Christmas at Tiffany's (18 page)

‘You’d better believe it. Come on. Let’s get some drinks.’

They pushed through the doorway – quite some feat since she was wearing a bulbous and warty solid-foam bodysuit that was wider than the door – and headed towards the kitchen.

‘You stay here,’ Bas commanded. ‘I’ll get the drinks. Once we get you in there we might never get you back out again.’

Cassie turned and stared out of the enormous floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall glass window. The views from up here – so, so much higher than Kelly’s apartment – were staggering. If she looked north, she could see the lights of Harlem, and south, the very tip of the Statue of Liberty. In front, between the towers, she caught glimpses of the East River, inky black and viscous in the night.

Now
this
is New York living, she thought to herself.

‘Hey! Thought I recognized that backside.’

She turned round. Kelly was standing in front of her wearing a red PVC corset, red fishnet stockings, tiny red silk panties and flashing horns on her head.

‘Oh! My! God!’ Cassie shrieked. ‘What would your mother say if she knew you were out like that?’

Kelly laughed. ‘What? You think they didn’t do this?’

‘No!’

‘Don’t you remember that time they all did Halloween together?’

‘No!’ The thought of her parents in any type of dress except black tie, was . . . well, unthinkable.

Kelly raised her eyebrows. ‘Your mother went as the Bride of Frankenstein.’

‘She did not!’

‘And you father was . . . well, you can guess.’

‘Frankenstein? Daddy?!’

Kelly held her arms wide. ‘The very same!’

‘You know, there’s a lot of rubber and PVC and leather going on,’ Cassie said suspiciously. ‘You’re sure we’re not just at some fetish party?’

Bas came back with their drinks. ‘Oooh, you look saucy! I take it Brett approves of that sexpot outfit?’

‘Oh yes. He’s already approved me,’ Kelly said. She winked. ‘Twice!’

They laughed, just as Brett – dressed as Dracula – came to join them. ‘What’s so funny?’

‘Nothing,’ Bas said. ‘We were just giving Kelly our approval rating.’

Brett leaned over and gnawed affectionately – and vampirically – on Kelly’s neck.

Cassie smiled to see her friend look so happy. In love, even. Brett had played his cards cleverly, right from the very beginning. It was just as Cassie had suspected. He’d noticed how Kelly had been defending her at Mischka that night, so he’d decided to get to her by pretending to get to Cassie – that way, Kelly forced herself between them and straight into his arms. Cassie thought it very romantic.

‘You look gorgeous too, Cassie,’ Brett said with a grin when he’d put Kelly down.

‘Thanks, Brett!’ Cassie laughed. ‘I’m covered in warts, have green make-up on my face and an arse the size of New Jersey. I feel a million dollars!’

‘Well your legs look great. At least we can see those,’ he said, before looking back at Kelly. ‘Am I allowed to say that?’

‘Of course. But only to Cassie,’ she admonished, smiling as he patted her scantily clad bottom.

‘Of course.’

They drifted off, locked at the lips, leaving Cassie and Bas to steadily empty a jug of ‘virgin’s blood’ and try to people-spot, although it was difficult with all the wigs, warts and appendages in place.

‘It’s like a really, really ugly masked ball,’ Cassie said, trying to identify a bat in the corner.

‘The problem with this outfit, of course,’ Bas grumbled after a while, ‘is that it makes bathroom trips long-winded.’ He sighed. ‘I may be a while.’

‘Don’t mind me,’ Cassie smiled, feeling sufficiently drunk to be left happily on her own.

She had just perched herself on the back of a sofa and was drinking in the power skyline when a slinky black cat, dressed in a skin-tight black leather jumpsuit, furry mittens and ears, with a feline mask over her eyes, ‘miaowed’ suddenly at Cassie as she passed, swiping a not-so-playful paw at Cassie’s face.

Cassie jumped, startled, as the cat laughed. She didn’t need to raise her mask for Cassie to know it was Selena. Her body graced every billboard. It was one of the most recognizable in Manhattan and set off to staggering effect tonight.

Cassie went cold as the model looked her up and down and laughed. Of all the times to be dressed as a toad.

‘So it is you. I did wonder,’ she purred, shaking her head at Cassie’s vanity-free costume. ‘Well, I can see why he chose you,’ Selena said sarcastically, leaning in to her. Her breath smelled of whisky and cigarettes, and her pupils were dilated. ‘I can’t
wait
to see the pictures.’

‘You were . . . sick,’ Cassie faltered. ‘I was just trying to help.’

Selena lit a cigarette between cupped hands. ‘Oh really? And how exactly does you pushing me off the job constitute helping?’ she sneered, blowing smoke in Cassie’s face. ‘Bebe
needed
me in that campaign. She cried down the phone to me, begging me to do the job. She kept saying it was going to be the end for her, that I was the only one who could pull her out of this. I only did it because Lou was on board. And now
Bazaar
has just crowned me the ‘girl of the year’. Meanwhile, she’s left with some mugshots of the girl who undermined her business in the first place. I don’t really call that helping, do you?’ Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully as she blew careless smoke rings. ‘In fact, aren’t toads traditionally an omen of bad luck?’

A figure in a bedsheet with holes cut out for eyes and plastic chains rattling round its middle came over, making unconvincing ghostly noises.

‘Whoooooo,’ he called, sounding more like an owl than a ghost, as he held his arms wide and swooped towards Selena. He straightened up suddenly and looked at Cassie. From the way his eyes were crinkling below the cutouts, she could tell he was smiling. ‘Hi, I’m Lou.’

Cassie gulped. ‘I’m . . . Toad,’ she managed, retracting her head further into the foam balaclava. Oh, please don’t let him recognize me, please don’t let him rec—

‘Great costume . . . and great legs!’ he said, winking at her before he swooped away after Selena, who had begun to sway off, swinging her tail hypnotically in one hand and moving sinuously to the music.

