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‘What are your plans, Ellie? Is Ben picking you up here?’
‘He’s gone to see someone in the imaging department. I’m meeting him there when I’ve finished with you. We’re going home first, because our house is on the way. Close your eyes while I do your make-up.’
‘Don’t make me look too made-up.’
‘Meg, you’re going to the ball. Made-up is good. But I haven’t overdone it. You look gorgeous. Just lipstick, then I’m done… There… You can look in the mirror.’
Meg looked. Normally she quite liked her face, but the make-up seemed to accentuate all the worst aspects of her features. The lipstick made her mouth look too big. The freckles on her nose, earned from so many hours spent outdoors, stood out. Resisting the urge to grab a tissue and rub it all off, she smiled because she didn’t want to offend Ellie, who looked genuinely delighted with what she’d achieved. ‘Thanks. Wow.’
Ellie’s mobile rang and she gasped. ‘That’s Ben. I need to get going. We’ll see you there, Meg. You look fab. Dino is going to be blown away. I wish I could stay to see his face.’ She sprinted out of the room, leaving Meg on her own with all her insecurities echoing in her head.
Staring at her reflection, she sighed. She didn’t look like herself. She didn’t feel like herself. Turning sideways, she kept her eyes on the mirror. All right, maybe she didn’t look awful. Just weird. Different.
The dress was nice.
Actually, she looked better than she’d thought she would.
Remembering Ellie’s comment that Dino would be blown away, Meg picked up the gold clutch bag that Ellie had persuaded her to buy along with the shoes. He wasn’t going to be blown away. She didn’t expect that. She didn’t have the sort of looks that would turn heads. But she looked OK. Decent. Hopefully he wouldn’t be embarrassed to be seen with her.
He’d asked her, she reminded herself firmly. He’d worked with her long enough to know what she was like. He’d kissed her when she’d been dressed in her windproof jacket. She had to look better than she did when she was being blown to bits by a gale.
Meg opened the door of the staffroom and was about to go in search of Dino when she saw him standing in the corridor. He was deep in conversation with a woman wearing a short scarlet dress. It was covered in sequins that sparkled and glinted under the lights.
Short? Meg’s stomach plummeted. Was she supposed to have worn something short? Why had no one told her? The invitation had just said ‘Black Tie’ and she’d interpreted that as meaning that everyone would wear a long dress. Ellie hadn’t said anything about the dress being unsuitable. But perhaps Ellie didn’t know. As a mother of two young children, she didn’t get out much either, did she?
Meg’s mouth dried and her heart started to pound.
She looked completely wrong.
Then Meg recognised the woman—Melissa. Staring at her sexy dress, which clung to her body and ended at mid-thigh, Meg wondered why on earth Dino hadn’t just invited her to the ball. In all probability he was wishing he had. He certainly seemed to be enjoying the conversation, his laughter echoing down the corridor.
Meg looked down at herself and felt her face burn with embarrassment. It was all too easy to imagine what his reaction would be when he saw her. The comparisons he was going to make. She was going to be a laughing stock. Everyone at the ball was going to be staring at her and feeling sorry for her. She has no sense of style. No idea how to dress.
Her palms damp with sweat, Meg closed the door to the staffroom, yanked off the gold shoes and quickly pushed her feet into her trainers.
No way. No way was she putting herself through this. She’d rather fling herself over the edge of a gully, naked. Dino was blocking the only exit, which meant…
Hesitating for only a fraction of a second, she grabbed her coat and opened the window. The freezing night air poured into the staffroom but Meg didn’t care. The cold was the last of her worries. Praying that no one would notice her, she hauled the dress up to her waist, slid nimbly out of the window and moments later she was sprinting through the darkness, the silk dress winding itself around her legs as she fled through the thick snow that covered the grass and on towards the car park. Her feet were soaked in an instant. Twice she tripped and landed on her hands and knees in the snow.
‘Stupid, stupid dress.’ Her palms stung with pain and she struggled to her feet for the second time and yanked the offending dress up around her waist. Her breath came in great tearing pants and every minute she expected to hear Dino’s voice coming from the open window, or footsteps pounding after her. Except that Dino probably wouldn’t have bothered following her. He’d probably just think he’d had a lucky escape.
The flash of guilt she felt at having left him standing there with no explanation was eclipsed by the knowledge that she’d done him a favour.
It was only when she realised that she couldn’t actually see her car that Meg discovered she was crying. She was so cross with herself. Why, oh, why, had she allowed herself to be talked into going to a ball?
Ellie was wrong. It wasn’t fun at all—it was a nightmare. In order for it to be fun, you had to be part of that female club who giggled over the contents of their make-up cases and drooled over dresses, and she did neither of those things. And it was perfectly obvious that Dino was never going to be interested in someone like her. He would have been embarrassed to be seen with her.
She reached her car and pressed her key, some of her panic receding as she heard the reassuring bleep and the clunk as the doors unlocked. Later, she knew, she’d feel guilty. But for now she was just relieved to have made it as far as her car.
Pulling the dress up to her knees so that it didn’t get tangled in the pedals, Meg turned on the engine, reversed out of her parking space and accelerated forward.
All right, so Dino seemed to find her attractive, but that was just up on the mountain, when they were working together. Here, doing everyday normal things, she didn’t fit and it was no use pretending that she did. She wasn’t any of the things he was looking for.
Tears blurred her vision and she brushed them away, struggling to keep her car on the road in the hideous weather conditions.
She contemplated driving to her mother’s house, but then decided that would trigger a whole load of questions she didn’t want to answer, so instead she took the road that ran along the side of the lake and to her cottage. Her mother wasn’t bringing Jamie back until the morning so she had until then to get herself back under control.
Five minutes later she was in the bathroom, scrubbing off the make-up Ellie had so carefully applied, the green dress lying in an abandoned heap on the floor.
