Authors: Joanna Rees
She stepped forward and cupped Tom’s face.
‘I’m so sorry. Forgive me.’ She kissed his lips softly. ‘You know, we can still . . . ’
Tom shook his head. ‘The moment’s passed. Forget it.’ He snatched her blue and white striped dressing gown from the hook by the cupboard and put it on.
Inwardly wincing at her cowardliness, Thea decided to let the matter drop. She watched as he went over to the champagne bottle.
‘What are we celebrating?’
‘Certainly not my erectile function at this particular moment,’ Tom said.
Thea let out an embarrassed laugh. ‘You’re never going to forgive me, are you?’
‘At least I know that you’d handle a burglar,’ he said, and she knew he was softening. The cork popped and hit one of the diamond patterns on the painted ceiling, landing in
the worn leather armchair.
Tom poured her a glass of champagne and she accepted it, smoothing her hair behind her ear.
God, she loved him
, she thought. She loved every single tiny hair on his head. She loved his long, dark eyelashes and the pattern of freckles on the bridge of his nose. And she loved
being in love with him.
‘So . . . how long can you stay this time?’ she asked.
‘Longer than before. I quit.’
She stared at him, stunned. His father, Duke, had fixed him up with a graduate position at Lloyd’s in London, a job most people his age would kill for.
‘It’s so fucking soulless. I can’t stand it. My parents are furious, but the good news is that I’m free to hang out with you. If you’ll let me, that is. I’m
going to take a year out and then reapply to do law. Just like you said I should.’
My God, she thought, he really means it. She noticed his bags then in the corner of her room. He really was planning on moving here to Oxford. Nerves writhed inside her. What about her studies?
What about all the societies she’d joined? And what about Bridget? What the hell would she say?
But in spite of her apprehension, another kind of excitement filled her too. Tom had come to
her
. This beautiful boy, whom she sometimes felt she’d loved her entire life, had left
London and changed his entire future to be with her. Because he believed in her. Because he believed in
them
.
She threw her arms around her – at the same time throwing all her doubts aside. She kissed him hard on the lips. She believed in him too. Together they’d make this work. Still
kissing him, she pushed him back towards her bed. He laughed as she tumbled on top of him, then he moaned, grabbing her and kissing her.
Afterwards, as they lay there together, their naked bodies still entwined, his soft fingers gently trailed across her breasts.
I could stay here forever
, she thought. Just here and now in
this beautiful room.
He finally pulled away and went to his jacket and lit up a cigarette. She smiled, watching him walk back towards her, luxuriating in the way the candlelight flickered across his perfect smooth
skin. She picked up the glass of champagne, took a sip and held the bubbles in her mouth.
He crouched down by the bed, then stood, the fax she’d picked up from her pigeonhole in his hand.
He opened it out. ‘It looks like it’s from your father,’ Tom said.
Thea took it from him and read it. It was typed in her father’s usual gruff tone, telling her that he wanted her to start making plans for her twenty-first birthday. But she knew what he
wanted and, as she pictured what a party in Maddox Towers would entail, she shuddered. There was no doubt he was calling her to step in line, but Thea had perfected the art of wriggling out of all
the family events that might have involved the photo opportunity her father craved. By meeting Griffin Maddox in Europe and being flightily and exasperatingly too busy to get back to New York when
he had requested her presence, Thea had managed to avoid being in the same building as Brett for nearly six years.
‘Oh God,’ she groaned. ‘Why can’t he just leave me alone?’
‘It’s just a party. I think it’s sweet.’
‘Yeah, with all of his and Storm’s friends. It will have nothing to do with me.’
‘It might be fun,’ Tom said. ‘I wouldn’t turn it down, if I were you.’
Thea looked at the fax again, then up at Tom.
‘I’ll agree to it, if you come with me,’ she said.
The words were out before she could stop herself. Her birthday wasn’t until next March. It was months away. They had the whole ordeal of Christmas to get through first. The last thing she
wanted to do was put him off by pressuring him.
‘What? Meet the parents,’ he said, speech-marking the phrase with his fingers.
