Authors: Rebecca Chance
‘What does that mean?’ she asked.
Lykke shrugged, a small movement of her narrow, bony
shoulders.‘I don’t know,’ she said quietly.‘But this is too strong.
I can’t be casual with something that is so strong.’
Her lips lifted into a haunting, sad smile.‘I should be more
clever for my career,’ she said. ‘I should tell you that, yes, I will
be with you whenever you want. Many models I know would
do that with any editor, any photographer, so that they will be
hired, be put on covers. But I cannot do that with you. Maybe
it is stupid of me, but I feel too strongly about you.’
Her eyes fluttered, the fake lashes falling and rising, dark
and spiky on her white cheeks. She regarded Victoria with the
same beautiful, melancholy smile, and said directly, ‘You must
come to me now, if you want to see me. You must take a step
towards me, as I did towards you.’
‘And then what?’ Victoria blurted out. ‘What do we do
then?’
She darted a glance over at Jeremy, half-hidden in the
crowd, who was happily sipping his bellini and chatting to
Mireille as they followed the crowd through into the exhibition room. Sensing his wife’s eyes on him, he lifted a hand
cheerfully as he was carried along by the press of people
around him.
Mireille had not dressed in red for the occasion; it didn’t
suit her. Her Valentino trouser suit was black, but her clutch
was red, clever accessorising to fit in with the theme of the
evening while still not compromising her desire to look as
good as possible. Her green eyes flashed with amusement as
she put her hand on Jeremy’s arm and made a comment that
had him smiling and joking back.
‘I’m married,’ Victoria said hopelessly, looking at her unsuspecting husband. ‘I have a baby on the way.’
One of Lykke’s hands lifted, as if to reach out to Victoria,
and then fell to her side again. ‘I want to see what you look like
now,’ she said intently, gazing at Victoria. ‘And when you get
bigger. I want to see you, to taste you, to hold you . . .’
Victoria swallowed so hard that the back of her throat felt
bruised. ‘I can’t do this,’ she whispered.
Lykke nodded, tumbling her crimped fall of hair over her
face so that Victoria couldn’t see her expression. She turned
towards the exhibition room.
‘Are you with Inge?’ Victoria asked, the words tumbling out
of her mouth, jealousy spurring her on. ‘Are you two together?’
‘You cannot ask me that,’ Lykke said sadly as she walked
away.
It was too painful for Victoria to watch her go. Tears
pricked at her eyes, and resolutely forcing them back, she
stared blindly at the pillar in the centre of the room, where
the screen next to the guard was playing the same catwalk
show as before. Lykke emerged, began to walk down the
runway towards Victoria, her blood-red dress eddying around
her like viscous liquid. A surge of longing rose within Victoria,
a passionate wish to be that dress, to wrap around Lykke that
closely, embracing her, stroking her long slender white
limbs . . .
‘Darling, are you all right?’
Victoria jumped, and then gasped with pain as the boning
and the hooks of the couture dress cut into her with the sudden
movement, the dress so tight that the boning was working its
way even through the layers of Spanx. She hadn’t noticed
Jeremy coming up to her, had been oblivious to anything but
Lykke on the screen in front of her.
‘Are you not feeling well?’ Jeremy’s forehead was creased
with concern. ‘You don’t look wonderful, I must say. Should I
take you home?’
Victoria managed to shake her head. ‘No,’ she muttered.
‘I’m OK.’
‘Sweetie! Is it true?’ Dietrich rushed over, cape fluttering,
Clemence on his heels. ‘Are you really pregnant?’
Victoria’s eyes widened in shock. Her encounter with Lykke
had stripped away all her well-established defences: she felt as
vulnerable as a child.
‘I . . .’ she started, almost babbling. ‘I . . .’
‘You know what? We’re almost into the second trimester.
We can tell people,’ Jeremy broke in, his face open and joyous.
He pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose. ‘We
are
pregnant!’ He threw his arm around Victoria. ‘Isn’t it wonderful? We’re over the moon!’
Victoria stiffened in his embrace. I wasn’t ready! she thought
furiously. I wasn’t ready to tell everyone about the baby!
Whether she would ever have been ready was another issue.
Victoria was fiercely private, refusing almost all interview
requests. She considered it her business, as editor of
Style
, to
look the part, to dress perfectly, be groomed at all times; but
the idea of giving other people permission to comment on the
changes in her body, to think they were somehow entitled to
coo over her and ask intensely personal questions, was an idea
from which she recoiled in horror.
