Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

I thought about this. I had been slacking somewhat with my makeover list, after the frankly disconcerting wax experience at the salon and the unremarkable changes that had been wrought on my nails. I supposed I ought to press on with it. Normally, I wasn’t at all interested in my hair and I hadn’t had it cut since I was thirteen years old. It ran down to my waist, straight and light brown – just hair, nothing more, nothing less. I barely noticed it, in truth. I knew, though, that for the singer to fall in love with me, I’d need to make much more of an effort.

‘This is, in fact, serendipitous timing, Laura,’ I said, drinking more of the delicious bubbles – my glass seemed miraculously to have refilled itself. ‘I had been planning something of a reinvention. Might next week be suitable for you to effect a change of hairstyle?’

She picked up her phone from a console table and tapped away.

‘How’s Tuesday at three?’ she said.

We were allocated twenty-five days of annual leave, and I had used three – a recovery day after painful root canal work, one of my biannual daytime social work visits, and an extra day I’d added onto a Bank Holiday weekend in order to allow me to finish a particularly lengthy but thrilling volume on the history of Ancient Rome without interruption.

‘Tuesday would be splendid,’ I said.

She shimmered off towards the kitchen, and reappeared with a tray of malodorous, warm snacks which she passed around the room. The space had filled up with people, and the overall volume level was very loud. I stood for several minutes examining the bibelots and objets which she had artfully placed around the room. More from boredom than necessity, I went to use the bathroom, a tiny cloakroom under the stairs which was also shiny and warm, gleaming white and scented, improbably, with figs – the smell, I eventually realized, emanating from a lit candle in a glass jar on the shelf below the mirror. Candles in a bathroom! I suspected that Laura was something of a sybarite.

I walked into the room at the end of the hall, which was, as I had correctly guessed, the kitchen. This room was also full of people and noise, but I could make out black marble worktops, gloss cream cabinets and lots of chrome. Her home was so … shiny. She was shiny too, her skin, her hair, her shoes, her teeth. I hadn’t even realized before; I am matte, dull and scuffed.

Feeling the need to escape the noise and heat for a moment, I opened the back door and stepped out onto a patio. The garden was small and contained little in the way of botanical life, being mostly paved with concrete slabs or covered in slippery decking. Dusk was falling, but the sky felt small here, and I felt penned in by a high fence which ran on all three sides. I breathed in, deeply, hoping for cool night air. Instead, my nasal passages were assaulted by tar, nicotine and other poisons.

‘Nice night, eh?’ said Raymond, loitering unnoticed in the shadows and, just for a change, puffing on a cigarette. I nodded.

‘I came out for some fresh air,’ he said, without a hint of irony. ‘I shouldn’t drink fizz, it knocks me for six.’ I realized that I was somewhat discombobulated myself.

‘I think I’m ready to go home now,’ I said, a little unsteady on my feet. It was, however, a lovely feeling.

‘Come and sit down for a minute,’ Raymond said, steering me towards a pair of wooden armchairs. I was glad to do so, as my new boots rendered my balance somewhat precarious at the best of times. Raymond lit another cigarette – he seemed to be becoming a chain smoker.

‘They’re a nice family, aren’t they?’ he said.

‘Laura is going to cut my hair,’ I blurted out. I’ve no idea why.

‘Is she now?’ He smiled.

‘You like her,’ I stated, nodding sagely. I was a woman of the world, after all.

He laughed.

‘She’s gorgeous, Eleanor, but she’s really not my type.’ His cigarette end glowed red in the semidarkness.

‘What is your type?’ I asked, finding to my surprise that I was actually interested.

‘I don’t know. Someone less … high maintenance, I guess. Someone … wait a minute.’

I was more than content to sit still while he walked off, returning minutes later with a bottle of wine and two garishly decorated paper cups sporting cartoon rodents on skateboards.

‘Rastamouse,’ I read aloud, slowly. ‘What on earth is this?’

‘Give it here,’ Raymond said, and poured us both a … cup. We tapped our vessels together. There was no clink.

‘I thought I’d found the perfect person for me,’ he said, staring at the back of the garden. ‘Didn’t work out, though.’

‘Why not?’ I said, although I could, in fact, think of many reasons why someone might not want to be with Raymond.

‘Thing is, I’m still not entirely sure. I wish I did know – it would make things easier …’

I nodded – it seemed like the appropriate thing to do.