About a Girl (18 page)

‘I didn’t think there was going to be a lot of call for black tie,’ I said, standing shame-faced in the doorway. ‘And I came in a hurry.’

Paige turned her back on my dressing room in disgust and fixed me with a very odd look. ‘Back to mine, then.’

It shouldn’t have been a shock that Paige’s wardrobe was bursting to the seams, but I was still a little astounded that her plane had been able to take off with all the shit that was spilling out of her bedroom. I was sitting on her bed waiting for her to show me outfit number three, and so far I’d counted seven bikinis, two swimming costumes, ten pairs of shoes and three striped American Apparel T-shirts that were
exactly the same
. And that was just what was on the floor. Inside the wardrobe, all manner of silk and satin concoctions threatened to leap out and make their bid for freedom.

‘What about this?’

She stepped out of the bathroom in what looked like an oversized white shirt with pleats on the front and no collar, and even though I’d already shown her mine earlier in the day, I was a bit worried that at any second she was about to show me her lady garden. At least when I’d done it, it was by accident.

‘It’s Derek Lam.’ She threw her arms out as though that should mean something to me. ‘It’s last season, though. Is it horribly obvious that it’s last season?’

‘Paige,’ I said as calmly as possible. ‘We’re going to a Hawaiian luau. In Hawaii. I don’t think it’s going to matter if it’s last season or if it pre-dates the Koran. I just don’t think white silk is a good idea when there’s going to be rum punch.’

‘Good point,’ she said, whipping the dress over her head to show me her nude bra and knickers before grabbing a multicoloured shift dress with a neon-pink bib in the front. It looked like a high-fashion Care Bear costume. ‘Thakoon?’

‘Bless you?’ I shrugged.

With a second disturbed look, Paige pulled the dress on, grabbed a pair of nude strappy sandals and shook her curls out in the mirror. ‘Fine.’ She pulled a grumpy face and then wiped off her red lippy with a tissue. ‘It needs a nude lip.’

I collapsed back on the bed. I had a feeling I was going to be there for a while.

CHAPTER TEN

It took another forty-five minutes of primping before Paige could be persuaded to leave for the luau. I had traded my heels for my brown leather flip-flops but kept my jeans and T-shirt. The night air had cooled slightly, but I was still really too warm. I was also incredibly conscious of the swathes of black eyeliner Paige had insisted I wear. To be fair to her, she didn’t do a horrible job, but it was just too hot for so much make-up and I wasn’t used to looking like a sexy panda. If there was such a thing. There was a reason pandas didn’t do it all that often, and I strongly suspected it had something to do with their amateur smokey-eye look in the Chinese humidity. Eventually, with Paige in her expensive toddleresque ensemble and me in my stolen clothes and borrowed make-up, we found Kekipi’s luau. And it was full of gays.

‘You came!’ Kekipi dashed up to me with a coconut that was not full of coconut water and gave me a huge hug. ‘I told missy to bring you. It’s not a real luau, just a bit of a boys’ get-together, but we do have tiki torches, dancing and a disgusting amount of pig.’

‘You had me at pig,’ I promised.

Kekipi laughed and clapped. He was my favourite. ‘Since Mr Bennett stopped giving his parties, we’ve made it a tradition to invite fabulous women to our own whenever there are fabulous women to invite.’

‘I believe Paige definitely falls into the fabulous category,’ I said, accepting a coconut cocktail of my own as well as a hot-pink lei made of delicious-smelling flowers. Across the way, Paige was trying to negotiate with a half-naked man for a baby-blue garland as the pink was ‘too matchy matchy’ for her outfit. ‘I think I’m just filler.’

‘Fabulous filler.’ Kekipi slipped his arm through mine and walked me over to an empty table. ‘So I have to ask you, have you seen Mr Twenty Questions today?’

‘I have,’ I confirmed and swiftly changed the subject. ‘But I have to ask you, what’s going on with Bertie Bennett? How come he keeps cancelling things?’

‘Oh, don’t,’ Kekipi said, waving his hand in my face. ‘I haven’t seen him in days. I don’t know where he’s hiding. I just find notes dotted around the house. It’s family business issues ? don’t concern yourself with it.’

‘Not the best time to invite journalists over, then.’ I found the straw in my cocktail and took a sip. It was so wonderful, I feared I might never drink any other type of drink as long as I lived. ‘Interesting.’

‘Hmm.’ Kekipi clearly didn’t want to talk about it. ‘But it does seem a little silly to invite a group of people over to interview you and take pictures then decide that’s the week you want to do a Dietrich.’

