by Jenny Colgan
‘Yeah!’
I stuck her in the little Pucci minidress. Even though she had a little pot belly - and, obviously, those flailing knockers - she looked utterly fabulous in it. In fact, the bosoms busting out of the top gave it an additional appeal.
‘Can I wear it?’ she asked breathlessly.
‘I think you’re going to have to,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I can’t get in it.’
Stupidly, I suddenly felt the gap between being eighteen and being twenty-five, and I didn’t like it. I glanced at my new look again. No, I was fine.
‘Put this on,’ said Delilah, giving me the Alice Temperley frock that I’d thrown in - it was meant to make me look pale and floaty and romantic. Mixed with the crazy hair and the dramatic make-up, though, it looked cool, edgy and very, very art school.
‘We are super-hot,’ breathed Delilah in all seriousness. Downstairs the doorbell started ringing and I could hear a lot of voices shouting and bottles and cans being opened. Cal’s music had won. I felt excited. ‘Shall we go?’
Well, upstairs in my bedroom I had thought I looked a bit odd, but I soon realised my outfit was absolutely nothing compared with what this lot were wearing.
The girls (I could mostly distinguish between the sexes) were all pin thin (it was with a soggy sense of horror that I realised I was among the oldest and fattest there), and wore mismatching tights on either leg, bin bags, punk hairdos, wedding dresses, psychedelic dungarees or combinations of all of the above. They looked like they’d all descended from another planet, or at least a particularly cool area of Tokyo. They had beehives too (hurrah!) or dreadlocks or Mohicans and their hair was lots of different colours. Weirdly, I noticed, although obviously they were all trying to be highly individual and everything, they all looked a lot like each other. Almost as one, they turned to eye up Delilah and me, standing there in our party dresses, with a distinct air of suspicion, not helped at all when the twins came screaming up the stairs. They were wearing PVC miniskirts, both in pink, so someone had obviously refused to back down.
‘Deli! ’ they screamed. ‘Sophs! ’
‘All the girls look really weird here,’ yelled Kelly, not lowering her tone despite the pallid vampires pouting at us.
‘And the boys look weird too,’ added Grace. ‘But quite sexy.’
I was relieved. Well, I didn’t want to be responsible for inviting people to, like, the worst party ever.
‘This is, like, the worst party ever,’ came a familiar voice from the corridor. Oh God. That sounded like Philly. I’d hoped they wouldn’t come, and deliberately hadn’t contacted them. I’d forgotten Esperanza had told them my address.
‘Let’s go on through,’ I muttered to Delilah and the twins. The silent art student vampires watched us as we moved towards the kitchen.
‘Yummy yum,’ said Cal looking at us as we entered. He was mixing ‘punch’ in a washing-up bowl. I knew what had been in that washing-up bowl and vowed to avoid it at all costs. He was wearing a white shirt, tight black jeans, a black jacket and black Converse.
‘What’s this crap you’re playing?’ said Delilah. ‘Can’t you put on some decent music?’
‘Well, nice to meet you too,’ said Cal.
‘Yeah,’ said Kelly. ‘We can do our Pussycat Dolls routine.’
‘I’m being Nicole,’ said Grace.
Suddenly, I badly wanted to see their Pussycat Dolls routine. From the look on Cal’s face, so did he.
‘Cinders! It’s a miracle,’ said Cal, looking me up and down again. ‘What have you done with your lovely hair? But, you know. Fantastic.’
I twirled for him and he winked at me wolfishly.
Cal was eyeing me up like a horse buyer at a county fair. I felt nervous under his gaze. Then Eck came in with some of his friends.
‘Nice shirt,’ I said. He looked like he might be blushing slightly.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘You look . . . different.’
‘Good different?’ I said in an encouraging tone.
‘Uh, yeah . . .’ he looked around. ‘Have you got a drink? Would you like another?’
He smiled hopefully at me and I felt a sudden rush of excitement. It had been such a long time since I’d been chatted up properly, by someone who didn’t automatically assume that I would immediately cop off with them as soon as they showed me the keys to their Porsche. Of course Eck didn’t have a Porsche. Or a Ford. Or a pushbike. But nonetheless, it was interesting.
‘Yes, please,’ I said cheerfully, holding up my glass. Cal raised his eyebrows at me and I waggled them back. A girl could flirt. At least, I used to be able to, and surely this skill hadn’t been lost for ever?
‘What the hell is this place?’
I heard the voice suddenly on the stairs. Even though I’d registered Philly’s presence already, hearing Carena still made me stop, and panic. She had come. I hadn’t actually thought she would. Never in a million years. At short notice? On a Saturday night? Impossible.
‘You wanted to come here, darling,’ came a familiar, deep, amused-sounding voice in response. I froze even more. It was Rufus.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ said Cal curiously. ‘Tatler just turned up to take your photo?’
‘No,’ I said. Eck returned from the fridge with some wine, and I gulped mine so quickly I scarcely thanked him. I was nervous and had too much energy to know what to do with myself.
