Charlie Glass's Slippers (17 page)

“Isn’t it
sexy
?” Robyn breathes, fondling the fabric in a manner that’s 180 degrees the opposite to the way she was sneering at all her dresses earlier. “
Pleeeease
, Cha-Cha, just try it on! It’ll really brighten you up. And don’t forget what I said: all the other girls will be wearing short dresses.”

I have a sudden vision of a scene that wouldn’t be out of place in a Jane Austen novel: a roomful of gamine fillies in fashionably short frocks, all whispering behind their fans/coming to a shocked halt in the middle of their stately quadrilles/swooning into the arms of a passing Regency buck at the sight of me, committing the ultimate social faux pas by daring to turn up to a party in something below the knee.

I mean, it
is
a Valentino that Robyn’s offering to lend me, for Christ’s sake. It’s not the cheap and cheerful H&M “monstrosity” Lucy was so unenthused about earlier.

And then there was that thing, of course, that Robyn said about Jay and girls in red dresses . . .

“Okay, but I really don’t think it’s going to fit . . .”

“Brilliant!” Robyn whoops. “Let’s get this old thing off you.”

“Oh, I’ll just go and change in the bathroom . . .”

“For fuck’s
sake
, Charlie, I’m your
sister
. I’ve seen you naked like literally bazillions of times.”

She hasn’t, in fact. I’ve made sure of that. But she’s already pulling at the zip on the side of Mum’s dress, sliding it down over my shoulders, and shaking it down around my knees for me to step out of. Then—in an astonishingly brisk manner that reminds me of Gaby—she’s whipped off my bra and is holding out the sparkly red Valentino for me to step into. I wobble a couple of times in my spindly heels, but this is the least of my worries.

“Robyn, I told you,” I say, as she hauls the dress up my legs, where it stops, dead, halfway up my thighs, “it isn’t going to fit . . .”

“It’s meant to be snug.” Robyn seizes the sparkly fabric and begins to yank it, inch by inch, up towards my hips.

It’s quite a feat of upper-body strength for someone so skinny. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen her put so much physical effort into something since she ripped Gaby’s Classical Civilization project into a hundred tiny pieces (terrible revenge for Gaby saying Robyn’s new bikini made her twelve-year-old stomach look “pregnant”).

“Just grab onto the door handle,” she gasps, edging the dress’s panels over my burdensome bottom, “and breathe in.”

I briefly have time to wonder how I’ve somehow ended up playing the role of corset-wearing Victorian to Robyn’s gimlet-eyed lady’s maid. But that’s about all I have time to wonder, because at this moment, Robyn heroically gets the dress up past my bum. From this momentous moment, it’s relatively easy to wiggle it past my middle and over my boobs, and then with one last almighty effort, she cranks the zip all the way up my side until it closes under my armpit.

I’m seeing stars. There’s a whooshing sound in my ears. With some difficulty, I turn to glance at myself in the mirror.

“See! Told you it would fit! And it looks great! Look at your
boobs
!” Robyn adds, as an afterthought.

Which is ironic, because in this dress, my boobs are not an afterthought. They’re jutting out, way up above my poor, crushed rib cage, as though I’m presenting them up for some kind of prize-melon award at a village fete. They’re the main event. The chief exhibit. At least, this is what I think until I turn to look at my rear view.

My bum, once again, is the size of a small county.

A small county that’s been swaddled in skin-tight, fire-engine-red Valentino. With spangles on.

“Robyn! You . . .” I have to choose my words carefully, because I know I’m only going to be able to manage to utter about six of them. “Sure . . . size . . . ten?”

“Of course I’m sure! It fits, doesn’t it?”

“Depends . . . definition . . . fits.”

“Well, I think you look great.
Very
sexy. Oh, that’ll be the taxi,” she adds, as her intercom suddenly buzzes. “Go down and tell him to wait two minutes, will you, Cha-Cha?” She grabs the midnight-blue baby-doll dress from the pile on the bed. “I guess it’ll have to be this one.”

“Will you . . . hang . . . Mum’s . . . dress . . . so won’t . . . crumple?”

