The Sweet Life (10 page)

As the girls grabbed their tiny wristlet clutches – big enough only for some money and a lipstick – Celia hurtled through the front door, looking harassed. She did a slight double take at the sight of them but adopted an expression of extreme mildness and murmured, ‘Off already, darlings? Have fun! And be home by no later than two, won’t you? I know these things can go all night, and that all your friends will be there, Federica, but you know our deal.’

Freddy muttered, ‘Yes, Mum, I know our deal.’

‘Have you got your phones?’ said Celia, looking from one girl to the other.

‘Uh . . .’ Janey began as Freddy suddenly clenched one of her hands tightly to shut her up, and said sarcastically, ‘Yes, Mother. We ’ve got them. So stop worrying and go back to work, like you
always
do. Even though it’s the
weekend
.’

An expression of guilt stole briefly across Celia’s face while Janey shot her cousin a bemused look, knowing there hadn’t been room in the wristlets for anything like a phone. The tension between Freddy and her mother could have been cut with a knife.

‘Right then,’ said Celia brightly, ‘Make sure you take a taxi home together and stick close to each other all evening. I’ve got to host tonight’s cocktail function at the embassy because the Ambassador’s flight has been held up in Munich – there’s no way he’ll get back in time. So there’s a lot I have to prep up on if I don’t want to put my foot in it. Have a good time . . .’ Her voice trailed off as Freddy wrenched open the front door and pushed Janey out of the apartment.

‘But you
know
we don’t have our phones!’ Janey hissed as they entered the cage lift and descended. ‘Are you sure we won’t need them?’

‘
She
doesn’t need to know that!’ Freddy snorted. ‘Like she cares! And,
no
, we won’t need them. You’ll be, like, ten seconds from home. Nothing bad’s gonna happen. It’s the
last
thing you’ll need. Just enjoy the night! One of the others will have a phone anyway.’

Both girls stepped out into the balmy night air, Janey negotiating the villa’s front steps in her teetering heels as though her life depended upon her every move, because it did! They were even less manoeuverable than the red wedge heels. If she took a step too quickly, her ankles wobbled. She was practically mincing, though it was probably worth it, she thought, if they made her look like a model.

Luca was leaning against the car, laughing into his mobile. He snapped it shut as he caught sight of Freddy and opened the door for her, doing a visible double take when he realised who was clomping up behind.

‘Signorina Gordon?’ he exclaimed in surprise, his tone not exactly . . . flattering, Janey realised.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake call her Janey like the rest of us do – she’s not a duchess or anything – and shut your mouth, Luca,’ Freddy retorted as she pushed Janey into the back seat, following her in. ‘Doesn’t she look sensational? Now drop us at the Piazzale Ugo La Malfa entrance to the Circo Massimo. E rapidamente! We ’re late. Cinderella here was hard to work with.
Very
hard to work with.’ Freddy gave Janey a sidelong grin to show that she was just joking.

Janey stared uncomfortably at the back of Luca’s head as he settled himself behind the wheel and turned the key in the ignition. She noted his grim expression as he turned his head briefly to check his blind spot before easing into traffic, wondering at the weird vibe she sensed going on between Luca and Freddy.

As the car headed towards the Via Nomentana, Freddy shot Luca a challenging look in the rearview mirror and said, ‘So tell us we look good, tesoro mio.’

‘You always appear bella, signorina del Gigli,’ Luca replied after the briefest of pauses, ‘but you should not have permitted signorina Gordon to leave the villa dressed, in this, this fashion. Non sembra appropriato . . .’ He lapsed into Italian so that Janey would not understand what he was saying.

‘What do you mean, it’s not
appropriate
?’ Freddy replied laughingly in English.

Janey winced. Is
that
what he thought?

‘She does not appear as . . . herself, you understand.’ Luca spoke to Freddy over Janey’s head as if she were not in the car, wilting inside with each word. ‘Non c’era niente di più . . . dignitoso?’ he said, meeting Freddy’s dark gaze in the mirror.

