‘And so, too, did courage take on new meaning. Bravery was not as easy as it had been once upon a time, no longer a simple question of rescue or relief. For how can we be sure of the right time to move? How can we be certain our help will be welcomed? Help is only what it means to the person receiving it—in all other ways, a martyr’s illusion.’
I’ll make sure of it …
‘Tonight, while we celebrate, far away in a distant country, ordinary people are forfeiting their lives.’ He paused. ‘I didn’t know it when I was a boy, but that is what courage means truly. It means sacrifice.’
I always will …
‘Help is not an easy thing to give. Courage is not an easy thing to have. But that does not detract from my certainty that they are the two most important assets we as humans possess. Through the works you are about to see, the feats in invention and creativity, the House of Moreau and its affiliates pledge their allegiance to both. I hope you will join me.’
The audience erupted in applause. JB stepped away. Aside from a short nod of acknowledgement, he remained impassive. He reminded Lori of a stone in a river, water rushing between and around, smooth and solid against the flux.
The show began. Lights drenched the runway. Music thumped, heralding the arrival of the models. Clad in the latest trends, six-foot-tall beauties, men, women and something in between swaggered down the walk. A pose at the end, photographers snapping, those sharp angles of elbows and shoulders and swan-like necks. All the while Lori sought JB’s response—what he was looking at, what interested him; the outfits and models that made him react. She wanted to be up there, having him see her. She wanted him to remember what they had shared, to say to van der Meyde,
That’s the girl I met. The one I told you about
.
She had to find a way.
Lori didn’t stay long at the after party. She was tired and any hopes she had of talking to JB evaporated when Desideria told her he was dining with sponsors and wouldn’t be around till later. She decided to go back to the hotel—it had been a long day.
Desideria insisted on coming with her. They took a car to the Mirage. Desideria tried to persuade her to indulge in a nightcap, a game of blackjack, but Lori was dead on her feet.
At the door to her suite, the older woman leaned in for an embrace. She smelled of cigarettes and aniseed. Several uncomfortable moments passed before Lori tried to ease her off, but Desideria renewed her hold, pulling their bodies closer till Lori could feel the squash of her breasts against a pair of much flatter, harder ones. Desideria must have felt it too, because she released an involuntary, guttural sound and buried her face in Lori’s neck, swaying slightly.
‘Do you want me to stay?’ she whispered, her breath hot and ragged.
Lori pushed gently. ‘That’s not a good idea.’
‘I know you’re a virgin.’ Without warning Desideria’s hands flew to Lori’s ass and clasped. ‘I know a lot about you, sweetheart. More than I should.’
Lori attempted to wriggle free. ‘I don’t want to offend you. Please …’
‘Then don’t. I can show you things, Loriana. Things a man never could. The moment I met you, I wanted you. Couldn’t you sense it? Forgive me. I can’t help the way I feel. Whenever I see you I want to touch your lips, your beautiful breasts. I want to love you with my mouth and taste you and teach you the things I long for you to know …’
‘No.’
Lori shoved her this time. ‘I don’t have those feelings for you … I’m sorry, I don’t.’ It didn’t matter if it was Rico or Desideria or whoever it was, why couldn’t people take no for an answer? She wasn’t ready. She was a virgin. At least, she hoped she still was. The things she did to herself … they didn’t count, did they? No. She was saving herself.
For who?
For him
.
Desideria was hurt. ‘I see.’
‘I like you,’ explained Lori, wondering why she was the one making amends. ‘But not in that way.’
‘I’m not sure what I was thinking,’ responded Desideria tightly.
‘Let’s forget it.’ Lori hoped they could. ‘See you tomorrow?’
‘Sure. Tomorrow.’
Lori closed the door and rested against it. She was aware of the other woman waiting outside, for a minute at least, before her footsteps padded quietly away.
Three a.m. The dead hour.
JB Moreau stood from the bed, looking down at the sleek contours of Arabella Kline’s naked back. Her golden hair was swept across one bronzed shoulder, a white sheet gathered round her waist. Soundly, she dreamed.
