Bad Brides

by Rebecca Chance

  ‘You dressed up for me!’ she said, delighted. ‘That’s so sweet.’

  He took her arm and tucked it securely into the crook of his as they walked towards the main staircase, which was wide enough to descend side by side.

  ‘Really,’ he said seriously, ‘it was the absolute least I could do.’

  Chapter Eight

  It was still, occasionally, a surreal experience for Jodie Raeburn, editor of Style UK, to walk into her office and realize that it did in fact belong to her. In her previous incarnation as Jodie Raeburn, lowly assistant to Victoria Glossop, the then-editor, Jodie had sat in the anteroom to this office, a jealously loyal gatekeeper, guarding access to Victoria as preciously as if it were an audience with royalty, but also, paradoxically, terrified to enter it herself: for every ten times Victoria summoned the assistant she had renamed ‘Coco’ into her office, nine of those were to haul her comprehensively over hot coals for some tiny infraction of the Victoria Glossop Code of Perfection.

  There had been an interim Style editor between Victoria and Jodie, of course. Jodie had moved to Manhattan as Victoria’s assistant and had swiftly climbed the job ladder there, from junior editor to launching and editing Mini Style, the teen Style spin-off, proving herself fully as an editor. She’d changed her name back to Jodie, establishing her own identity, before she’d returned to London, ready at last to sit in an office once occupied by Victoria.

  Filling her killer heels, Jodie thought, smiling to herself at the thought of the stilettos that, along with the miniskirts and her blonde chignon, were an intrinsic part of Victoria’s signature look. As if I could!

  After a near-suicidal attempt in New York to starve herself down to a size zero, Jodie had resigned herself to not being as thin or polished as her mentor. She had had the office completely redecorated when she arrived back in London, deliberately altering the white and greiges and gleaming transparent glass that had been Victoria’s tonal palette; the previous editor hadn’t dared to change them. Now the décor was fun, playful, as befitted a young editor. Jodie had been barely twenty-eight when Victoria, now CEO of Dupleix Publishing and editor-in-chief of the entire Style empire, had sent her protégée to London to not only edit Style UK, but also simultaneously launch a British Mini Style.

  ‘Sink or swim, and you’d better paddle bloody hard!’ Victoria had said gleefully, relishing her choice of words. ‘You’re taking over at a year younger than I was when I first edited Style, plus you have a launch to oversee as well! But then of course, you’ve had the inestimable benefit of being apprenticed to me, so we’ll call it a wash. I’m giving you the keys to the kingdom. Don’t fuck this up.’

  Well, I haven’t yet, Jodie thought, looking round her office – her office! – with its cream walls, orange and red Marimekko rugs, twin burgundy Fritz Hansen ‘Egg’ chairs on tripod steel bases, the flashes of gold in the shelving system and framed prints on the walls; a lavish arrangement of salmon-pink roses on the desk, sent by her fiancé, were yet another burst of colour that toned with the rest of the room. I’ve put my own stamp on Style UK, Mini Style’s flourishing, and, of course, that means Victoria promptly decided to throw another plate at me to juggle. I know all too well how she loves to test people.

  Pulling up her Vitra state-of-the-art chair, she took a seat at her gleaming white laminated Knoll desk, uncapped her bottle of Vitamin Water, took a deep breath, and then activated the video-conferencing screen which every Style editor had been required to install in her office as soon as Victoria had taken the helm at Dupleix. Victoria liked to be visually in touch with all her minions, perfectly aware that she was even more intimidating when she was both heard and seen. This was a scheduled call, which at least meant that Jodie had had time to prepare for it, but you still never lost the nerves that fluttered in your stomach at the anticipation of seeing your boss on screen, as perfectly groomed as ever.

  Like actors say about performing live – you never stop getting stage fright, Jodie thought as the screen loaded up and Victoria’s custom-made white leather chair came into view. It was unoccupied, of course: people waited for Victoria, never the other way around. Ten seconds elapsed, long enough to make the point; and then a swish of fabric was audible, a blur of crisp white shirt came into view, and Victoria Glossop, editrix-in-chief and mistress of her universe, sat down, crossed her long slim tanned legs in their sharkskin beige miniskirt, and tilted her haughty features sideways momentarily to take the glass of water her assistant was handing her – Fiji water, chilled to seven degrees, with a fresh slice of lime dropped into it with silver tongs, Jodie remembered all too vividly. She had learnt Victoria’s needs so efficiently that even after several years she knew her boss’s tastes as well as she knew her own.

