Authors: Rebecca Chance
He pulled back a little, taking hold of her shoulders, looking
down at her earnestly.
Aren’t I too young? Coco thought. Am I really ready to get
married? I’ve got my career to forge out, a new magazine to
pour all my energy into.
‘I didn’t expect this,’ she tried to explain to him. ‘I wasn’t
ready. I still don’t know if I am.’
‘But we love each other,’ Jacob said, perplexed. ‘I want us to
get married and be together forever.’
‘Aww!’ both Tiff and Kelly sighed romantically.
‘Give us a moment,’ Jacob said to the Raeburns, putting his
arm round Coco’s waist, leading her out of the bar, through
the lobby, out of the glass doors and into the cold winter night
air outside. He slipped off his jacket and put it round her
shoulders, taking her hands.
‘Look, honey, I know it’s sudden, and I know I didn’t do it
right, okay?’ He kissed her hands. ‘But you make me feel so
young, you know? Like a crazy kid. I just love you so much, I
can’t keep it to myself. I want to tell the world!’
He smiled at her. ‘Listen, you and me – we’d be New York
media’s top power couple if we get married. Think of the
dinners we’d have, the parties we’d throw! Anyone and
everyone’ll be killing their best friends to get an invitation.
New York’s the media capital of the world, baby, and you
could be the ruling queen! I know how ambitious you are –
doesn’t that tempt you? Think it over.’
Coco drew in a deep breath of icy air. Her head was spinning again; out here in the cold, Jacob was so warm, his physical
presence so compelling, that she just wanted to cling to him,
to press herself against his heat, bury her head in his chest. Her
body had given in to Jacob completely, a long time ago. Her
brain was the holdout, and even her brain wasn’t used to saying
‘No’ to him.
‘Coco, you’re really hurting me,’ he said, when she still
couldn’t manage to give him an answer. He withdrew his
hands from hers and shoved them in his pockets, turning away,
staring across the dark racetrack towards the glowing, lit-up
glass building that was Mercedes-Benz World: some kind of
concert was going on inside, a party, music bubbling out,
applause rising and falling.
‘I’m so disappointed,’ he said sadly. ‘It was such a great day
– I had real fun with your dad and brother. I thought we were
all bonding so well.’
Jacob’s disappointed in me
? Coco felt the panic rising again.
By now, his approval was the most important thing in her life.
If he withdraws his attention – turns away from me – I honestly
don’t know what I would do
.
Neediness, desperation, began to flood through her. She felt
her heart pounding, faster and faster. The idea of being the
queen of New York, of ruling the most elite of media circles,
was terrifying but also – she couldn’t deny it – immensely
seductive. But even more important was to hold on to Jacob, to
make him turn back towards her . . .
‘Can I have some time?’ she asked, her voice thin and frightened. ‘Please, Jacob. Don’t be angry! We’ve only been together
for a few months, it’s so much to take in. I never saw myself
getting married this young. I’ve got the magazine now, too – I
need to make a success of that first.’
‘You can do all that and get married,’ Jacob said over his
shoulder, still not turning round. ‘You’ll move in with me,
everything will be taken care of. I don’t want a wife to do the
damn housekeeping. You won’t have to worry about a thing.’
The cold was seeping through the jacket now; its light wool
and silk blend was not enough to keep it out, not when she was
standing still. Cold was rising through the thin leather soles of
her shoes as well. Coco shivered from head to toe, her teeth
beginning to chatter.
‘Just a few months more?’ she pleaded. ‘You know I love
you. You know I want to be with you. I just need to get my feet
under me at the magazine, catch my breath—’
‘You don’t love me enough,’ he said bleakly, swinging back
to face her. Under the lights from the parking lot she saw his
expression; his features were set so grimly that she was frightened to her core. He looked as if he had already decided that
it was all over.
‘You can keep your job,’ he said slowly. ‘I’m not a vindictive
man, Coco. You’re a great girl and a really talented editor.’
‘Jacob!’ she screamed. She rushed towards him, stumbling
in her haste. ‘Don’t
say
that! I want to be with you – I love
you! All I’m asking is—’
He disengaged her clutching hands, holding her at arm’s
length.
‘I’m ready
now
,’ he said. ‘I love you, Coco. God only knows
how much. But I want this now. It’s just an engagement! I’m
not forcing you to get married next week.’ He heaved a deep
sigh. ‘I’m an all-or-nothing kind of guy. I made this decision. I
want to marry you. And you have to be in or out. If you can’t
say right now, this moment, that you love me and want to
marry me too . . . then I can’t be with you any more. I’ll have
to walk away.’
Coco was crying, tears pouring silently down her face, hot
on her cold cheeks.
‘Jacob,’ she sobbed, ‘please don’t make me choose like this.
It’s so soon, everything’s just going so fast.’
