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  ‘Is your sister a nun?’ Ed asked, as he laid the contents of Clare’s case out over Rosie’s bed.

  ‘She might as well be,’ said Rosie. ‘As far as I know, she hasn’t had so much as a snog for the past twelve months. Not since she split up with Ryan.’

  ‘What happened there?’

  ‘He took her on holiday to the South of France and she spent half the time on her spreadsheets. He told her she was too uptight.’

  ‘I’m not surprised.’ Ed dangled a particularly restrictive elasticated undergarment from his fingers. At least, he and Rosie thought it was an undergarment. It might have been a surgical knee support.

  Rosie slipped on one of Clare’s jackets and Ed, who fancied himself a natural stylist, pushed the sleeves up Rosie’s forearms for a more casual look. He stood back to admire his work. He shook his head. He tried folding the cuffs back. No better. Rosie frowned at herself in the mirror.

  ‘This jacket is never going to lend itself to ‘casual’,’ said Rosie.

  ‘Try taking it off and draping in over your shoulders like a cloak.’

  Rosie tried the cloak option.

  ‘Better,’ said Ed. ‘But not much.’

  ‘This is awful. I can’t carry this off. We’re going to lunch in a vineyard.’

  The outdoor lunch was the first official event of the wedding party.

  ‘I’m just going to have to wear the dress I arrived in.’

  Which would have been fine, had Rosie not spilled half a bottle of Chianti down the front of it the previous evening. The dried red stain made it look as though someone had stabbed Rosie in the ribs.

  ‘Could I cover it with a corsage?’ Rosie asked.

  ‘I don’t think you could cover that stain with a whole bouquet,’ said Ed. ‘You should have put white wine on it last night like I told you.’

  ‘I didn’t think it would matter,’ Rosie sighed as she pulled on a skirt that reminded her of school.

  Ed was still rummaging through Clare’s bag. The tissue paper she had used to pack the clothes so carefully was all over the floor. Ed pulled her shoes from their dust-bags.

  ‘Classic,’ he said as he admired the plain black patent pumps he found in one bag. ‘But dull.’

  Rosie slipped on one and stretched out her foot to admire the fit. They were dull, Ed was right, even if they did make her ankle look tiny.

  ‘Oooh, Tod’s,’ Ed murmured, as he fondled a belt. ‘Expensive. Feel the quality of that. That’s lovely.’

  ‘Great. But what am I going to wear?’ Rosie whined.

  Ed tied the luxury label belt around Rosie’s waist and turned the top of the boring skirt about it so that it was at least transformed from knee-length to mini. But it still looked like something she would have worn to school or to work as a waitress.

  ‘People will ask me to take their orders.’

  Ed insisted that Rosie was being paranoid. He claimed that with one of Clare’s white blouses tied at the waist, Rosie looked very fashion forward. Hadn’t Angelina Jolie worn masculine style suiting to the Baftas? Rosie was not in the least bit convinced. Not even when Ed broke off some of the fake silk flowers from a display in the hotel corridor and used them to fashion a bright yellow corsage.

  ‘Instant chic,’ said Ed.

  ‘I still look like a work in a restaurant,’ said Rosie.

  Indeed, when they went down to breakfast, Rosie was asked to fetch someone a latte.

  Chapter Seven

  Clare did not have the benefit of a fashion-forward friend to help her style Rosie’s jumble-sale hoard. Neither did she have any confidence in her own styling abilities. Clare wasn’t the type to read fashion magazines. She didn’t have time for that. It took her all day on a Sunday to get through the important newspapers and her subscription to the Economist. Clare had no idea what was fashionable. She just knew what was professional and neat.

  Clare laid Rosie’s clothes out on the huge double bed in her hotel room in an attempt to make sense of how they might work. Familiarity with the suitcase’s contents did not make her any happier. There was nothing, nothing at all, that she could imagine impressing the senior management she so desperately wanted and needed to impress. All those garish colours and cheap and nasty synthetic fabrics. As she picked up one of the maxi-dresses, static made it cling to her whole arm. Attack of the killer tat.

