She found a restroom away from the main lobby, tucked down a small corridor. It was quiet, an oasis of calm compared to the melee in the central atrium. She peered at herself in the mirror, evaluating her face from different angles and frowning. It had been two hours since she’d left the pharmacy and last applied make-up in the cramped cupboard toilet at the back, and some shine was creeping in. Sometimes she feared she was destined to spend the rest of her life at her dressing table, staring into her vanity mirror, charting the rise and fall of empires on her face: the blackheads on her forehead, the whiteheads around her nose, the lurkers, small angry lumps beneath her skin that lay like dormant volcanos, hot to the touch but offering no sign of release. She wrote everything down in her diary, hoping that this scientific approach might someday provide an explanation for what she referred to internally as the state of her face. She could have been beautiful, that was the huge injustice of it. Her hair was long and blonde, her body toned and taut from hockey and barely eating. A body like Baywatch, a face like Crimewatch. That’s what she’d heard a boy in her Duke of Edinburgh’s Award group say as the others laughed. Fuck you, she would frequently think. Fuck all of you, when I’m earning enough to have my skin lasered, or whatever advancements lay ahead. Until then she applied make-up. Lots and lots of make-up. She needed her toolbox, she thought, reaching for her hefty bag, glad to have this bathroom to herself.

Oh.

She started at the unmistakable sound of crying. She considered leaving – tearful situations were not her speciality. She was practical, concise. She could explain the law of indices or accurately predict a chemical equation. She could not dissect a text message from a boy, or console a friend while they tearfully complained about their mother. It was for this reason some of the girls at school branded her ‘cold’, or sometimes ‘frigid’. She hated that word, with its Miss Havisham undertone, as if all the other girls were gamely shagging or dishing out blow jobs every night after school – she wasn’t more frigid than anyone else, surely? They were seventeen and at an all-girls’ school! And then there were her clothes; whatever she tried, she always seemed to get it wrong, the other girls laughing that her outfits were ‘too loud’ or ‘too clashy’. It was why she was wearing practically a uniform today, so she couldn’t get it wrong. She did as she always did. Told herself it didn’t matter. Because it didn’t. She was bright and she was focused and she’d get out of that school and she’d get a good job and she’d make enough money to fix her skin properly and she’d be a success. She felt certain that of all the things she couldn’t control, her success was a surety. But she was feeling a little different tonight. There was something about being here for le Bal, in this beautiful hotel, something about knowing Valentin had invited her to join him and the others. She felt emboldened. She felt like maybe she could have something to add sooner than she thought.