Authors: Rebecca Chance
‘My boobs are really sore,’ Victoria said. She looked down
at her silk sweater, grateful at least to see that the milk hadn’t
leaked through. Easing it away from her bra, she winced: the
pads inside the cups were damp. ‘I need to feed her or express
soon.’
‘Have some soup first,’ Jeremy said, laying Sasha down in
the small wooden rocker crib in the corner of the kitchen.
‘She’ll wake up in about half an hour or so, if she’s on schedule.
You can feed her then. Eat something – that way you can relax
when you’re sitting feeding her.’
He started to ladle the soup into bowls. Victoria poured
herself a glass of water and sat down at the kitchen table.
‘This is so nice,’ she said, but she could hear that her tone of
voice was sugary and artificial. I’m so tired, she thought. I don’t
want Jeremy to give me a hard time tonight . . .
‘How long is this going to go on?’ Jeremy asked, putting
down a beige leather placemat in front of his wife, setting a
brimming bowl of soup on it, pulling spoons and blue-andgreen striped fabric napkins from drawers set into the table.
Victoria wasn’t a coward; she didn’t pretend not to know
what Jeremy was talking about.
‘I don’t know,’ she said honestly.
Jeremy was slicing a poilane loaf from Le Pain Quotidien
which he had been warming in the oven; the scent of hot
doughy bread made Victoria’s mouth water. He buttered two
slices with thick sweeps of yellow, farm-churned butter, drizzled pesto from a jar onto the surface of his soup bowl, and
took his seat at the table, opposite his wife. In her rocker crib,
Sasha shifted a little, began to make the small, murmuring,
exploratory sounds that were the precursor to beginning to
wake up.
About twenty minutes, and she’ll be opening her eyes and
wanting some milk, Victoria thought, starting to spoon up her
soup. Jeremy’s bang on time with her schedule.
‘Mmn, this is delicious,’ she said. She’d have loved the bread
that Jeremy was biting into, the pesto that smelled fragrant as
it warmed up and melted into the soup. But bread was a forbidden carb, pesto a forbidden fat; she couldn’t even allow herself
to think about them.
‘I wish this were enough for you,’ Jeremy said sadly. ‘Our
life, our baby.’ He looked around the lovely kitchen, lit by
hidden soft spots and candlelight, the faint creaks as Sasha
stirred in her crib.
‘Most women would think they were incredibly lucky to
have a set-up like this,’ he continued. ‘And you’re throwing it
all away for some model! It’s such a cliché, Vicky, don’t you
see that? It’s like the female equivalent of a mid-life crisis.’
‘I don’t want to throw it all away,’ Victoria protested. She
met his eyes across the table, holding his stare, seeing, unhappily, how very sad his expression was. ‘I don’t want anything to
change, Jeremy.’
As soon as the words left her lips, she knew how ridiculous
they sounded.
‘Vicky, I caught you kissing that woman in Paris. You’re
having an affair with her! You’re the one who’s changed our
whole life, and now you’re saying you don’t want change?’
Jeremy’s spoon clattered into his bowl.
‘Well, you can sort that out very easily,’ he went on. ‘Can’t
you? You can tell that woman you’re never going to see her
again. Stop having sex with her every chance you get!’
To her horror, Victoria saw tears begin to form in his blue
eyes. He took off his glasses and put them on the table.
‘I know I was never—’ he said, ‘I was never really what you
wanted in bed. I know you were just keeping me happy when
we had sex. But I thought it was enough for you. I thought all
you really wanted was yourself.’
‘My God, Jeremy,’ Victoria whispered, putting down her
own spoon. She felt awful. He wasn’t saying this to be cruel: he
really meant it. Which made it so much worse.
‘You know what I mean!’ His voice rose. ‘I thought you
were a narcissist, that you couldn’t really love me because you
couldn’t love anyone – or maybe you were so in love with your
precious career that there wasn’t room for anyone else! But I
loved you! I still love you! And I want things back the way they
were. That was enough for me, what we had. Why couldn’t it
be enough for you?’
