‘Remind me, Olivia, to dig out my strapless bra tonight,’ said Emily, as we stepped into the lift on the way home. ‘I don’t want to get to the hotel tomorrow and not have the right underwear.’
Judicious juggling with the Luscious Lips budget and some hardball negotiation with the hotel had ensured that Emily and I had a room to get ready in. With kick-off at seven there would be no time to go home to change. It was the least the hotel could do. Miranda’s suite was costing £1500.
Later that evening while I was going through my notes for the hundredth time, I came across the stylist’s list of accessories, including a frightening-sounding flesh-toned, super-booster bra. That reminded me.
‘Emily. Bra,’ I yelled to her. At my shout she wandered into the room looking puzzled.
‘Olivia, have you borrowed anything?’
Not the scarf again, please.
‘Like what?’
‘Underwear,’ she said hesitantly.
I stared at her, she looked serious. I snorted. ‘You are joking.’
‘No,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I can’t find a couple of things. Knickers. My Janet Reger bustier.’
She was definitely joking. Even with a pair of grapefruit, umpteen rolled up socks and an entire box of Kleenex, my meagre bust wouldn’t have come near to filling that thing.
‘Really?’ I asked disbelievingly. She must have misplaced them or put them somewhere else. ‘You haven’t left them anywhere?’
She glared at me. ‘Well let me think, I’ve been sleeping my way across London with gay abandon — silly me, they could be anywhere between here and Watford Gap. I’m not some floozy you know.’
‘I wasn’t implying anything. It’s just... you do lose things,’ I said apologetically. A polite euphemism for ‘You never put anything away’. I was the housework fairy. ‘Have you left them at... ?’ I couldn’t bring myself to say Daniel’s name just in case a big arrow lit up above my head and a voice boomed, ‘She fancies him’.
‘No,’ she said crossly. ‘I haven’t been there for weeks. They’re not there. Are you sure you haven’t seen them?’
‘What?’ I didn’t mean to say that out loud. So she hadn’t been to Daniel’s for weeks and he hadn’t been here overnight since the accident. The thought that perhaps they weren’t sleeping together was enormously cheering.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ she snapped.
From her room I could hear bad-tempered thumping as she resumed her search. Then I heard an angry, ‘Bloody hell.’ She came storming out clutching a framed picture.
‘Do you know anything about this?’ She tossed it onto the sofa cushion beside me. The glass was broken. It was her favourite; one of those cloudy portrait shots of her coyly peeping up at the camera. The studio photo shoot and makeover had been a birthday present from her mother. My idea of hell but Emily had loved it. It was a stunning picture, although I thought it was a bit artificial and over-glossed. Shame, really, because she was very pretty.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Er, it’s broken.’
A twinge of injustice stirred my mettle. I drew myself up. ‘And what’s that got to do with me?’
‘Sorry, Olivia,’ she said more calmly, realising that perhaps this time she’d overstepped the mark. ‘You’re right. It’s just because... well... you’re the only other person who lives here.’
‘I didn’t break it.’
‘It must have been the invisible man, then,’ she said sulkily.
My mind immediately homed in on the memory of that wet footprint. She frowned at my expression, wagging her finger belligerently.
‘Don’t start that nonsense again,’ she said firmly. ‘I’ve not heard from Peter since the last email. Your cousin probably sorted him out. Honestly, Olivia, you are completely neurotic.’
‘So would you be if you ended up with a dozen stitches in your arm,’ I retorted dramatically. Since my chat with Ned about Peter, I harboured some worries.
‘Perhaps it just fell,’ I said, ignoring the scaredy-cat voice at the back of my head saying ‘What about your necklace? The one that was on the floor instead of your jewellery stand’.
The sensible voice in my head reminded me that with the launch tomorrow, I didn’t know my arse from my elbow at the moment. I’d probably just knocked it off the stand in my hurry to get to work this morning.
