Page 55 of Cover Story

‘Trivia round, what perfume do you wear? It’s unusual?’ Connor said, interpreting it correctly.

‘Oh,’ Bel said, feeling her skin pinken with self-consciousness that he’d got that close, and noticed, ‘Malin + Goetz Dark Rum.’

‘Booze as a scent? I like it. Jen always wore jasmine something or other.’

Bel decided it wasn’t the moment to share Shilpa’s conviction that ‘Bitches wear jasmine. Not all jasmine wearers are bitches but all bitches like jasmine. Scientific fact.’

‘How are you bearing up regards Jen?’ Bel said, carefully.

‘Shamefully well. It should be a lot more difficult than it is and it’s now obvious I had been shuffling “break up” down the to-do list for months, if not a year, and I shouldn’t have. She called me out on that, in fact.’

Bel hesitated. ‘She called you out? Didn’t she send you the bombshell nude?’

‘Yup. Jen got over the ignominy of the misfired topless selfie very quickly and then it became a savage indictment of my lackof caring that she was lured into sexting with the other guy, when minutes away from seeing me.’

‘That’s …’ Bel paused.

‘Say it.’

‘An inspiring degree of self-esteem,’ Bel concluded, ‘I want to “match her freak”, as they say.’

Connor burst out laughing. For an unwary split second she thought she saw Actual Like on his face.

She bolted upstairs and changed, reappearing as Bella with hair in a long plait over one shoulder, bright red lipstick and matching shift dress (£25, Vinted). (There was something peculiarly freeing about trying on someone else’s taste, even if that person didn’t exist, Bel observed.)

‘You look really nice,’ Connor said, and sounded genuinely approving, brushing the last of his Old Fashioned from the corner of his mouth.

‘Of course you think I look nice, I’m dressing completely differently to my own taste.’

‘You could find the coded insult in absolutely anything I say, couldn’t you?’

The doorbell rang at a punctual five past seven. The food smelled great, the lighting was glimmering-perfect, the music was the right level, candles lit, glasses out, their eyes lightly spangled by cocktail.

If only this wasn’t a sinister masquerade.

32

‘I’ve never seen Gerts like this with anyone other than Rick,’ Amber said, ‘Duchess Gerts, you’re such a flirt!’

It had been established that Duchess Gerts: 1. Loved Connor 2. Loved cheese and lamb and 3. Was sufficiently happy that she retained sovereign control of her bowels, for the time being.

Though Bel worried for Connor’s Levis if that changed, given she was now perched in his lap like a baby, worried eyes and flat nose peering over the edge of the dining-room table.

Connor had happily scooped her up after she pawed his leg, and now they were a devoted couple.

The necessity of bringing their pug was, in fact, an extraordinary stroke of luck: fussing over a small creature was in British DNA– Connor was a dog person, and Gertie absorbed any anxious oxygen in the room in an instant.

Despite the concealed apprehension on the part of the hosts, when Amber, Rick and airborne-in-arms Gertie clattered through the door, Rick bearing an entire box of bottles of red wine, the evening had effortless momentum.

‘I didn’t know if you were winepeople, you know? When Bella said bring red, I panicked and fired up the Wine Society site and bought anything expensive and French.’

‘You’d think I’d know, running a wine bar, but we sell a lot of rosé– that chicken wine!– and cocktails,’ Amber shrugged. She was slinky in a long bias cut silk skirt, shoulder-grazing hoop earrings and her trademark slicked-back Grace Kelly hair.

‘Girl dinners,’ Bel said.

Rick wasn’t as standoffish as Bel originally thought, simply stretched too far by the number of introductions when they last met. Bel was disarmed by him, apologising instantly: ‘I’d stopped taking information in by the time we met, I’d gone fugue state, hahaha.’

He was the creative director at a marketing agency and said ‘don’t make me explain’ and Connor said: ‘What if none of us talked about employment all evening?Forcedourselves.’

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