Authors: Rebecca Chance
ictoria was standing with her back to the conference
room, staring out of the window at the falling snow that
was softly blanketing Manhattan. It was late for snow, nearly
the end of winter, but the vagaries of climate change were
confounding all the meteorologists’ expectations, and just as
March was coming round the corner, the first buds of daffodils
pushing up in Washington Square Park, a freak cold front had
closed in over the Eastern Seaboard. New Yorkers had not yet
changed their wardrobes over for the spring/summer season,
put their furs in climate-controlled storage lockers, but the
unexpected snowstorm had sent everyone scurrying to pull
out the salt-stained boots and ankle-length shearlings that had
migrated to the back of their closets.
The figures Victoria could see on Third Avenue, below,
looked like Russians. Few New Yorkers carried umbrellas in
the snow; the winds that whipped from one side of the island
to the other, down the canyons between the skyscrapers, could
turn an umbrella inside out in a flash. Instead, Manhattanites
crammed on big fur hats that wouldn’t blow off, and zipped
up equally bulky padded coats against the icy gusts.
Alyssa was waiting downstairs with Victoria’s white
Arctic fox hat, a present from Jacob, brought back from
Kazakhstan years ago, and her Prada belted coat. But Victoria
had one more meeting of the day before she could go home.
In American vernacular, this meeting was simply to touch
base. But in some ways, it would be the most difficult of the
entire day.
The double doors of the conference room swung open and
closed again with a soft snick.
‘Hi, Victoria.’
Victoria turned around to see Coco at the far end of the
room, facing her over the long shiny conference table.
‘Come up.’ Victoria gestured for Coco to join her at the
head of the table, where a pretty tea set was all ready for them
on a silver tray. ‘I know this room isn’t exactly cosy, but I’ve
been having meetings all day here, with tons of different
people, and it was just easier to stay on in here. I hope you
don’t mind.’
Coco’s eyebrows rose; Victoria was being positively conciliating, which was definitely unlike her.
‘No, that’s fine,’ Coco said politely, walking around the
curve of the table. She was wearing a knitted Mark Fast minidress, belted at the waist, over knee-high Marc Jacobs boots;
she looked pretty, age-appropriate and fresh.
No Chanel, Victoria noted with irony. Coco’s wearing hip
young designers now – Mark Fast, Alexander Wang, Yigal
Azrouël, Prabal Gurung. She doesn’t look like Jacob’s little
designer doll any more: she looks like a chic young woman
about town.
‘You’ve put on some weight,’ Victoria said frankly, surveying the younger woman. ‘I hope you don’t mind my saying it.
But it suits you.’
‘I know,’ Coco admitted. ‘I felt tired all the time. And
hungry.’ She smiled. ‘I’m even eating bread sometimes now.’
‘
Bread?
’ Victoria said in an instant, shocked response. ‘My
God! Don’t make a habit of it.’
Coco nodded. ‘I won’t. I’m still being careful. I’m just not
chasing a size zero any longer.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ Victoria said, sitting down in one of the
two big swivel chairs at the top of the table. ‘It didn’t suit you.
Would you like some Earl Grey?’
‘I think I would,’ Coco said. ‘Thank you.’
‘It’s very civilised, Earl Grey,’ Victoria said, pouring a stream
of fragrant, bergamot-scented tea into two small, white and
pink Minton cups, sitting on matched fluted saucers. ‘Perfect
for the afternoons.’
She slid one of the cups towards Coco.
‘I won’t keep you too long,’ she said. ‘It’s five already, and
you probably want to be off home to beat the worst of the
snow. I have a car waiting too.’
Coco watched the steam rising from the hot teacup.
‘I’m not actually going home,’ she said demurely. ‘My sister’s
in town, visiting. I’m going out with her and . . . a friend.’
It was Victoria’s turn to raise her eyebrows.
‘Are you?’ she said approvingly. ‘Good. I’m glad to hear it.
You’re young. You should be out having fun.’
