Christmas Magic. Cathy Kelly

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       Off Your Trolley

      Purple was not my colour. Not even a subtle, iris-hued gossamer cardigan that was supposed to drape delicately over the shoulders, revealing elegant collarbones before ending in fragile scallops around a Scarlett O’Hara-sized waist.

      That’s what it would have looked like on Chloë, my older sister: a girlie confection of silk that made the wearer look part water fairy/part supermodel.

      On me, it just looked like something I’d knit myself, without the pattern. The tiny, elbow-length sleeves made my own solid forearms look as if they belonged to a sheet-metal welder, while the tiny mother-of-pearl buttons were stretched in a too-small rictus with the buttonholes as they strained against extra-enormous PMS-variety boobs.

      In the cardigan and a slithery lilac skirt, I resembled nothing so much as a bruise in full colour. A big bruise.

      Not the elegant, lissom girl I wanted to transform myself into before the ten-year school reunion. Which was only six days away!

      ‘Come out of the cubicle, Sarah,’ ordered Chloë. ‘We want to see you.’

      I came out gloomily.

      Chloë and the assistant looked at me for a moment, matching bird-like blonde heads at an angle, mascaraed eyes narrowed as they took in the purple ensemble.

      They looked more like sisters than Chloë and I did: both petite, fine-boned and capable of giving admiring men in passing cars whiplash.

      Being six foot tall with an athletic build, the only way I’d ever give a man whiplash was if I banged into him at full tilt.

      With my height, men just weren’t interested in me. I mean, I was the only female researcher in Reel People TV who’d never been chatted up by the Head of Marketing, although my colleague Lottie reckoned this was because even Slimy Eric didn’t have the nerve to flirt with a woman who could look down on his bald patch. It wasn’t that I secretly longed to feel his sweaty paw on my backside in the secrecy of the executive lift. I just wanted to be one of the girls for a change, instead of Amazon Woman.

      ‘Perhaps the green one?’ suggested the sales assistant.

      Green! If purple made me look like a female boxer after a title match, green was even worse. Green made me look seasick, bilious, like second-stage bruising.

      ‘I mean,’ the assistant continued helpfully, seeing as I wasn’t saying anything to the contrary, ‘with your auburn hair, green would be lovely.’

      ‘Green doesn’t suit her,’ Chloë announced in a bored voice, studying perfect gel nails for flaws.

      Sometimes I hate Chloë.

      ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll have a wander around the shop and see if there’s something else I’d like,’ I lied, obviously convincingly enough, as the assistant drifted off to flog more Tiny Tears-sized clothes.

      ‘I don’t think there’s anything else here that would suit you, and we don’t have much time,’ Chloë said crushingly. ‘I have to be back in the office in half an hour.’

      God forbid that she didn’t get back to PR Solutions in time, I thought crossly, wrenching the curtain across the cubicle.

      I mean, who else would be able to organise all those crucial details for the latest society launch she was involved in – like making sure the Page Three stunna who was guest of honour didn’t end up sitting beside the footballer she’d kissed and told about the week before, or checking they’d got the right sort of mineral water so that the ladies who lunched wouldn’t be belching through the speeches.

      I carefully inched my way out of a hundred and fifty quid’s worth of purple spider’s web and simmered. Why did my only sibling have to drive me insane every time she opened her mouth?

      Catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I reached for my T-shirt, I remembered why. Because Chloë was gorgeous and I wasn’t. Because she had attractive men falling over themselves to take her out to dinner while my last date had been with a systems analyst named Humphrey who’d taken me to a sports club in Clapham and run out of cash after buying me two vodkas. And because at the age of twenty-seven I was sick and tired of being ‘the clever one’.

      Just a year apart in age, we were a million years apart in everything else. All through school, Chloë’d had endless boyfriends and everyone loved her. She’d actually been voted the most popular girl in the school in her last term. My claim to fame was winning the fifth-year physics prize, not an achievement guaranteed to make you a member of the cool gang. Chloë wasn’t just a member of the gang; she ran it. Despite that, I still wasn’t allowed in.

      Ten years after leaving school, it still rankled. The invitation to the reunion had seemed like the ideal chance to redress the balance, to prove to the old girls of St Agatha’s that I was different from the Sarah Powell of old: glamorous, successful, and chased by scores of men. Except that I wasn’t any of those things. Well, I was successful enough. I’d just been given a promotion – without the help of the Head of Marketing – and I’d saved up enough for the deposit on a flat of my own. But the ‘glamorous and chased by men’ bit was a non-starter. You couldn’t be glamorous with unruly long red curls, freckles and the build of an Olympic swimmer.

      I’d drafted Chloë in to help purchase the perfect outfit. If anyone knew how to wow the St Agatha’s Old Girls, it was Chloë. But that hadn’t exactly panned out either. I suppose you couldn’t expect a size-eight nymph to know what would suit a six-foot-tall Olympian with no discernible waist.

      We hurried along Old Brompton Road together. Me stomping along in my TV researcher’s uniform of black jeans, black leather jacket and white agnès b T-shirt. Chloë immaculate in a white Michael Kors trouser suit, killer stilettos and more MAC than Lady Gaga needed for a photo-shoot.

      I was too disheartened to talk but she chattered away like a canary on acid.

      There was a guy she liked from another PR company, she said, СКАЧАТЬ