by Anita Hughes
Serena flashed on meeting Chase in her father’s study and fixing his shirt. She remembered the way he plotted their future like a game of Snakes and Ladders. She saw him slide the diamond ring on her finger and whisper they were a great team.
She walked along the harbor to Nick’s car. She opened the door and slid into the passenger seat. She leaned against the upholstery and let the tears roll down her cheeks.
* * *
Serena walked into the Cary Grant Suite and saw Zoe perched on a love seat, eating a bowl of sorbet. Her hair was softly layered and she wore a red silk dress and taupe pumps.
“Where have you been?” Serena asked. “You changed your hair, it looks gorgeous.”
“I feel like Wendy in Peter Pan,” Zoe said, touching her neck. “But the stylist at Sergio Valente said it brought out my eyes.”
“You went to Rome?” Serena raised her eyebrow.
“Rome and Milan and Paris.” Zoe licked her spoon. “My father introduced me to Tom Ford and Valentino. When Valentino kissed my hand I almost died—I promised I’d never wear any color besides red.”
“Red suits you,” Serena said, smiling. “Where’s your father’s girlfriend?”
“Don’t call her that.” Zoe shuddered. “She’s back in Yugoslavia or Transylvania or wherever Sports Illustrated models are from.”
“The last time I saw you you looked like you wanted to drive a stake through your father’s heart.”
“We walked along the beach and he told me everything,” Zoe replied. “Then we went back to the Carlton and told Verushka to pack her Louis Vuitton cosmetics case and catch the first flight. After she left he ordered a private jet and we flew to Milan. We had a private tour of Valentino’s offices and dinner on Lake Como. Fresh scampi and risotto at an eighteenth-century palazzo in Bellagio. The next morning we flew to Paris and met Tom Ford.”
“Chelsea would be jealous.” Serena eyed the dress boxes piled on the dining-room table. “Does this mean you’re going back to Sydney?”
Zoe’s eyes darkened and she put down her spoon.
“My father loves my mother, but it’s more complicated than I thought. He’s afraid she won’t forgive him.”
“What are you going to do?” Serena asked.
“You’re going to help him,” Zoe said. She stood up and smoothed her hair. “He’s waiting for us at the Carlton Restaurant.”
“How am I going to help him?”
“You’ll see.” Zoe grabbed her purse. “He’ll tell you the whole story.”
* * *
“Zoe told me so much about you,” Malcolm said as he stood up and extended his hand. “It’s not often I meet a woman masquerading as a salesgirl at an exclusive jewelry store.”
Serena blushed and sat at the round table next to the window. She glanced at her white linen dress and flat sandals and felt underdressed. Other women wore shimmering cocktail dresses with four-inch stilettos and heavy gold jewelry.
Serena remembered the drive back from Monaco, Nick driving too quickly and Serena hunched against the door wishing she hadn’t come. She was still too raw, her eyes too quick to fill with tears, to spend time with someone else.
Malcolm put on his reading glasses and consulted his menu. He had salt-and-pepper hair and clear gray eyes and finely lined skin. He wore a light wool blazer and beige slacks and leather shoes with tassels.
“I’m glad you did.” Malcolm nodded at Serena. “I hate to see Zoe hurt, it’s never what I wanted.”
Malcolm ordered lobster rigatoni and chateaubriand and plates of risotto. Serena tasted the fresh tomato and mozzarella salad and realized she was starving. Nick had wanted to stop at a bistro, but Serena pleaded a terrible headache and ran straight up to her room.
“After the kidnapping, my wife wouldn’t talk to me,” Malcolm began. “She ate her meals in her room and we were only together on public occasions. I slept in the study, spent all my time at the office, made sure I was home at night to be with Zoe.”
Malcolm drank the full-bodied red wine and looked out at the harbor. “Laura doubled security on Zoe and wouldn’t let her out of her sight. Every time the wind shifted she thought someone was in the house or following her on the street. After four months she said she couldn’t take it anymore. She wanted us to move to her parents’ sheep farm.”
