Authors: Jill Mansell
‘Lucas has a booking at eight, but he’ll come straight over as soon as he's finished.’ Millie was following Orla upstairs to her room. ‘What happened to your publisher and his wife? I thought they were coming down for a long weekend.’
‘Oh, he was caught up at some do last night. They’re arriving this afternoon.’ Winking over her shoulder at Millie, she added, ‘With Colin.’
The mental image was still firmly fixed in Millie's mind of some nerdy, bumbling, good-hearted lad with sweaty palms and a pudding-basin haircut. For the first time, she plucked up the courage to say, ‘Look, this Colin bloke, you aren’t going to force him on me, are you?’ Another mental picture began to take shape, of him clutching a plate of vol-au-vents and spending the whole evening shadowing her. Every time she turned round, there he’d be, grinning toothily and offering her a nibble.
While hovering at a discreet distance, Orla and JD and Mrs. JD nudged each other with pride, whispered that it was all going frightfully well and didn’t they just make the
sweetest
couple?
‘Force him on you?’ Orla looked shocked. ‘I’m not forcing anything to happen—the whole point of this book is that you live your own life! All I’ve done is invite Colin down here. You might love him to bits or you might decide you can’t stand him. But it's entirely up to
you
.’ She grinned. ‘Darling, don’t panic, I’m not a pimp.’
‘So what's he like?’ Reluctantly, Millie decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. ‘Does he have a job?’
She had privately concluded that Colin—with his Christmas-present sweaters and placid manner—was a bit simple.
‘Well, I suppose you could say he's between jobs at the moment.’ Orla gestured in that airy way people do when they’re talking about someone a bit simple. ‘Taking a bit of a break, that kind of thing.’
Millie nodded, understanding.
Right, a total no-hoper.
They had reached the master bedroom by this time, a vast expanse of deep blues and greens and endless mirror-fronted fitted wardrobes. Hanging from one of the wardrobe doors was a Dolce & Gabbana bag, which Orla unhooked and passed to Millie.
‘Wow, is this what you’re wearing tonight?’ Reverently, Millie pulled out the honey-colored shift dress fashioned from fine, butter-soft suede. It was scoop-necked, sleeveless, and very elegant,
the kind of thing supermodels slunk along catwalks in. It was also absolutely tiny.
‘No, you are.’ Looking pleased, Orla threw herself on to the bed. ‘I chose it. For you. Isn’t it great?’
Dolce & Gabbana? If they’d just opened a shop in Newquay, this was the first Millie had heard of it. Stunned, she said, ‘How?’
‘I spotted it in a fashion piece in the
Sunday Times
last week. Phoned up, ordered one, it was delivered yesterday.’ Orla shrugged as if it were obvious.
How the other half shop.
‘Right. Of course,’ said Millie.
‘Go on then, try it on!’
Millie looked at her.
‘I’m sorry, this is a beautiful dress, and it's really kind of you to buy it for me. But I can’t wear it.’
‘Why not?’ Orla bounced upright on the bed. ‘Because it's suede? But you aren’t a vegetarian!’
‘Not because it's suede.’ Even as she said it, Millie was running her fingers regretfully over the bodice of the dress. ‘Because it's Dolce and Gabbana, and it cost a fortune, and it wouldn’t be
me
. It's cheating. Everybody would automatically assume I was a Dolce and Gabbana kind of person and I’m just not. I’m a chainstore girl, I buy clothes from Top Shop and Miss Selfridge and Dorothy Perkins.’
And I wear them with cheap shoes…
‘But it's a present, and you’d look so great in it,’ Orla pleaded.
‘You want me to be Cinderella,’ said Millie, ‘but
Cinderella
's a fairy tale. And you want your book to be real. I mean it. Designer labels might be you, but they aren’t me.’
‘The label's on the inside,’ Orla explained. ‘Nobody would know! If anyone asks, you can tell them you bought the dress in Top Shop… then they’d think how fabulous you looked and be even more impressed!’
‘That's cheating even more.’ As Millie spoke, someone tapped on the bedroom door.
Giles stuck his head round.
‘JD just rang to say they’re running late. Colin's been held up at some interview thingy so they’ll be here around six.’
Millie frowned.
Interview thingy? On a Saturday afternoon? Colin had to be applying for the position of assistant lettuce-washer in McDonald's.
