Authors: Rebecca Chance
Jools’s tears were perilously close now. She swallowed in a
desperate attempt to ward them off. The man beside her
adjusted the parasol, staring up curiously at the bizarre white
girl, tall as a giraffe, looking like an alien who had just dropped
to earth and wasn’t getting a friendly reception from the locals.
I can ride – sort of, she thought miserably. I mean, I’ve done
pictures on horseback before. I laid down on one for that
Elizabeth Arden perfume campaign. I just didn’t realise the
horse would be so jittery – and then he got extra wound-up by
the camels . . .
The foil trim of her linen T-shirt was itching, and the longsleeved layered top the stylist had pulled over it was too hot
for this blazing weather, beginning to dampen with her sweat.
But that was fashion for you: you shot winter in summer,
summer in winter, swimsuits in February and autumn layered
dressing in what was going to be a 50-degree day in the
Moroccan desert . . .
Hooves sounded in the distance. The camels stirred; decorated lavishly with bright harnesses trimmed with tiny golden
bells, they jingled as they moved, their ponderous heads
turning towards the approaching horse as it crested the far
dune. It was a breathtaking sight. The huge dark stallion, its
dark chocolate coat gleaming lightly with sweat, galloped
effortlessly through the orange sand, its hooves moving majestically, its slim rider straight as a wand on its back. From a
distance, it might have been a slight boy riding the stallion, a
young Berber who had grown up on horseback, a
keffiyeh
wound around his head to protect his face from sun and blowing sand, its ends trailing picturesquely behind him in the
desert breeze. It was only as the horse and rider drew nearer,
slowing at the rider’s command into an easy trot, that it became
clear that it was a woman seated so elegantly in the saddle, her
hands light on the reins, drawing the stallion to a halt in front
of Jools with seemingly effortless control.
It was not a
keffiyeh
covering her head, but a vintage silk
Hermès scarf, wrapped around her neck and knotted at the
back. She wore a simple white cotton shirt, tucked into beige
jodhpurs drawn tightly into her narrow waist with a wide
woven leather belt. Her riding boots were black and highly
polished, catching a flash of sunlight as she kicked one foot
free of its stirrup, swung her leg over the horse and simultaneously freed the other foot, dropping to the ground in a single,
smooth motion, one hand retaining a grip on the reins. She
patted the horse’s neck; he whinnied in appreciation of the
exercise she had just given him.
Mireille Grenier, fashion director of
US Style
, one of the
most influential women in the entire industry, looking like a
1940s film star, beckoned to Jools, who was staring at her with
her mouth open. Although Mireille moved with the grace and
ease of a much younger woman, close-up, the lines around her
eyes and mouth, the fineness of her skin, indicated her true
age, the early fifties. Her huge green eyes, glowing now with
the excitement of the wild ride through the desert to calm
down the stallion, rested their gaze on Jools, who was goggling
at her in heroine-worship.
‘Come and take the reins,’ Mireille said, smiling at the young
model. ‘Make friends with him, now that I have tired him out
for you. He’ll be very good from now on,
n’est-ce pas
,
mon vieux
?’
She patted the stallion in valediction as she handed over the
reins to Jools.
‘Bring him some water,’ she commanded no one in particular.
‘We can start in five minutes. He will be quiet and good for her.’
‘Mireille, you’re a bloody miracle!’ the photographer said in
devout tones, chucking his cigarette on the sand and grinding
the heel of his boot into it. ‘Thank fuck for you. I thought we
were buggered!’
With the same enigmatic smile, Mireille went towards the
fashion tent; its occupants were gathered at the opening,
gaping at her, a young assistant in the forefront holding out a
chilled bottle of water.
‘I didn’t know you could ride!’ the assistant gushed worshipfully, as everyone else chimed in with dramatic gasps of
appreciation. ‘That was like something out of a film – that horse
so jumpy and shying away, not letting Jools get on its back or
anything, and then you just walked up to it and vaulted on and
rode off over the hill, and we were all freaking out a bit, but I
mean, you obviously knew
exactly
what you were doing . . .’
She ran out of breath as Mireille finished the water and
handed her back the empty bottle.