  When she finally managed to shake off the maxi-dress, Clare looked at the clothes she had been wearing on the flight over: a pair of wide jersey trousers and a simple black V-neck sweater. They were far from fresh. But what were her options?

  Clare put the trousers and V-neck back on. They would have to do. They weren’t too wrinkled, having been on hangers all night, and at least they were neutral and forgettable. Maybe she could get away with wearing them for the next three days if she rinsed out the sweater each night. Feeling a little better, Clare went into the bathroom to put her make-up on under the strong fluorescent light. She shook her foundation bottle to make sure the colour was properly mixed and even. And the top of the bottle flew off…

  Clare wailed as she stared at the patch of flesh-coloured goop dripping from her sweater to her trousers. She snatched a handful of tissues and tried desperately to wipe it off. It was no good. The foundation had already soaked into the fine black cashmere of the sweater and even if she rinsed it out properly in the sink, it would never be dry in time. She undressed again, putting her sweater and trousers in a laundry bag. Clare could not believe her luck.

  Now there really was no choice but to borrow something belonging to Rosie. Clare put on the dreaded blue maxi dress and found a cardigan that wasn’t too crumpled. The cut of the maxi-dress showed way too much décolletage, so she buttoned the cardigan up to the neck for more coverage. She eschewed Rosie’s treasure chest of accessories and put on the flat black ballet pumps in which she had flown.

  It was awful. Regarding her emergency ensemble in the mirror, Clare looked as though she had run out of a house on fire in the middle of the night, dressing in whatever she could snatch on the way. She didn’t look in the least bit professional. She wouldn’t have been out of place in the audience at the Jeremy Kyle show. How on earth had her twin sister developed such an appalling lack of taste?

  As she stared at her badly-dressed reflection, Clare tried to take comfort in the fact that at least she knew her presentation backwards. She’d practiced it so many times. If she could just project enough authority, maybe no-one would notice that she was dressed like a clubber.

  Fat chance.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘Hey, Marwood! Didn’t you get the memo? The conference in Hawaii is next year.’

  The lobby of the conference hotel looked like the scene of a wake. Just as she had anticipated, not one of Clare’s colleagues was dressed in anything other than grey, blue or black. The company didn’t have a uniform, but you wouldn’t have known it looking down into that room. Clare saw her biggest rival, Melanie Bosworth, standing by a table laden with coffee urns. Melanie, of course, was dressed from head to toe in black. The cut of her suit breathed quiet luxury.

  Melanie’s eyes flashed with something like amusement when she caught sight of Clare coming through the room towards her.

  ‘Clare,’ said Melanie. ‘How are you? Nice, er, outfit. Would you like some coffee? They’ve only got filter but maybe an iced latte is more appropriate with that skirt. It’s … it’s quite a departure from your usual style.’

  ‘Got to mix it up from time to time,’ said Clare. She didn’t want to have to explain the whole silly saga.

  ‘Mixing it up is one way of putting it,’ said Melanie out of the side of her mouth, mostly for the benefit of Russell Bramley who had just joined them at the coffee bar.

  ‘Wow, Marwood,’ said Russell. ‘Nice, er… nice, shoes.’

  Clare glanced at her shoes, which were the only part of her ensemble that actually belonged to her. This was awful. And it had only just begun. Clare could feel everyone’s ey
es upon her. She could hear their whispered asides. Had she lost it? they were asking each other. Was she going to use her moment on the platform to insult senior management and hand in her resignation, as Jerry Brunner had done at the Atlanta conference the previous year? She certainly looked crazy enough in that frock. Hadn’t Jerry turned up in floral shorts on the day of his big reveal? It was a sign.

  Melanie and Russell moved off the subject of Clare’s outfit and onto the day’s events. They were all three of them due to speak to the entire conference that morning. Neither Melanie nor Russell seemed in the least bit phased by the idea. And ordinarily, Clare wouldn’t be so bothered either. It wasn’t as though it was the first time she’d had to address a huge room full of her peers.