‘Oh, JD warned me about it yesterday, said this might happen.’ Diamonds the size of frozen peas glittered as Orla flapped her hand. ‘The MTV thing. I suppose bloody Madonna kept everyone waiting for hours.’
Madonna?
Did she just say Madonna or McDonald's?
Mystified, Millie said, ‘What?’
‘Oh darling, didn’t I mention it? They’re rumored to be doing a film together… then again, you know what these movie people are like, it might never come off.’
‘A film?
Colin?
’
Orla was grinning now; she’d held out as long as she could.
‘Although they’d be brilliant together, no question about it. And now he's finished his run in the West End he's looking for another project, something new and a bit different.’
Making a film with Madonna… fair enough, that counted as something a bit different.
‘Okay,’ Millie demanded. ‘Who is he?’
‘Well, just darling Colin as far as we’re concerned.’ Orla was smiling fondly as she spoke. ‘But I suppose you’d know him as Con Deveraux.’
Millie's stomach did a quick swish-swish spin. She gulped. Con Deveraux was the all-singing, all-dancing star of the dazzling new show that had taken the West End by storm.
He was sex on legs.
Oh good grief, thought Millie, and Orla's only gone and invited him down here to meet
me
!
‘This is definitely cheating,’ she told Orla. ‘You said no celebrities.’
Orla looked indignant. ‘It's not cheating at all. I’ve known Colin since he was fourteen years old. He might be a celebrity to you, but to me he's just JD's little boy.’
‘So what are you up to this evening? Off anywhere nice?’
The phone was sandwiched between Hester's left ear and shoulder as she painted her nails bright orange. She knew she didn’t need to lie, Nat had never minded her going out and having fun. All she had to do was tell him about Orla Hart's party. He’d be delighted, he’d ask her what she was wearing and encourage her to have a great time.
But that was the trouble. What she couldn’t tell Nat was that Lucas Kemp was going to the party as well. And there was a chance she might end up having a truly great time. Just not the kind Nat would want her to have.
‘No, I don’t feel like going anywhere.’ Basically, it was simpler to fib. ‘I just fancy a quiet night in.’
Bugger, now she’d messed up a nail. Nat certainly picked his moments to phone.
‘Come on,’ he sounded amused, ‘it's Saturday night, you’ll have changed your mind by nine o’clock.’
Hester was indignant. What was he saying, that she was weak-willed or something?
‘I will not be changing my mind.’ She flapped her wet nails as she spoke, uncurling her legs and splaying her toes in preparation for their second coat. ‘Definitely
definitely
staying in.’
‘Money's running out,’ said Nat, who was calling from the pay-phone in the restaurant. Above the sound of the pips he called, ‘Love you, speak to you soon, bye.’
‘Love you too,’ Hester began, but he’d already hung up. Well it was six o’clock. Back to work, rush rush, chop chop, slave slave. She could picture it only too clearly, the heat and chaos of the kitchen, everyone yelling at each other, the head chef threatening to sack anyone who sliced the wrong thickness of star fruit…
It was almost insulting, Hester decided, that Nat would rather be up there in Glasgow enduring all that torture than down here with her.
Right. Toes. Second coat of Orange Dazzle.
She’d make sure somebody appreciated all the effort she was putting in, if it killed her.
And hadn’t orange always been Lucas's favorite color?
Orla and Giles had pulled out all the stops. Or rather the party planners had. As Millie and Hester rattled up the drive in Millie's car, they saw that as well as the artful flood lighting around the house, the trees had been swathed in glittering white fairy lights. The marquee, like a giant wedding cake, occupied the east lawn. Music was spilling out from the marquee and guests milled around the garden in the deepening twilight. The sky was marbled yellow and purple like a bruise, the air warm and still. There were also some extremely smart cars parked along the driveway and, behind the house, Millie glimpsed the rotor blades of a helicopter silhouetted against the skyline. Thankfully there were a few other unsmart cars there too. Squeezing the Mini in between a gleaming black Jag and a much-abused blue van with ‘Water, I need water’ scrawled across its dusty rear doors, Millie switched off the ignition, spotted Orla amongst the crowds, and wished for the hundredth time she hadn’t worn the dress.
‘How do I look?’ she asked Hester, who was straining forwards, frantically elongating her eyeliner in the rear view mirror.
‘What does it matter how you look?’ Hester's hands had by this time begun to shake, which wasn’t doing her any favors, eyeliner-wise. ‘I’m the one meeting Lucas—you should be telling me how great I look.’
