“I can’t find it anywhere.” Sadie suddenly appears beside me. To my horror, she seems almost in tears. “I’ve looked at every single girl. I’ve looked at all the necklaces. It’s nowhere.”
“It has to be!” I mutter as we head back down the corridor. “Sadie, listen. I’m sure it’s on one of the models. We’ll look really carefully at each one as they go past, and we’ll find it. I promise.”
I’m being as upbeat and convincing as I can, but inside… I’m not so sure. I’m not sure at all.
Thank God I’m in the front row. As the show starts, the crowd is six deep, and everyone’s so tall and skinny there’s no way I would have got a view from further back. Music starts thudding and lights start flashing around the room, and there’s a whoop from what must be a group of Diamanté’s friends.
“Go, Diamanté!” one of them yells.
To my slight horror, clouds of dry ice start to appear on the catwalk. How am I going to spot any models through that? Let alone any necklaces. Around me, people are coughing. “Diamanté, we can’t bloody see!” yells some girl. “Turn it off!”
At last the fog starts to clear. Pink spotlights flash onto the catwalk and a Scissor Sisters track starts thumping through the speakers. I’m leaning forward, alert for the first model, ready to concentrate as hard as I can, when I glimpse something out of the corner of my eye.
Opposite me on the other side of the catwalk, taking his seat in the front row, is Uncle Bill. He’s dressed in a dark suit and open-necked shirt and accompanied by Damian, together with another assistant. As I stare in horror, he looks up and catches my eye.
My stomach lurches. I feel frozen.
After a minute he lifts a hand calmly in greeting. Numbly, I do the same. Then the music increases in volume and suddenly the first model is on the catwalk, wearing a white slip dress printed with spiderwebs and doing that sashay-model walk, all hip bones and cheekbones and skinny arms. I stare desperately at the necklaces jangling around her neck, but she whizzes past so quickly, it’s almost impossible to get a good view.
I glance over at Uncle Bill and feel a prickle of horror. He’s scanning the necklaces too.
“This is useless!” Sadie appears from nowhere and leaps up onto the catwalk. She goes right up to the model and peers intently at the jumble of chains and beads and charms around her neck. “I can’t see it! I told you, it’s not there!”
The next model appears, and in a flash she’s examining that girl’s necklaces too.
“Not here either.”
“Super collection,” a girl next to me exclaims. “Don’t you think?”
“Er… yes,” I say distractedly. “Great.” I can’t look at anything except the necklaces. My vision is a blur of beads and gilt and paste jewels. I’m feeling a growing foreboding, a sense of failure-
Oh my God.
Oh my God oh my God! There it is! Right in front of me. Wound around a model’s ankle. My heart is hammering as I stare breathlessly at the pale-yellow beads, casually twined into an anklet. An anklet . No wonder Sadie couldn’t find it. As the model sashays nearer, the necklace is about two feet away from me on the catwalk. Less than that. I could lean over and grab it. This is absolutely unbearable…
Sadie suddenly follows my gaze and gasps.
“My necklace!” She zooms up to the oblivious model and yells, “That’s mine! It’s mine!”
The moment that model is off the catwalk I’m going after her and I’m getting it. I don’t care what it takes. I glance at Uncle Bill-and to my horror his eyes are glued on Sadie’s necklace too.
The model is sashaying back now. She’ll be off the catwalk in a minute. I glance across, squinting as a spotlight catches me right in the eye, and see Uncle Bill getting to his feet and his people clearing a way for him.
Shit. Shit .
I leap to my feet, too, and start making my way out, muttering apologies as I tread on people’s feet. At least I have an advantage: I’m on the side of the catwalk nearer the doors. Not daring to look back, I fling myself through the double doors and sprint up the corridor to the backstage area, flashing my pass at the bouncer guy on the door.
The backstage area is mayhem. A woman in jeans is barking instructions and pushing models onto the stage. Girls are ripping clothes off, having clothes put on, having their hair dried, having their lips touched up…
I look around in breathless panic. I’ve already lost sight of my model. Where the hell is she? I start moving between all the hair stations, dodging rails of clothes, trying to catch a glimpse of her-when suddenly I become aware of a row at the door.
“This is Bill Lington, OK?” It’s Damian, and he’s obviously losing it. “Bill Lington . Just because he doesn’t have a backstage pass-”
“No backstage pass, no entry,” I can hear the bouncer saying implacably. “Rules of the boss.”
“He is the fucking boss,” snaps Damian. “He paid for all this, you moron.”
“What you call me?” The bouncer sounds ominous, and I can’t help smiling-but my smile dies away as Sadie materializes, her eyes dark and desperate.
“Quick! Come!”
I start to move, but Sadie vanishes. A moment later she reappears, looking wretched.
“She’s gone!” she gulps, hardly able to get the words out. “That model girl has taken my necklace. She was hailing a taxi and I dashed back to get you, but I knew you’d be too slow. And when I returned to the street… she’d gone!”