Malcolm paused and cut thick slices of steak. “I was miserable, but I didn’t think the answer was to hide at a sheep station in the middle of nowhere. What kind of life would that be for Zoe? She was almost a teenager! She needed to be distracted by boys and clothes and makeup—not listen to the rain on a tin roof and have her schoolwork delivered by a biplane.
“Laura argued that the safety of my family wasn’t as important to me as the latest shipment of swimwear and my winter collection.” Malcolm’s gray eyes flickered. “She was wrong; I’d already made enough money for several lifetimes. I didn’t want the kidnappers to win, I didn’t want them to take our beloved mansion on Sydney Harbor, Sundays at Doyle’s in Watson’s Bay, picnics in the Botanic Gardens.
“We saw a therapist and finally agreed to send Zoe to boarding school in Surrey. Laura had cousins there and the name Gladding wasn’t anything special.
“I thought things would get back to normal. Laura loved to entertain; we used to have fabulous dinner parties: the prime minister rubbing elbows with Judy Davis and Hugh Jackman and Baz Luhrmann.” Malcolm speared a roasted potato with his fork.
“She attended her charity functions and society events. She even moved back into our bedroom so the maids wouldn’t gossip, but she wouldn’t let me touch her.” Malcolm looked at Serena and his eyes were like cut glass. “I hadn’t kissed a woman in thirteen years.
“I’m fifty-two years old; I want to travel, see a sunset in Africa, explore the grottoes in Capri. And I want to do it with someone, I want to touch a woman’s hair, smell her perfume.”
“How am I going to help?” Serena asked. She looked at her plate and realized she hadn’t touched the crunchy Mediterranean sea bass or the medley of spring vegetables.
“I bought Laura a beach house in Palm Bay, her own racehorse, a wardrobe of couture clothes, and it didn’t change anything,” Malcolm said, and pushed aside his plate. “I want to publicly admit that I was wrong, that I should have sold the business, moved to Yarra Yarra or wherever the hell she wanted. I want you to write a feature story for Vogue telling her how much I love her.”
“You want to apologize to your wife in front of millions of readers?” Serena repeated.
“Laura doesn’t wear her emotions, she never has a hair out of place or a creased hemline,” Malcolm continued earnestly. “I want to show her I’m willing to bleed in public.”
“Do you think it will work?” Serena asked doubtfully.
“I’m too old to learn new tricks,” Malcolm replied, leaning back in his chair. “I want my wife back and I don’t know how else to get her.”
* * *
Serena sat in the living room of the Cary Grant Suite watching Zoe unwrap Godiva chocolates.
“I don’t even like caramel,” Zoe said with a sigh, tossing the wrapper on the coffee table. “I wish room service would stop leaving them on my pillow.”
“Do you think your mother will forgive him?” Serena asked.
“It was my idea,” Zoe said, unwrapping another chocolate. “I can’t bear to think of my parents divorced. My mother might be as stiff as a poker, but I know deep down she loves him.”
Serena thought of her own parents, always showering each other with attention. Her father would surprise Kate with a bottle of Dior, tickets to a new play, one perfect orchid. Every morning Kate made Charles two poached eggs just the way he liked them. She made sure his coffee was waiting and his newspapers were neatly folded.
Serena tried to imagine her father sitting at another breakfast table with a dark-haired woman and two small children. She pictured him cutting their toast, pouring their milk, reading them stories.
�
�I want my parents to be happy.” Zoe interrupted her thoughts, tossing the chocolates in the garbage. “And I can’t imagine having a stepmother who’d make a perfect villain in a James Bond movie.”
chapter thirteen
Serena gazed out the window at the glittering Mediterranean and felt a twinge of excitement. Attendants in crisp white shirts and shorts carried beach chairs and fluffy white towels. Serena watched fishermen push their boats out to sea and yacht captains polish the decks of their floating palaces.
She jumped out of bed, slipped on a cotton dress, tied her hair with a blue ribbon, and took her laptop into the living room. She poured a cup of creamy French roast coffee, cut a ripe peach, and sat down to work on Yvette’s story.
Her phone rang and she picked it up.
“Please don’t tell me you’re sitting on the beach in a bikini,” Chelsea’s voice came over the line. “San Francisco has been socked in for days. I’m wearing cashmere and drinking hot tea.”
