She shrugs, as if it’s no big deal, but the corners of her mouth turn up ever so slightly.
“We can go during my lunch break, if you like?” she says. “There’s that new boutique on the high street. It’s tiny, but it’s got a lot of great brands.”
By ‘a lot of great brands’, I know she means ‘a lot of incredibly expensive brands’. Post Snow-Globe Bramblebury is filled with shops which would probably be best described as ‘chi-chi’. But I don’t have time to drive to the nearest big town just to wander around the charity shops I usually buy my clothes from, and I do have some money saved up, thanks to my habit of never actually doing anything with my life, so it’s going to have to do.
Plus, if someone as picky as Paris approves, that means it’sgotto be good; which is why, just over an hour later, we find ourselves leaving the store together, both of us being very stiff and polite as we try to acclimatize to this unexpected new turn our working relationship has taken. I’m just starting to entertain the beginnings of a daydream in which we become close friends, who’re forever popping in and out of each other’s houses, andborrowing each other’s clothes (Because I’m at least ten years younger and a hundred times cooler in this vision, obviously), when Paris suddenly says the four words guaranteed to ruin my day.
“Isn’t that Elliot Sinclair?”
I look in the direction she’s pointing, and, sure enough, there he is; strolling along the main street of the village, looking for all the world like a man who isn’t even remotely worried about bumping into his ex while wearing a pencil in his hair. And not just because he doesn’t evenhavea pencil in his hair. Actually, he looks like he could easily apply to be in a hair commercial, if the whole ‘bestselling author’ thing ever starts to get old. It’s kind of unfair that he looks so good, while being so …him.
Maybehe’sthe one with the portrait in the attic?
It’s not Elliot I’m looking at, though, great hair aside.
No, all of my attention is currently fixed on the woman next to him; a woman whoalsohas spectacularly good hair, as well as a face I recognize instantly as the one I last saw waving goodbye to Elliot from the doorway of her cottage a couple of days ago.
It’s Katie Hunter: and she’s smiling up at Elliot as if he’s some kind of tasty treat she’s saving for later.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, a memory attempts to fight its way to the surface, before being abruptly drowned out by the wave of inexplicable jealousy that comes after it.
“Holly? Are you okay?”
I tear my eyes away from Elliot and Katie, to find Paris watching me warily, as if she’s already deeply regretting her offer to take me clothes shopping.
“I’m fine,” I reply brightly, in a tone that sounds unconvincing even to me. “Just … just looking forward to my makeover, that’s all.”
“I didn’t say anything about amakeover,” Paris replies, her horrified look casually destroying my vision of our futurefriendship. “I’m not a miracle worker. But look, here’s the place I was telling you about.”
She steers me through the doorway of a little boutique, which is about half the size of the bookstore, and decorated entirely in stark white, with items of clothing displayed like works of art. I wander around cautiously, too scared to touch anything, while marveling at the fact that a place like this even exists in Bramblebury; a village which, until recently, boasted an Oxfam shop and a place selling equestrian gear as its only source of ‘fashion’.
The Snow Globeeffect strikes again, I guess.
Within minutes, Paris is herding me into a changing room with an armful of clothes, which I dutifully try on, waiting for the moment when I’ll look in the mirror and think, “Yes, that’s it. That’s the woman I want to be. My life is now changed.”
But the moment doesn’t come. The clothes are all beautiful, even to my unpracticed eye, but nothing looks quite right; by which I mean nothing makes me look like Beautiful Katie Hunter — or Bloody Katie Hunter, rather, who has suddenly become the gold standard of attractiveness to me.
And meanwhile, no matter what I try on, I’m still just Holly.
“This isn’t fair,” I complain to Paris when I emerge from the changing room a few minutes later, my cheeks red from the mini workout I’ve just had struggling in and out of a selection of bodycon dresses. “If my life was a movie, this would be the moment where I take off my glasses and basically turn into another person. Like Superman.”
“You don’t wear glasses,” replies Paris, ever the pragmatist. “And your life technicallyisa movie, anyway. It’s just not the movie you want it to be.”
“Not yet, it isn’t,” I mutter, feeling like I should apologize to the sleekly sophisticated shop assistant at the door as we leave the store empty-handed. “But I’m working on it.”
Paris eyes me curiously, but whatever she’s about to say is lost as I step through the doorway of the little boutique and walk straight into something very tall, and very solid.
Something, in fact, very Elliot Sinclair.
“Holly,” he says politely, not sounding particularly surprised to find me almost falling over him for the second time in the space of a week. “How are you?”
“I’m great,” I reply, quickly scanning the street for any sign of Bloody Katie, and relaxing slightly when she fails to materialize. “Just been doing a bit of shopping with my friend Paris.”
Paris’s eyebrows almost disappear into her hairline at this, but she doesn’t contradict me, and I smile at her gratefully, relieved to be ‘showing up as my best self’, as she instructed me earlier
“That’s nice,” says Elliot. “Is that a pencil in your hair?”
He reaches out and removes it, like a magician performing a trick — only in this case, the only ‘trick’ he manages to pull off involves my hair rapidly uncoiling itself like one of Medusa’s snakes, and absolutely no one is impressed by it.
