While she was waiting, she pulled her phone out of her bag and called Ken’s house. No answer. Where the bloody hell was the wife? Shouldn’t she be there?
Lila waited until she’d listened to his voice on the answering machine before she hung up. God, she loved him. Even hearing him on a machine turned her on.
The assistant returned with the dress, and Lila paid and left, walking back across the road on her tiptoes so that the spike of her heels didn’t get stuck in the cracks on the tarmac.
She hung the dress up on the hook above the back window of the car, then took a quick snap of it.#tonightsoutfit #beautiful #designer #lilalovescavalli.Post. Immediately the pings started and the number of likes increased by the nanosecond. People loved to see what she was wearing. The designers should really give her stuff for free.
She headed back into the salon, where Suze sat, like a stunning, slightly scary sentry at the door.
‘Ah, you’ve returned. Did you track down your friend?’ Suze asked.
Lila shrugged. ‘Nope, no idea who it was. We had a look at Cammy’s CCTV, but I didn’t recognise her. Probably just someone that follows my fashion and lifestyle advice on social media.’
Suze immediately looked down at something on the desk in front of her – almost as if she was covering up some snide reaction. Another one that was jealous of her, Lila decided. Small talk dispensed with, she cut straight to the point.
‘Cammy and I are going out tonight,’ she chirped, ‘So I’d like something done with my hair and I’m way too tired to do my own make-up. Do you have anyone free?’
Suze checked the screen. ‘Okay, so Rod can do a blow-dry or styling, but I’ve only got Kylie free on make-up.’
‘The young girl who’s still training?’ Lila sneered, as if she was saying ‘the young girl who has fleas, nits, and a suspected case of the plague?’
‘That’s the one,’ Suze confirmed, with the widest fake smile. Lila could spot it a mile away. Took one fake bitch to know another. Suze was still talking. ‘She’s actually great. She did the girl who was in here asking for you and she looked beautiful when she left. Don’t think I’ve seen a more stunning face today.’
Ouch, insult with a sting. Lila would have fired back with an equally subtle but venomous barb if she wasn’t quite aware that she held the worse hand here. If she pissed Suze off, she could quite easily end up going to dinner with hair that looked like she’d been caught in a wind tunnel and disastrous make-up. Although, that might happen anyway if she was getting palmed off to a junior, but at least Rod knew what he wasdoing. She needed these appointments so it was time to suck it up and play nice.
‘Wow, I wish I’d met her. Anyway, Rod and Kylie would be great thanks.’
There was a hesitation, as if Suze was deliberating whether or not to mess up her day, but she clearly decided to take the business. ‘No problem.’ She turned to the shop floor. ‘Kylie, we have another victim for you. Rod, you’re up too. Make this woman beautiful.’
Ouch, another sting. Make her beautiful? She was already fricking beautiful. This time Lila couldn’t resist the urge to purse her lips. Don’t bite back. Do not rise.
Rod, the punkish weirdo who was, despite his awful taste in style and fashion, a genius with hair, appeared at her side and ushered her to a free seat at the centre console. Kylie pulled a tray of cosmetics over.
‘Okay, so what are we doing today, gorgeous?’ That was more like it. A man that recognised something special when he saw it.
‘I’m thinking maybe big waves, side parting, Cindy Crawford eighties look. Something breathtaking that will make me impossible to resist.’
Rod thought the second part of that request was a little joke. If only he knew.
‘And your make-up?’ Kylie asked.
Lila swallowed her hesitation over letting someone who had only ever washed her hair loose on her face. If it was that bad she could fix it herself in the car.
Lila thought about it. She would be wearing pink, so red, vampish drama would clash. ‘Dark, smoky eyes, nude lip,’ she answered. She’d worn that look at a convention last year andKen had loved it. He’d had her naked before dessert. Said she reminded him of Kim Basinger. Whoever that was.
The two of them got to work, Rod parting her hair and wrapping it, section by section, in huge rollers. Kylie got her cleaning pads out and started removing the make-up that Lila had been touching up all day. Lila held up her phone and snapped a selfie, careful not to get Rod or Kylie in the frame. There was no way she was giving this place free publicity.#glamsquad #rockingthe80svibe.
She scrolled back up to the last post – over two hundred ‘likes’ already, and tons of comments.
‘Gorgeous!’
‘Sexy’.
‘You’ll be stunning, babe!’
The last one from someone she didn’t know at all. There was that overfamiliarity right there. That thought jolted her back to the stranger that was looking for her.
‘Suze said someone was in here asking for me earlier. A blonde woman. Maybe similar age to me. A north of Scotland accent.’
