by Lindsey Kelk
‘I need to relax,’ I told myself. ‘And I need a drink.’
I cautiously opened the door and sprinted to the kitchen. Glasses seemed surplus to requirements and so, classy gal that I was, I opted to swig straight out of the bottle and ran back to the bathroom with it. I was really just saving Kekipi a job. I was really just very thoughtful.
‘Hello?’
Why hadn’t I locked the front door?
‘Just a minute,’ I yelled, clanking the wine bottle far too loudly against the marble sink and grabbing a towel to cover myself.
‘Vanessa?’ The voice came closer and closer. ‘It’s Paige, from Gloss?’
‘Hi.’ I flung the bathroom door open, towel tucked around my boobs, steam billowing out behind me. ‘Hello.’
‘Christ, it’s like a Bananarama video.’ The blonde girl in front of me stared back with wide eyes. ‘Nice hair.’
‘Thank you?’
‘Sorry, didn’t mean to drag you out of the shower.’ She could not stop staring at me. I subtly glanced down to make sure my boobs hadn’t escaped from my towel. ‘I was looking for Vanessa?’
‘Oh, of course, that’s me.’ I casually stretched my leg out backwards and kicked the bathroom door shut, hoping she couldn’t see the open wine bottle. My work brain had helpfully clocked on to remind me that Paige Sullivan was the art director from Gloss magazine and would be arriving on Tuesday. Today was Tuesday and, bugger me backwards, here she was.
‘Vanessa Kittler?’ Paige stretched out a confused hand.
‘Yes?’ I took it reluctantly but shook it with as much enthusiasm as I could muster. There were only two absolutes in this world ? nobody put Baby in a corner, and nobody liked a dead-fish handshake. ‘Vanessa Kittler, photographer extraordinaire.’
There was nothing like trying a little bit too hard sometimes.
‘Oh, OK, sorry, not quite with it from the flight,’ Paige said, smiling back at me with a bright, lipstick-commercial confidence that didn’t quite make her eyes. ‘Just literally got in. Delayed for bloody ever. Literally just landed. Just now. I know, I feel like shit. I look like shit.’
She did not look like shit. Her blonde hair fell around her shoulders in perfectly manageable loose curls, her eye make-up smouldered and her lips were painted a perfect Old Hollywood red. She was so pretty, she looked as if she should be famous.
‘And I suppose I’m a bit distracted because I can sort of see your vagina.’ She pointed to the hem of my towel but kept her eyes up.
‘Oh, shitting hell,’ I muttered, crouching down and looking for a new, longer cover-up. ‘Sorry. I was just having a shower.’
‘And a drink?’ She craned her neck, looking over my shoulder to where the bathroom door had mutinously swung open.
‘Little one,’ I said, pinching my thumb and forefinger together. ‘The tiniest one it’s possible to have, really.’
‘Sounds bloody good to me,’ Paige said, slipping out of a quilted bomber jacket to reveal perfectly toned arms in a white cotton vest, complete with peekaboo neon-pink bra straps. Brilliant. ‘Maybe we are going to get along. Tell you what, why don’t I go and unpack, and then we’ll meet back here for a beverage. We need to talk about this shoot, yeah?’
It irked me ever so slightly that she pronounced the end of the word ‘beverage’ the same way you would pronounced ‘barrage’, but aside from that, I couldn’t see a problem with her plan. It was better than anything I had lined up, after all, and what harm could it do me to have the art director of the magazine on my side?
‘Yeah, sure,’ I agreed, still stooping. I bet she had a genuine diamond vajazzle under her spray-on jeans. ‘I’ll even put some clothes on.’
‘Oh, you and your scandalous ideas.’ She gave me a quick blast of a dirty laugh that made me like her even more. ‘Not too many, eh? Might be the odd eligible bachelor out here. Speaking of, don’t suppose you’ve run into our journo boy yet, have you?’
Run into, eaten dinner with, snogged the face off.
‘Nick? I have had the pleasure,’ I replied, considering how best to explain to this complete stranger who was sort of my boss that I had sexually assaulted our journo boy about thirty minutes earlier. ‘He’s in the cottage next door.’
