Beads, Boys and Bangles (10 page)

Mum’s standing in the hall, waiting.

‘Wow,’ she says. ‘You look . . . different. Go gently on him, darling. He won’t know what’s hit him.’

Different good or different bad? It’s too late to find out, so I give her a quick kiss and head out of the door
before she realises quite how much of her perfume I’ve borrowed.

‘Back by midnight, don’t forget,’ she shouts after me.

SO Cinderella. I’ve been given an extension because Harry will be there.

‘And don’t let him . . .’

Yada yada yada. I can’t hear because I’m rushing into the taxi and concentrating on not doing a Naomi Campbell in my platforms down our front steps. They’re not quite as easy to walk in as I’d hoped. Especially for a girl who lives in Converse.

Harry’s doing his set in a posh members’ club, which is on several floors of an old East End warehouse building. I’ve been sort-of hoping Alexander would be in the reception area, waiting for me, but he’s not. I guess real, proper grown-up boyfriend types don’t behave like your friends and meet you as soon as they can. But this club is big, and he could be anywhere.

By the time I track him down in the bar my insides have already performed several ballets and my ankles are starting to hate Prada with a passion I didn’t know they were capable of. I’m feeling hot in more ways than one. I hope I look cool and sophisticated.

He’s sitting on a bar stool, relaxed and glamorous. I pause and flutter my eyelashes in his direction. One of them comes off and gets stuck to my eyeball. I have to pick it out with a finger.

Meanwhile he comes over and kisses me on the cheek again, smiling. He looks me up and down and the smile fades slightly.

‘Where are the legs, Boots?’

‘Er, still here,’ I say.

I wait for him to say something nice about my dress or my makeup or my hair or something.

‘Want a drink?’ he asks.

‘Yes!’ I gulp. ‘How was Cuba, by the way?’

‘Stop sounding like Her Majesty!’

He says it with a laugh, but I’m just trying to be polite. I can’t help it if the Queen’s polite too. What else do you ask someone who’s just come back from Cuba? If you can’t bring yourself to ask if they like your dress?

We go over to the bar and I order champagne. YES YES YES!

It’s a bit of a surprise when the barman eventually passes me a smoothie. I look at it through my droopy fake eyelashes, confused. The barman grins. ‘Your brother was round earlier. He told me how old you are. And that this is your
second
favourite drink.’

‘Did he tell you how much I loathe every millimetre of him?’

‘Yup,’ the barman says, still smiling. ‘He did.’

‘Cheers,’ says Alexander, clinking his glass against mine. ‘So. Tell me about school.’

This quite simply has to be The Worst Date In History. I’m wondering whether to just leave my smoothie and
find my taxi money and go. But luckily Alexander sees the look on my face and leans forward and brushes a lock of hair away from my face.

‘Only joking, Boots,’ he says, a bit huskily. ‘I missed you. Tell me all about
you
.’

The next hour is nice. We sit and talk. He tells me about performing in Cuba and helping young kids from the streets who might become future stars. I tell him about Crow’s new party dresses and the agonies I went through choosing these shoes (although not the agonies I’m going through now, wearing them). I watch his long fingers playing with the rim of his glass. His sky-blue silk shirt tucked into designer jeans. His blond hair curling slightly over his collar.

Then we hear the thump thump thump of Harry’s music and go through to a room where you can hardly move for dancing bodies, grooving the night away. Alexander miraculously finds an empty spot and whirls me around, making me look like I’m some sort of trained dancer myself.

Even in this confined space, he is the best possible dance partner. Totally concentrated, totally cool, totally brilliant at thinking of the perfect move at the perfect time, whisking me out of the way just in time to avoid being whacked by a stray limb from some other dancer who’s not quite so together.

I completely lose track of how long we dance for. I even forget that I’m wearing impossible shoes and in
severe danger of breaking an ankle every time I move. It’s impossible to talk, because the music’s so loud, which means I don’t even have to think of any intelligent conversation. So I’m a bit disappointed when eventually Alexander nods his head towards the seating area at the back of the room.

I hadn’t really noticed it before. Lots of dark velvet armchairs around low tables with little candles on. Lots of couples sitting around, chatting and . . . snuggling. Etc.

Quite a lot of etc., actually.

Alexander finds one empty armchair and guides me towards it. But where’s he going to sit?

Oh. He flings himself into the armchair in front of me and deftly sits me on his knee, so our faces are level. Then he puts one of his beautiful, long-fingered hands on my thigh. I look at his angular cheekbones. Even in this low light, I can see little beads of sweat forming on his upper lip.

So there he is, looking at my face. And I’m looking at his. And getting quite obsessed with the little beads of sweat. I get the sense that his upper lip is going to be moving closer to me any time now, so I’ll get to see them from even more close up. I try to find them sexy.

I don’t.

My insides are impossibly confused. They’re doing a major finale now, full of arabesques and grand jetés and multiple pirouettes. But they’re also seriously wishing that the upper lip would stay where it is and
not come any closer to mine.

It does, though.

At the last moment, I drag my eyes away from it. Alexander kisses me properly. And guess what, the sweat rubs off his upper lip onto mine. NO NO NO NO NO.

The kiss itself is OK. So-so. I’ve had better practising on the back of my hand, to be honest. And certainly with a French exchange boy last year, and that was in a Eurostar duty-free shop and lasted about three seconds.

By now, Alexander has started poking the tip of his tongue between my teeth. I can’t help myself. I clamp them shut. YUK! I’m not up for the whole tongue-in-mouth-kissing-in-public scenario.

