Trust No Bitch: Part 3

Alice Jenkins

It was the best Alice had looked in weeks. With her dainty, black satin dress, her make up incontrovertibly "on point" (as Lilly liked to say), and her hair back to its typical smoothness, Alice knew that she looked like a young woman nobody at her older sister's party that evening would ever envisage doing a furtive half gram of cocaine in the back of a London taxi. And how wrong was that? She thought, striding out of the taxi and passing her suitcases to the doorman, before greeting the woman behind the check in desk. That people make so many conjectures about a person based on the way they talk, dress, hold themselves? Fair enough, she'd used it to her own advantage for the last several years, but still, it mystified her. Where's the evolutionary basis for the human race being so observationally lazy? She couldn't help but wonder, stepping into the elevator and watching the lights of London sink beneath her. And more importantly, what did it say about her that she would rather keep exploiting that mindset and admit to Gemma that she was involved in a hit and run that ended up in somebody being paralysed from the waist down than that she had a serious drug problem? She had, as Gemma had asked her what the Supplier was really holding over her, briefly considered telling the truth. Describing that photo, the illicit contents of her bathroom cabinet all on show. The mouth, however, acting of its own accord, had spewed out Vicky Prescott's name and by then, it was too late to go back on that too; she could tell by Gemma's face that she had already guessed it. There was no time to mull over that, though, she was reminded as the elevator finally reached the 51st floor and the doors slid open. Behind them was a corridor full of gaudy cardboard cut outs of her older sister, Vanessa, who was holding in her palm a tub of her Prima skin lotion, the words "Young Businesswoman of the Year" embossed along the bottom.

"Invitation, please?" A burly woman, stood next to the archway into the hall in which Vanessa's party was taking place, asked, the bridge of The Wombats' song Curveballs blaring out of it. Alice slipped the invitation out of her handbag and passed it to the woman with a smile, lingering in the archway for a second, the skin between her eyebrows puckering. She couldn't see a thing, just a boundless black void, from which the dull twangs of an electric guitar, excited chatter, and the clink of glasses were all being emitted.

"Prima...means cousin in Spanish, doesn't it?" She asked in spite of her confusion, the security guard nodding sluggishly back at her, Alice turning back round to face the void. It was only as she did so that guitars launched into the song's final chorus and the room was illumined by white and electric blue spotlights, revealing the band stood playing on a podium in the middle of the room. "Of bloody course." She said under her breath. "Dramatic lighting." What more did she expect from her self-professedly magnificent older sister? She only had to try harder not to audibly splutter as she took a few wary steps into the hall, her eyes widening at the formidable cityscape that was visible through the full length windows lining the wall to her right. "Little shindig" she faintly recalled Vanessa initially describing the event as. No, a snort of disbelief at her older sister's idea of the word "little" would not be approved of. It would probably get her a peculiar look or two from people around her, each one of them a picture of urbanity, lots of suits and bow ties, heels and midi dresses, glasses of champagne balanced precipitately between two fingers. Alice, in her mini dress, felt suddenly quite out of place, tugging it down the best she could as she made her way over to the bar and took a seat, ordering a small mojito.

"Thanks." She mumbled to the stultified-looking bartender, who had slid her drink carelessly across the bar, hunching over it to take a sip. She managed to go unnoticed for all of 30 seconds before she felt a peremptory tap on her shoulder, silently cursing and rolling her eyes before swivelling round in her seat with the most sincere smile that she could muster; it was Vanessa, arms crossed complacently to her chest. She looked resplendent as ever, and aware of it too, in a white dress, that unlike Alice's, did not flare at the waist and instead skimmed over her svelte behind.