Page 74 of Bad Influence


Font Size:

‘And you moved to Surrey, fromthis?’ I remarked.

‘Madness, as it turns out.’ Mandy laughed. ‘It’s good to be home. Hola, Louis!’ She turned to warmly embracean immaculately groomed older man, who had silently appeared with cold towels on a tray. The Hollywood equivalent of Philippa.

‘Hola, Mandy, Jose, Jimi,’ he said, and they all greeted him jovially.

‘This is Amber’ – Mandy turned to me – ‘my stylist. She’s staying here too and can take the second guest suite.’

‘Very well, it’s ready,’ Louis replied, bowing his head compliantly, then turning to offer me a towel too.

I don’t mind if I do.

My room was far better than any hotel room I’d ever stayed in. It had a small terrace overlooking the twinkling lights of Beverly Hills beneath. Later on, as the sun nearly dipped below the horizon, I took a photo of the view.

I wish you were here, I typed into WhatsApp and sent to Vicky. Then I copied and pasted the same message, sending it to Rob. He hadn’t called me back after I missed his call before we left, and though it would be the middle of the night back home, I wanted him to know I was thinking of him.

After she had shared her news with us, Mandy’s pregnancy bump seemed to pop out overnight. When I met her as instructed in her spacious dressing room early the next morning, she was already in a flap about the day ahead. I began familiarising myself with the cacophony of open shelving displaying designer handbags, and shoe carousels crammed with strappy sandals in all colours. It was barely conceivable that none of the items in here had made it to Surrey.

The pregnancy announcement had been moved forward to this morning, so as to attract maximum traffic from all corners of the globe, which meant we didn’t have time to go to Decades.

‘It’s no problem. We’ll go shopping in your wardrobe!’ I smiled brightly, trying to sound a lot less nervous than I felt.

Mandy’s LA-based glam squad, a make-up artist called Sandy and hair stylist Ace, was working on her makeover in the bedroom while I prepped the clothes. Jimi popped in to offer me a coffee, which I gladly accepted. I had felt a little shy around him since the night of the party, though he didn’t seem to act any differently, which made me question whether I had imagined the connection between us. But there was little time to dwell on it right now.

Mandy had the dream closet, and I went through her wardrobe, getting acquainted with the designer goods in there, considering items, pulling out possibilities, and curating my choices into ‘maybes’ and ‘definitelys’. Once complete, I hung up the ‘definitelys’ carefully at one end of the wardrobe to be reviewed by Mandy, as we made the final selection for her baby reveal look.

With her caramel waves tousled to perfection, Mandy came and surveyed my selection. She tried a figure-hugging Hervé Léger peach dress and a striking Saint Laurent silver slip, and we even pondered a stunning cropped, tuxedo-style dinner-jacket and trousers combo by Dolce & Gabbana. But nothing felt right to Mandy. I shuttled to and from the wardrobe adding more to the ‘maybe’ pile, but still she wasn’t convinced by any of my choices, and to be honest,neither was I. Her bump was now clearly there, and she was feeling self-conscious, getting changed in the en-suite bathroom each time, instead of in front of me, as she had been happy to do previously.

‘We can at least save the Hervé Léger for the Baby Mom launch,’ I suggested optimistically, when she emerged for the fifth time complaining that the stretchy, body-hugging design was too dressed up for the purposes of this announcement. Yet, the empire-line creation I had dressed her in before was too relaxed.

Finally, with time ticking, I suggested we take a break and regroup in ten minutes, by which time I would have pulled out even more options. As Mandy cautiously left the bathroom, I held up a white bathrobe for her to thread her arms into, feeling like a waiter in a posh restaurant.

She slipped out of the towel underneath and moved across to the huge, full-length mirror at one end of the dressing suite. She stood there quietly surveying herself as, right on cue, Jose came and stood behind her, taking in his wife’s beauty. He put his arms around her waist and spontaneously created a heart shape with his fingers over her bump.

‘You look beautiful, my babies,’ he swooned. Mandy lifted her face and twisted to kiss him on the lips, before placing her hands on top of his.

‘That’s it!’ I called, in a flash of inspiration. ‘Stay there!’ It didn’t matter that the scene around them was full of discarded clothes, including a couple of bras, in fact it added to the ambience.

‘The robe is perfect! Quick, Jimi, bring the phone!’ I called out. ‘Sandy, flick out her hair just slightly. Ace, a touch more powder on both.’ I moved around the couple, both of them barefoot, Jose wearing white joggers and his trademark white T-shirt, a chunky silver chain bracelet around his wrist. I darted around the front and loosened the dressing gown belt around Mandy’s waist to accentuate her middle even further.

Mandy cupped my face with her hands. ‘You’re a genius, Amber!’ She smiled contentedly.

Jimi crashed into the room, iPhone in hand. ‘Are you ready?’

‘Yes, shoot some video too!’ Mandy commanded.

In just thirty seconds, the perfect social media content was created: an intimate moment between a pregnant couple marvelling at the miracle they had created.

It did not require an expensive fashion photographer, assistants, lighting rigs, or management barking orders, it felt completely natural.

The resulting video and stills were relaxed, romantic, and real. Within minutes, Jimi had edited it into a ten-second video, set it to a song Mandy had recorded several years ago, aptly entitled ‘Ooh Baby’, and uploaded it to YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, X, and Snapchat simultaneously.

We busied ourselves tidying the room and waited.

Chapter Nineteen

Watching a moment go viral is a bizarre experience. It’s like being in Wembley Stadium with ninety thousand adoring Taylor Swift fans all screaming for their heroine, only the volume is on mute.

Like a commentator reporting on a World Cup final, Jimi kept us constantly updated. ‘We’re at 100k likes, comments are in the thousands,’ he said excitedly, sitting on the chaise longue in Mandy’s bedroom, as she and Jose reclined on the bed. ‘We’ll hit a quarter of a mill in a second. It’s flying.’