Charlie Glass's Slippers (19 page)

When Jay sits back down, he’s a little closer than before. There’s barely a hand’s width between us.

“So,” he says. “Charlie Glass.”

“Jay Broderick,” I reply, because that seems like the only thing I
can
reply.

“The mysterious Charlie Glass.”

Which I have absolutely no response to whatsoever. So I just take a couple of small sips of champagne, instead. I’m hoping this will confirm his (entirely mistaken) belief in my mysteriousness.

“Where have you come from?” he asks, softly.

“Um, Earl’s Court?”

He lets out his second shout of laughter. “You kill me, Charlie, you know that? Are you always this funny?”

“Not intentionally.”

He even seems to find this funny, because he laughs for another moment or so before continuing. “Anyway, all I meant was that you seem to have come from out of thin air. I’ve never met you at a party, or out anywhere with friends . . .”

Okay, now I definitely need to stay as silent as possible. I can hardly tell Jay that I haven’t
been
to any parties for almost ten years, or that while everyone else I know was out with friends, I was at home being fat and lonely and taking care of Dad.

Still, with any luck he’ll interpret my silence as yet more of my apparent mystery.

“And then there’s the other thing about you. You don’t seem that impressed by me. I mean, I wait all night for you, and pull the whole knight-in-shining-armor move, and bring you up here and tell you how totally irresistible you are, and you barely say a word!”

Shit.
I’ve taken the mysterious-silence thing too far.

“Oh, I’m really sorry . . .”

“Don’t apologize. I love it.” He moves closer—only an inch or so, but close enough so that I can feel the warmth of his strong, solid body. “Most girls would have been all over me by now. Most girls are all over me no matter what I do. And all because I happen to have a couple of quid in the bank. But not you. It’s like you’re . . . immune to me.”

I don’t feel the slightest bit immune to him right now. Quite the opposite: my stomach is flipping like a pancake. It flips even more when he places one hand on the side of my face. His little finger strokes, very gently, the nape of my neck beneath my hair.

Suddenly, without any warning, we’re kissing.

We’re kissing
. I haven’t kissed anyone in ten years, and now here I am kissing Jay Broderick.

I just have to say that again, to be sure it’s actually happening: here I am kissing Jay Broderick.

It’s even better than I imagined. His lips taste of champagne, and his hands are in my hair, and his chest is pressing, firmly, against my prize-melon breasts. I can hardly breathe. I don’t think I’ve felt so helplessly turned on by anything, ever, in my entire life. I may not have much experience in this area, but I’m fairly sure that Jay is—quite literally—the best kisser on the entire planet. But then he would be, wouldn’t he, with the amount of women he must have been involved with? All those beautiful girls who are lining up in droves to let him do whatever he wants to them . . .

I can’t do this.

Before I know what I’m doing, I’m pushing him away.

“Hey, I’m sorry!” He pulls himself off me, eyes wide with surprise. His lips are rosy where I’ve been kissing them, and his hair is more mussed up than ever. “Let’s take a break. I was moving too fast.”

“No. I mean, you weren’t . . . it’s not you,” I blurt, “it’s me.”

Which isn’t quite true, because it’s not me, either. It’s all those other girls—a veritable string, you might say—who are suddenly crowding into my head. It’s Cassia Connelly, with the peachy, perfect bottom and the breasts sculpted by the gods. It’s the international supermodels. It’s Chloe and Zoe, and Maggie O’Day, and all the fabulous, glamorous women here tonight who are far more in Jay’s league than I’ll ever be. It’s
Robyn
, for Christ’s sake, who would throw me from the top of this roof if she could see what I’m doing right now.

“I’m sorry,” I mumble.

“Don’t be sorry! It’s okay. Look”—he gets to his feet to fetch the champagne bottle again—“let’s just have another drink, cool things off for a few minutes.”

“No, I can’t. This is . . . it’s all wrong.” I start hauling myself up from the low sofa . . .

. . . which is when I feel my seam split.

And not just any seam. The seam at the back of the skirt. The seam that, up to this point, has barely been holding the spangly red fabric together over my county-sized, thong-clad bum.

Okay. Game over. I have to get out of here.

“Water!” I yelp, as Jay turns back towards me with a glass of champagne. “I . . . I’d actually really like a glass of water.”

“Water?”