‘I’ve been lying low for a while,’ Coco said. ‘Working, keeping my head down. I think I’m ready to socialise a little now.’
Victoria nodded, lifting her teacup and sipping her Earl
Grey.
‘Look, I wanted to let you know the current state of play
with Jacob,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how much he’s been in
touch with you.’
Coco winced. ‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘Not since . . . we were
all at his apartment.’ She raised her bare left hand. ‘I left the
ring there,’ she said. ‘I just took it off and left it on the livingroom table. That was it. I haven’t heard a word from him since.’
She looked directly at Victoria. ‘And I didn’t want to,’ she
said.
‘I don’t blame you,’ Victoria said, sighing. ‘It was an absolutely horrendous scene. I don’t think I’ll ever forget . . .’ Her
voice tailed off. Even Victoria, tough, handbitten Victoria,
couldn’t bear to say the words: but she didn’t have to. They
both knew exactly what she meant: the sight of Mireille
tumbling over that balcony to her death.
There had been scaffolding on the lower floors of the building, as there so often was in Manhattan; work being done on
the façade. Mireille had hit it, bounced off, and, mercifully for
any passers-by, landed not on the sidewalk but in the flatbed of
the workmen’s lorry, full of tools and equipment. The body
had apparently been horribly mangled, according to the
New
York Post
, which had eaten up this juicy scandal, reporting it
with its usual salacious, staccato prose.
‘Thank God at least Jacob managed to keep the fact that
Mireille was his wife out of the papers,’ Victoria said, shuddering. ‘Can you imagine how awful it would have been if the
press got hold of that?’
Coco shook her head, not in disagreement, but in rejection
of the scenario Victoria had just named, the idea of all of them
being doorstepped by the press. As it was, the Dupleix public
relations division had spun Mireille’s death as a horrendous
accident; the official version was that she had been demonstrating poses for a projected fashion shoot, had climbed up
onto the balcony to show one off, despite the protests of Jacob,
Coco and Victoria, and tragically slipped to her death. The
story might not have the ring of plausibility, but in lieu of any
other theory, or any reason why Mireille might have wanted to
kill herself, or the three others present might have conspired to
kill her, it had been accepted.
It didn’t hurt, of course, that Jacob was one of the most
powerful media magnates in the US, and that those men had
an unspoken compact to protect each other; newspaper and
magazine owners did not gossip about each other in their periodicals. Other people’s lives were fair game: theirs were not.
So no nosy tabloid journalist had dug too deeply into the
story. No one had found Jacob and Mireille’s marriage
certificate in the records of the mayor’s office in Paris. Mireille
had died intestate, and all her belongings, the deeds to her
apartment, had gone to a distant French cousin. Whether Jacob
had had to pay off the New York authorities to bury any
evidence of his marriage, or whether it had simply never arisen,
neither Victoria nor Coco ever knew.
As soon as Mireille’s death was officially declared a suicide,
Jacob had left the country. Coco had heard, through the
Dupleix gossip grapevine, that he had moved out of his apartment the very night of Mireille’s death. It was common
knowledge that he had put it on the market shortly after; the
Post
had enjoyed itself tremendously with coverage of the
‘Death Plunge Penthouse’, itemising every single detail of its
luxurious interiors from the realtor’s particulars.
‘Unfair on you,’ Victoria observed to Coco. ‘The press making
it seem as if Jacob dumped you, rather than the other way around.’
Coco smiled wryly, sipping her tea. ‘No one could believe
that I’d break off an engagement to my multi-millionaire boss,’
she commented. ‘They had to tell it that way. I know the PRs
here were pushing that version. If they said I’d dumped him, it
would have been so suspicious that some journalist might
actually have started investigating why.’
Victoria nodded in approval.‘Very true,’ she said. ‘And very
smart. I admire you, Coco. It’s a rare woman who can put pragmatism over her pride.’
‘Thank you,’ Coco said politely.
