A Girl's Best Friend

  ‘We’ve got to get all these people out of here!’ I yelled, dodging a woman wearing a string of multicoloured fairy lights around her neck, a Santa hat and no clothes. ‘Al will be home soon, he can’t see this.’

  ‘Why not?’ she yelled back. ‘He didn’t come to the presentation! He doesn’t give a shit. He’s going to sack me anyway.’

  ‘Of course he isn’t.’ My voice started to scratch from all the shouting. ‘He did go, I saw him and he told me. He just didn’t stay very long.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked, something that looked suspiciously like tears in her huge blue eyes. ‘So, what? He saw it and he hated it? Or he’s a selfish shit like you and he just didn’t care enough to bother hanging around.’

  Stunned, I stared at her, while the party raged on around me.

  ‘Which do you think it is?’ she asked, grabbing the bottle of champagne back out of my hand.

  ‘I didn’t leave because I didn’t care,’ I said, ashamed. ‘I was on my way back and I didn’t think I’d be gone that long.’

  ‘Oh, no, I know,’ she said. ‘You left to go and see a man who keeps messing you around because that was more important than being there for me.’

  I couldn’t even think of a way to argue with her; it wasn’t as though she wasn’t wrong, I had just hoped she would understand.

  ‘I didn’t think it was more important,’ I tried to explain without digging myself into a deeper hole because really, wasn’t that exactly what I’d done? ‘I didn’t plan to go and see him at all but then I realized if I didn’t go tonight he would be gone and Kekipi said I should go and—’

  ‘That’s right!’ Amy shouted, two little red spots appearing on her cheeks. ‘It’s Kekipi’s fault! He told you to go so you had to. I’m sorry, Tess, for a moment I thought you were a twenty-eight-year-old woman who made her own decisions.’

  ‘I’m not twenty-eight until next month and you know it,’ I said, my shame dissolving into frustration. ‘And none of that explains why you decided to put on a rave in Al’s living room.’

  ‘Because I worked my backside off to make tonight a success and none of you cared,’ she shouted over the top of the music. Mariah Carey was never meant to be played this loud. I pressed a finger to my ear to make sure it wasn’t bleeding. ‘So why not have a party.’

  I hated myself so much. ‘Amy, the presentation was incredible, everyone said so.’

  ‘They did,’ she agreed, furiously swiping at her eyes. ‘Apart from my best friend and my brilliant boss, who both had better places to be.’

  ‘I didn’t have a better place to be and neither did Al,’ I argued, fully aware that she could blow at any second. I kept a tight hold of the doughnuts. ‘He had a bit of a meltdown; it happens to everyone, you know.’

  ‘Right, right,’ she said, her eyes burning fierce. ‘He had a meltdown. And what about you?’

  Clenching my jaw and pressing my lips together, I shook my head.

  ‘I messed up,’ I said, my words shaky. ‘I let you down. And I’m sorry.’

  Amy took another drink from the champagne bottle as Ivan ran past screaming with the naked girl on his shoulders. With a bitter laugh, Amy opened it, grabbed a doughnut from the big pink box in my arms, stuffed it in her mouth and then knocked the rest of them onto the floor.

  I couldn’t believe she would attack the doughnuts! I basically had nothing left to live for.

  ‘The presentation was incredible, I couldn’t believe it,’ I told her, staring at the glazed mess at my feet. ‘I mean, I do believe it, obviously. What I mean is, the whole thing was so beautiful, I was blown away. I took so many photos. And you did all that. It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen, Amy, I’m so, so proud of you.’

  The fire in her eyes flickered for a moment. The power of that doughnut knew no bounds.

  ‘And yes, I left to go after Nick and I shouldn’t have. Definitely not without letting you know anyway, and the plan was always to come back before the end. I tried to but I got stuck in traffic.’ I was going to ignore what might have happened if Susan hadn’t interrupted us. ‘You have to believe that I’m sorry and we have to get all these people out of here before Al gets home. Where are Delia and Genevieve? Where’s Kekipi?’

  Amy nodded across the room. ‘Don’t know about the others but Genevieve is over there.’

