‘OK, but I would also like to see them while it’s all popping off,’ she said, linking our arms and allowing me to lead the way.
The party planners might not have realized quite how popular Myrna’s event was going to be, but they had done a spectacular job decorating. All the dust sheetshad been removed and replaced with soft, golden light. Everything sparkled like it was brand new, only not new now, new in 1961, and it was easy to imagine we’d all been taken back in time the moment we crossed the threshold. Soft jazz played through invisible speakers, a raspy voice over a tinkling piano, undercutting the happy buzz of conversation and ever-present fizz of champagne. There were so many flowers, red roses, Myrna’s favourites, as well as delicate touches of jasmine and iris to scent the room. It smelled as though the whole house had been very lightly spritzed with Chanel No. 5.
I nodded politely at a short, smiley man I vaguely recognized as the husband of a housewife as we passed by him, onto the patio and into the night. The A listers kept on coming but there were only two people I was really watching for.
‘Have you heard from Bel or Ren?’
I hated it when my sister read my mind.
‘No,’ I replied. ‘Have you?’
‘Bel texted to apologize for cancelling our session. I said I’d see her tonight but I haven’t heard back. She’s not one to miss out on a party though, I’m sure she’ll be here.’
‘You know her better than I do,’ I replied, realizing at once that it was true.
Just because I liked her, didn’t mean I knew her. Offering to help set her up with Ren had been a huge mistake, and not just because of my feelings. If I could go back in time to that very first morning, I’d do it all differently. Introduce the two of them then step back, stay out of the way. Hindsight truly was a wonderful thing. Now all I needed was a time machine and we’d be set.
‘Are you kidding me?’ Suzanne yelled when we reached the bottom of the garden. ‘That’s a swimming pool?’
‘Isn’t it stunning?’ I confirmed. ‘The stories Myrna has told me, honestly, if those trees could talk.’
She moved across the grass as though drawn to the deep blue water, her eyes glassy and full. ‘I’m just going to dip a toe in,’ she whispered. ‘It’s too beautiful, I have to. Also these shoes are killing me. Whatever possessed me to wear four-inch heels?’
‘Suze, we’ve only been here half an hour, it’s too early for skinny dipping,’ I warned. ‘If you want to keep your job, at least wait until it’s properly dark.’
She held up a hand to signal that she’d heard me but I knew the words hadn’t fully registered. Not that I blamed her – there was something about that pool that could make even the most committed never-nude change their ways. Avoiding the siren song of the siren sapphire waters, I took myself over to the edge of the lawn where wooden loungers had been set up in groups of twos and threes, creating a tiny sanctuary away from the party, but no one had needed it. Yet.
Behind us, the house glowed with life, looking more incredible than ever and thrilled to be used for its true and proper purpose. It hadn’t seen a party like this in more than fifty years and if Myrna was right, which she usually was, it would never see another. It didn’t bear thinking about.
The little black evening bag Myrna had insisted I use rather than carrying my lipstick in my pocket ‘like a pack donkey’, vibrated in my left hand and I immediately threw myself on top of it like an unexploded grenade,looking around to make sure I hadn’t been seen. Phones were banned from the party. All the guests arriving through the front door and all the staff coming through the back had been searched, a certain multi-Grammy award winner having her gold iPhone wrenched from her hand with a separation anxiety-stricken sob. But I didn’t arrive through the front or back door. I came down the staircase from the dressing room and I was the only person at the party who still had their phone.
More than a little afraid one of Myrna’s security guards would shoot me on sight, I walked over to the very edge of the garden, leaning against a tree and pretending to enjoy the view as I opened my bag and pulled out my phone, swishing my hair over one shoulder to hide the handset. It was still vibrating, silent but insistent, with a UK number I did not recognize.
Had he changed his number again just to torment me? It was possible. He must have felt a disturbance in the force, a ripple in the ether that told him I was happy again and needed knocking down a peg or two.
‘Bad luck, dickhead,’ I said, steeling myself to answer. ‘I’m ready for you this time.’
‘Hello, is that Phoebe?’
But I wasn’t ready for her.
‘Hello?’ I replied hesitantly. ‘Samantha?’
There was a muffled snuffling on the other end of the line, the sound of someone swallowing, a decision being made.
‘Yes,’ said a thick, hoarse voice. ‘Sorry to call so late, but you said any time and I suppose this counts as any time.’
I did the mental maths. Eight in the evening in LAwas four in the morning in the UK. Four in the morning on her wedding day.
‘I absolutely meant it,’ I shook my head at the very silly question I was about to ask. ‘Are you all right?’
A beat.
‘I’m supposed to get married today.’
I closed my eyes and Myrna’s party, the Hollywood Hills all melted away, leaving me alone, in an eighties bathroom, smothering my sobs with a hand towel so he wouldn’t hear them.
‘Are you still there?’ Samantha asked, a quiet panic I recognized in her voice. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have called, this is so out of order, it’s not your problem.’
