by Karen Swan
Caro came back to them, her beloved phone clutched to her chest like it was a baby bird. ‘Right. The driver’s round the corner and good to go. Oh, is that for me?’ she asked, picking up Jules’s untouched drink and despatching the vodka tonic like it was a shot, smacking her lips together afterwards.
Jules tutted like a weary headmistress and without a word wandered back to the bar to get another drink.
‘You look fed up,’ Caro said, taking in Nettie’s muted mood.
‘I feel like Cinders in her “before” outfit,’ Nettie grumbled. ‘People keep thinking I’m staff. I’ve been asked where the loos are five times already.’
Caro chuckled. ‘Little do they know you’re the star of tonight’s show.’
Nettie huffed, nervous and wanting it to be over and done with. ‘Green really suits you,’ she said, envying the sight of Caro in her narrow emerald satin tux and wishing that, just for once, she got to wore something beautiful.
‘Huh.’ Caro just shrugged and tucked her long, straight hair behind her ears. She never seemed particularly bothered by what she wore, but her skinny frame – which had seen her badly teased at school – looked sensational in clothes and she was able to make an ultra-narrow trouser suit look as relaxed as pyjamas. The trousers stopped an inch above her ankles, but rather than wearing vertiginous heels, she had pulled on a pair of black mannish brogues – ‘Perfect for running in,’ she’d explained earlier, frantically chewing on her gum, which hadn’t done anything to soothe Nettie’s nerves.
The foyer was filling up, mainly with the behind-the-scenes people who were the unsung heroes of the project – the lighting director, post-production editors, sound crew and wardrobe team – as well as the producers and executives who made it all happen. There wasn’t a single face Nettie recognized and she felt sick at the thought of what she had to do with the ones she would.
‘Jules doesn’t think we’ll get to see Judi Dench. I just love her face. Don’t you love her face?’
Caro stopped chewing. ‘Huh? She’s old.’
Nettie brought her hands up to her face and waggled her fingers. ‘Twinkly eyes.’
‘What you talking about?’ Jules asked, rejoining the conversation, drink clutched firmly in her hand this time.
‘Judi Dench,’ Caro muttered, scanning the room for celebrities.
‘She’s got such lovely eyes. I really hope we see her,’ Nettie said, wiggling her fingers again.
‘I told you, her character died in the last one. She won’t be here.’
Nettie felt nerves grip her again, giving her stomach a squeeze that made her close her eyes. She wasn’t cut out for this kind of adventure. Jules, Caro, Daisy – they were all, in their different ways, ballsy and gutsy and feisty; they could do this kind of tomfoolery in their sleep. But Nettie? She was a home bird who thought living the good life was a bubble bath and a miniature bottle of fizz sucked through a straw with the latest issue of Grazia magazine.
‘Well, will we get to see any of the film? We could sneak in afterwards,’ she said hopefully.
‘Oh really? You think we’ll be able to pull that off?’ Caro asked sceptically. ‘Listen, a clean getaway is all we ask for.’ Her phone buzzed in her hand and she looked down at it with a wry smile. ‘Oh – it looks like the eagle has landed,’ she said. ‘Come on. It’s this way.’
The girls followed her as she pushed through a door that had a yellow ‘Authorized personnel only’ sign on it and trooped down a corridor with strip lighting and concrete floors. Nettie began to feel sick.
A glare of light and a sudden drop in temperature indicated a door at the end was open, and they headed straight for it. But as they passed a sign for the ladies’, they heard a loud hiss.
‘Psst. In here.’
Caro did an about-turn and doubled-back into the toilets, where Daisy was struggling to prop open the fire door with her foot while holding up, behind her, a full-length hanging bag. The zip strained to close in the middle, where it ballooned grotesquely, and a pale blue impression glowed gently through the white plastic.
‘Great,’ Caro grinned, nodding at the sight of it.
‘This thing weighs a ton,’ Daisy gasped as Caro helped take it.
‘I told you! How do you think I feel? I’ve got to wear the damn thing,’ Nettie moaned.
‘Did they ask what it was?’ Caro asked.
‘I said it was a spare ballgown for Helen Mirren.’
The girls burst out laughing.