Freddy snorted. ‘
Dignitoso?
We’re going to a
rave
, Luca, not a night at the opera! Get with it, Granddad. She looks
hot
.’

‘Hey,
hey!
’ Janey interrupted as both pairs of eyes flicked quickly in her direction and away again. ‘I’m in the car, too, you know, and I think I look, uh,
fine
.’

Luca’s tone was amused. ‘You look disastroso, like the car accident. Too much here, too little there, all falling apart.’

His words pulled Janey up short for a second, Fellini’s awful car crash avatar flashing up in her mind’s eye, before she shook the image away. When what Luca was saying actually registered, Janey gasped indignantly.

Luca compounded the awfulness by adding a moment later, ‘Like you are, how do you say, becoming dressed in the dark.’ Janey snapped her mouth shut, feeling herself go an unbecoming shade of crimson.

But Freddy rounded on Luca. ‘That’s a horrible thing to say, Luca!’ she squealed. ‘Janey worked hard to achieve this look and I think she looks brilliant, for a change. She’s very
in the now
tonight. Very
au courant
. How
dare
you.’

It had actually all been Freddy, of course – they were her clothes, after all – but Janey was so furious with Luca’s open disapproval that she didn’t bother to correct Freddy’s false assertion. ‘You wouldn’t know the first thing about fashion, so, so, drop dead, you j-judgemental beast!’ Janey stuttered at the back of Luca’s head.

Without missing a beat, Luca shot back, ‘If I were to, as you say, drop dead, signorina, how far would you be able to walk to your rave in your too-high shoes?’

Of course, being the numero uno ladies’ man that he was, he had to have noticed that little detail! Janey fumed, her head about to blow off in sheer temper. It was a weird feeling for her, because she was regarded as the cosmic peacekeeper of Selbourne High. Nothing
ever
got under her skin. Except Luca. For all the wrong reasons. She could only manage a gargling noise.

‘
Chillax
, you two,’ Freddy said, looking from Luca to Janey in open fascination. ‘Tonight’s supposed to be about Peace, Love, Unity, and Respect, remember? So stop comparing her with your posse of overdressed, busty, blondely botoxed babes, Luca Sarti, because Janey’s
one of a kind
.’

Janey just sank down lower in her seat in humiliation. If that was his type, she thought, then it was all utterly hopeless and she might as well give up now.

Nobody spoke another word before the car drew up at the Piazzale Ugo La Malfa, which was teeming with a diverse cross-section of partygoers. Trippy hippy types, hip-hoppers, face-painted teens wearing DayGlo and clutching glowsticks, d‘n’b aficionados, hardstyle trancers, tekheads, plain old weirdos and everything in between. Strobe lights cut the air above the Circus Maximus, the night sky illuminated with eerie giant images and pulsing with a mingled roar of competing beats. The entire scene was set off by the immense scale of the Circus Maximus itself, which was set in a valley between some of the highest hills of Rome and littered with stone ruins that marked where the stadium had once stood.

Too upset with Luca to even say goodbye, Janey flung herself out of the car as Freddy held a brief exchange with Luca in Italian before slamming the door. He drove away without a backward glance.

Janey was so distressed by Luca’s attack on her appearance that she could barely breathe. The crowd pressing in on all sides wasn’t helping either.

Freddy gave her a hard poke in the ribs to get her attention before pulling her by the wrist into the gigantic throng of partygoers making their way towards the main gate.

‘Don’t lose me!’ she screamed as Janey nodded her understanding. This was
vast
.

Despite her misery, her pulse began to race.

Freddy retrieved two passes clipped to lanyards out of her wristlet clutch before they got to the main entryway, and jammed one over Janey’s head just as they surged through the turnstiles with what felt like a thousand other people.

People were squealing and crying out in the crush and, without warning, Janey couldn’t see Freddy
anywhere
. She was through, and surrounded by thousands of revellers, all freeforming to their music of choice. The night was a blur of pounding music, and glowsticking, and bodies in motion. It was
amazing
.

