Page 7 of Shout Out To My Ex

I stop short. ‘Sorry?’

‘You heard me.’

‘Yes, but what does that mean?’

‘I, my dear sister, have managed to work some magic and Bliss Designs is going to Paris Fashion Week!’

A hush descends over the workroom, and I can feel all eyes locked on us.

‘I… you…what?’

‘I know it’s late notice, but an Icelandic designer had to pull out and I snagged us their spot.’

‘But that’s only a few weeks away… and we’re just a small…’

Doubt rushes through me, shouting, ‘Imposter, imposter, imposter!’ inside my head.

‘Hey.’ Cass’s voice drops an octave and many decibels. She glances around. ‘Come.’ She grabs my hand and drags me towards our office. Once we’re inside, she closes the door and eyes me closely. ‘You all right?’

‘I’m not sure. Did you just announce in front of the entire team that we’re showing at Paris Fashion Week?’

‘Yes.’

I expel a breath, nodding slowly, trying to absorb what this means. I have a thought.

‘This isn’t like that time you said we were going to be sold in shops and I thought Harvey Nicks but you meant Primark, is it?’

‘That was good exposure.’

‘We were asked to design a T-shirt,’ I retort, blinking at her pointedly.

‘Forcharity,’ she lobs back.

‘All right, fine,’ I concede. Itwasa good cause, as well as good exposure. ‘But when you say Paris Fashion Week?—’

‘I mean your autumn/winter collection. In Paris. During Fashion Week.’

‘And not in some back alley in the fifteenth arrondissement?’

‘Nope. In the Carrousel du Louvre.’

Her words send a jolt of adrenaline through my veins – buoying and terrifying me in equal measure.

‘And you’re not playing?’

She grabs me by both shoulders and pins me with a big-sister-slash-business-manager look. ‘Listen, as fun as this is – convincing you that I’m serious – I need you to believe me and I need you to believe meright now, because we have less than three weeks until we’re showing in Paris. And not in some back alley. All right?’

A grin breaks across my face, quashing the internal cries of imposter. ‘We’re showing in Paris,’ I say.

‘We’re showing in Paris.’

I grab both her forearms and start jumping up and down. ‘We’re showing in Paris,’ I chant. To her credit, Cass plays along and there we are, two thirty-somethings bouncing up and down, giddy and ridiculous.

‘Right,’ she says after indulging me for a good thirty seconds, ‘shall we tell them the good news?’ She nods towards the workroom and when I look past her, our small but formidable team is standing still, eyes trained on us through the glass walls.

I scoot past Cass and fling open the door.

‘Is it true?’ asks Zara, the most senior of the team.

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