Kinda Last Season

“I dunno why they have to have the sodding ball in May,” Milly dumped her, orange Marc Jacob’s handbag (limited edition) on the kitchen table and flopped into a chair.
“Morning Milly,” said Jo, looking up briefly from the pan she was stirring, “Want some beans?”
    “I mean, May? How’s anyone supposed to have any money left by now? They only give you bloody peanuts to start with. It’s like students don’t have to eat or something.” She shook her long blonde hair out of its clip and started twisting it absent-mindedly into a French knot.
    Jo heaped the beans onto two dishes, carefully moving the bag out of the way before setting the plates down.
      “You’re not going then?” It seemed like a sensible plan to her: last year had been hot, crowded and the bar queues were ridiculous. The band were pretty third rate and she’d spent most of the night in the ladies’ hiding from some geek who’d taken a shine to her after she’d been too polite to tell him to get lost.
      “Of course we’re going,” Milly said, between mouthfuls, “Got any cheese? I got us tickets so you can pay me later. I just don’t know how I’m gonna afford a dress. Silver-spoon cow Sarah got a four-hundred pound bright pink ball gown. Any coke left? Must be nice to have rich parents, shame she’s gonna look like a big strawberry Pavlova.”
      Jo passed Milly a slightly stale lump of cheddar and poured them both a coke “Extra cash from waitressing can’t hurt she’s down that hotel most nights.”
      “Yeh well, she’s got an easy degree – whatsit – telly or summat?”
      “Film and TV.”
      “Must be all that sitting around watching DVD’s that does it then. You seen how much weight she’s put on this year?”
      Jo said nothing. Sarah was only a little bigger than she was, although it was a fair point about the Pavlova. Milly lit up a Marlborough Light and started waving it around.
      “But anyway, she’s got a four hundred pound dress and I’ve got thirty quid left of my overdraft, and I need to get drinks from that too.”
      Jo wasn’t sure if she was fishing for a loan. Or “loan” as it had turned out last term. Technically that’s my thirty quid, she thought.
      “I mean, yeah, you get some guy to buy you a few, but you still need back up and summat for fags and taxi. Need another bloody loan just to have a night out.”
    “Could you do something with last year’s dress? The one with the lacy bits? It is pretty, and you’ve not worn it since.”
      Milly looked as if her friend had just suggested she get married in sack cloth.
    “You could put a sash round it, or a scarf. I’ll take the hemline up if you like. No-one would remember anyway.”
    “I’d remember, Jo. Besides, you can’t wear a scarf to a ball.”
    “You must have something. Come on, we’ll have a look,” she stood up. Milly stubbed her cigarette out in the leftovers of the beans and reluctantly followed her upstairs.

    They had to pick their way across Milly’s room, tiptoeing across the patches where the make-up stained carpet was still showing, since Milly appeared to be using the floor as a sort of second wardrobe for her slightly less dressy clothes, as well as storage space for an assortment of overdue library books relating to an essay due three weeks back. Jo noticed a pair of abandoned skin tight jeans slowly absorbing the leak from the radiator.
    “See there’s nothing!” Milly said as she threw open the doors of her tightly packed wardrobe. A few mismatched shoes fell out. Jo stifled a laugh as she assessed the situation.
    “What about this?” She went straight to what she always saw as Milly’s most stunning acquisition:  a deep scarlet Fifties’ number with a full skirt and sweetheart neckline. Admittedly, it needed cleavage, which Milly was notably lacking, although it didn’t seem to bother her when it came to choosing clothes. Jo held the dress up to herself, swishing the skirt as she looked in the full length mirror. It looked better with dark hair, too.
    “Wore it to my cousin’s wedding,” said Milly, without looking up.
    Jo sat down on the bed, stroking the dress on her lap. “What about the green one?”
    “Laura’s wearing green. And it’s kinda last season now.”
    “Oh. Obviously.”
    Milly flopped on the bed next to Jo, pushing a text book aside to rest her black stiletto booted feet on a chair.
  “Did you want to see if I’ve got anything you can borrow?”
  “You’re a size bigger than me. It’d gape.”
  “Suppose.” Jo stared at the ceiling. “Maybe you should go in your underwear. At least you’d be the centre of attention.”
    “Yeh,” said Milly. She lit another cigarette.

