Liz was planning to go with a subtle but sexy local-girl-made-good-comes-home look. Dewy, bright, natural-looking skin, pink, pearly lips, bright but subtle eyes, her hair lightly styled and looking very slightly windswept.
Laid out on the dressing table was a palette and selection of brushes that wouldn’t have looked out of place in an artist’s studio. Liz leant in a little closer to check how she was doing – looking natural and girl-next-doorsy was the toughest look of all to pull off.
Her stylist at Starmaker had sorted out three possible outfits for the party: a little Victoria Beckham number with its trademark full-length zip, a Hervé Léger bandage dress and something from Burberry that Emma Watson had worn to some daytime thing, although this one was in jade not grape. While the outfits had looked just fine in London, looking at them now on their hangers with the shoes standing underneath, Liz suspected that they were all too dressy for West Norfolk. For the girl who styled her at Starmaker, Camden was probably her idea of rural.
It all looked way too show-bizzy – and those Louboutins were going to be a complete nightmare on the grass. Liz took a deep breath and tried not to let Suzie unsettle her. ‘Calm, calm,’ she murmured. ‘Deep breaths, inner strength. Do not let her get to you.’
Just why the hell should she be expected to rush when she’d paid for almost all of the party?
Liz picked up a make-up brush, closed her eyes and took another calming breath. Breathing; for the last six weeks Liz had been paying her yoga teacher a small fortune to teach her something she had been doing all her life without giving it a moment’s thought. She tried to visualise being at one with the open plain, the rolling woodlands, the mighty ocean, the whole of creation – but all she could think about was getting one over on Suzie.
Bloody woman, bursting in her telling her what to do. Had she any idea how much a marquee cost? Half an hour, my arse, Liz thought furiously. It was going to take her that long to get her foundation right. And no one was going to show up this early, surely?
Breathe.
Anyway, Suzie was such a control freak, Liz couldn’t see her being away for very long. After all, how long did it take to have a shower and towel-dry an unstructured bob for God’s sake?
Liz made the effort to concentrate on her breathing and inner peace and radiant beauty, imagining her body was light as a butterfly and suffused with joy and contentment, at one with the universe.
From somewhere downstairs Liz heard the doorbell ringing.
‘Bugger it,’ she spat as her eyes snapped open.
*
‘My new shoes have got to be here somewhere,’ said Suzie, coming up for air after a prolonged hunt under her side of the bed. ‘This is absolutely ridiculous. Where the hell are they? They can’t just have disappeared. I put them in the bottom of the wardrobe, I know I did.’
‘So why are you looking under the bed?’ asked Sam, who was busy towelling his hair dry.
‘Because they’re not in the wardrobe, I’ve looked.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure. I’ve had everything out,’ she said, pointing to a jumble of things piled up on the bedroom floor. ‘They’ve got to be here somewhere; shoes just don’t vanish.’
The family cats sat on the bed and watched with considerable interest as Suzie folded back the duvet and dived under the bed again. So far she’d found a stray trainer, a vacuum cleaner attachment, a sprinkling of coat hangers, some spilt cotton buds, enough fluff to re-carpet the sitting room – but no shoes. Still wrapped in her towel, Suzie sat back on her heels.
‘They’re brand new, they’re in a box, they’re peacock-blue silk. I mean, where the hell could they have got to?’
‘Well, don’t look at me,’ said Sam, busy sorting out his own clothes. ‘I’m not into high heels.’
‘They’re not that high,’ she said, not bothering with the joke. ‘They’re just gorgeous and I bought them specially and I haven’t got anything else that goes with my new dress.’
He looked at her sceptically. ‘You must have something else you can wear . . .’
‘Well, I haven’t. All I’ve got are flip-flops, sensible dog-walking shoes, gardening boots and wellies. The only other pair of going-out shoes I own are the ones I wore with my going-away dress, and how many years ago was that? They’re so out of fashion I’m expecting a call from the V&A any day now.’
‘Don’t have a go at me, I was just saying,’ Sam said, sounding hurt as he headed back towards the bathroom, making Suzie feel guilty that she had snapped at him. She sighed; if she was honest, it wasn’t only Sam’s fault that things weren’t great between them. She had too many secrets to make life easy for either of them.
Suzie also knew that if she had worn her old shoes to the party, Sam wouldn’t have said a word, and even after all these years she couldn’t decide whether that was because he just didn’t notice or he just didn’t care. He always used to say that he loved her just the way she was, which in one way was wonderful, but as time had gone on – and particularly at the moment, when things between them were so tense – Suzie had begun to feel less certain. There was a very fine line between acceptance and indifference.
Giving up on the shoes, she took her new outfit out of the wardrobe and held it up against herself. It was a rich Persian blue, beautifully slimming, beautifully cut, column dress, with a little matching jacket that had cost a small fortune even though it had been in the sale. She ran her fingers over the fabric. With her job and the girls growing up it had been so long since Suzie had bought anything really nice for herself. She turned to look in the mirror to gauge the effect. The colour brought out the deep blue of her eyes and looked lovely against her lightly tanned skin. It had been a great choice.
And okay, so it was more than twice what Suzie had ever paid for an outfit before, but she had needed something new, something special for tonight and Sam could hardly complain – she was earning her own money these days, proper money, not peanuts. Now that she was more successful it was time she started to make more of an effort, that was what Matt had said. ‘Dress for success,’ he had said, and if this dress was anything to go by, success was a foregone conclusion.
Seeing her sister Lizzie, even when she was dressed down, had made Suzie feel dowdy and plain, so she was even more pleased that she had made the effort to find something special to wear for the party.
She and Sam had been together so long that she wondered if he still really noticed that she was a woman. Not that Suzie had ever been a girlie girl and these days working in the garden all day meant that she had a lot of checked shirts and jeans and hands that said more about manual labour than manicures.
But all that was going to change if Matt had his way.
Matt. She sighed.
Matt had insisted on going to Cambridge with her to help choose the dress for the party, and when – after half a dozen outfits – she came out of the changing room in the blue outfit, he had given her a round of applause, saying she looked lovely, really gorgeous. For the first time in years, as she did a little twirl for him and the shop assistant, that was exactly how she felt.
Hidden away in the back of the wardrobe were the
