'Too right, matey, banned for bloody life. Show your face in here again, and I'm calling the cops.'
'It's not his face that's the problem,' said Grenville.
'You too,' said Collarless Shirt.
'But I ordered drinks,' said Carolyn.
'You want me to call the cops right now?' asked Collarless Shirt.
We left, Toby laughing and joking with anyone who would listen, Sophie acting sniffy, the others a little more subdued but pretending not to care. I tried to look as inconspicuous as possible. It wasn't hard, though I suppose I might have attracted attention by default; onlookers might have asked themselves, 'What's that plump girl in the spectacles doing with that glittering flock of beautiful people?' But I didn't think so. With a bit of luck, I would be able to revisit the Rhumba Bar any time I liked and no one would know me from Eve.
As we reached the exit, Toby turned back and made a sweeping bow. There was a small scattered shower of applause.
We started off down the road in search of another air conditioner. 'Well,' said Charlotte, drawing abreast of Carolyn and me as we strolled. 'At least now we know whose is biggest.'
Isabella came up behind us and asked, 'And whose is that?'
Charlotte and Carolyn both looked at me and giggled.
'Lucky old Clare,' said Charlotte.
I giggled too, but died a little inside, because I thought she was just being bitchy about my earlier faux pas.
Chapter 7
I'd taken to keeping the bathroom door closed at all times of the day and night. It wasn't the mirror I was frightened of so much as the eight-legged population, which had miraculously continued to flourish even after I had vacuumed up strands of web from every last corner. I kept the door shut because I didn't want spiders scampering all over the rest of the flat. More particularly, I didn't want them crawling into my ear as I slept and laying billions of tiny spider eggs in my brain. Not that shutting them in the bathroom would have stopped them; if they'd really wanted to make a break for it, they could have limbo-danced under the door any time they wanted.
One night I woke up at about three o'clock to an unfamiliar sound: a faint rustling. The sound reminded me of the swish of silk against skin.
Oh God, I thought, the spiders are out of control.
I wasn't in a hurry to get up and investigate. I felt around for my glasses, slipped something on to my feet, and walked softly across to the small landing outside the bathroom door.
I stood there, poised in the half-light coming through my filmy new bedroom curtains, and listened, ears straining for the faintest scurrying of spindly legs, the susurration of cobwebs being spun, the gentle scrunch of teensy jaws chomping down on crunchy insect torsos.
Silence.
Dead silence.
I placed my hand on the doorhandle, and the rustling started up again as though I'd pressed a button. It was louder now, and quite obviously had nothing to do with spiders, unless they had somehow learned amazing new communication skills. What I was listening to was the faint hum of conversation, so faint that the sound of my own breathing would probably have drowned it out.
But I was holding my breath. I had to remind myself to let it out and draw in a fresh supply of air. I did this very gradually. I didn't want to make a sound.
There were several possibilities here. Either I was dreaming and so, lurking on the other side of the door, ready to pounce, was a bloodthirsty one-legged koala bear. Or I had burglars. But what kind of burglars would shut themselves in my bathroom? There was nothing worth stealing in there, unless they were after a half-empty bottle of Chanel № 5 which I'd stopped using after Sophie had said that it made me smell as though I'd covered myself in baby powder.
No, this wasn't burglars.
This was something worse.
I pressed my ear up against the door.
There were definitely two of them, chattering quietly, a gentle whispering that went on and on, neither rising nor fading away. It was so faint that, under other circumstances, I might have dismissed it as a mild attack of tinnitus.
Part of me was tempted to run back to bed and burrow beneath the duvet till morning, when I could go about my business as though nothing had happened, as though I hadn't heard noises in the middle of the night at all.
But I knew, with a heart heavy as suet pudding, that I had to open the bathroom door right now, or I would never feel safe in that flat again. I would have to leave Notting Hill and run back to Hackney with my tail between my legs. Back to a boring, anonymous life in the boondocks.
No, I wasn't going to be beaten.
I gripped the handle, took a breath so deep the air filled my body all the way down into my feet, and opened the door.
The next morning I bought a bag of croissants filled with apricot jam and hammered on Sophie's door. Whole minutes passed before she opened up, yawning and complaining and rubbing the sleep out of her eyes with her knuckles.
'Breakfast,' I said, waving the bag, and before she'd had the chance to frame a reply I'd dodged past her into the kitchen and switched on the microwave.
'Mmmmm not hungry,' she mumbled, groping for the kettle.
That's all right,' I said cheerily. 'I'm sure I can manage them all by myself.'
Sophie shivered and disappeared to look for something to put over her nightgown, leaving me to make the tea and watch over the croissants. When they were ready, I piled everything on to a tray and carried it up to the living-room.
'Sleep well?' I asked as Sophie emerged from her bedroom, knotting the belt of a delightfully simple little silk dressing-gown.
She paused in mid-knot, looking vaguely troubled. 'Not really, now you come to mention it. Bad dreams.'
I'll bet, I thought.
Sophie's eyes suddenly opened wide. 'You were in one of them.'
'Thanks a bunch,' I said.
'You were trying to make me wear the most ghastly cardigan,' she said. 'And I wouldn't. So I ran away.'
It hadn't been quite like that. When I'd finally summoned enough nerve to open the bathroom door, what I'd found in the shadows behind it had not been burglars, nor spiders, nor even one-legged koala bears, but Sophie, perched on the edge of my bath in her white cotton nightdress. Her bare arms looked skinny and vulnerable. Even without the light on, I could see that her skin was tinged with blue.
She had caught up the hem of her nightdress in her hands and was scrunching it into a sweaty little wad, murmuring softly to herself as she did so, nodding earnestly, arching her eyebrows as though listening to a reply, half-smiling, casting her eyes down and fluttering her lashes. It was the perfect portrayal of a woman holding up her half of a flirtatious conversation.
But whoever she was flirting with was in her dreams.
It wasn't the first time I'd caught Sophie walking and talking in her sleep. Once, at school, I'd found her standing by the window, gazing out into the dark grounds with unseeing eyes and muttering, 'I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too…' I'd read somewhere it was dangerous to wake sleepwalkers, so I'd done nothing but watch and listen, and eventually she'd returned to bed of her own accord. The incident had alarmed me, but I'd never mentioned it to her or anyone else, nor had I ever caught her doing it again. Until now.
She looked cold, so I nipped back into my bedroom, looking for something to drape around her shoulders. By the time I returned, carrying one of the chunky cardigans knitted for me by my gran, Sophie was on the move. For an anxious moment I thought we were going to collide in the bathroom doorway, but she swept past, oblivious, and started down the steps, taking them so rapidly I had to scamper to catch up. I was just in time to see a flutter of white nightgown as she slipped out of my front door, leaving it wide open behind her.