Chapter Two
Tricia looked at me as I walked out of the changing room in the red dress. Her lips pursed.
“What now?” I asked. “What’s wrong with this one?”
The sales lady came over and helped zip me up at the back. “Oh, that’s lovely on you.” She circled around me. “You’ll need heels with a dress like this, but it really brings out your colouring.”
I gave Tricia my best ‘I told you so’ look. She hadn’t liked any of the dresses I’d tried so far.
“It’s too red,” she muttered when we were alone again. “It makes you look odd.”
“But you heard what the sales lady said.” I examined my reflection in the full-length mirror, turning right and left.
The velvety fabric was tight enough to give me curves.
It moulded to my backside, pushed up my boobs and cinched around my waist, making it look so slim you could wrap both hands around it.
How would I look dancing in Osian’s arms wearing this?
“Yeah, the clue is in the title?” Tricia’s lip curled.
“Sales lady,” she said, landing very heavily on the word.
“It means she needs to sell. She’s not going to tell you the truth, is she?
Probably excited about the commission she’ll make off this dress that no one else was ever going to buy.
You don’t want to go to the dance looking like the Bride of Frankenstein, do you? ”
Bride of Frankenstein? I examined my reflection again.
“You should wear something lighter. All the girls he dates wear lighter colours. He must prefer it. Try the yellow dress, maybe – or that oatmeal on the hanger.”
Yellow always made me look ill. I glanced at the oatmeal dress. It looked beige. I didn’t know… “Should I try the purple again?”
“The Walking Dead purple?” She rolled her eyes.
I’d loved the purple dress; it was off the shoulder and the floaty organza skirt was just see-through enough to make my legs look nice, like Heidi Klum’s in that advert.
“I don’t understand something.” Tricia tapped a finger against her temple. “I’ve been thinking lots but can’t work out why he asked you. I mean, he ignored you for months like he didn’t see you at all, then out of nowhere he invites you to some posh dance at his tennis club. It makes no sense.”
The first time she’d asked this same question, I had answered that he probably liked me, but she had laughed at that. So I stopped answering.
“I mean, it makes no sense. You weren’t dressed up nice or anything, and you have messy nails.”
I held up my hands to show her the manicure I’d got that morning.
They’d massaged all kinds of moisturisers into my skin after cutting and shaping my nails and trimming all the cuticles; my fingers looked fit for Buckingham Palace.
My nails were painted a glittery midnight blue with a rainbow lustre when the light hit them.
It was like a magical transformation: no one would believe hands like these ever went near a garden.
“He’s already on girlfriend number five. Every girl in the Verbiers is queuing up for her turn,” she went on.
“Maybe he’s looking for someone different.”
“Well, duh!” She looked even more sullen.
“He’s never going to find someone special in the coven of witches.
I bet he’s dating someone from the tennis club.
You said he was on the phone with someone.
” Tricia sounded excited for the first time today.
“I bet it was his girlfriend and he’s trying to make her jealous. Didn’t you say he was arguing?”
“I don’t know. He just said something about being too late to cancel.” I made my way back behind the curtain to change out of the Bride of Frankenstein dress.
“That’s it,” Tricia answered. “It’s obvious she cancelled on him and he’s trying to teach her a lesson by going with someone else. She’ll be jealous and they’ll make up. He’s evil to use you like this.”
No, she was wrong. He wasn’t evil at all. And who says a girl like me couldn’t get a date with Osian James? We thought he was shallow, but he had just proved he was really nice and kind and… he listened to me, really listened. And understood me.
He was the one!
“I have to buy a dress. I can’t go to the dance in nothing, and it’s tomorrow,” I argued.
“What about your hair?”
“Going to Toni and Guy tomorrow,” I assured her. She can’t find fault with them, she goes there.
It didn’t make her happy. She was still sulking when we got home with the purple dress in a zip bag.
To be really honest, I wished she would just go home.
I wanted to try on the dress again and show it to my mum to double check it didn’t make me look like a zombie. But Tricia came into the house with me.
“Is that you, Angelina?” my sister called from upstairs.
Everyone called me Evie – well, except my grandparents, who used the full Evangeline and made me sound like someone in a Regency novel. But my sister liked to be different.