“Yes, yes, I’ll do all that. Just go and tell the taxi to wait, Charlie, please, or he’ll think there’s nobody here and drive off.”

Going down to the taxi is easier said than done, because in this dress (which I’m starting to think is only 20 percent dress, and 80 percent boa constrictor) I can’t exactly make rapid progress, especially not when there are stairs involved. All I can do is kind of mince forward, rather like some overenthusiastic extra playing Chinese Peasant Woman Number Three in an amateur pantomime of Aladdin. These blasted shoes don’t help, either: I may have been able to stride around my
flat without wobbling off them, but now that I’m taking these tiny, mincing steps, they’re that much harder to balance in.

I suppose I should be gratified, when I do make it down the stairs and out into the street, that the waiting taxi driver’s eyes are out on stalks (exactly the way I wanted Ferdy’s to be last weekend), but frankly I’m too worn out to care. And anyway, this isn’t necessarily proof that I actually look
nice
or anything. It’s perfectly possible that this taxi driver just happens to be an enthusiastic cultivator of prize melons, and he’s interested in the fact that I seem to have strapped two of them to my chest.

“Sister . . . down . . . two . . . minutes,” I manage to tell him, before collapsing into the back of his taxi.

“No problem, darling . . . Off to a glamorous party, are you?”

“Yes.”

“With your sister?”

“Yes.”

“That’s nice . . . Oh, is this her now?”

I peer through the window to see where he’s pointing.

It is indeed Robyn coming out of her building.

Robyn, wearing Mum’s Yves Saint Laurent dress.

She’s a good couple of sizes too small for it, but this doesn’t matter, partly because she’s slipped a skinny diamante belt around the waist, and partly because—as I should have realized before I let her talk me out of wearing it—the dress is so brilliantly cut, the fabric so beautiful, that it flatters pretty much whatever kind of body is under it.

“You don’t mind, do you, Charlie, darling?” she’s saying as she clambers into the taxi beside me, bestowing me with her prettiest smile. “I just thought it was such a divine dress, it would be an awful shame for
nobody
to wear it.”

“But . . . you said . . .”

“Oh, come on, Cha-Cha, you’re not going to be a pain about it, are you?” she pouts. “Besides,
you’re
wearing one
of
my
dresses. That’s the nice thing about being sisters, now that we’re almost the same size. We can do swapsies with our clothes!”

I don’t have anything to reply to this. The Valentino boa-constrictor dress had already taken away much of my physical ability to speak; now Robyn has taken away pretty much all the will.

I’m kicking myself for being so completely and totally bamboozled.

“Please . . . be careful . . . very delicate . . .”

“Well, for fuck’s sake, Charlie, what do you imagine I’m going to do? Chuck glasses of red wine all over it and rip off the hemline by trapping it in a car door?”

I hadn’t, actually, imagined either of these things, but now, of course, I’m really worried.

Robyn puts a hand on my shoulder, her eyes wide. “I’ll guard it with my life, Charlie, I promise. The only bad thing that could
possibly
happen to this dress this evening is Jay Broderick ripping it off me in a fit of passion . . . God, I’m
joking
, Cha-Cha, there’s no need to look like you’re about to be sick! Just along the road to Holland Park, please,” she instructs the taxi driver, who’s now openly ogling the pair of us (not just this pair of mine) in his rearview mirror. “I promise, if I
do
shag Jay, I’ll get totally naked before I let him so much as get a hand on me, okay?”

I say nothing, and concentrate on reeducating myself in the skill of breathing as the big, posh houses of Notting Hill gradually become the even bigger, even posher houses of Holland Park.

chapter twelve

W
hen we get out
of the taxi outside the Broderick house, the first thing I notice is the thudding bass line coming from somewhere inside.

The second thing I notice is that the gates are manned by two burly security guards, wearing dinner jackets, earpieces, and stern expressions, as if they’ve been tasked with presidential security for the evening and there’s a very real chance we might be the descendants of Lee Harvey Oswald, smuggling Russian-made rifles inside our party dresses. (As if I could smuggle
anything
inside this dress. For Christ’s sake, there’s barely enough room for my essential organs in here.)

