Authors: Joanna Rees
‘
Comme ça
?’ Vadim chopped more of the fabric away. Then he stood back with a surprised smile.
The sun was low in the sky by the time Romy was finally allowed to leave, the streets bathed in a warm late-afternoon gold. Nico was waiting for her, standing smoking a
cigarette against his old black Mercedes, which was parked underneath a cherry-blossom tree on the street. Romy’s dog was on a lead by his feet, and Romy laughed at what a reluctant
dog-sitter Nico had turned out to be.
‘You should be a model yourself, posing like that,’ Romy said, picking up Banjo and giving the delighted mutt a cuddle.
‘You mean the dog should be a model, or me?’ Nico asked.
‘The dog, silly,’ Romy laughed. ‘What on earth are you wearing, anyway?’
Nico pulled at the green German-army jacket. Romy knew they were the height of fashion, but she couldn’t get used to seeing people wearing them. They reminded her of the guards at the
orphanage.
‘Don’t you like it?’
She could tell he was disappointed, so she changed the subject.
‘Has he been any trouble?’ she asked, tickling Banjo behind the ears and thinking that he actually looked as if he was grinning. It was no surprise, considering how he’d looked
a few weeks ago when she’d found him, half-starved, a broken chain around his neck strangling him.
‘He peed on my new Converse, but apart from that he was OK. Anyway, how did it go?’ Nico asked, treading on his cigarette and opening the car door. ‘Did you behave
yourself?’
‘I modelled a dress for Princess Diana. It was
so
sexy,’ Romy said, ushering Banjo into the tiny back seat, before running back and picking up her bags.
‘What have you got there?’ Nico asked, looking down at the designer names over the top of his sunglasses.
‘Oh,’ Romy grinned. ‘I went shopping earlier.’
‘But I dropped you off—’
‘But I was early, so I had a snoop around. Oh my God, Nico, you won’t believe the stuff in some of these shops.’ She got into the car and put the bags on her knees, before
delving inside. Nico sat in the driver’s seat.
‘There was this shirt,’ Romy said, pulling the Oxford stripe out of the bag. ‘I couldn’t
not
buy it. You’ll look amazing in it.’ She held it up against
Nico’s face. ‘Much better than this silly army look. You look great in classic stuff. I thought you’d like it in white too.’
Nico shook his head, pulling an exasperated grin. ‘You shouldn’t have. You have to stop. You have to save. The whole point about fashion is that people will give you everything for
free.’
Romy took one of the skyscraping yellow heels out of the shoebox and showed it to Nico. ‘But how could I leave them in the shop?’
Nico rolled his eyes at her, then took her bags and wedged them in next to Banjo, who clamped his sharp teeth around the fancy rope handles of the shoebox. ‘You’re going to have to
keep them well away from this little fella,’ he warned.
She petted Banjo, then grinned at Nico, pulling the Aviator sunglasses out of his hair and putting them on herself, as he started the car and drove down the wide avenue.
‘I love Paris,’ she told Nico. ‘Isn’t this amazing? Are you really sure you don’t mind being here with me?’
He shrugged. ‘I’ll make do,’ he told her, turning up the neat car stereo, then grinning at her. It was the new acid-jazz CD Romy had brought from the buskers the other night,
when they’d been having dinner.
Romy sat back in her seat, putting her sore feet up on the dashboard. She still had the scar from her run-in with Tia Blanche all that time ago, but it was fading now. Just as Tia herself was.
Romy was gratified that she’d been chosen over Tia for several high-profile jobs in the last few months. The perfume campaign, with the shot of her dangling the keys on her finger as she sat
on Jovo, was everywhere. She’d even seen it on a hoarding in Charles de Gaulle airport, right above Duty Free.
Romy had insisted on splitting her fee with Jovo, her co-model, who had made enough to send his granddaughter to university and to buy a new car, he’d told Romy in his last letter.
She was delighted, as was Tomaz, the client, who’d also been in contact to assure Romy that sales of the perfume were soaring and to tell her that if she was in the South of France in the
summer to be sure to look him up in his chateau. Simona had already booked Romy in to be the face of their new make-up range, charging quadruple her normal fee. When Simona had told Romy how much
she was going to get, she’d nearly fainted.
And now that she and Nico were going to be settled in Paris, she felt as if life couldn’t get any better.