He was crying now, the tears flooding down his cheeks.
‘I thought you couldn’t love anyone, not the way I wanted
you to love me. And that was okay – until I realised that you
could
love someone. My God, the way you were looking at that
woman! The way you kissed her! You’ve never kissed me like
that.’
Baby Sasha, hearing her father’s voice high with distress,
started to cry in her crib, as if in sympathy.
‘I’ll feed her,’ Victoria said, pushing back her chair and
standing up.
‘You’ve barely eaten anything,’ Jeremy said, crying all out
now, at that point of misery when every small slight becomes
magnified to become part of the central grievance. ‘I made that
soup especially so you’d eat something filling and healthy after
a hard day’s work.’
‘I’ll have some later,’ Victoria said desperately. ‘I promise.’
She was picking up Sasha, taking her over to the rocking
chair in the corner. It was designed especially for baby feeding,
and Jeremy had ordered three for different rooms of the house.
Sasha’s face was red and wrinkled up, her tiny button nose
sniffing the air like a mole’s, smelling the milk that had leaked
on her mother’s bra: as soon as Victoria pulled up her sweater,
unhooked the catch about the bra cup and let that down,
Sasha was latching eagerly onto her mother’s swollen nipple.
‘Here,’ Jeremy said, dabbing at his wet face with a napkin,
coming over to pick up the big V-shaped bolster that lay beside
the chair, putting it around her waist so that it could take most
of Sasha’s weight.
‘Thanks,’ Victoria said gratefully, settling Sasha against the
bolster. It was early days; she wasn’t yet into an easy feeding
routine, had actually forgotten that the bolster existed.
‘You’re welcome,’ he said, sniffing, still patting at his face.
Looking down at his wife, their baby in her arms, snuffling
happily at her breast, his expression softened into yearning.
‘You look so beautiful, both of you,’ he said, torn between
happiness and misery. ‘Why can’t it be like this, Vicky? Why
can’t Sasha and I be enough for you?’
He knelt down by the chair, stroking the back of Sasha’s
head with one gentle finger.
‘Tell me that this woman’s just a crazy fling,’ he pleaded.
‘Pregnancy hormones, some sort of life crisis. Tell me it’ll burn
itself out, now you have Sasha.’
He was crying again, and Victoria felt her own tears start to
well up.
I’m not the cold, hard bitch without feelings that everyone
thinks I am. I’m making my husband unhappy, I’m breaking his
heart, and it’s unbearable. I hate to see Jeremy like this! He’s done
nothing wrong, nothing at all. I’m the one behaving badly, I’m the
one who should be crying and pleading for him to take me back.
And instead, he’s sobbing because he thinks I might leave him.
But what can I do? I’m in love for the first time in my life – with
someone who loves me in return, cares about my baby. This isn’t
just a fling. I can’t lie to Jeremy. What I feel for Lykke is real, and
I can’t believe it won’t last.
How can I turn my back on that?
Miserably, she met her husband’s eyes over their baby’s
head.
‘I can’t tell you that, Jeremy,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so sorry.’
He buried his head in his hands.
‘What’s going to happen to us?’ he asked, his voice muffled.
‘What’s going to happen to our family? I want more kids,
Vicky. I want to fill the house with them.’
Two, and that’s my limit, Victoria thought, but had the
sense not to say so aloud.
‘And I want yours!’ he sobbed.‘I don’t want another woman,
I don’t want to start again – I’ve only ever wanted you!’
Victoria was crying now too. Tears fell down her face, off
her cheeks, would have dripped onto her feeding baby if she
hadn’t turned her face away, managed to free one arm from
holding Sasha to wipe her eyes on the arm of her sweater.
It should have been one of the happiest times of their life;
husband and wife, their first child happy and healthy, watching
her breastfeed, sitting in the lovely kitchen of their luxurious
townhouse, surrounded by ease and affluence. The perfect
family: the perfect life.
