The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs by Christina Hopkinson Page B

eyebrow. I wish I could do that.
    Becky is grappling with her pants. Cara’s eyebrow goes up still further. “What are you two up to? Should I be jealous?”
    “God, no,” I stammer. I always stammer and blush and fumble around Cara.
    “I was only teasing,” she laughs. Of course—nobody would ever transgress if they were lucky enough to be with Cara.
    “We were just talking,” says Becky, grumpily. “What, like there’s a law against it?”
    “You’re drunk.”
    “Am not.”
    “I think you’ll find that you are.”
    “Am not, am not, am not.”
    If Becky goes on behaving in this way, then they’re really not going to need any children, since the household already contains one ready-made teenager.
    “Sorry, Cara,” I mumble. “We’ll get out of the loo now.”
    “Don’t worry about it. I love your dress,” she says and strokes my arm while looking me up and down. Thanks to the control pants and my weight loss I sense that I might make the grade. “What a lovely froth it is.”
    I’m sure I feel a spark, but that may just be the static created by her rubbing the, in fact, rather cheap viscose of my high-streetpurchase. She leans over and whispers in my ear. Her breath is actually cool; it feels as if it would smell like she’d just had a scrape and polish with a dental hygienist.
    “Can you look after her?” she says. “She seems to have hit the champagne a bit early.”
    I nod.
    “Thank you,” she says, giving my arm another stroke. As if I had any choice in the matter. I can’t imagine anybody refusing Cara anything.
    I drag Becky off in search of Joel, who is chatting to a girl who’s running her fingers through her hair and who quickly recedes on being introduced to the wife.
    42 ) Is weirdly attractive to other women. It’s his disheveled charm, I guess—though I should know, I fell for it myself.
    All right, all right. It’s not as if he can help it. Though I’m not sure he needs to listen quite so intently to what strange women have got to say to him. “You’re great, Joel,” Becky begins to say to him. “Really great. I hope Mary appreciates you.”
    “I’m sure she does,” he says. “In a secret, special way.”
    “Just tell her to remember all the good things, too, not just the bad ones.”
    “I do,” I interrupt. “Really I do, Becky.”
    “Promise me, Mary. Give credits as well as debits.”
    “What are you talking about?” asks Joel.
    “Nothing. I promise, Becky.” I look around, frantic for distraction. “I didn’t know you’d invited Mitzi.”
    “I didn’t. Cara did. Cara thinks Mitzi’s one of the few acceptable people she’s met through me. Wasn’t really through me anyway, was it? It was through you two. They’ve really taken to each other. Ring each other up and stuff.”
    “They would, wouldn’t they?” I say. Cut by a tailor—no, costumier—from the same expensive cloth made by “an amazing collective in India, they’re artists, really”: blonde Mitzi and dark Cara, Rose White and Rose Red, like two sisters in a children’s story. Cara greets Mitzi with an extravagant enthusiasm, which is followed by them standing a foot apart, still clutching each other’s hands, swapping compliments.
    I feel a pang of jealousy. It’s always unnerving to see two people who only know each other through me become friends in their own right. When they finish admiring each other’s shoes, Mitzi comes over to join us.
    “All right, Mitzi,” says Joel. “How have you been?”
    “Well. Busy, frantic.”
    “Really?” he says. “Doing what?”
    “Raising four children in a complicated world, Joel, to begin with.”
    “Yeah, but when are you going to go back to work?”
    43 ) Insistence that “work” is something only done in an office, factory or building site.
    “Because working in TV is such a valuable contribution to society, isn’t it?” says Mitzi, giving him that pouty smile of hers.
    “Better than shopping.”
    “I don’t do much of