‘So. I have a surprise,’ Nico told her.
‘Oh?’
‘The apartment is ours.’
Nico reached into his jacket pocket and threw the keys to her. Romy squealed with delight as they entered the ninth arrondissement and moved into the warren of streets, past the Moulin Rouge and
the row of clubs, cabarets and bars. Pigalle certainly wasn’t the smartest place to live, but it was the most hip, and all the artists Nico knew were gathered here, where the apartments were
much cheaper than in more salubrious neighbourhoods.
Romy looked up at the high building as they stopped near the kerb, and at the imposing black front door and the row of posters and flyers plastered on the wall next to it. A van had stopped
further up the street and Nico nodded to a man who had clearly been waiting for him. The back grille of the van rattled as he pulled it up.
‘I took the liberty of getting removal men to get all the furniture in. I rented that job-lot we saw. They weren’t very pleased when I told them we were right at the top. Why did it
have to be a penthouse apartment?’ Nico said.
‘The law of relativity. People at the top live longer than people at the bottom. It’s a fact.’
‘How much longer?’
‘A trillionth of a second – over a lifetime,’ Romy clarified, ‘but it’s the point that counts. We’ll be living life faster up there, so time will go
slower.’
She grinned at him and Nico rolled his eyes. ‘The stuff you pick up from all those books you read,’ he said, taking the keys back off her to open the front door. He pulled her out of
the way as two men passed them, heaving the leather sofa up to the stairwell. ‘We’ll take the lift,’ he said gesturing her inside. She followed him and watched as he pulled back
the grate of the old-fashioned lift. ‘After you.’
Romy giggled. ‘I feel like I’m in an Audrey Hepburn movie,’ she said, as she watched the lights on the numbers above the grille light up. As they moved through the floors, she
saw the shoes of a woman walking along the corridor with a small white dog on a lead. Banjo barked.
‘Looks like there’ll be a lady-friend or two for you,’ she told him.
They arrived at the grand doors of the penthouse apartment a moment later.
‘Well,’ Romy said, pointing to herself and doing a cutesy hip-bend as she put Banjo down. ‘You gotta carry me over the threshold. It’s good luck.’
‘Seriously?’ Nico said, laughing, then she whooped with delight as he picked her up, threw her over his shoulder and took two nimble steps across the parquet flooring to the
door.
He deposited her inside and she grinned at him in the giant gilt-framed mirror on the wall opposite. They’d seen this partially furnished show-apartment briefly last week and she knew how
much Nico liked its old, bohemian charm. Looking round now, Romy thought it was even cooler than she remembered.
They both laughed as Banjo ran into the vast sitting room and onto the armchair that the workmen were putting by the fireplace.
‘Which bedroom do you want?’ Romy asked Nico, her eyes wide as they explored the flat. But now, for the first time, she realized the massive commitment that they’d made –
to actually live together. But who better to live with than her best friend? It wasn’t as if she had anyone else. Florence, Nico’s assistant, had moved in with her boyfriend, and her
other friends were all settled in their own places. It had been fine crashing with Emma and Terese, but Romy couldn’t wait to have her own place and pay them back for their hospitality.
‘You take the big one,’ Nico said. ‘You’ll need the space for all those shoes you keep buying. Besides, I won’t be here the whole time. I’ll keep my studio
things in the small room.’
Romy reached up and kissed his cheek. ‘You are the perfect gentleman,’ she said. ‘If you romance a hot stud and bring him back here, I promise I’ll let you use my
room.’
Romy ran into the bedroom and jumped on the four-poster bed, touching the canopy above. ‘Romy, be careful,’ Nico laughed, calling after her. ‘The deposit was huge.’
‘Come on,’ she laughed, holding her hands out for him.
He jumped once on the bed with her, then they fell over, giggling.
She was in his arms for a moment, nose-to-nose, and she breathed in the comforting smell of his aftershave. She grinned at him. She adored him so much, she wondered whether it would ever be
possible to find a man she got on with as well. ‘Show me the roof terrace again,’ she said, scrambling away from him.
She ran barefoot over the floorboards into the vast living room with the circular staircase on the back wall. Then, unlocking the glass door, she was on the roof. Banjo’s claws clattered
on the metal stairs as he ran up behind her.
‘This is amazing,’ Romy said, leaning out over the railing and looking at the view. Montmartre was so close, it felt as if she could touch the white stone of Sacré Coeur
Basilica at the top.