And I’m tearing it apart, Victoria knew, the pain of guilt a
constant dull ache in her stomach as she cried onto her crooked
elbow. I’m tearing it apart, and it’s all my fault.
She and Jeremy had been sleeping in separate beds ever
since they had come back from Paris: he hadn’t discussed it,
had simply come home and moved all his stuff from his
bedside table to his dressing room, where he was ensconced on
the large wooden daybed.
Sasha’s room was on the other side of the dressing room, so
Jeremy could get up when she woke in the night, and either
feed her with expressed milk or bring her through to Victoria.
As an arrangement, looked at from a brutally practical perspective, it worked . . . well, perfectly.
How does he think we’ll manage more children if we aren’t
even sleeping together any more? Victoria thought desperately. She couldn’t have sex with Jeremy again; she knew she
couldn’t. Not now. Not when she knew how wonderful it
could be with the right person. How it was supposed to be, all
along.
I can’t ever have sex with a man again.
Her mind drifted back, before Jeremy, to Jacob. Jacob and
his games, his tests. His big hairy body, his stocky torso, the
weight of him on her. She grimaced in repulsion at the memory.
Jacob had been fair: he’d made sure she had enjoyed herself
too. She’d had plenty of orgasms. But any comparison of Lykke
with Jacob was laughable, ridiculous. Lykke’s smooth white
body, her silky hair –
Hyperion to a satyr
, she thought, remembering a quote from Hamlet.
And then from Jacob she returned, once again, to Coco, and
her face hardened.
What am I going to do about her? Even if she isn’t after my job,
Jacob will insist on giving it to her! I know him – he won’t be able
to resist the temptation of being a New York power couple. After a
few years at the most, he’ll be itching to push her up the ladder.
And he won’t have his wife working under anyone. She’s an editor
of her own magazine now, making a big success of that.
Next step would be editor of a magazine for grown women,
not teen girls. And Jacob won’t want her moving to London to
edit
Style
there, though that’d be the next logical step. He’ll
never live in London – he’s always complaining about the
weather and the lack of world-class sushi.
So he’ll maybe even skip over that step. For her. For his little
baby-toy wife. Put her straight into the top job in New York,
and leave me out on the street. I’ll have to take some job styling a label, like Jennifer Lane Davis.
God, I’d hate that! I’d be the one sucking up to editors,
hoping they like our latest collection. Right now, I have the
power. How can I give that up? And, if Jeremy and I somehow
manage to work things out, could we afford for him to be a
stay-at-home husband if I take a job like hers? The
Style
editor’s
job comes with so many perks – not just the salary, but the car
and driver, the zero-interest loan for our mortgage . . .
My God, we could lose this house if Jacob sacks me!
Bloody, bloody Coco! Victoria thought savagely. All the
drama of her situation, the huge mess she’d made of her love
life, subsumed into a slow-growing fury towards the girl who
had once been her lowly assistant and had risen with stratospheric speed to be a rival far more deadly than any she had
ever known.
If Coco weren’t around . . . If Coco were out of the picture . . .
if she fell under a bus, or off a cliff – then everything with Jacob
would go back to normal. I could catch my breath, not be
panicking all the time at work. I could work out a way to manage,
somehow, to have Lykke and not lose my family.
To have it all.
And, in Victoria’s mind, this thought swelled up to monstrous
proportions.
If Coco fell off a cliff, everything would start to be all right.
If Coco fell . . .
‘
Y ou can’t weigh anything at all,’ the woman was crooning
to Coco, her voice gentle, hypnotic. ‘You’re so light! You
could just float away, like a balloon, soar up into the air, over
the city . . .’
‘I
would
like to fly,’ Coco murmured, her head whirling.
And then she felt the hands close round her waist, lifting
her up, tilting her over the edge of the balustrade. She was so
dizzy, so confused, that it took her what seemed like aeons to
connect with the realisation that the woman was trying to
kill her.
Her head was hanging over the wide stone shelf, her hands
loose by her sides, knocking against the poles that supported
the waist-high balcony. Her knuckles grazed against them,
scraping her skin, and that pain helped to bring her out of the
weird trance she was in; she pushed her hands against the
rough stone, scraping them more, hurting herself in a desperate attempt to jolt herself into full consciousness.
