The Sweet Life (11 page)

Janey remembered this now and shook her head, struggling to escape the man’s embrace. But he laughed harshly and tried to pull her face around for a kiss. Twisting her head away, she lost her balance as he let go of her, and fell into an untidy heap of arms and legs on the ground. A couple of people looked up disinterestedly before returning to their conversations. Janey was glad that in the moodily lit space, no one could see the tears in her eyes.

The dealer laughed as Janey struggled to her feet, badly shaken. She batted her way furiously out of the marquee, holding her borrowed heels.

Hours after she and Freddy had been separated, Janey – on the verge of tears – had had enough. Her feet hurt, her head hurt, she’d been pawed at by a tonne of strangers, she’d had to fight off a creepy drug dealer and, ironically, had never felt so alone in all her life. The night that had started so promisingly had become a nightmare. She just wanted it to be over.

Without looking back, she limped barefooted towards the Piazzale Ugo La Malfa and the first taxicab she could flag down.

Celia, arms crossed and wearing a wrap over her nightgown, launched herself at Janey as soon as she let herself into the apartment. ‘You’re late! And you look like a train wreck. Do you know how
worried
I’ve been about you?’

Janey glanced at the hallway clock, which read 2.49 a.m., and her insides turned to ice. ‘I’m really sorry,’ she mumbled, pushing hair out of her eyes, ‘but I lost Freddy. Looked for her all night. No watch.’ It seemed too hard to put everything she’d gone through into words.

‘You could have called her!’ Celia hissed. Janey remained miserably silent. Freddy had told her mother they were carrying mobiles; telling Celia that Freddy had lied right from the start was probably a sure-fire way of
not
improving Celia’s mood.

‘But you didn’t, did you, because you had other plans!’ Celia accused. ‘Freddy told me you got through the turnstiles together but you pretty much ditched her straight away for the first stoner you saw!’

Janey froze. How could Freddy have told her
that
unless she was home already?

Celia nodded as the realisation dawned in Janey’s eyes. ‘She said she spent the rest of the night looking for you but gave up and came home early when she realised how late it was, and how hopeless it would be trying to find you in a crowd of twenty thousand people! She was so exhausted, she went straight to bed.’ Celia pointed at Freddy’s bedroom door.

Janey was struggling to process what Celia was saying. ‘That’s not true!’ she insisted. ‘I lost sight of
her
. And some guy
did
put his arm around me but I pushed him away. She probably saw him do it and misunderstood. I’ve been looking for Freddy for
hours
, just like she’s been looking for
me
.’

‘Which explains why you’ve got bruise marks on your arms and knees, and lipstick smeared across your face,’ Celia retorted. ‘I can’t believe how
wrong
I’ve been about you, Jane! I don’t need more issues, not with
you
too. You’re new to this city, and you’re in my care. A thousand horrible things could’ve happened to you. Clean yourself up and go to bed. We ’ll talk about this in the morning.’

Celia disappeared into her bedroom and shut the door. Entering her own bedroom, Janey took one look at her bedraggled reflection in the wardrobe mirrors and burst into tears. She’d never broken curfew before,
ever
, and then as soon as she met the long-lost family she so wanted to impress and keep in her life, she looked like a complete flake!

The one person who could’ve made her feel better about the whole fiasco – her mum – was beyond reach. The thought just made Janey cry harder. Lydia would’ve just laughed about the misunderstandings.
And
she would’ve been proud of how Janey had stood up for herself against that drug-dealing gorilla in the chill-out room.

The thought that Celia’s opinion of her had surely sunk only made Janey feel more lonely and lost than ever. Until it dawned on her several moments later, as she lay looking at the ornate ceiling through a teary haze, that she
did
have someone she could pour her heart out to.

Janey crept down the hall to the study, closed the door and switched on the desk lamp beside the computer. She logged in via her aunt’s login screen. ‘Please be there,’ she pleaded under her breath. It was around eleven o’clock on Saturday morning back home. One of them
had
to be online.

She scanned the desktop icons and brought up the Skype welcome screen. She typed in her Skype name and password and pulled up her contacts list. Only Gabs was online.

Janey picked up the headset lying beside the computer, checked the position of the webcam above the monitor and hit the start button on the screen, crossing her fingers that everything would work.

As Gabs’s wonderfully familiar features sprang into focus, Janey kept her voice low. ‘Hey, Gabs. It’s so good to see you. You don’t know
how
good.’

‘What happened to your
face
, Janes?’ Gabs exclaimed from her perch in front of her grandma’s computer. ‘Are you wearing
leopard print
?’

Janey started crying again, making what remained of her make-up run even more. Her story tumbled out in short bursts as she sniffed and hiccupped.

‘
Why
would Freddy say that?’ Gabs burst out after she’d managed to piece together Janey’s night.

Feeling a little calmer, Janey sighed. ‘Maybe she really did think I’d ditched her for that guy, I don’t know. It was dark. He just grabbed me, plus he was half naked. It would’ve looked pretty bad. You can’t blame Freddy – she’d bent over backwards to help me get party-hearty all day, which I was pretty amazed about! All I know is that Celia now thinks I’m some kind of skank.’ Janey hadn’t known it was possible to feel so homesick, or so low.