“I’m not at the beach.” Serena smiled, gazing at the white sand filled with chaise lounges and striped beach umbrellas. “But the weather is gorgeous.”
“I knew I shouldn’t have become editor in chief,” Chelsea sighed. “I answer to bureaucrats in pin-striped suits while my features editor works on her suntan.”
“Yvette’s story is coming together,” Serena said as she glanced at her laptop. “I think you’ll be pleased.”
“Harry Ames called me, he’s worried about you.”
“The publisher?” Serena asked.
She had only met Harry Ames once, at Vogue’s New York Christmas party at the Carlyle. He kept tapping his fingers on his glass of eggnog, and Serena felt he’d rather be talking to Donna Karan or Ashley Olsen or anyone besides an editorial assistant.
“Someone gave him a copy of the Chronicle and he read the story about your father.”
Serena clutched the phone so tightly she thought it would break. “I haven’t seen it.”
“‘Retired senator has kept a second family secret for thirty years, his wife and daughter are devastated,’” Chelsea continued.
Serena felt the room tip and sat quickly on an ivory silk armchair. She tried to answer but her throat closed up and her heart raced.
“I told Harry you’re staying in a luxury suite at the Carlton-InterContinental sipping Moët and Chandon and eating foie gras.” Chelsea paused. “He thought maybe I should send you home and assign someone else to Yvette.”
Serena pictured Chelsea in her Hervé Léger dress, perched on the side of her desk. She remembered Chelsea saying if Serena didn’t want to go to Cannes, she’d write someone else’s name on the Air France ticket.
“I haven’t had time to think about anything but Yvette,” Serena replied brightly. “She’s spilled some secrets that will shock you.”
“They better knock the socks off the fashion world or Harry Ames is going to serve me as lunch to the board of directors.” Chelsea was quiet and Serena thought she’d hung up. “You’re the best writer I have; don’t let me think I’ve made a mistake.”
Serena hung up and sank back against the satin cushions. She was desperate to read the article about Senator Charles Woods, but she didn’t have time for self-pity. She had to see Yvette and then she had to sit at her computer and write the best story that ever crossed Chelsea’s desk.
* * *
“Serena!” Yvette opened the door of the Sophia Loren Suite.
Yvette wore a red linen dress with a wide white hat. Her cheeks were dusted with blush and she wore thick mascara and red lipstick.
“I was visiting a friend,” Yvette said as she took off her hat. “She’s quite sick, I thought I’d dress up and take her to lunch. There’s nothing like eating soufflé and watching the sailboats to lift one’s spirits.
“We’ve been friends for years,” Yvette continued, smoothing her hair. “Isn’t it funny how much time we waste on men when our female friendships last a lifetime.”
Serena took out her notepad and waited while Yvette poured a cup of vanilla tea.
“It’s impossible to see that when we’re young.” Yvette curled up on a peach silk armchair. “We only know desire, the feeling that starts in your loins and makes everything else seem completely unimportant.”
* * *
“I want you to go to a party with me,” Bertrand announced, leaning against the fireplace mantel.
It was late afternoon and Yvette had been working for hours on Bertrand’s manuscript. Her back ached and her stomach felt stretched like a balloon.
“What kind of party?” Yvette asked.
“A Hollywood producer is interested in Pays de Cocagne. Edouard is in New York and he doesn’t trust me to go by myself,” Bertrand replied, lighting a cigarette. “He’s still angry that I refused to go on a book tour. I wrote the damn thing, do I have to recite it like a fucking parrot?”
“You want me to go to a cocktail party?” Yvette raised her eyebrow.
“Edouard does, he seems to like you,” Bertrand said, then inhaled deeply. “Are you sure you didn’t sleep with him?”
Yvette felt the baby kick against her cotton dress.
“I’ll go.” She nodded. “But you have to stop smoking, the smell is making me nauseated.”
* * *
Yvette stood in front of the mirror in her dressing room, painting her lips with Lancôme lipstick. She told herself she was going to the party because Edouard asked her to, but she knew she wanted to stay close to Bertrand.