“Don’t get why you wanna go. She was an old cow. Even you thought so.”
    The two girls were making their way slowly down the high street. Milly had stopped to re-arrange her parting, checking her reflection in the window of a DIY store. Jo wondered what the shop assistants made of a twenty year old blonde so incredibly interested in petrol mowers.
    “I didn’t,” said Jo, “Mrs Crabtree was really kind to me. Besides, you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.”
    “Why not? They can’t hear you.”
    It was hard to argue with this logic. Jo had hardly expected much sympathy from Milly. It was true that Jo’s old boss from the café she’d worked at in her first year was a bit grumpy, and not too popular, but Jo still felt bad that she was dead. She’d had her little kindnesses. She’d been better than most bosses at putting up with Jo’s mobile going off during service when Milly was having a boyfriend crisis.
    “I just want to pay some respect. Funeral’s out of town, but we can drop some flowers at the funeral parlour on our way to lectures. It’s only ten minutes.”
    “Yeh, ten minutes with a load of dead people. Lot of red in at the moment isn’t there?” She’d stopped again to study the window display in River Island.

    “You don’t have to come,” Jo pointed out, but Milly made no move to leave.
    They picked up the cheapest bouquet in the florists and went into Daniel’s & Son funeral home next door. An attractive young man in a dark suit greeted them sombrely. Milly was pouting at him and seemed to have forgotten her reservations about the undertaking business: he looked increasingly perplexed as she tossed her hair and asked a series of bizarre questions about his “interesting career”, Jo pretended not to notice. He politely ushered them through a dark curtain and into a corridor lined with a number of wide wooden doors, all shut. Jo noted an alcove to the left with two coffins propped up, open: one powder blue inside and one baby pink, it reminded her of a christening; as if gender colour identity were crucially important at times of birth and death. The oaky swirls of the fabric revealed it as taffeta, rather than satin. Perhaps this was the economy range. She couldn’t help thinking that these ominous objects really ought to be shielded from grieving relatives, but maybe they found it reassuring: this all purpose his’n’hers invite to the afterlife.
    The young man directed them into one of the rooms, and pulled the door gently to as he left. The windowless room was conspicuously warm and smelt of plug-in air freshener.  The soft stately-home style carpet matched the black-cherry yoghurt coloured wallpaper; add a sofa or two and the sealed pine coffin with its small solitary wreath could almost be a coffee table.
    “See, I told you no-one liked her,” said Milly, looking at the tiny floral tribute, “Bet you anything the undertaker put that there.”
    “Shsh.” Jo gently laid the flowers next to the wreath and stood with her head bowed, willing Milly to shut up for two seconds at least.
    “Spooky… did you see those empty coffins? All ready to be filled like. Gives me shivers. Can you imagine being buried in one of those things? Or put in the oven? Ooh, I don’t wanna think about it.”
    “Don’t then,” said Jo from between gritted teeth. Actually, on the contrary she wasn’t sure the coffins looked “ready to be filled” at all, it seemed quite odd to associate something quite so elegant and neat with being purely a receptacle for some grizzly corpse. She heard Milly go out into the corridor. Thank God for that she thought.
    There was an excited whisper: “Jo! Jo!” Come and look at this!”
    “What?”
    “Just come look”
    “For God’s sake,” hissed Jo, finally giving up and stepping out into the corridor. Milly was peeping around a door into the room behind it.
“Milly, you can’t do that it’s a funeral home!”
    “Yeh, but look!”
    Jo sighed and poked her head through the gap: “Oh my God!”
    “I know! Gross isn’t it?”
    Opposite them lying on a table in an open casket, was the body of a young girl. Jo had never seen a dead body before. Part of her desperately wanted to leave; the other half just couldn’t stop staring. The girl could only have been about twenty, their own age, and was slender and delicate, with thick, very straight blonde hair, arranged over bare shoulders. She really did just look as though she was sleeping, like a fairy tale princess, ready to wake with a kiss. Her smiling lips were painted crimson, her cheeks were powdery pink and there was still a vague hint of a tan. It seemed somehow inappropriate to Jo for a corpse to look so pretty; and so healthy. It was difficult to imagine what she could possibly have died of. Even her hands, though pale and cold-looking, had been exquisitely manicured. Jo shivered a little.  Maybe that was just how her family wanted to see her one last time: bewitchingly beautiful. But so still. Like a doll.
    Before Jo could register what she was actually doing, Milly pushed past into the room, put a hand in the coffin and started rubbing the hem of the girl’s gorgeous blue silk dress between finger and thumb with all the excited concentration of a wine taster sampling a fine vintage. “It’s Versace Jo!”
    “What?”
    “I can’t believe they’re gonna bury it. Look, it’s gorgeous. Embroidery and everything. It’s beautiful. Look at the split up the side. And it’s off the shoulder Bit sexy for a corpse.”
Jo stared.
  “They can’t do it. It’s sacrilegious”
    “What is?” it seemed bizarre that Milly should chose this particular moment to develop a conscience; but she wasn’t listening, she was lifting the bottom of the dress, studying the delicate design.
    “There’s a slip the same colour.”
    “So?”
    “So, no one’s gonna notice. Guys don’t see things like that, do they?”
    “Oh God, Milly, no...”
    “I need it more than she does. It’ll only rot or get burnt anyway. It’s a waste. You’re into all that recycling stuff, aren’t you?”
    With the same determined look Jo recognised from their trip to Oxford Street last Christmas, Milly was feeling for the zip down the side, directly under the perfectly clean-shaven armpit.  As if handling some giant Barbie, she rotated the arm in its socket to rest on the top edge of the coffin, the dead girl laid poised to answer some eternal question about The Great Beyond. She slipped one hand under the girl’s back and methodically started to peel the dress away, the arm flopped down again. “Stay still,” said Milly, firmly, as she replaced it. Some of the make up powder had come off on the back of her wrist.
    Jo left the room: “I’m gonna pretend I didn’t see that,” she muttered to herself, feeling sick. When Milly came out her shoulder bag was bulging.
    “Milly; you get worse and worse.”
    Milly giggled, sticking a cigarette between her teeth, although Jo’s voice had never been more serious.

