Bella by Jilly Cooper

don’t you come, too?’ he added to Steve.
    ‘Won’t I be de trop ?’ said Steve.
    ‘Not at all,’ said Angora. ‘Lazlo will melt into a telephone box and magic up some amazing looking girl for you, then we’ll go on the town. Thanks for drinks, Bella. See you at Gay’s wedding. Lazlo had some crazy scheme for us all to go down to the country the next day, then we can go to Goodwood. If you like horses,’ she added to Steve, ‘you’d better come too.’
    And they drifted out, hardly bothering to say goodbye, leaving Bella jibbering with misery and impotent rage. Lazlo’s nasty grin stayed with her, like the Cheshire Cat, long after he’d gone.
    She had even more cause to be angry with him in the next few days. Two television plays and a commercial she’d considered certainties suddenly fell through. Her bank manager wrote a vitriolic letter complaining about her overdraft.
    She was also due to play Nina in the Britannia’s production of The Seagull, which was going into rehearsal next week. Suddenly, Roger Field, the director, sent for her and told her he wanted her to play Masha, the frumpy, frustrated schoolmistress instead.
    Bella lost her temper. ‘Lazlo Henriques is behind this!’ she stormed.
    ‘Who’s he?’ said Roger unconvincingly. ‘I make the decisions round here. I feel you’d be better as Masha.’

Chapter Seven
    As usual, Bella left buying something to wear to Gay’s wedding to the last minute. She knew she shouldn’t buy anything at all. There were stacks of hardly worn dresses in her wardrobe and, with the present intransigence of her bank manager, he was bound to bounce the cheque anyway.
    But for the last week she’d been spending money as though it was going out of fashion, almost as though she was determining her own destiny, forcing herself into such financial straits that the only way out would be to marry Rupert.
    Anyway, she had to have a new dress. She knew that Steve had been asked to the wedding, and that he’d been seeing a lot of Angora, and that she must knock him for six by looking even more glamorous.
    The shopping expedition was a disaster; half the shops seemed to have sales on. Everything she tried on looked perfectly frightful and she’d no idea how the weather was going to turn out. It was one of those grey, dull days that might easily get hot later.
    ‘Puce is going to be very big in the autumn,’ said a sales girl, forcing her into a wool dress and holding great folds of material in at the back to give it the appearance of fitting.
    Bella winced at her washed out reflection. ‘I look like something the cat brought in or up,’ she said. ‘I need a new face, not a new dress.’
    By two o’clock, when she was getting desperate, she found a dress in willow green, sleeveless, low cut and clinging, with a wrap-over skirt. It was the only remotely sexy thing she had tried on.
    ‘Do you think it’s all right for a wedding?’ she said desperately.
    ‘Oh yes,’ said the sales girl, raking a midge bite with long red nails. ‘People wear anything for anything these days.’
    By the time she’d found a floppy, coral pink picture hat and shoes to match she was really running out of time. But when she tried them all on later in daylight in her flat, she realized the coral looked terrible with her tawny hair.
    She had an hour and a half before she had to be at the church. Her hairdresser was closed that afternoon. The only answer was to wash her hair and put a red rinse on it, but in her haste she forgot to read the instructions about not using it on dyed hair. The result was not a gentle Titian, but a bright orange going on Heinz tomato, and impossibly fluffy with it.
    She soon realized, too, that half a ton of eyeliners, blushers, shaders and all her skill at making-up wasn’t going to do her any good. It simply wasn’t an on-day.
    Her skin looked dead, her eyes small and tired, and no amount of pancake could conceal the bags under them.
    It was also getting