Page 69 of Trouble

‘You will embarrass yourself, and embarrass me by association,’ Akia said. ‘Also, you will look like one of those sad dogs with the long floppy ears.’

‘Oh, thanks ever so much,’ said Emily.

She allowed herself to be yanked this way and that until Akia had installed meticulous rows of curling papers.

‘Do not fuss with those,’ Akia said happily. ‘Or I’m afraid I shall have to kill you. The last person who ruined my curling papers after I had put them in was dead the very next day.’

Emily stared at her in the mirror.

‘Dead?’

‘Well, it was unrelated. She was very old. Trouble with her heart. But still .?.?. consider it a warning.’

‘I will not touch the curling papers on pain of death,’ Emily said.

Being forced to sit and look at her reflection for so long was its own sort of torture. Akia insisted that she had good bone structure, whatever that meant, and that her eyes were very arresting. Emily could not see it. She thought the barmaid back at the Rose and Crown had the true measure of her: scrawny, odd-looking.Big lampy eyes.

There were still things to be done, and Emily had to do them all with her hair pinned up on top of her head like a balding lion. Mr Khan arrived while Emily was standing just outside the back door, taking a few moments to herself to breathe, which meant she had a front row seat as he asked Meera if she was excited for the ball, if she had planned what she would wear, and then expressed his belief that she looked beautiful regardless.

He had chosen the worst possible timing. All Meera said in response tothiswas, ‘I thought we had ordered forty oranges? You’ve given us thirty-eight.’

Emily’s conversation with Charles, and the revelation that he knew her real name, had left her feeling nervous and jumpy. Oliver tapped her on the shoulder to get her attention while she was haphazardly arranging flowers into vases and she almost cuthisstem off.

‘Christ,’ he said, backing away with his hands up. ‘You almost sliced me a new arsehole. Does the army know about you?’

If Charles had indeed sold the box, at least his only physical evidence of her crimes was gone – but it also meant that Emily was now a true thief, with no way for her to undo what she had done. Every time she thought of it, some urgent ball-related task would come up and she would get dragged back into bustle and activity, with absolutely no time to think on it until the fleeting moments between laying her head on the pillow and falling asleep.

‘Careful,’ Aster said in the hall, a few hours before the guests were due to arrive. ‘If you insist on looking like you’re havingthatmuch fun, everybody will want a turn.’

Emily’s face remained stony. Everybody seemed to think they had the right tocommenton her now, and she was finding it highly vexing.

‘And where willyoube tonight?’

Aster grinned. ‘Struck down with a large helping of Generic Malady,’ he said, pressing the back of his hand to his forehead in mock-distress. ‘A plague of Hairlessness. A terrible case of the Trousers.’

‘So your plan is to hide?’

‘That’s right,’ said Aster. ‘Hide. Eat some of Joe’s cake. Entertain myself by imagining all the ways in which you are inevitably embarrassing yourself. Have fun – don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’

‘There’s nothing you wouldn’t do,’ said Emily.

‘So true, you lucky thing,’ said Aster. ‘Your hair is ridiculous, by the way.’

The papers had done their job, and Emily now had a full head of curls so enthusiastic that they kept bouncing merrily in the periphery of her vision. She didnotfeel ready for a ball. She felt like a poodle with a nervous condition.

As the guests began to fill the ground floor and Emily made her escape, Akia managed to snare her again and come at her with a comb, attacking on all fronts until her hair had been tamed and she looked less like she was about to win the consolation prize in a dog show.

‘There you go!’ Akia was wearing a sunshine-gold dress that looked beautiful against her skin, and had a matching floral pin tucked into her own braided hair. ‘Lovely.’

Emily snorted. She hadneverbeen lovely, and it was unlikely that she was about to start now.

‘Yes, I know, you’re not lovely, you’re thetoughestgoverness in town,’ said Akia, laughing openly at her. ‘But right now you have a pretty dress to wear and a genius has fixed your hair, so why don’t you imagine you’re somebody pleasant and lower yourself to having fun, just for one night?’

Emily’s answering nod was not particularly convincing. It was probably the tensed jaw and the gritted teeth that did it.

‘Well, close enough,’ said Akia. ‘Come on. Let’s finish up in the kitchen and then go to aball.’

Meera had worked a miracle.