“Yes, water. I’m feeling . . .” I sit back down, very suddenly, which I realize is going to be the best way to hide the calamitous split until I can make an escape. “. . . a bit dizzy all of a sudden.”

“Oh, my God, are you okay?” Jay crouches beside me, concern on his handsome face. “Do you need something else to eat? Another canapé?”

“Mmm, yes . . . I mean, no! No, just that water.”

“Of course.” He goes into his pocket, presumably for his phone. “I’ll call Annabel, have her get one of the staff to bring up a bottle . . .”

“No! You have to go and get it! What I mean,” I carry on, when he looks rather startled, “is that I’d rather nobody else came up here. It would . . . ruin the atmosphere.”

“Okay. I’ll go and grab some water and come right back up.” He straightens and heads for the elevator. “I’ll be two minutes, Charlie, that’s all.”

“No hurry. Take as long as you need!”

The moment the elevator doors close behind him, I’m scrambling back up to my feet again.

Okay—I have to think fast. There has to be another way down from here that doesn’t just involve waiting for the elevator to creak its way back up, probably with Jay already back
in it. Or, I realize, as I peer over the edge of the railings, down to the ground five floors below, one that doesn’t involve my suddenly developing the power of flight . . .

Oh, a drainpipe! Thank God, there’s a drainpipe!

I’ve been pretty good with drainpipes ever since my teenage years, when Diana would ban me from going to any party she knew I particularly wanted to go to, then go out for the evening herself and lock me inside the house without a key. Admittedly I haven’t shimmied down a drainpipe for roughly twelve years, nor have I ever done so from quite such a height, nor have I ever done so in a skin-tight minidress and heels, with my basically bare bum peeping out the back . . . but beggars really can’t be choosers. And if I’m really trying to look on the bright side, I weigh a good thirty pounds less than I did the last time I went down a drainpipe, with thighs strengthened to near steel by all those painful hours of squatting and lunging.

There’s a narrow ledge on the other side of the railings that I need to get to before I can lower myself onto the drainpipe, and I can’t possibly risk wobbling off it in my spindly heels. With shaking hands, I unbuckle my shoes, take them off, and grip the narrow ankle straps between my teeth. Then I clamp my clutch bag under one arm while—easily enough, now that my skirt is split open at what was previously the tightest point—kicking first one leg, then the other, over the railings.

It’s only a couple of (extremely) careful paces along the ledge until I reach the drainpipe. I lower myself to my knees, hold on very, very tightly to the railings, then slide my legs over the edge of the ledge and around the sides of the drainpipe.

Jesus
, it’s high up here. I start to inch my way down the drainpipe: knees first, then hands, knees again, then hands again. It’s slow going, but steady, and when I’ve inched my way down a couple of stories, I get up the courage to glance down for a moment. About ten feet below me—on the floor where
that bass line has been thudding from all evening—I can see that there’s a jutting balcony that would break my fall if I were to slip at this very moment. Which is good news! I mean, I’m not so jaded by this evening’s (myriad) disasters that I can’t recognize good news when I see it.

The bad news, however, is that there’s someone standing on the balcony, looking up at me. More precisely, let’s face it, looking up at my great big, mooning bum.

“Er—madam? Are you okay up there?” the someone calls up to me, through cupped hands.

I don’t say anything. I can’t say anything, because I’ve got my shoe straps clenched between my teeth. So I just make a kind of
hhnngggg
noise, which is meant to mean
I’m perfectly fine, thank you, no need for any concern!

“Oh, God . . .” The someone has clearly mistaken
hhnngggg
for
Save me, save me, I’m semi-naked and stuck halfway down a drainpipe
. “Look, I’m going to go and get some help, okay?”

“No!” This time I open my mouth so I can speak properly. I regret it when my shoe straps slip out of my mouth, sending the shoes dropping to the garden below. “I’m perfectly fine! Nothing to see here!”

“Er—actually, there’s quite a lot to see here.”

This is when I realize that the someone on the balcony has an extremely familiar voice.

Heart thudding more than ever, I risk a proper glance downward. Which is when my suspicions are confirmed.

“
Ferdy?
” I blurt, before I can stop myself.

“How do you know my . . . oh, my God.” He’s clearly recognized my voice, too. (Well, there’s no way he could have recognized me by my bum. Is there?) “
Charlie?
Is that you?”