Wetness ran down her hands. She was bleeding. The winter
air was cold on her face: forty storeys below her, traffic
flowed down 10th Street, yellow cabs, black limousines, the
tiny wasp-like buzzing of motorbikes.The view swam beneath
her, so far away, so close if she fell, and the thought of plummeting down to the concrete below was a jolt of pure white
fear, a lightning bolt that hit her in the chest and galvanised
her to action.
Her feet were still off the ground. Scrabbling frantically, she
caught one against the stone, bracing herself, pushing the other
foot back in a disoriented donkey kick that connected with the
thin body behind her. The woman pushing her had hands like
steel, her grip frighteningly strong, but Coco was young, and
strong after her months of training with Brad, and the kick sent
the woman off-balance, staggering back. Coco’s attacker didn’t
let go in time; her hands stayed clamped to the girl she was
trying to kill, and Coco fell back with her, away from the edge
of the balustrade.
Away from immediate danger.
The crushing grip on her waist finally released as the woman
struggled to find her balance. Coco flailed and bumped into
one of the wrought-iron chairs that were grouped around the
coffee table, grabbing onto its back, managing to steady herself.
Incredulously, gasping for breath, she stared at the woman,
keeping the chair between them. The woman’s elegant features
were distorted, her lips drawn back from her teeth in a grimace of sheer, feral aggression and frustration. Her hair had been
disarranged in the struggle, dark locks falling out from her
habitual bun, tumbling over her shoulders.
It was the first time Coco had ever seen Mireille looking
anything less than perfect.
‘Mireille,’ she choked out. ‘What are you doing? I don’t
understand. Is this some kind of awful joke?’
‘He’s
mine
.’ The French woman’s green eyes were wide, her
teeth still bared. ‘Jacob is
mine!
’
‘He’s
what
?’ Coco had thought her eyes couldn’t widen any
more, but at this extraordinary exclamation, she felt the skin
stretch back from her eye-sockets as she goggled at Mireille.
‘He’s mine!’ Mireille screamed now, her hair whipped
around her face by the growing wind. ‘He has been mine for
more than thirty years!’
Mireille’s hands were hooked into claws. She made no effort
to raise them and put her hair back into place, which, for some
reason, frightened Coco more than anything that had come
before. If Mireille, always perfectly groomed, perfectly
composed Mireille, was shrieking insanely, her hair flying
behind her, then anything was possible, anything at all; the
laws of the universe had been upended.
Mireille was crying now, the tears falling down her pale
cheeks, melting her black eye make-up, which was beginning
to streak the paper-thin skin beneath.
‘I loved him from the first moment I met him,’ Mireille
sobbed. ‘I still love him with all my heart! Gradually, I began
to realise what Jacob was.
Who
he was. He was too young to
be tied to one woman, and I understood that. I let him go, but
he was always still with me. He took care of me, and I was
loyal to him.’
Coco stared at Mireille, struggling to take all of this in. There
was something in the champagne, she realised. Something to
knock me out, to make me woozy. Great waves of exhaustion
were sweeping over her, one after the other, battering her
consciousness, trying to roll her under.
I have to stay awake! If I don’t, she’ll come for me again –
throw me over the edge
. She shuddered, forcing her eyes to
stay open, fixed on the woman who had just revealed herself
as her rival.
Mireille’s hands were clasped below her heart, the fingers
twisted together so tightly that the knuckles were white. Black
sooty tears were splattering down her face and onto her hands;
she seemed oblivious to them.
‘Victoria was like me, he said,’ she continued. ‘Ambitious, a
career woman. He would make her a success, as he had made
me one. I was angry – I did not like that he had a new protégée.
But as soon as I met Victoria, I knew that she was not a danger.
She would never want to marry him – she would take everything she could get, play his games, use him in return. Victoria
was safe. But
you
. . .’