They’d had sex for hours, hard and urgent, the release that both of them craved. Only, JB had never been one for sleeping after he fucked. Fucking left him empty, the pointlessness of it once the fact was done. Little existed between him and Arabella, just a concise encounter every now and again that, for all the heat and skin and fervour of the moment, meant, in the lonely hours, nothing at all.
His suite at the Orient Hotel overlooked the Strip. Pulling on a pair of jogging pants and silently sliding the balcony doors, JB stepped outside. He inhaled. At the apex of Vegas’s grandest enterprise, it was possible to see the entire sprawl of Sin City, her vast array of sparkling lights and golden spires and summits. And yet not a soul could see him.
It was the way of his life. Always the observer, never the observed.
The blinking red light of an aeroplane passed across the night sky. JB rested his elbows on the terrace rail and gazed up at a star-pricked dome.
They’d said it about him since he was a child. He was a closed book, a distant ship. Something missing. At first, shy. Later, disconnected. A conversation he’d overheard one summer, when he was back in France on school vacation, hovering unseen by the drawing-room door, his mother and father discussing him in hushed tones while they drank gin cocktails and planned their next party and hadn’t a clue who their only son was.
The boy has no heart
.
And people said it again, and again, after the accident.
What’s wrong with him? Any other child would be in pieces …
Some time ago, he had started to believe it himself. It was easier to be fixed against the memories of the past. Easier to freeze over. He was missing something, of course, had always missed it, because it had never been given to him.
And there were times, like now, when he was looking over the city and feeling as if this ought to be right, a destination of some kind, that the hollow in JB threatened to consume him entirely. He thought of Lori, so different from the women in his life, those tough, grasping women against whom her innocence shone like dawn. She drew him, had drawn him ever since the first time he’d laid eyes on her at the San Pedro harbour with her boyfriend. It was her goodness, her kindness, for he had watched her for weeks and come to know the hardships she faced, and in a lifetime of building walls he had begun, piece by piece, to dismantle.
Little wonder he had given in to temptation. It was impossible to forget the way she had kissed him that day, her eyes like the ocean, a blink and he was beneath the surface, treading water, leagues of silence underfoot. Peace.
Despite the inconceivability of their situation, how he could never have her, not in this lifetime or the next, JB knew he could not have abandoned her that day. Vulnerable, a girl.
Look what had happened the last time he had done that.
25
Aurora
Aurora and Pascale arrived at Gare du Nord in Paris early Friday evening. Aurora was tipsy after the champagne Pascale had insisted on getting on the Eurostar (a little inappropriately, she thought), nevertheless it was probably better that way. Whenever she remembered the reason she was here, the A-word, she felt even sicker than normal. She was unable to address her fears with Pascale: Pascale had undergone two of these things in the past—what was the big deal?
Arnaud and Gisele Devereux had sent their chauffeur, a hot young Parisian called Alex, to pick them up. Pascale clearly knew Alex well and nattered away in French as they sped to the couple’s apartment in Montmartre.
Aurora was accustomed to luxury, but only of a certain type. She had grown up around money, lots of it, and all the shiny wonderful things it could buy. But she hadn’t grown up around sophistication, or taste, or, dare she say it,
class, and when those things were combined with cash, the results were potent. Pascale’s parents lived in a converted penthouse at the very top of one of Montmartre’s oldest buildings. The apartment was enormous. It was filled with art. You could see the whole of Paris from an oval window: the glittering spike of the Eiffel Tower, the twin columns of Notre Dame and the silky twist of the Seine.
Alex noticed Aurora’s expression.
‘C ‘est jolie, n’est-ce-pas?’
Aurora didn’t know what he was on about, though she did know that Angelina Jolie’s surname meant ‘pretty’.
‘Yeah … très.’
‘A bientôt!’
Pascale called to Alex when he left. She turned to Aurora and snorted unkindly. ‘“
Très
”? You’re going to have to do better than that. There’s nothing worse than an American who can’t be bothered to speak the language.’ She padded into the kitchen and pulled open the fridge. It was less of a fridge and more of a chilled room, wall-to-wall filled with supplies, from bottles upon bottles of Veuve Clicquot to little jars of
cornichons
and caviar. ‘My parents will fully expect you to know the basics.’
