Christmas at Tiffany's (13 page)

Cassie relaxed and let him mist her hair. As he picked up his hairdryer and began quickly styling it, she watched the models dress in the mirrors. The transformation was incredible. They were able to shrug into the intricate creations, all overlaid with mesh and sequins, in moments, while the dressers fastened the shoes to their feet simultaneously. Their overly long limbs that had seemed so slouchy and adolescent when unclothed became elegant and sculptural now, and the girls seemed to move differently too. The lights for the runway – orange, pink and red, for a Caucasian sunset, apparently – clicked on and the atmosphere changed.

She looked back in the mirror, and was amazed to see what Bas had done. He had given her the same style as the models. Well, almost.

‘Oh my God!’ she exclaimed. ‘That’s so
cool
! I’ve never been cool in my life!’ she remarked, genuinely astonished as she looked at herself from every angle in the mirror. She looked five years younger, and like she lived in a loft in SoHo with a band.

‘I love it!’ She looked up at him and a flash of doubt crossed her face. ‘But I can’t keep it, Bas. Everyone’ll think I’m trying to be like them,’ she said, nodding her head towards the disappearing models who were filing onstage for the final dress rehearsal.

‘Nonsense. You look better than those bags of bones any day,’ he said. ‘Although you’re getting so skinny!’ he admonished, squeezing her thigh. Three weeks of heartbreak, early-morning runs and sushi for dinner had begun to take their toll, and her new sample-size wardrobe slid on easily now. ‘Anyway, I’ve given you the style that was
supposed
to go out till Madame threw a last-minute hissy fit . . .’

A sharp crackle of interference brought the headset suddenly to life.

‘Cassie! Get to front-of-house now. We’re opening the doors in four.’ It was Hannah, Bebe’s PA.

Cassie looked back at her reflection and sighed. It was too late now. She didn’t have time to worry about what people were going to think.

‘Dinner after?’ Bas asked as he began rearranging his brushes, ready for the hasty touch-ups as the models came back.

‘Great,’ she beamed, loping towards the stage. ‘I’ll tell Kell.’

She lifted the curtain and was suddenly dazzled by a fury of white flashing lights rushing at her. She raised her hands to her face instinctively and crouched low. Five feet above her, the models were stalking through the glare-like mist, the director shouting instructions – ‘More knee, Freya!’ and ‘Feel her flight!’

‘Cassie! Where the fuck are you?’ the voice in her ear shouted. It was Hannah again. She was more frightening than the designer herself.

‘Coming,’ she said, turning away from the overstuffed block of photographers standing at the end of the runway, their professional hierarchy marked out by the yellow gaffer-taped Xs on the floor. Many of the ones at the back were standing on their sturdy camera cases to lift their lenses above the heads of the guys in front, and there was a riot of badinage and innuendo every time one of the models got to the end of the runway and practised her turn.

She skipped up the aisle towards the back, grateful for the enveloping blackness. The limelight wasn’t for her. She instinctively preferred the shadows. Always had. Even as a child, she’d been the one who played the debonair owl when Suzy, Anouk and Kelly took it in turns to be a swooning Princess Aurora, and when they’d got older and gone to formal balls for real, she was usually in the loos helping someone pin up a torn hem or rushing around trying to locate a pencil sharpener for their kohl. She liked to be the support act.

Which was probably why everyone had been so stunned when she turned round and got married first. There had been an unspoken assumption that out of the four of them, Cassie would probably be the last to find her man. Suzy was so forthright that men couldn’t ignore her, Anouk so sultry men didn’t want to, and Kelly had a worldly edge that even at fourteen boys found irresistible. But Cassie? She was too . . . not meek; too modest. She didn’t shine or put herself out there. It wasn’t that she wasn’t every bit as attractive as the others, but it was easy to overlook her in such a dazzling group.

‘Where do you want me?’ she asked into the darkness, looking down on the action. The standing-only people had been allowed in and were beginning to grab the backs of the back-row chairs, guarding their spaces as jealously as any editors on the front row. The pecking order was distinct.

‘Keep an eye on the standers,’ Hannah muttered. ‘They’ll do anything to get a seat.’