Considering that Milly had the dress now; there was little chance of returning it without suspicion. Talking her out of wearing it was a dead end. Jo reluctantly dropped the issue, though it certainly didn’t make her feel any better about going to the ball.
    Milly did look hot in it: it skimmed her shapely thighs enticingly and was a perfect fit to her slim figure. The deep blue silk with its delicate gold embroidery across the neckline made her hair look blonder and her eyes look bluer. You could see how pleased she was with herself when she posed and pouted in the mirror, though when Jo looked at her she could see only the dead girl.


The ball came a week later. To Milly’s obvious delight, their fashionably late entrance turned plenty of heads. Amongst a crowd of mostly safe, dark colours and long ball gowns, the eyes of nearly every male in the room went straight to Milly, her body hugged close by the shimmering fabric. Her carefully lip-glossed mouth broke into a satisfied grin as she strutted toward the bar with Jo trailing behind her in last year’s conservative silver grey. Back at the flat she’d told herself it was a classic, stylishly cut with just the barest hint of cleavage: far less vulgar than anything in Milly’s collection, but right now it felt more like a cloak of invisibility than a ball gown. People probably thought Milly had hired a footman for the night.  Within minutes, Milly had a drink in each hand, and the boys who’d bought them hovering hungrily at her elbows. Jo was still queuing. She wondered what Milly told the smitten boys about the dress. She felt a half empty glass pushed into each hand. Milly headed for the dance floor.
    Jo watched the smooth back heading away from her, and downed one of the drinks with a brief unnoticed scowl at the guy who bought it.
    Milly rubbed her hands lovingly over the smooth fabric in time to the music, shimmied her hips hypnotically with arms aloft, started to bump’n’grind with some lucky Sports student, closing in, pressing herself against him for a few seconds, then backing away, leaving him desperate for more. He beckoned her back with a series of bizarre arm movements he seemed under the impression were rhythmical. Knowing how to retain the interest, she left the dance floor at the end of the song, flicking a smile over her shoulder before pushing her way back to where her drinks were waiting. Her drop onto the sofa was clumsier than her usual studied public elegance.
    “Alright?” asked Jo. For once she was quite glad of Milly’s premature return; she’d just spotted the geek she spent last year’s ball hiding from, spot cream glowing in the ultra-violet strobe, and thought maybe she could graciously pass him on to her single friend. She gazed across at the guy Milly had just finished dancing with, who was thrashing himself around wildly to some heavy rock track that clearly didn’t lend itself to seduction, though every so often he’d make a drunken leer in the general direction of Milly’s legs.
    “Think so.” Milly dug in her bag for a cigarette “These shoes are killing me. Leg muscles all stiff, like really stiff,” she lifted her feet awkwardly onto the table, knocking over a beer. “Need another drink probably. D’ya mind?”
    Jo glared at the back of her head, but got up to wait at the bar. When she got back, Milly was dancing again, this time with a tall, chiselled post grad, but her rhythm seemed to have lost it a bit. She looked exhausted and eventually staggered back to the sofa.
    “You sure you should have another?”
    “Yeh I’m fine,” Milly snatched the glass. Her voice wasn’t slurred, but it was quiet and hissy, not right somehow. She sat rigid, with the drink on the arm of the sofa, looking queasy.
    “Shoes still hurt?”
    “Me arms have gone funny now too.” She held one out in front of her like a sleepwalker in a silent film, but it fell straight back down to her side as if filled with clay.
    “Muscles all stiff, not been going to the gym enough.” She paused, to try and take a sip of her drink but gave the action up as apparently too much effort. Jo took the glass back.
  “Need to rest.”
    She didn’t sound herself at all. Jo wondered if she was going to faint.
    “You look a bit pale, Milly.”