Aurora was horrified. She tried to play it cool, though secretly she was shitting it about meeting the fearsome Devereux couple. No doubt they were out right now with the president or something. (Did France have a president? Or was that a prime minister? She wasn’t sure.)
‘What, like
oui
and non?’ Her accent was dreadful. ‘And
sieve-oo-play
?’
‘I wasn’t going to turn up in England not speaking a word, was I?’ Pascale grabbed a couple of glasses and popped open yet another bottle of champagne. ‘It’s a courtesy.’
‘I suppose.’
‘Anyway.’ Pascale lit a cigarette. ‘You’ll get the hang of it. Want one?’
Aurora was shown to one of the guest bedrooms, a pearly-pink princess of a room complete with golden candelabra and a four-poster bed. She had visited Paris with her parents before, ages ago when they’d been on tour in Europe, but she’d been holed up in a hotel for most of it eating novelty French chips out of a bucket and watching MTV. Tom and Sherilyn had spent the whole trip sniping, as if actually having to spend that much time in each other’s company was too much for either of them, and the only mitigation had been Tom taking her to EuroDisney on their last weekend. Needless to say, her mom hadn’t come.
Now, as Aurora explored the costly antique furnishings and claw-footed tub in the bathroom, she wondered how people knew where to
get
this stuff. It was, like, easy enough to spend money on cars and shoes and what everyone
said
you ought to have, but these things came from someone’s personality. And that personality was elegant, refined … all the things she, and her own family, weren’t.
She was unpacking when she heard the door go, followed by a flutter of greetings in French. Aurora heard her own name occasionally puncturing the surface, the Rs making it sound like someone clearing their throat—’
Or-hor-ha
’. She stepped out to meet them.
Pascale and her mother were smoking, Gisele still in her coat, slim cigarette held between the long fingers of a chocolate-leather glove. They were chatting more like sisters than mother and daughter, so similar in appearance, both raven-haired, both petite, and with a fast, matter-of-fact way of speaking. Arnaud was pouring brandies. He
was extremely French in appearance, and didn’t smile when he saw Aurora. Grey-haired, lean, rangy. Long nose. Liquid eyes. A white linen shirt that was open at the neck, a thin gold chain resting on the crinkled skin.
Pascale jumped up. ‘Maman, Papa, meet Aurora Nash,
ma meilleure amie
.’
Gisele embraced her. ‘A best friend of Pascale’s is a best friend of ours,’ she said. Her voice was sweet and girlish, but you knew she could drop it in a second and eat you for breakfast. ‘Did you have a good trip?’
‘Uh …
oui
,
merci. Très bien
.
Merci
.’
Pascale rolled her eyes but Aurora didn’t know what she’d done wrong. Arnaud extended his hand and she shook it.
‘Bonsoir.’
They had dinner—or, three of them did; Gisele just smoked—and Pascale talked about school, sometimes in French, sometimes in English, and Aurora contributed where she could. She wasn’t used to feeling self-conscious or like a sitting idiot: normally she was the one in control. In fact she’d never felt inadequate before in her whole entire life, and that was really the only word. Because despite her wealth and privilege, what did she herself, not her parents, not her PR people, not her rep—what did
she
have to bring to the table?
When Gisele politely enquired after her parents,
‘les chanteurs’
, Aurora felt embarrassed. It was horrible to say, but Tom and Sherilyn seemed so cheap and cheesy in comparison with the Devereux lifestyle. Gisele and Arnaud discussed history, politics, art … no wonder their daughter was so well informed and sure of her mind. The only things
her
mom and dad discussed were their record-breaking album sales or the ratio of honey to cinnamon in Tom’s hair. And
she couldn’t remember the last time they had eaten a meal at home together.
She tried to remember as much of Madame Taylor’s French lessons as she could. She’d never paid attention, had lost interest during an enforced debate with Eugenie Beaufort over the respective merits of a
croque monsieur
and a
croque madame
. Having to pretend she gave a
croque
.
‘Ils sont … bon …’
she began, before giving up and speaking English slowly.
Pascale interrupted. ‘They’re fluent in seven languages,’ she said witheringly.