‘I’d do anything for a tuna sandwich,’ Cassie thought to herself, fed up with Kelly’s titbit diet. So much for little and often; little and rarely, more like. She was losing weight. It was impossible not to, with the adrenalin of nineteen-hour days and a smashed heart. But unlike Kelly, who watched on enviously as Cassie started shrinking before her eyes, she had no desire to get thinner. It wasn’t currency to her, just an outward manifestation of misery.

‘Where’s Aspen?’ Hannah hissed in her ear as the room filled up. ‘Can anyone see her? She’s supposed to be doing the front row.’

Cassie scanned the room. Aspen was the queen of Kelly’s team – rail-thin, chic, rich as Croesus and with stellar contacts. In fact, she was the one who had talked most of the Park Avenue princesses into attending today. She and Kelly had known each other since kindergarten as their mothers had moved in the same circles, but whereas Kelly had gone to school in Europe, Aspen had been a pupil at the prestigious Juilliard School in Manhattan, and therefore had much closer connections with the society set here.

‘Cassie? Can you see her? I’ve got word Olivia Delingpole’s car’s pulled up.’

Who? Cassie began looking more urgently. Where was Aspen?

Another voice came through on the headset – Zara, the junior account executive. ‘She’s backstage with Bebe and Kelly. There’s a crisis. Selena’s broken the zip on the finale dress and they can’t get her out of it without unpicking the seams. Aspen and Kelly are having to rejig the entire running order.’

‘Fuck! But she’s the meet-and-greet girl.’ There was a pause. ‘Okay, look – fuck it! You’ll have to get down there, Cassie. Go get Olivia.’

Cassie froze.

‘Now! Move it!’

Quickly she skipped down the steps. ‘Um, so just tell me, quickly . . . who is Olivia Delingpole? I mean, how will I recognize her?’

She could tell by the silence that followed that it was the wrong question to have asked.

‘You don’t know who Olivia Delingpole is? Editor-in-Chief of
Bazaar
?’

Cassie got down to the front and found herself back in the glare of the lights. The models were backstage again and the runway was empty. Occasional pops from the photographers’ lights flashed as they tested their exposures. She looked up towards the lighting booth at the back of the room, where she knew Hannah was standing, watching her. She couldn’t see in, but she knew Hannah could see her. She shook her head apologetically, biting her lip.

She saw an important-looking woman in top-to-toe camel holding a red bag. She headed towards her.

‘Not her, you fool!’ Hannah shouted, following her trajectory. ‘She’s just the accessories editor at
Red Carpet
. The woman in the Tory Burch coat – she’s walking straight towards you.’

Tory Burch coat? How was that helpful? Did it have a third arm? There was a gaggle of women heading straight towards her, all wearing coats.

‘A bit more, please,’ Cassie said nervously. ‘Hair colour?’

‘Blonde.’

She scanned the group. There were only two brunettes. Oh God, Kelly, where are you?

They were upon her. Her headset gave her away as the go-to person for the show. They stood waiting, silently. The thought that she didn’t have a clue who they were clearly wasn’t crossing their minds.

Cassie tipped her head to the side and smiled. ‘Hello, ladies,’ she said, grinning nervously. ‘We’re so pleased you could come to the show.’ They carried on staring. ‘Do you, uh, have any tickets?’

Hannah instantly started shrieking in her ear. ‘What the fuck are you doing? Of course they do. They’re not at the fucking movies! Their names are on the seats. Just lead them there. Just lead them!’

Cassie lifted the earpiece away from her ear a little. Much more of that and she’d have a perforated eardrum.

‘Let me show you to your seats,’ she smiled, walking along the front row and then standing back slightly so that they could find their names on the chairs.

They sashayed over, then stopped. ‘No. This is wrong,’ one of them said, pointing to the seats. She was wearing a navy trench with tortoiseshell buttons and huge round matching sunglasses.

Cassie looked at the cards. Oh God – when she’d fallen, had she put them back in the right order? She tried to think, but Hannah was heavy-breathing down the line at her. ‘Are they sitting? Cassie, I can’t see you. I’ve got a TV camera blocking my line of sight. Where are you? I need you ready. I’ve got the
Glamour
girls coming through.’

