Lindsey Kelk Girl Collection: About a Girl, What a Girl Wants. Lindsey Kelk

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sure,’ I agreed, still stooping. I bet she had a genuine diamond vajazzle under her spray-on jeans. ‘I’ll even put some clothes on.’

      ‘Oh, you and your scandalous ideas.’ She gave me a quick blast of a dirty laugh that made me like her even more. ‘Not too many, eh? Might be the odd eligible bachelor out here. Speaking of, don’t suppose you’ve run into our journo boy yet, have you?’

      Run into, eaten dinner with, snogged the face off.

      ‘Nick? I have had the pleasure,’ I replied, considering how best to explain to this complete stranger who was sort of my boss that I had sexually assaulted our journo boy about thirty minutes earlier. ‘He’s in the cottage next door.’

      ‘Oh, good – I should, you know, check in,’ she said, immediately preening and peering out of the window. ‘Do you know if he’s there now? Do I look OK?’

      Oh. Shit. She liked him.

      I nodded and kept schtum, hoping Nick would do the same. Now I really was starting to feel like Vanessa. Forty-eight hours into the job and I’d already snogged my boss’s boyfriend.

      ‘So, back here in, like, two hours?’ Paige grabbed a huge square bag decorated with interlocked Cs from the worktop and waved her sparkly watch at me. ‘Cocktails and catch-ups?’

      ‘Cocktails and catch-ups,’ I confirmed, a little bit excited to have a potential new girlfriend. ‘Two hours.’

      As long as it wasn’t cock-ups and catch tails, this could be a grand old time.

      Almost three hours later, I was perched on the arm of the overstuffed sofa in my living room, watching the ceiling fan spin round and round and wondering whether or not red wine on an empty stomach had been a good idea. I’d spent almost forty-five minutes out of the previous hour blow-drying and straightening my hair while swearing at the humidity, begging it to play nicely and not embarrass itself next to Paige’s perfectly coiffed locks. It had half listened and, as such, I had only had to half pin it up.

      Eventually, Paige knocked once on the door and let herself in, just like before.

      ‘We’re twins,’ she exclaimed, holding up her arms in delight.

      We were not twins. We looked like a before and after. Paige had painted a pair of dark blue denim jeans onto her pin-thin legs and wrapped black masking tape all around her torso until it resembled a racer-back vest. I had squeezed myself into a slightly too small pair of Vanessa’s stolen jeans and disguised the resulting muffin top with a slightly too big black T-shirt. That said, we did appear to be wearing the same shoes.

      ‘Don’t you just love Tribs?’ she asked, pointing a foot at me. ‘I know YSL shoes are stupidly expensive, but they’re so bloody comfy. As soon as I got my first pair, I was like, fuck, no more Choos or Looboos for me. Tribs all the way.’

      ‘All the way,’ I agreed. I had certainly not had enough wine. I didn’t even know I was wearing YSL shoes.

      ‘So, this guy who works here, Zippy or something?’ Paige opened up a much smaller version of the same Chanel bag she’d brought in earlier and produced a little black bullet of lipstick. ‘He came over earlier and said there was this little luau thing on the beach a bit further up. It’s not an official work thing, but he said it would be fun. There will be drinks and there will be boys.’

      I assumed that by Zippy she meant Kekipi, but I let it go.

      ‘I like drinks and boys,’ I said, watching her reapply perfect red lipstick straight from the tube without a mirror. ‘Should we maybe not wear massive high heels on sand, though?’

      ‘Good point.’ She smacked her lips together and dropped the lipstick back into her bag. ‘But I can’t wear jeans without heels – my legs look like tree trunks.’

      ‘I can’t imagine for a second that they do.’ I refused to play the ‘I’m so fat, you’re so fat’ game with a creature this well put together. It was insulting to both of us. ‘It’ll be fine.’

      ‘No, I’ll have to go and get changed,’ she said, shaking her head resolutely. ‘If I wear trousers without heels, I basically look like that little guy from Game of Thrones, and he’s the only one who’s getting away with being four feet tall and hot. He’s hot, yeah?’

      ‘He seems very nice?’ I hoisted myself to my feet and waited the obligatory three seconds until I felt comfy in my heels. ‘Do you want to go and change, then?’

      ‘No need.’ Paige clapped and looked at me like she’d just solved world poverty. ‘I’ll borrow something from you. I’m sure we’re about the same size.’

      We weren’t, but I was so flattered-slash-worried she’d suffered a serious head trauma, I let her push me out of the way and disappear into my room.

      ‘Oh, Vanessa.’ She stood in front of my wardrobe looking at all my rejected outfits for the evening with her hands over her mouth. And by all, I meant three. Because I only had three other outfits. The yellow dress I’d worn for dinner the night before, a black silky number and my newly cut-off denim cut-offs. ‘Is this all you have?’

      ‘I didn’t think there was going to be a lot of call for black tie,’ I said, standing shame-faced in the doorway. ‘And I came in a hurry.’

      Paige turned her back on my dressing room in disgust and fixed me with a very odd look. ‘Back to mine, then.’

      It shouldn’t have been a shock that Paige’s wardrobe was bursting to the seams, but I was still a little astounded that her plane had been able to take off with all the shit that was spilling out of her bedroom. I was sitting on her bed waiting for her to show me outfit number three, and so far I’d counted seven bikinis, two swimming costumes, ten pairs of shoes and three striped American Apparel T-shirts that were exactly the same. And that was just what was on the floor. Inside the wardrobe, all manner of silk and satin concoctions threatened to leap out and make their bid for freedom.

      ‘What about this?’

      She stepped out of the bathroom in what looked like an oversized white shirt with pleats on the front and no collar, and even though I’d already shown her mine earlier in the day, I was a bit worried that at any second she was about to show me her lady garden. At least when I’d done it, it was by accident.

      ‘It’s Derek Lam.’ She threw her arms out as though that should mean something to me. ‘It’s last season, though. Is it horribly obvious that it’s last season?’

      ‘Paige,’ I said as calmly as possible. ‘We’re going to a Hawaiian luau. In Hawaii. I don’t think it’s going to matter if it’s last season or if it pre-dates the Koran. I just don’t think white silk is a good idea when there’s going to be rum punch.’

      ‘Good point,’ she said, whipping the dress over her head to show me her nude bra and knickers before grabbing a multicoloured shift dress with a neon-pink bib in the front. It looked like a high-fashion Care Bear costume. ‘Thakoon?’

      ‘Bless you?’ I shrugged.

      With a second disturbed look, Paige pulled the dress on, grabbed a pair of nude strappy sandals and shook her curls out in the mirror. ‘Fine.’ She pulled a grumpy face and then wiped off her red lippy with a tissue. ‘It needs a nude lip.’

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