Page 3

‘Same film, but Edna Mode.’

‘Nice.’

The fancy-dress party is another NGRS conference tradition. The best-dressed person at the party normally wins a night away for two people at some spa hotel or other, which ensures the entries are fiercely competitive. To make it interesting, you can’t win by simply buying an outfit, which someone has obviously forgotten to mention to our new head of sales. The judges expect proper effort and imagination, and they reward people coming as more obscure characters too.

As we make our way into the lobby area, we’re greeted by a welcome blast of cold air from the open doors. Next to me, Marie sighs with pleasure and starts pushing through the crowd to get to them. Claude has also disappeared, presumably to find a quiet spot to join his conference call, but I spot Ian, my manager, at the end of one of the coffee queues, so I head over to join him.

‘Hi, Athena,’ he says with a smile. ‘Are you having a lovely time?’

I grin back. ‘Oh, yes. Wild horses couldn’t drag me away. You?’

‘I’ll get back to you on that. Plus points, sitting next to Emilio and playing corporate lingo-bingo, which I won when he missed the sales guy talking about picking off the low-hanging fruit. Minus points, listening to Emilio whining about the spaghetti Bolognese at lunch, which he said he wouldn’t even feed to his dog.’

‘It was pretty disgusting, to be fair,’ I observe. ‘Claude was questioning whether the ragout was secretly made out of dog food, so there’s a theme there.’

‘The joys of annual conference,’ he agrees. ‘Switching to happier things, I have news. How soon can you be on a flight to Cape Town?’

‘They signed?’

‘I just got the email. The timing couldn’t be better really, as your French project is pretty much wrapped up, isn’t it. So?’

‘Yup. It’s my sister’s wedding next Saturday, but I could go after that.’

‘OK. Book yourself on the Sunday night flight and I’ll tell the client to expect you on Monday morning.’

‘Nuh-uh. Tuesday morning. I’m not pitching up dishevelled and disorientated after eleven hours on a plane. That won’t create the right impression at all.’

He sighs. ‘You’re right. Tuesday morning it is.’

The coffee has obviously been stewing for a while, as it has an unpleasant bitterness to it, but I can’t help smiling as I sip it. I’ve never been to Cape Town, but I’ve heard good things about it so I’ve been unsubtly angling for this project ever since it was first mooted as a possibility, despite the possibility of it clashing with my sister’s wedding. As chief bridesmaid, there was never any chance I was going to turn around and say I couldn’t do it because of work, but I have to confess, it’s a relief that I don’t even have to make the choice. I smile as my conversation with Claude comes back to me. Today, maybe Athena does get to have it all. The question now is whether I can top it by winning the fancy-dress competition.

2

I didn’t win. Despite all the effort I put into my outfit, including temporary hair dye to change my blonde locks to Mirage’s silver, horribly uncomfortable green contact lenses and a long black dress that’s the spitting image of the one she wore for dinner in the volcano with Bob Parr, I only managed third place. Although I was a little disappointed, I’m sure we’ll find a point during my sister’s final wedding preparations to drink the champagne I won, and I have to admit the winners were well chosen. In second place was Claude, who’d been very secretive about his character, but had then pulled off a very convincing Bomb Voyage. I’d say the fancy dress was a broad fifty/fifty split between the Toy Story and Incredibles films, which only made the winner stand out more. A woman called Maddy, from finance, had evidently spent weeks crafting a papier mâché Dory from Finding Nemo, which she had attached to herself using shoulder straps, so the head seemed to be sticking out of her chest, and the tail her back. It was just as well that the judging took place early on, as poor old Dory got tattier and tattier as the evening progressed, and quite a lot of her had ended up in pieces on the dancefloor by the end.

It’s now Friday morning and I’d normally be congratulating myself on not drinking too much and having plenty of water before I went to bed. Another day of presentations awaits, and I suspect there will be quite a few people who will be struggling, having thoroughly overdone it at the party. However, there’s no room for smugness as I have a big problem, which is that the bloody temporary hair dye doesn’t appear to be as temporary as I thought. I’ve lathered my hair three times so far this morning, and it’s still completely silver. After consulting the instructions on the box in rather more detail than I did last night, I’ve just learned that it could take up to twelve washes to get it out. That’s not an option, given that my sister’s wedding is just over a week away, so I pull out my phone to call Lucy. She was my brother Troy’s first girlfriend and has been our family hairdresser ever since.

‘Hi, Athena,’ she answers after a couple of rings. ‘What’s up?’

‘The temporary hair colour I used for the company party isn’t coming out. I know it’s cheeky, but we’ve got our final dress fittings for Hebe’s wedding tomorrow, and she and Mum will go nuts if they see it like this. Is there any possibility I could call in first thing and get you to fix it?’

‘Hmm,’ she replies thoughtfully. ‘What product did you use?’

I read her the description off the box and there’s an ominous pause before she speaks.

‘That’s not temporary, Athena. It’s semi-permanent.’

‘I know that now, but the packaging was misleading. It definitely says temporary on the box. Surely you can just dye it back to the colour it’s supposed to be, can’t you?’

Another pause. ‘OK. My first client is at eight thirty. Can you get here an hour before that?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘I’m not promising anything, all right? But I’ll do whatever I can.’

‘Thanks, Luce. You’re a lifesaver.’

‘We’ll see about that. Next time⁠—’