Page 25 of Cover Story

I’m on a top secret op, thanks

You’re in Topshop more like x

She knew what he was chiefly aggrieved about: he enjoyed Bel’s company and despised Connor’s and, in Aaron’s mind, she was isolating him with a man ‘who’s like a human desiccant. Human gherkin jar brine.’

Bel was waiting for a certain combination of circumstances to action the second part of her Ci Vediamo plan. After nine days’ hard slog of pretending to be a well-heeled Wi-Fi scrounger, on the Thursday, at 5.45 p.m., those circumstances finally seemed to arrive.

Amber was inches away over Bel’s shoulder, peering boredly at her phone. Bel prayed she wouldn’t saunter off, and messaged Shilpa.

You’re UP.

17

Bel’s phone buzzed with a FaceTime incoming. She moved her sunglasses to her head and propped the phone on its pop socket, against a cup. She’d changed her plain rubber case to a hardcover one featuring a raven-haired anime girl eating ramen. She didn’t really know what she was conveying with this choice, and decided Bella didn’t either.Just liked the aesthetic.

‘Hiiiii,’ she said, chin on hand, speaking at a pitch and volume where she hoped to immediately activate eavesdropping instincts.

‘Hiiiii,’ Shilpa trilled back. Then, as if she was somehow sending the question up with her intonation:‘How’re you?’

(They’d practiced their ironic-yet-not-ironic mannered cadences. ‘Just a touch of vocal fry, not too much,’ Bel instructed. ‘We’ll lose sight of whether we’ve gone full Paris Hilton otherwise.’)

‘You know your job is mad as shit, don’t you?’ Shilpa had said.

‘Oh my God, babe, so much.’

‘Yeah, good. I’m working,’ Bel said. ‘Well, working at this nice bar I’ve found.’ She picked up her phone and swooped it around for a panorama. ‘Yeah, in Didsbury. It’s my Didsbo season. What’s up?’

‘So … Maya says she’s not had your deposit for Cancun? Was checking everything is OK?’

‘Ehm,’ Bel adjusted her sunglasses on her head and fiddled with her hair, ‘I meant to talk to you about that. I can’t come, I’m so sorry. I am sooooo skint. We’ll do a lush lunch at The Ivy instead? Or go for Mexican food here, hah.’

Shilpa left the stunned pause they’d rehearsed, in a read-through that left them both hysterical, after ad libbing. (‘If you can’t stop yourself laughing at any point, end the call,’ Bel advised. ‘It’ll just look like you bitch-slap cut me off and I can call you back.’)

‘Sorry, but what the fuck, Bella? You’re still doing New York in the autumn, but you can’t do my hen?’

‘I’d paid for those flights before you said where your hen was!’

‘Oh, cos you thought my hen would be in RHYL?’

‘It’s not personal, Shilpa, it’s money!’ Bel hissed, face warm with the peculiar exertion of the performance, which usefully looked like appropriate emotion. ‘I would if I could.’

‘Translation, getting pissed in Manhattan with those random idiots is more important than one of your best friends? More than something I’ll only do once in my life?’

‘Five-star hotel! Le Blanc Spa is crazy money. I know the other girls are stretching themselves too.’

‘Implying what? Thatno onewants to go?’

‘I didn’t say that, I mean it’s expensive.’

‘If you couldn’t afford it you could’ve told me, I could help. You can borrow it?’

‘I don’t want to get into more debt. I’ve got three weddings this year, it’s breaking me.’

‘Three weddings, and how many hens? Two?’

‘Yeah.’

‘So you’re going on the other hens?’

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