‘What?’ Daisy demanded. ‘I had to say something.’
‘It’s a bloody strange ballgown!’ Jules laughed. ‘Unless the toffee-apple silhouette is where we’re all gonna be at next season.’
‘Listen, I’ve just had to chat up a spotty teenage porter with halitosis for forty-five minutes while you’ve been hobnobbing in the bar. I’d like to see you think of anything better. What else was I supposed to say?’
‘That you got the days wrong and it’s a prop for the screening of Toy Story?’ Jules laughed again.
‘Oh, just shut up and help me get this thing in the cubicle,’ Daisy muttered. ‘If anyone comes in and sees it, we’re blown.’
She and Caro carried the hanging bag to the toilet stall, where it promptly jammed in the narrow doorway.
‘No, wait, you’re . . . Tch, let me,’ Caro muttered, pulling it free again and helping Daisy to tug it through the doorway. ‘Can one of you push it, please?’ she called from the other side of the cubicle.
Nettie walked over and began to push. The suit was engineered with an inner frame and its circumference was several centimetres bigger than the door aperture.
‘I don’t think it’s going to go,’ Nettie groaned, pushing as hard as she could, just as it suddenly popped through the doorway and there was a clatter as something – or rather, someone – fell onto the loo.
‘Oh my God!’ Jules gasped.
‘Careful!’ Daisy yelled from the other side of the cubicle wall.
Nettie looked back at Jules. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I’ve left my bag in the foyer!’
Nettie winced. The bag – albeit bought in the sale – had still cost the same as a washing machine (which Jules had also needed at the time) and many sacrifices were having to be made (the cost of weekly new undies bit into her ‘weekend kitty’) whilst she tried to save up for one.
‘I’m sure it’s perfectly safe out there. Why would anyone take it? It’s not like the place is packed with destitutes—’
But Jules had already gone, the door slamming on its hinges as her red-soled footsteps skittered along the concrete floor.
‘Uh, Houston, we have a problem,’ Caro called over the doorway.
Nettie looked back and realized what it was in an instant. Ducking down to see below the stall door, she could see Caro’s and Daisy’s legs in awkward positions as they tried to manoeuvre round the toilet and the vast, bulbous shape of the bunny suit that had almost filled the tiny space.
‘Oh fucking hell! We can’t get back out!’ Daisy shouted crossly. ‘You’re going to have to pull it out again!’
Nettie laughed suddenly at the ridiculous conundrum. Why hadn’t they thought of that a moment ago? Why were they even doing this? It was the definition of craziness to have blagged their way into this event in the first place, much less to now be wrestling in the loos with a giant, jammed bunny costume. Her nerves quickly latched on to the hilarity of the situation – plus the vodka – and she laughed harder. Maybe, if the suit could stay jammed in there, she wouldn’t have to go through with tonight’s stunt. They had sailed easily through today’s fundraising target of £20,000 so this could be her saving grace.
‘Stop bloody laughing and get us out of here!’ Daisy shouted again, stamping her new Sandra Choi shoe and accidentally stabbing Caro in the foot.
‘Ow!’ Caro yelled. ‘Fucking hell, Daise! What are you bloody doing?!’
Nettie began to howl. Somewhere along the way they had turned into a Carry On f
ilm.
‘Stop laughing, Nettie! It’s not funny!’
‘S-sorry,’ Nettie cried, wiping her eyes clear but still shaking with laughter as she feebly tried to pinch some of the hanging bag and begin to pull it through. But it was like pulling a button through the eye of a needle and she was still far too amused to be of much practical help.
Behind her, the door swung open again.
‘Jules, help me with this,’ she giggled, giving another heave and leaning back into a deep squat that she could never manage in her circuits classes.
‘Well . . .’ a deep voice said behind her. It certainly didn’t belong to Jules and she let go of the bag in surprise and fright, falling backwards. But she didn’t hit the cold, hard floor. Instead, a pair of arms caught her – just – and lifted her to standing, a waft of whisky and musk wrapping round her like smoke before she could turn.
Behind the cubicle, Daisy and Caro had fallen silent, their squabble suspended as they held their breaths, wondering who had rumbled them.