‘Oh, good ? I should, you know, check in,’ she said, immediately preening and peering out of the window. ‘Do you know if he’s there now? Do I look OK?’
Oh. Shit. She liked him.
I nodded and kept schtum, hoping Nick would do the same. Now I really was starting to feel like Vanessa. Forty-eight hours into the job and I’d already snogged my boss’s boyfriend.
‘So, back here in, like, two hours?’ Paige grabbed a huge square bag decorated with interlocked Cs from the worktop and waved her sparkly watch at me. ‘Cocktails and catch-ups?’
‘Cocktails and catch-ups,’ I confirmed, a little bit excited to have a potential new girlfriend. ‘Two hours.’
As long as it wasn’t cock-ups and catch tails, this could be a grand old time.
Almost three hours later, I was perched on the arm of the overstuffed sofa in my living room, watching the ceiling fan spin round and round and wondering whether or not red wine on an empty stomach had been a good idea. I’d spent almost forty-five minutes out of the previous hour blow-drying and straightening my hair while swearing at the humidity, begging it to play nicely and not embarrass itself next to Paige’s perfectly coiffed locks. It had half listened and, as such, I had only had to half pin it up.
Eventually, Paige knocked once on the door and let herself in, just like before.
‘We’re twins,’ she exclaimed, holding up her arms in delight.
We were not twins. We looked like a before and after. Paige had painted a pair of dark blue denim jeans onto her pin-thin legs and wrapped black masking tape all around her torso until it resembled a racer-back vest. I had squeezed myself into a slightly too small pair of Vanessa’s stolen jeans and disguised the resulting muffin top with a slightly too big black T-shirt. That said, we did appear to be wearing the same shoes.
‘Don’t you just love Tribs?’ she asked, pointing a foot at me. ‘I know YSL shoes are stupidly expensive, but they’re so bloody comfy. As soon as I got my first pair, I was like, fuck, no more Choos or Looboos for me. Tribs all the way.’
‘All the way,’ I agreed. I had certainly not had enough wine. I didn’t even know I was wearing YSL shoes.
‘So, this guy who works here, Zippy or something?’ Paige opened up a much smaller version of the same Chanel bag she’d brought in earlier and produced a little black bullet of lipstick. ‘He came over earlier and said there was this little luau thing on the beach a bit further up. It’s not an official work thing, but he said it would be fun. There will be drinks and there will be boys.’
I assumed that by Zippy she meant Kekipi, but I let it go.
‘I like drinks and boys,’ I said, watching her reapply perfect red lipstick straight from the tube without a mirror. ‘Should we maybe not wear massive high heels on sand, though?’
‘Good point.’ She smacked her lips together and dropped the lipstick back into her bag. ‘But I can’t wear jeans without heels ? my legs look like tree trunks.’
‘I can’t imagine for a second that they do.’ I refused to play the ‘I’m so fat, you’re so fat’ game with a creature this well put together. It was insulting to both of us. ‘It’ll be fine.’
‘No, I’ll have to go and get changed,’ she said, shaking her head resolutely. ‘If I wear trousers without heels, I basically look like that little guy from Game of Thrones, and he’s the only one who’s getting away with being four feet tall and hot. He’s hot, yeah?’
‘He seems very nice?’ I hoisted myself to my feet and waited the obligatory three seconds until I felt comfy in my heels. ‘Do you want to go and change, then?’
‘No need.’ Paige clapped and looked at me like she’d just solved world poverty. ‘I’ll borrow something from you. I’m sure we’re about the sam
e size.’
We weren’t, but I was so flattered-slash-worried she’d suffered a serious head trauma, I let her push me out of the way and disappear into my room.
‘Oh, Vanessa.’ She stood in front of my wardrobe looking at all my rejected outfits for the evening with her hands over her mouth. And by all, I meant three. Because I only had three other outfits. The yellow dress I’d worn for dinner the night before, a black silky number and my newly cut-off denim cut-offs. ‘Is this all you have?’
‘I didn’t think there was going to be a lot of call for black tie,’ I said, standing shame-faced in the doorway. ‘And I came in a hurry.’
Paige turned her back on my dressing room in disgust and fixed me with a very odd look. ‘Back to mine, then.’
