three

JEANS GO WITH EVERYTHING

You can only worry about what’s going on at the time. That’s one of life’s weird ironies. Because so many times afterward, you look back and think, God, that’s what I was fussing about? Talk about a total lack of proportion! I’d give anything to go back in time and be dealing with those tiny little issues, instead of the great big problems I’m wrestling with now.

But hey, welcome to the wonderful world of hindsight.

Because I don’t know right now that I’m being set up. I don’t know that Dan McAndrew is going to die at that party. All I do know is that I’m obsessed with two worries going round and round in my head, and (because I can’t see into the future) they seem like the two most important things in the world, like an eclipse blocking out the sun, so I can’t focus on schoolwork, gymnastics, anything but them: (a) Will Luce and Alison ever forgive me? And (b) What the hell am I going to wear to Nadia’s party?

I’m horribly ashamed to admit this, but the second question is the one that’s bothering me more. And I know what an awful person that makes me. I should feel terrible about turning my back on my friends like that, and I do. When I think about Alison and Luce, and the fact that they’re sending me to Coventry at the moment—not speaking to me, not looking at me, basically pretending I don’t exist—I get an awful sinking feeling in my stomach.

And when I think about the party, I feel like sick is rising in the back of my throat. Why on earth did I agree to go? I barely know anyone to say more than two words to. I don’t travel in their world in any way. Their specialist subjects are the classics.

And I don’t mean Latin and ancient Greek. I mean the real St. Tabby’s classics: where to get the best manicure, which is the best month to go to Saint-Tropez, which boys will raise your social status, and how to get on the special pre-sale-viewing list for whichever shoe designer is hot this year.

And no, I’m not familiar with these topics from personal experience. But if you have any classes with Plum or Nadia or Venetia, or if you’re simply stuck behind them as they take their time going upstairs in those wobbly stilettos, you can’t help learning more about them than you ever wanted to know. It’s all they bang on about. You’d think St. Tabby’s was a Swiss finishing school with classes in flower-arranging and how to get out of Porsches, the way they carry on.

And yes, I’m jealous of how glamorous and photograph-able their lives are, and that’s why I sound bitter. No point denying that, is there?

I stare at the contents of my wardrobe. This is a joke. I don’t know why I’m even looking. I know already that I don’t have anything to wear to a party at Nadia Farouk’s penthouse flat in Knightsbridge. That in itself—not having anything to wear—wouldn’t be an insuperable obstacle. The true problem is that I know enough about fashion to recognize that I don’t have the right thing to wear, but not enough to know what that would be.

Hell and damnation.

I glance around my room, which doesn’t represent me, because this isn’t my home. It’s a guest room, complete with white walls and tasteful engravings of fruits and flowers, which are echoed in the chintz curtains and bedspread. Sounds a bit like a classy hotel, doesn’t it? I’m not allowed to put up posters, or even framed prints. No making holes in the walls. In a way, it’s a little girl’s dream room: it’s very pretty. But it’s not me. It’s never been me.

No wonder I’ve been spending all my time hanging out with Alison and Luce. But suddenly I feel as if I’ve been hiding in Alison’s basement for the last few years: hiding from everything. Life. Boys. The universe.

And though I know that’s a gigantic exaggeration—after all, it’s not like I was invited to a ton of parties I didn’t go to, it’s not like a ton of boys asked me out and I turned them all down—I’m also aware that there’s more than a grain of truth in it. I’ve been at school, or doing gymnastics, or hanging out with the girls I met through gymnastics, for the last few years. I didn’t take any risks—apart from throwing myself through the air trying to do a twisting back layout and land on my feet rather than my head, of course.

It’s not surprising that I grabbed at the first thing resembling security that came along—drowning girl and life preserver ring spring to mind, though it’s such an obvious analogy that my English teacher would write “NO NO NO LAZY LAZY!!!!!” if I tried to use it in an essay. (She’s not big on sparing your feelings.) But maybe it’s time to push aside the life preserver and start swimming on my own?

Not that I have much choice, actually. I doubt that Alison and Luce will ever speak to me again.

I sit down on the corner of my bed and stare out the window at the view. Thick green leaves from tall, sweeping trees frame two elegant large white houses across Holland Park, which is the wide street on which this house (equally white, equally large, equally elegant) is set. Occasionally a red double-decker bus passes by along Holland Park. I can see the top deck, but its passengers aren’t remotely close enough to peer into my window. These houses are built on a slight rise, and their lawns slope down gently to high stone walls, lined with trees, to provide plenty of shade and privacy. I’ve spent a lot of time lying out on the lawn, reading in the sunshine. By myself, of course, because I’m not allowed to bring any friends back to the house. That’s one of the conditions of living here.

It’s lonely. But I do have the whole attic to myself. Which includes my own bathroom.

