and I could only groan in reply.
It was the following night and I was carrying home four Asos dresses that had been delivered to Frisbee. I knew Eugene was desperate to give his verdict like a Project Runway judge but I hadn’t wanted to try them on in the shop and risk bumping into Zach. Plus, the bathroom was cramped and I suspected Asos didn’t accept returns which had been trailed in loo water.
Please could one of the dresses look decent? This was the most grown-up party I’d ever been invited to. Please could they transform me into a sophisticated woman who looked like she knew what the home secretary did (something to do with homes?) and not into a gawky teenager who’d rummaged through her mother’s wardrobe and circled lipstick on her cheeks.
Once I got back, Mia helped. Sort of. Dress one was declared ‘too cheap and shiny’. Dress two apparently made me look like ‘an old woman who teaches ballroom dancing on a cruise’, and dress three was simply ‘disgusting’. But she smiled like a proud mother when I came out from her bathroom in dress four. It was a dark red velvet and off the shoulder.
‘Flo, you look like Jessica Rabbit!’
I blinked at myself in her full-length mirror. It was as if the dress was a disguise; normal, sensible Florence with her hair tied back in a ponytail had been usurped by this glamorous pretender. Mia was exaggerating. I didn’t have the proportions of Jessica Rabbit. But with make-up and heels, I would look like someone else entirely, someone who could be friends with the glossy Octavia Battenberg. I stood on tiptoes and narrowed my eyes, trying to imagine it.
‘What shoes?’ she asked.
‘My black heels,’ I said, still squinting in the mirror.
‘No,’ she said, waggling a finger at me. ‘You’re not wearing those shoes with that dress.’
‘What’s wrong with them?’
‘They’re the sort of clumpy courts the Queen wears. You can’t wear a dress like that with those heels, it’s like wearing couture with wellington boots. Hang on…’ She jumped off her bed and opened her wardrobe, then crouched to inspect dozens of stacked shoeboxes. ‘Not these, not these. Definitely not those but these might work.’ She pulled out a box marked ‘Jimmy Choo’.
‘Uh-uh,’ I said, backing away from the box as if it contained a tarantula. ‘They’ll be too small.’
‘Just try them,’ replied Mia, lifting the lid off. ‘You’re not running the marathon, it’s only for the night.’
She pulled out a pair which matched the blood red of the dress, with thin straps that tied round the ankle. The heels looked like knitting needles. They were the sort of shoes I’d never even tried on before because they were too delicate – and I never wanted to draw attention to the size of the canoes at the end of my ankles.
Mia knelt and held one out. Wobbling, I lifted my foot and pushed it in. Bigfoot getting ready for his first party.
‘And this one.’
I clutched Mia’s bedpost so I didn’t fall over as she fastened the strap around my ankles, then, unsteady as a newborn foal, turned round to look in the mirror.
‘Perfect. Although you need a pedicure. Even Hugo has more attractive feet than you.’
‘Thanks. But I can’t wear these, they’re too tight and I can’t walk in them.’ My calves were already shaking.
‘Just practise tonight. Up and down in the kitchen. I’ll teach you.’
It took ten minutes to get downstairs and then Mia shouted at me – ‘head back, chin up’ – while I tottered along the kitchen tiles. But half an hour later I’d improved. I wouldn’t be able to walk very far at the party and dancing would be impossible – I’d have to remain rooted on the spot and wave my hands in the air like a tree in a thunderstorm. But Mia was right: these were the sort of heels that should be worn with a dress like that.
‘Cinderella shall go to the ball,’ she said, as I sat on a kitchen chair and undid the straps.
‘Thanks for your help.’
‘Please,’ replied Mia, with a wave of her hand. ‘I’m good at this shit.’
I pulled off the shoes and wriggled my toes gratefully. ‘Where’s Ruby?’
‘Getting her hair done. She’s seeing that guy you work with tomorrow.’
‘Zach?’
I said his name so loudly Mia looked up from the hob and frowned.
‘Yeah, him. Why? Is that bad?’
I paused for a couple of beats before replying. ‘No. Not bad. Just weird. He hasn’t said anything.’
But that