The Stylist (17 page)

‘That’s the other thing. I don’t think she actually has anyone—other
than her housekeeper and a bunch of celebrities, who certainly weren’t there for her when she nearly puked in her bag. I think she must be lonely, too. And she’s kind of asexual. I can’t imagine her with a man, or a woman, for that matter.’

‘Well, then, there’s only one person for it—you.’

I shrank back into my seat. ‘I’ll try to broach it this week, while we’re in London. Everything feels more normal over here.’

Vicky high-fived me across the table. After a brief silence, she asked me: ‘Do you think you’d ever want to live in LA?’ Her question was impressively nonchalant, but I could tell she’d been working up to it. She stared at me in a moment of sobriety.

‘Nah. Everyone’s too self-obsessed,’ I replied quickly, and saw Vicky visibly relax. I had told her what she wanted to hear—and I was pretty sure it was the truth. I paused briefly to consider what I’d do if Mona offered me a permanent job, which would need me to be based in LA. My mind wandered: me, Liam, sunshine, a Cadillac, the Pacific Coast Highway. Who knew what the future might hold.

‘Anyway, I’d better get back,’ I said, breaking off the daydream. I had momentarily forgotten about the outfits we were wearing, and suddenly felt ridiculous amongst the appropriately dressed after-work drinkers. ‘I’ve got all this to pack up again before the morning—we’ve got to prep for Miss P tomorrow.’

‘You’re styling Miss P? I thought she’d disappeared!’

‘Mona’s planning to bring her back with a fashion bang at the BAFTAs.’

‘Awesome! I wouldn’t mind being
your
assistant one day, Amber Green—stylist to the staaaars! One for the road?’

Four for the road later, I finally staggered into my freezing cold bed, feet once again aching from being squashed into ill-fitting shoes. Needing some attention, I texted Liam to let him know I was home safely, as requested. He replied: I wish my head was resting on your pillow too x. Hazily I Instagrammed the pillow, tagging him in it. Naturally, I spent a good fifteen minutes styling it, lighting a candle on my bedside table, making a delicate head-shaped indentation and setting it up so the light fell on it in the right way and it looked as enticing as any pillow could.

I’d like to meet that pillow x,
came the immediate response, giving me goosebumps. I went to sleep wondering if he ever would.

Next morning I was rudely awoken by my phone ringing.
Rob—he had to be back in the UK by now? LA Liam? Shit, I still haven’t called Mum.
No—Mona. ‘Meet me near Selfridges at 10:00 a.m. I’m seeing the personal shopper to get the bits for Miss P.’ No chance to get over my jet lag today, let alone make it out to Zone Five on the tube to see my folks or sleep off this hangover. Aargh, my head!
When will I learn that spending time with Vicky, even for brunch, never turns out to be just a simple outing involving eggs and coffee? It always turns into something we later refer to as ‘messy ‘.
My head was killing me, far worse than any hangover I’d had in … let’s see … just over a week, since I last went out with Vicky.

In the shower, my thoughts returned to LA Liam. Communications with him had crossed the Atlantic and we’d swapped surely a hundred messages. I reflected on his American accent. He did have an American accent, didn’t he? Somehow I couldn’t quite hear it in my head. I mulled
over his mega-watt smile, curly hair and the way he’d made my heart race that night at Soho House, but the more I thought about it, the more cloudy the image became in my mind. Like a misted, sepia photograph of a celluloid heartthrob, he was in danger of becoming a movie-perfect moment forever lost in time. Yet over the past week he had forged his way into my world.

Even in the busy surroundings of Starbucks on Oxford Street, Mona was easy to spot. Dark glasses, a tumble of chocolate curls with highlights like caramel ribbons, skintight leather leggings, a cotton tee, her favourite Isabel Marant leather jacket and Jimmy Choo biker boots. A big, impossible-to-miss cherry-tomato Anya Hindmarch tote was plonked on the table in front of her, along with two Venti cups of strong caffè macchiato—enough to power a small school. She was talking loudly on the phone, but that didn’t stop her standing up to aggressively wave me over, a jangle of bangles making customers turn.
Uh-oh, she doesn’t look happy.
Mona didn’t blend in, even amongst cosmopolitan London shoppers.

‘Fear not, Clive, I hear you loud and clear,’ she was saying. ‘What she needs is a “wow” moment. Miss P
will
make an impact at the BAFTAs. She’ll be the front page of all the red tops on Monday morning. I’ll make sure of it.’