Mireille took a step towards Coco, who whimpered in fear,
swivelling to keep the chair between them.
‘
You
! You and your pathetic father complex! You looked at
him as if he was God, you stupid little fool! You were so
vulnerable, so needy – he could see it in you, smell it on you.
You little
petite bourgeoise
, so common, so socially insecure –
you did whatever he told you. He could make you into what
he wanted. Not like Victoria!
She
at least has some backbone.
She was capable of saying no to him. But she is an aristo, and
you – you are nothing!’
Coco opened her mouth to protest, but the truth of
Mireille’s words hit her like a series of slaps across the face.
I have done whatever he wanted. Things I didn’t want to do,
things that were utterly humiliating. I am needy and vulnerable.
That’s why Jacob wants me. I’ve given him control, I’ve turned
into someone I wouldn’t recognise as myself. Yes, I’ve been
pathetic.
Everything she’s saying is true.
‘That is why he wants to marry you! Because you are weak,
he can make you into a doll to play with, that he can control
and boast about. He told me he was going to propose to you
well before he did it,
tu sais
!’
Mireille beat her chest with her hands. The white lock of
hair had come loose, the pins that had secured it into her bun
hanging from it. She looked insane, like an evil witch from a
fairy-tale, her eyes glittering through the wet black make-up
smeared over her face.
‘I am still first with him!’ she screamed. ‘I, not you! He tells
me everything! He is only marrying you because now – now,
after all these years, now that he is old –
now
he wants children!’ She was panting in fury. ‘He never let me have children,
he said it would ruin my figure. He made me have a
sterilisation, booked the appointment and marched me to the
doctor. He said that if I loved him, I would do it.
Salaud!
And
then he told himself the fantasy that it is
I
,
I
who do not want
them, to make himself feel better for depriving me. He is a liar,
un menteur
! And now he thinks he can marry a girl, a pathetic
little
petite bourgeoise
who is now the age that I was when he
met me, and start again, make a family with her!
Non! Jamais!’
Mireille took another step forward: she was between Coco
and the French doors. Coco darted a frantic gaze sideways, to
see if she could escape between the big bay trees in their terracotta pots, try to run to the next set of doors instead: but they
were all locked from the inside, she realised, her panic rising
still further, making it hard for her even to breathe.
I could try
to smash the glass, reach through and unlock them, but Mireille
would catch me well before I managed that
.
She looked round and screamed her head off. Mireille had
glided forward, was facing her with only the chair between
them. Her face was grotesque, a mask of black and tears, her
hair dangling in rat’s tails, her teeth bared still.
‘He only wants babies with you because there’s all this plastic surgery now,’ Mireille hissed vindictively. ‘He is terrible
about women’s bodies; when they are no longer perfect he
discards them like rotten fruit. But now he sees Victoria – she
is so stupid, she thinks no one knows she has had an operation
with the caesarian to flatten her stomach,
imbécile
! He thinks,
Oh, I can get Coco pregnant, and then I can pay the doctors to
cut her afterwards, make her back into the doll I bought with
a huge diamond ring!’
She shoved her face towards Coco; the girl recoiled in absolute terror.
‘Or, he’ll decide he wants to take out your eggs and have
someone else carry your baby so you don’t change at all. You
wait! He will do that,
j’en suis sûre!
’
‘Oh no,’ Coco managed through frozen lips. ‘I wouldn’t like
that. I want to have my own baby.’ Are you mad? she thought
in panic. Why did you say that? For God’s sake, Jacob made
her get sterilised! Of all the things to come out of your mouth
– that’ll drive her crazy!
But whatever medication Mireille had given her was growing stronger by the minute, not only weakening her but making
her confused, so that the words that spilled out were the ones
more designed to infuriate an already-incensed Mireille.
Reaching out, the Frenchwoman took hold of the chair on
which Coco was leaning and, with one powerful movement,
ripped it from her grasp. The chair spun away, crashing into the
bay trees. Coco staggered, and the next thing she knew,
Mireille’s hands were on her shoulders, pushing her back. Her
heels buckled under her, one snapping off, destabilising her
still further; she tried to bring up her hands, to fight Mireille
off, but she had no strength. She was as weak as a kitten.