Victoria set down her cup. ‘You know Jacob went to India,
afterwards,’ she said, swivelling in her chair a little to fully face
Coco. ‘Just got on a plane and pissed off, leaving us all to clear
up his mess.’
‘I knew he was in India,’ Coco said.
‘Doing a retreat. Getting his head together. Taking some
time to find himself.’ Victoria tilted her head, looking down
her long nose in contempt of this string of clichés. ‘Working
through his mid-life crisis. Hopefully,’ she added coldly, ‘finally
working out why he treated poor Mireille so appallingly. I
mean, she let him do it – and I’m not minimising what she
tried to do to you – but
really
, I should have slapped
him
, not
her. He actually needed it more.’
‘I agree.’ Coco’s stomach churned as Victoria’s words
brought back more memories of that awful day.
‘Sorry,’ Victoria added. ‘You’ve gone a bit pale. Would you
rather not discuss it?’
‘No, it’s a relief,’ Coco said, letting out a long breath. ‘I
haven’t been able to talk about it with anyone. At least there’s
someone else who knows what happened.’
Victoria nodded in understanding. ‘I haven’t told anyone
either,’ she said. ‘It’s just too big a secret. It simply wouldn’t be
fair to burden someone else with it.’
The two women looked at each other, reliving the terrible
events that had happened on the terrace of the penthouse.
‘Thank you for saving my life,’ Coco said quietly.
‘Oh, please.’ Victoria waved her away brusquely, with the
awkwardness of an upper-class Englishwoman being openly
praised for moral virtue. ‘Anyone would have done the same.
Honestly. Let’s say no more about it. More tea?’
She refilled both their cups.
‘So the latest news from Jacob, and the reason I asked you
to come in for a meeting,’ she said, her tone crisp now, ‘is that
he’s taking a year of absence. He wants to go on with this
hippy-dippy retreat and then walk the Himalayan Trail on a
voyage of personal discovery with a native guide.’
Victoria flicked contemptuous apostrophes in the air with
her long, elegant fingers.
‘No fool like an old fool,’ she commented. ‘If he’s not marrying a woman thirty years younger than himself, he’s falling into
the hands of some hippy quacks. They’ll fleece him for millions,
and he’ll deserve it. I bet he’ll come back with his hair down
to his shoulders, stinking of patchouli oil and chanting mantras,
or whatever it is that they do.’
Coco blinked at this vivid image.
‘He’s appointed me acting CEO of Dupleix,’ Victoria said.
‘Together with Barney.’ Barney Cohen was the CFO of the
company.‘It’ll be a lot of work, damnit, especially with Mireille
gone.’ She sighed. ‘Ironic, isn’t it? I’d have put her in to helm
Style
for me on a temporary basis if she’d still been here. She’d
have been perfect – she’d have done a great job, and she never
wanted mine.’
She looked narrowly at Coco. ‘Don’t get any ideas,’ she said
firmly. ‘I’m not asking you to do it. You’re much too young and
ambitious. Are you happy at
Mini Style
?’
‘Yes.’ Coco nodded vehemently. ‘Truly I am. It’s the perfect
place for me. Look, I know I was really young to be put in
charge of a start-up, and I know I got it because I was with
Jacob. I’m not going to deny it. But I’m doing really well. The
stats are great, I have brilliant ideas for the next few issues, lots
of storyboards all ready to show you . . .’
‘Stop!’ Victoria held up a hand in the imperious gesture
that was all too familiar to Coco. ‘I’m not sacking you, for
God’s sake. I think you’re doing an excellent job, though I have
some notes for you we can talk over next week, let’s say. I want
you to stay exactly where you are. Keep doing what you’re
doing. Keep increasing circulation. Keep kicking
Teen Vogue
’s
arse, as they say over here.’
She grinned a little wolfishly. ‘And keep your eyes off my
job, okay? Do all those things and your future at Dupleix is
very bright, as far as I’m concerned.’
‘Thank you!’ Coco breathed, hugely relieved.