  I followed her gaze across the room to see Al’s housekeeper slumped in an armchair, the top four buttons on her blouse undone, her high and tight bun let loose and a bottle of vodka in her hand. She held a hand out in front of her face and laughed.

  ‘There you are, you dumb hand,’ she yelped, delighted. ‘What are you doing there, hand?’

  ‘I don’t even want to know,’ I said, turning back to Amy, stripy knickers, neon bra and all. ‘We can fix this.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked, furious and heartbroken all at once. ‘Why bother?’

  ‘Because you love working with Al,’ I said, beginning to lose my temper. ‘Because you’re good at it and because you’re mad at me and disappointed in us both but you don’t want to mess everything up.’

  She stared at me for a moment and I really didn’t know what she was going to do.

  ‘Tess?’ she said, looking around her as though she was seeing the party for the first time. ‘I’ve dropped the biggest bollock ever, haven’t I?’

  ‘No,’ I lied as two models jumped up on the coffee table in their stilettoes and started grinding on each other to the super sexy beats of ‘Mistletoe and Wine’. ‘We can sort this out. You turn off the music and I’ll kick everyone out.’

  ‘It’s on Spotify,’ she said, looking around the room. ‘But I can’t remember where I left my phone. Give me a minute.’

  She grabbed a black polo neck from the back of the settee and pulled it on, not bothering with the bottoms, and ran off into the kitchen in her knickers. Looking back at the packed living room, I gnawed on my bottom lip, not sure where to start, so I picked up the doughnuts instead and put the box on a side table. Then I turned round and faced the room.

  ‘OK, everyone!’ I bellowed at the top of my voice. ‘You need to GO HOME.’

  Strangely enough, no one budged.

  The house was heaving with people, dancing on the sofas, kissing in corners and doing God knows what underneath the dining room table. I saw empty bottles of vintage champagne on every surface while someone had spilled tequila all over the polished wooden floors. The music was so loud I could barely think, and while that didn’t seem to be a problem for all the gurning, grinding partiers, it was a problem for me. I needed Amy to shut it off. When the music stopped, the party stopped, I told myself. And lights, we needed lights.

  ‘If I were a light switch,’ I muttered. ‘Where would I be?’

  I grabbed the empty bottle Amy had abandoned and searched for switches. How hard could it be? I asked myself. But of course it was impossible. I vaguely remembered seeing Amy wielding some sort of Starship Enterprise-type handset when we got in from the airport on Monday night but I had no idea where it was hiding.

  Picking my way through the party, I began to gather discarded bottles as I tapped individual party guests on the shoulder.

  ‘You need to leave,’ I shouted at a group of young-looking men, all over six-foot tall, all gorgeous. ‘You have to go!’

  ‘No, it’s cool,’ one of them replied, grabbing me around the waist and pulling me into the centre of their dance circle. ‘You don’t have to go anywhere.’

  ‘Not me,’ I replied, shaking off one pair of hands, only for them to be replaced by another. At any other time, being mauled by a gang of male models could only be considered a good thing but I was so, so frustrated. ‘You. All. Have. To. Go.’

  But they were far too busy tearing off their clothes and grinding on each other to listen to me. With arms full of Cristal and Krug, I stepped over thousands of dollars of carelessly abandoned dresses, shirts and shoes, wending my way back towards the foyer. There had to be a fuse box somewhere,
I decided. Since Amy didn’t seem to be having any luck killing the music, shutting this thing down at the source seemed like the best option. Weighed down under half a dozen bottles and one pair of very expensive shoes, I heard a strangled sob escape from my mouth when the front door swung open again. Not more people, I couldn’t take it.

  ‘Aîa!’

  Kekipi and Domenico, still in their dinner jackets but sans bowties, stood outside, shock written all over their faces.

  ‘Help me,’ I begged. ‘Please, make it stop.’

  ‘What is this song?’ Kekipi replied, a smile breaking out on his face and his foot tapping along. ‘I love it!’

  ‘It’s Cliff Richard and you’re not helping!’ I thundered. ‘Please, Domenico, we have to get everyone out of here before Al gets home.’

