Chapter Ten #2
One side of the wardrobe is fitted out top to bottom with shoe racks, and there is not an empty shelf among them.
Britannia was clearly a woman who adored fashion, and she had the shoes to go with them all.
Strappy, delicate sandals, gold dancing shoes, palest green and ivory T-bars, nude silk pumps.
It’s a treasure trove of heart-stopping yesteryear gorgeousness, and I sigh as a pair of butter-soft black suede Mary Janes almost fall out into my hands, midheeled and designed to tie over the foot with sassy long satin ribbons.
I stare at them and can almost hear Britannia’s whispers of encouragement in my ear as I wind the ribbons around my fingers.
Try them. Try them. What harm can there be?
I don’t let my brain engage with reality at all.
I just go with it, perching on the stool at the dressing table to slip my feet into them.
They fit; of course they do. They were always going to.
They’re not massively high, so even a heel novice like me can actually walk in them.
As I fasten the black silk ribbons, I’m overcome with a feeling of what I can only describe as womanliness.
I’m not going to wear them tonight, of course.
I stand up and catch sight of myself in the full-length wardrobe mirror and I hardly recognize the woman I see there.
She’s me, because she’s wearing my trademark skinny jeans and she has my face; but she’s not me, because the heels, ribbons, and clingy sweater give her curves and there’s a nervous glitter in her round dark eyes.
She’s me with flushed cheeks and a wave of a fairy godmother’s magic wand, and all of a sudden I have that same feeling I get whenever I put on my mint silk dressing gown.
It’s the shoes. I know I should change them, but I really don’t want to take them off my feet, and that’s when I have another of those empowering moments like the one earlier in the shower.
I glance at my black Converse beside the bed and then I think about the fact that I’m in a castle, for God’s sake, and I know I’m not going to change into them.
I’m a twenty-seven-year-old woman and I don’t dress for anyone but myself, and right now I want to wear these to-die-for sexy shoes, so that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
Emmeline Pankhurst did not get thrown into prison for me not to be a woman in charge of her own destiny and shoe choices.
Buoyed by my own skewed feminist pep talk, I half run from the room before I can chicken out and change into my trusty sneakers.
I pause at the bottom of the stairs because I can hear the low murmur of voices.
Intrigued, I move quietly toward the sound, then stop and tuck myself behind the wall because Leo and Britannia are huddled together beside the fireplace.
They don’t spot me, but I can see his face and I know that look in his eyes because he used to look at me that way.
Bloody Britannia Lovell! The woman is to men what catnip is to cats.
I can’t catch their words, but somehow I don’t think his line of questioning is going to be of any help to the case.
I jump as my text alert sounds loud in my back pocket and I regret letting Artie set the Star Wars theme as my ringtone, because Leo seems to model himself on Kylo Ren and will no doubt think it’s in homage to him.
He’ll conveniently gloss over the fact that Kylo Ren was a cold-blooded killer who murdered his own father and concentrate on the fact that he has good hair.
Sorry for the spoilers. I’m left with no choice but to style it out with a nonchalant stroll from my spot behind the wall, as if I’d just chanced upon Leo and Britannia there that very second.
I make a show of checking my phone as I wander in, because that’s how very relaxed and disinterested I am in their conversation.
Britannia turns around with an expression of panicky guilt all over her beautiful face, which clears quickly to relief when she sees it’s only me rather than the ghost of her husband or her lover. God, it must be complicated being her.
She whispers something to Leo, then flees past me, murmuring “nice shoes” slyly as she goes.
Leo looks at me and for a minute he seems disoriented, as if so very bewitched that he cannot focus on reality. I don’t think for a second that I’m the one who bewitched him, but even so he does something of a belated double take when he finally fixes on me.
“You look…different.”
I almost say different good or different bad, but then I remember this is Leo and his opinion is of no importance to me so I keep my mouth shut.
“I brought your dog back,” he mutters by way of explanation of his presence. “Nikki found him in her bedroom eating her prawn cocktail crisps. He’d ripped the bag open and was rolling around in them on her bedspread.”
It’s such an overly detailed image that I don’t know what to say.
What I actually want to say is that Leo should know better than to associate himself with people who buy prawn cocktail crisps, especially people who eat them in bed.
Fish and bed are two things that should never happen in the same sentence.
“Thank you,” I say, distracted because the text alert was from Marina, telling me to stop whatever I’m doing and check social media right now.
I click it open and see why: The twins have uploaded a photo of me and Fletch snogging in the upstairs hallway to the #Darklings social media feed.
They’ve captioned it with something sarcastic about me working hard as usual and hashtags of #Leowouldnt and #allplayandnowork.
“Bollocks!” I groan, and scroll down to see Marina is locked in a furious running battle with them. Thank God my mother and Gran aren’t tech savvy enough to be on socials.
“Did you know about this?” I stab my phone toward Leo and he glances at it, then whips his own phone out to check what’s going on.
After a moment, he clicks it off and slides it back into his shirt pocket with a shrug.
The look in his eye tells me he probably didn’t know, but also that he’s fine with the twins’ underhand attempts to discredit me.
Times like this I see how very far apart we are these days.
“You better get over there and make them take that down right now,” I bark, my chin in the air.
“I’ve played fair with you so far, and trust me, you don’t want me to let Marina at Nikki and Vikki after this.
There might be two of them, but she’s smarter, she’s faster, and right now, she’s ready to rip their matching heads off. ”
He smirks. “I’ll see what I can do. You know how these things are though; it’ll have gone viral by now.”
Thankfully, I doubt it. Leo might be gaining popularity these days because of his TV slot, but despite his overinflated ego, he’s not the actual Adam Driver. His followers probably have no clue who I am. I’m more worried that Glenda might be a social media ninja.
“Just deal with it,” I snap, and the supercilious smile on Leo’s face renders him more Severus Snape than Kylo Ren.
“What did Britannia have to say just now?”
Hah. That wiped the smug smile right off his face.
Never before have I seen Leo Dark blush.
He tries to bluff his way out of it, shrugging and muttering something about meeting her again tomorrow to discuss something urgent, then he takes his leave with a clatter of noisy leather soles on wooden floorboards and a swish of his glossy man-mane.
I sigh as I close the heavy castle doors behind him to keep Lestat inside for the evening.
I know from experience that getting attached to a ghost you’re investigating is only ever going to lead to complications but seeing as I’m standing there in Britannia’s satin-ribboned shoes, I’m probably not in a position to judge.