“Yes. Hi, there.” I try to sound nonchalant, as if I’ve just bumped into him in the deli aisle at Sainsbury’s. Hopefully this will trick him into thinking this isn’t quite so mortifying after all. “So! I didn’t realize you knew Jay Broderick.”

“I don’t. I’m here with a Chill stall. The party planner read about Chill in
Time Out
a few weeks ago, and she called and asked if I could . . .” He stops, almost certainly realizing that we’re not, in fact, in the deli aisle at Sainsbury’s, and that it’s utterly absurd to be holding this conversation when I’m ten feet above him, clinging to a drainpipe, with my bum hanging out. “Okay, Charlie, this is ridiculous. We need to get you down from there. I mean, for crying out loud, what are you even doing shimmying down a drainpipe in the first place?”

“Well, I went up to the roof garden with Jay, and then my dress ripped . . .”

“
He ripped your dress?
”

“No, no! I ripped my own dress! Look,” I carry on, a bit desperately, “can you just turn your back for a moment, please, while I come down the rest of the way? I mean, I’m sure you can’t have failed to notice that I’m slightly underdressed in the skirt department, and . . .”

“Hey! Excuse me!” There’s a sudden shout, coming from the top of the house.

It’s Jay, leaning over the edge of the roof garden. I panic for a moment that he’s seen me, but I think—God, I
hope—
he can only see Ferdy from this angle.

“Mate,” he goes on, confirming my hope, “I don’t suppose you’ve seen a girl down there or anything?”

I flatten myself against the side of the house.

“A girl?” Ferdy shouts back up to him.

“Yeah. Blond. Red dress. Stunning.”

“
Stunning
, you say?” echoes Ferdy, in a deliberate tone that I know is meant for my benefit rather than Jay’s.

“Yes. In a red dress,” Jay calls. “Kind of short.”

“Wait—the girl is short or the dress is short?”

“The dress!”

“You’ve mislaid a stunning girl in a short, red dress?” Ferdy calls. “God, I’m really sorry. Sounds like a pretty bum deal.”

Part of me almost—
almost
—laughs out loud. The part of me that knows I’ll find all this funny in about thirty years. The rest of me—the part of me that’s clinging to a drainpipe, hiding from a devastatingly sexy man who I’d quite like to be getting off with right now—remains steadfastly unamused.

“Yeah, I thought she might have gone down the drainpipe or something, because there’s no other way . . .” Jay sounds truly perplexed. “Well, never mind. Thanks anyway, mate.”

“No problem!”

A moment later, Ferdy hisses, in a theatrical whisper, “I think we’re alone now!”

“Turn around again!” I hiss back as I start to shimmy, as fast as possible now, down the drainpipe towards the balcony. When I reach that level, it’s only a short stretch to be able to get my hands on the balustrade, and then I can swing my legs over onto the balcony itself.

It’s only now that I realize that Ferdy is wearing a weird, red-and-white-striped blazer, a red bow tie, and a funny little straw boater hat. It’s bizarre and, in the shadows that are being cast from the rooms on the other side of the balcony, rather creepy.

“The uniform for the night,” he says, when he turns around and realizes that I’m staring at him. “All the food-stall–holders are wearing it. As decreed by Broderick. Sorry—by your close personal friend and expert bodice-ripper. You know—
Jay
.”

“He’s not a bodice-ripper. I told you, I ripped the dress myself. Or rather, my bloody great bum did.” I don’t even care anymore about drawing Ferdy’s attention to my least-favorite body part. After all, he’s had a pretty good eyeful of it tonight. And I’m so suddenly, savagely, miserable about everything that’s just gone so horribly wrong, after such dizzying heights of glory just a few minutes ago, that I don’t even care.

But then Ferdy slips off his stripy blazer and puts it over my shoulders. “There. To protect your modesty.”

“Thank you.” I put my arms through the blazer, which is so huge on me that it does, thank God, cover my exposed backside. “And thank you for covering for me just now. With Jay, I mean.”

“It’s no problem.” Ferdy is gazing down at me. “I didn’t even know you knew Jay Broderick, Charlie, let alone well enough to go cavorting with him in rooftop gardens.”

“We weren’t
cavorting
! We were just chatting.”

“Ah, yes. I’m sure Jay Broderick does a lot of chatting in rooftop gardens. I mean, that’s the kind of thing they enjoy, these super-rich playboys—having a really good chat.”