Chapter Ten
To my surprise I was getting the hang of things on the beauty team and even starting to enjoy it. At first, the incompetence of some of the girls on the magazines amazed me.
‘Hi, it’s Trudy, on Babe mag. I need another sample of the Sunset Pink lipstick.’
‘But I’ve already sent you two.’
‘Yah, but I left one at the shoot and well the other . . . yah, the photographer stood on it. Be a poppet and send another . . . two. You know. Just in case.’
There must be a black hole in Soho full of make-up and skincare products.
By the end of the first week, I was an old hand and didn’t bother asking what had happened. I just gaily shoved more products into horrifically expensive padded envelopes to bike round to them. Our budget for sending out make-up and moisturiser was twice the national debt of a small dictatorship.
As I learnt the ropes, I was relieved to find diplomatic relations were holding up, although Emily was no help at all. It wasn’t deliberate, she was just incompetent — spectacularly so. None of the things that she was supposed to do ever got done.
Luckily Cara had warmed up and was quite helpful. I suspected that her cheerful attitude today had something to do with Arsenal winning their latest match. Her mood did tend to depend on their results.
Most of the time, she was quite cheery so I guessed they were quite good. Her supporting them might come in quite handy, as I could get the inside track on this football business. Which reminded me. I’d promised Ned I’d speak to Jabba about tickets to the box and a game.
* * *
Everything was going well until two days before the premiere.
Miraculously Miranda and Rowan’s relationship had lasted longer than their dual celebrity average had suggested — but then he’d gone and blown it, which I only discovered when Emily had burst into the flat the previous night clutching the Evening Standard.
‘I don’t believe it. Look what’s happened.
Miranda’s going to go ballistic.’ She looked positively gleeful about it.
Apparently while celebrating his number one, Rowan had got roaring drunk and seduced a nearly sixteen-year-old schoolgirl who then sold her story to the Sun.
Judging from her grainy portrait, the girl could have passed for a twenty-year-old hooker quite easily.
Miranda promptly dumped him and was now milking Rowan’s betrayal for all she was worth.
Telling her heartbroken tale to the Mirror took precedence over coming to try the dress on.
The headline read, ‘Chart Break for Miranda.’
While the publicity was great, it did leave a slight problem.
With less than forty-eight hours to the premiere, it was now down to me to conjure up a man, and quickly.
Short of nipping down to the nearest fire station, I was running out of ideas.
Fiona had taken her handy little black book with her.
After all, it wouldn’t do for me to be too successful.
Then I had a brainwave. Sebastian. Daniel’s brother. He would be perfect.
I hadn’t seen or spoken to Daniel since that awkward moment the morning after my accident and I’d been trying hard not to think of him.
Every time I did, my brain tied itself up in knots trying to figure out whether I might have given myself away that night.
Did he have any inkling how I felt about him?
I chickened out and got Emily to phone him. By the end of the day everything was sorted and we had an escort for Miranda. Sebastian would be meeting us at the hotel the following evening.
One more problem down. All I needed to do now was get Miranda to the sodding dress fitting.
* * *
By the time we left the office that evening it was late and I felt as if I was coming apart at the seams, but thankfully nearly everything was in place.
I’d even managed to sort out tickets for Ned and me to go to a football match as a guest of Collingwood Construction next week.
He was thrilled to bits. I still wasn’t sure.
In the meantime, the premiere was front of mind.
This time tomorrow I’d be there, as long as I remembered to pick up my dress from the dry-cleaners and go to the doctor’s surgery.
I was hoping the nurse would down grade my bandage to a smaller dressing otherwise I’d be having a severe wardrobe crisis.
In the course of arranging the evening, Emily had managed to wangle official invites to the premiere in a swanning-down-the-red-carpet capacity for us. The gilt-edged invitation was taking pride of place on the mantelpiece in the flat.
‘Remind me, Olivia, to dig out my strapless bra tonight,’ said Emily, as we stepped into the lift on the way home. ‘I don’t want to get to the hotel tomorrow and not have the right underwear.’
Judicious juggling with the Luscious Lips budget and some hardball negotiation with the hotel had ensured that Emily and I had a room to get ready in. With kick-off at seven there would be no time to go home to change. It was the least the hotel could do. Miranda’s suite was costing ￡1500.
Later that evening while I was going through my notes for the hundredth time, I came across the stylist’s list of accessories, including a frightening-sounding flesh-toned, super-booster bra. That reminded me.