Cassie turned away, grateful for the narrow escape, and saw Bas chatting with a bat in the corner. She ran over – not inconspicuously in her toad costume. ‘Bas,’ she whispered, kissing him on the cheek. ‘I’m off. I’m sorry.’

‘What? But why?’ She saw the conflict cross his face. Close up, the bat he was talking to was very good-looking.

‘It’s fine, you stay. But I have to go. Luke Laidlaw’s here and I refuse to be in the same room as him.’ And she turned and fled.

She never, ever wanted to see that man again.

Cassie waved her yellow flag frantically as she saw them clip round the corner. It was almost impossible to spot them amongst the thousands of other runners, but a man running in a dustbin kept clanging in to them and it was Kelly’s scowl she spotted first. They’d done eighteen miles and been running for two hours already, but she and Raoul had barely broken sweat, save for an appealing rivulet that was trickling idly down the central groove of Kelly’s stomach. Her ponytail – back-combed and tonged by Bas as a good-luck token before she’d set off – swished prettily from side to side, and Cassie felt a rush of love for her proud, ambitious, kind and phenomenally fit friend.

Not that she was doing so badly herself. She was at least able to get round the reservoir every other morning now – it was still less than two miles, but hey! She’d come from a standing start – and she had to admit Kelly had been right about the kickboxing lessons, not just about what it would do for her thighs (she’d always quite liked her legs), but also what it would do for her arms, shoulders and waist.

She was five back from the front of the crowd, and there were that many rows again behind her, but in her now customary stacked boots, she stood an inch above most other people, and she could see Kelly looking for her – they’d prearranged the spot – finally catching sight of the flag she was flapping about like a demented canary.

She jogged Raoul with her elbow and they both raised a hand in salute as they passed.

‘Only eight more to go, Kell!’ Cassie hollered. ‘You can do it!’

‘Hey!! That’s my new jacket!’ Kelly shouted back, clocking the sumptuous cinched Burberry leather jacket that had only arrived from London the day before. It was sold out everywhere in New York, and Suzy had only managed to get her hands on one by pulling some strings with their marketing director, whose wedding she’d organized.

Cassie put her thumb to her nose and waggled her fingers teasingly, knowing she was safe – for the time being at least. Kelly laughingly shook her fist as she was carried away, swept along in the bobbing current.

Cassie watched the backs of their heads for as long as she could, and then waved her flag and clapped for another couple of minutes as scores of other runners, all with their own supporters, stories and motivations, passed by. But what had been a vital, personal event just moments before now morphed into an anonymous heaving crowd that kept standing on her toes and trying to push her back.

She let herself be squeezed out, people rushing to fill the gap like water, until eventually she was out and walking slowly along the back of the pavement, past the windows of all the closed-up shops. She felt the melancholy that was only ever one step behind her, begin to quicken its pace, trying to catch up and hitch a ride on her shoulder. The day before, in contradiction to her divorce lawyer’s advice, she had chosen
not
to contest the pre-nup, and Gil was in her every waking thought.

She took the path of least resistance and walked with the traffic, unaware of the admiring glances checking her out. She didn’t see the effect on men of her legs encased in skinny indigo jeans, or the way her hair wafted silkily beneath the woolly hat, or the way other women coveted the on-trend ‘stolen’ jacket. From her point of view, it had just been the warmest thing she’d been able to find, as the New York winter was really beginning to show its teeth – strong northerly winds had been prevailing for over a fortnight already. Pulling her hat further down over her ears, she stepped into a Starbucks to get a coffee and try to thaw her hands.

‘Hi, I’ll have a skinny, almond-milk, decaf double macchiato to go, please.’

‘That’ll be four bucks.’

She handed over five and shivered as the grinding of coffee beans competed with the hiss of foam being frothed.

‘There’s your change. You can collect it over there,’ the barista said. ‘Next!’

‘Thanks,’ Cassie said, unzipping one of the jacket pockets and dropping the coins inside. She was surprised to feel something already in there, and pulled out a small folded envelope. She was even more surprised to find her name written on it, and underneath, in brackets,
(Sorry, this was supposed to go in with the seeds.)

Frowning, she opened it. A piece of paper with feint lines and torn tabs at the top which had clearly been ripped from a notebook was covered in pencilled doodles and a collapsed scrawl:

This was her list? She’d been expecting him to tell her to take tea at the Plaza and shop at Bloomingdales. ‘Skinny decaf double macchiato!’ a voice bellowed for the third time.

‘Huh? Oh, that’s me,’ Cassie said, tuning back in and jogging over. She picked the cup up gingerly and walked over to the bussing station. She began to reread the note, intrigued by the left-of-field suggestions, as she idly stirred her coffee. Host a dinner party? In Kelly’s kitchen? What was he – crazy?

Run around Central Park. Hmmm. Well, it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility. She wasn’t doing badly, as it happened.

Read a book at the library – ho-hum. Visit Ground Zero. She looked up and out of the window, at the throngs shuffling past, all heading in the same direction – to Tavern on the Green in the Park, where the marathon was ending. If the island was a ship, it would surely capsize today as all the city went to congregate in that one spot. Ground Zero, though . . . The race started downtown, on Staten Island, but crossed over to the other side of East River. It would be deserted there today.

Folding the list and zipping it back up in her pocket, she strode out and caught the first bus going downtown. She swung into a seat and watched as the bus crossed the invisible boundaries, transporting her out of the deluxe Upper East Side and into Midtown, crossing to the West Side at Broadway and travelling south into chichi Chelsea, down to the West Village, boho SoHo, Tribeca, and finally into the financial centre.