It shouldn’t have been a shock that Paige’s wardrobe was bursting to the seams, but I was still a little astounded that her plane had been able to take off with all the shit that was spilling out of her bedroom. I was sitting on her bed waiting for her to show me outfit number three, and so far I’d counted seven bikinis, two swimming costumes, ten pairs of shoes and three striped American Apparel T-shirts that were exactly the same. And that was just what was on the floor. Inside the wardrobe, all manner of silk and satin concoctions threatened to leap out and make their bid for freedom.
‘What about this?’
She stepped out of the bathroom in what looked like an oversized white shirt with pleats on the front and no collar, and even though I’d already shown her mine earlier in the day, I was a bit worried that at any second she was about to show me her lady garden. At least when I’d done it, it was by accident.
‘It’s Derek Lam.’ She threw her arms out as though that should mean something to me. ‘It’s last season, though. Is it horribly obvious that it’s last season?’
‘Paige,’ I said as calmly as possible. ‘We’re going to a Hawaiian luau. In Hawaii. I don’t think it’s going to matter if it’s last season or if it pre-dates the Koran. I just don’t think white silk is a good idea when there’s going to be rum punch.’
‘Good point,’ she said, whipping the dress over her head to show me her nude bra and knickers before grabbing a multicoloured shift dress with a neon-pink bib in the front. It looked like a high-fashion Care Bear costume. ‘Thakoon?’
‘Bless you?’ I shrugged.
With a second disturbed look, Paige pulled the dress on, grabbed a pair of nude strappy sandals and shook her curls out in the mirror. ‘Fine.’ She pulled a grumpy face and then wiped off her red lippy with a tissue. ‘It needs a nude lip.’
I collapsed back on the bed. I had a feeling I was going to be there for a while.
CHAPTER TEN
It took another forty-five minutes of primping before Paige could be persuaded to leave for the luau. I had traded my heels for my brown leather flip-flops but kept my jeans and T-shirt. The night air had cooled slightly, but I was still really too warm. I was also incredibly conscious of the swathes of black eyeliner Paige had insisted I wear. To be fair to her, she didn’t do a horrible job, but it was just too hot for so much make-up and I wasn’t used to looking like a sexy panda. If there was such a thing. There was a reason pandas didn’t do it all that often, and I strongly suspected it had something to do with their amateur smokey-eye look in the Chinese humidity. Eventually, with Paige in her expensive toddleresque ensemble and me in my stolen clothes and borrowed make-up, we found Kekipi’s luau. And it was full of gays.
‘You came!’ Kekipi dashed up to me with a coconut that was not full of coconut water and gave me a huge hug. ‘I told missy to bring you. It’s not a real luau, just a bit of a boys’ get-together, but we do have tiki torches, dancing and a disgusting amount of pig.’
‘You had me at pig,’ I promised.
Kekipi laughed and clapped. He was my favourite. ‘Since Mr Bennett stopped giving his parties, we’ve made it a tradition to invite fabulous women to our own whenever there are fabulous women to invite.’
‘I believe Paige definitely falls into the fabulous category,’ I said, accepting a coconut cocktail of my own as well as a hot-pink lei made of delicious-smelling flowers. Across the way, Paige was trying to negotiate with a half-naked man for a baby-blue garland as the pink was ‘too matchy matchy’ for her outfit. ‘I think I’m just filler.’
‘Fabulous filler.’ Kekipi slipped his arm through mine and walked me over to an empty table. ‘So I have to ask you, have you seen Mr Twenty Questions today?’
‘I have,’ I confirmed and swiftly changed the subject. ‘But I have to ask you, what’s going on with Bertie Bennett? How come he keeps cancelling things?’
‘Oh, don’t,’ Kekipi said, waving his hand in my face. ‘I haven’t seen him in days. I don’t know where he’s hiding. I just find notes dotted around the house. It’s family business issues ? don’t concern yourself with it.’
‘Not the best time to invite journalists over, then.’ I found the straw in my cocktail and took a sip. It was so wonderful, I feared I might never drink any other type of drink as long as I lived. ‘Interesting.’
‘Hmm.’ Kekipi clearly didn’t want to talk about it. ‘But it does seem a little silly to invite a group of people over to interview you and take pictures then decide that’s the week you want to do a Dietrich.’