Two girls sitting at the table next to Mona tried and failed to discreetly take her photo, and she shot them a dirty look. Perhaps the jet lag had caught up with her after all. I had forgotten Mona was probably more famous in London than she was in LA, thanks to the buzz about the pilot show and the fashion blogging scene. She seemed somewhat stressed.

‘You’re late,’ she stated before I’d reached the table, loud
enough for the adjacent customers to know I was being told off by my boss.

When I reached the table and sat down, she ushered me in close, casting more dirty looks at the two girls who were now desperately trying not to laugh. I was pretty sure a badly taken snap of Mona had already made its way onto Instagram.

‘What I’m thinking is a gown with guts, preferably sheer cutaway panels revealing just enough side boob and side bum to get people talking,’ she announced, causing a businessman on a neighbouring table to look over his copy of the
Times.
‘We need some serious flesh on display to secure the front pages.’ She stretched out her arm to reveal a very new-looking, chunky rose-gold Michael Kors watch. ‘Shit, Amber! Now you’ve made me late for the appointment.’

I was still taking in the side-boob-and-side-bum brief—or rather, lack of briefs—as she stood up. I had a flashback to Rita Ora once flinging off her undies to pull off the see-through side bum look at an Oscars after-party. It was definitely daring. ‘Do you think Miss P will be up for it?’ I asked nervously, picturing the five-foot-three singer, with legs half the length of Rita’s.

‘She’ll have to be. That’s why they’ve asked me to do it—I get results.’ She produced her iPad from the tote and handed it over. ‘You hold the fort here, catch up on returns and manage appointments for the BAFTAs, and I’ll be back in an hour.’

‘You got it, boss.’

The girls on the next table had stopped bothering to hide their iPhones now, and snapped away, recording Mona’s look from behind as she sashayed out of the cafe, sunglasses on, persona firmly in place.

‘So cool,’ said one.

‘Total bitch, though,’ said the other. A part of me wanted to pull up a chair at their table and let it all out.

As I waited for Mona to emerge from Selfridges, weighed down with eye-popping gowns, my mobile phone rang on my makeshift Starbucks desk. Instead of an irate PR chasing the return of their precious gown or questioning why it had come back hacked off below the thigh—Mona had told me that Beau once took a pair of scissors to an Armani because she wanted it to look ‘sexier’ halfway through a party, much to the dismay of the designer—I almost choked on my second coffee when I saw LA Liam’s name lit up. He had actually called!
That means his voice is at the other end. And I am expected to speak to him.
It was such a shock, I bottled picking up, but listened to his voicemail three times in a row. He sounded slightly husky, American all right and mischievous, sexy. LA Liam had arrived in London, too. And he wanted to meet up. A cool half hour later—it was painful to wait that long, but I didn’t want to appear over-keen—I rang him back. And half an hour after that, he was sitting opposite me in Starbucks.

‘My very own Eliza Doolittle,’ he said, pulling up a seat. ‘You look so …
English
today.’

My mind boggled—was this a compliment? Judging by the fact he was leaning so close he could almost certainly smell my coffee breath, I supposed it was.

‘Hello, Henry ‘iggins,’ I replied, blushing. He looked puzzled, clearly his understanding of
My Fair Lady
only stretched to Eliza.

‘What a great coincidence—fate has brought us together.’ He smiled. His black hair so naturally thick and unruly, it
was a battle to keep it out of his face. My American Poldark.
Wait until I tell Vicky about this!
He tucked a curl behind his ear and leaned in closer. He had devastating brown eyes with eyelashes that reminded me of a baby camel. He was so exotic-looking, almost the exact opposite of Rob with his pretty-boy features—or Henry Higgins, for that matter. I felt like I was starring in my own rom-com, he being the hottest holiday romance ever. All we needed were some piña coladas and a palm tree. I wished the iPhone girls were still here to record this: me being wooed by a bona fide American hottie.

‘Anyway, what brings you to London?’

‘Flew in late last night,’ he said, stretching his arms across the table. His body language was all over me. ‘You know, few BAFTA parties, more auditions—I’m up for Gillian Anderson’s surgeon in a new miniseries. But anyway, that’s boring—’

He reached for my hands. Before I knew it he was lacing his fingers with mine. I suddenly felt painfully self-aware. PDAs with a virtual, albeit fit, stranger in the middle of the morning in a crowded Starbucks was alien terrain for me. Yet it was thrilling. A girl on the next table seemed to have clocked Liam; his good looks certainly stood out in a crowd. Or perhaps she had actually seen some of the obscure TV dramas and low-budget films he was listed as having bit-roles in on IMDb. I let my fingers be wiggled by his, desperately trying to shed my self-consciousness. An inner voice urged me to live in the moment; throw caution to the wind—think more like Vicky than myself. What was it she said? ‘When one man wants you, others do, too.’

