He hauled her upright and got her across the courtyard. But as soon as he opened the door into the house, the lights switched her brain into gear again, and she looked at her watch in horror.
‘The minicab! They’ll be here any minute, asking for Hendred Associates. I said I’d be waiting for them. Where did I leave my coat?’
‘Ah, the car. It is for you,’ said one of the passing waiters. ‘They are waiting outside. Your coat, it is on the rack in the breakfast room. I show you.’
Bella dashed off to get it but when she shot back to retrieve Lottie’s borrowed bag from the courtyard, there was no sign of Silk Shirt. She did look, but the cab was waiting and she could not see anyone the right height or wearing a pearl-white silk shirt. So she had to go without saying goodbye to him.
Just as well, she thought grimly. Panic banished the effects of the champagne. Now Bella was remembering, rather too vividly, how she had curled up against his shoulder and told him the story of her life.
She said a distracted goodbye to her hostess and fell gratefully into the back of the minicab. She told herself she was just tired. She told herself she was over-reacting.
But there was a cold voice in the back of her head, like a headmistress giving an end-of-term report. Change everyone around her … change time zones … change continents … Isabella Greenwood still makes an utter fool of herself.
AAAAARGH!
3
‘When is a Date not a Date?’ – Tube Talk
Bella woke the next morning with a mouth like the inside of a sandpit. She groaned and rolled over, muttering. But the taste wouldn’t go away.
Eventually she hauled herself up on one elbow and peered at the bedside clock. But even closing one eye, she couldn’t stop the figures dancing in and out of focus. She fell back with a thump – and something scratched her ear.
‘Eeeugh!’ she yelled, forgetting she was no longer on the island.
She leaped out of bed and looked round wildly for something to hit the bug with. If it was a bug. She had horrid images of scorpions and poisonous centipedes …
It was only when she was looming over the pillow, with a copy of the heaviest Harry Potter she could grab from the bookcase raised high above her head, that all the bits of her brain clicked back into place. Of course. She was not on the island: no tent, no cooking pots, no wonky table with sheets of data stacked high on it. And this was a real bed, too. She was in Lottie’s spare room and the most lethal thing in it was the dodgy hair dryer.
Bella lowered Harry, feeling a fool.
Still, even if Pimlico was scorpion-free, something had bitten her. With well-practised caution, she pulled back the covers.
And stopped, appalled.
It looked as if someone had emptied the contents of one of Granny Georgia’s pot-pourri jars over it, exactly where Bella had been sleeping. There were bits of powder-dry leaves, mixed in with twigs and, frankly, earth. A green stain across the bottom sheet ended in a half-crushed bay leaf. Where her head had lain, the pillow was peppered with a brownish-grey dust. It was all made worse by unmistakable smears of last night’s lippy and a sad bit of sparkle.
‘Yuck,’ said Bella from the heart.
The bedroom door opened and Lottie wandered in, yawning. She was wearing an oversized teddy bear tee-shirt that reached down to her knees, and pink socks. ‘You screamed, miss?’ she said amiably.
Bella shuffled a bit. ‘Er – I thought a scorpion had got into bed with me. I was half-asleep.’
Lottie narrowed her eyes at her. ‘Have you been reading science fiction again?’
Bella shook her head. ‘No. Worse than that.’ There was no help for it. She would have to come clean. ‘I – er – sort of fell into bed last night without taking my make-up off and …’ She stood aside, letting the state of the sheets speak for her.
Lottie stared and her mouth fell open. ‘That’s not all you didn’t take off, from the look of it. Is that mud?’
‘No. Or rather, well, yes, I suppose it is.’
Lottie closed her mouth, opened it again, shook her head, closed her mouth and sat down rather hard on the end of the bed.
‘Why?’
‘Um – you could say I had an accident.’
‘I can see that. If Carlos saw your hair now, he would slit his throat.