Some afternoons after he left she crept up to her bedroom and closed the curtains. She lay on the king-size bed and stroked herself, picturing Bertrand’s dark eyes and cocky smile. She touched her nipples and moved her fingers against her wet mound until her body shuddered in long waves. Only when the baby kicked and she needed to go to the bathroom did she get up and splash cold water on her face.
* * *
“It’s a shame your husband is missing the party,” Bertrand said as they approached a white villa flanked by palm trees. “He hasn’t spent much time in Antibes; is there trouble in paradise?”
Yvette bent down to adjust her heel. She wore a pale pink maternity dress and white leather sandals. Her dark hair curled around her neck and she wore small diamond studs.
“Henri is in London,” Yvette said, bristling. “He’s in the middle of an acquisition.”
“I hear it’s raining in London.” Bertrand climbed the stone steps. “I hope he took his raincoat.”
* * *
Yvette stood by the bar, sipping a Shirley Temple. The living room had an oak floor covered with Oriental rugs. Leather sofas were scattered around the room and two afghan hounds slept next to a glass coffee table.
“American women have no fashion sense,” Bertrand observed. He wore white linen slacks and a white T-shirt. He held a scotch in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
Yvette gazed at the women in hot-pink miniskirts and platform shoes and wished she’d stayed at the villa. She’d never attended a party without Henri, and she felt suddenly shy and out of place.
Bertrand was swept away by a blond man in a navy silk suit and Yvette examined the array of fruits and cheeses.
“Your husband is very handsome,” a female voice said. “I’m sure you’ll have a beautiful baby.”
Yvette looked up and saw a young woman with blue eyes and straight blond hair. She wore a turquoise miniskirt with a gold chain belt.
“He’s not my husband.” Yvette blushed.
“Everyone said the French were progressive,” the girl said, filling a plate with crackers and duck pâté. “In Ohio you still get a ring before you make a baby.”
“I am married but Bertrand is not my husband.” Yvette flashed her wedding band. “He is a novelist, we are friends.”
“That’s the author everyone’s talking about,” the girl said, glancing at Bertrand curiously. “I imagined him younger, with thicker hair.”
“Bertrand is a wonderful writer,” Yvette said
stiffly, filling a plate with wedges of Edam and slices of melon.
“He has quite the reputation,” the girl replied, tossing her blond hair over her shoulder. “If he’s not taken, I think I’ll say hello.”
Yvette watched the girl cross the room and touch Bertrand’s arm. She saw Bertrand lean close, his shoulder brushing her breast. She saw the girl flutter long fake eyelashes and whisper in his ear. She saw him take her hand and lead her into the hallway.
Yvette dropped the plate on the side table. She clutched her stomach and ran to the bathroom. She stood in front of the beveled mirror, retching into the pink marble basin.
* * *
“You can’t go to Paris,” Bertrand fumed. “I’m on a fucking deadline. You have to finish translating the manuscript.”
“And I’m having a baby.” Yvette sat at her desk writing a list for Françoise. “My doctor insists I come in for an appointment.”
“You had an appointment last week.” Bertrand paced around the living room, clutching his straw hat. “It’s not so hard to have a baby; you wait nine months and it pops out.”
“Something about test results.” Yvette kept her eyes on her notepad. “I’ll return in a few days.”
* * *
Yvette had woken up the morning after the party and knew she couldn’t stay in Antibes. Being around Bertrand kept her body in a state of alert. Her blood pressure was raised and the pulsing between her legs was a mix of the most exquisite pleasure and sharpest pain.
She would write him a letter and say the doctor insisted she finish her pregnancy in Paris. He could mail the manuscript and she would complete it in her apartment. The children might be angry that their days at the beach were cut short, but when Henri returned from London he could take them paddle boating in the Bois de Boulogne.
Yvette slept during the train ride, her body filled with a wonderful sense of relief. The train pulled into the Gare du Nord and she gazed out the window, waiting for the conductor to open the doors.
She saw a man kissing a blond woman wearing a short white dress. She pictured kissing Bertrand in public, his smooth cheek touching hers, his hand reaching beneath her skirt.