  Throwing off his jacket and rolling up his sleeves, he snapped into action. As he had managed Al’s Italian home while taking care of his wayward son for decades, I had a feeling this wasn’t the first time he had pulled the plug on an unplanned party. Kekipi, on the other hand, the patron saint of impromptu soirees, was no use to us whatsoever. By the time I had ditched my empties in the umbrella stand by the front door, he was already shirtless and swigging from a bottle of vodka with the male models.

  A split second before I went completely deaf, the earsplitting EDM remix of ‘Last Christmas’ gave way to deafening silence before it was replaced by a loud chorus of disappointed grunts and yells.

  And then the sirens started.

  ‘Don’t worry about the Po-Po,’ Kekipi said, still dancing to nonexistent music only he could hear as everyone else began to rush towards the door. ‘This place has seen crazier parties than this and no one ever got arrested. Well, one person. Maybe two. And there was that time with Mick Jagger but that was in the seventies, you don’t need to worry about that.’

  ‘I am not ending up in a police cell again,’ I shouted, gripping his shoulders as I looked right into his glassy eyes. ‘Once was funny, twice was bad, but three times in one year is not happening. Sort it out, Kekipi. Sort. It. Out!’

  ‘Relax,’ he said as lights flooded the foyer and Domenico held the door open for the fleeing partygoers. ‘It’s not like we’re doing anything illegal; it got a little loud, that’s all. We’ve turned the music off, they’ll slap our wrists and leave.’

  ‘I think someone has drugs,’ I whispered, rubbing my wrists. I could already feel the handcuffs. ‘What if they find drugs?’

  ‘Of course someone has drugs,’ he said before turning to me with a serious expression. ‘Do you have drugs?’

  ‘No,’ I said, beginning to feel very sick as two officers slowly got out of the car in front of the house. ‘Of course I don’t. I’m me. I daren’t even take Nurofen Plus in case I OD.’

  ‘Good,’ Kekipi replied. ‘I would have been terribly upset if you didn’t share.’

  ‘This is not a joke!’ I shouted. ‘This is America. Don’t you watch the news? Prison here is not fun.’

  ‘Maybe not if you’re a top,’ he sniffed. ‘Calm down, let me handle it.’

  ‘I’m not going to ring in the New Year as someone’s bitch,’ I told him as the police officers knocked on the open door. ‘Amy? Where are you?’

  ‘Oh, for Beyoncé’s sake!’ Kekipi blew out a giant huff of a sigh, grabbed hold of my oversized sweatshirt and yanked it over my head. ‘Tits and teeth, Brookes, tits and teeth.’

  ‘Hey,’ I yelped, my voice muffled by the soft fabric before he tossed it to one side, fluffed out my hair, and gave me a look so filthy I felt as though I might catch something.

  ‘Good evening, gentlemen, ma’am.’

  The two officers approached us with heavy stares, one with his thumbs tucked into his elaborately stocked utility belt, the other holding his radio in one hand, a gun in the other.

  An actual gun. In his hand.

  ‘Good evening, officers.’ Kekipi, bare-chested but impossibly charming, waved them inside. ‘Won’t you please come in, you must be freezing out there.’

  ‘Not really,’ one of them replied. ‘But then we’re wearing shirts.’

  Well, at least they had a sense of humour.

  ‘How can we help you this evening?’ Domenico asked, all smiles and civility. It suddenly became glaringly obvious how the two of them had ended up in their jobs: grace under pressure didn’t even begin to cover it. ‘I do hope our quiet soiree did not upset any of our neighbours.’

  ‘We had some reports of a disturbance,’ the second officer, a giant of a man, said as he stepped inside to take a look around. ‘Looks like your quiet soiree got a little out of hand.’

  ‘There were a few uninvited guests,’ Kekipi confessed. ‘But as you can see, everyone has gone now. It’s such a shame when a few rowdy people ruin a lovely, quiet night, don’t you think?’

  The first officer looked him up and down. Kekipi offered up a polite smile, as though it was perfectly normal to run around an Upper East Side townhouse shirtless with a bottle of Cristal in your hand. And as far as I knew, it was.

  ‘Yeah, real shame,’ the officer said. ‘Mind if we take a look around?’

  ‘I would be delighted, if you would be so kind,’ he replied, shoving me into his path. ‘My poor friend here was frightened out of her wits when she heard your sirens. She thought something terrible must have happened.’

