Read Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend Online
Authors: Jenny Colgan
Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend (19 page)
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Philly came up out of nowhere and kissed me affectionately. I was quite touched before I realised she had hopped in and was now standing between Cal and me. She started gyrating in front of him.
‘Dancing?’ she said.
I hoped Cal would say something chivalrous, like how he was dancing and that he would turn to me and say, ‘But
she
is my partner.’
she
is my partner.’
But he didn’t. He smiled cheerfully at me, moved a little to the side, and he and Philly started dancing. I turned to watch. God, he was a good dancer. Philly was giving it her best hip shimmy but unless I was very much mistaken he wasn’t dancing anything like as close with her as he had with me.
‘Oh, Sophie, what
are
you like at holding on to a man?’ said Carena, as if this was hilarious.
are
you like at holding on to a man?’ said Carena, as if this was hilarious.
‘Now, Rufus, go and get me a drink. Champers if they have it. Do you have it? No? No?’
I rolled my eyes. ‘No,’ I said.
‘Gwah?’ said Rufus. The twins had stepped their lesbian dancing up a bit and were now pretending to tongue each other. Rufus had actual dribble coming out of the side of his mouth.
‘Get me a
drink
, darling.’
drink
, darling.’
Rufus blinked himself back into the present. ‘I want to stay in here.’
The twins had sidled right up to him. I did hope they didn’t nick his wallet.
Carena glared at him and, slinking slightly, Rufus moved away from Kelly and followed Carena out of the room, like a dog who’d done something naughty on the kitchen floor. Just before she moved out of earshot, though, she turned round one last time to me.
‘Oh, is Gail all right?’ she said, her face suddenly full of mock concern.
‘Why?’ I said, my senses immediately on red alert.
‘Because I heard she’s moving out. Just wondered what was up?’
Carena’s tone was saccharine sweet but her words struck me as if I’d been stabbed. Moving out? Of my house?
‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘Where’s she going?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Carena. ‘I just heard people talking about it in Mirabelle.’
I could feel my heart pound loudly.
‘I’m sure it’s nothing,’ she said.
But I didn’t think it was nothing. If a frenemy like Carena came all the way to the Old Kent Road to casually drop it into conversation, there was a strong chance it actually meant quite a lot.
I sat back down in the kitchen, all the booze I’d had earlier - and the news - making my head spin. I tried to call both Gail and the house but wasn’t getting an answer from either place. This made me feel worse than ever.
‘What’s up?’ said Eck. I looked at him, his face was genuinely concerned. But I didn’t know what to say - my house and possibly my inheritance, which I hadn’t told any of them about in a wish to stay reasonably normal - were possibly gone. Or Gail has vanished with everything or Carena was just trying to wind me up because she’s my arch-nemesis, or, a million different things . . . my head couldn’t settle.
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Money problems. Possibly.’
Even as I said that I felt my heart pound.
‘Oh, the fun kind,’ he said.
‘Are you on a student loan?’ I asked. He nodded.
‘What’s it like?’
He looked at me. ‘Are you serious? Haven’t you been to college?’
I toyed between an outright lie and the outright truth, neither of which seemed particularly useful at the moment. Yes, I had been to college. But I hadn’t had to live on a student loan.
‘Can I have another drink?’
‘Sure,’ Eck said, and he headed off in search of more wine.
‘Hey,’ came a sinuous voice to my left. ‘Why did you bring all that totty to the party when it insists on just dancing with each other or complaining that there’s no champagne?’
I blinked, struck out of my vacant reverie. Cal looked nine foot tall looming above me. I made my mind up. My life was an incredible mess, possibly. I had to sort out about a million things, not least my evil ex-friends. But for now there was only one thing I could think of to clear my head and make me not think. And it wasn’t another glass of wine.
I stood up, wobbling a little. ‘Could we go upstairs for a bit?’ I said. It came out breathily, almost as a gasp.
‘Are you all right?’ he said, looking a bit concerned.
‘I’ve just had some bad news,’ I said.
‘What’s up? Prince William marrying somebody else, Cinders?’
‘No.’
I didn’t want to tell the whole sorry story. I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to think about anything at all.
‘Could we just get out of here?’
Cal glanced around. ‘You mean, move to the undiscovered west wing?’
‘What about your room?’ I said.
He stopped teasing me and looked straight at me then. ‘Are you sure?’
I took his arm. I wasn’t sure of anything, I just had to get out of there and try and stop all these questions running round my head. ‘Yes,’ I said.
I followed him as he swept towards the kitchen door, the noise of the party outside ominously loud. Just as we got there I heard a voice say my name and turned round. It was Eck. He was standing there, holding my drink and looking perturbed.
‘Sophie. Are you OK?’
Cal gave him a quick, annoyed glance.
‘I’m fine,’ I said, trying to sound like I knew what I was doing.
‘Are you sure?’ he said.
Cal’s lips twitched in annoyance and he continued on. Eck’s expression looked pained.
Cal’s bedroom must have been the largest in the house, at the front. The bare wooden floorboards in here didn’t look quite as bad as they did on the stairs. On every available surface were bits and pieces of twisted metal and clay.
‘Is this what you’re working on?’ I said.
Cal grunted. ‘Something along those lines.’
Then he threw himself back onto his bed. I sat down on a stuffed armchair in the corner of the room. It made me feel oddly formal.
