‘Right.’ The woman picked up an iPad from the table and flicked its screen a few times. Her nails were long coffin shapes, painted lime green.
Then she looked at us and shook her head.
‘We’re definitely invited,’ Dani said, attempting an ingratiating smile. ‘Fabian said so. Fabian Flatley?’
Again, the woman shook her head. ‘No Fletcher, no Meredith.’
‘How about just our first names?’ I suggested. ‘Zoë and Danielle?’
‘Not on the list. Excuse me.’
The door behind us had opened again and two girls in floaty white broderie frocks gave their names and were waved through.
‘Why don’t you call Fabian?’ I said.
Dani nodded, looking almost green under her make-up. With the blonde woman watching us expressionlessly, Dani pressed buttons on her phone, held it to her ear and waited. And waited.
‘He’s not answering.’
The blonde woman looked pointedly at the door.
‘Come on,’ I said, bundling Dani outside. ‘We can’t just stand there with her watching us. Too mortifying.’
‘But he said.’ Dani sounded like she might be about to cry. ‘He promised me our names would be on the list.’
‘But they’re not,’ I said gently.
‘We could come back later, when it’s open to the public.’
Privately, I thought this was a terrible idea, but agreeing to it at least gave me an hour or so to persuade Dani of that.
‘Okay. Let’s go somewhere else and get a drink, and you can try calling Fabian again. I’m sure there’s just been some kind of fuck-up, but he might be busy and not answering his phone.’
She nodded, dabbing her eyes with a tissue. ‘Where shall we go?’
‘I used to work round here – there are loads of places. There’s a decent pub just the other side of Trafalgar Square. Let’s head over there.’
The Griffin only just warranted the description ‘decent’, but it was close and it would be quiet, so I could sit down and assess the damage my shoes had done to my feet. There was a bit of my ankle that felt ominously cold when a breeze brushed it, and I suspected I’d already lost a chunk of skin.
‘I just don’t understand,’ Dani said. ‘He said to come. He even asked for both our surnames so he could add us to the list. You don’t think he did it on purpose, do you?’
‘I’m sure he didn’t. I’m sure you’ll be able to get hold of him on the phone and he’ll explain and we can go back and it’ll all be… What the hell’s that noise?’
We’d headed back off the side street onto one of the busier roads, but even so, even though it was right in the centre of town, it shouldn’t have been as noisy as it was. Behind us, I could hear shouting, chanting, drums and even something I was pretty sure was a vuvuzela.
‘Is it the Hare Krishnas?’ Dani said. ‘They come down Oxford Street most days, don’t they?’
‘They don’t make as much noise as that.’
We stopped and turned around, and, as we watched, a huge crowd poured into the street. There were so many people they filled it right from one side to the other; it must have been closed to traffic somewhere because there were no cars or buses and no space for any. There was just a wall of people, moving slowly but inexorably towards us, a wave in which we’d have no choice but to be swept up.
As they drew closer, I could make out banners and placards saying ‘Rebel for life’, ‘Act now’ and ‘Tell the truth’.
‘Shit,’ I said to Dani. ‘It’s the Extinction Rebellion demo.’
‘What, that march against climate change thing?’
I nodded. ‘I’d forgotten it was today.’
Forgotten almost deliberately, because I’d seriously considered going but sacked it off in favour of being Dani’s wingwoman and felt guilty about my lack of commitment to a cause I cared about. But now, like it or not, we were going to have to join the march, because there was literally no way around it.
‘Come on.’ I grabbed Dani’s arm and we headed up the street, the chanting crowd growing closer and closer behind us.
‘You can’t eat money! You can’t drink oil!’
‘There is no Planet B! Declare climate emergency!’
Soon, the lead marchers caught up with us, and Dani and I, in our going-out clothes and high heels, were enveloped into the jeans-and-T-shirt-clad throng, carried along like overdressed twigs in a fast-flowing river. Someone thrust a placard saying ‘We can’t eat money’ into my hand, and someone else gave Dani the corner of a ‘March now or swim later’ banner to hold. She gripped it awkwardly in the hand that wasn’t holding her little sparkly clutch bag, her eyes wide and alarmed.
I was struggling to keep up in my high heels, but I had no choice; the press of bodies all around me made it impossible to slow down. We passed another side street, but there was no way of escaping the throng.
I heard my voice joining the chant: ‘I don’t know but I been told, fossil fuels are getting old.’ Dani caught my eye, horrified, then started singing too. In our going-out clothes, surrounded by a sea of people, we couldn’t have looked more out of place if we’d tried. It was like one of those dreams where you’re on your way to a job interview and you realise you’ve forgotten to put any clothes on, and for some reason you decide to style it out and go ahead anyway.
And now, just like in those dreams, I was unable to escape. I was falling behind Dani, though; as she strode unwillingly along, I found myself dropping back, slipping through the crowd towards the side of the road, my aching feet literally unable to go any faster.
The marchers turned a corner and I lost sight of Dani for a moment, and then my heel got caught in a crack and I stumbled, tried to right myself, made it worse and ended up in a heap on the cobblestones, surrounded by my silver bag and my placard. Oblivious, the marchers carried on past me, now chanting, ‘What do we want? Climate action! When do we want it? Yesterday!’ and one of them actually stepped on my dress and gave me a brief, impatient scowl like it was my fault.
My knees were bleeding, the hem of my dress was ripped and, pathetically, I’d started to cry. I rummaged in my bag for a tissue but found only my phone, my bank card and a lipstick, which of course made me cry even more. The day, which had started out not exactly promisingly, had gone completely and utterly wrong. I had no hope of finding Dani now, and there was no way I could go into a bar anyway, with my knees all bloody and my dress torn. If Dani had any sense she’d escape from the protest as soon as she could and make her way to the station and home, and I was going to do the same, and text her as soon as I was out of this madness and enough time had passed for there to be no chance she’d suggest giving the party another shot.
I struggled to my feet, cursing my stupid shoes and my stupid lack of balance and stupid Fabian Flatley and his stupid guest list, and waited for the tail-end of the march to pass me. A couple of people looked at me curiously but didn’t stop, for which I was quite grateful. And then someone did: a guy wearing a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament T-shirt and camo trousers, with long brown hair and an array of piercings in his ears.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked, propping his placard against the wall next to mine. He smiled, and I realised he was seriously hot, with the kind of chiselled features that would be more at home on a movie star than a climate-change protester. ‘These events get emotional, don’t they? I was nearly crying, too, during the speeches in Parliament Square. I didn’t see you there. I’d have noticed, even in that crowd.’