‘Emily. Bra,’ I yelled to her. At my shout she wandered into the room looking puzzled.
‘Olivia, have you borrowed anything?’
Not the scarf again, please.
‘Like what?’
‘Underwear,’ she said hesitantly.
I stared at her, she looked serious. I snorted. ‘You are joking.’
‘No,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I can’t find a couple of things. Knickers. My Janet Reger bustier.’
She was definitely joking. Even with a pair of grapefruit, umpteen rolled up socks and an entire box of Kleenex, my meagre bust wouldn’t have come near to filling that thing.
‘Really?’ I asked disbelievingly. She must have misplaced them or put them somewhere else. ‘You haven’t left them anywhere?’
She glared at me. ‘Well let me think, I’ve been sleeping my way across London with gay abandon — silly me, they could be anywhere between here and Watford Gap. I’m not some floozy you know.’
‘I wasn’t implying anything. It’s just .
. . you do lose things,’ I said apologetically.
A polite euphemism for ‘You never put anything away’.
I was the housework fairy. ‘Have you left them at . . . ?’ I couldn’t bring myself to say Daniel’s name just in case a big arrow lit up above my head and a voice boomed, ‘She fancies him’.
‘No,’ she said crossly. ‘I haven’t been there for weeks. They’re not there. Are you sure you haven’t seen them?’
‘What?’ I didn’t mean to say that out loud. So she hadn’t been to Daniel’s for weeks and he hadn’t been here overnight since the accident. The thought that perhaps they weren’t sleeping together was enormously cheering.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ she snapped.
From her room I could hear bad-tempered thumping as she resumed her search. Then I heard an angry, ‘Bloody hell.’ She came storming out clutching a framed picture.
‘Do you know anything about this?’ She tossed it onto the sofa cushion beside me.
The glass was broken. It was her favourite; one of those cloudy portrait shots of her coyly peeping up at the camera.
The studio photo shoot and makeover had been a birthday present from her mother.
My idea of hell but Emily had loved it. It was a stunning picture, although I thought it was a bit artificial and over-glossed.
Shame, really, because she was very pretty.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Er, it’s broken.’
A twinge of injustice stirred my mettle. I drew myself up. ‘And what’s that got to do with me?’
‘Sorry, Olivia,’ she said more calmly, realising that perhaps this time she’d overstepped the mark. ‘You’re right. It’s just because . . . well . . . you’re the only other person who lives here.’
‘I didn’t break it.’
‘It must have been the invisible man, then,’ she said sulkily.
My mind immediately homed in on the memory of that wet footprint. She frowned at my expression, wagging her finger belligerently.
‘Don’t start that nonsense again,’ she said firmly. ‘I’ve not heard from Peter since the last email. Your cousin probably sorted him out. Honestly, Olivia, you are completely neurotic.’
‘So would you be if you ended up with a dozen stitches in your arm,’ I retorted dramatically. Since my chat with Ned about Peter, I harboured some worries.
‘Perhaps it just fell,’ I said, ignoring the scaredy-cat voice at the back of my head saying ‘What about your necklace? The one that was on the floor instead of your jewellery stand’.
The sensible voice in my head reminded me that with the launch tomorrow, I didn’t know my arse from my elbow at the moment. I’d probably just knocked it off the stand in my hurry to get to work this morning.
I needed to slow down. After this bloody launch was over I could relax. The Old Codgers’ cricket match was coming up. Bliss. I hadn’t seen Mum and Dad for ages. A weekend at home was something to look forward to.
That’s not all you’re looking forward to, whispered a treacherous little voice in my head.
Rubbish. I wouldn’t see much of Daniel. As captain of the opposition, he’d be out on the pitch and I’d be in the kitchen making sandwiches. It was highly unlikely I’d see him for more than a few minutes.
* * *
‘So, how’s it going with Miss Babelicious?’
Daniel threw his brother a dry, resigned look, used to Sebastian’s humour.
‘Don’t call her that. Her name’s Emily.’ He checked his watch. They’d be on time if they left now. With the trains into London up the spout and knowing that Emily was relying on Sebastian turning up tonight, he’d volunteered to be chauffeur. Now he wondered if he was going to regret it.
He hadn’t seen Emily, or Olivia for that matter, since the night of the glass injury. Work had been full on, true, but the whole episode had left him feeling discontent, so he’d deliberately immersed himself in work to give himself some thinking time.