Maya races from the Egyptian columns of FASH HQ and turns left onto Oxford Street to the Ionic columns of Selfridges’ façade, where a familiar face is waiting under the black and white canopy. It’s a good job Maya has runner’s legs because she was already late, but now her nose, with its smattering of summer freckles, is beading and she looks even more dishevelled. You wouldn’t know from the now streaming sun that this morning was so dreary. Maya’s grey skinny jeans seem a little wintry for the way the day turned out, but she raided the fashion cupboard at lunchtime and changed out of her rainbow sweatshirt into a cropped T-shirt with illustrations of beetles and butterflies all over it.
‘Nice bugs,’ says her best friend Nena, looking at Maya’s chest and her widening enormous, feline eyes.
‘Thanks,’ Maya replies with a wink and kisses her friend’s cheek, wiping a smudge of white face paint off it as she draws away.
Nena is wearing her trademark black vest top over skintight leather-look leggings and ballet flats. The blank canvas for whatever incarnation she has been today, which from the remnants of white face paint Maya is guessing a clown.
They pause to let shoppers out of heavy brass and glass doors and enter the sweet and heady scented world of the perfume hall. They snake through the beauty department, where gurus from Henriksen to Hauschka promise skin salvation, bypassing Hermès for Hermé in the confectionary hall. This is what they do when they meet after Maya has finished work for the day, before Nena starts her evening’s graft. They will choose four macarons from the counter at Pierre Hermé, which they will take carefully up four escalators to the food hall on the top floor, where they will enjoy them with an unsullying sparkling water to clear the palette between flavours and a sullying gossip. When Maya and Nena first began this tradition, they would each buy the other four flavours, a different combination every time, but now they do away with that and choose their own at the counter with orange, grey, fuchsia and lime stripes above it to colour-match the confections sitting under climate-controlled glass.
‘So what’s new?’ asks Nena. Black, mischievous eyes, sparkling brightly despite their darkness.
Everything about Nena sparkles brightly.
Maya looks around the confectionary hall, bursting with women weighed down with designer shopping bags after a day of frivolity and she feels as unsophisticated as she did on the first sweet treat outing she made with Nena, who would become her last best friend, eating ice cream together on a south coast pier.
The friends met on their first night at university, freshly arrived cohabiters in the same halls of residence. That sorry Sunday evening, when teary parents had long since headed back up the A3 and Maya’s mother Dolores had done her best to make breeze-block walls look homely, and the warden, a mature Scottish student in an Australian cork hat, read an unnecessarily unfriendly riot act on the rules and regulations of this cell-block style accommodation. Maya looked at the strangers packed into the windowless TV room to gauge faces: did anyone else find this approach a little heavy? There were, after all, 188 scared teens in the room. But as Maya looked around, only Nena’s face stood out. Bored at the back. Twirling a strand of long shiny black hair from the artwork piled high on her head and woven intricately in fabrics of turquoise, red and yellow. Dark skin that made it impossible to detect her ethnicity: was she Latin or Indian or Caribbean? Her huge eyes had whites around the edges like a lion pup but looked as though they were painted in thick eyeliner; her plump lips were raspberry red, even though she wasn’t wearing a scrap of make-up. She wore a loose black off-the-shoulder top over a black vest and leggings and delicate dusty-pink ballerina flats on small feet. Small but strong, a body like an acrobat’s. The sort of girl who stands out in a crowd, as she had earlier in the week when Maya noticed her and her tower of hair, not falling out of place while she jumped up and down to ‘Last Nite’ at Brixton Academy. They hadn’t spoken that serendipitous night; Nena hadn’t noticed Maya, but it was enough of a coincidence to be a conversation starter for Maya six days later.
After the introductory sermon, Maya went over to Nena and said hello. Nena smiled and they never looked back.