‘You don’t have to,’ she said quickly, putting down her champagne. ‘In fact, it’s probably a very bad idea—’
‘I’d love to,’ he said, stopping her excuses with a kiss. She put her arms around his neck, pulling him back down towards the bed, loving the way his hips automatically snaked
against hers.
‘Are you sure? You’ll come back to America with me?’
‘You think I’d let you celebrate your birthday on your own? I want to spend every second I can with you,’ he said, kissing her.
‘Right answer,’ she said, smiling and kissing him back.
Outside a firework exploded, making them both jump, and Thea laughed. But as she rolled him onto his back and positioned herself astride him, she remembered the night of fireworks a long time
ago when she’d overheard Storm telling Brett that she was a freakish little brat.
What had she done, inviting Tom to meet her family? What if he ended up thinking that she was a freakish little brat too? Or, worse, what if Tom saw through them? Through Brett and Storm, and
Thea too? What if he glimpsed the dark secrets behind the perfect Maddox facade?
March 1992
Romy yanked at the handcuffs that were chaining her to the prison bars behind her. She rattled them again, crying out. Pressing her bare feet up against the bars, she flexed,
flipping her head back and pulling with all her might, as if she could break the thick metal.
Exhausted, she flattened herself against the bars, looking at the tiny cell, with its shiny white floor and black bunk, the scene blurring for a moment in her vision.
‘Sensational,’ Nico said, coming in low with the camera, the shutter flickering in her face. ‘That’s it, darling. Keep going.’
But as Romy looked into the lens, seeing her own reflection, a memory flickered in her mind. Black-and-white photographs floating into the darkness, a figure in a blood-stained gown jumping in
slow motion like a ghost.
Romy’s eyes snapped open. ‘Stop,’ she said.
‘What’s the matter?’ Nico asked, alarmed, as he peered up from behind the camera. ‘It’s going great. You look terrific. Are the handcuffs too tight?’
Romy shook her head, wriggling her wrists out of them, so that they clattered to the floor around the mocked-up bars. She bent her wrists round. ‘No.’
‘Then what?’
Romy moved away and stood in the centre of the set, her hand on her hip. Her hair had been backcombed beyond recognition and her false eyelashes weighed down her eyes. She fingered the diamond
top of the ripped designer vest that barely covered her bronze-dusted chest.
Beyond the fake prison cell, in the darkness of Nico’s studio, she knew there were a whole host of observers watching today’s shoot. Nico’s assistant, Florence, the make-up and
hair crew, as well as the agency people and the client from the cosmetics giant. None of them were going to miss this – the big shoot for the launch of the new fragrance. Nico had been
planning it for weeks.
‘I’m uncomfortable with this whole . . . prison thing. I think this is the wrong message,’ she said, shielding her eyes from the bright lights.
‘Darling, you don’t get to have a view,’ Nico said, through clenched teeth. ‘And we agreed . . . this is what the Art Director wants.
This is what they’re paying
us for
.’
Nico might be nervous, but he was the talent here, not these people.
He
was the one they were paying. But that’s what he forgot sometimes, even though Nico had more persuasive
powers than anyone she’d ever met, when he wanted to. After all, it had been Nico who’d talked her into modelling in the first place. It was thanks to him that her life had changed
beyond all recognition in the last two-and-a-half years.
Which is why she eyeballed him back now, telling him to hold his nerve, as the Art Director Lorenzo and the ad-agency people strode onset, as well as the pinstriped grey suit who – Romy
assumed from the way the others’ panicked looks focused on him – was the client.
Lorenzo was wearing tight leather jeans and had sculpted facial hair and little black-framed glasses. He spoke in rapid Italian to Nico. Romy looked furious.
‘He wants to know why you have stopped,’ Nico said, his tone making it perfectly clear that once again Romy had overstepped her position. He widened his eyes at her, but she brazened
it out. She hoped her strength would give him confidence.
‘I like this fragrance, but I wouldn’t wear it with this imagery. My point is that there are so many women in prison,’ she said as the crowd of men assembled around her,
‘women who suffer real incarceration – physically and mentally. There is nothing sexy about the smell of fear.’
For a second she pictured herself standing up in the crate in the aeroplane hold, after her terrifying journey from East Berlin. Stinking and scrawny. None of these people would ever know what
they were trying to glorify here. Let alone understand.
