Later that evening, after feasting on oysters and champagne in the first arrondissement—smack in the center of Paris—Alice and Tally hopped into a cab and stepped out twenty minutes later down a narrow street in Pigalle. Amidst much complaining and swearing in French, their driver had dropped them straight in front of the club’s red carpet, nudging his rickety white taxi between the lines of Bentleys and stretch limos and Smart cars.
“This is so insidery!” breathed Tally, taking in the locale’s discreet, unvarnished exterior. Tonight of course, for its launch party, the place had been decked out with floodlights and velvet ropes and bouncers. But ordinarily, the only thing giving it away would have been the glowing red orb suspended outside.
“Très chic,” Alice replied. “No wonder they called this place Souterain. You know, that’s French for ‘underground.’” She smiled to herself. She really was quite fluent.
“Whatever you say. How do you think we get in?” Tally was crushed up against a lamppost; the pavement was so crowded that she and Alice could barely move. Nearby, a pen of flashing paparazzi roared every time some new TV personality, model, sports star, or fashion designer arrived and twirled for the cameras.
“There’s the entrance.” Alice pointed to a knot of wannabes clustered to one side of the red carpet. The line stretched about halfway down the street.
“Fuck me if I’m waiting behind that.” Swaying over, Alice elbowed her way through the swarm and planted herself in front of the bouncer. She ran a hand through her long, brown hair. It was feeling particularly smooth tonight, thanks to the Kérastase masque she’d applied earlier on.
“Nom?” the bouncer demanded gruffly, barring her way through the velvet ropes.
“Pardon me?” Alice swallowed. She’d never blagged her way into a club before; she was used to obstacles like this melting away.
“Name?” the bouncer repeated in English with a heavy French accent.
“Umm…” Alice turned to Tally for a prompt.
But Tally wasn’t there. Where the fuck had she gone?
“Oh yes, well, I’m a VIP,” Alice babbled. “I think my father’s already inside.” She stopped. Her father? Did she want to sound like any more of a loser?
“And your fahzer’s name eez?” the bouncer inquired, tap-ping his people-counter against his clipboard.
“Umm, it’s Monsieur… Monsieur… François…”
“Sweetie!” Tally called, seizing Alice’s hand from behind. “Sorry I lost you. I saw that pop singer Raphael going in and just had to stop and watch.”
“Who?” Alice glared at her. Tally was always going on about obscure foreign singers, and now wasn’t the time.
“Raphael.” Tally insisted. “Oh my god, he is sooo beautiful.”
“Ee is not zee only one,” the bouncer uttered, staring at Tally as if he was a starving dog and she was a bone.
Alice narrowed her eyes. Didn’t she look pretty too, in her new satin slip dress with matching black satin shoes? This was the part she always hated about going out with her best friend. Tally’s new dress shimmered all over with silver sequins. Her stilettos were silver too, with long, tapering metal heels that looked like they could stab someone through the heart. Which, judging from the expression on the bouncer’s face, they had.
“Entrez,” he said, unhooking the rope for them. “Be my guest.”
“Thank you,” Tally beamed.
“Whatever,” Alice grumbled.
“’Ave a wonderfool night,” the bouncer breathed as Tally passed. “But please do not forget I, poor Jean-Baptiste, outside and freezing weezout you.”
“I hope you freeze to death,” Alice muttered.
“Sorry?” Tally asked.
“Nothing. I wasn’t talking to you.” Alice ripped open her clutch and ferociously smeared on lip gloss. “Let’s get drinks.”
Souterrain’s interior couldn’t have been more different from its plain facade. The space had been tarted up to look like a lavish burlesque club, all plush fabrics and chandeliers and private alcoves. On the stage in the main arena, a mostly naked woman was doing some kind of magic trick involving a blow torch and a cage of doves. Revelers applauded from cabaret tables, while above them, three gallery levels spiraled toward the ceiling, each with its own dance lounge and floor show. The VIP area was a series of mock dressing rooms, where clusters of Paris’s elite were knocking back bottles of Cristal. Alice and Tally slipped their way past stunning women dressed for the catwalk and angular men in skinny jeans to get to the bar.
“Excuse me, ladies, may I purchase you a beverage?” a man standing next to Alice inquired above the R&B music.
Alice looked him up and down. He was rake-thin with full lips and a black ponytail. His equally weird friend was already ordering drinks.
Alice shook her head.
“Yes, please! How lovely,” Tally interrupted. “I’ll have an Old Fashioned.”
Alice nudged her. “Stop! Have you seen his hairdo? Freak. If he buys us anything, we’ll have to talk to him.”
“Of course we won’t,” Tally said into her ear. “Anyway, too late now.”
“And you?” the man pouted at Alice.
“Ugh,” Alice sighed. “I’ll have a mojito, I suppose.”