    “Couldn’t afford sun bed, could I?” She sounded in pain. “Think I better take my shoes off.” She leant forward to unbuckle a shoe and toppled forward off the sofa. In the process she revealed that the red lacy knickers she’d put on over her tights weren’t quite as well matched as the underwear of the dress’s original owner. Through the frayed hem Jo thought she even noticed the barest hint of cellulite under the flashing lights.
“Shoulda brought a camera.” Jo smiled, and gave her friend a gentle kick in the ribs: “Milly?” Milly rolled onto her back, still and stiff as a dried up beetle, her eyes rolled back in her head. Everyone stopped and looked around. Jo screamed.
    The ambulance crew were on the scene within minutes, pushing the crowd of goggle eyed students out of the way and swarming around the oddly peaceful looking Milly.
    “What’s her name? Has she taken anything? What happened?”
    Jo heard questions swirl around her and the crowd fell over each other to answer them.
    “Milly? Milly? Can you hear us, Milly?” shouted one of the crew, his hands on her shoulders. They tried to arrange Milly into a more dignified position. One of them loosened the dress very slightly, and for a moment Jo thought she saw a flicker of consciousness, though seconds later it was confirmed that her friend had stopped breathing.  A hand crept softly across her bare shoulders to her throat, confirming there was no pulse either. Two paramedics started resuscitation as the others ushered the curious crowd out of the bar.  Jo hung back quietly by the bar; watching a young and vaguely handsome paramedic push down rhythmically, jelly inserts wriggling their way free of Milly’s booster bra. Another performed a passionate kiss of life through a sterile tissue. Her hips lifted slightly off the floor with each movement, and the blue dress shimmered as it moved under the still flashing disco lights and it became increasingly clear that all efforts were in vain. Just before she was gently led away from the scene, Jo heard her friend pronounced dead.

Jo persuaded herself to brave the funeral parlour again, just two weeks after her last visit. It was, at least, a different one. This time she held a bouquet of pale blue, to lay on the closed white coffin amongst an assortment of others, all with sympathetic notes attached: there was one from the boy she’d danced with, another from Sarah, the strawberry Pavlova. Jo laid hers in pride of place on top of them all and stood head bowed. Slowly she became aware of a conversation floating in from the corridor; it was between two of the parlour cleaners.
    “Did you hear what happened at Daniels’ up in town?”
    “Yeh heard something. Didn’t someone wake up in a coffin there or something- I figured it was crap ‘cos there was nothing in the paper.”
    “They’re trying to keep it quiet apparently. One of the old guys was locking up for the night when he hears this knocking from out the back and thinks he’s being burgled, so checks all the doors and there’s nothing. So he reckons he’s imagined it and starts to go, when he hears it again. Figures out it’s coming from one of the rooms, so he goes in and finds its coming from one of the boxes that’s all ready to go next day. Anyway, he’s probably a bit scared, but having been in the business a while, guesses there’s a rational explanation and opens up the box, and out steps this girl.”
  “Yeh?”
  “No kidding. She says she’s been there ages. It was weird 'cos she’d been conscious all the time. Her pulse and breathing had stopped, and her limbs had gone all stiff so everyone thought she was dead. Only she wasn’t proper dead, she could hear everyone talking and wailing and crying over her and making all the funeral plans, and she couldn’t do anything 'cos her muscles had all stuck and she couldn’t talk: like she was dead, but not.”
  “Nah, no way. They’d do a post mortem and check. Someone’s having you on.”

    “Yeh, maybe, but the weird bit is when she sat up she was just wearing this blue slip thing, like they were gonna bury her in her underwear.”
    Jo lifted her head, turned around and walked out into the bright May morning, swinging her orange Marc Jacob’s handbag (limited edition) as she went.