Nettie turned, her shoulders by her ears in apprehension as she braced herself for the sight of the security guard about to throw her out. But the khaki eyes looking down at her were glittering with amusement, not suspicion; the narrow suit was no uniform but had a cut that could only have been stitched by Jermyn Street elves; and the face watching her surprise unfold was no stranger’s but as familiar to her as her own.
Oh God. Oh God.
‘I detect mischief,’ the man said with a sudden grin, leaning against the wall, one hand in his trouser pocket.
Nettie shook her head wordlessly. Jamie Westlake was here, in the ladies’ loos. He was right here, talking to her, in the ladies’ loos.
He raised an eyebrow at her silence. It didn’t seem to bother him particularly and she realized he probably got this reaction a lot. His eyes seemed to absorb her without moving, as though he could see all of her – hands, toes, clattering heart – in his direct line of sight.
‘No? So what are you doing, then?’
Nettie’s mouth opened, but no sound came out and she closed it again.
His eyes lifted off her – her body temperature cooling by five degrees as he did so – and he looked over at the giant blue-tinted plastic bag now firmly wedged in the door. Daisy and Caro had each lifted their feet off the floor and Nettie could only imagine the two of them crouched on the toilet seat, their hands pressed against the walls as they held their breath and waited for – what they must suppose to be – the security guard to leave.
Another laugh suddenly bubbled up inside her at the image, nerves and hysteria one and the same thing now, for the situation – if it had been bizarre before – had now veered into the downright unbelievable. She would remember this moment for the rest of her life. She would dine out on this for weeks. She would tell her grandchildren of the night she gatecrashed a Bond party and—
‘What is that thing?’ He took a step towards the cubicle and she was jolted back to reality.
‘It’s a dress!’ she cried.
Jamie stopped and leaned against the wall again. ‘A dress?’
‘Mm-hmm,’ she nodded furiously.
He arched an eyebrow. ‘Bloody odd-shaped dress.’
‘Ball dress.’ She coughed nervously.
He was quiet for a moment, before turning back to her. ‘And this is a ball dress for . . . you?’ This time, his eyes travelled over the length of her, tiptoeing round her narrow, black-clad silhouette, the sweep of his gaze over her gentle curves like fingers. It was like being brushed by a feather and she suppressed a shiver.
He saw.
She took a step back, trying to focus. She had to get a grip. There was too much at stake here for her to allow even Jamie Westlake to rumble tonight’s skit. ‘Helen Mirren.’
‘Dame Helen Mirren?’ Amusement threaded his voice and she wondered if he was buying any of this or just enjoying the charade. His eyes were latched on to hers like they’d been bolted and it syringed the breath out of her so that she could only nod. ‘So you’re her assistant?’
She swallowed. ‘That’s right. I have to keep the dress out of sight in case she . . .’ Her voice faded as she ran out of lie. ‘Um, you know, changes her mind about what to wear.’
The eyebrow went up again. Right one. She made a mental note. For the grandchildren. ‘Changes her mind after she’s walked the red carpet?’
He was tripping her up, knowing far better than she how occasions like this worked. ‘Exactly. She likes to change into something, uh . . . more comfortable for the . . . screening.’ She kept her eyes off the bulbous silhouette that would span two, if not three chairs in the screening room and make sitting an impossibility.
‘I see.’ The way he angled his head, the smile on his lips, told her he saw how it was exactly. He was no fool. He straightened up suddenly and made to move towards the cubicle. ‘Well, I’d better help you, then. I wouldn’t want Dame Helen to be without options tonight.’
‘No, it’s fine – I’ve got it,’ Nettie said, all but throwing herself in front of the stall, her arms outstretched to block his efforts. ‘It has to be, uh . . . confidential.’
He looked down at her, so close now that she could see a few tiny flecks of gold in his irises. How had she never noticed them before? She had gazed at his image on the ‘Sidebar of Shame’ often enough that she thought she knew every contour of his face, but a flat image conveyed nothing of the aura that came with the 3D model – the stubble coming through that looked like it would be soft against her palm, the ever-ready smile that seemed to start and end in his eyes, the natural forward-push of his lips that she had assumed was a self-aware pout for photographs, the party scent that told her all those mad, bad headlines were probably true.
