Charlie Glass's Slippers (23 page)

But now that I’m almost at her grave, that all feels wrong.

I know this is really illogical, but I just have this uncomfortable, unsettling feeling that Mum isn’t going to recognize me.

This was a bad, bad plan.

Three rows away from Mum’s grave, I deposit the half-dozen pink roses instead at the headstone of a Much-Loved Husband, Father and Grandfather named William Austin. Then I turn around and head back towards the gates, starting to run again as soon as I’m out on Harrow Road.

chapter fifteen

G
alina, when I shuffle
shamefacedly into Skin Deep at lunchtime on Tuesday, can scarcely contain her glee.

“You are here for showgirl wax!”

“Well, yes, that’s right, Galina.”

“You are meeting nice man at party? You are going on date with him?”

“As a matter of fact, I am.” I follow her through the curtain and into the torture chamber. “I’m going out to dinner with him.”

“You are taking knickers off.”

“No! Absolutely not, Galina, not on a first date—I don’t care how sexy he is. It’s just dinner.”

“I mean you are taking knickers off now, please,” she says, rolling her eyes and waggling a pair of paper knickers at me. “I am wanting to start with Brazilian.”

“Oh. I see.”

My hands are trembling with (what I assume are) pre-wax nerves, as I manage to get my knickers off and the paper ones on while Galina’s back is still turned, while she fiddles with her pot of burning-hot wax.

When she turns around, dripping spatula in hand, her eyes widen in sudden and theatrical horror.

“Is like Enchanted Forest down there.”

I feel my face flooding with color. “Well, I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration.”

“Is not. If I am looking hard enough, I think I am finding Sleeping Beauty!”

She chuckles at her own joke. I remain grimly offended.

“But is no problem, Sharlee. I am growing up near Kazlu Ruda forests in Lithuania. If is anyone who can be hacking way through, is me.” She brandishes her spatula at me in a Churchillian fashion before leaning down, uncomfortably close to bits of me that I usually avoid letting people get close to, hiking up one side of the paper knickers, and starting to paint a hot layer of wax beneath. “So, before date you are thinking also spray tan? You are paler than when I see you last week. Tanned is looking more slim.”

“
Really?
” I’m kicking myself, now, for not realizing this. “Oh, God, Galina, then I’d better get a spray tan, too!”

“Is good decision. I will fit you in for spray tan tomorrow lunchtime.”

“Oh, no, that’s no good. I mean, do you have any time today? Can you fit it in after the wax, for example?”

She laughs, ringingly. “You cannot be getting spray tan on same day as wax! Tan will collect in open pores! Will be looking ridiculous! Anyway, skin will still be red and sore from wax until tomorrow.”

I stare at her. “Tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“But . . . I’m going out on my date
tonight
!”

Galina falls silent.

“Then this is
big
mistake,” she says, after a moment. She’s regarding, with great sorrow, the portion of me that she’s just slathered hot wax all over. “Tonight you will still be looking like plucked chicken.”

I lift my head so I can see where she’s already put the wax.
It spreads, a thick and yellowing crust of it, all the way down one side of my ill-fated lady parts and halfway down my inner thigh. “And is there . . . any way of getting this off without the plucked chicken effect?”

She shakes her head. “Is not. But you are saying he is not going to see this area on first date,” she adds, rather slyly. “You are saying is just dinner.”

I’m too appalled to reply. Anyway, I have to brace myself for the agony that’s bound to follow when she rips this wax off.

Before she rips it off, however, she’s suddenly distracted by something several inches farther down, below my hips.

“You are having orange-peel skin on thigh,” she says, with interest. “When you are coming in for spray tan, Sharlee, I can be giving you cellulite treatment for that.”

• • •

Me and my poor, plucked-chicken lady parts are just on our way out of Galina’s salon when my mobile rings. Maggie is calling.

“Charlie? Where are you? Are you at the store?”

“Yep, I’m here right now,” I say, fishing for the keys in my bag as I approach the door. “What’s up?”

“I’ve got amazing news! The
Evening Standard
wants to profile Glass Slippers in their magazine section on Friday!”

“The
Evening Standard
? As in . . . the newspaper?”

“Yes! I was on the phone just now to my friend Heather, who’s the fashion editor for the magazine section, and she was
so
excited about your dad’s shoes being relaunched that she wants to do a full article about them, with photos and everything!”