‘All animals must be exercised well before a shoot,’ Mireille
said in her light French accent. ‘It is an absolute rule. I gave
precise instructions yesterday to the Berbers that the horse
must be tired out before they brought him here.’ She shrugged
her narrow shoulders. ‘
Tant pis
. We will deduct 15 per cent of
their fee.’
‘Yes, Mireille,’ the assistant said instantly.
‘Tell Valerie to check Jools’s make-up,’ Mireille said, entering the tent, crossing to a table on which was resting the Birkin
bag that travelled everywhere with her. ‘Her eyes looked damp
to me. And adjust her top. It is crooked,
un tout petit peu
.’
Two assistants shot out of the tent to obey her commands as
Mireille pulled her BlackBerry from her bag and checked its
screen. Even in the Moroccan desert, there was some signal,
and Mireille was as aware as a professional spy of the need to
be constantly informed of the latest developments in the fashion world; it was one of the reasons why, over decades, she had
maintained her position as a key player in a viciously competitive environment. During that time, she had cultivated
informants under the guise of gossip; gradually, as Mireille rose
to the prominence of her current job, she had trained up a
whole raft of assistants who had gone on to work on magazines
all over the world – an entire network of fashionistas loyal to
her who knew that Mireille would return in favours whatever
snippets of information they could provide.
A text had come in. From London. Mireille’s delicately
plucked eyebrows rose as she perused its contents.
So Jacob is in London – well, I knew he was going there. And
having dinner with Victoria. Again, not a surprise. But celebrating
afterwards at Annabel’s? Raising glasses in a toast?
Slowly, Mireille slid the BlackBerry into her bag. This could
mean only one thing. Jennifer Lane Davis’s days were
numbered in single digits. Jennifer was out, and Victoria, two
years early, was in.
Inwardly, Mireille sighed. Victoria is coming back to New
York, thinking she can rule the roost. Well, it will be a battle
royal, but I will win. I always do. Victoria may be a superb
editor, but she has no grasp of subtlety. None at all.
Eh bien. I will make my preparations.
They were waiting for her outside. She walked to the opening of the tent, noticed all the faces turning to her with
expressions of awe and devotion. Jools was being boosted onto
the stallion by the Berber; she settled into the saddle, taking
the reins with confidence now. It was an instant shot. The tall,
white girl on the dark horse, the layers of her clothes blowing
picturesquely in the breeze, the gold of her huge earrings and
the foil trim of her top catching the sun, and behind them, the
rising orange dune, the desert sands.
A new editor to battle. To vanquish. Yet another younger
woman trying to make her mark, control my work
. Suddenly,
Mireille felt every year of her age; no, even more – as old as
those sands, flowing gently in the wind.
And then a smile curved her lips.
But like the sands, I have seen so much. People have tried to
ride roughshod over me, as they have tried to conquer the desert,
and they have all failed, slipped away like the wind – while I am
still here. Victoria may try to impose her will on me, but she’ll fail
like all the others.
And I will endure.
n a wide, leafy street in Notting Hill lined with white
stucco-fronted houses, the current editor of
UK Style –
though not for much longer
, she thought triumphantly – was
standing under her pillared porch. Extracting her door key from
her bag, she unlocked the front door that was stylishly painted
in Farrow & Ball’s Castle Gray gloss. Lesser mortals who had
worn five-inch high heels since eight o’clock that morning
would have kicked their shoes off as soon as they closed their
front door behind them. But Victoria was made of sterner stuff,
and she tripped along the hall as easily as if she were wearing
ballet pumps. It didn’t hurt, of course, now that she regularly
had Botox injections in the balls of her feet to amortise the pain
caused by the near-constant wearing of vertiginous heels.
Her husband Jeremy was up, of course, as Victoria had
known he would be, waiting to hear the news, sprawled on the
big squashy sofa in his office. Jeremy had been playing poker
online: his avatar was seated at a green baize table on the
screen of his gigantic flat-screen television, a miniature version
of Jeremy dressed in pyjamas, with the same wildly curling
hair and small round glasses. The real Jeremy dropped his
console and swivelled round to look at her as she stood in the
doorway.
He jumped up. Jeremy could read her expression immediately, even though Victoria seemed as cool and poised as ever,
quirking an eyebrow as she watched her husband scrutinise
her face.
