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Charlotte spat at him like a furious cat. “If you touch me, I’ll break your neck. I can do Krav Maga, you know!”
“So can I, remember?” He held out his hand to her again. Hesitantly, Charlotte took it, and even let him lift her down from the table, a tired, tipsy elf who could hardly keep on her feet any longer.
Gideon put an arm around her waist and turned to us. As so often, his expression didn’t tell you what he was thinking. “I’ll just deal with this. You girls go to my place with Raphael,” he said briefly. “We’ll meet there.”
For a moment our eyes met.
“See you soon,” he told me.
I nodded. “See you soon.”
Charlotte didn’t say another word.
And I wondered whether, maybe, when Cinderella had ridden away with the prince on his white horse, she too had a few tiny little guilt feelings.
Forever—is composed of Nows—
EMILY DICKINSON
FOURTEEN
“ONE MORE REASON to stay on the wagon,” groaned Lesley. “Look at it any way you like, when you’ve had too much to drink and made an exhibition of yourself, you feel a real idiot. I wouldn’t like to be in Charlotte’s shoes at school on Monday.”
“Or Cynthia’s,” I said. As we left the house, we’d seen the birthday girl necking in the cloakroom with a boy two years younger than our class. (In the circumstances, I hadn’t bothered to say good-bye to Cynthia, particularly as we hadn’t even said hello.)
“And I wouldn’t like to be the poor guy who threw up all over Mr. Dale’s funny froggy feet,” said Raphael.
We turned into Chelsea Manor Street. “But Charlotte really took the cake.” Lesley stopped outside the window of a furnishing fabrics store, not to look at the display but to admire her own reflection. “I hardly like to say it, but I did feel really sorry for her.”
“Me too,” I said quietly. After all, I knew exactly what being in love with Gideon felt like. And unfortunately I also knew what it felt like to make an exhibition of myself in front of everyone.
“With luck, she’ll have forgotten all about it in the morning.” Raphael unlocked the front door of Gideon’s apartment in a large red brick building. The Dales’ house in Flood Street was very close, so it had seemed sensible to change at Gideon’s place for the party.
Only now did I take a closer look at it. Earlier, I’d been in too much of an emotional state after my meeting with Lucy and Paul in 1912 to notice anything. I’d been sure that Gideon lived in one of those ultra-hip apartments, a hundred square yards of yawning void, all chrome and glass and a flat-screen TV the size of a football field. But I’d been wrong. A narrow hall led from the door past a small staircase to a living room flooded with light; its back wall was a huge window. The other walls were lined with shelves up to the ceiling, with books, DVDs, and a few files stacked on them, all jumbled up together, and in front of the windowsill there was a large gray sofa with a lot of cushions.
But the heart of the room was an open grand piano, although an ironing board propped casually against it made it look slightly less impressive. And the three-cornered hat slung over one corner of the piano lid didn’t quite fit the picture either. Madame Rossini was probably searching desperately for that ’at. Still, maybe this was Gideon’s idea of Homes & Gardens.
“What would you like to drink?” said Raphael, acting the perfect host.
“What is there?” Lesley asked, looking suspiciously at the open door to the kitchen, where the sink was piled high with dishes and plates encrusted with what had presumably once been tomato sauce. Or maybe it was a medical experiment and part of Gideon’s studies.
Raphael opened the fridge. “Hm. Let’s see. There’s some milk, but its use-by date was last Wednesday. Orange juice … oh. Can orange juice solidify? It kind of rattles inside the carton. Ah, this looks hopeful, could be some kind of lemonade. If we mix it with—”
“I’d just like some water, please.” Lesley was about to drop on the huge gray sofa, but remembered at the last minute that the Grace Kelly dress wasn’t suitable for lounging in and sat primly on the edge of the seat instead. I flopped down beside her with a huge sigh.
“Poor Gwenny.” She patted my cheek lovingly. “What a day! You must be worn out. Is it any consolation if I say you don’t look it?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “A bit.”
Raphael came back with glasses and a bottle of water, and swept a few magazines and books off the coffee table, including an illustrated volume about men in the Rococo period.
“Can you move a few square yards of those skirts aside to make room for me on this sofa?” He grinned down at me.
“Oh, never mind that, just sit on the dress,” I said, letting my head drop back and closing my eyes.
Lesley jumped up. “No, no, don’t! We’ll tear something, and then we’ll never be allowed to borrow any clothes from Madame Rossini again. Come on, get up and I’ll unlace the top.” She pulled me to my feet again and started helping me out of the Queen Alexandra dress. “You look somewhere else while we do this, Raphael.”
Raphael stretched out full length on the sofa and stared at the ceiling. “Okay like this?”
