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they’re seeing.
    “Marc Jacobs bag, chestnut, big limited-edition buckle with MJ on it, barrel-shaped, two big side straps,” she recites with utter seriousness.
    I bite my lip so I don’t crack up and offend her. Taylor is so fashion-illiterate she might as well be running over the combination of the safe she’s about to open surreptitiously. We had to look up a picture of the bag online today, to make sure she recognized it. She pored over that photo like she was committing a secret formula to memory—and in a way, she has.
    “That’s it,” I assure her. “Nadia says Plum takes it with her everywhere, because it’s a limited edition.”
    Taylor briefly rolls her eyes: she has no time for people who care whether a bag is a limited edition. But then, she doesn’t own a single handbag.
    “Okay, here I go,” she says, standing up. “Watch my back.”
    “If it looks dodgy, I’ll create a diversion,” I promise, and I mean it, though all I can think of is waving to catch Plum’s attention and yelling that her dancing is worse than a four-year-old’s. That should do it.
    But it’s very much a worst-case scenario, because if Plum sees me here, and then her phone goes missing, she’s bound to connect the two incidents, and then she’ll come after me. Which is the last thing we want to have to deal with. So we’re both hoping a diversion won’t be necessary. My fingers are crossed so tightly I’m almost cutting off my circulation.
    I turn to watch Taylor slipping through the crowd. She bends down, as if she’s dropped something, and then she’s simply gone, disappeared. Though she’s big-shouldered and packed with muscle, Taylor moves surprisingly smoothly, and there doesn’t seem to be a ripple in the crowd around where she ducked down.
    Meanwhile, Plum is still giving the table-dancing everything she has, wiggling and shaking, her long hair flying from side to side as she tosses her head around in a way that I’m sure would make me want to puke my guts out if I had a few colored martinis inside me. Her skinny legs flash up and down, and when she does that squatting move again, which makes all the boys whoop, I’m pretty sure that everyone in front of her is definitely, as promised, seeing her knickers. I don’t get why it’s sexy to look like you’re about to go to the loo—even her face is all twisted up like she’s constipated—but clearly there’s a lot about being sexy I’m just not aware of, because it’s going down fantastically with the crowd.
    Plum’s halfway through popping out her bum again when it happens. Up till now, the situation’s been fairly contained: Plum’s lot are crowding round the table to watch her, people are looking up from the pleb section to see what’s going on, but no one else seems that bothered—though I do notice the bouncers guarding the VIP area are looking over at the booth and talking into their headsets.
    Then it all goes to hell in a handbasket.
    It looks like the table’s tipping under Plum’s feet. She falters. The expression on her face changes from constipated to alarmed. She wobbles, and then she sits down heavily on the table, her legs shooting up in the air. The table tilts drastically. The drinks on it go flying, and everyone screams and jumps back.
    Oh my God, what if Taylor’s underneath it? Forget getting caught, she could be badly hurt! I’m on my feet, running toward the table, all concerns about getting spotted by Plum forgotten in my concern for Taylor. As I push into the crowd I see Nadia right by the table, her hands outstretched. It looks like she’s trying to steady it. Ross is reaching out to help Plum, who’s trying to stand up, but just then the table does a huge heave, and her heels slip on the surface, probably from all the spilled sticky alcohol. She does a spectacular half spin, her arms flailing, looking like nothing so much as a figure skater on drugs. Despite the gravity of Taylor’s situation, I start