‘It does a bit,’ I agreed, finding the bottom of my drink far too quickly. Maybe it had only been half full. Maybe I was a complete lush. ‘These are really good.’

‘They are almost as delicious as Mr Miller.’ He took my empty coconut from me and set it on a table. ‘I’m not refilling until you tell me what he said to you today. Was it saucers of milk at table two? Did you scratch each other’s eyes out?’

‘Not exactly.’ I really wanted that coconut back. ‘Not yet, anyway.’

‘Oh, amazing.’ Kekipi clapped and an obscenely fit young man with long black curtains of hair parted in the centre appeared with two more drinks. I imagined that being in charge of hiring and firing had its perks when you were Bertie Bennett’s estate manager. ‘Did you hate-fuck him? You hate-fucked him, didn’t you?’

‘No!’ I tried to look scandalized. I had awkward issues with people using the eff-word to mean, well, effing. I failed. ‘I absolutely didn’t.’

‘But you wanted to.’ He pushed my new drink across the table towards me. ‘Don’t worry, I get it. He’s hot, he’s an asshole, you’re in Hawaii. It happens.’

I forced a stray strand of hair back into the kirby grips at the back of my head and gave one firm, decisive nod. ‘Maybe so, but it’s not going to happen to me.’

‘I guess we’ll find out about that later, won’t we?’ Kekipi stood up and backed away, wiggling his eyebrows at me.

I sat alone at my table, happily watching Paige and what I assumed to be the rest of Bennett’s staff dancing to the sounds of someone’s iPod under several strings of perfectly hung fairy lights. Tiki torches marked out the dance floor and someone had wrapped spare leis around the palm trees. It looked like we were in an all-gay, Hawaii-based remake of
Dirty Dancing
. If I tuned out the music, which was always difficult when someone was playing Beyoncé at full blast, I could hear the sea lapping against the shore and everything smelled sweet. Not least my delicious cocktail. I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply. I should have started making stupid decisions years ago. I really wished Amy was here. Not Charlie, though. Because I wasn’t thinking about Charlie.

I continued to not think about Charlie for two more drinks and almost an hour of the Beyoncé, Rihanna and Robyn megamix. I’d almost got to my feet for that ‘Call Me Maybe’ song, but Kekipi dashed over to stop me, declaring the song ‘so last year’, apologizing for its inclusion and refreshing my drink. I knew putting away so many cocktails on a school night was a bad idea, but since all my bad ideas had been going so well, I figured I might as well keep up the good work. Plus it made the music so much more bearable. After a rousing group rendition of ‘Single Ladies’, Paige wandered over, zigzagging across the sand, and sat down in the chair beside me with a sloppy smile.

‘I think I’m jet-lagged,’ she sighed, head tilted up towards the stars. ‘I feel a bit weird.’

‘Do you want to go back?’ I asked, not really wanting to head home, but Tess the Martyr was always lurking in the subconscious background. ‘We can go back.’

‘No, no, I’m fine.’ She patted my hand and leaned over to my straw to take a sip of my drink. ‘That helps.’

‘I don’t think it does,’ I said, passing her a skewer of barbecued chicken and a can of Diet Coke.

She held up her hand and made a pukey face which I took to mean she didn’t want them. Just as well, because I really did.

‘Shouldn’t we talk about the photo shoot?’ I asked, watching her mouth the words to whatever Lady Gaga song was playing with a glazed expression. ‘Like, what you want me to actually do.’

‘I have it all planned.’ Paige closed her eyes and piled her hair up on top of her head and then let it fall down her back. ‘It’s just an amazing concept. The portrait we’re going to do at the house, and then, for the fashion shoot, we’re going to Iolani Palace. It’s this amazing old palace where the kings of Hawaii used to live, so we’re going to shoot the dresses there with Bennett on a throne, like the king of fashion. It’s going to be major.’

Major? It was going to be major? I nibbled on a chicken skewer and nodded as confidently as I could.

‘I have one question for you, though.’ Paige opened her eyes and turned to face me fully, pushing her hair behind her ears. ‘Why are you pretending to be Vanessa Kittler?’

I dropped my chicken onto the sand.

‘Why am I what now?’ I hoped she was drunk enough that a grammatically awkward question might flummox her.

‘Why are you pretending to be Vanessa Kittler?’ she repeated with careful and precise enunciation. ‘Because you’re not her.’