  ‘Too cold, Monika,’ Victoria said to the assistant as icily as the offending water. ‘Take it away and get me one at least three degrees warmer.’

  Thank God, the assistant didn’t say a word; you never answered back, that was Lesson Number One. You just nodded, whipped the glass away, considered for a split-second buttoning the glass inside your shirt and hoping that would warm it up a bit before realizing that your emaciated, starving frame emitted no heat whatsoever. Then you shoved it into the microwave and hoped that just a couple of seconds in there would fix the problem, which was non-existent anyway since you had taken the Fiji bottle out of the temperature-controlled drinks fridge which was set to the precise seven degrees that Victoria specified . . .

  ‘Hi, Victoria,’ Jodie said, grinning with great affection at the fact that her boss would never, ever change – and that I don’t have to get the bitch her water ever again.

  ‘Ugh, I miss Coco!’ Victoria complained, looking down her long aristocratic nose at the young woman who, as Coco, had been the best assistant Victoria had ever employed. ‘Why couldn’t I just clone you? My God, what are you wearing?’

  ‘Preen blouse,’ Jodie said, her grin deepening. ‘Frame jeans. And—’ She leant back in her chair and raised her legs just enough so that Victoria could see her feet – ‘Isabel Marant Bekket hidden-wedge trainers.’

  ‘Sneakers at the office!’ Victoria almost gagged. ‘My God! Thank Christ at least they have a heel, but—’

  The assistant returned with Victoria’s water, her slim café-au-lait hand trembling visibly in the corner of the screen as she set it down. Luckily, Victoria was so distracted by the deliberately oversized pale green suede and light brown leather trainers into which Jodie’s tight jeans were tucked that she completely ignored her hapless PA.

  ‘They’re absolutely positively the latest thing,’ Jodie said with considerable glee.

  ‘Sneakers!’ Victoria repeated, relishing the horror with which she pronounced the word; she and Jodie had fallen over the years into a kind of older sister/younger sister relationship, where Victoria ritually mocked Jodie’s clothing choices while secretly acknowledging that Jodie had her finger firmly on the pulse of current trends. ‘They look like you stuck your feet into a pair of gigantic marshmallows and then spray-painted them the colour of vomit. Model-vomit, the kind that comes up when they haven’t eaten anything for two days and then they do vodka shots, the silly little bitches.’

  ‘Don’t hold back, Victoria.’ Jodie sipped some Vitamin Water. ‘Tell me what you really think of my shoes.’

  ‘I don’t understand her as a designer,’ Victoria complained. ‘I don’t get her ethos, her philosophy. Who wants to make women’s feet look bigger?’

  ‘Hey, she’s very European,’ Jodie said cheerfully. ‘And big shoes slim the legs.’

  True as that was, Jodie had deliberately started a policy of annoying Victoria by dressing in Marant and other designers like Acne whose shabby-chic aesthetic drove Victoria crazy; it was a clever ploy to distract Victoria from complaints or gripes she had with Jodie or her staff.

  ‘Sometimes I suspect you of wearing ghastly things in meetings as some kind of calculated provocation,’ Victoria said with frightening perception,
her grey eyes flashing as sharply as the matching grey diamond of her engagement ring as she picked up her glass of water.

  ‘So, Style Bride of the Year,’ Jodie said quickly, wanting to move Victoria on from this dangerous line of speculation. ‘You want to know where I am with that. I sent through a briefing email earlier – what did you think?’

  ‘It’s fun, this, isn’t it?’ Victoria sat up straighter, eyes flashing even brighter. ‘Not the wedding part – God, I really could care less about weddings, they’re like a taste vacuum, a black hole of tacky. All these bias-cut satin dresses the women wear over here make me want to stone them with rocks. They think they’re chic, but all they are is bland.’

  Jodie shivered: pretty much the worst insult Victoria could possibly throw at anything was ‘bland’.