Looking at the view from my bedroom window is what I always do when I’m confused, or upset, or unhappy. Rain or shine, gray skies or blue, it never fails to center me and calm me down. I think: If this were a project at school, an exam I wanted to pass, what would I do?

And then I think: Research. I need to research my way through it.

For the first time since being invited to that party, I feel as if I might be able to get things just a bit under control.

“Oh my God! Look at that bag! It’s the definition of pretty!” exclaims Girl A.

“Oh yah!” replies Girl B, which is how really posh girls say “yes.” “If that bag was a girl, all the boys would be totally in love with her.”

This exchange is followed by a round of self-conscious giggles at their own cleverness.

I shrink against the changing-room wall. And not because of their idiot banter—it’s like hearing boys on the bus repeating lines from comedy films that were hilarious on-screen, but crash and burn in the mouths of talentless morons. The talentless morons fall about laughing. Everyone else roll their eyes and turn their iPods up.

I’m cringing because I know those voices. The first one is Venetia and the second one is Sophia Von und Zu, the German countess with wads of money coming out of her ears. I peek through a tiny chink in the curtains just to confirm it. Yup, there they are. Confidence is a weird power. Horse-faced, big-bummed Venetia is standing there with as much self-assurance as if she owned the shop. And tall, slender, blond Sophia, with smooth china-white skin and enough money to buy the shop here and now, has the droopy shoulders and slumping posture of a rag doll with really low self-esteem.

“Excuse me,” Venetia says, I presume to the shop assistant, “do you have this in any other colors?”

“No, I’m afraid not. Just the yellow,” says the shop assistant.

“Oh, God, how upsetting!” Venetia exclaims, as fervently as if she’d been told that one of her best friends had been taken to hospital.

“So disappointing!” Sophia chimes in. It’s obvious she thinks that agreeing with everything Venetia says will keep Venetia as her friend. And Sophia is absolutely right.

And then I nearly jump out of my skin, because the girl who’s helping me pulls lightly at the curtain of my cubicle and says, “How’s it going in there? You need any other sizes?”

“Uh, no,” I mumble, trying to keep my voice low so Venetia and Sophia won’t recognize it. “I’m fine.”

“Great,” she says brightly. “I’ll give you some time. You’ve got a lot to get through in there.”

I certainly do.

This boutique is like a jewel box. It has pale-blue Ultrasuede walls, shiny emerald floor, chrome-and-silver display racks, a series of minichandeliers trembling with crystal drops hanging from the ceiling, which is painted with a mural of silver clouds on an azure background. The changing room has an Ultrasuede upholstered bench and the curtains are layers of blue and green chiffon. And on the long rail, which I turn to look at now, is hanging a whole row of clothes that the very helpful salesgirl has picked out for me. Clothes in greens and burgundies and pale mauves that, she says, suit my coloring; clothes that, hopefully, cling in all the right places while draping tactfully over the others. Clothes that will make me look as if I belong in a place like this.

Because if I can look like I belong here, in this gorgeous temple to beauty and fashion, then my odds of looking like I fit in at Nadia’s party are infinitely raised.

Clearly, my trendy-boutique research (I scoured Teen Vogue, Elle Girl, and a slew of other magazines looking for shops which sounded like places Plum and her crew would go) was very successful. Too successful. I hadn’t bargained on running into members of Plum’s set during the buying process.

I realize I’m going to have to hide out in the changing room the entire time they’re here. Because if they see me, they’ll know I’m here buying clothes for the party, and then I might as well not go at all, because everyone will laugh at me because I was so freaked out by the invitation that I had to run out to the most expensive boutique in super-chic Notting Hill and shop like a pathetic, desperate, socially insecure maniac, but I have to go, because Dan McAndrew is going to be there, and he said my name suited me—

Calm down, Scarlett, for God’s sake! You’re hyperventilating, you stupid cow!

I close my eyes for a moment. Over the hypno-relaxing-trippy music that’s playing, I hear Venetia’s voice. Actually, I could hear Venetia’s voice over zombie death metal cranked up to full blast. She’s got one of those grating, high-pitched upper-class voices that could cut through steel faster than a circular saw.

“Oh my God, no, you can’t wear Blue Aeroplanes! Put those back at once!”

“What do you mean?” Sophia sounds baffled, as am I.

“You can’t wear Blue Aeroplanes jeans! Only Plum can wear Blue Aeroplanes!”

“Are you serious?” Sophia says.

“Fine. Don’t believe me. Buy them and see what happens.”

“What’ll happen?” Now real doubt is creeping into Sophia’s voice.

Venetia heaves a giant sigh. “Plum will send you to Coventry for weeks. That’s what she did when Nadia bought Blue Aeroplanes. Don’t you remember?”

“No, I don’t! When was that?” Sophia sounds petrified.

“Last autumn. After half-term. You must have been there.”

