I, Spy? (Sophie Green Mysteries, No. 1) (Sophie Green Mystery)

making up a lot of lies). “He invited me to some ball thing tonight, it’s really posh and I don’t have anything to wear.”
    “Blow him off! I can’t believe you didn’t tell me this!”
    Ella is a nanny and lives vicariously through me and her other friends. She spends her days changing nappies and driving around in a pointlessly large Land Rover, picking her charges up from poncy schools and ballet lessons.
    “I—well, it’s all kind of sudden,” I said, truthfully.
    “Are you sleeping with him?”
    “Not as such.”
    “Oh, come on. What’s the point of seeing a married man if you’re not getting sex? Jesus, Soph, did I teach you nothing? Anyway, can’t you sting him for a ballgown?”
    “He’s sort of unavailable,” I improvised. “I’m meeting him there.”
    Ella sighed. “Okay,” she said. “How much time do you have?”
    “I have to leave here at eight, very latest.”
    “Come over at three. Her Ladyboat’s going to the spa. We can raid her wardrobe.”
    Ella’s employer is a very nouveau bitch called Crystal who used to be a stripper but is now the wife of an equally nouveau shipping magnate who got knighted recently. They have two young children who rarely see their parents. Normally I’d say this wasn’t good for the children, but I’d met Sir and Lady Tasteless and now believed that the very best thing for these kids was if they never met their parents.
    Besides, their father probably wasn’t Sir Darren anyway.
    So I got in Ted and rolled up the zen-raked gravel of Sir Darren’s awful mansion just after three. He was out of the country on business (trans, shagging his secretary in Mauritius) and she was at the spa (getting botoxed). Ella had just picked the kids up from school and set them to doing homework (the cruelty! I never had homework ’til I was at secondary school, and I never did it then). She pulled me upstairs to her Ladyboat’s dressing room and I stared in wonder.
    “Look at all the pretty colours!”
    Ella grinned. “Half of ’em never worn. She still hasn’t cottoned on to the fact that real celebs don’t actually buy their clothes, they just borrow them. Anyway. Where’s this ball thing, then?”
    “Kensington.”
    “Oh, very nice.” She paused, pulling the cover off a blue beaded thing. “Not the Buckman Ball?”
    “Erm, yes. Why?”
    “Jesus! Her Ladyboat’s been trying to get invites to that for years. She donates bloody billions to the charity—”
    “What is the charity?”
    “I dunno. Some children’s disease, or an AIDS foundation or something fashionable. No one gives a damn about the charity, Soph, it’s all about profiling.”
    She kept badgering me about my married man, and I kept saying I couldn’t say. “It’s really complicated,” I said about a hundred times. “I’m trying to break it off…”
    “But he keeps inviting you to posh things. Hmm.”
    Eventually, terrified I’d get caught, I grabbed a luscious Donna Karan dress and scarpered.
    “What will you say if she notices it’s missing?” I asked through Ted’s window.
    Ella shrugged. “It’s at the cleaners.”
    “She ever worn it?”
    “Don’t think so. I’ll tell her one of the dogs got in there and peed on it. I’ll think of something. I’m still mad at you for not telling me about this bloke before,” she added. “At least tell me his name?”
    “Luke,” I said, without thinking, and Ella beamed.
    “Good name. Biblical.” She waggled her eyebrows at me. “I’ll see you later, yeah?”
    I nodded and drove away gratefully. Ella had also outfitted me with shoes and a gorgeous gossamer wrap. I figured I was good to go.
    The hair dye hadn’t taken well, so I redid it when I got home. I figure my blondeness is too ingrained to be covered by one shot of Clairol. When I washed it out, my barnet was deep, deep brown. Jesus. I looked like a total goth with my pale skin. Time for some bronzer.
    By the time I was finished, I felt like I should have been sprayed with fixative. I taped the fully charged transmitter to my garter (yes, I own a suspender belt) so it was hidden by the petticoats of the skirt and fixed the microphone to the underwiring of the dress.
    It’s worth paying for designer things, I guess, for how good they make you look and how confident they make you feel. I was mad a few years ago when backless tops came out because I simply couldn’t wear them without a bra. Even those clear-strap ones never look right, and they don’t do