  I felt him pinch my arm, hard.

  ‘I thought something terrible must have happened,’ I parroted. ‘I was frightened out of my wits.’

  The officer shifted his gaze from Kekipi’s bare chest to my barely covered one and from the look on his face, he much preferred what he saw.

  ‘We’ll just be a moment,’ the second officer said, slapping his partner’s back as he headed into the reception room. ‘Could you turn the lights on back here, please, sir?’

  ‘Just not all of them,’ I whispered to Domenico as he swiped at the console. ‘Darker is better.’

  Even with mood lighting, the devastation was obvious. Broken bottles, smashed glasses, Christmas trees turned over, paintings knocked off walls and a foot-long rip in the middle of the leather sofa, a stiletto shoe sticking out of the gash.

  ‘Quiet soiree, you say?’ The second officer pulled the shoe out of the sofa and turned it over in his hand. ‘If you guys decide to throw a real party, you let us know ahead of time, all right?’

  ‘Hopefully you’ll have the day off and be able to attend,’ Kekipi replied. ‘We do apologize.’

  ‘I can’t find my tossing phone!’ Amy came barrelling down the spiral staircase, still trouserless, her black jumper covered in neon paint. ‘And Genevieve is in the bath doing—’

  She stopped dead in her tracks and blanched at the sight of the policemen.

  ‘Absolutely nothing,’ she said calmly, crossing her legs and scrunching up her toes. ‘Evening.’

  ‘OK, just keep it down,’ the giant policeman said, handing me the shoe and then tapping his hat at Amy. She curtsied on the staircase, wide-eyed and holding her breath. ‘And happy holidays.’

  The first officer gave my cleavage one last, lingering look before offering a curt nod to Kekipi and Domenico and following his partner out the door. Closing it behind them and turning every single lock, Domenico surveyed the destruction with a wary look on his face.

  ‘It’s not a Bertie Bennett party unless someone calls the cops,’ Kekipi said with a shrug. ‘No harm done.’

  ‘No harm done at all,’ I said, holding up the shoe. ‘Unless I find out who this belongs to and rip her a new one.’

  ‘That’s a very modern take on the Cinderella story,’ he replied, opening the pink cardboard box with the doughnuts. ‘Ooh, treats!’

  ‘Good grief. Did I miss an earthquake?’

  Al stood in the middle of the room, hands on his hips and a great big smile on his ruddy face.

  ‘No, but you missed a hell of a party,’ Kekipi replied, biting into half a damaged doughnut. ‘Jane would have been proud.’

/>   ‘She did love a good get-together,’ he said, eyes full of happy memories as he looked at the destruction before him. ‘She wouldn’t have been happy to see it over before midnight, though. Where did everyone go?’

  ‘Home,’ I said, not quite sure I was hearing him right. ‘Because the police came. You aren’t upset?’

  ‘Upset?’ Al dropped his arm around my shoulders and gestured to the chaos. ‘You should have seen this place after Mick Jagger came to stay. Where did Amy get to? Do I need to go and bail her out? I think we’ve still a friend at precinct nineteen.’

  ‘I’m here,’ she said, waving timidly from the stairs. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Not at all, my girl,’ he said, shrugging off his coat and adding it to the clothing pile in front of him. ‘Between this and the presentation, I’ve never been so proud. You’re a wonder.’ He looked up at her as he said it, holding her gaze. I saw her give him a small smile back.

  ‘And she knows how to throw a bash,’ Kekipi added. ‘Now, Genevieve’s doing what in the bathroom, Amy?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Amy said. ‘Definitely not tripping balls with one of the waiters from the presentation.’

  ‘Good for her,’ Al said, flapping a hand at it all and starting up the stairs. ‘I don’t know about all of you, but I’m exhausted.’

  ‘Amen to that.’ Kekipi picked his shirt up from the pile of discarded clothes by the front door and tossed it over his shoulder. ‘What a fantastic night.’

  ‘You’ve all gone completely mad,’ I said, taking one last look at the devastation before following them up the stairs, forcing one tired foot in front of the other. If this was Kekipi’s idea of a fantastic night, I would hate to see a terrible one.