Really, I’d just like to go through the next six months and
have the baby and never have anyone say a single word about
what’s happening, she thought. And then her brain added:
Apart from Lykke. You wouldn’t mind Lykke doing that
.
Stroking
your stomach, your breasts . . . telling you how you tasted, licking
your skin
. . .
Irresistibly, her eyes were drawn across the room, trying to
spot Lykke’s tall white figure, and failing.
I’ll ring her. I have to. I’ll get Alyssa to book her in for an
appointment through Elite in the next couple of days. Okay, it’ll be
in my office, but we can talk at least, and then I’ll sort out a hotel
suite where we can meet – no, even better, the Dupleix penthouse
at Columbus Circle! No one’s there at the moment, we’ve moved
out but I still have the keys. It’s the perfect place for a
rendezvous.
‘A baby! Too exciting! What lovely news,’ Clemence sighed
in exactly the slushy, overdone tones that Victoria had been
imagining. ‘A
Style
baby – how fabulous. Think of all the lovely
little outfits you can dress it up in.’
She tilted her head theatrically to one side and considered
Victoria.
‘You’re hiding it very well,’ she said approvingly. ‘I didn’t
notice a thing. Though, now I look at you, your waist isn’t
quite as small, and your face is a little softer, don’t you think,
Dee?’
‘Ooh, maybe.’ Dietrich tilted his head too. ‘Maybe a little
under the chin, do you think? Oh, don’t worry,’ he hastened to
reassure his boss, whose eyes were flashing in anger. ‘Just a tiny
dusting of bronzer under there, and it’ll disappear completely.’
How dare they? Is this what it’s going to be like for the next six
months?
Victoria shuddered. Then: oh
God
– another thought hit
her.
It won’t just be six months – it’ll be ages after that too. Because
then they’ll be commenting on how my breasts look, if I’m breastfeeding – if I’m losing the weight again, and how that looks . . . this
is a nightmare!
‘How did you know I was pregnant?’ Victoria demanded,
her voice so sharp that both Dietrich and Clemence took a
step back.
‘Mireille told us,’ Clemence said quickly, passing the buck.
‘We thought you’d want to be congratulated straight away,’
Dietrich chimed in nervously, clasping his hands together in
front of his chest.
Face clenched like a fist, Victoria scanned the room furiously for Mireille. Failing to spot her, she stormed towards the
exhibition room, Clemence and Dietrich falling back to let her
pass, identical tiny wails of apology and regret trailing from
their lips. The room was a stunning wall of red, the Valentino
dresses on podiums behind sheets of glass, positioned in groups;
the effect of their proximity was mesmerising, the rubies and
crimsons and fire-engine reds like a fire licking up the glass.
Despite herself, Victoria stopped in her tracks, the impact of
the collection so breathtaking that it required a moment to
absorb it.
‘Superbe, n’est-ce pas
?’ Mireille murmured from behind
Victoria.
Victoria swung around, the chiffon layers of the dress swirling, the boning cutting into her cruelly now.
‘How dare—’ she began, but Mireille, smiling widely, was
leaning towards her, her right hand up, the emerald on her
fourth finger gleaming as she laid her palm on Victoria’s shoulder and dropped a kiss on her cheek.
‘
Mes félicitations
!’ she said, her voice full of warmth. ‘It is
such happy news. I am so pleased for you and Jeremy.’
Victoria pulled away with a jerk. ‘How did you know?’
she snapped, loud enough that people around them turned
their heads in surprise to see Victoria Glossop raising her
voice to her legendary fashion director, in public, at a
Valentino party.‘And how
dare
you go around telling everyone my private news?’
‘
Mais, ma chère Victoria . . .
’ Mireille’s hands opened wide,
the palms upturned theatrically. Her eyes creased in bemusement, her full lips pursed in a
moue
of surprise. ‘
Je suis désolée
!’
she exclaimed. ‘I am so sorry! Of course, when I heard the
happy news from the model, naturally I thought that it was
common knowledge,
c’est tout
. I would not have dreamed of
telling Dietrich and Clemence if I had realised that you—’
‘Which model?’ Victoria’s teeth were gritted now.