  ‘Well, good news,’ she said, deftly taking this and spinning it to her advantage, ‘my two front-runners are definitely not bland! They’re both young, stunning, super-photogenic. The grooms are gorgeous too – very different styles. I think the key question here is, what do we want the first issue to say about us? Who’s going to encapsulate our brand? I mean, last summer was totally the royal year – first Queen Lori of Herzoslovakia.’

  ‘Fabulous jewellery, lovely long neck,’ Victoria muttered in parentheses.

  ‘Princess Chloe, of course . . .’

  ‘Safe, safe, dumpy – a size twelve, for God’s sake.’ Victoria yawned like a cat, perfect white opalescent teeth sparkling between coral-glossed lips.

  ‘So this summer, maybe a Countess is too much like the royals? Is she too beauty-queen?’ Jodie clicked on the screen of her laptop, swivelling it round to show Victoria a picture of Brianna Jade in a recent shoot for Hello!

  ‘Teeth and hair and tan,’ Victoria said dismissively.

  ‘Great bones,’ Jodie countered. ‘Look at those cheekbones. And she’s curvy, but actually she’s barely a ten.’

  ‘Photographs bigger,’ Victoria muttered, but she was still staring at the picture of Brianna Jade, and she hadn’t said no.

  ‘That’s muscle tone. She’s very fit – she’d jump for you,’ Jodie said, a code between them: Victoria loved action modelling shots, had made her name on US Style with dynamic, vigorous photographs of models running, leaping, twirling in whirls of fabric and colour.

  ‘Hmm,’ Victoria mused. ‘Well, she’s polished. I like polished. And the other one? Bit insipid, isn’t she?’

  Victoria knew perfectly well who Jodie’s other shortlisted candidate was, had been fully briefed, but she liked making people pitch to her so she could tear at their proposal with claws as sharp as the dragon painted on the six-fold screen that dominated her Manhattan office.

  Jodie clicked on Milly’s photo.

  ‘She’s a full-on It girl here in the UK,’ she reported. ‘Incarnates boho chic. If she puts on a Top Shop dress, it sells out straight away. Definitely the fashion-forward option.’

  ‘I smell hippy,’ Victoria spat with gusto, which was barely better than ‘bland’.

  ‘English style, fresh, young, Alice Temperley vibe, groom even more up-and-coming than she is – actually he’s up and come: his band’s won tons of Grammies, swept the Brits this year,’ Jodie practically chanted. ‘We could style her fantastically – she’s tiny, she can wear anything.’

  This perked Victoria up, as Jodie had known it would; slim, toned Brianna Jade might not be model-skinny, but Milly most definitely was. And that was a huge point in her favour; it was much more work to find clothes for a model who wouldn’t fit into the child-size samples designers sent out.

  ‘So who’s your front runner?’ Victoria asked, sitting back, finishing her Fiji water, setting down the glass, throwing back her head and yelling: ‘Monika! More water!’ in a shriek so high-pitched that Jodie automatically flinched; after all these years, she still expected the glass to break.

  Jodie’s secret was that she didn’t actually have a favourite in this race. There wasn’t an obvious winner. In Jodie’s opinion, either girl would make a cracking first Style Bride of the Year. Her real fear was that Victoria, who was notoriously capricious, would discard both of Jodie’s choices and make her go searching for a third candidate, which would take up way too much time when Jodie already had Style and Mini Style on her plate. And after Jodie had sweated cobs dancing like a madwoman to Victoria’s tune, Victoria would probably, perversely, finish by circling back to choose either Milly or Brianna Jade.

  And time was of the essence. Yes, the ceremony would be next spring or early summer, in order for the photographs and copy to be ready for the three-month lead time a glossy magazine usually demanded. But the idea was to start tracking the wedding now for the Style website, to tease readers with photo shoots of engagement parties, updates on the latest location scouting and dress designs, building into a diary of the most elegant wedding of the year.

  Monika practically ran into the office, teetering on the crystal heels of her suede Miu Miu over-the-knee boots but managing to keep the fresh glass of water steady; she whipped the empty glass away, substituting it with its replacement, and dashed out of the room again. Victoria looked at the water and pushed it away as impatiently as if she hadn’t just shrieked at her assistant to bring it for her.

  ‘I’m on the fence,’ Jodie said frankly. ‘I don’t usually say this, but they’re both very evenly balanced.’