“How stylish. How festive,” the man droned. “My name is Baffi. It means mustaches in Italian.” He sounded utterly bored by everything that came out of his mouth. He stuck out his hand. It felt dry and limp.
“And I’m Nikita,” Baffi’s friend introduced himself. He was carrying all four of their drinks in his spidery hands. “Come, we’ll sit over here.”
Before Alice could stop him, Nikita had laid everything out on a low table and festooned himself over one of the ottomans round it. Baffi pulled out a seat for Alice, then positioned himself almost on top of her. He smelled like one of those people who don’t shower very much, then douse themselves in cologne and think you won’t be able to tell the difference. Alice rattled her mojito without taking a sip. There was no way she was trusting someone like that not to slip a roofie into her drink.
It would be so much better if they were with Miguel right now. Why had she listened to Tally?
“You seem like an ice queen but underneath I can smell it: You have passions of fire,” Baffi whispered lazily in her ear.
Alice jumped. “What?”
“You have appetites,” Baffi drawled. He fished the olive out of his martini and poked it slowly between his lips. “I can satisfy them.”
Alice stared at him in horror.
“I think he’s into you,” Tally hissed, catching sight of Baffi’s amorous expression. She’d finished her Old Fashioned and was chewing on one of the orange slices inside it. “Want me to leave you alone so you can hit on him?”
“Have you gone insane?” Alice said. “I need the bathroom. Are you coming?”
The ladies room, a welcome break from the noise by the bar, had been designed to look like a boudoir. Alice sat down on a pink pouf and checked out the selection of perfumes and moisturizers arranged on a vanity table. She spritzed some Passage d’Enfer from L’Artisan Parfumeur onto her wrist.
“I thought you had to pee,” Tally said, tucking a loose hair into the pile pinned on top of her head.
“No. I just wanted to get away from those psychopaths.”
“But your guy was hot. I thought if you kissed him it might help you forget about T.”
“I don’t want to forget about T,” Alice said defensively. Tally was so thoughtless when she got drunk. Why would she mention Tristan at a time like this?
Tally’s phone beeped. She grabbed it. “Oh.” Her face fell. “It’s a text from Rando.”
“What does he want?”
“To see me next week.” Tally threw her phone back into her bag.
“Well? Aren’t you going to reply?”
“No. I mean, I wouldn’t have given him my number except he looked so nervous asking for it the other night.” A coy dimple appeared in Tally’s cheek. “I’m in love with someone else.”
Alice grimaced. Furiously, she pumped some L’Occitane hand cream out of its bottle and rubbed it into her cuticles. “You mean Mr. Logan, don’t you?”
“Maybe,” Tally giggled.
“I don’t get it. What the hell do you see in him?”
“Everything! He’s so manly and sexy and strong and kind and intelligent.” Tally had gone dreamy. “Whenever we’re in his class, all I can think about is ripping his clothes off and tracing my fingers round that tattoo.”
“Tattoo?” Alice stiffened. Her mind started racing. She thought back to Mr. Logan in the Badger and Hounds. That woman she’d seen, the yellow scarf…
“Where’s his tattoo?” she asked between her teeth.
“On his chest. Why?”
“How the hell do you know?”
Alice’s voice was so dangerous that Tally looked up in alarm. “He told me. What’s the matter?”
“Of couse he didn’t fucking tell you.”
“He did! Why would I lie?” Tally’s voice was shaky. She hated confrontations.
“You’re shagging Mr. Logan, aren’t you?”
Alice shuddered. She hadn’t known how irreversible those words would sound till she’d said them out loud. She had never accused Tally of anything serious, not once in their entire three-year friendship. But she couldn’t take it back now.
“No!” Tally turned red. “What if I was, though—would it be so bad?”
“Of course it would. He’s a teacher. And a sleaze.”
“Well, I’m not.” Tally paused, her eyes flashing. “But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t.”
“Fine.” Alice stood up and straightened her skirt. She wasn’t finished with her investigation yet. “Just so you know, someone else is.”
“What—what do you mean?”
“I saw him in the Badger and Hounds the other day. He was coming down from those sordid upstairs bedrooms and there was a woman with him. I couldn’t see her properly but they were definitely together. She looked just like you.”
“I don’t believe you. It can’t have been him. It must have been someone else.” Tally’s face was heartbroken. Her eyes had become pools of tears.
Alice felt a stab of remorse. Maybe her guess had been wrong. But still, Tally needed to come to her senses. It was Alice’s duty as a friend to protect her against herself.
“Look, I don’t mean to sound like a bitch or anything,” Alice said in a gentler tone of voice, “but you should really get over this little infatuation. It’s making you look like a total fool in front of everyone. I’m your best friend, so I can tell you that.”