‘
Mais
Lykke,
bien sûr
! The Finnish girl who is on the St Louis
shoot. I know you have only the most passing acquaintance with
her, so when she told me just a moment ago that you were pregnant, I of course assumed that she had heard it from someone
else on
Style
.’ Mireille’s green eyes were full of embarrassment
now. ‘I should have realised, when Dietrich and Clemence did
not know either, that it was something more private. I can only
apologise.’
Victoria was struck dumb.
How could Lykke do this? How
could she betray my confidence, and not only that – to the biggest
thorn in my side at
Style
? And how could she know to go straight
to Mireille with news like this – to blindside me as a sort of
revenge?
‘Victoria, my dear.’ Mireille, her delicate skin now creased
even more with concern, reached out tentatively to put a
hand on Victoria’s bare arm, but Victoria was already turning
on her heel and stalking further into the exhibition room,
looking for Lykke.
How dare she? And to think I was going to ring her, to do what
she wanted, to be stupid enough to start an affair with someone
who’s just shown that she absolutely can’t be trusted . . .
The huge glass walls that held the dresses winged out into
the centre of the room from all four corners, like an X whose
centre had been removed. The arrangement allowed viewers
to look from dress to dress, gave them an opportunity to
compare ones in all four cabinets, and to see both the front and
the back very effectively. It also created little nooks where visitors could gather and gossip.
As Victoria rounded the side of one of the wings, she heard
the tittered words: ‘. . .
totally
swings both ways. Apparently,
she didn’t come out of there till morning!’
‘Oh my
God
,’ another girl gasped. ‘That’s
beyond
juicy! I
completely thought she was straight.’
‘Then what was she up to with Lykke in her suite till dawn?’
the first girl said triumphantly. ‘They were Lykking!’ She
giggled. ‘Oh my God, did you
hear
what I just did? That’s
hilarious! I’m going to Twitter it right now.’
‘Lykking,’ the second girl repeated. ‘I could
die
, that’s so
funny. Are you, like, completely sure?’
‘Yes! Gospel! Absolutely! You’ll never
guess
who told me . . .’
If Victoria had been able to, she would have slammed to a
halt and executed a swift reverse before the girls realised she
was within earshot. But the force with which she was hunting
Lykke down precipitated her forward, sent her fully round the
side of the glass wing before she could stop; she was almost on
top of the two gossiping girls before she knew it. They swung
round, and it would have been comical, in another context, to
see the horror on both of their pretty faces.
Oh God, they’re
Vogue
girls, Victoria realised in an instant.
That means this has already spread beyond
Style
. . . it’s all over
New York. And everyone will be Twittering and Facebooking.
London, Milan, Paris, Moscow . . . everyone will know by now
that Victoria Glossop spent the night with a model . . .
‘Victoria!’ breathed one of the girls, her eyes as wide as
saucers. ‘I – I didn’t—’
‘You’d both better work your arses off at Condé Nast,’
Victoria bit out. ‘Because you just lost any hope of being hired
at Dupleix. Ever.’
Everyone’s looking at me! she fumed as she stalked back
through the flaming lines of red dresses, her own chiffon skirts
swirling dramatically, the diamonds in her ears burning fire.
Everyone’s turning to look at me, laughing behind my back.
Victoria Glossop, stupid enough not only to fuck a model but get
caught doing it
.
Victoria was so absorbed in her furious interior monologue
that she didn’t realise that there was a tiny step up from the
exhibition room to the lobby. One of her slingback heels
caught on it and snagged. If she’d paused for a moment, lifted
it and continued smoothly on, disaster would have been
averted. But Victoria was, literally, in a tearing hurry, and all
her fury was vented in one sharp, vicious lash of her foot as she
tore her shoe free of the impediment. Louboutins were
beautifully made, but the fragile heel, wrenched with such
pressure, couldn’t help but give way.
Victoria, off balance, toppled sideways and had to catch at
the door jamb to avoid falling. Her flailing attracted instant
attention, and in a mere few seconds everyone at the launch
was turning to look at Victoria Glossop, grabbing onto the
door lintel, precariously propped on one heel, all her dignity
gone as she struggled not to crash to the ground. Silence fell as
everyone goggled at the sight: for a moment, the only noise in
the lobby was the broken heel, with its distinctive red back,
rolling away across the rake of the floor.
‘Darling!’ Jeremy exclaimed, running towards her. ‘What
happened? Are you all right?’