The thought of losing him – her rock, her mentor – was
utterly unbearable. She had never felt alone before she met
Jacob; now the mere idea of being without him made her feel
terrifyingly bereft. She looked up at him, trying to blink the
tears away, and every instinct in her body told her that he was
immovable. What he had said was how it was going to be.
There were only two options, and she had to choose one and
bear the consequences.
Coco felt as if she was being ripped apart.
‘All right, I’ll marry you,’ she sobbed. ‘I will – I’ll do it. I
can’t bear to lose you!’
Her reward came instantly; he dragged her towards him,
enfolding her in a bearhug, hot and all-encompassing, his
mouth closing on hers in a deep passionate kiss that left her
dizzy and still sobbing, now with relief. Dazedly, she felt him
wiping her face with a handkerchief, kissing her again, tenderly
now, telling her that she was a good girl, that he would make
her happier than she had ever been in her life.
Reaching into the pocket of the jacket draped over her
shoulders, he pulled out the Tiffany box, snapping it open.
Taking her left hand, he slid the ring onto her finger.
‘Two and a half carats,’ he said.
It was so heavy it actually weighed down her hand. Coco
turned her wrist back and forth, marvelling at it, watching
the colours spark from the centre of the diamond, flashes of
bright red and blue. She had never seen anything like it
before, never remotely possessed anything this valuable. It
was extraordinary.
‘I’m going to shower you with diamonds,’ Jacob said, smiling at her stunned reaction to the enormous stone. ‘It’s just the
first of many.’
‘Jacob, you don’t have to.’ She sniffed, and took the handkerchief from him to blow her nose. ‘It’s not about what you
give me – I love you for
you
!’
‘I know that. It’s why
I
love
you
!’ He hugged her again, so
tightly she could hardly breathe. ‘We’re going to get married
and you’re going to make me the happiest man in the world!’
Tears were springing to her eyes once more. It’s because I’m
so happy! she told herself, clinging to Jacob, putting her hands
up and trying to work them between their bodies just enough
to make a tiny bit more breathing room. I’m so happy I could
cry my eyes out with happiness!
She shivered again.
I just didn’t think it would be quite like
this when I got engaged. In the cold, sobbing, terrified that he’d
leave me if I said I wasn’t quite ready
.
No. This is not how I pictured it at all.
Of course she had known that a caesarian was an operation.
Of course she’d realised that having a simultaneous tummy
tuck was going to exhaust her still more; after all, there was a
reason that the combined surgical procedure wasn’t advertised, wasn’t openly discussed, that the names of doctors who
would do it were passed around by an underground network
of women who could afford the extremely high prices and
wanted near-total discretion. A caesarian scar was the perfect
concealment for a tummy tuck; one incision, rather than two,
was always preferable. Victoria had been assured that hers was
minimal by the usual standards, would fade very successfully
with the regular application of Vitamin E oil. She’d managed
to keep her weight gain down to 12 pounds; apparently there
had been very little stomach excess for the surgeon to remove.
Still, it had been much worse than she’d anticipated. The
anaesthetic might prevent pain, but she’d felt everything,
nonetheless; the slice of the scalpel, cutting her open, the reach
in to pull her baby out of her. And then, worst of all, because
she had the tummy tuck scheduled as well, she couldn’t hold
her baby straight away, had only the swiftest glimpse of a tiny,
squawling mite, covered in blood, the cord dangling from its
stomach, held up above the screen that prevented her from
seeing her gaping, open abdomen, before they told her it was a
girl and whisked her away so that they could concentrate on
removing the excess fat from her tummy.
Victoria had lain there, sobbing, feeling utterly bereft.
Utterly empty. Her little baby girl was a bloody, gunky mess,
covered in fluids and her own poo, and all Victoria had wanted
was to have that gunky, messy, pooey baby laid on her chest, so
that she could look at her, hold her, take in, awed, what she
and Jeremy had created between them. The operation had
seemed to go on forever, and it was the single worst experience
that Victoria had ever had in her life, that sensation of loss and
misery, waiting endlessly to finally hold her baby. Her lips had
moved, but she was dazed from the drugs they’d given her and
couldn’t get a word out; she had wanted to beg them, plead
with the surgeon, to stop the tummy tuck there and then. I
don’t care about having a flat tummy, she had thought desperately, something that would previously have been heresy to
her. I just want to hold my baby – give me my baby!
Jeremy had been wonderful. Baby Sasha – the name they
had chosen, whether the baby turned out to be a boy or a girl
– had been cleaned up, checked out and handed to him, and he
had insisted that Victoria see Sasha as soon as the incision in
her stomach was sewn up and the operating room no longer
needed to be sterile. Overriding the medical staff’s protests
that Victoria needed to rest a little, he had demanded to bring
Sasha to her, pointing out that Victoria – visible through the
glass viewing window – had tears pouring down her face.