Gabs frowned. ‘That is the
wrongest
thing I’ve ever heard in my life! Whatever the opposite of a skank is, you’re it. Now get some sleep. I’ll update the others.’

‘It’s okay,’ Janey yawned. ‘I’ll do it via MySpace before I go to bed. I want to get my impressions down while they’re still fresh. Leaving aside the Goa trance fiasco, the whole thing
was
a pretty surreal experience. Parts of it were mind-blowing.’

‘Just keep us posted,’ Gabs replied in a troubled voice. ‘And stay out of Celia’s way for a while until she cools off. I’m sure it was all a misunderstanding and you guys will laugh about it tomorrow.’

‘I will,’ Janey promised. ‘I’ll log on daily – once the coast is clear.’

‘And stay away from leopard print,’ said Gabs with a grin. ‘It does
nothing
for you!’

Centro Storico

When Janey opened her eyes the next morning, everything that had happened the night before flooded back in reverse order.

She grinned as she remembered Gabs’s parting words on Skype, winced as she recalled the argument with Celia, and gave a mental shudder as she remembered her horrible encounter with the sleazy drug dealer. She’d been lucky to get off so lightly.

Then Janey smiled as she recalled how the strobes had lit up the sky over the Circus Maximus. Parts of the night
had
been beautiful, and filled with happy strangers. And she never would’ve experienced any of it if she hadn’t gone. But one more thing made her stomach flip over, and that was the memory of Luca’s disdain.

Luca
.

Janey’s mouth turned down. She’d been a huge chump for even letting the guy get under her skin.

Busty blondes!
she thought to herself.
Ha!
She definitely wasn’t going to be one of
those
when she grew up.

Janey crawled out of bed, still wearing the things she’d gone out in the night before.

As she stumbled out of her bedroom to the kitchen, Janey mentally rehearsed the kinds of casual, breezy things to say to an aunt who thinks you’re some kind of subterranean troll, and to a glamour-puss cousin who believes you’d hook up with the first stranger who walks by. So she was
very
relieved to find the kitchen empty of all life – apart from a note.

Sorry, overreacted.

Worried as hell. Had to get to work early.

Deadlines. Talk tonight?

                Celia xx

Janey binned the note and made herself a coffee before heading back to her room to survey the damage, studying herself in the mirrored doors of her built-in robe.

Celia had been right. She
had
come home looking like a train wreck. And she’d been so exhausted that she’d climbed straight into bed after her late-night computer bender, still wearing full war paint and the improbable outfit that Freddy had somehow brainwashed her into wearing.

‘You look like a clown,’ said Janey to her own reflection. ‘No wonder he thinks you’re a joke!’

Her eye make-up was smeared down her cheeks and looked like a surrealist painting, while her lipstick had migrated across the lower half of her face. The paleness of her freckly skin highlighted several bad bruises on her arms and legs. And in the morning sunlight, her red mini and loud empire-line top were just Eurotrash awful. Sure, it was a look that Kate Moss might’ve pulled off, but on Janey, it was just
bad
.

Disgusted with herself, Janey dragged off Freddy’s clothes, scrubbed her face and had a long shower. Back in her bedroom, she changed into the comfy grey T-dress and pulled her hair back into a low side ponytail.

‘That’s better,’ she said out loud, opting for a little light coverage to hide the huge dark circles under her eyes. ‘Now, if we could try and have a nice, humiliation-free day today, that would be just fabulous.’ She gave her reflection a tired, lopsided grin.

Janey was just getting her guidebooks out of her backpack when her mobile phone rang, the one that Celia had given her two days before. In the stillness of the apartment, the shrill and unfamiliar ringtone froze Janey in her tracks.

She dug the phone out.

Luca (mobile).

She relaxed and broke into a broad smile, until she remembered that Luca had thought her responsible for the way she’d looked last night. So her ‘Ciao, Luca,’ was a little uncertain.

‘Ciao, cara,’ Luca replied in his familiar, deep drawl.

Note to self
, thought Janey as her stomach swooped, then hastily righted itself.
Look up what
that
means!

They both started talking at once.

‘I shouldn’t have . . .’ started Janey.

‘You looked . . .’ Luca began.

‘You first,’ said Janey. ‘And I didn’t mean to call you a beast. You were right. I did look really, really terrible.’

‘Not terrible,’ Luca replied amusedly. ‘Just like the B-grade movie star! Though I could ’ave put it better.’

‘You could have,’ Janey laughed ruefully. ‘But you’re also too
kind
. I looked thoroughly
F
-grade. Now did you, um, mean to call me? Celia’s not home, if that’s who you’re looking for.’

Because there has to be a logical explanation for why we’re
talking
, thought Janey wryly.

‘Certo,’ Luca responded. ‘I am indeed calling you. It is my, how do you Australians say, “off ” day? And my many girlfriends, they are busy, so . . . you are free for a little walking?’