Page 123 of Shout Out To My Ex

‘Or for a plague of locusts to descend,’ he replies.

When we enter the room, conversation ceases and all eyes swing towards us. God, whatever’s happened in the past fifteen minutes, it must be terrible news. The mood in here is markedly sombre.

Cassie rushes over and hugs me.

‘You all right, Bean?’ she asks quietly. I nod inside her embrace and after a tight squeeze, she releases me, then scrutinises me closely. ‘Wait, you lookhappy.’ A grin breaks across my face, despite the gloomy atmosphere, and I nod vigorously. ‘Oh my god! Really?’

A loud, ‘Ahem,’ bursts our bubble and we both look towards Paloma. ‘Sorry to interrupt…’ She doesn’t seem particularly sorry. ‘If you could please take a seat.’

I sit next to Leo, Cassie sits beside me, and both reach for one of my hands. Whatever we’re about to discover, at least we’re in this together.

‘And just quickly, introductions,’ says Paloma. ‘This is Saskia, the founder of the agency.’ An attractive, stylish woman in her mid-forties smiles at me across the table. ‘And our investigator, Marie.’ Marie is a woman of about seventy who’s even tinier than I am and, belying her age, is dressed like a throw-back to the punk era. Curiously, she’s also holding an unlit cigarette between her fingers as if she’s smoking.

‘Marie has made a pertinent – and timely – discovery,’ says Paloma. ‘Marie, over to you.’

Paloma sits next to Cassie and we all watch as Marie walks to the head of the table with a slight swagger. She may be diminutive, but she certainly knows how to command a room. She presses a button on the remote she’s holding and the screen above her head fills with an image of Franzia on the catwalk at Leo’s fashion show.

I draw in a sharp breath.

‘You all know this person as Franzia,’ says Marie in a thick French accent. After a brief dramatic pause, she continues. ‘But you probably do not know that she is actually… Karen Whitehead.’

Marie advances to the next image: a high school-aged girl, pretty, plump, and fresh-faced, posing with a girlfriend, their school uniforms askew and both holding melting ice cream cones.

‘What the hell?’

My head swivels towards Leo. ‘You didn’t know? About her real name?’ I ask.

‘Uh-uh,’ he says, his eyes riveted to the screen. He blinks a couple of times and shakes his head, then meets my eye. ‘To be honest, I’ve barely spent any time with her that wasn’t staged.’

‘Right, of course. And where is she from, Karen Whitehead?’ I ask Marie, thinking of Franzia’s all-over-the-place accent. ‘Given her real name, I’m guessing it’snotsomewhere in eastern Europe?’

‘Shropshire,’ Marie replies.

I bark out a laugh. ‘Oh my god. So that means “Franzia the supermodel” is a construct, essentially acharacter!’ I say, my voice steeped in mockery. ‘Oh.’ I realise what I’ve said and turn to face Leo, AKA Lorenzo. ‘Sorry, that was thoughtless of me.’

He gives me a tight-lipped smile. Ireallydidn’t mean to disparage himorlump him in with the Franzias of this world.

‘Oui, c’est vrai,’ says Marie, replying to my rhetorical question. ‘And,’ she continues, ‘we have all seen the public Franzia, but how many have seenthisside of her?’

She advances to the next image of Franzia, one in which she’s stabbing a finger at a cowering makeup artist, her face contorted in fury.

‘Oh my god,’ I say under my breath.

‘Oh, wow,’ says Leo. I glance over and he’s clearly bewildered. ‘I mean, she was pissed when she came to the store this morning, butthat’sout of control. Do you think this is a one-off or…?’ he asks Marie.

‘My sources tell me that this’ – she points to the screen – ‘it happens all the time. But never in front of the designers or photographers.’

‘I’mgladyou’ve never seen this side of her,’ Cassie says to Leo. ‘She sounds like a right mare.’

There’s something in the way Cass says this that troubles me, then realisation dawns. ‘Wait, did you know? About Franzia?’ I ask her.

‘I… Yes.’

‘For how long?’

Her eyes flick towards Poppy and Nasrin across the table. ‘Er, we found out after Paris,’ she says, ‘but it didn’t change anything about your situation, so?—’

‘So, you kept it from me?’

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