Chapter 17
17
Bel’s phone buzzed with a FaceTime incoming. She moved her sunglasses to her head and propped the phone on its pop socket, against a cup. She’d changed her plain rubber case to a hardcover one featuring a raven-haired anime girl eating ramen. She didn’t really know what she was conveying with this choice, and decided Bella didn’t either. Just liked the aesthetic.
‘Hiiiii,’ she said, chin on hand, speaking at a pitch and volume where she hoped to immediately activate eavesdropping instincts.
‘Hiiiii,’ Shilpa trilled back. Then, as if she was somehow sending the question up with her intonation: ‘How’re you?’
(They’d practiced their ironic-yet-not-ironic mannered cadences. ‘Just a touch of vocal fry, not too much,’ Bel instructed. ‘We’ll lose sight of whether we’ve gone full Paris Hilton otherwise.’)
‘You know your job is mad as shit, don’t you?’ Shilpa had said.
‘Oh my God, babe, so much.’
‘Yeah, good. I’m working,’ Bel said. ‘Well, working at this nice bar I’ve found.’ She picked up her phone and swooped it around for a panorama. ‘Yeah, in Didsbury. It’s my Didsbo season. What’s up?’
‘So … Maya says she’s not had your deposit for Cancun? Was checking everything is OK?’
‘Ehm,’ Bel adjusted her sunglasses on her head and fiddled with her hair, ‘I meant to talk to you about that. I can’t come, I’m so sorry. I am sooooo skint. We’ll do a lush lunch at The Ivy instead? Or go for Mexican food here, hah.’
Shilpa left the stunned pause they’d rehearsed, in a read-through that left them both hysterical, after ad libbing. (‘If you can’t stop yourself laughing at any point, end the call,’ Bel advised. ‘It’ll just look like you bitch-slap cut me off and I can call you back.’)
‘Sorry, but what the fuck, Bella? You’re still doing New York in the autumn, but you can’t do my hen?’
‘I’d paid for those flights before you said where your hen was!’
‘Oh, cos you thought my hen would be in RHYL?’
‘It’s not personal, Shilpa, it’s money!’ Bel hissed, face warm with the peculiar exertion of the performance, which usefully looked like appropriate emotion. ‘I would if I could.’
‘Translation, getting pissed in Manhattan with those random idiots is more important than one of your best friends? More than something I’ll only do once in my life?’
‘Five-star hotel! Le Blanc Spa is crazy money. I know the other girls are stretching themselves too.’
‘Implying what? That no one wants to go?’
‘I didn’t say that, I mean it’s expensive.’
‘If you couldn’t afford it you could’ve told me, I could help. You can borrow it?’
‘I don’t want to get into more debt. I’ve got three weddings this year, it’s breaking me.’
‘Three weddings, and how many hens? Two?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So you’re going on the other hens?’
‘One’s in the Cotswolds and the other is at Chloe’s family place in France so the cost is way lower.’
‘Amazing! You’re only sacking my hen off? Wow, Bella.’
‘Shilpa. It’s literally ￡1,300 return if I go in Standard Economy while you’re all in Business. I know your hen do will be absolutely lit, but you can’t expect everyone to be able to absorb that kind of cost.’
‘Except I got engaged eighteen months ago and you could’ve been saving instead of buying YSL courts!’
Bel gasped. ‘Are you my financial adviser?’
‘Honestly, I’m not sure I want you as my bridesmaid if this is how you treat me.’
Bel widened her eyes.
‘Uhm … we’ve had the dress fitting?’
‘You’re what, a large twelve? I’m sure I’ll find another candidate.’
Bel stared into her handset in feigned disbelief.
‘Not sure that’s how it’s meant to work, but OK. Your choice.’
‘No, how it’s meant to work is that bridesmaids go on the hen weekend. Enjoy the Cotswolds, and France.’
Shilpa ended the call.
Bel picked her phone up, as if to be sure she was gone, and put it down again, mouth open. She checked her Michael Kors rose gold diamante watch (fifteen quid, Vinted) and hoped she was being seen. She extravagantly rubbed her temples, dabbed at her eyes with a paper napkin while exhaling.
