Vintage Alice BBhh11664455MM--PPrreessssPPrrooooffss..iinndddd ii 3300//44//0099 99::2200::5544 PPMM This page intentionally left blank BBhh11664455MM--PPrreessssPPrrooooffss..iinndddd iiii 3300//44//0099 99::2200::5544 PPMM Vintage Alice Jessica Adams BBhh11664455MM--PPrreessssPPrrooooffss..iinndddd iiiiii 3300//44//0099 99::2200::5544 PPMM First published in 2009 Copyright © Jessica Adams 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, alive or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Arena, an imprint of Allen & Unwin 83 Alexander Street Crows Nest NSW 2065 Australia Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100 Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218 Email: [email protected] Web: www.allenandunwin.com Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia www.librariesaustralia.nla.gov.au ISBN 978 1 74175 829 0 Set in 11.75/15 pt Granjon by Bookhouse, Sydney Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 BBhh11664455MM--PPrreessssPPrrooooffss..iinndddd iivv 3300//44//0099 99::2200::5544 PPMM To Peter Clarke and his award-winning dog Ollie BBhh11664455MM--PPrreessssPPrrooooffss..iinndddd vv 3300//44//0099 99::2200::5544 PPMM This page intentionally left blank BBhh11664455MM--PPrreessssPPrrooooffss..iinndddd vvii 3300//44//0099 99::2200::5544 PPMM one 1 I am moving to Australia because I want to see some wildlife that isn’t a pigeon. This is not the kind of thing I can admit to Australian immigration officials, but it’s the way I feel this afternoon. The next time I see a bird in the wild, I’d like it to be something that doesn’t strut around like James Brown singing ‘Sex Machine’. London’s male pigeons are like 1970s medallion men. If they could wear cheap aftershave and leave their shirts undone, they would. I can see one of them in front of me now, stalking a female. Soon she’ll be lured back to his loft and, after copulating with him, will be left to bring up the chicks on her own. There’s a dirty teaspoon on the next table and the temptation to throw it at James Brown is strong. Now he’s trying to eat a cigarette butt. He also has the pigeon equivalent of man boobs. If my chest looked like that, I wouldn’t puff it out. When Nash and I finally land in Australia there will be emus, not pigeons. There’s an emu decorating the national coat of arms on Form 80. I bet emus don’t try to eat cigarette butts. I am sitting in this café studying Form 80 like a woman possessed because today Nash and I have our final 1 BBhh11664455MM--PPrreessssPPrrooooffss..iinndddd 11 3300//44//0099 99::2200::5544 PPMM meeting with Nice Heidi from Australia’s Department of Immigration and Citizenship. Should Heidi throw me any trick questions about recent war crimes, terrorist activity or freedom fighting, I am ready for her. The answers will be no, no and no. Unless you count the woman I shoved out of the way outside the tube just now to get a free shampoo sample. Nash and I are using shampoo from the £1 shop at the moment. Of course, it may not be shampoo at all. It could be mayonnaise. The label is printed entirely in Arabic. When I had a proper job, I also had proper hair. It was short and blonde, and streaked and conditioned, and blow-dried and moussed. These days, I have one-quid hair. Like a credit crunch Agyness Deyn. I read through all the letters from Nice Heidi. She has been in charge of our application for months, steering us gently towards a sympathetic doctor when Nash and I had to get our medical checks and coaching us through Form 80, the character assessment form. She even got us over the awkward bits about our relationship. Not the awkward bits within the relationship, of course, because that would have made her a counsellor – or possibly a modern miracle-worker. Rather, Nice Heidi’s role was to find out if Nash and I really constitute a bona fide couple in the eyes of the Australian government. She needed to test all this because Nash is the sponsored employee going to Sydney and I am merely the secondary applicant. In other words, I’m just like a WAG, but without the handbag. If all goes well, Nash will be the next head of music at St Joseph’s Boys School, North Sydney, and I will be – according to Form 80 – his interdependent partner. 2 BBhh11664455MM--PPrreessssPPrrooooffss..iinndddd 22 3300//44//0099 99::2200::5544 PPMM Nice Heidi has been very kind throughout – waving away my embarrassing employment history, and even overlooking the fact that Nash and I don’t share a bank account, a mortgage or bills to prove we’ve been together for longer than six months. Nash and I have never even discussed a joint bank account. I think both he and the bank manager would be too frightened. Even when I was a child, my piggy bank had a crack down the centre. And after two years together, we still don’t split the bills. Instead, Nash pays for everything, and I clean all the rooms on the top floor of the Swiss Cottage International Travellers Hostel, where we’re currently living rent-free. The rooms have to be cleaned between check-out time, 10 am, and check-in time, 2 pm. I wear a Walkman that I bought from a charity shop and play old compilation tapes that one of my ex-boyfriends made for me back in the ’90s. I used to have a portable CD player but one of the backpackers pinched it. Once we’re in Australia, I’ll never be able to listen to old Manic Street Preachers songs without thinking of the smell of rubber gloves. I sniff my hands now, to check, and sure enough they smell like the inside of an old hot water bottle. There is a kind of mad hope in my heart at the moment, and it all hinges on Australia. It’s the sort of deranged optimism that defeats everything – being broke, being stuck in this café in the pouring rain, even being surrounded by over-sexed pigeons. I have never been to Sydney (though Nash has) and I have never been married (although Nash has) but in my dreams I see us on Bondi Beach a year or two from now, standing on the sand in our wedding clothes, while he puts a ring on my finger. By then, Vintage Alice 3 BBhh11664455MM--PPrreessssPPrrooooffss..iinndddd 33 3300//44//0099 99::2200::5544 PPMM will be a shop, not just an imaginary fashion design label. All the ideas I have about recycling old clothes to make new ones will finally become a reality. All the plans I have to single-handedly wipe out size zero skinny jeans and the tyranny of the smock top will have succeeded. If I keep picturing these dreams perhaps they will become real. Isn’t that the theory? There are practical reasons why Australia might turn things around too. When we move to Sydney, Nash and I will instantly lose all the problems we have here – namely, not having any money and being forced to live in two rooms on the top floor of the Swiss Cottage International Travellers Hostel. All the good bits I love about Nash – the sexy, soulful, sensitive musician bits – are bound to come back once he stops working so hard and worrying so much. And he can get a motorbike again, and ride it on those long Australian highways that go on forever. I just want to design clothes for Vintage Alice, and make women feel wonderful, and grow my hair and go barefoot. The last time I went barefoot in London, I skidded on a tomato sauce sachet and fell on an old nappy. That just about sums this place up. Form 80 is terrifying. Nice Heidi says she is very happy with my employment history, but what if some all-powerful Australian official scans the form at the last minute and realises that my last proper job was Woman With Key In Back, which involved me standing on a crate outside Covent Garden station painted silver while small children threw crisps at me? Worse still, what if the Australians find out that I’m not a fashion designer after all (as I printed in such beautiful letters on the form), but a wannabe fashion 4 BBhh11664455MM--PPrreessssPPrrooooffss..iinndddd 44 3300//44//0099 99::2200::5544 PPMM