Standing in between the security guards, looking leggy and efficient as ever in black leather leggings and a cropped, tight blazer, is the leggy and efficient Annabel.

“Good evening, ladies.” She smiles briskly, then glances down at her clipboard. “Could I get your names?”

“Robyn Glass.” Robyn has adopted the haughty, disdainful expression she favors when talking to Staff. “I expect I’ll be listed in the VIP section.”

“Robyn!” I hiss, embarrassed for her. “This is a birthday party, not a club.” (I’ve learned that if I speak very softly and
quite slowly, I can manage to get out entire sentences all in one go.) “There won’t be a VIP section.”

“Of course there will,” she scoffs. “Everyone has a VIP section at their birthday party! I had one at my last birthday party, remember?” (She seems to have forgotten that her last birthday party was at her then-boyfriend’s beachside home on Capri and that neither I nor Gaby was invited.) “This is my sister Charlie,” she adds, to Annabel. “She’s probably down in brackets next to my name, or something.”

I freeze as, for one awful moment, it suddenly occurs to me that Annabel might remember my surname. But evidently her efficiency doesn’t extend to this (either that or she just can’t countenance that a Charlotte Glass she met three months ago could be the Charlie Glass who’s in front of her right now), because she doesn’t blink an eyelid as she glances down at her clipboard.

“Yes, you’re both down here, ladies. And you are in the VIP section, as it happens. So if you’d just like to follow me . . .?”

I’m a bit stunned that there is such a VIP list after all—I mean, if you invite people to your house for your birthday, shouldn’t they
all
be VIPs? And what does it say about Jay Broderick that he’s hosting a two-tier party like this?—but Robyn is excitedly linking her arm through mine and hauling me after Annabel as she starts to lead us through the open gate.

I’m managing to speed up my mincing pantomime walk enough to keep pace across the driveway, even if it does mean that my thighs are chafing against each other. Annabel is barking orders into her walkie-talkie, and when we reach the house itself, the wide oak front door opens for us as if by magic.

“Two more VIPs,” she tells the waiter who’s opened the door and is standing behind it with a drinks-laden tray. “Show them through to the library, please.”

The lobby looks rather different from the last time I saw it. There’s a five-piece jazz band and a full cocktail bar complete with those showy-off barmen who do clever tricks with their shakers, and the elevator (sensibly) has been cordoned off with a single red-velvet rope. There’s an extremely loud volume of chatter coming from the library, and there are people to-ing and fro-ing across the lobby to help themselves to the cocktails that are being snazzily made by the barmen.

“Oh, my fucking
God
!” Robyn shrieks, slipping her arm out of mine the moment she spots a pair of extremely skinny blond girls in (natch) extremely short party dresses, who are helping themselves to cocktails before heading towards the staircase. “Chloe! Zoe! I didn’t know you were coming!”

Chloe and Zoe both squeal with excitement and I stand back and watch, not quite certain what to do, as the three of them start giving each other the once-over.

“Have you lost weight?” Chloe/Zoe demands of Robyn.

“No! I’m huge.
You’ve
lost weight. I hate you.”

“Well, I was ill for a few days last week and I couldn’t eat. The weight just fell off.”

Robyn visibly winces.

“But you look
fab
,” Chloe/Zoe continues. “That dress is
amazing
.”

“Oh, it’s just something I picked up last time I was in New York. Vintage YSL, I think.” Robyn puts one hand on her hip, striking a pose. She has, at least, the grace to avoid meeting my eye. “Do you think the birthday boy will like it?”

“God knows. He’s being a real old misery-guts tonight,” Zoe/Chloe pipes up. “He’s barely even spoken to me, which is pretty fucking rude, seeing as Mummy is, like, best friends with his stepmother and everything.”

“He’s in a mood because Cassia Connelly hasn’t turned up, I expect,” Chloe/Zoe says. “Tragic, really, especially when you see how insanely hot he’s looking tonight. Anyway, it’s
deathly dull in the VIP section, so we were about to go up and see what’s happening on the first floor.” She gestures up the stairs, which is where the thudding bass line is coming from. “There’s better music, and loads of food stalls, apparently, and I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to find someone to give us a bit of coke.”