She checked the time again.
‘Excuse me,’ Bel said, flagging down a passing waiter and making sure her voice rang out clearly, ‘can I order a bottle of champagne?’
‘Of course. How many glasses?’ the waiter said.
‘One, please,’ she said.
‘Leo!’ called Amber to the waiter, ‘No bill for it. On the house.’
‘Oh my God, thank you!’ Bel said, turning as if seeing Amber for the first time. ‘That’s so generous.’
‘Whole bottle. That bad, huh?’ Amber said, nodding down at Bel’s iPhone.
‘Oh, you have no idea,’ Bel said, rolling her eyes extravagantly and shaking her head confidentially. ‘Have you ever had a friend get engaged, and the ring on her hand turns her into an absolute demon? It’s like she’s Bilbo in Lord of the Rings , if he went to Cartier. And Bilbo was being a massive bitch.’
‘Hahahahaha,’ Amber said, ‘OK, only condition for your comped bottle, you let me have a glass of it with you, and tell me the story?’
‘Deal!’ Bel said, beaming.
‘Got to be some perks for all the shit I shovel here. It looks nice outside– fancy taking it out there? I’m Amber, by the way.’
‘Great idea,’ Bel said. ‘I’m Bella.’
‘See you there in one min, Bella, I’ll bring it out,’ Amber said.
Bel snapped her laptop shut, shoved it into her designer bag and picked her way carefully to an al fresco spot. She reapplied lipstick in a vintage Versace compact (￡40, eBay) smoothed her ringleted ponytail, and tried to calm the boiling sea inside herself. A mixture of victory, anticipation and significant nerves.
Amber joined her and set down a silver bucket, white napkin over it and green bottle nestled in proper lumps of ice. She pulled two flutes out of the pockets in a cotton apron tied round her waist. ‘You pour it, just gonna grab my vape.’
Bel carefully angled and sloshed champagne out in two equal measures and felt glad of the disinhibition it was about to create, though she needed to keep a check on inebriation.
Amber reappeared, crossing an acre of her bare, tanned legs in an ankle-length dress with a deep slit in it, and taking a drag on a Lost Mary, Watermelon Ice flavour vape.
She picked her glass up, tapped, ‘Salut!’ and drank.
‘I could hear some of your conversation just now, and your friend sounded like a lot, if you don’t mind me saying?’
‘Oof, is she ever.’
Bel recounted Shilpa’s fictional tantrums in colourful, amusing terms, and Amber snorted. They shared notes on hens, weddings and girl group holiday WhatsApp politics.
‘Mexico! That’s what, a three, four grand spend on a hen?’ Amber frowned, shading her eyes from the sun. ‘That is too much, in my humble.’
Bel agreed it was. She tried not to congratulate herself too early on her prediction that drama and alcohol were key British girl-bonding rituals, ones that might fast-track a friendship.
(Shilpa had been awestruck when she outlined it. ‘If it works, Amber thinks SHE befriended YOU? You are so Machiavellian, Macauley! Like Game of Thrones , the shit stirrer guy, Lord Shitfinger.’ ‘Do you mean Littlefinger?’ Bel said. ‘Wait, yes.’)
And it turned out, Bel was absolutely right not to prematurely drown in pride, because a big fall was coming. A big fall in Tom Ford sunglasses and black Levis.
Sipping her second drink, she glanced up, and with an immobilising degree of horror, saw Connor walking down the street towards them. A six-foot-tall, arrogant nightmare, slicing through her carefully constructed unreality. Connor Adams. What the fuck? This far from the office?! On a working day? On the day she starts playing her undercover role, properly?
It was such astonishingly bad luck, such an implausible comic beat, Bel took a few moments to absorb and process that this piece of cosmical ultra fuckery was definitely happening. That it wasn’t an uncanny lookalike, and that there was no arguing with it.
She couldn’t flee the scene with a sudden loo trip: he’d seen her, she was captive, and he would be within speaking distance any second.
Bella Niven had only a split second to work out what to do.