  ‘Pick one!’ Victoria snapped, sitting up even straighter, if possible, than she usually did; even after having two children, her posture was as perfectly erect, her stomach as flat and sucked as tightly as ever into her ‘Pilates corset’ of highly trained muscle. ‘Come on, do it! I haven’t got all day.’

  Jodie opened her mouth, swiftly scanning the pros and cons of each candidate, about to make a decision – but just as she did so Victoria interrupted: ‘No! Wait!’

  She leaned forward, picking up the silver Tiffany pen that Monika had to polish every week, tapping it on the spotless glass desk that Monika had to wipe smooth three times a day.

  ‘We’ll pick both of them!’ Victoria announced.

  ‘You mean multiple covers?’ Jodie asked; this was often done, though never before with Style. ‘I thought you hated—’

  ‘No, I loathe editors who do that! Like the pull-out Vanity Fair covers, I hate those too! You know I despise people who can’t make their minds up. Here’s what we’ll do: we tell these two that they’re both in the running,’ Victoria said, eyes gleaming, raising one hand to her perfectly smooth blonde hair. ‘We’ll set them against each other – make them jump through our hoops. That way, we’ll have much more editorial control. If we commit to one of them, that gives them the power, and we want the wedding to be perfect – but if they know they’re not a definite yes, they’ll bend over backwards to please us. Yes, I love this! It’s perfect!’

  Why don’t we just make them cage fight? Jodie thought. Victoria would love that!

  But watching her boss positively lit up at this idea, she was certainly not going to say a word to counter it. Given the mood she was in, Victoria might actually take duelling brides as a serious suggestion.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Stare up at him – yes, great – like you’re offering him the basket thingywhatsit. Awwight there, ’ave a noice plum, Tarquin me love! ’

  The photographer lapsed into a mix of faux-Cockney and faux-Mummerset which was instantly understood by Milly, to whom he was talking, as an instruction to pose like a cross between Nell Gwynne with her oranges and an innocent damsel about to burst into a sung rendition of ‘Cherry Ripe’. She was bearing a trug, handmade in Sussex with a chestnut frame and handles and a base of woven willow treated with linseed oil; the Telegraph magazine, which had organized the shoot, was very keen on country-chic detail.

  The trug, an oval basket specially designed for carrying freshly picked fruit, was exactly the kind of thing that Telegraph readers ordered from advertisements in the sponsored gardening section. Milly raised it higher, smiling co
yly as she displayed its contents of early autumn apples, damsons, plums and blackberries for the benefit of her fiancé. Tarquin, who was posed next to her under a Worcester Pearmain apple tree, looked down worshipfully into her adorably pretty face.

  ‘Perfect!’ The photographer lapsed back into his normal RP tones. ‘Okay, I think we’ve got this set up, everyone take twenty while we get the picnic lighting sorted.’

  Hair and make-up and stylist bustled over to Milly and Tarquin, taking the trug away from her, ready to whisk them back to the big RV parked on the farm track that led into the Somerset orchard in which they were shooting. Milly turned to look over one pale shoulder, her golden curls, tonged into perfect ringlets, falling down her back.

  ‘Eva!’ she called. ‘Come along, I need you.’

  Eva, who had been watching and snapping photographs on her phone for the various social media accounts run by Milly and Me, nodded and duly followed, catching a couple of great behind-the-scenes photos as Milly, leaning on Tarquin, slipped off her scalloped pink leather Chloé pumps, handed them to the stylist, and stepped instead into the pair of Hunter wellies waiting ready for her. The cream macramé lace Dolce and Gabbana dress Milly was wearing had a tight pencil skirt, and the sight of Milly waddling awkwardly in the slim-fitting dress and oversized Hunters made even the naturally sober Eva stifle a smile.

  ‘Don’t photograph this,’ Milly called imperiously, still leaning on Tarquin’s arm as they picked their way across the orchard, squelching on some early windfalls. ‘I look really stupid.’

  ‘Darling, you could never look stupid,’ Tarquin said admiringly.

  ‘Aw,’ the make-up girl sighed. ‘You’re so lucky, Milly. My boyfriend would never say that to me.’

  ‘Wait till we’re married and he’ll change his tune,’ Milly said, but her self-satisfied tone belied her words; she was very well aware that Tarquin’s devotion to her was rock solid.