LITMIR.BIZ

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teardrop, a twenty-first birthday present from her doting stepfather, nestled seductively against her neck under a feathery fall of hair.

      Of course there was nothing wrong with Bella. She was blonde, gorgeous and twenty-four. She had a job most people only dreamed about. She was living in the most exciting city in the world. She could have any man she wanted. What could possibly be wrong with Bella?

      ‘No,’ said Annis, convinced at last. ‘Bella’s wonderful.’

      She gave Lynda a brilliant smile.

      Her stepmother did not respond for a moment.

      ‘Bella would tell you anything,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘But would you tell me?’

      ‘If I thought there was something really wrong with Bella I would,’ Annis assured her. ‘But I don’t. Honestly. I’m probably just getting myself stewed up about the wedding. You know what I’m like about performing in front of a lot of people.’

      Lynda hesitated. But Annis was certain now and it had its effect. Eventually her stepmother nodded, satisfied.

      ‘All the more reason for Bella to be a bridesmaid,’ she said practically. ‘You know she gets you out of stage fright.’

      Annis remembered adolescent drama groups, school concerts, sailing club votes of thanks. Two minutes before she was due to open her mouth, Annis would freeze. That was when Bella would ram a crown down over the brows of one of the peacock boys, or seize a triangle and dodge among the waiting players, refusing to give it back; once she had slid along the polished floor of the church hall on a tea tray and had brought the wrath of a phalanx of church wardens down on her head; once, memorably, she had nearly lost her dress when a shoelace strap had broken at a critical moment. Annis would dive to the rescue. By the time she’d rush out to do her bit on stage, she’d still have half her mind on Bella. None at all was left for her nerves.

      ‘Everyone used to think I was a brilliant speaker and Bella was a tearaway,’ she said now, remembering. ‘Nobody noticed that the two went together. No tearaway, no speaker—just a frozen jelly with lockjaw.’

      Lynda laughed. ‘You’d better not get lockjaw at the altar. You get that daughter of mine back, you hear me? You need her.’

      Annis did not deny it. She took a decision.

      ‘I’ll phone her now,’ she said with resolution.

      The open-plan office was all limed wood and high-tech silver. No desks. Desks were not chic. The journalists used their laptop computers on tables that were minimalist swirls of wood. Some were shaped like commas, some like 1950’s kidney dressing tables. The chairs were somewhere between bar stools and chicken wire. There were lots of mirrors. Every single piece of furniture was on wheels.

      ‘Fluid. Dynamic. We like to keep everything loose,’ Rita Caruso, head of features and Bella’s boss, had said when she’d introduced her to the room. ‘The décor reminds us that the world is in constant flux.’

      That had been in November. By Christmas, Bella had been masterminding office-chair races. The course had been three times from glass wall to glass wall ending with a dash round the three central columns and the prize had been an evening clubbing under Bella’s direction. Everyone agreed that anyone who went out with Bella was in for a unique experience. As in-house lawyer, Clyde, put it, she was never going to be the queen of cool but by thunder she knew her music. And she could dance. And her contact list was fantastic.

      At five o’clock she was sitting at a particularly nasty dagger-shaped desk, trying to talk to a stylist in LA and make notes at the same time without sending all her other notes onto the floor. The silver room was supposed to be a paperless office as well. Background music thrummed through state-ofthe-art speakers that looked as if they could make it to the moon under their own steam.

      Bella was conscious of pins and needles in her leg, a crick in her neck and fast-evaporating patience with the prima donna on the other side of the country. In fact she was concentrating so hard on not losing her temper that she did not really register the first call.

      ‘Hey, English! I’m talking to you.’

      Bella looked round then. Behind her, Sally Kubitchek was waving her hands in the air. Bella put a hand over the little microphone suspended from its twenty-first-century Alice band round her head and mouthed a question.

      ‘Your sister,’ yelled Sally.

      ‘Ah.’ Bella brought LA back into the conversation. ‘Sorry Anton, something’s come up. I’ll have to call you back.’ In the teeth of his protests, she took off her headset and disconnected the cellular phone.

      Sally sat in front of a discreet bank of lights. ‘Take it in Caruso’s room,’ she advised. ‘She’s at the Guggenheim interviewing this month’s millionaire. He gave them something amazing and they’re showing the press tonight. She won’t be back.’

      ‘Right. Thanks.’

      Rita Caruso’s office had one of the few chairs that was both comfortable and immobile. They all used it when they could. Bella flung herself into its leather embrace as the telephone began to purr sycophantically.

      She snatched it up. ‘Hi, Annie. How you doing?’

      ‘Hi, Bella Bug. I’m fine. You?’

      ‘I’m cool.’

      ‘How’s the job?’

      Bella laughed. ‘I’m licking them into shape.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘Well, I’ve had a couple of brushes with the style police but, apart from that, everything’s fine.’

      ‘Are you sure?’

      ‘Yup. Caruso says I have a nasty British sense of humour. She likes that. It means I write good copy. I even get to have a crack at interviewing one of her millionaires if I’m a good girl. No, correct that. If I’m a malicious and witty girl.’

      ‘Wow.’ Annis was half amused, half shocked. ‘I’ll buy witty. But you were never malicious.’

      ‘I’m working on it,’ said Bella blithely.

      She stretched her legs. Her four-inch spike heels just about reached Rita Caruso’s desk. She was not a tall girl. But she was going to put her feet on the desk anyway. It was symbolic.

      She stretched luxuriously and said, ‘So tell me about you. How’s the wedding?’

      ‘Growing,’ said Annis is a voice of deep gloom.

      Bella grinned. ‘Told you it would. Quiet wedding isn’t in mother’s vocabulary.’

      ‘For you maybe.’

      It was just as well Annis was on the other side of the Atlantic. Bella’s grin did not so much fade as freeze.

      Fortunately Annis had no suspicion. ‘But I’m not even her daughter,’ she complained. ‘And I’m too tall for frills and veils. Weddings and I were made for separate universes. But will she listen?’

      ‘No,’ supplied Bella. ‘The wedding experience pervades every known universe as far as mother is concerned. Even if you bring a sick note, she’ll convince herself you want it really.’ She made a huge effort. Her voice didn’t sound too bad.

      That was New York for you. It taught you to come back with a smart remark even if your heart was breaking. Let’s hear it for New York, she thought.

      Annis did not detect anything wrong. ‘Too right.’ She hesitated. ‘Er—that’s what I was calling about actually.’

      Bella’s hand was clammy on the receiver. Please don’t ask me to come to the wedding. Please, please, please, Annie. It was unashamed panic.

      ‘Oh?’

      ‘I need help.’

      If Annis had hit her, she could not have winded her

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