She paused, remembering Tristan’s wise insights about Tally the night they’d first kissed. Maybe that would help.
“Listen, Tals, in a way I totally get why you like Mr. Logan,” she said sympathetically. “If my dad ignored me the way yours ignores you, I’d be looking for father figures too. I’d probably be far more messed up than you are.”
“Thanks a lot. How charitable of you to even be friends with someone as messed up as me.” Tally stalked toward the door. Then she wheeled round. “By the way, Ali, give me some credit. Do you honestly believe I would sleep with Mr. Logan in a fucking pub? I have better taste than that.”
Alice watched the door slam behind her friend. Did she believe it? Nothing seemed certain anymore.
At precisely eleven o’clock the next morning, Alice was shocked out of her sleep by the sound of her cell. She scrambled blindly for it, reaching toward the spot where her bedside table would have been in Tudor House.
Ring ring. Ring ring.
Where was it?
Then she remembered. She was still in Paris. There was Tally, curled up like a snail at the very edge of the bed, as far from Alice as possible. That was an improvement from last night, at least. After they’d left the club, speaking to each other only in monosyllables, Tally had locked herself in the bathroom and started running water in the bath. Alice had figured she’d leave Tally alone for a while to calm down. She’d settled on their bed with Grazia, her favorite celebrity weekly, and listened to the faint splashing sounds emanating from the bathroom, waiting. And waiting.
Ring riiiing!
“For fuck’s sake. Pick it up.” Tally flung out her arm in desperation.
“I can’t find it.”
“Hang on. Here.” Tally chucked the phone to Alice across the mountain of pillows that seemed to have sprung up between them since last night. Alice frowned. It looked like Tally had piled them there on purpose.
“Hello?”
“Al! It’s Sonia. What took you so long?”
“You bloody woke us up. What kind of person rings at eleven o’clock on Sunday morning? It’s practically the middle of the night.”
“Sorry, babe.” Sonia didn’t sound sorry at all. “I couldn’t wait. I have such brilliant news for you.”
“What? Hold on, let me put you on speaker.”
Alice pressed a button on her phone and laid it carefully on the pillow-barrier so Tally could hear, too. It was clearly meant as a peace offering. Hopefully, Tally would get the idea. “Go on.”
“Okay, so, last night, while Dylan was in the bathroom, I saw this e-mail she’d left up on her screen. It was to her sister, I think—but I don’t know. I mean, I’m not even sure Dylan has a sister.”
Alice yawned. “Is this going anywhere?”
“Duh. Guess what it said? Dylan’s not seeing Tristan at all anymore. Apparently she hasn’t even heard from him since the party.”
Alice’s shoulders drooped in relief. “Nice one,” she said. At least T had been telling the truth about something. “Good work, darling. What else did you find out?”
“That was it. She came back before I could read more. But here’s some other news. You know how Bella Scott’s dad is Lucian Scott, the famous director?”
“Obviously.”
“Well, he’s coming to Pashminas to the Rescue! I didn’t think he’d bother, but Bella just told me he promised her. Oh my god, guys, do you know what this could mean for my film career?”
Oh my god, guys, Alice mouthed, pinching her nose. She caught Tally’s eye. The two of them laughed silently.
“I’m having a credit inserted into the program,” Sonia rattled on. “Entire event conceived and directed by Sonia Khan.”
Tally snorted. “But you didn’t conceive it, Sone. It was Ali’s idea.”
“What? No, it wasn’t. How can you say that?”
“Umm, because it’s true?” Alice cut in. “We have witnesses. Anyway, we should really go.”
“How’s Paris?” Sonia’s voice was sharp with jealousy.
Alice glanced at Tally. “Totally brilliant. We’re having a wicked time. Fantastic. Oh, and Sone?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for that news about Dylan.” There was a cheeky gleam in Alice’s eye. “I thought you’d do some good snooping on this. Know why?”
“’Cause you’re so nosy. Get it?”
Alice and Tally collapsed in hysterics on the bed.
“Oy, why are you being such a cow?” Sonia moaned. “I called you with good news, didn’t I? Anyway, my cast came off yesterday. My face is back!”
“At long last. That means we won’t have to listen to you complain,” Alice giggled. She hung up.
“Hey, Tal.” There was a solemn look on her face now. She had to sort things out with Tally or she’d be stuck with no one but Sonia, who was acting more like a lapdog than ever. “I didn’t mean all that shit I said last night. I’ve been thinking, maybe it wasn’t Mr. Logan I saw. He had his back to me and stuff. And I might have been a tad drunk that afternoon.”
Tally chipped off a bit of her silver nail varnish. Then she smiled. “Drunk? What were you doing in the pub in the middle of a school day anyway?”
“Good question,” Alice laughed, settling in for a fine old morning gossip. She was saved.
For now.