I found myself staring at his full lips, wondering what it would be like to kiss them. And then he lunged forwards. We
were like two tortoise heads popping out of their shells, stopping just shy of knocking noses. He hooked one hand firmly around the back of my head and pulled my stunned face really close, right across the middle of the table. He was staring at my parted lips. I could feel his breath on them.
My God, he’s masterful.
I felt like a wobbly marshmallow in his hands.

‘I’ve been thinking about kissing you from the moment we met,’ he said, brown eyes shining with lust as they fixed on my now quivering lips.

And before I could decide how to react, or had a second to wish I’d sucked a mint, it was happening. We were kissing.

His tongue was hard, urgent, investigative. There was a sound as our teeth clashed. I wanted to laugh but instead he held my head in place, working his tongue deeper, silencing me. Granted, it had been a while since I’d had a proper snog, but I didn’t remember it being quite as aggressive as this. The experience was beginning to feel more like a dental procedure than a kiss as his tongue explored my mouth.

‘You taste so good, Amber,’ he said, pausing momentarily to stare at my glistening lips once more.

After another minute or so of tongue warfare, I slowly moved my head back, and gently pulled his hand down from its vice-like grip of my neck. He slumped back into his chair. When I dared to look up again, I was staring into the green eyes of Rob, who looked equally shocked.

‘God, so sorry, I, um, Mona said you were working in here and so we—’ Over his shoulder were Fran and Shaggy. Both seemed to be trying not to laugh.

The TV crew saw me having the worst kiss I’ve ever had. So did most of Starbucks. Please, dear God, what have I done to deserve this?

Liam noticed we had company.

‘All right, mate?’ Rob said awkwardly.

Liam barely registered him, clearly unfazed that we’d been caught mid–bad kiss by some people I knew.
Or maybe he doesn’t think the kiss was bad?
I didn’t know which was worse. Instead, he was eyeballing the serving counter towards the front of Starbucks.

‘Don’t know about you, Eliza, but I’m ravenous. If I don’t get something inside me I might end up eating you again.’ He winked.

Rob raised an eyebrow.

I felt myself turn scarlet.

‘Um, yes. I mean no, not had lunch yet, I’ll grab us a baguette each, if you like?’ Being Mona’s assistant had turned me into acting like everyone’s assistant, but I really wanted to get away from Terminator Tongue.

‘I’ll go. What can I get you?’ he insisted.

I thought for all of two seconds. ‘BLT, please.’ I suddenly felt starving. Perhaps some stodge would give me the energy to get through whatever the next part of the day would have in store. Nothing was predictable when it came to Mona and I needed to know why the camera crew was here.

‘A whole one?’ He looked shocked. ‘Gluttony is one of seven deadly sins, you know. I thought you’d be watching your weight. Whatever.’ And he headed off towards the counter.

I gasped.
Did he actually say that? I’m gluttonous for wanting a sandwich for lunch?
Fury flashed before my eyes.
Bloody LA and its starving hungry people.
Rob heard, too, but he looked away, seemingly embarrassed at having seen me full-on pashing with a guy who had now pretty much told me I was fat.

Fran pushed in front of Rob. ‘So, I take it Mona hasn’t mentioned the filming. Again?’ She rolled her eyes.

‘Um, no,’ I muttered, so utterly sick and tired of having the wrong answer. ‘She’s in Selfridges at the moment, if you want to find her there.’

I was still digesting the gluttony comment and more than anything I just wanted them all to leave me alone.

‘That’s not a bad idea,’ Rob said, after a pause, sensing my mood. ‘Let’s do the background stuff outside Selfridges and try to hook up with Mona later or tomorrow.’ He had offered me a lifeline and I was grateful. Fran turned on her heel to leave, huffing as LA Liam knocked her arm on his return to the table. He chucked a BLT across it towards me.

‘What time will you finish work, babe?’ he asked.

‘Never,’ I replied, truthfully. ‘I’m working for Mona 24/7 at the moment. Until we get the BAFTAs out of the way, at least.’