For a moment, Janey just stood and took it all in. Then she pivoted around, searching for any sign of Freddy and the Goa trance arena. It didn’t help that she didn’t know what Goa trance music was supposed to sound like, but at least she had a vague idea where Freddy and her friends were likely to be hanging out. Janey could see six main stages or arenas – it wouldn’t be too hard to narrow down which one was playing the right sound.

She began moving towards the nearest arena in her uncomfortable heels, through a sea of shifting dancers. ‘Why did I let Freddy convince me to wear these ridiculous things?’ she muttered ruefully as she dodged a half-naked guy covered in body paint.

‘Eh, English girl,’ a young Italian guy roared at her a moment later as he slipped a sweaty, heavy arm around her neck, ‘you want be friends?’

‘No thanks!’ Janey yelled back, ducking out from under his arm and backing away. The guy blew her a wobbly, no-hard-feelings kind of kiss before trying the same move on another passing female.

Janey wrinkled her nose and kept moving towards the nearest sound stage, which was surrounded by enormous speakers and throwing up strobe lights and laser beams in technicolour. The music was so loud and so fast that the first dancer she grabbed onto to try and figure out where she was just shook his head and pointed at his ears.

She backed away and prodded someone else in the arm. ‘Goa trance?’ she screamed at a young woman who was crazily glowsticking figure eights in the air. The beat pounded through Janey’s body.

‘Gabber!’ the young woman bellowed in Janey’s ear before melting away.

The next partygoer Janey tried to ask shook his head in time to the furious beat and screamed the same thing. Janey figured it had to be the style of music.

As the night wore on, Janey began to feel overwhelmed by the swelling, bellowing crowd and the pulsing, deafening music that came from every direction and seemed to vibrate right through her body. She worked her way around every sound stage and realised that Freddy’s friends must have given her the wrong information about where to meet, because the next arena offered d‘n’b, another happy hardcore, the fourth psy-trance, the fifth chemical break and the last ambient space music, which sounded less like music and more like the soundtrack to a dopey sci-fimovie. The dancers at the last stage were so relaxed and trippy that Janey felt like she’d been grabbed and hugged by almost everyone there. Frustratingly, no one she’d asked seemed to know what Goa trance was.

Exhausted and dispirited, she plunged through a curtained doorway into a designated chill-out room – a large, dimly lit marquee that had been erected roughly midway between the two largest sound stages. Settling onto a low divan next to a sleeping girl and a couple with their arms wrapped around each other, Janey closed her eyes and let the gentle lounge-music mix just wash over her. It felt like she’d been embracing a million different people for hours, half of whom had wanted to take her home! She wondered whether Freddy was all right and thought momentarily, with regret, that she wouldn’t get to dance with Brandon tonight because it was probably time to return to Celia’s. She was never going to find Freddy and her friends now; it seemed really late and if anything, the crowd had grown a whole lot bigger. Without her phone or her watch, Janey couldn’t really be sure what the time was and she didn’t want to risk staying out past two.

As Janey bent down to take her shoes briefly off her aching, blistered feet, someone draped a muscular arm around her waist from behind, pulling her close. The stranger slurred something crude-sounding in Italian, to which Janey disgustedly replied, ‘Non capisco! I don’t understand.’ She tried to wriggle free of the man’s tight hold, but he was really strong, and (double ick!) really hairy to boot. Janey had had enough of strange guys coming up and touching her that night to last a lifetime. Most had been harmless, but there was something about this guy that shrieked
super creepy
. She struggled harder.

Instead of letting her go, the man crushed Janey even closer to him and purred into her hair, ‘Lei vuole X? The ecstasy? You want?’ He shook a bag of bright pills just by her ear. Janey felt a stab of real fear.

‘It’s about control, and about self-respect,’ her mother had said when the subject of drugs had come up at home, while they’d been watching something together. Lydia had been a cool mum who never lectured her daughter. ‘I’m never going to try and
stop
you doing anything,’ she had added. ‘But always be aware that things can turn in an instant. And some things can never be undone. Don’t stuff your life up over one cheap thrill, that’s all I’m saying.’