Almost a decade later, they are still the best of friends, as silly as each other, with strange hang-ups or ways of thinking that only the other would understand. Nena is scared of stickers and won’t ever eat fruit in case a gluey Cape, Enza or Del Monte logo touches her. Maya lines her home with conkers every September to keep the spiders out. It has worked for the two autumns she has rented a room in her brother Jacob’s house. Last year, Maya collected seventy-six conkers from the common near their parents’ home on the hill, lined them up along windowsills and doorways, and by the time they’d shrivelled up that December, Maya realised she hadn’t seen a single house spider all season. Jacob finds it somewhat annoying in autumn when he walks in from work, slips and almost breaks his leg on a conker, but ever since his big sister came to live with him, when her hair turned wavy, he let the small stuff slide. Plus he’s not that fond of spiders either.
‘Let’s get the macarons, I’ll explain upstairs,’ says Maya.
At the counter Nena chooses the most colourful concoction she can: pistachio and raspberry compote; yoghurt and grapefruit; rose and lychee; passion fruit and rhubarb. As the French woman serving them hands Nena her cellophane bag she passes it straight to Maya to remove the sticker seal for her. Maya then chooses, following today’s high-summer leanings, and opts for lemon; jasmine flower; orange and basil flower; carrot and pistachio.
‘Oh my god, AMAZING,’ says Nena, sinking white teeth into passion fruit and rhubarb as they rise on the first escalator from leather into denim.
Maya can’t wait for the fourth floor before she tells her friend the news.
‘I got it back. I got The Feeling!’ she bursts, clasping Nena’s bare brown shoulder.
Nena chokes on crispy, powdery shell as she takes in a deep gasp.
‘THE feeling? Like Leonardo DiCaprio through a fish tank kinda feeling?’
‘Yep… Although the guy I’m in love with wasn’t looking at me like that. Or looking at me at all for that matter. But it was proper butterflies I haven’t had in, well, you know…’
‘Bloody hell, what does he look like?’
Maya ponders. How can she describe those eyes, that beautiful full reading mouth, or the solid V at the base of his neck? How can she explain falling in love after nineteen minutes without sounding crazy?
‘He’s got that cool nerdy rock star thing. Dark. Hipster glasses. Mysterious. Beautiful. Oh my god, Nena, he shines. But quietly, unassumingly. He looked lovely. And he gets my train!’ Maya says with glee, as if this means they’re in a relationship. ‘Or at least I hope he will tomorrow. And the day after. Oh god, what if he’s a tourist?’ she says, running desperate fingers through her scalp.
Nena has never seen her best friend behave so strangely, Maya is usually more measured and thoughtful than this. In fact it’s usually the other way around. But Maya’s eyes look so bright, Nena can see orange blossom shards floating among praline pools.
‘A Monday morning commuter train? He’s not a tourist,’ says Nena with authority. ‘Is he married?’
‘No ring.’
‘Did he give any signs of having a Special Someone?’
‘Well he’s very handsome and looks nice, so I guess he must. And he’s reading One Hundred Years Of Solitude, so he’s a romantic. And cerebral. He’d be in demand.’ Maya’s heart sinks a little at the prospect.
‘Let’s face it, any hot guy in London is in demand,’ shrugs Nena, taking the rose and lychee macaron out of the bag and raising an exasperated eyebrow. As if she’s ever had to make an effort for someone to fall for her. Nena has never had trouble finding love in London, no matter how much she pretends she and Maya are in the same single sisterhood. Nena is one of those people who is so vivacious, she could go to a party on her own, which she often does, and come home with five people’s numbers in her phone: men wanting to date her, women wanting to go for coffee with her, parents wanting to book her. She is a swashbuckler by day and a dancer by night. When the sun is up, Nena is a children’s entertainer, making kids marvel at how she can turn a balloon into a cutlass at pirate parties or how she can throw sparkles up in the air and make them land perfectly on her eyelids for little princesses. When the sun goes down, Nena wows the West End. She can’t hold a tune, but you know that dancer in the ensemble who you can’t take your eyes off when the leading lady is desperately vying for your attention? That’s Nena. Her father is a retired Brazilian dancer who joined the English National Ballet and fell in love with Nena’s principal dancer mother. That’s why when Nena walks she glides, and when she shakes her head with fierce attitude, her thick long black hair seems to move independently, falling gently into place of its own accord. Nena always has at least three boyfriends on the go. At the moment she is seeing Tony, the leading man in the West End’s biggest show; Darius, a waiter from her favourite Camden coffee shop around the corner from her flat-share; and Pete, the plumber who just did a great job in fixing her pipework.
