you could do anything?' says Sophie.
Pause.
I'm staring at her, unable to respond. She stares back for 10, 20, 30 seconds . . . I'm speechless, mouth opening and closing like a goldfish. My inability to answer that simple question makes me want to be sick even more. What's wrong with me?
Plum exchanges a glance with Sophie.
'I don't know!' I say eventually. 'I don't want to talk about this anymore. I'm going home to get changed. I need to put my singledom skills to the test again.'
The best thing about a busy social life? It helps you avoid reality.
Chapter Five.
Whenever you break up with someone, you don't just break up with one person. You break up with their family, their friends and their dog. It's sad, inevitable and kind of annoying. But it's just the way it is. Which is why this weekend has been a bit . . . urgh.
For a start, Peter's mother rang yesterday morning, talking about how much she misses me and how love is something that you have to work at. Bloody nightmare. Then last night Plum, Henry and I went to a party which turned out to be a minefield of Peter's friends who either asked me about Peter, ignored me or gave me death stares. At 10 pm, my cheeks aching from fake smiling, I made eye contact with Plum and raked a finger across my throat to indicate that I wouldn't mind leaving. We grabbed Henry, who had been rejected by every girl in the bar anyway, and took a cab to a late-night bar in Victoria.
We had a long chat about singledom on the way.
'I need to hang out with guys more,' said Henry. 'I think you chicks are the reason I never get any action.'
'You don't think it's because you tend to wake up with bites of unchewed kebab in your mouth?' I said.
'One time!' shouted Henry. He paused. 'I could murder a kebab now, actually.'
'I am so over that crowd,' I said, applying lip gloss. 'They all think I'm an evil bitch for dumping Peter.'
'Me too,' said Plum, taking the lip gloss from me. 'But only because I've slept with all the decent men.'
'You didn't sleep with me!' exclaimed Henry, slapping Plum away as she tried to put lip gloss on him too.
'I snogged you at my 21st, sweetie,' she replied. 'And it wasn't great kissing, so I didn't bother to defile you.'
'Maybe you're a bad kisser,' he said. 'Because I'm awesome.'
There was a pause, probably as we all wondered if we were, in fact, bad kissers.
'I'm starting to think I'm bad in bed because men keep dumping me after I sleep with them,' said Plum glumly.
'I heard that you were bad in bed, actually,' said Henry. Plum punched him, quite hard, in the shoulder. 'Ow.'
'I have only kissed or slept with one person since my teens,' I said. 'So both of you can just shut up.'
Poor Henry, I reflect. My mother would be so happy if I fell in love with and/or married him. So would Plum's. But we've known him too long. I don't even think of him as having a willy. I sort of imagine he has a mound down there, like a Ken doll.
Today, I'm dragging Plum to meet my sister and her fiance at a pub called The Cow in Notting Hill.
'I fucking hate Sundays,' says Plum, lighting a cigarette as we walk towards the pub. She's in a mood. 'Every Sunday I go to bed alone and wake up on Monday alone and think, oh, another week, a whole week till the weekend when I might, maybe, get to meet someone new, someone who isn't a total cockgobbler . . .'
'Plum!' I exclaim. 'That is melodramatic. And untrue.' Her hung-over negativity scares me. Is that attitude inevitable? Will I end up like that? I did meet someone last night, between you and me, but I don't want to bring it up now and make Plum feel worse.
'Churchill had a black dog. I have singledom,' she says, exhaling theatrically. 'I will die alone.'
'Plummy-'
'It's enough to make me completely desperate-'
'Don't! Don't say that word,' I exclaim. I don't want to catch her Sunday blues. 'I don't like it.'
Plum looks at me strangely. 'Alright. Jeez. Oh, there they are. Sitting outside. Yay.'
Luke is half-Dutch, and inherited white-blonde hair from his Dutch mother so it's easy to spot him in a crowd, like a little ray of light. He and Sophie met a year ago and got engaged two months ago. Just before I left Peter. I'd tell you that their perfect, blissful love had no impact on my Peter decision, but well, I'd be lying. It was a major catalyst. Sophie wanted to marry Luke, I didn't want to marry Peter, the contrast was too huge to ignore.
'About time!' says Sophie, standing up to hug and kiss us hello. I note, as usual, how she seems to glow with happiness whenever Luke is around. That's what love should be like. Maybe I'm just not capable of it. Argh. Love.
Time for a drink.
'So tell me about last night,' I say a few minutes later, Corona in hand.
'Another fucking 30th. A dinner party,' says Sophie. Luke is 30, so their social life seems to be 'another fucking 30th' every weekend. 'Started with wine and nibbles, ended with straight men doing synchronised dance routines to Backstreet Boys songs.'
'I rocked out like AJ McLean,' adds Luke. His phone buzzes. 'That's the hotline . . . ah. Dave can't make it. He's unable to get out of bed, apparently.'