A stunned silence followed. Romy didn’t flinch. They needed her, whatever it was they thought she had. This was the same as poker. It was all a confidence trick. Make them think you held
the winning card, and they’d bend to your will.
Lorenzo started talking rapidly to the man in the pinstriped suit. But Romy interrupted.
‘Let
me
explain,’ she said. ‘Please.’
The fat man in the suit stepped forward and Romy shook his hand, then led him away from the others by the arm. She was much taller than him, something that clearly intimidated him, as he
straightened his back now and attempted to stare her down.
‘Listen,’ she said, neutralizing him with a smile and a look – that look, the doe-eyed come-and-get-me look that she was already famous for across Italy. As she continued to
talk, in Italian – something that clearly delighted and surprised him in equal measure – she watched his shoulders relax.
Her tutor in her evening classes had told her that she had a gift for languages, the like of which he’d never come across before. Romy didn’t tell him that she’d made it
through this far by becoming a chameleon, and it was always languages that had helped her fit in, allowing her to win and now to keep her precious freedom.
She used this ability now to get on first-name terms with Tomaz, the suit. Then, once she’d brought a blush to his flabby cheeks, she grilled him about his demographic for the perfume, and
explained in his native language why she thought the message was wrong. Then she told him her idea.
‘But that’s a whole change of the campaign dynamic,’ Lorenzo spluttered, when Romy explained it to him a few minutes later. But it didn’t matter what he thought now. The
fat client, Tomaz, was already convinced. He was gazing across the studio at Romy even now, his eyes glittering. Was he having fantasies, she wondered, of inviting her onto his yacht? Romy knew
plenty of models who went out with filthy-rich, ugly men, but she wasn’t ever going to become one of them. She was too busy earning her own money to bother with anyone else’s.
‘If that’s what the client – thanks to you – now wants, then that’s what we’ll give him,’ Lorenzo said. His eyes flashed a warning. ‘I just hope,
for both of our arses,’ he said, deliberately slipping into English so that no one would understand, ‘you’re right.’
She knew she was taking a risk, putting her own views on the line like this. Adrenaline burst through her as Lorenzo clapped his hands to get everyone’s attention.
Romy turned to Florence, Nico’s assistant. She was wearing leggings and an oversized baggy jumper, which accentuated her mop of peroxide-white hair and elfin-like features. ‘Get the
doorman up here. Jovo’s his name. Tell him Romy needs a favour.’
‘What are you planning now?’ Nico asked.
‘You’ll see.’
Jovo was exactly what she needed. They’d always chatted whenever she came to Nico’s studio, and Romy often brought him cherries from the fruit stall on the corner by her apartment.
This morning they’d talked about the crisis in Bosnia, where his family was originally from, and how he was expecting trouble between the Serbs and Croats. He’d once been a boxer back
there, he’d told Romy. Now, in his sixties, he was decidedly more fat than muscle. Perfect for what she had in mind. ‘Trust me. It’ll be OK.’
Ten minutes later Romy had Jovo lying on the floor of the cell on his considerable belly, his hands handcuffed behind his back. Then Romy sat on him, the keys of the handcuffs dangling on her
finger.
‘Now shoot,’ she told Nico. ‘And Florence, honey, could you get me those Gucci heels we had before, please, darling? I don’t want to do any more shots with bare feet. Not
when those shoes are so gorgeous.’
She let Nico direct her, flicking her head triumphantly. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed Lorenzo nodding approvingly, his arms folded across his shirt. She even thought she saw him
smile.
At the back of the studio, dressed in her regulation black polo-neck jumper and designer slacks, Simona Fiore sucked on her cigarette, concealing with her normal scowl the
frisson of excitement that she felt. She didn’t usually come along to her models’ shoots, but she had some special news that she was looking forward to breaking to Romy after the job
had finished. Very special news indeed.
Perez Vadim had requested Romy for his Paris catwalk show on Friday.
Perez Vadim
. What’s more, the hot designer of the moment had personally called Simona, and she’d wasted no
time in demanding a ludicrously high price for Romy’s services. Such a commission would really propel Romy into supermodel status.