The Love of My Afterlife(51)

“Was there a point to this interaction?”

Cooper frowns and I immediately feel guilty about my snappishness, making a mental note to really try to address it if I get a chance to stay alive. Cooper was surprisingly willing to help me when I turned up to ask him the other night. Even when I told him that he would probably have to come to the gala with me—a pretty massive thing to ask of someone on such short notice. I should try to be nicer.

“Is everything okay?” I ask, softening my tone.

“Just wanted to lend you these,” Cooper says. “I wasn’t sure where in my flat they were, but I eventually found them at the back of a cupboard.”

He hands me a large red jewellery box, the word Cartier printed in silver on the top. Up close the box is worn and faded, marked in patches where it’s been handled time and again.

I open the box and gasp. Nestled inside is a pair of huge diamond and pearl earrings in a beautifully intricate triangular shape.

“They belonged to Em,” Cooper explains. “She bought them at one of the estate sales she used to love going to. I know this because she wouldn’t stop telling everybody how clever she was to have found them at such a bargain price. They were made in 1922, which, as you know, is the exact year in which The Great Gatsby is set.”

I absolutely did not know that. Either way the earrings are incredible, like nothing I’ve ever seen before. “You…Are you sure?”

This seems like a huge deal. These earrings must have such sentimental value to Cooper, and he doesn’t know me well enough to know that I won’t lose one, which, let’s face it, isn’t entirely unlikely.

He waves my question away. “Nothing more than clever preparation. Nobody will suspect you of being an interloper when you’re wearing vintage diamond earrings that large.”

“These diamonds are real?” I yelp.

“Of course they are. Cartier doesn’t do cubic zirconia.”

“Holy shit. They must be worth—”

“Enough that I would appreciate you being careful with them, yes.”

I picture myself wandering around the party, clutching my ears the whole time so that the earrings don’t fall out.

“They’re so heavy,” I muse, weighing them in my hands, entranced as they glitter beneath the hallway light.

“Your lobes look sturdy enough,” he replies. “I think you can handle it.”

“I will choose to take that as a compliment.”

“As intended.”

“You know, Cooper, that’s the first pleasant thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Cooper gives a swift shake of his head. “I told you I liked your cactus the first time I brought a parcel to your apartment.”

“You remember that?”

“I remember everything, Delphie.”

His eyes glint as he fixes me with an unsettling look that lasts a second longer than is polite. I think of his finger in the aquarium.

“Anyway!” I sort of shout in response. “Gotta go!” I hold up the earrings. “Got to do some ear strength training if I’m gonna handle these bad boys. Wonder if they make miniature kettlebells for earlobes? Haha.”

Cooper raises an eyebrow.

I give him a half wave and then spin on my heel and scarper out of the building.



* * *





I reach the pharmacy to find Leanne holding a pair of gold spray-painted angel wings aloft, a beam on her lineless face.

“I thought we said Daisy and Gatsby!”

“Do you not trust me? After all these years?”

“No!” I say, eyeing Jan, who has three different sets of heated hair implements plugged into the wall.

“Well, well, well. She’s got what she wanted, so now the sweetness and light has buggered off. I knew it was too good to last.”

“I’m just not sure about angel wings. I said I wanted to blend in!”

“You’re not going to be wearing the entire wings, you turnip. I’m plucking from them for the dress. I’ll use some of the feathers as embellishments, but I won’t know which exact feathers and where to put them until you’re in the dress.”

“Oh.”

“Yes,” Leanne echoes. “Oh.

“Right, come on, Mum.” Leanne claps her hands together and looks me up and down. “We’ve got some serious heavy lifting to do.”



* * *





It has taken three hours, and I have felt every one of them deeply. From the shapewear that Leanne insisted she help me squidge myself into (and that she promised had never been used even though she kept glancing at Jan as she said it), to Jan’s snail’s pace looping of my hair over a metal tong that came perilously close to my eye four separate times. And then there was the whole fifteen minutes in which Leanne absolutely lost her shit because I wasn’t keeping my eyelashes still enough for her to stick individual lashes onto my existing lashes and create a “cat’s-eye vibe.”

“Does it even matter?” I’d asked, to which she’d had to “step outside for some air.”

When they’re done, Leanne and Jan step back and nudge each other, smiling.

“Go into the blood pressure booth and have a look,” Jan urges.