I’m speechless for a moment (though this is only partly because of Maggie’s incredible news. It’s also partly because the tops of my red-raw thighs have just rubbed together in a most uncomfortable way, and I have to concentrate on absorbing
the pain so I don’t yowl out loud), but when I can speak, I say, “Maggie, that’s amazing.”

“I know!”

“But . . . oh, dear. I don’t know if we can actually do a Glass Slippers photo shoot when I don’t even have permission from the directors to do the relaunch yet.”

“Oh. Right.” Maggie thinks for a moment. “Okay, so I’ll tell Heather to make the article a kind of retrospective about your dad’s classic collections. It can just say that celebrities and fashionistas are clamoring to get their hands on vintage Elroy Glass shoes. Which is true, let’s face it. We needn’t actually say they’re going to be for sale, or anything. In fact, thinking they can’t get their hands on them will only make people want them all the more!”

I have to admit, it’s pretty brilliant.

“So, look. You’re going to have to stop whatever you were planning on doing this morning and get the store ready for the photo shoot there this afternoon.”

“
This afternoon?
”

“Well, obviously, Charlie. I mean, if they’re going to get into print on Friday it has to be done ASAP. But honestly, there’s no need to panic or anything. The store is a perfect space for a shoot at the moment because it’s so empty. All you need to do is get the place spruced up and start bringing down some of the best shoe options for Heather to pick out for the model to wear.”

“She’s bringing an actual model?” This is an even bigger deal than I thought. But even as I’m digesting this, something suddenly occurs to me. “Oh, God, Maggie, should I call Robyn and see if she’s available to model instead? I mean, she does all the shoots for Elroy Glass, and I know she’d—”

“Charlie, are you nuts? Quite apart from the fact that your sister is borderline insane, don’t you think Glass Slippers needs a totally different image from Elroy Glass?”

It’s a fair point. As is the one about Robyn being borderline insane. And anyway, this is a huge moment for me: my first ever fashion photo shoot! The last thing I need is interference from my sisters. So I tell Maggie I’ll start getting things spruced up and shoes brought down and snacks brought in. Though she doesn’t seem anywhere near as concerned about the snacks part as I am, perhaps because she’s accustomed to working with fashion editors and models and knows that the maximum refreshment that will pass their lips is a sip or two of sparkling mineral water and a morsel of sashimi.

“Just one more thing,” I ask her before I end the call. “How long will the shoot take, do you think? It’s just that I have . . .” I don’t want to say the words
a date
. Talking about it with Lucy yesterday, not to mention Galina just now, has made me even more nervous about it, and increasingly convinced that I’ve somehow imagined the whole thing. “. . . plans. For this evening.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” Maggie reassures me. “They’ll get there at about three and it shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours to get the shots they need. They’re a newspaper supplement, not a glossy fashion magazine, so they won’t labor over it forever. Anyway, I’ll try and pop by this afternoon if I can, but I’m due at Stella’s new fragrance launch at four, so the timing might be impossible . . .”

“You can’t make it?” I feel a small swell of panic (overriding the little frisson of excitement that I now, somehow, live in a world where the people I know attend fragrance launch parties for Stella McCartney). “So . . . I have to do this on my own?”

“Well, yes, but there’s nothing to it, Charlie, honestly. Heather will know exactly what she needs. All you have to do is facilitate. You’ll be fine, my lovely, I promise you. God—look, I need to dash now,” she adds, as the clicking of her heels gets a little louder. “I’m due at a client’s in ten minutes.
Look, try and enjoy the shoot, Charlie—that’s my best advice to you,” Maggie adds, rather breathlessly, before she rings off. “I mean, come on—isn’t it all starting to get very, very exciting?”

• • •

Well, yes. The shoot, now that it’s happening, is very, very exciting. Very, very exciting indeed.

It’s just that it’s
been
very, very exciting for the past five hours. Which is an awful lot longer than Maggie said it would take. And which does mean, just a little bit, that the excitement levels have started to wane. Especially since there isn’t even an obvious end in sight.