“Oh, brilliant . . . I’ll just tell my sister I’ll see her in the VIP section in a few minutes.”

“You came with
Gaby
?”

“Ugh, no. My other sister. Charlie.”

“I didn’t know you had another sister!”

“Yes, that’s her right here, in the red dress . . .” Robyn turns around and gestures for me to come and join them. “Cha-Cha, these are two of my very best friends, Chloe and Zoe. Chloe and Zoe, this is my sister, Charlie.”

“Hi!” I smile and wave, which I regret when Chloe and Zoe stare back at me, neither smiling nor waving.

“Hi,” Chloe/Zoe says, and then after a moment, in an accusing tone, “You’re really
pretty
.”

“Oh, well, she doesn’t usually look this good!” Robyn says, before I can reply. There’s the faintest tinge of green to her skin all of a sudden, but that might just be the lighting. “But I lent her this dress! Which was, like, really nice of me, because it’s a brand-new Valentino.”

“It’s a nice dress,” Zoe/Chloe says, in a similarly accusing tone, before glancing down in the direction of my feet. “Oh, my
God.
Those shoes! They’re incredible!”

It’s the first genuine-sounding thing she’s said, so I try out another smile.

“Thank you! They’re vintage ones, by my dad . . .”

“
Our
daddy,” Robyn snaps. She silences me with a glare, looking—for one terrifying moment—exactly like Diana. “Anyway, Charlie, I’m going to pop upstairs with Chlo-Chlo and Zo-Zo. I’ll see you inside the party, okay?”

Which is just bloody great, because now I
really
don’t know anyone at this party. But as Robyn heads for the stairs (Chlo-Chlo and Zo-Zo trailing in her wake) there’s not much for it but to grab one of the martinis the waiter is proffering and mince into the library, where hopefully I’ll be able to loiter, looking as if I’m between conversations, until Robyn and her friends stop stuffing coke up their noses and come back down to join me.

Or—I know—maybe I can just try to look busy on my mobile phone! God knows, I’d rather get involved in a text chat with Lucy than stand around amongst all the smart, glamorous people—sorry,
very important people
—who are shrieking away at each other in large gangs inside the dimly lit library. Yes—I’ll find somewhere to sit down and text Lucy. The taxi ride over here led me to the conclusion that sitting down, in this dress, is A Good Thing.

I spot the little chaise longue where I sat waiting for my interview, which has been helpfully tucked away in a kind of alcove between two tall bookshelves, and teeter over there, clutching my martini with both hands, for ballast.

I’ve not been there thirty seconds, and not even managed to get past the first few words of a text to Lucy (
You were right about glam; not seen anyone in Brecon Beacons mountain gear yet
), when someone suddenly plonks herself down on the chaise beside me.

“
Christ
almighty, that was a lucky escape. You don’t mind if I sit here for a moment, do you?”

It’s a stunning dark-haired girl, wearing a very small tangerine-colored dress (that displays her ample frontage even more than mine does), clashing fuchsia sandals, and a spectacular pair of aquamarine earrings.

“Er—no, not at all.” I extend a hand—though carefully, just in case the movement makes my own ample frontage make a break for freedom. Still, at least my conclusion about sitting
down was right—it does seem to free up my poor, crushed rib cage by a crucial couple of millimeters and make it easier to talk. “I’m Charlie.”

“Huh?”

“My name. It’s Charlie.”

“No, it’s not. It’s Anastasia.”

Okay—either she’s been overdoing what Robyn and her friends are upstairs doing right now, or she’s just plain nuts and in the throes of some weird obsession with a missing Romanov princess. Either way, I don’t want to risk disagreeing with her.

“Oh, come on, you must recognize me!” she goes on. “I’m Maggie! Maggie O’Day! We worked together on that shoot in the Negev desert, remember?”

“I’m, er, not a photographer.”

“Well, of course not. You’re a model.”

I actually laugh out loud. “You think I’m a
model
?”

“Oh, come on, Anastasia! I’m Maggie! The stylist! I styled that desert beauty shoot you were in last summer, for
Elle
magazine.”

