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Authors: Lisa Jewell
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lipstick and her hair up. She looked amazing . Everyone said so. They all did.
Robyn’s mum had gone all funny when she came downstairs in her prom dress, cupped her hands over her mouth and sucked in her breath and said, ‘You look stunning, stunning. A real, true princess.’ Her dad had just smiled his big dumb smile and looked a bit proud. And then they’d said all the usual rubbish about don’t go anywhere without telling your friends , and call us if you’re in trouble, it doesn’t matter how late it is , and never leave your drink unattended and don’t accept drinks from strangers unless you’ve seen the barman pour it with your own eyes . Yeah yeah yeah. It wasn’t as if she’d never been out drinking before. She’d been out drinking since she was about thirteen years old , for God’s sake. Robyn could take her drink.
Even when she was at it with Christian (why would a Jewish person call their son Christian , it didn’t make any sense?) up against a wall outside the men’s toilets, she’d been in control. Totally. Except that he wouldn’t put a condom on. It didn’t matter really because she knew she had two morning-after pills in her drawer, and she figured he smelled too good to have an STD. No one with hair that smelled of actual roses could have an STD. Anyway, she’d been in total control, pulled him over by his tie, taken him out of his trousers, kissed him hard, really hard . ‘You’re my birthday present to myself,’ she’d whispered in his ear.
After the restaurant had kicked them out at 1 a.m. they’d streamed down the high street, gorgeous girls and boys, everyone with their arms around each other; they were singing, it was like a scene out of a film. She’d tried to get a photo of it on her mobile but the light wasn’t good enough, just a blur of streetlamps and streaks of people. But she’d keep it forever, anyway. Good times. The best night of her life.
She swallowed down the pill with the energy shot and prayed that they would both stay down. She only had one pill left and if this one came back up, that’d be it, back to the GP. She didn’t have a hangover, Robyn didn’t get hangovers. Liver of steel. But she felt as tired as a dead person just crawled out of their grave. She pulled her black hair away from her face and gazed at herself in the mirror on her dressing table. Was it right, she thought, to think that you were so pretty? Was it normal? Did other eighteen-year-old girls look at their own faces in the mirror and think, Mmm, pretty ? She did. Every time she saw herself she felt a little shiver of pleasure, of satisfaction. She was already worried about losing it. Already knew that come her late-twenties she’d be Botoxing the crap out of herself. Or whatever people would be doing in the year 2018. Sitting in tanks of Martian pee or something. Actually she’d rather have Botox than sit in a tank of Martian pee. But anyway, she’d definitely be on the case.
There was little in the world that Robyn could imagine being worse than looking bad. But as it was, she looked good, even on five hours’ sleep and a bloodstream full of metabolising vodka. Her hazel eyes were shaped like fish, and her eyebrows were finely arched and a really nice shade of brown. She had a – well, there was no other word for it really but a perfect nose. Not turned up, not long, not short, absolutely straight, with nice little nostrils. And then there was her mouth. It was cushiony. As a child she’d looked almost alien: over-wide eyes and a huge pair of lips that looked like they’d been unpicked from the face of a thirty-year-old woman. She’d had to grow into her extreme features, had to grow bones and an underlying structure to support them. People sometimes said she looked like Angelina Jolie. And she wondered, she did wonder, about these lips and where they had come from. They looked like African lips. It was possible, she supposed. They weren’t her mother’s, that was for
Robyn’s mum had gone all funny when she came downstairs in her prom dress, cupped her hands over her mouth and sucked in her breath and said, ‘You look stunning, stunning. A real, true princess.’ Her dad had just smiled his big dumb smile and looked a bit proud. And then they’d said all the usual rubbish about don’t go anywhere without telling your friends , and call us if you’re in trouble, it doesn’t matter how late it is , and never leave your drink unattended and don’t accept drinks from strangers unless you’ve seen the barman pour it with your own eyes . Yeah yeah yeah. It wasn’t as if she’d never been out drinking before. She’d been out drinking since she was about thirteen years old , for God’s sake. Robyn could take her drink.
Even when she was at it with Christian (why would a Jewish person call their son Christian , it didn’t make any sense?) up against a wall outside the men’s toilets, she’d been in control. Totally. Except that he wouldn’t put a condom on. It didn’t matter really because she knew she had two morning-after pills in her drawer, and she figured he smelled too good to have an STD. No one with hair that smelled of actual roses could have an STD. Anyway, she’d been in total control, pulled him over by his tie, taken him out of his trousers, kissed him hard, really hard . ‘You’re my birthday present to myself,’ she’d whispered in his ear.
After the restaurant had kicked them out at 1 a.m. they’d streamed down the high street, gorgeous girls and boys, everyone with their arms around each other; they were singing, it was like a scene out of a film. She’d tried to get a photo of it on her mobile but the light wasn’t good enough, just a blur of streetlamps and streaks of people. But she’d keep it forever, anyway. Good times. The best night of her life.
She swallowed down the pill with the energy shot and prayed that they would both stay down. She only had one pill left and if this one came back up, that’d be it, back to the GP. She didn’t have a hangover, Robyn didn’t get hangovers. Liver of steel. But she felt as tired as a dead person just crawled out of their grave. She pulled her black hair away from her face and gazed at herself in the mirror on her dressing table. Was it right, she thought, to think that you were so pretty? Was it normal? Did other eighteen-year-old girls look at their own faces in the mirror and think, Mmm, pretty ? She did. Every time she saw herself she felt a little shiver of pleasure, of satisfaction. She was already worried about losing it. Already knew that come her late-twenties she’d be Botoxing the crap out of herself. Or whatever people would be doing in the year 2018. Sitting in tanks of Martian pee or something. Actually she’d rather have Botox than sit in a tank of Martian pee. But anyway, she’d definitely be on the case.
There was little in the world that Robyn could imagine being worse than looking bad. But as it was, she looked good, even on five hours’ sleep and a bloodstream full of metabolising vodka. Her hazel eyes were shaped like fish, and her eyebrows were finely arched and a really nice shade of brown. She had a – well, there was no other word for it really but a perfect nose. Not turned up, not long, not short, absolutely straight, with nice little nostrils. And then there was her mouth. It was cushiony. As a child she’d looked almost alien: over-wide eyes and a huge pair of lips that looked like they’d been unpicked from the face of a thirty-year-old woman. She’d had to grow into her extreme features, had to grow bones and an underlying structure to support them. People sometimes said she looked like Angelina Jolie. And she wondered, she did wonder, about these lips and where they had come from. They looked like African lips. It was possible, she supposed. They weren’t her mother’s, that was for
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