Oh help. More strangers wanting the VIP treatment. She looked back at the seats. Jesus – what the heck did it matter if someone was a space over from the seating plan? They were sitting, weren’t they?

‘No, this is correct,’ Cassie said hurriedly in her most authoritative voice. ‘Bebe oversaw the seating plan herself. We’re just so tight for space in here.’ She shrugged apologetically.

The woman’s nostrils flared slightly and Cassie wondered whether she was going to be shouted down on this. But after a disdainful stare and a contemptuous sniff, the woman sat down and the others followed suit, their group punctuated by empty seats. They all instantly began busying themselves with their iPhones. Cassie noticed that the woman in the navy coat had taken the Delingpole chair. So that was Olivia Delingpole. So that was a Tory Burch coat.

She turned to find the
Glamour
girls holding out their tickets, smiling rather more than the other set, and she quickly took them to their seats. Hmm, not so tough after all.

The room was packed now. The show was running forty-five minutes behind the official schedule, which was normal, she was told. The eight tiered rows were completely filled apart from a few keep-you-waiting spaces in the front. The photographers had finished setting up and were jostling restlessly, crammed like sardines in their demarcated rectangle at the foot of the runway. On the opposite side from the fashion editors, where the buyers sat, a huddle of paparazzi photographers were crouched low in front of the celebrities Aspen had sweet-talked into coming – Gwyneth Paltrow, Liv Tyler, Natalie Portman, Sarah Jessica Parker, Heidi Klum – and television reporters were asking them questions as the cameramen sat on the side of the runway.

‘Get them off the stage,’ Hannah barked. ‘I want everyone in their seats. What’s that? You’re kidding me?
Yes!!!
’ Cassie could practically hear her punching the air. ‘Right, I’m being told Alexa’s car has just pulled up. We’re gonna be good to go in two minutes.’

Who? Cassie skittered round to the other side of the catwalk, shooing the cameramen and reporters away surprisingly easily. Her headset and all-black look radiated authority.

‘She’s coming in now,’ Hannah commentated. ‘Cassie, I can’t see you. Too many fucking photographers. Give me the cue when she’s seated.’

‘Could you tell me something by which I can identify her,’ Cassie asked quickly, too panicky now to prevaricate about revealing her ignorance. There were still lots of people moving about, mainly ‘standers’ bagging the last few untaken seats as the lights went down.

There was a furious silence. ‘You have
got
to be kidding me! How can you not know what Alexa Bourton looks like? She’s the new fucking editor of
Vogue
. You have heard of
Vogue
, I take it?’ she snarled sarcastically. ‘Where the hell have you been living?’

‘Scottish Borders,’ Cassie replied, trembling, as a woman came into sight radiating the kind of couture-as-casualwear chic that no amount of all-black and high heels would ever endow her with. ‘It’s okay, I see her,’ she said, taking the initiative and walking to meet her, smiling brightly.

‘Right, lights down, cue music,’ Hannah ordered. ‘I want the first girl out ten seconds after she’s seated. Let’s not keep her waiting, people! This is the first time we’ve had a
Vogue
presence in seven seasons.’

‘Hello,’ Cassie beamed. ‘We’re so thrilled you could make it to the show. Would you like to follow me and I’ll take you to your seat. The show’s about to begin.’

The woman followed. She did indeed look like she was at the top of the fashion tree. Her hazelnut hair tumbled expensively on to a giraffe-print coat, and she was carrying an enormous squashy burnt-orange bag. Cassie took her to the last remaining seat in the front row – hell, the last remaining seat in the house now.

The music, which had been an unidentifiable blend of ambient dance music, ratcheted up in volume and segued, curiously, into pan pipes, which were then overlaid with a thumping rock tempo for the girls to walk to.

Cassie moved out of the way, her pulse racing, grateful that the show was under way and she could relax at last. She sat discreetly on the front step in the aisle.

The first girl came out, her cheeks flushed and eyes bright (from the activity she’d seen in the loos backstage, not due to the mountain air). A polite scatter of applause skipped through the audience as the model began to stomp her way down the catwalk. It had been amazing to Cassie to discover during the castings how many girls just couldn’t walk – not only because of the ridiculous heels, but actually losing all opposite-arm-to-leg coordination.