  One of the tricks Clare had learned early on in her career was that when it came to overcoming nerves, it helped to look at your audience as very ordinary human beings. One way of achieving that in double quick time was to imagine them all completely naked. That wasn’t going to work for Clare today. Not when she was wearing an outfit so awful she wished she could step up to the podium in her birthday suit instead. While Melanie and Russell discussed their presentations, Clare sipped at her coffee. Her stomach gurgled noisily, a physical manifestation of her psychological anguish.

  Melanie turned to talk to her again.

  ‘I see you’re on straight after me,’ she said. ‘I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait until lunchtime when all this will be behind us.’

  Melanie had no idea how much Clare was wishing the same. As the bell rang to announce that the morning’s session was about to start, Clare broke out in a furious cold sweat. The nylon didn’t help.

  ‘Maybe you want to unbutton that cardigan a bit,’ Melanie suggested. ‘Show off that lovely dress.’

  Melanie was the first of that morning’s speakers. The people taking the stage had been allocated seats in the very front row of the hall so they wouldn’t have to struggle through crowds when it was their turn to stand up. When Melanie was introduced, she got to her feet and turned momentarily to smile at her audience from close range. Then she cupped her hand over her mouth and said to Clare in a stage whisper, ‘Wish me luck.’

  Luck? There was something about that faux-modest gesture that made Clare want to howl. The last thing Melanie needed that morning was luck. As she was so fond of reminding the lesser mortals who worked alongside her, luck was for the lazy. True excellence was a matter of preparation, not chance. And Melanie was always perfectly prepared.

  Melanie walked on stage slowly. Other, more nervous people would scuttle onto the stage, keen to make it clear they didn’t want to waste anyone’s precious time with their preparations. Melanie had the nonchalance that only comes with confidence. She could let her audience wait because she knew she was worth waiting for. Besides, she was giving everyone a chance to take in her wonderful outfit. Clare was full of envy as she clocked Melanie’s black patent Louboutins. They were utterly plain and yet they sent such a loud and clear message of elegance and power and control. Clare thought of her own Gucci pumps, stuck somewhere in Italy, and prayed that Rosie hadn’t already left them under a table somewhere, forgetting all about them while she danced barefoot and drunk.

  Melanie stepped behind the lectern and addressed her audience with a smile.

  ‘Gosh,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t expecting quite such a crowd this morning. Fortunately, I have a little trick up my sleeve to take the pressure out of facing such a dauntingly well-informed and successful audience.’ She paused to give the audience a chance to guess before she told them with a smile, ‘I’m imagining you all completely buck-naked.’

  And there went Clare’s opening line.

  The entire room – except for Clare – burst into appreciative laughter. Melanie slipped off her jacket. Beneath it she was wearing a dove grey silk shirt, unbuttoned to just the right depth. It was exactly the sort of thing Clare would have been wearing were her suitcase not deep in the Italian countryside.

  ‘OK,’ said Melanie. ‘Let’s get started.’

  Chapter Nine

  Clare could not concentrate on a single word of Melanie’s presentation. Her mind was entirely elsewhere as she struggle to think what on earth she could say to open her speech with a laugh now that Melanie had used her best line. Clare gazed up at the stage, appearing to watch Melanie’s slide show, but all she could really see was a blur of colours, as jumbled and clashing as the contents of Rosie’s case. And the word that kept coming to her was ‘nightmare’. Nightmare. Nightmare. Nightmare. Maybe this was actually a bad dream and any minute now she would wake up to find she was back at her mother’s house, with her own case at the foot of the bed and the whole journey to the States still ahead of her. But though she actually went so far as to pinch the flesh on the inside of her arm, it was clear this was no dream. Clare was at the annual conference. The most important date in the work year. She was about to go on stage and she was wearing a maxi-dress that looked not unlike a cheap nightie. She was wearing an electric blue angora cardigan…

  Melanie finished her presentation. The audience clapped appreciatively. Melanie beamed her Apprentice-winning smile at the people who mattered and left the stage with even greater poise than she had taken it.