EW EW EW EW.

I let the kiss last as long as it needs to, but my jaw stays firmly shut.

When Alexander pulls away at last, his eyes are closed. He seems not disappointed, as I’m expecting, but dreamy.

Then he opens his eyes and smiles at me in a ‘How was it for
you
, baby?’ sort of way.

I smile back and pretend I’ve got another fake eyelash in my eye. I use the opportunity to wipe my lip.

EW EW EW EW.

How am I ever going to admit this to Jenny? I’ll have to lie and say it was wonderful.

And just as I’m thinking this to myself about Jenny I could swear I spot the Queen of Evil, Sigrid Santorini herself, disappearing through a door in the far corner of
the room. Sigrid, the woman who stole Jenny’s first nearly-boyfriend. Sigrid, the woman who stole the star piece of Crow’s first couture collection. Sigrid, who lives in California and couldn’t
possibly
be in a club in Shoreditch where my brother is DJing.

I’m confused. My
brain
is doing pirouettes now. This must be some sort of nightmare mirage, brought on by the stress of the First Proper Kiss.

I put my arm around Alexander’s neck and secretly check my watch. Ten past eleven. Only twenty minutes to go until I can ask him to get me a taxi.

‘Fancy another dance?’ he asks.

I nod with relief. Dancing I can handle.

‘By the way,’ I ask. ‘What’s through that door over there?’

I point to the far corner of the room.

‘That’s the VIP section,’ he says. ‘Where the stars go. I know the guy on the door. Want a look?’

I shake my head violently. ‘No. Definitely not.’

‘Rather dance, hey?’

He gives me a confident wink, certain of my complete adoration of his every move.

Nineteen minutes left. I follow him onto the dance floor.

‘
I
t was incredible,’ I say. ‘He was
such
a good dancer.’

‘And?’

‘And?’

‘Did he kiss you, you idiot?’

I nod.

‘
And?
’

‘It was lovely.’

Jenny gives me a very suspicious look.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Totally sure. It’s just, you know, hard to describe.’

She should know. She made a rubbish job of describing her first serious kiss to me. And that was with a MOVIE STAR on the set of
Kid Code
and he KISSED HER FACE ALL OVER.

‘Try.’ She still looks very suspicious.

Instead, I tell her about the room and the velvet armchairs and Harry’s set. I almost tell her about the Queen of Evil, but manage to stop myself. It must
have been my imagination.

Jenny can see I’m avoiding the important stuff, but she doesn’t push it. Instead, she smiles a quiet smile to herself and asks, ‘So when are you seeing him again?’

‘We haven’t fixed a day,’ I say. Which is code for ‘He hasn’t called or texted, so I have no idea.’

I ought to be devastated, but I’m sort of not. I’m more relieved, so far, but I wouldn’t admit that to Jenny in A MILLION YEARS.

We’re in the school cafeteria, having lunch. Edie’s supposed to be joining us after a debating club session she does on Mondays. Edie does extra stuff most days of the week, but Mondays are the worst. She needs one of those Hermione Granger things that make you go back in time, but sadly we’re not at Hogwarts.

When she does come, she sits down with a smile, takes a sip of her water and says something that has Jenny and me spluttering our lunch all over the table.

‘Did you know, by the way, that Sigrid Santorini’s in town?’

Oh. My. God. I was so sure I was wrong about seeing her.

But more importantly, HOW ON EARTH COULD EDIE KNOW? It’s not exactly the kind of news they announce in the
Financial Times
. I’ve seen Edie less than a metre away from one of the most famous women on the planet and she didn’t seem to notice.

‘My mum told me this morning,’ she says casually. ‘She
thought I’d be interested. I wasn’t, I have to say, but I thought you would be. There’s some film festival Sigrid’s going to. Mum heard her on the radio, talking about it.’

Straight after school, we go home together to my house, to Google Sigrid. We meet Crow in the hall. Her school finishes earlier than ours and she usually beats us to it.

‘Sigrid’s in town!’ we say, all together, like some sort of stressed-out girl group.

Crow looks at us calmly.

‘I know,’ she says. ‘She’s just left a message. She wants another dress.’

For the next hour, we surf the web.

Eighteen months ago, Sigrid made a smash-hit comedy with Joe Yule, Jenny’s heart-throb (and mine and half the female universe’s – but Jenny got an actual snog out of him before Sigrid came along). The movie’s being shown at a festival next week. Joe’s busy being the New Teenage Sex God on a film set somewhere, so Sigrid is going along to greet the crowds. Meanwhile, she’s staying in a chic little hotel in Soho, going to a couple of European awards ceremonies and generally ‘catching up with all her old friends from previous visits to the ancient city of London’.

And some of her old enemies, apparently. Crow says she’s due for her first fitting tomorrow.

‘I have to go over to her hotel. She doesn’t have time to
come here. Can you come with me, Nonie?’

At first I say yes, assuming it’s straight after school. But then it turns out Sigrid can only do an appointment at nine pm. And for once, I’m accompanying Mum to a private view by one of the artists she represents. She doesn’t ask me very often and I can’t possibly turn it down.

Jenny can’t go, with rehearsals starting in a few days and lots of advance homework to do. And hating Sigrid’s guts, of course. Which is how Edie ends up agreeing to keep Crow company. We don’t think anything of it at the time, apart from the fact that Edie is very kind, which we knew anyway.

We think a lot about it later, but by then it’s much, much too late.