“I was in Kenya the week after half-term! On safari with Mummy and Daddy!” Sophia realizes. “But I do remember, I came back and we weren’t allowed to talk to Nadia. Only no one told me why, and I didn’t want to ask.”

I grimace. Sophia is such a pathetic sheep.

“Well, that’s why,” Venetia says. “And now you know.”

I hear the sound of hangers shifting as, I presume, Sophia fearfully slips the pair of Blue Aeroplanes jeans back on the rail.

“Secretly?” Venetia adds, in what she thinks is a lowered voice. “And promise you won’t tell?”

“Oh yah, absolutely!” Sophia sounds very excited.

“Nadia looked better in the jeans than Plum did. That’s why Plum got so angry. You know she doesn’t have much of a bum.”

“Gosh,” Sophia says.

“I heard Nadia cut the jeans up and sent them to Plum, and that’s when Plum took the Coventry thing off and we could talk to Nadia again,” Venetia continues. “But that’s just a rumor.”

“Oh yah, of course,” Sophia says.

They both sound very subdued now. I know they believe the part about Nadia cutting up the jeans.

And so do I.

“Well, there’s nothing in this bloody shop today,”

Venetia says bluffly. “Since they only have that bag in yellow. God. Do you want to get a soy latte?”

“Love to!” Sophia sings out.

Honestly, I’m surprised Sophia doesn’t bleat instead of talk. I bet if Venetia had asked her if she wanted to get a slice of dead rat fried in batter, she’d have agreed. Anything to fit in.

Mind you, it’s hypocritical of me to complain about that, isn’t it? What am I doing here if not spending a fortune on clothes that will help me fit in?

I nose slowly through the curtains to make sure they’ve gone, like a mole trying to see if it’s safe to come out of its hole. When I’ve got enough of my face (about the amount you have out of the water when you’re floating in the sea) through the gap in the curtains to be sure that the coast is clear (goodness, I’m full of metaphors today) I emerge.

“That looks really nice,” says the shop assistant from across the room.

I turn to look at myself in the long mirror in its twisted silver frame. I already had a look in the changing room. I’m not an idiot—I know better than to walk outside without checking first to make sure I don’t look like a fat sausage squeezed into a skin too small for it.

I’m wearing an aqua green top in a silky material, with lots of straps, including one that runs diagonally across one shoulder and down the back. The material is suspended from the straps in a series of gathers and angled folds that looked on the hanger like someone had taken drugs and gone crazy in the sewing room, but on me actually hang really nicely. It’s a bit like drapery from a Greek statue, and somehow, miraculously, I look grown-up and graceful in it.

The salesgirl has also found me a pair of jeans that work. I.e., I didn’t pull them on, stare at myself in the mirror and think Thunder thighs, elephant legs, and burst into tears. Not too skinny, not too baggy. Nice dark denim, which is always safe. Pale denim is only for girls so thin and confident that they can wear stuff that’s so out of fashion it’s just about to come raging back in again. And I am not one of those girls.

Thank God I’ve got a pair of jeans that fit. I know it’ll be okay to wear them to the party. Jeans go with everything.

“Do the sandals fit?” asks the assistant.

“Yeah, I think so,” I say.

To my embarrassment, I actually have to think about that, since I am so not used to wearing three-inch heels. I take a few steps, and I don’t fall over or twist an ankle.

“Um, you might want to do your toenails if you’re going to wear open-toed shoes,” says the assistant nicely.

I look down at my craggy, unvarnished toenails. The contrast between them and the strappy gold sandals is so awkward it’s comical. I’m like a little girl playing dress-up in her mother’s shoes. Only this isn’t dress-up anymore. If I’m going to wear the princess shoes, if I’m going to go to the princess party, I’m going to have to act my age. I’m sixteen. I’m not a little girl any longer.

She comes to stand behind me, tugging and adjusting the gold and brown leather belt and the drapes of the green top so it hangs just right. In the long mirror, I watch what she’s doing. I take a whole series of mental notes. I want to be able to reconstruct this perfectly for Saturday night.

“Some earrings,” she’s muttering as she touches my hair. “Take this back off the face. You need blusher. And a lot of eyeliner. A lot. I’ll set you up with a nice little makeup kit. Oh, and do you have a pretty bra? Because that one’s showing, and it’s not exactly, hmm  .  .  .”

In the mirror, I watch myself go bright red. Not exactly the kind of blush she was recommending. I shake my head wordlessly.

“No problem, I can tell you exactly where to go. Now, why don’t you come over here and pick out some nice earrings? Wow, this is so much fun!”

I hope she’s on commission, because she’s being really nice to me. Not at all patronizing, which is what I was terrified of. Like the obedient lamb I accused Sophia of being, I walk dutifully over to the counter.

This is all going to cost me a fortune.

Lucky, really, that I have a trust fund.