‘I found that on a skip,’ he said.
‘Where’s your snake?’ I asked, suddenly nervous.
‘There’s really no snake,’ said Cal, laughing. ‘You do have to get over believing that. OK. I gave it five pounds and told it to take itself to the cinema tonight so it didn’t spoil the party.’
‘What’s it going to see,
The Adder Boleyn Girl
?’
The Adder Boleyn Girl
?’
‘Actually, it’s got more art house tastes. I think it’s seeing
Snaking the Waves
.’
Snaking the Waves
.’
I smiled and relaxed, even as I felt Cal’s eyes upon me.
‘You’re a mystery woman, Cinders,’ said Cal, softly. ‘I don’t know what to make of you, I really don’t.’
Even the sound of his voice sent shivers down my spine. Enough talking. His dark eyes were completely inscrutable. But for now, seeking oblivion, seeking something new, something to make me feel good, feel better, I didn’t care. This was what I wanted. I gave him a look that conveyed exactly that. The noise of the party was loud below us, but I didn’t give a toss.
Cal sighed. ‘I knew having a female flatmate was going to mean big trouble,’ he said. Then he got up, his wiry height blocking out the light from the lamp, strode across the room and suddenly, brutally, kissed me.
Chapter Eleven
It was just like I’d hoped it would be. Fierce. Not particularly gentle. God it felt good to be with a man who knew exactly what he was about and what he wanted; even if - maybe especially if - he’d honed his skills through an insane amount of practice with different girls. Nonetheless it didn’t feel as if he was going through the motions; Philly once slept with an ex-boy-band member and said he was completely lazy, as if he was doing it because he felt obliged to share himself with the world, just because so many women fancied him. Oh, and he was unbelievably, insultingly concerned about the condom going on properly, implying she was riddled with disease and desperate to steal his spunk at the same time. (Not completely unwise on his part when dealing with Philly though.)
I took in the smell and sense of Cal’s long, lean body. He wasn’t muscly, but skinny and smooth. Weirdly, he wasn’t entirely unlike a very sexy snake himself. I finally fell into an exhausted sleep around five, watching the shadows brighten across his concave cheeks, his eyelashes nearly brushing the cheekbones. It was the first dreamless sleep I’d had in weeks.
Of course, and I’d known he would all along, when I woke up in the morning, he had gone. Vanished. At least he’d had the manners not to disappear the second it was over, and go and see if there were any more pickings to be had at the party. He’d hardly got warmed up, I reflected, by the time I’d hauled him upstairs.
I brushed away my disappointment. I’d known this would happen, of course. This was what boys did to me. Rufus had done it, and Cal would do it too. And I’d wanted a quick fix. And it had worked, for a while, even if I wasn’t particularly proud of myself. I’d used him far more than he’d used me. Still.
Oh God. I suddenly realised I was going to have to do the walk of shame in my own bloody flat. Surely not. I glanced over at the window. No, we were three storeys off the ground. Climbing out wasn’t an option.
I looked around. The room looked a lot less romantic in the harsh light of the morning. There were no curtains on the windows. How could people live like that? Had it genuinely just never crossed his mind to get some curtains? I guessed not. I suppose when all your concentration was focused on sculpting and shagging, maybe you somehow skipped the other stuff.
Well, I had to do something. I was desperate for the toilet for starters. I looked around for clothes. Oh God, of course there was only the dress I’d been wearing the night before. I could grab one of his shirts, but, one, it would look totally, embarrassingly presumptuous and, two, I’d seen too many girls arrive shyly in our kitchen having done exactly that. I didn’t want him to think for a moment that I was one of those, desperately hanging around for too long; calling long after he’d stopped answering. I mean, we had to see each other. I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea. Plus, I wasn’t sure I’d look better than them in it.
Holding my dress around me, trying to get it to cover everything, I put my foot on the cold floorboards. They squeaked immediately. Bugger this cheap and decrepit and tacky house and everything in it. As I went vertical, I could feel my head starting to spin. Normally I reckoned I didn’t get hangovers but now I wondered if it was because I’d been more used to drinking nice, clean, expensive champagne, and not the gut rot I’d partaken of last night with such gusto. Now my head felt like a cement mixer and my stomach was full of acid and an emotion I really didn’t like. Shame.
Really, it probably wasn’t the best idea to crap on your own doorstep, no matter how sexy the doorstep . . . well, that analogy wasn’t working terribly well. Despite a distinctly dizzy, sicky, yuck sensation and a taste in my mouth to suggest that at some point I’d dug a tunnel in the woods with my teeth, swallowing all the worms along the way, I was just going to have to get on with it.
Taking a deep breath, I launched myself through the door. Nobody in the corridor, good. Oh, whoops, I had overlooked that there was someone in the corridor - Wolverine, stretched out and having a nap. Carefully, I tiptoed past and made it to the stairwell. Then I tiptoed down the stairs, creaking on each one. Halfway down I decided I didn’t care and made a flying leap down the rest towards my bedroom door, my dress floating out behind me. ‘Yaaaargh!’ I yelled, as I came face to face with Eck, and he came face to face with me. And one of my boobs, which was hanging straight out.
Normally I’d have expected a friendly quip or something, but he merely glanced at me, said, ‘Hi, Sophie,’ in a very flat voice and skirted past me to head up the stairs. I backed myself against the wall.
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