“I’ve . . . never been in any desert beauty shoot for
Elle
magazine.”

“Oh, well, maybe it was
Grazia
. I lose track of these things . . . Oh, my
God
,” she suddenly shrieks, glancing down at my feet. “Your shoes are
gorgeous
! God, models always nick the best things from shoots . . .”

“I didn’t nick them! They’re mine.” I watch her face as she gazes, covetously, at my feet, with much the same intensity as Chloe/Zoe was just showing. “You really like them?”

“I
love
them,” she breathes. “Are they vintage YSL?”

“No.” I shut down the pang of bitterness about the
actual
vintage YSL I should have been wearing tonight. “They’re vintage Elroy Glass.”

“They’re
not
!”

“They are.”

“But Elroy Glass shoes are really blah . . . Oh, though come to think of it, I’m fairly sure my mum used to wear Elroy Glass in the olden days. And
she
wasn’t blah. She once shagged David Bowie on the Concorde to New York.”

“That’s . . . nice.”

“They look like a size six. Can I try them on?”

It takes me a moment to realize she’s talking about the shoes.

“Um, sure.” I unbuckle my sandals and pass them to her.

“Oh, my
God
,” she repeats, although semi-orgasmically this time, as she slides her feet into the shoes. “How can a pair of shoes this gorgeous be this comfortable?”

“You think they’re
comfortable
?”

“Well, not compared to my ancient Uggs, perhaps. But compared to these bloody things”—she kicks one of her own fuchsia sandals in my direction, indicating that I should try it on—“you might as well be walking on air.”

I put my right foot into the fuchsia shoe and—when I have to double-check that I’ve not accidentally tried to put on the left one of the pair—realize that Maggie is right. Here I’ve been assuming that Mum’s crystal sandals were the most painful footwear experience known to womankind. But trying on this fuchsia sandal is a whole new level of agony.

No wonder “everyone” is suffering from bunions, if this is the kind of shoe “everyone” is wearing. Although it does, briefly, reassure me that Elroy Glass shoes aren’t the only ones these days that bring about foot deformities.

“So, did you find them in a vintage store or something?” Maggie is asking.

I realize it’s going to be very long-winded to explain all about Dad, especially when there’s so much noise from the chattering crowds and that thudding bass line from upstairs. And when she’s convinced I’m a model called Anastasia.

“Kind of a vintage store. Yes.”

“Well, you have to tell me where. I’d literally
kill
for a pair of . . . oh, mother of God, incoming,
incoming
!” Before I can work out what she’s talking about, Maggie is kicking off my shoes, pulling her own back on, and scrambling to her feet. “Sorry to ditch you, Anastasia, but I need a new hiding place.”

“Hiding place from whom?” I ask, slightly alarmed that a chainsaw-wielding madman is about to lurch into view.

But it’s too late, because Maggie-the-stylist has shot off like a nervous deer, blending into the crowd of equally beautiful people in a manner James Bond himself would be proud of.

I realize whom she’s fleeing from about two seconds later: Hamish.

He’s just appeared at the edge of my little alcove, clutching two full champagne glasses. His face is still shiny and roughly the same color as uncooked bacon, and his shirt collar is still too tight.

“Hel-
lo
,” he says, when he sees me.

“Hello.”

“You’re looking pretty lonely over here all by yourself.” He maneuvers onto the chaise longue next to me, in the space that Maggie just abandoned, and puts his champagne glasses down on the bookshelf behind us. “I’m Hamish McGarrigle.” He extends a hand and takes mine before I offer it. His palm is damp, with the texture of warm Play-Doh. “I’m Jay’s best friend.”

I’m not that surprised by the fact he doesn’t recognize me—this is pretty much to be expected, apparently, by now—but I am a little taken aback by his claim to be Jay’s best friend. I mean,
really
?

“You know, I’m pretty sure we’ve met before, but you’re going to have to tell me where.” He’s leaning in a bit closer, close enough that I can see a sheen of sweat on his forehead. “Have you been to one of my parties at my country house in Wiltshire?”