‘Marrying
you
?’ Mireille spat, shoving Coco against the
balustrade again, the lean muscles of her trained dancer’s body
like steel rods holding Coco in place. ‘You little nothing! He is
mad if he thinks I will agree to this. Oh, I smile and nod and
say I understand, but Jacob is mine! He thinks I will come to
your wedding, watch him marry you, you who are so stupid
that you drink the champagne I give you and believe the ridiculous story I tell you, drink it up without a question as you
drink three sleeping pills as well –
ah oui, ma petite
, that is why,
if I let go of you now, you would fall to the ground. You have
nothing left to fight me with.’
Propping Coco against the balustrade with one hand on her
narrow chest, Mireille bent down and, with an expert twist of
her back, reached the other arm under Coco’s legs, scooping
them up. Coco could barely even manage to kick out. Waves of
unconsciousness were rolling over her, turning her under, like
a surfer swept into the undertow, board whipped away.
Submerged. Drowning.
Her kicks were so feeble they didn’t slow Mireille down a
fraction. Mireille’s hands were clamped around Coco’s calves,
digging in, bruising her as they lifted them up, pivoting Coco’s
thin, fragile body onto the wide balcony, rolling her to the very
edge, to the drop-off, the point of no return . . .
‘What the
fuck
? What the hell is going on? Mireille, what
are you
doing
?’
It was a woman’s voice, not Jacob’s. High, piercing, generations of command in it, certainly enough to make Mireille
jump and turn to look at the new arrival. Victoria, swathed in
a white fur cape coat, swept across the terrace towards their
tableau, her red-lipsticked mouth opened into a dramatic O of
shock. The phone started to ring inside the apartment, but
everyone ignored it.
‘Put her down!’ she ordered, and Mireille, completely taken
aback, actually let go of Coco’s legs. Coco felt them fall, and
managed, with her last iota of strength, to swing them enough
so that she tumbled over the balustrade back to solid ground
again. Her feet touched the stone flags below, her hipbones
digging into the side of the rail. Though she was wearing her
coat, she was so thin now that the contact was painful.
‘Mireille, what the bloody hell? Have you taken leave of
your senses?’ Victoria demanded, gloved hands on her hips.
‘What on earth is wrong with Coco? She looks like she’s
fainted! And
Jesus
,’ she took in Mireille’s black-stained face,
‘have you seen yourself? Talk about a make-up emergency!’
‘What are you doing here?’ Mireille snapped back. ‘This is
not your apartment. How did you get in?’
‘Oh please. As if any doorman could stop me if I wanted to
come in. And I’m not exactly a stranger here, am I?’ Victoria
scowled. ‘Jacob’s been dodging me for days, and I have to speak
to him! I’m going to insist that he puts a new clause in my
contract. I want it in writing, signed and sealed, to say that he
can’t sack me and then install his wife. And if he doesn’t do it,
I’m going to threaten to walk. He can’t replace me right now,
I’m doing a bloody good job – and he certainly can’t make
her
editor for a few years.’ Victoria threw out a hand, pointing at
Coco’s comatose body. ‘She absolutely isn’t ready for a job this
important. But I need to protect myself for a decade. That’s
my bottom line.’
She stared more closely at Coco.
‘Look, Mireille, what the fuck is all this? What were you
doing when I walked in – were you fighting? And why the hell
is Coco practically passed out?’
‘Because she has drunk a glass of champagne with three
Zopiclone in it,’ Mireille said, bending to pick up Coco’s legs
again. ‘She is about to fall, because she has leaned too far over
the balcony. It will be a tragic accident. We will both see it, you
and me, Victoria. We will both say how sad it is. We ran to try
to catch her, but we were too late.’
‘What? My God, that’s what it looked like, but I couldn’t
believe . . .’ Victoria stared at Mireille incredulously. ‘But