‘It does a bit,’ I agreed, finding the bottom of my drink far too quickly. Maybe it had only been half full. Maybe I was a complete lush. ‘These are really good.’
‘They are almost as delicious as Mr Miller.’ He took my empty coconut from me and set it on a table. ‘I’m not refilling until you tell me what he said to you today. Was it saucers of milk at table two? Did you scratch each other’s eyes out?’
‘Not exactly.’ I really wanted that coconut back. ‘Not yet, anyway.’
‘Oh, amazing.’ Kekipi clapped and an obscenely fit young man with long black curtains of hair parted in the centre appeared with two more drinks. I imagined that being in charge of hiring and firing had its perks when you were Bertie Bennett’s estate manager. ‘Did you hate-fuck him? You hate-fucked him, didn’t you?’
‘No!’ I tried to look scandalized. I had awkward issues with people using the eff-word to mean, well, effing. I failed. ‘I absolutely didn’t.’
‘But you wanted to.’ He pushed my new drink across the table towards me. ‘Don’t worry, I get it. He’s hot, he’s an asshole, you’re in Hawaii. It happens.’
I forced a stray strand of hair back into the kirby grips at the back of my head and gave one firm, decisive nod. ‘Maybe so, but it’s not going to happen to me.’
‘I guess we’ll find out about that later, won’t we?’ Kekipi stood up and backed away, wiggling his eyebrows at me.
I sat alone at my table, happily watching Paige and what I assumed to be the rest of Bennett’s staff dancing to the sounds of someone’s iPod under several strings of perfectly hung fairy lights. Tiki torches marked out the dance floor and someone had wrapped spare leis around the palm trees. It looked like we were in an all-gay, Hawaii-based remake of Dirty Dancing. If I tuned out the music, which was always difficult when someone was playing Beyoncé at full blast, I could hear the sea lapping against the shore and everything smelled sweet. Not least my delicious cocktail. I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply. I should have started making stupid decisions years ago. I really wished Amy was here. Not Charlie, though. Because I wasn’t thinking about Charlie.
I continued to not think about Charlie for two more drinks and almost an hour of the Beyoncé, Rihanna and Robyn megamix. I’d almost got to my feet for that ‘Call Me Maybe’ song, but Kekipi dashed over to stop me, declaring the song ‘so last year’, apologizing for its inclusion and refreshing my drink. I knew putting away so many cocktails on a school night was a bad idea, but since all my bad ideas had been going so well, I figured I might as well keep up the good work. Plus it made the music so much more bearable. After a rousing group rendition of ‘Single Ladies’, Paige wandered over, zigzagging across the
sand, and sat down in the chair beside me with a sloppy smile.
‘I think I’m jet-lagged,’ she sighed, head tilted up towards the stars. ‘I feel a bit weird.’
‘Do you want to go back?’ I asked, not really wanting to head home, but Tess the Martyr was always lurking in the subconscious background. ‘We can go back.’
‘No, no, I’m fine.’ She patted my hand and leaned over to my straw to take a sip of my drink. ‘That helps.’
‘I don’t think it does,’ I said, passing her a skewer of barbecued chicken and a can of Diet Coke.
She held up her hand and made a pukey face which I took to mean she didn’t want them. Just as well, because I really did.
‘Shouldn’t we talk about the photo shoot?’ I asked, watching her mouth the words to whatever Lady Gaga song was playing with a glazed expression. ‘Like, what you want me to actually do.’
‘I have it all planned.’ Paige closed her eyes and piled her hair up on top of her head and then let it fall down her back. ‘It’s just an amazing concept. The portrait we’re going to do at the house, and then, for the fashion shoot, we’re going to Iolani Palace. It’s this amazing old palace where the kings of Hawaii used to live, so we’re going to shoot the dresses there with Bennett on a throne, like the king of fashion. It’s going to be major.’
Major? It was going to be major? I nibbled on a chicken skewer and nodded as confidently as I could.
‘I have one question for you, though.’ Paige opened her eyes and turned to face me fully, pushing her hair behind her ears. ‘Why are you pretending to be Vanessa Kittler?’