Page 24 of Cover Story

Bel laughed. She logged off, high on the fumes of unexpected victory. Still open on her screen were Amber Kendrick’s Instagram and Facebook accounts, and the wine bar’s website.

Now she had to become someone’s new best friend overnight. Her mind wandered to Shilpa’s winning familiarity in Schofield’s Bar, as collector of people, what Bel once called her platonic promiscuity. And she thought,there’syour role model.

Actually, that had given Bel an idea.

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Bel stared at herself in the mirror after a third reapplication of Lisa Eldridge’s Sunday Matinée lipstick and repeated the internal mantra:yourself, but different.

With no experience at creating alter ego identities, Bel decided her point of reference was her belief that the most convincing lies are part-truth.

Ergo, Bella Niven (her mother’s maiden name) wasn’t some parody of an Amber Kendrick friend, but a special-event Bel with the volume turned up.

Bella was far more overtly girly and–whisper it– it had been quite fun to play fancy dress. Today she’d had a salon blow dry with heat-tonged curls pushed back from her face with a bejewelled headband. Her make-up, courtesy of a wedding trial in Selfridges, was a full face with kittenish thin liquid eyeliner flicks and rosy mouth. Her ‘it’s a boy!’ baby-blue nails and toes had been painted by a professional.

For outfits, she’d dug into the section of her wardrobe she thought of as special event and repurposed it to weekday. Ditto footwear. She practiced traversing the apartment in a pair of three-inch high lace-up boots. Usually an activity-ring-closing walker, she’d have to become an Uber-to-the-door princess.

Finally, she’d rented a YSL bag on a thirty-day lease: the idea was she’d keep switching to give the impression of a sizeable collection.

None of this was strictly necessary, of course, except Bel thought a costume would be extremely helpful when play-acting. In order to behave differently, it helped tolookdifferent.

Her squeamishness about the deceit hidden under these layers. Erin’s interests trumped Amber’s– yet who had made Bel the judge? Only Bel. Heavy was the head that wore the bejewelled headband.

She had also studied the women of Amber Kendrick’s world, and this attire should see her fit right in. God bless those who set their social media profiles public– the harvest for Bel was plentiful. As with Glenn, she felt she’d already met Amber.

Her friends were shiny, spendy, rosé wine with ice cubes in glasses held aloft for the photo clink, Palma-villa holidaying, animal-print wearing, Pomapoo dog and Ragdoll cat-owning, noisy party girls.

Amber herself was a little sleeker and sportier than her glam squad coven: long balayage hair often worn pulled back, Grace Kelly severe, from small, balanced features, her long, stretchy dresses with cut-outs showcasing a lithe figure, her feet regularly in immaculate Superga sneakers.

Bel wondered if it was because her friends aspired to a lifestyle, and Amber had always had it. If you’re born into high-rolling, you don’t need to dress like a WAG to prove anything. It could also be because running a bar involved being on your feet a lot.

Bel gleaned all this from Instagrams of Amber gripping an Aperol Spritz with a fluoro manicure, or posing in fairy wings,Burberry anorak and body glitter at Glastonbury, or hanging baubles on a department store-sized Christmas tree. In a line-up, Bel could also now confidently identify her prematurely silver-haired fox boyfriend, Rick, usually seen with their pug, Gertie. The chatter in the comments between Amber and her friends allowed her to catch the tone, the mood, the jokes.

Bel felt she was learning a new language, one where she’d be using the upspeaking inflection.

Ci Vediamowas one of the more footballers’-wivesy bars in Didsbury, screened from the street by a ring of potted palm trees strung with festoon bulb lights. It had an outdoor pavement café area and inside, dark leather booths separated by sprays of ferns. A bar area, lit by a row of glass globe pendant lamps, ran across the back wall.

It was a brasserie by day, with a menu of expensive, high protein girl’s brunches of eggs, avocado and smoked salmon, the health mirage ruined by the ubiquity of bowls of their ‘house speciality’ invention, smoked chilli-tomato fries with aioli, which Bel was pretty sure the Spanish invented first and called patatas bravas. Accessorised by pint-sized Bloody Marys, crammed with pickled chillies and leafy sticks of celery, as if three of your five-a-day could come from 11.00 a.m. alcohol.

All in all, it said the good life, large disposable income,come and get accidentally wasted when it was only meant to be a mid-afternoon catch-up over flat whites.The kind of place that was especially popular in lockdown: outdoor seating plus neighbourhood-based piss-up.

Also key for Bel in the Ci Vediamo layout was that undesirable table, closest to the bar. Squeezed in for profit maximisation,its occupants inadvertently able to listen in to conversations between the staff and to be overheard in turn. There was a cash register– possibly with the iPad under lock and key beneath it– right above it. If you scanned the whole room it was probably the least desirable table for being squeezed in, and yet ideal for covert surveillance purposes.

Bella, also thirty-four (the less you changed, the fewer chances of slip up, she reasoned), was a knitwear designer for a London company, who worked remotely– thank you, Shilpa, for sending some relevant-looking documents. And, rather like her inspiration, got bored of the same four walls.

So Bella had come up with an idea that she was going to work in different postcodes of the city to liven things up a bit, and June was Didsbury’s turn.

All week, Bella had put in a couple of hours stint a day at Ci Vediamo, sipping an iced macchiato (her alt liked milk: gone were Bel’s Americanos) and tap-tapping at her MacBook Air, AirPods in but no sound playing. Observing out of the corner of her eye as the youthful proprietor breezed in and out and chatted to staff, waited the odd table.

She and Amber had no interactions, though Bel felt her appraising gaze sweep over her a few times. It was a place with enough regulars that being new was noticed. This was why it was important not to attract attention until she had bedded in a little.

Bel repeatedly made her excuses at the newspaper’s Deansgate office around lunchtime: ‘Working from home again this afternoon’ before nipping back to Ancoats to don her Bella costume.

Aaron made disbelieving noises, Connor maintained hiscouldn’t-care-if-you-live-or-die-or-work-from-a-deep-ocean-submersibleindifference.

Aaron pinged her phone by day three:

Have you finally quit? Never known such a part timer

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