‘You agreed to come,’ I heard Carena hiss back, obviously she was used to houses with slightly more solid walls than ours.
‘I thought it was a party and might make a change from wedding meetings about crockery,’ Rufus sounded like he was complaining.
‘Well, it is a party, isn’t it?’
I wished there was another exit to the kitchen that didn’t involve throwing myself out of the window. I didn’t want to see Rufus . . . but oh, I did. I’d always wondered if he’d ring, once he heard about my dad. Maybe he’d feel so mortified and tortured with grief he’d realise he’d made the biggest mistake of his life . . . instead, of course, he’d been out pricing wedding rings with Carena. He can’t possibly have given me another thought.
‘Who wants to dance?’ I announced quickly. The music was still gruesome, but I had to get rid of this nervous energy. And what the hell was Carena playing at, bringing him. OK, I’d said I was over him but that didn’t mean I meant it. Did she really have to rub it in? I thought about what I knew about Carena. Yes. I suppose she did.
Another thought struck me. They were going to spill the beans - reveal my identity to the boys. I didn’t want to have to cope with all the questions and the interest and how they’d look at me differently if they knew I was going to be rich. I quite enjoyed (apart from the cleaning) my anonymity here. I didn’t have to keep up with anyone, look right, eat right, get invited to the right places. It was pretty mucky, but surprisingly relaxing.
‘I will,’ said Eck, but Cal caught my eye just at the wrong moment. I didn’t have much time.
‘OK,’ I said to Cal.
‘You next, yeah?’ I added to Eck as I dragged Cal towards our living room.
‘Uh, I didn’t really want to dance anyway,’ Eck was mumbling, turning back to his mates with an embarrassed-looking expression.
I ducked my head to the facing wall and held Cal’s jacket over my face. Fortunately there were about a thousand people in the hall, and Carena had her nose up in the air, so we managed to squeeze past undetected.
The music was throbbingly loud in the living room, but, weird as it was, I found I no longer minded. Tentatively at first I moved my arms into the air and let my body sway in time. God, I do love to dance. That doesn’t necessarily mean I’m very good at it, but I do love doing it. There’s an old cliché that says ‘dance like no one’s watching’, but I don’t believe in that. I think you should dance like everyone in the world is watching you and you’re Madonna at Wembley Arena. So, art student girls - get out of my way!
As I warmed up, I could feel Cal startin
g to respond. He was a surprisingly good mover - oh, OK, I wasn’t that surprised. Nobody as confident as Cal was a truly bad dancer. But he was slinkier than I’d thought, sexier than ever as we started moving closer and closer. His mouth made a little moue of approval as he watched me twirl about. Good. Ideally I didn’t want him to watch me critically and then go ‘Woah, horsie’.
I shimmied closer. He did likewise, till suddenly our chests were nearly touching and we were holding eye contact for longer and longer. I felt I could dive into his dark eyes; the desire to touch his lean pale chest was becoming overwhelming. I forgot about Carena and Rufus. Even Daddy. I forgot about anything except the grind of the music and the heat of the floor and the very small distance between us. Now our movements were completely synchronised, moving more and more slowly in rhythm with one another till it felt inevitable to . . .
‘God, I nearly didn’t recognise you,’ came the voice. ‘Till I saw those arms waving about madly of course. What on earth have you done with your hair?’
‘Hello, Carena,’ I said, standing back from Cal. My plan to be an elegant strong woman on the surface took a real battering when I saw who was standing beside her.
Rufus looked as handsome as ever, maybe more so. I felt my heart flip. He looked a little embarrassed. But under the circumstances, not as much as he should have done.
‘Hi, Rufus.’
‘Uh, hi, Sophie.’
I thought he was looking away in shame, until I noticed his gaze wobble away to where the twins had started on the most absurd mock-lesbian dancing I’d ever seen in my life. Which didn’t seem to bother Rufus or ninety per cent of the other men in the room, who were suddenly transfixed. Rufus clearly still just wanted to have fun.
‘Uh?’ I said.
‘Oh, yeah,’ he mumbled. He couldn’t meet my eyes, even when he tried. I noticed Carena’s long fingernails tighten on his arm, although she was pretending to be looking elsewhere.
‘So . . . life going well?’ I said.
‘Uh, yeah . . .’ He looked about to ask me the same question, but must have realised, from the hallway décor alone, that that would be pointless. ‘Look, I’m sorry things went . . . well you know. We had fun, didn’t we?’
I think it’s then I felt something that I couldn’t immediately identify. It felt weird. I realised what it was: I actually felt a bit sorry for Rufus. Which might sound strange for me to say. But for Rufus, everything was fun. And the second it wasn’t, you had to find something else to take its place. Nothing was constant, nothing was worth working for. I realised it was a bit rich for me to be thinking this when a few weeks ago I really hadn’t done a day’s work in my life, but there it was. I spotted his eyes flick to Grace and Kelly again - in search of more ‘fun’, I think, and for the first time I felt some of the ice leave my heart.
