Oh, and we snogged each other once at our end of A-level party. But I put that down to too much Thunderbird.
Then Janice spots me, jumping up from her chair and enveloping me in a huge, Giorgio-scented bear hug.
‘Someone smells nice.’ I squeeze her back. ‘Classy bitch.’
‘And you look brilliant,’ she tells me, even though I know I look like a big ginger pineapple.
‘Do I?’
‘Course you do. God, you’re such a lucky bitch, Katie, not having any tits.’
‘Er…thanks.’
‘S’true.’ She looks miserably down at her own chest, sticking her jaw out like us women always do when we check out our cleavages. ‘Everything I wear hangs straight from my nips and makes me look preggers.’
‘You look great,’ I tell her.
And she does. Her clingy black long-sleeved T-shirt emphasises her glorious sweater-girl curves and her pancake-flat stomach. But I can tell she doesn’t really believe me.
We both blame her insecurity on the workplace. She’s got a very good job in advertising. Unfortunately, it means that she’s forced to sit next to tossers who come out with ridiculous stock phrases, like ‘Hold on, Roger, let’s get our ducks in a row on this one’, and ‘We’re not sure how this one’s going to pan out, Frank, so we’ll just have to suck it and see’. All the women who work there wear a lot of black and are so thin they haven’t got bums. Soon, they’re probably going to have to cushion the loo seats to avoid facing legal action relating to injury in the workplace. Poor old Janice works in a bum-free environment. Her surroundings are arse-lite. And the pressure to look emaciated is enormous. She’s tried every diet fad going. The Hay. Weight Watchers. The Elton John. The diet which let her eat anything she wanted, as long as she only ate one of it. Aerobics. Swimming. Trampolining. She even tried to get me to join Bums and Tums with her. Which, of course, was totally impossible. My idea of exercise is bending down to put a couple of pains au chocolat in the oven to warm through. And I’m allergic to those cheesewire leotards that slice you right up your bum.
At the moment, she’s following the advice of some diet guru or other who’s advised her against keeping any food in the house. But it’s not working too well. By bedtime, her tummy’s rumbling so much she’s frenziedly scoffing whole jars of vitamin tablets and tubes of Setlers Tums, just to keep the hunger pangs at bay.
The poor love. It’s not as though she has an eating disorder. She just wishes that she did. She spends a lot of time being pissed off that she doesn’t have the willpower to be anorexic. For her, anorexia is an impossible goal. A bit like seeing a pair of Dolce & Gabbana shoes she knows she’ll never be able to buy, even if she saves up for a decade.
‘I’m starving.’ George pulls a candy-pink fag out of the pack and examines it carefully.
‘Don’t worry,’ I assure him. ‘It doesn’t clash with your T-shirt. What about you, Sam?’ I ask as he gives me a big New Year smacker on the cheek. ‘Are you hungry? What are you having to eat, you fat bastard?’
‘At least I can put on weight if I want,’ he teases me. ‘Which means I don’t have to go around looking like a lanky ginger hockey stick.’
‘Ha ha. Come on, let’s order. I could eat a scabby donkey.’
‘I’m going to have whatever I like as well.’ Janice looks at the menu resignedly, struggling with her desire to look like a Belsen victim versus her craving for cheesy garlic doughballs, spaghetti carbonara and double chocolate ice cream.
‘Might as well,’ I encourage her.
‘Sod it,’ she agrees. ‘I can always yack it up later if I feel like it.’
She wishes.
We order mozzarella-stuffed mushrooms, well-dressed salads and enormous pizzas all round and demand a new bottle of white wine. George orders two pizzas. He feels so terrible he thinks he’s having meningitis, so he reasons he might as well. But that’s nothing new. For a start, he goes out clubbing so much he’s always completely hanging. And he’s a classic hypochondriac. He’s got a big Book of Symptoms at home, which he flicks through at random, convincing himself he’s got raging symptoms of each and every disease in it. AIDS figures weekly. As does emphysema. Last week he was absolutely positive he had deep vein thrombosis. The week before it was CJD. And he’s had rickets and shin splints God knows how many times.
I love these lunches. Love the fact that my three best friends all get on so well. And, while we wait for the food to arrive, we chatter like sparrows, each telling the others what we’ve been up to over Christmas. Sam, lopsided baseball cap on head, tells us how much his niece loved her Wendy house. And then, bright-eyed with excitement, he rolls up the sleeves of his baggy sweatshirt and yatters about his new house. He finally moved in a week before Christmas and he can’t wait to get going on the decorating.