‘Not at all. Oh, and you can stay on in your apartment on
the Bowery. Dupleix will keep paying the rent as a perk of
your job – or give you an interest-free loan if you want to take
out a mortgage in future, as long as you stay with the company.
It’s the least we can do, under the circumstances.’
‘
Thank
you!’ Coco was breathless with gratitude at this
news. She loved the Halston apartment, and even on an editor’s
salary, she couldn’t have afforded to keep it. Magazine publishing wasn’t a lucrative job; its salaries couldn’t compete with
equivalent jobs in advertising or PR.
Victoria flapped her hand to signal that Coco should say
nothing more.
‘Now—’ Victoria pushed back her chair and stood up, ‘I’ll
let you get off to meet your friends. I should be shooting back
too. I’ve got to feed Sasha in half an hour or so.’
Coco stood up. The two women hesitated for a moment,
looking at each other. Then, tentatively, they leaned in, and
slowly, unsurely, because they had never done this before,
kissed each other on both cheeks. Meeting, finally, as equals.
Delicious smells emanated from the kitchen, soft music
pouring down the hallway. Lykke came out of the living room,
in a grey marl sweater over skinny jeans, her hair pulled off her
unmade-up face, looking ridiculously beautiful. Ducking
down, she helped Victoria out of her snow- and salt-stained
boots, putting them on a wrought-iron rack to dry.
‘It’s so nice that you’re home so early,’ Lykke said happily,
hugging Victoria, unzipping her coat.
‘Well, don’t get used to it,’ Victoria said, kissing her girlfriend. ‘I’ll do what I can, but with Jacob off in India finding
himself, you’re looking at the new CEO of Dupleix. Lots of
meetings, lots of dinners.’
‘Oh my God? It’s definite?’ Lykke asked excitedly.
‘Signed and sealed,’ Victoria said, her eyes sparkling. ‘You
know, I’m terribly excited. It’s a new challenge. I
love
new challenges. I have all these amazing multi-platform ideas just
flooding in, twenty-four seven.’
‘New power,’ Lykke said, her smile full of amusement. ‘You
love new power.’
Victoria giggled. ‘Well, yes,’ she admitted. ‘I do love new
power. I’m taking to this role like a duck to water. Barney’s
awfully impressed with my grasp of everything, if I do say so
myself. Jacob had better watch out – I may not want to give
him back the reins when he returns.
If
he returns,’ she added.
‘He’s saying a year now, but who knows how long he’ll be
away? He’s never taken time off before – he’s always been so
driven. Maybe he’ll decide to buy a houseboat in Kerala or a
mansion in Goa and never come back. Wouldn’t that be
fabulous?’
She wrapped her arm around Lykke’s waist, kissing her
neck. Together, the two women walked down the hallway
towards the kitchen.
‘Grilled salmon steaks and wilted spinach for dinner,’
Jeremy announced as they came in. ‘With risotto for me.’ He
pulled a face. ‘And maybe one spoonful for you, Vicky? You
have to have some carbs. Lykke agrees with me.’
‘I do,’ Lykke said firmly. ‘A big spoonful for her.’
‘You’re both ganging up on me,’ Victoria complained, but
her smile belied her tone of voice.
I still can’t believe how happy I am, she thought, looking
from her girlfriend to her husband. Honestly, I don’t deserve
this. And I know everyone thinks we’re crazy for trying this, for
moving my girlfriend in to live with Jeremy and Sasha. But so
far, it really does seem to be working . . .
Jeremy was flipping the salmon, Lykke setting the table,
sticking out one long leg to rock a sleeping Sasha gently in her
crib. It was a perfect – if unorthodox – domestic scene.
The main impetus to make it work was that all the alternatives would have been so much worse, Victoria knew as she
went to the fridge and poured herself a glass of diet tonic.
I
couldn’t bear to break up my family, and I couldn’t bear to live
without Lykke.
And the miracle is that Lykke and Jeremy felt the same. Neither
of them wanted to break up the family either.
In fact, they both want me to have another baby.