She had cried even harder when Jeremy had bent down and
touched Sasha’s tiny little hand to hers where they lay, temporarily paralysed, folded on her chest by the nurses; Victoria
could just feel the baby’s fingers, and she could see the miniature, magical half-moons of her nails. A fierce, protective surge
of love had flooded her, stronger than the anaesthetic, stronger
than anything she had felt before.
She’d managed to move her numbed lips to whisper possessively, triumphantly, ‘She’s perfect.’
Jeremy was beaming with pride, his eyes wet with emotion,
Sasha cradled in his arms. Her face was bright red; there was
still a little green gunk in the corners of each of her piggy little
eyes; her nose was squished flat. If she had been anyone else’s
baby, Victoria would have turned her head away, utterly
revolted by so unaesthetic a sight.
Instead: ‘So beautiful,’ she added, her mouth curving into a
smile, achieving some movement in her fingers, enough to curl
them around Sasha’s tiny ones.
‘She’s a wonder,’ Jeremy said devoutly. ‘A total wonder.’
And then the doors banged open, metal whacking against
metal as if someone were wheeling in a trolley, and a stream of
high-pitched, screeching voices rose over the clamour.
It wasn’t a trolley. It was a clothes rail, heavy with padded
hangers from which a whole rack of clothes hung, each in
transparent zipped-up cases. It was wheeled in by Alyssa,
followed immediately by Clemence and Dietrich, both of
them talking nineteen to the dozen, dressed up like peacocks
crossed with parakeets, Clemence actually having to duck as
she came in because the plumes in her Philip Treacy hat would
have brushed against the top of the doorway. The couple
would have been extraordinary in any setting – Alyssa was
over six foot and Dietrich’s mohawk was always a showstopper – but here, in the operating room, they looked like
alien gods. Behind them, the protesting nurses in their green
scrubs, trying to impede the triumphal progress of the clothes
rail, were small, squat peasants.
‘Darling!’ Clemence announced. ‘Congratulations! I have
brought your post-maternity wardrobe. Dietrich and I have
spent weeks working on practically nothing else. A special
surprise for you!
Voilà
!’
Alyssa pulled the rack right along Victoria’s bed, nearly
bumping into Jeremy and Sasha.
‘It’s to
die
for,’ Dietrich sighed eagerly. ‘Wait till you see it,
Victoria. It will make you feel so much better after all this
doom and gloom. Ugh, hospitals are so
depressing
!’
‘It smells of bleach in here,’ Clemence complained, sniffing.
‘Revolting.’
‘Where shall we start?’ Dietrich scampered to the rail and
started flicking through the hangers. ‘Hmm, I think the Lanvin—
‘Fuck off, all of you!’ Jeremy shouted. Sasha, in his arms, had
started crying at all the sudden noise and commotion. Jeremy’s
face was bright red, his eyes flashing madly behind the lenses
of his glasses: with one step, he placed himself between Victoria
and the clothes rail, his shoulders squared. His voice was so
loud that Clemence and Dietrich fell silent, goggling at him
like exotic fish in a tank.
‘Get the fuck out of here!’ he yelled. ‘My wife has just had
a
baby
, for fuck’s sake! Our baby’s crying, and I just swore in
front of her, which I promised myself I would never, ever do!’
Jeremy’s curly hair was sticking up in rage; he seemed to swell
before Victoria’s dazed eyes. Head throbbing, tears forming
yet again in her eyes, she was deeply impressed by her husband’s
titanic defence of his family’s privacy. It was like watching the
transformation of Bruce Banner to the Incredible Hulk.
‘Out!
Now
!’ Jeremy hissed. With Sasha held protectively in
his arms, he couldn’t gesture, but he jerked his chin towards
the doors. ‘Or Victoria will sack you all!’
It was the only threat that would have worked. Squeaking
in fear, no longer exotic gods but frightened mice, Clemence
and Dietrich fell over each other in a scuttle to the door.
Clemence made it there first; Dietrich’s knee-high black wedge
boots, and the tight leather trousers over which he was wearing them, prevented him from moving at any kind of speed.
They both abandoned Alyssa completely; it was the furious
nurses who had to hold open the doors to allow her to roll the
clothes rail out as quickly as possible, babbling apologies to
Victoria as she went.
‘That’s it!’ Jeremy told his wife with great severity as the
rail disappeared. ‘Fashion’s all very well, Victoria, but there are
limits
!’
And Victoria, collapsed on the mattress, every nerve in her
body feeling ripped to pieces, desperate only to fall asleep with
her baby in her arms, her cheeks wet with tears, could only
manage the words: ‘Thank you,’ more devoutly and lovingly
than she’d ever spoken to Jeremy in her life.