“Matie? I didn’t know you were coming.” I’d thought she was spending Christmas in France with her boyfriend’s family. “Are you in your room? I’ll just be a sec,” I said quickly, hoping Tricia would take the hint and leave.
“No one calls me Matie anymore.” My sister jumped down the last few steps.
Ever since Matie went to live in Paris she’d become Matilde. Yeah, she’s like that. Super pretender.
“That boy came looking for you,” she said. “He’s a bit drop-dead, isn’t he?”
“What boy?” I asked with a quick side eye towards Tricia.
“He waited for a while but we didn’t know when you’d be back and you had your phone switched off. He left you this.” Matie pointed to the sideboard.
There was a small pot, wrapped in cellophane around the stem of a camellia. It had a single bud, just starting to open, but I would recognise it anywhere. A Snow Flurry.
“OMG how did he find it?” Excited words gushed out of me as my heart sped like a beatbox in my chest. “He must have searched loads of nurseries.”
“He left you a card.” Matie handed me a white envelope.
A card! My face went hot and my heart fluttered. Was this what it was like having a boyfriend? Gifts and cards?
I peeled it open. The front had a picture of a field of white flowers. Wow, he was so thoughtful. He was the perfect boyfriend. I opened the card slowly, savouring the feeling. His handwriting was sloping and a little irregular. Green felt tip.
Hey Evie
I’m really sorry, but something’s come up.
I got a place in the Argentinian Open because someone dropped out last minute.
My coach wants me to fly to Buenos Aires immediately so I can get as much practice as possible.
My flight’s booked early morning so we won’t make the dance tomorrow night.
I’m really sorry. We’ll do it another time.
Also a replacement for the flower I killed.
Hope this one survives. Just don’t let me near it. ?
See you in the new year.
Osian
I sat down. Don’t know how. Just suddenly I was sitting down on the arm of the sofa.
“What’s wrong?” Tricia took the card from my fingers and read it. “Oh, that explains it,” she said slowly.
I looked at her.
“That’s the phone call. Why he said it was short notice to cancel. It must have been about the tennis tournament. His whole life is about tennis.”
“I don’t think so. He was planning to go to the dance.”
“Yeah, but that was just in the moment because he felt guilty about breaking your plant. That’s all.” She smiled. Her first smile for days. Her first smile since I told her about my date.
Looking back, I must have known in my heart she was upset and resentful that Osian had asked me out. At the time, I was too focussed on my date, on his words in that card. I must have read it a hundred times.
His words.
We’ll do it again.
See you in the new year.
Didn’t that mean he wanted to go out with me again?
Yes, of course it did.
When January came, I followed news of the Argentinian Open like a sports fanatic.
Osian James, the youngest contestant, a last-minute entry.
That’s huge for a player who hadn’t even been seeded.
The school were uber excited and posted the results of every match on the board outside the head teacher’s office.
He surprised everyone and made it as far as the quarter finals.
I waited for him – probably held my breath for the whole of January.
But when he came back, everything was different.
He looked different. Not just the tan that darkened his skin and bleached his hair so the golden highlights at his temples really shone.
He just seemed older somehow. More confident.
More gorgeous. More everything, in every way.
Although he came back into class, it was like he didn’t even belong there anymore – a visiting celebrity. Everyone treated him differently too, even the teachers.
Students followed him around wanting to touch him, to take selfies with him.
He started hiding in the library where no one was allowed to talk, his nose in a book most of the time.
At the end of the day, he slipped out the back through the delivery entrance to avoid the paps hanging outside the school gates.
And obviously, he never spoke to me again or even looked in my direction, like he’d totally forgotten who I was.
“Don’t worry about it,” Tricia tried to console me. “Like I said, he was just doing the polite act. He knows how to be charming and play the whole flowers-and-gifts thing; it means nothing. I tried to warn you.”
A week later, she saw him walking at night with Susan Wooley. He walked her home and they spent ten minutes at the front door ‘snogging’, with his hand under her jumper and her hands under his shirt.
From then on, Tricia told me about every girl he dated. Kissed. Touched. Spent the weekend with. Every week she had a new story with details that hurt so much, they took my breath away.