‘I am,’ I replied, forcing a laugh. ‘Of course I am. Who else would I be?’

‘Fucked if I know.’ Paige shrugged and leaned forward, arms across the table. ‘But you’re not that bitch Kittler. So I’ll ask you again and hopefully you’ll have an answer that won’t involve the police or the need for me to call them. Why are you pretending that you are?’

Shit. Shit shit shit.

‘Oh God, I should have known this wouldn’t work,’ I said, giving up on trying to think of a good excuse and hoping she was feeling charitable. ‘But the quick version is, Vanessa is my flatmate, she was out of town, I’d had the worst week on record, then I took the call from her agent about the job and this all seemed like a good idea at the time.’

‘What, flying to Hawaii, lying to a bunch of people and pretending to be Vanessa?’ Paige asked. ‘Not to mention an evil, slaggy bitch no one in the industry can stand?’

‘Yes?’

She waved at Kekipi’s drink-delivery buddy and waited for him to bring over a fresh coconut before she said anything else.

‘Vanessa Kittler shagged my ex-fiancé about two years ago.’ She started slowly and I could tell she was trying very hard to remain calm. ‘He wasn’t my ex at the time. He was my fiancé.’

‘Sounds about right.’ I didn’t want to say too much. There was still too much opportunity for this to go horribly wrong. ‘Sorry.’

‘When the picture desk told me they’d got her for this job, I went mental. I’m sure they’d tell you that would be putting it politely. But it was all so last-minute. I was away last week and no one else was free. Allegedly.’

She stopped to neck almost half her drink in a oner.

‘Obviously I tried to get her taken off the job. Because, you know, it’s not just that I hate her, she’s a shit photographer. Yeah, OK, she took, like, four really good photos once upon a time, but that’s it. People only book her now because they want to shag her. It’s pathetic.’

‘Again, all sounds about right,’ I replied. ‘Apart from the four good photos bit.’

‘Years ago.’ Paige flapped her hands around. ‘They’re, like, legendary. In that they’re absolutely beautiful and everything else she’s ever done has been shite. Not that I’ve actually seen them because I won’t work with her. Which is handy, given that you’re not her.’

‘So what now?’ I stared through the wooden slats of the table at my toes, a crushing feeling weighing heavy in my stomach. ‘Are you sending me home?’

‘How can I?’ she asked. ‘I don’t have another photographer. I can’t take the pictures. Unless one of these beautiful, beautiful men happen to be a proficient photographer, I would be even more fucked than I am now, wouldn’t I? Do you have any idea how hard it was to get this interview organized?’

‘No, I don’t,’ I admitted. ‘I know this is insane. Or at least I am.’

Paige rubbed invisible worry lines away from her forehead and stared at me.

‘I didn’t say anything earlier because I was trying to work out what was going on. I thought maybe there were two Vanessa Kittlers, or that maybe you’d just dyed your hair and, I don’t know, had a complete personality makeover. Like, maybe you’d had a stroke or something. I tried to find her on Facebook, but of course she’s not on Facebook because she’s too fucking cool. But wow, this is actually happening. You are not Vanessa Kittler. But you are pretending to be Vanessa Kittler. In Hawaii, on a photo shoot, even though you’re not actually a photographer.’

‘That would be it in a nutshell, yeah.’ It was hard to have such a serious conversation with One Direction as a backing track, but somehow we managed.

‘Are you at least a good photographer?’ she asked. ‘Jesus, you are actually a photographer, aren’t you?’

‘Let’s just go with yes.’ I winced at Paige’s hopeful expression. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t really know what else to say.’

‘Say that that you’re going to take some fucking brilliant pictures of Bertie Bennett, that I’m not going to get fired, and that come Monday, when we land in London, this is all going to seem like it was a very strange dream.’ She looked as serious as it was possible to look for someone who had been drinking bootleg Malibu out of hollowed-out coconuts for two hours.

‘I’m going to take some fucking amazing pictures of Bertie Bennett, you’re not going to get fired, and come Monday, I really hope we find out this has been a dream, otherwise I’ve got a really difficult week coming up,’ I replied. ‘And if it helps, Vanessa isn’t not on Facebook because she’s too cool; she deleted her profile because people kept leaving really, really horrible comments on her wall and she hated having to untag unflattering pictures.’

‘How do you live with her?’ Paige asked. ‘
Why
do you live with her? Aside from this psychotic episode, you seem like a relatively normal, nice person. Do you hate yourself or something?’