‘STUNNING. GORGEOUS,’ ORLA DECLARED with all the told-you-so satisfaction of a bride's mother. She hugged Millie again. ‘You look terrific. I’m
so
glad you changed your mind about wearing it.’
Millie wasn’t, she was consumed with guilt. She felt like a vegetarian caught guzzling a bacon sandwich.
At home she had tried on practically the entire contents of her wardrobe in search of the perfect party outfit. But all the time she’d been able to hear the D&G dress whispering silkily, ‘Go on, wear me, you know you want to.’
Even though it was inside its carrier bag, stashed behind the bedroom door, Millie hadn’t been able to block out the sound of that hypnotic voice, breathing encouragement. ‘Hey, why not? I’m here now… and you
know
I’ll make you look great Millie had done her best to ignore the dress. She had scruples, didn’t she? If she was going to be the role model for the main character in Orla's book, she had to be real, she had to be
herself
.
In her own clothes.
No matter how cheap they might be.
The trouble was, after an hour of trying on, it was jolly hard to have scruples when everything else looked awful and the most fabulous dress in the world was peeking provocatively over the top of its carrier bag, winking, and murmuring, ‘Hi sweetie, I’m still here.’
So in the end—of course—she’d been
forced
to wear the bloody thing, just to shut it up.
‘And you must be Hester,’ Orla went on, greeting her with an enthusiastic kiss on each cheek. ‘Looking wonderful too, of course. I’ve heard all about you, it's fantastic to meet you at last! Thank you
so
much for coming.’
Hester was instantly won over, as people invariably were, by Orla's charm and warmth. Now she understood how Millie had become so friendly with her so soon—and how Orla was able to invite a whole load of people she barely knew to her own party.
Not that Hester would have dreamed of staying away. After all, hadn’t Lucas been invited along too?
‘Are my parents here yet?’ Millie thought how weird it sounded, lumping her mother and father together when in fact they comprised a strained menage à trois with Lloyd and Judy as the couple and Adele the loose cannon.
‘Absolutely.’ Orla's greeny-gold eyes twinkled. ‘Your mother's carrying a volume of Sylvia Plath's poetry. I think I blotted my copybook when she asked me which writers I most admired and I said Stephen King.’
‘Blimey!’ Hester exclaimed.
‘Oh darling, are you dreadfully shocked? I know people always say their favorite writers are Tolstoy and Proust, but I just can’t do it,’ Orla agonized. ‘And I’m sorry but Stephen King
does
write brilliant books—’
‘Ahem.’ Millie cleared her throat. ‘Actually, I don’t think it was that kind of blimey.’
Glancing over her shoulder, following the direction of Hester's wide-eyed gaze, Orla relaxed and said, ‘Oh, you mean Colin.’
Con Deveraux came over, carrying something rectangular and gift-wrapped.
‘A little something I thought you might like,’ he told Orla as, exclaiming with delight, she began to tear away at the blue and gold paper. ‘Hot off the press. A friend of mine works for the company that's printing them up.’
‘Eeurgh.’ Orla yelped and jumped back in disgust when she saw what it was. Holding the offending item at arm's length—like a box of maggots—she said, ‘Am I allowed to burn it?’
Hester was still quietly goggling at Con Deveraux in his cream linen trousers and exquisite pale green shirt. What he may have lacked in conventional good looks, he more than made up for in charisma. Exuding testosterone and star quality, he looked as if at any second he might burst into one of the spine-tingling dance routines featured in
ZaZoom
.
‘What is it?’ Millie peered over at the cover of the book dangling from Orla's disdainful fingers.
‘A proof copy of Christie Carson's first novel. The snide, weasel-faced little megalomaniac who gave me that diabolical review.’ Orla pulled a face at Con. ‘I can’t
imagine
why you think I’d want to read this.’
‘Anyone here know any black magic?’ Millie said brightly. ‘We could cast a spell, turn it into the worst-selling book of all time.’
Con grinned down at her.
‘You’re Millie, right?’
Aware that Hester, next to her, was panting like a Yorkshire terrier, Millie said, ‘And you must be JD's son?’
He laughed.
‘Orla told me to look out for you.’
Why, why, thought Hester,
why
couldn’t Orla have told him to look out for me instead? Why did all the good stuff always have to happen to Millie? Okay, so Lucas would be here soon, but that was beside the point. Crikey, Hester silently marveled, if anyone could give Lucas a run for his money in the gorgeousness stakes, it was Con Deveraux.