Page 2 of Kiss Heaven Goodbye

Sarah began touching up her own make-up in the big gilt mirror. ‘I’d hardly call your feeble attempts at pulling him seduction. The most you’ve said to him in the last three days is pass me a pineapple, despite him mooning around you for days.’

Grace felt a jolt of excitement. ‘Has he? When?’

‘Didn’t you see him down on the rocks with his top off? I know I did, but he only had eyes for you, more’s the pity.’

Sarah turned to Grace and pouted.‘In the words of Disraeli, action may not bring you happiness. But there is no happiness without action. You have to be bolder. Sit next to him at dinner. I want plans made for the holiday. Arrange to go up to Leeds or wherever it is he’s from. Invite him to London. A gig. He’s into music, isn’t he? Find out from Miles who he likes and get tickets, anything to get him on his own. Seduction is really quite simple you know. Especially when you wear this.’

‘Are you sure you should be going to law college? I think Sandhurst might be more appropriate.’

Sarah flung open the wicker wardrobe and pulled out a piece of leopard-print chiffon.

‘What’s that?’

‘Put it on,’ she instructed.

‘It’s see-through!’

Her friend’s lip curled upwards in triumph. ‘My point exactly.’

Grace hesitated before taking the kaftan from Sarah, wishing she could be more like her friend, the product of unmarried ‘resting’ children’s TV presenters who had brought up their daughter to have a voice, a cause and cast-iron self-belief that she could do anything or be anybody she wanted to be.

Grace’s parents on the other hand had given their daughter every material advantage. But the very wealth that had allowed it had drawn Grace into rather than out of her shell. She didn’t like attracting attention to herself. She’d spent a lifetime hearing people whispering about her when helicopters dropped her off at school or her father’s chauffeured Bentley picked her up from friends’ houses. She’d hated it and as a result she liked to blend in.

Get a grip, she told herself, squashing down the disappointment she had felt all week. You’ve got a first-class degree; you can get an eighteen-year-old to snog you.

She was surprised as she caught her reflection in the mirror. It wasn’t half bad. The kaftan was short and sheer and had a deep V-neck with topaz-coloured beads around it. The colour made her skin look more tanned and her long, thick hair more tawny, and the narrow silhouette added inches to her height. Five feet nine but not in a willowy way, Grace had wide shoulders from sports: lacrosse and netball. Sturdy was how her father frequently, painfully, referred to her, as if he was describing an oak tree, but the light chiffon had draped itself over her curves in an elegant and flattering way.

‘Very Sharon Stone.’ Sarah nodded appreciatively.

‘Wi

lma Flintstone, more like.’

She tried to pull down the kaftan a few inches to hide more of her thighs. ‘Heck, it’s short. I’m not sure my legs are good enough for something this mini.’

‘Nothing a bit of blusher can’t sort out,’ replied Sarah thoughtfully.

She knelt down and started daubing long streaks of bronzer down the outside of Grace’s thigh.

‘What are you doing?’ shrieked Grace.

‘Slimming your legs by optical illusion, of course.’

‘Well, well. What’s going on down there?’

Grace looked up to see her friends Freya Nicholls and Gabby Devlin at the door. They were both wearing tiny string bikinis, and barely-there sarongs were wrapped around their concave waists.

‘Just a little enhancement,’ said Sarah, unfazed by the girls’ disapproving looks.

Gabby flopped on to the bed, leaving dampness on the coverlet, while Freya pulled a bottle of Moët and another of Kir from her beach bag. Freya had a job lined up at the Lynn Franks PR agency in London as soon as they got back to the UK, and already she had older, more sophisticated tastes than the rest of them. The four girls were unlikely friends – according to Sarah, Freya and Gabby had dispensed with a sense of humour when they discovered that their stunning good looks were all they needed to carry themselves through life. But the two of them had taken Grace under their wing on their first day at Danehurst when she was lost and homesick, and they were sworn best friends for life by the time Grace realised they had almost nothing in common. And when they had followed Grace to Bristol to attend the polytechnic, it had seemed wrong to do anything else but invite them to live with her in the four-bedroom house in Clifton that her father had bought for her time at uni.

‘Thought we’d get the party started early,’ said Freya as Gabby went to fetch glasses.

‘So how was snorkelling?’ asked Grace.

‘Amazing,’ said Gabby, playing with the string of brown beads around her ankle. ‘You should have come.’

‘And leave Valley of the Dolls unfinished?’ Grace grinned, holding up a dog-eared paperback.‘After a three-year diet of Chaucer, Milton and Shelley, this is like manna from heaven.’