The Love of My Afterlife(38)
“Fine,” I say.
And it is fine. It’s not ideal, but it’s fine. I have a lead. He will be at the Shard tonight.
I roll up my sketches, slip them into my bag, and determinedly march out of the function room.
“We’re leaving?” Frida asks. “But we’ve paid for the whole two hours!”
“Oh, you can stay!” I say vaguely. “But I have somewhere to be.”
There’s a Tube strike this week, so I pull out my phone, flicking onto a ride-sharing app. It shows an available car two minutes away. I should get to the Shard in…fifty minutes? That’s ages. Frida peeks over my shoulder at the screen. “Taxi’s too expensive. You could take a bus.”
“I don’t have time,” I say, pressing the booking button for the taxi.
“I’ll come with you,” Frida announces, bringing me back to the present.
I shake my head quickly. “Oh no. No need. Anyway, I thought you wanted to ask Claude out?”
Frida shrugs. “I feel his personality doesn’t match the picture on the poster, you know? On the poster he looks like a dynamo. But in real life it’s like he has a stick of charcoal lodged where the sun will not shine.”
When the car pulls up, I dive into the back seat. Frida—ignoring my polite rejection of her company—immediately climbs into the other side, strapping herself in and giving me a thumbs-up. “It’s funny,” she says, her eyes shining with excitement. “All this time I’ve lived in London and I’ve never been to the Shard. I always said to Gant we should go, and he always said, ‘Frida, be quiet.’ I do talk a lot, I suppose.”
“Gant sounds like a dick,” I mutter.
Frida shrugs and nods her head slightly, her gold moon earrings dancing at the movement. “He wasn’t so bad.” Her eyes have welled up again. She seems genuinely heartbroken.
As we slowly pull away from the pavement, Claude jogs out of the pub and over to the car. “You are crazy and possibly a danger to my most popular model!” he shouts through the open window, his cut-glass voice ringing in my ears. “But you have much artistic potential!”
20
A quick Google search tells us that there’s only one dance event on at the Shard this evening—a silent disco in an event space called The View. A silent disco! I’ve never heard of such a thing. As we step into the lift, Frida presses a hand to her chest.
“Here I am at last! In the world-famous Shard.”
When we reach level seventy-two, the lift opens with a quiet swoosh.
Frida starts to shimmy her shoulders in anticipation as we walk towards a set of glass doors through which we can see at least a hundred people dancing in a room lit up in purple and pink. Everyone is wearing headphones. Aha! They do listen to music but, I assume, it’s the music of their own choosing. What a good idea! Not that I’ve been to any discos recently, but I like the idea of having my own personal soundtrack for such an occasion.
In front of the glass door there’s a tall, wide woman wearing a headset and carrying a clipboard. Behind her is a sign that requests all visitors “please have their tickets ready.” We don’t have tickets. Damn. Maybe if I explain to the woman that we only want to dip in and out to find someone she’ll just…let us in? But judging from the irritated curl of her mouth I am doubtful of her inclination to relax any kind of rule. The woman shakes her head furiously as we approach. She runs her eyes over my little dress and then up towards Frida’s flower crown.
“You’re late!” she hisses.
“Excuse me?”
“You better not bail early like the last guy. So unprofessional. Left me up shit creek without a paddle. That’s the last time I’m hiring from Maurice Alabaster.” She huffs. “Though I’m glad he sent two of you, at least.”
What is she on about? Who is Maurice Alabaster? Who does this woman think we are?
I open my mouth to ask all of these questions, but Frida darts in front of me. “Yes, he sent two of us,” she echoes, chin lifted, as the woman opens the glass doors and leads us into the event space. I immediately scan the room for signs of Jonah. Nothing yet but it won’t take long for me to spot someone so tall and magnetic in this crowd.
“The pair of you are on that one.” The woman points to an uplit pink podium on the left side of the room. In each corner of the space there is a podium, on top of which are dancers. Professional dancers. Professional dancers dancing. And then I realise that each dancer is wearing a flower crown exactly like Frida’s. This woman thinks we’re here to dance?
“Where’s your headdress?” the woman asks me, her massive eye roll indicating that she’s edging close to the end of her tether.
“It was stolen!” Frida reveals as I stand there agog at what is unfolding right now. “On the street, yes. Someone pinched it off her head. A wizened old man, in fact. He had long silver hair and one wayward eye looking to the east. But Delphie is the most beautiful dancer in London. Nobody will care that she isn’t wearing the head flowers.”
I side-eye Frida. How is she this good at lying? The stern woman looks me up and down. “Fine,” she tuts. “But I will be making a complaint to Maurice. I expect performers to arrive in costume.”