‘Come and see this,’ Nico said, and she followed him up some steps to the top of the roof terrace, where there was a barbecue area complete with a wooden hot-tub. There was even a
small patch of turf, which Banjo was already scratching at.
‘We’re having a party. Call up everyone you know. This place is fantastic. After Boho,’ she said, remembering her earlier conversation, ‘I said we’d meet Anna there
at ten.’
‘No. I don’t think we should trash it right away—’ Nico began, but Romy held up her hand to stop him.
‘Nico, Boho is practically downstairs. You can’t move in here and then put a halt to partying. Think about it. We’re right in the centre of everything. This will be like our
own private-members’ club.’
‘OK, but do me a favour and give me a buzz before we go,’ he said, smiling at her and running his hand bashfully over his hair. She laughed, knowing how much he liked her to play
hairdresser to him.
‘Why? Are you feeling lucky?’ she asked him.
Anna was Romy’s new friend in Paris. They’d met a few weeks ago on a shoot, and the Parisian model was happy to show Romy around and introduce her to her formidable
social circle. It seemed Anna knew anyone who was anyone, and Romy was intrigued by this new set of funky, talented people – all of them artists or models or actors. It made her feel like she
was part of a hip gang. That, for the first time, she was on the inside looking out, and not the other way around.
Romy pulled Nico down the basement steps towards the bouncers outside the famous club, smiling and talking rapidly and loudly to them over the thump of the music, about her and Nico being on
Anna’s guest list.
‘Are you really, seriously planning on dancing all night in those shoes?’ Nico said. ‘You can barely walk in them.’
Romy laughed, pulling him past the crowds to the dark, smoky club.
Inside the music was deafening, a DJ in a booth lit up above the heaving dance-floor.
‘Come on,’ she yelled to Nico. ‘Let’s head to the VIP area.’ She took his hand and dragged him through the sea of dancing bodies to the industrial metal
staircase.
Anna spotted her and waited at the top, her arms open wide in welcome. She was tall with long blonde hair, which she’d tied up in a big clip, so that it fell in wisps around her pretty
face. She was wearing a miniskirt and high black boots, which showed off her long, tanned legs.
‘Hey, girlfriend,’ Anna said huskily. ‘Take one of these. They’re amazing.’ She draped her arm around Romy’s shoulders and popped a pill in her mouth.
Romy waved to Nico, wanting him to get one too, but she saw him talking to a guy in a blue silk shirt and smiled. She’d probably lost him for the evening.
Anna squeezed Romy in on the purple banquette, next to a dark-haired guy with a stubbly beard called Bernard, and handed her a glass of champagne.
Soon there was more champagne, and then Romy felt Bernard rubbing his hand up her thigh and felt herself shuddering all over. The flashing lights, the beat of the music in sync with her
heartbeat – she suddenly felt as if her nerve endings were tentacles soaking it all up. When Bernard suggested that they move away from the banquette to dance, Romy let him hold her hand and
lead her.
She felt the rhythm of the music pounding through her as she surrendered herself to the darkness and the mass of bobbing bodies around her. Bernard pressed against her, his hand moving up her
thigh. Then the next thing she knew she was kissing him.
Later she couldn’t remember how they’d all got back to her apartment, or who half the people were whom Anna had invited. But Nico wasn’t there when they got home. Romy felt a
momentary worry, but there were too many people stumbling, laughing into the apartment. Gil and his friend Max, who set up music in the living room whilst Anna’s friends Paulie and Jules
sorted out more tequila shots. Then a guy on a motorbike turned up with more pills.
And then there was Bernard. Sexy Bernard, who snaked his arms around Romy and kissed her again, until she was lost in his kiss, moving towards the bedroom, already not caring that he was
undressing her, knowing only that she wanted more of his touch, more of his skin.
It was nine o’clock in the morning when Romy heard the insistent buzzing, followed by Banjo yelping and scratching at the door.
Sitting up in bed, rubbing her eyes, she saw that Bernard was naked beside her, the curve of his torso making her instinctively want to touch him.
God, he has a great body
, she thought.
Pulling on her robe, she picked through the debris of the sitting room and hallway, then giggled when she saw Nico passed out on the new sofa, red lipstick on his mouth. She ruffled his hair
affectionately.