The problems began when Katya, the model, arrived forty-five minutes late (delays on the Circle Line, apparently, although the bags she was carrying from the Anthropologie store just a few blocks away along King’s Road did make her claims ever so slightly unconvincing); the problems continued when Heather, the fashion editor, got into a half-hour-long disagreement with Rufus, the hair and makeup artist, about whether Katya’s hair should be swept off her face in a slick ponytail or tumbling in waves around her shoulders; the problems got worse when Katya didn’t like the first outfit that had been picked out for her, went into a strop, and cried when Heather wouldn’t let her call her agent; and everything got worse still when the photographer got bored of the tears and waiting for the hair decision to be made and wandered off for a smoke and in search of something to eat (I
knew
I should have provided more than just sparkling mineral water and supermarket sushi), stopped answering his phone, and reappeared only fifteen minutes ago.

Jay is meant to be picking me up in half an hour’s time. I am meant to be showered, coiffed, fully made up, and attractively attired by then.

This date isn’t going to happen, is it? I knew it was all too good to be true. I’m going to have to call him and cancel.

Or rather, I’m going to have to
text
him and cancel, because right at this very minute I’m meant to be deciding whether I want Katya, the model, to wear the scarlet platforms or the (Madonna-approved) cobalt-blue Mary Janes in the next shot, and if I don’t make the decision pretty sharpish, I’m scared that the photographer is going to wander off again and then we’ll all be here until Christmas.

“The red platforms. Definitely,” I tell Heather, because in all honesty I think they’re both terrific shoes, and that they both look equally terrific on the end of Katya’s skinny, gazelle-like legs.

“You’re sure?” She wrinkles her nose, gazing between the shoe options as if she’s reliving
Sophie’s Choice
, and as if it truly is a matter of life or death. “I guess that could work, if we put her in the pencil skirt rather than the capri pants . . .” Heather’s head is on one side as she wrestles with this dilemma. “But if we put her in the skirt, her hair is going to be all wrong . . .”

“Christ, no. I mean, no. I mean, why don’t we just stick with the capri pants and the hair the way it is?” The prospect of Heather and Rufus getting into another half-hour debate about ponytails is just too horrendous to contemplate. Though mind you, now that I’ve texted Jay
(Really sorry but I need to take a rain check. Stuck at store for work. Call you later?)
while Heather has been mid-ponder, I guess it doesn’t make all that much difference if I’m here all bloody night.

“I don’t know . . . maybe neither shoe is right. What happened to the tan sandals I saw earlier?” Heather is down on her scrawny knees now, rifling through the shoe boxes that are spilling all over one side of the store. Across the other side, the photographer sits down heavily on one of the chairs I’ve dragged down from the stockroom and starts laboriously checking his camera equipment, and Katya slumps sulkily
against the wall, making a big I-could-call-my-agent-any-minute pantomime with her iPhone. Rufus simply busies himself with some hot rollers and glances up, briefly, to roll his eyes at me. “If we put those with the capri pants, and if you could line up some of the more conservative court shoes to go with the pencil skirt . . .”

She breaks off, because the door to the street is opening and a neat head of dark hair is appearing around it.

It’s Gaby.

Worse: it’s Gaby in a thunderous mood. I can tell, instantly, by the warlike set of her narrow shoulders and the sheer level of irritable energy she’s giving off. (That’s if I couldn’t tell by the scowl on her face and the fact that she’s opening her mouth to berate me before she’s even taken more than a couple of steps inside the store.)

“What the fuck, Charlie?” She bangs the door shut behind her and stalks towards me, heels practically piercing each wooden floorboard she steps across. “Didn’t you think you ought to let me know about this? I mean, I am only the bloody PR director, after all.”

“Gaby, I . . . how did you even know?” I want to curse myself for sounding so weak, for falling into the trap of seeming to admit that I’ve done something shady by agreeing to the shoot in the first place.

“Your BFF Maggie O’Day. I ran into her at Stella’s perfume launch earlier. Not that she even had the decency to come over and tell me herself. She was busy showing off about all the great press she was already getting you, and thank God I got wind of it.”

“Well, sure, but Gaby . . .” I realize that all the others in the room have stopped what they’re doing—from rifling through shoe boxes to fiddling with hot rollers—and are staring at us. I can’t really blame them. It’s probably the most genuinely exciting thing that has happened at this shoot ever since we
started it. I take Gaby by the arm and lead her out of the room and towards the staircase, where at least we’ll have a modicum of privacy. “Gaby . . . um . . . you’re PR director for Elroy Glass. Not the PR director for Glass Slippers.”