‘We did,’ I said. Which was true.
Carena stopped pretending to look round, and, sensing it was safe to be herself again, raised her eyebrows.
‘You live here?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘South is the new Nice.’
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Well, happy flat warming.’
She really was tiny. Her waist looked like a child’s. Had I ever been that small?
‘You look really slim,’ I said. I liked the idea of not feeling bitter any more and wondered if giving her a compliment might help. ‘Really, skeletal. Near death.’
She beamed. ‘Thanks! Well, anyway, it’s hardly like Daddy or Rufus would let me go off the peg, but I want to stay at sample size just in case.’
I shook my head at her in confusion. ‘What?’
‘For my wedding dress. You know. Sorry, is that insensitive to bring that up again?’
I glanced at Rufus, who was drooling like a big friendly dog while watching Grace and Kelly.
‘You know what?’ I said suddenly, finally meaning it. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
Philly came up out of nowhere and kissed me affectionately. I was quite touched before I realised she had hopped in and was now standing between Cal and me. She started gyrating in front of him.
‘Dancing?’ she said.
I hoped Cal would say something chivalrous, like how he was dancing and that he would turn to me and say, ‘But she is my partner.’
But he didn’t. He smiled cheerfully at me, moved a little to the side, and he and Philly started dancing. I turned to watch. God, he was a good dancer. Philly was giving it her best hip shimmy but unless I was very much mistaken he wasn’t dancing anything like as close with her as he had with me.
‘Oh, Sophie, what are you like at holding on to a man?’ said Carena, as if this was hilarious.
‘Now, Rufus, go and get me a drink. Champers if they have it. Do you have it? No? No?’
I rolled my eyes. ‘No,’ I said.
‘Gwah?’ said Rufus. The twins had stepped their lesbian dancing up a bit and were now pretending to tongue each other. Rufus had actual dribble coming out of the side of his mouth.
‘Get me a drink, darling.’
Rufus blinked himself back into the present. ‘I want to stay in here.’
The twins had sidled right up to him. I did hope they didn’t nick his wallet.
Carena glared at him and, slinking slightly, Rufus moved away from Kelly and followed Carena out of the room, like a dog who’d done something naughty on the kitchen floor. Just before she moved out of earshot, though, she turned round one last time to me.
‘Oh, is Gail all right?’ she said, her face suddenly full of mock concern.
‘Why?’ I said, my senses immediately on red alert.
‘Because I heard she’s moving out. Just wondered what was up?’
Carena’s tone was saccharine sweet but her words struck me as if I’d been stabbed. Moving out? Of my house?
‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘Where’s she going?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Carena. ‘I just heard people talking about it in Mirabelle.’
I could feel my heart pound loudly.
‘I’m sure it’s nothing,’ she said.
But I didn’t think it was nothing. If a frenemy like Carena came all the way to the Old Kent Road to casually drop it into conversation, there was a strong chance it actually meant quite a lot.
I sat back down in the kitchen, all the booze I’d had earlier - and the news - making my head spin. I tried to call both Gail and the house but wasn’t getting an answer from either place. This made me feel worse than ever.
‘What’s up?’ said Eck. I looked at him, his face was genuinely concerned. But I didn’t know what to say - my house and possibly my inheritance, which I hadn’t told any of them about in a wish to stay reasonably normal - were possibly gone. Or Gail has vanished with everything or Carena was just trying to wind me up because she’s my arch-nemesis, or, a million different things . . . my head couldn’t settle.
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Money problems. Possibly.’
Even as I said that I felt my heart pound.
‘Oh, the fun kind,’ he said.
‘Are you on a student loan?’ I asked. He nodded.
‘What’s it like?’
He looked at me. ‘Are you serious? Haven’t you been to college?’
I toyed between an outright lie and the outright truth, neither of which seemed particularly useful at the moment. Yes, I had been to college. But I hadn’t had to live on a student loan.
‘Can I have another drink?’
‘Sure,’ Eck said, and he headed off in search of more wine.
‘Hey,’ came a sinuous voice to my left. ‘Why did you bring all that totty to the party when it insists on just dancing with each other or complaining that there’s no champagne?’
I blinked, struck out of my vacant reverie. Cal looked nine foot tall looming above me. I made my mind up. My life was an incredible mess, possibly. I had to sort out about a million things, not least my evil ex-friends. But for now there was only one thing I could think of to clear my head and mak
e me not think. And it wasn’t another glass of wine.
I stood up, wobbling a little. ‘Could we go upstairs for a bit?’ I said. It came out breathily, almost as a gasp.
‘Are you all right?’ he said, looking a bit concerned.
‘I’ve just had some bad news,’ I said.
‘What’s up? Prince William marrying somebody else, Cinders?’
‘No.’
I didn’t want to tell the whole sorry story. I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to think about anything at all.