HIRED BY THE DEVIL

Chapter Seven: The Gala Pt 1

Saturday arrived quietly.

Rosalina was still in her pyjamas at nine in the morning, sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea she had forgotten to drink, watching Brian push his scrambled eggs around his plate with the focused disinterest of someone who had decided eggs were personally offensive.

“You need to eat,” she said.

“I am eating.”

“Moving food around a plate is not eating.”

“It’s a process,” Brian said seriously.

She almost smiled. Almost.

Then he coughed — once, twice — and her almost-smile dissolved into the particular kind of stillness she had learned to wear when her chest did something complicated. He was fine. He was always fine after the small coughs. It was the other ones she watched for. The ones that lasted too long and left him pale and quiet in a way that twelve year olds were not supposed to be quiet.

Born with a weak heart, the doctors had said when he was three days old, as though it was a simple thing. As though weak and heart belonged in the same sentence about someone that small.

He needed the operation. Had needed it for two years now. The kind of operation that sat in a drawer in Rosalina’s room in a folder she tried not to open because opening it meant looking at the number again and the number had not changed and neither had her bank balance — until very recently.

This job, she thought. This job is going to fix it.

Brian looked up and caught her watching him.

“I’m fine Rosie.”

“I know.”

“You’re doing the face.”

“I don’t have a face.”

“You have a very specific face,” he said. “It looks like this.” He arranged his expression into something that was apparently her worry face — eyebrows slightly drawn, mouth doing something complicated, eyes just a fraction too still.

It was unfortunately accurate.

“Eat your eggs,” she said.

He ate his eggs.

Betty arrived at noon with a garment bag over one arm and the energy of someone who had been planning this moment for longer than the occasion warranted.

“Don’t say anything,” she said, before Rosalina could say anything. “Just look.”

She unzipped the garment bag.

The dress was emerald green. Floor length, satin, sleek and simple in the way that very expensive things were simple — not plain, just unafraid. A subtle low back. Clean lines. The kind of dress that did not need to try.

Rosalina stared at it.

“Where did you get that?”

“Miss Parker gifted it to me last month.” Betty held it up against Rosalina’s frame with the satisfaction of someone whose plan was coming together exactly as imagined. “She has extraordinary taste and so do I and green is your colour. I have always said this.”

“Betty—”

“And before you say anything about the shoes.” Betty reached into the bag and produced nude strappy heels that were exactly the right height and exactly the right everything. “These are mine but your feet are my feet so this is a non-issue.”

Rosalina looked at the dress. Then at the shoes. Then at Betty.

“I don’t even know why he invited me,” she said.

“Doesn’t matter why. What matters is you’re going and you’re going looking like this.” Betty was already steering her toward the bathroom with the focused efficiency of a woman on a mission. “We have time. Shower. Hair. Makeup. In that order. No arguments.”

“I wasn’t going to argue.”

“You were constructing an argument in your head. I could see it happening.” Betty pointed at the bathroom door. “Go.”

Rosalina went.

By six thirty she stood in front of the mirror in the bedroom and looked at herself for a long quiet moment.

The dress fit like it had been made for her. The green — deep and rich, the colour of old Italian gardens — made her golden eyes do something she hadn’t expected, brightening them somehow, making them more themselves. Her natural blonde hair fell in soft waves past her shoulders. Betty had kept the makeup simple — warmth, a little definition, nothing that tried too hard.

She looked like herself. Just a version of herself that had been turned up slightly.

“Okay,” Betty said from behind her, arms folded, deeply satisfied. “You have to admit it.”

“It’s a nice dress.”

“ROSALINA.”

“It’s a very nice dress.”

Betty threw a pillow at her.

From the doorway Brian appeared, took one look at his sister, and said with the devastating honesty of twelve year olds everywhere: “You look really pretty Rosie. Like actually pretty. Not just normal pretty.”

Rosalina turned to look at him.

“Thank you Brian. That is both a compliment and an insult.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, already walking away.

Betty was still laughing when Rosalina’s phone buzzed.

Jeremy will be at your door at 7. — Giorgio

Betty grabbed both of Rosalina’s hands and squeezed them once — firm and warm and full of everything she didn’t need to say out loud.

“You’re going to walk in there,” Betty said, “and you’re going to be exactly who you are. And that is going to be more than enough. You hear me?”

Rosalina looked at her best friend.

“I hear you,” she said quietly.

“Good.” Betty released her hands and straightened up. “Now go. And text me everything.”

*******