‘To get your glad rags on and get going. Come on. I’ve got to be in Chepstow Road in half an hour.’
‘What for?’
‘A job. Now get going.’
‘But why do I have to get changed?’
‘No reason,’ he said, unzipping a suit carrier and headingtowards the downstairs toilet, ‘you’ll just have more fun if you’re glammed up. Trust me.’
‘OK,’ said Ana, blushing at Gill and Di’s winks and heading up the stairs.
She unzipped her tartan suitcase and tipped the contents all over her bed. What kind of choice was this, she thought, picking up ludicrously, almost comically ill-matched garments and discarding them? She had two pairs of Bee’s Indian harem trousers, a spare T-shirt, her khaki Lycra top, which she threw to the floor when she realized that it actuallysmelled, a load of diamond jewellery, the black sequinned jacket, three brightly coloured cotton Indian tops and her pyjamas. Bollocks, she thought, thinking of all those beautiful dresses and gowns she’d packed away at Bee’s and sent back to Devon. But then she looked down at her legs and realized she couldn’t have worn a frock anyway – nearly a week’s worth of stubble – not just a hint of mousy growth but proper boots-and-shorts stubble. So. Trousers. It had to be. She pulled off her cotton vest and slipped on an Indian top. Pretty, she thought, eyeing up her reflection, but not glam. She took it off. Then she took off her jeans and pulled on the harem trousers. As she looked at her reflection she suddenly remembered that harem trousers were juststupid.The sort of thing that probably seemed like a good idea when you were wandering around India with a bindi on your forehead eating lentils with your fingers, but get them home and you soon realize that they’re an incredibly unflattering garment that makes you look like you’ve done a huge poo in your crotch.
And then she remembered Lol. Lol wore jeans all thetime but she always looked glamorous. She pulled her jeans back on. And then she spied the black sequinned jacket. She pulled it on over her bare chest and buttoned it up. She arranged herself into all sorts of unlikely positions in the mirror, checking that her boobs didn’t fall out, and then she put on Bee’s diamond necklace and Lol’s snakeskin stilettos. Jesus, she thought, checking herself again, this either looks great or I look a complete tit. How were you supposed to know the difference, she wondered? Could she, she wondered? Could she really go out like this? With no bra on? No top? Well – she’d have to – she didn’t have any choice.
She was about to let down her hair and comb it out when she suddenly remembered what Flint had said earlier on about it suiting her up, so she smoothed it down with her fingertips, put on a pair of diamond drop earrings, got halfway through her door, remembered she’d forgotten deodorant, slicked some on, put some spit on her eyelashes and then went clattering down the stairs.
‘Ready,’ she cried, grabbing her rucksack from the coat stand and piling into the living room.
‘Oh. My. God,’ said Gill, getting slowly to her feet, a copy ofNow!magazine falling to the floor. ‘You look amazing.’
Di’s jaw was on the floor. ‘I told you. Didn’t I tell you? Fantastic, absolutely incredible.’
And then Flint emerged from the kitchen, gulping down a glass of water, and Ana nearly fainted. He was wearing a black suit, a white shirt and a thin black tie. He looked like Michael Madsen inReservoir Dogs.He looked like the handsomest thing she’d ever seen in her life.
‘Wow,’ he said, looking genuinely taken aback, ‘Ana – you look – wow.’
The two of them stood and stared at each other in wonder for a while, like a paused video, before someone hit Play and Flint looked at his watch and Ana said, ‘Come on, we’re going to be late,’ and in a big fug of embarrassment and wolf whistles and silly comments from Gill and Di, they both bundled themselves out of the door and towards his car, desperately trying not to look at each other as much as they both desperately wanted to.
32
Flint’s client was a model called Liberty Taylor. With her was her boyfriend, a weasely, pasty-faced boy with strange, combed-forward hair who was ‘no one’, according to Flint. How weird, thought Ana, to be ‘no one’ just because your girlfriend was skinny and pretty and got paid to have her photograph taken. Ana watched in wonder as the two of them emerged from a large white house with wrought-iron balconies, all unsmiling cool and tatty vintage clothes. She had it, she thought, peering curiously at Liberty, whatever it was that it took to be famous, she had it. Her hair was jet black and gelled into Marcel waves across her forehead, and she was wearing a flimsy, chiffony dress and shoes so strappy that they barely existed. She was unbelievably pale and had a pink blob in the middle of each cheek. Her boyfriend looked like a recalcitrant teenage brother who’d been made to dress up for the night. They didn’t talk to each other as they left the house, just sort of wafted silently out and lowered themselves professionally into the back of the car as Flint held the door open for them. She heard the ‘no one’ boyfriend muttering ‘Cheers, mate,’ as the door was closed behind him.
‘Where are we taking them?’ Ana whispered to Flint as they pulled away.
‘You don’t need to whisper,’ whispered Flint, turning towards her and smiling. ‘They can’t hear us.’
‘Oh. Right.’ She grinned at him, thinking, ‘You are a juicy-rare-burger-and-thick-cut-chips of a man and I want toeatyou.’
‘We’re going to a film premiere,’ he said, ‘some cockney-caper thing. Sunny Moore’s in it.’
‘Who’s Sunny Moore?’
‘Another model – I think they used to be flatmates, or something.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I told you,’ he smirked, ‘I know absolutely everything about celebrities.’
‘What – even stuff like flatmates?’
‘Yup. Even stuff like flatmates. It scares me sometimes how much room in my tiny little brain is taken up by things like the name of Liz Hurley’s new boyfriend.’
‘Oh,’ said Ana smugly, ‘even I know that one – it’s Hugh Grant, isn’t it?’
Flint threw her a pitying look. ‘You poor, poor little thing,’ he said, ‘you really don’t know a thing, do you?’
‘What,’ Ana objected. ‘But it is, isn’t it? Liz Hurley does go out with Hugh Grant, doesn’t she?’