‘Oh please,’ Victoria said, sounding bored. ‘Spare me the
poker vocabulary.’
But the gleam in her eyes, the slight curve of her mouth,
were clear giveaways to someone who knew her as well as
Jeremy did: he clapped his hands, his smile as wide as hers was
restrained.
‘You got it!’ he yodelled. ‘You got New York!’
Victoria dropped her bag onto the back of the sofa. ‘Two
months,’ she said. ‘And not a word to anyone till Jacob breaks
it to Jennifer.’
‘Oh my God! You’re amazing.’ Jeremy fumbled his bare
feet into his fluffy slippers and skidded around the sofa,
bumbling between it and the armchair, enfolding his wife in a
warm, flannel-pyjamaed embrace. ‘You did it! Two years early!
That’s just wonderful.’
Victoria was happy enough with her triumph to allow
Jeremy to hug her for longer than the few seconds she usually
permitted; when he pulled away and beamed at her, she even
returned his smile with one of her own.
‘Jacob says we can have the Columbus Circle penthouse,’
she said, turning away and walking into the kitchen.
‘Oh.’ Jeremy looked briefly downcast. ‘Just until I find us a
house? I mean, this is it, right? We’re going to be in New York
for ages. I do want a house of our own, Vicky. A proper home
for us.’
Victoria slipped off her mink jacket, and Jeremy took it,
draping it over the back of one of the bar stools that were lined
up on one side of the shiny, natural-oak kitchen island. She slid
elegantly onto another bar stool, custom-built, the same natural oak, upholstered with a light yellow leather seat. Victoria
preferred the bar stools to the chairs at the kitchen table; she
liked to be as high up as possible.
‘The penthouse has three bedrooms and a huge terrace,’ she
pointed out. ‘It’s probably got more square footage than most
of the houses you’ll look at in New York.’
‘But a house is more –
family
,’ Jeremy persisted, pushing his
glasses up his nose with one finger. ‘A house is a home. Come
on, Vicky. Let me have this one. You’ll never be there anyway.’
He said this without an ounce of reproach in his voice.
Jeremy had no illusions about his wife, and never had. They
had been together ever since university, where Jeremy had
been a brilliant mathematician and Victoria the editor of a
glossy magazine which she had founded, secured advertising
and sponsorship for, and spent every waking moment working
on. She had barely scraped a third, but that hadn’t mattered;
the magazine had been her springboard to her first job at
Vogue
. Even at university, Victoria had already been a legend,
her name spoken in bated breath, dire warnings issued about
getting out of her way if you didn’t want to be mown down.
Everyone was frightened of her; she was so polished, so ambitious, so obviously the star of their year, burning so brightly she
would scorch you if you got too close.
But Jeremy had been undaunted. There was nothing he
found more attractive than a powerful woman, and from the
moment he had seen Victoria at a party he had pursued her
with a singlemindedness that had been the talk of their entire
year. Victoria wasn’t looking for a relationship, didn’t have
time for one, wasn’t even particularly interested in men; but
Jeremy literally would not take no for an answer. He had
applied the skills he was honing in his extremely advanced
studies of higher maths and the philosophy of science, and
used them to calculate how he could convince Victoria that
she would be better off with him in her life.
Gradually, Victoria had realised that things ran more
smoothly with Jeremy around. He ran errands for her, did her
laundry, cooked her dinner and made sure her fridge was
stocked with the few foods she would allow herself to eat. He
escorted her to parties and waited patiently while she worked
the room. After graduation, he took a job at a merchant bank
as a research analyst and suggested she move into his South
Kensington flat, as her salary as an assistant at
Vogue
would
scarcely allow her to rent a shoebox in Acton Town. He made
himself indispensable, and Victoria began to realise that she
couldn’t do better than Jeremy if she wanted a long-term partner. How rare was it to find a man who would always put her
interests before his own, celebrate her achievements, be, in
short, a traditional old-fashioned wife of the kind that barely
existed any more – while still earning a good salary?
And clearly, she needed a partner, if only for social reasons.
