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extras’ wardrobe room (one of the first-floor bedrooms) where the wardrobe girl was still working away arranging things. There are so many rails of costumes, all labelled and being ironed with some kind of high-pressure steam-jet thingy, which I’m sure has a proper name.
    The dresses looked stunning, all silk and chiffon, empire-line and floor-length. We hoped we could try on everything in sight, but Lizzy had given them our photos, heights and shoe sizes from the other day so a costume had already chosen for each of us.
    I was resigned to looking the worst, as usual, but because of my height I was wearing a dress from the women’s section of the wardrobe department and not the girl’s section and it looked way better than any of the others. It fitted perfectly. I was told by Wendy (the wardrobe girl who is only about twenty), that it was originally made for a lead actress in a TV movie a couple of years ago and they just spruced it up a bit with an underskirt and dyed it lilac. Apparently they always recycle costumes from movie to movie, altering pieces as they go.
    Lorna looks really odd in a dress, as if it’s one big itch for her, but Hanna looked amazing – verydifferent, but very lovely, and I think she knew it as she was grinning even as the heavy make-up came off and the newly dark-brown hair was uncovered from under her beanie. Sophie, Alice, Amber and Bonnie all look good, but their costumes are a bit ordinary compared to the others so Wendy says she’ll fix that by tomorrow.
    The shoes were another matter. They hurt. No wonder people died sooner in those days, they wanted to leave the planet to get away from the constant foot pain they were in. Wendy says that the trick is to bring sneakers onto the set, have your shoes in a draw-string bag and then change into them at the last minute, and that I could put my glasses in there at the last minute too. She wanted to have me wear this hat thing, but I begged her with just my eyes and she put it away with a smile, and replaced it with this large hair-ornament that she came across in some box. It looked like a plain, silver, spidery shape with lots of glass blobs, but she bent it so two of the prongs could fasten in my hair and spruced it up with a ribbon covering the glass bits so it’s not so shiny, and added two feathers and now it looks amazing. She then tied a similar piece of ribbon around my wrist and it really works. Wendyin wardrobe is going to be a very cool person to have around.
    Once we were sorted Wendy disappeared next door to fit out the guys.
    As we reluctantly, and not so reluctantly (Lorna), got changed back into our usual clothes everyone was telling me that mine was the best and I was trying to tell them great things about theirs, but I couldn’t help smiling all the same.
    Pretty soon we could hear Gussy at the top of his voice going, ‘You have GOT to be joking! I play football you know, give that to Alex!’ and Paul who was obviously dancing about the room la-la-ing the tune to an old-fashioned waltz.
    Lorna and Hanna suggested we peep in at the keyhole, but the rest of us didn’t think we could ever recover from such a thing in our own lifetimes. Good thing we nixed that plan as we met Nick and the other three guys coming up the stairs, but they didn’t have time to talk as they were late for the fitting. I think the others are called Owen and Pete and Fraser, but I might have that wrong because they are from Paul’s class in school and don’t come round to the house much. Nick avoided eye-contact with me completely when he said ‘Hi’.
    Stephen invited the others to hang out here after the fittings and they’re around until tonight so the place has that summer camp feel. I am now hiding out in my window-sill nook in the library and can hear the guys and Lorna, Hanna and Alice next door in the billiards room. I am determined not to go and find Nick, he can come and find me. I think he still owes me an apology for the dance