‘These are amazing!’ Nena says, rising past wool and cashmere into lace with a full inelegant mouth that would probably break Pierre Hermé’s heart. Maya knows the love that goes into making those bad boys, so she always waits until she is in the food hall to give the macaron her total appreciation. When Maya’s hair turned wavy and she moved out of London and in with her brother Jacob in Hazelworth, she bought herself a KitchenAid as a consolation present, and has been working hard to crack the secret of making the perfect macaron for the three years since. So far it’s evaded her.
Maya and Nena reach the fourth-floor food hall and weave through white square tables and red and black chairs to their favourite spot in the corner that overlooks Oxford Street and Duke Street at rush hour; to the window where they can best see the top arc of the London Eye beyond the cranes and rooftops glimmering in the warm light of a summer evening.
Nena grabs two sparkling waters so she doesn’t have to watch Maya unpeeling her own sticker seal and squirrel it onto the cover of a notebook safely out of Nena’s sight. Maya then unwraps the cellophane bag with care and precision, takes out the jasmine flower macaron and looks at it, misty-eyed.
‘Nena I love him.’
‘What the fuck?’
‘I know. But I can see myself with him. He looked so… right, I just wanted to bury my head in his neck and close my eyes. I’ve never felt like that about anyone.’
‘Not Jon?’
‘Nope.’
‘Not even Leo?’
‘Not even Leo.’
‘God you have to take a photo of this guy and show me what you mean.’
Maya suddenly feels protective and changes the subject. ‘How’s it going with West End Boy?’
Nena twists her straight shiny hair with one finger then ties it expertly in a bun on top of her head. Without her usual flowers or hair adornments, Nena looks naked. A blank canvas ready for Act II tonight.
‘Oh he’s hot. We’re having a LOT of fun. Although it’s a bit annoying waiting for all the girls at the stage door to bugger off before he can bugger me.’
Maya chokes on ground almonds and icing sugar, takes a sip of water to compose herself and gives Nena a mock disapproving look.
‘How long will he be here for?’
‘His visa runs to the end of the year and I think he’s booked until Christmas, which is cool. We both know it isn’t anything heavy.’
Maya marvels at how Nena can be so casual about someone she has given her body to, someone so in demand, and washes down her fourth and final bite of the jasmine flower macaron with another sip of water. She folds the cellophane back over the remaining three.
‘I can’t eat the others, I’ve lost my appetite. I’ll report back on them later, but the jasmine flower gets a thumbs up,’ she says, tucking them carefully into her lilac scalloped-edge satchel.
‘Well rose and lychee is the mutt’s nuts. You should try recreating it, Maya.’
Maya daydreams about one day finding patisserie alchemy, while Nena eats her remaining two macarons and talks Maya through the rest of the cast she’s working with.
‘Your life is so much fun!’ exclaims Maya.
‘Well maybe yours is about to get interesting, if you can get it on with Train Man.’
Maya looks at her watch. ‘I’d better go.’
‘Already?’
‘I have a class tonight, last one of the year,’ she says standing.
‘OK Sugartits, I’m going down to the beauty hall. Gotta get me some more paint. Gimme a hug. And text me if he is on the train tomorrow,’ Nena says, slinging her large holdall of tricks and costume changes over her shoulder.
Tomorrow? Maya doesn’t know if she can wait that long to see him again. Her heart feels tight in her chest but her runner’s feet take her back down four escalators past lace, wool, denim and leather, and she skips onto a number 390 bus. All Maya can think about is how she hopes Train Man will be on her train home this evening.