Single women weren’t invited out half as much as girls who
were tidily paired-up. Nor did she want to be the stereotypical
ice queen, the awful sexist judgement on women that Meryl
Streep’s character embodied in the film of
The Devil Wears
Prada
, which preached that career women couldn’t keep a
man because they worked too hard. Victoria would never let
someone say that about her, never let herself be seen as vulnerable nor an object of pity. So when, after several years of
co-habitation, Jeremy began to drop hints that it was time for
them to get married, Victoria found herself shrugging, thinking, Why not? and researching an engagement ring that was
the exact same shade of grey as her eyes.
It had been a surprise, however, that even her father had
approved of Jeremy’s proposal.
‘Clever girl,’ Judge Glossop had said, nodding benevolently.
‘He’ll give you your head in everything, run the house for you
and pull in a good whack while he’s about it. Frankly, he’s a
better wife than your brothers have managed to find.’
Her father had kissed her forehead.
‘The best thing your mother ever did was to give me you–
my precious daughter. You’re a better man than any of my
sons, my dear. I couldn’t be more proud of you.’
Well, here I am, Daddy!
Victoria thought now, looking
around her at the glossy, open-plan, custom-made Smallbone
Arts and Crafts-style kitchen which had cost a fortune, and in
which she had barely even made a cup of tea. Jeremy had
designed it, picked out the pale yellow tiles to blend smoothly
with the light wood cupboards, a mix of chic town style – to
please Victoria – and a rustic cosiness that appealed to Jeremy.
It had cost a fortune, and she would leave it for good without
a backward glance.
Forget London. New York has everything I
ever wanted.
She shrugged inwardly. What did she care whether they had
a penthouse or a townhouse in New York? Jeremy was right,
she’d barely be at home anyway.
‘Whatever you want,’ she said to her husband. ‘We’ll take
the penthouse for the moment and you can start house-hunting straight away. Jacob says Dupleix will give us an interest-free
loan for whatever mortgage we need.’
‘Fantastic!’ Jeremy’s eyes shone behind the lenses of his
glasses. ‘London’s all very well, but I really miss Manhattan.
We had so much fun there.’ He beamed. ‘I told all our friends
we’d be back soon – I didn’t imagine it’d be only two years.
Whoo-hoo! And this is it, isn’t it, Vicky? We might never
come back.’
‘Not if I can help it,’ Victoria said crisply. ‘London’s all very
well, but there’s so much more energy in New York. I simply
can’t wait.’
‘Me neither.’ He was beaming. ‘I’ll let Carpenter, de Vere
know tomorrow, but I can’t imagine they’ll have any problems
with me moving again. I mean, they didn’t before. The time
difference isn’t that huge, and I’m in blue-sky research anyway.’
It hadn’t even occurred to Victoria to wonder how Jeremy’s
work would be affected by her new job. He worked for a hedge
fund as what was picturesquely known as ‘a quant’, designing
mathematical models for risk assessment and predicting
market movements; ‘blue-sky research’ was the most arcane of
all, but Jeremy, who had managed to study for a PhD while
simultaneously working for a merchant bank, was capable of
such intellectual flights that it was worth it for Carpenter, de
Vere to let him doodle in speculative theory for months on
end, trusting that eventually he would invent a new pricing
approach for derivatives that would more than justify his
salary and bonuses.
‘
Now
, to celebrate your good news . . .’ Jeremy shuffled
behind his wife in his slippers and started to massage her
shoulders. ‘I checked your Persona fertility thingy this morning, and it’s red. By my calculations, you’re just about to
ovulate. Shall we give it a go?’ His voice slipped into a pleading
tone. ‘We really should get on with it, Vicky. We want two, and
you’re thirty-four, darling. No time to waste.’
A stab of panic shot through Victoria, as it did every single
time Jeremy mentioned children. He was the one that wanted
two so badly, not her; he was the one who wouldn’t be content
with a penthouse in one of the most sought-after addresses in
Manhattan, who needed a proper house, with two small children running around, disrupting everything, making messes,
and worst of all, ruining the figure that their mother had dieted
and exercised so hard to achieve . . .
‘I’m not sure it’s the right time for me to get pregnant,’ she
said nervously. ‘After all, there’s the move now, and I’ll be
starting my new job—’
‘Now, darling,’ Jeremy said more firmly, ‘you keep saying
that it’s never the right time, and you know that sometimes
one just needs to get on with things. No time like the present!