‘Thanks, though, for the offer,’ she said, swallowing hard. His eyes were on her mouth. He was actually staring at her mouth.
His eyes rose back to hers and she knew she wasn’t imagining what she saw in them. She’d read all the stories about him – she could list, right now, even with her head spinning, five A-list actresses he had had affairs with. He was the bad boy of the music world, bad in any world frankly and far, far too dangerous for a girl like her.
‘What’s your name?’
He wanted to know her name. Jamie Westlake was interested in her, even if it was just for the next ten minutes. Which it would be.
But she didn’t have time to reply. The red-soled patter of Jules running back down the corridor made them both look over just as the door was flung open and her friend stood triumphant, holding her clutch bag aloft.
‘Oh holy crap!’ she cried, recognizing Jamie immediately and falling into the same stunned silence as Nettie had sported not two minutes earlier. Jamie straightened, stepping back from Nettie and the hanging bag, one hand slipping into his trouser pocket as he waited for the intruder to recover. Again, he seemed used to it.
‘What the hell’s he doing in the ladies’?’ Jules asked Nettie, as though it was the fact that he was in the ladies’ and not that he, Jamie Westlake, the most gorgeous man in the world – official – was in the same room as them that was the pertinent point.
‘My mistake – I thought it was the gents’,’ Jamie said with a wink that made Jules’s eyes light up. She fiddled with her black dress quickly, all the right bits wobbling, and Nettie’s heart sank. See? There it was, the roguish charm, the boyish diffidence that made women the world over just collapse in heaps before him. Jules hadn’t even stepped into the room and she was already in full flirt mode.
Jamie turned back to Nettie. ‘Well, it was nice meeting you.’ His eyes roamed her mouth again. ‘I’ll be sure to compliment Dame Helen on her dress later.’
‘Yes. Fine,’ Nettie managed.
He didn’t move for several seconds and she willed herself not to swallow, not to betray her nerves. And then he turned and left.
‘Have a good night,’ he said to Jules as he passed her at the door.
‘Oh, I will,’ J
ules replied in her huskiest voice.
Nettie wanted to hit her, but she didn’t move. She waited for the sound of his footsteps to disappear. She needed to be sure he was gone.
Jules didn’t.
‘Oh. My. God!’ Jules scream-whispered, running towards her with her eyes wide with delight and grabbing Nettie’s hands. ‘What the hell?’
‘Has he gone?’ Daisy asked from behind the cubicle wall, just as Caro groaned and unwound herself from the contorted position she had had to maintain for the past few minutes.
‘Jeez, I thought he’d never shut up!’ Caro complained. ‘Was it that bloody porter flirting? I bet he was looking for you, Daise.’
‘The porter?’ Jules guffawed as she realized their limited view of the encounter. ‘Oh God, don’t tell me you missed it!’ she laughed, grabbing a handful of the bag and giving it an almighty tug as the others pushed from the far side. The bunny suit came free suddenly and they all stumbled across the room in varying states of excitement and disgruntlement. ‘That was only bloody Jamie Westlake.’
Daisy and Caro – who’d almost fallen over each other in a tangle of skinny legs – both froze. ‘You what?’ Caro asked.
‘The bloke just in here was Jamie Westlake.’ Jules chewed on her own knuckle.
Both girls looked at Nettie. ‘That bloke you were talking to was Jamie Westlake?’ Daisy echoed in disbelief. She slapped a hand to her forehead. ‘I knew I recognized his voice.’ Her voice had slipped into the next octave up.
Nettie just shrugged. The momentary high had left her now with a crushing low. Simply being in his orbit had made her feel weightless and sprinkled with fairy dust. She had felt warm and breathless in his gaze, and stepping out of it, even after only three minutes with him, the world felt altered and diminished somehow.
‘Well, no wonder you sounded so moronic, then,’ Caro said, chewing her gum with the usual speed. ‘I did wonder why you could barely string a sentence together.’
‘I was shocked!’ Nettie protested. ‘He was the last person I expected to see in here.’
‘Jamie Westlake was three feet away from us and we missed it?’ Daisy wailed, off on her own riff of missed opportunity.