  In the front row, Clare fanned her face with the conference programme. She felt hot, she felt cold, she felt sick and then she felt hot again. She’d unbuttoned the cardigan but caught Russell looking at her cleavage so quickly buttoned it right back up.

  ‘How was I?’ Melanie asked as she took her seat again. ‘I hope I didn’t make a fool of myself. You don’t think that joke at the start about everyone being naked was too much?’

  Clare didn’t answer. She was in another world. A world of misery. Could anything save her now?

  Maybe there would be a fire. Yes. Maybe the fire alarm would go off and everyone would have to leave the room before Clare could get up. And by the time they got back, it would be too late for her to speak. God. ‘Please let there be a small explosion,’ Clare prayed.

  But no. Guy Braddington, who was chairing that day’s programme, was already introducing her. The audience was applauding her to her feet. Clare got up, feeling light-headed. She did not turn to smile at the rows of people behind her. She did not ask Melanie for a little shot of support. Though Melanie gave her one anyway. After a fashion.

  ‘Best of luck up there. Once you’ve got the slide show going, no-one will be looking at what you’re wearing anymore.’

  But until then... That was the real message. Until Clare got the slideshow going, everyone would be staring at her and wondering why she had come to the conference in clothes better suited to a Caribbean cruise. A cheap cruise, where the cocktails were all inclusive and everyone took full advantage of that fact.

  Clare felt her face blaze bright red as she made her way towards the steps. She tried taking a deep breath in the hope she might cool down but it was useless. The dress was long and voluminous. Too long and way too voluminous. It was inevitable that she would get the hem of the skirt caught up in her feet as she climbed the stairs and fell forward just like Jennifer Lawrence at the Oscars but with none of her quirky star charm.

  There was a gasp and the applause stopped. The silence in the room was deafening as Clare finished her walk to the lectern. She was so flustered, she didn’t bother with a proper introduction but hurried to get her slide-show up as quickly as possible. Then, of course, the projector crashed.

  As she waited for a technician to sort out the glitch, Clare just stood at the lectern, clutching its edges as though she might fall down at any moment. Out in the audience, people were losing patience. They were beginning conversations (about Clare’s outfit, she was convinced). They were getting out their smartphones. Some of them were actually leaving the room to take calls or have a sneaky cigarette.

  Even Melanie stood up from her seat in the front row and stretched ostentatiously, signaling her impatience and boredom to the whole auditorium. She mi
ght as well have started singing ‘Why are we waiting?’

  ‘The projector’s fixed,’ said the technician. He had to say it three times before Clare opened her eyes and acknowledged the fact.

  It was hopeless. Clare simply could not regain the composure she needed. And then the projector broke down again. And then the technician couldn’t find a way to repair it for fifteen minutes, by which time Clare’s slot was officially over. In all probability, Clare thought, her career was over too.

  Guy Braddington, who had been lending his assistance to the business of getting the projector up and running again, tapped Clare on the shoulder.

  ‘I think we’ll have to reschedule your presentation for later in the day,’ he told her. ‘Do you mind?’

  Did Clare mind? Never had anyone made her quite such a welcome offer. He might as well have given her a winning lottery ticket.

  ‘That will be fine,’ said Clare, trying to sound disappointed.

  ‘I’ll suggest everyone takes a coffee break,’ said Guy. ‘Heaven knows how long it will take to get the projector working. No point everyone sitting in here when they could be networking over a cappuccino.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Clare.

  As Guy announced the impromptu coffee break to the gathered delegates, Clare felt herself go limp with grateful relief. While everyone else raced to the coffee urns in the lobby, Clare gathered up her notes and left the stage, making sure to lift the skirt of her sister’s stupid dress well out of the danger zone of her feet in their flat black shoes.