Besides,’ he added cunningly, ‘the younger you are, the quicker
you’ll snap back into shape. Remember the consultant telling
us that?’
Jeremy knew just the argument that would convince his
wife, the prospect of leaving babies so late that stretch-marks
became a real issue. When Victoria had realised that Jeremy’s
heart was set on having children, she had toyed with the idea
of adoption – so fashionable nowadays, everyone was doing
it! First it had been China, but that was rather passé by now
– Angelina Jolie had sourced hers from Vietnam and Ethiopia,
Madonna from Malawi, Maxie Stangroom from Rwanda. The
world really was your oyster. Victoria was so fair and blonde,
a dark-skinned baby would look fabulous in her arms. She
wasn’t one of those fashion editors who eschewed black
models – far from it, she’d always booked a whole range of
ethnic types for shoots.
Reluctantly, however, she had had to concede defeat on the
idea of adoption, at least until they had been trying for years
and years to have a baby of their own. Jeremy would only
agree to it under those conditions. She was desperately envious
of bloody Jennifer Lane Davis, who had had not one, but two
children made with her own eggs and her husband’s sperm,
implanted in a surrogate, who had then carried them to term.
It cost, apparently, $100,000 a baby, with lawyer’s fees and
‘living expense’ extras for the surrogate, but Jennifer hadn’t
had to go through morning sickness, swollen boobs, water
retention, or any of the horrors associated with childbirth – let
alone a schedule afterwards based round having to pump milk
like a cow from breasts which, at that point, might as well have
been udders.
Jennifer’s story was that she was unable to carry children
successfully herself, due to Irritable Bowel Syndrome; well,
Victoria didn’t believe a word of it. Jennifer just hadn’t wanted
to get fat, and Victoria couldn’t blame her. It was increasingly
common among actresses, singers, women whose bodies were
forensically scrutinised by the media every time they stepped
out of their doors or their limos, to go the surrogate route.
Right now there was huge speculation that the leading,
unquestionably A-list R&B diva of the moment had imported
a poor Latin-American woman with a good track record of
getting pregnant to New York, put her up in a lavish Manhattan
apartment on the Upper West Side, and sent her to the best
fertility doctors in town. The woman was apparently carrying
a baby made from the diva’s eggs and equally famous husband’s
sperm; once she had it, she would hand it over and slip back to
her home country and her own children, with a fortune and a
cast-iron confidentiality agreement. The diva, Victoria had
heard, was perfectly capable of having children, as far as
anyone knew. But neither she nor her husband had wanted to
risk spoiling her famously curvy figure, or slow down the
torrent of albums, live performances and, most lucrative of all,
endorsement deals.
In the UK, however, it was much more difficult to pay a
surrogate to grow and birth a baby for you. In the States, land
of the free, the diva’s arrangement – if not the secrecy surrounding it – was almost commonplace nowadays. Women who were
too old to be fertile would even buy one woman’s eggs, fertilise them with their husband’s, or purchased donor sperm, and
implant them in another woman, because that way the surrogate whose womb they were renting had no relation to the
baby she was carrying, and therefore no right to keep it. One
could even dictate what medical procedures the surrogate was
to have at birth, induce the baby against her own preference,
insist on a Caesarean if necessary . . .
A wash of hope flooded through Victoria as she realised
that now she and Jeremy were moving to the US, now that she
would be on a salary identical to the one that had permitted
Jennifer to pay another woman to do all the hard work of
carrying her children, that would become a real possibility. But
then she looked up at her husband, who was standing over her,
holding out a hand. He was absolutely set on their making
their own children the old-fashioned way: his eyes were shining as if he were envisioning their babies, floating in front of
him on twin puffy clouds, like cupids in a Renaissance painting, each with a little set of wings.
I’ll have to go through with it for now, she thought gloomily, taking his hand and rising to her feet. But it’s been a few
months, and I haven’t got knocked up yet – hopefully I won’t.
I know the consultant said we were fertile, but she also said
there are plenty of women who simply can’t get pregnant –
‘unexplained infertility’, she called it. How long will Jeremy
take before I can start talking to him about surrogates? A year?
He’s so keen to start a family, maybe after we’ve been trying
for a year with no success I can point out that maybe a nice
woman with a fully-functioning womb in Vermont is the way
to go . . .