London

by Carina Axelsson

  No wonder the room we saw looked like such a creepy time warp, I thought. It probably hasn’t been touched since Clarissa died.

  “I sometimes see the two of them go in—Miss Wimple too, in fact. That’s the nanny,” Mr. Rivera continued. “Not often, but it does happen. Come to think of it, I’ve seen Georgie at the house a couple of times in the last month. It’s a shame they don’t keep it looking better on the outside. They could get a fortune for it if they sold it now.”

  We thanked Mr. Rivera before turning to leave. “I’ll want a cut of the treasure if you go mudlarking,” he called after us with a wave.

  Sebastian came home with me but then headed off to visit Gavin in the hospital. “I’ll get to the party as soon as I can after I’ve showered and changed,” he said. “Although, frankly, ma chère Holmes, I’m most looking forward to the boat trip afterward.”

  “Me too, Watson.”

  I wasn’t running late yet, but it would take me a while to get all the way across town to Spring Studios, where I was due for a shoot that afternoon. The studios are in north London, and I had to take the Tube and a bus to get there. As I sat watching the views whizzing past the bus windows, I turned over in my mind everything that Mr. Rivera had told us.

  Once I finally arrived at the studios, I pushed all thoughts of the case to the back of my mind and focused on the booking in hand—and Josh Locke. I checked in at reception and walked into Studio IJ, the largest at Spring Studios. I said hello to the team and the other models (they’d shot all morning and were now ready to leave)…or at least I tried to. Josh Locke’s fame hung over the studio like some kind of transparent fog, making it nearly impossible to hold eye contact with anyone, let alone speak to them. It didn’t matter who I tried to chat with, they all seemed to have an eye over my shoulder looking to see where Josh was, what he was doing, or who he was talking to.

  As for Josh, I couldn’t have gotten close to him without a struggle even if I’d wanted to. He was surrounded by models and studio crew. He seemed to enjoy the fuss everyone made over him though. Light banter came easily, and he seemed to hold the models and studio crew enthralled with everything he said.

  It wasn’t my sort of thing.

  I quietly headed over to the hair and makeup area and set down my shoulder bag, but before sitting down, I went to the buffet table laid out with an assortment of salads and finger foods and filled a small plate with some squares of potato frittata, a yummy-looking prawn salad, and a couple of veggie sides. It already seemed like ages since Sebastian and I had eaten our paninis, and working on a case always seemed to make my appetite voracious.

  With the loaded plate in one hand, I took as many toothpicks (speared fish cakes—yum!) as possible with the other. I was looking forward to sitting down for hair and makeup so that I could think through the morning’s discoveries while I ate. But as I turned away from the buffet table I bumped—hard—into someone. This time, unlike the collision by the revolving door yesterday, my lunch plate took the shock of the blow. I watched as my prawn salad went flying off my plate and landed all down the front of Josh Locke’s jacket.

  “Yesterday you nearly take me down in the revolving door, and today you accessorize me with a selection of salads. I’m clearly a walking target whenever you’re around,” he said. His voice was stern but his eyes were smiling.

  “Trust me,” I said, “you’re the last thing I’ve been aiming for.” I felt a little guilty about the salad though, so when I saw he was looking for something to wipe his jacket with, I put my plate down, found a roll of paper towels, and helped him clean himself up. Then I picked up my still half-full plate and left.

  He followed me as I walked over to hair and makeup and asked, “So, are you going to go all prickly on me again today?”

  I could see some of the crew watching us as we headed toward the far end of the studio. “Prickly?” I stopped and looked at him. “How would you be with someone who’d just sent you flying?”

  “Well, perhaps a bit prickly at first,” he said, smiling, “but afterward, once I’d seen that they’d clearly bumped into me accidentally, I think I’d lighten up.”

  “Then I guess that’s the difference between us.”

  “What?” He looked confused.

  “I’m not about to lighten up.” I continued walking, hoping that he’d leave me alone. I had to admit that I hadn’t been especially friendly with him yesterday, but we’d hardly met under the best of circumstances—and I’d been really irritated by all the preening and fame-worshipping that surrounded him.

  I thought again of the half-dozen people who had been listening at the door during his meeting with Jacky, not to mention her outrageous eyelash batting. Josh had seemed to revel in it. All that fuss made it hard for me to take him seriously. I had no idea where Josh the pop star ended and Josh the person began.

  “Is there something I’m doing or saying that you don’t like?” he persisted.

  “You’re being very direct today.”

  “That’s because I’m trying to start a conversation with you, and so far, I have to say, it’s not been easy.”

  I shrugged my shoulders and put my loaded plate down on the hairdressing table.

  “You know, Axelle,” he said, “I actually asked to work with you today—hard though that may be to believe. I’m starting to ask myself why.”

  He clearly meant to compliment me, and maybe most people would have taken it that way, but his words had the opposite effect on me. Famous Josh Locke wants to work with a particular model so he clicks his fingers, and said model magically appears in the studio and is supposed to be flattered. Is he serious? I thought. Did he really think that just because he wanted to work with me, I would jump at the chance of working with him?

  I tried my best to keep my anger in check, but that only lasted about a second. I turned to face him.

  “You what?” I said.

  “I asked to work with you.”

  “And so now I’m supposed to be grateful? Because you chose me?”

  To his credit, he looked confused.

  “Because if that’s the deal, then you’re totally mistaken. I’m not like some dish in a restaurant that you just pick off a menu!”

  Sam, the hairstylist, pointed to a chair and I sat down in a huff.

  “That’s not what I mean—at all.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s what it sounds like. I didn’t ask to work with you. I was put on option, accepted the job, and now here I am. I certainly wasn’t told that I’d have to be extra excited about the job just because I was your choice!”

  Josh looked furious. “Clearly, I made a mistake. That wasn’t my intention at all—but you’re obviously too stubborn to understand that.”

  I honestly didn’t see how else I could have interpreted his behavior. Because of his fame he’d (A) been given the option to decide which model he’d like to work with and (B) assumed the model—in this case, me—would be excited or flattered to work with him.

  “Good,” I said. “So now that that’s clear, why don’t we just decide to ignore each other and get on with our afternoon as best we can?”

  “Fine,” he said and walked away.

  “I hope the two of you are good actors,” Sam said as he started brushing my hair.

  “Why?”

  “Well, I don’t know if you’ve seen the storyboard yet, but you’re supposed to be a young, romantic couple.” Sam laughed lightly as he caught my eye in the mirror.

  Grrr!

  After that, the prep time progressed as normal. Sam finished my hair—it was stick straight and very 1960s—and then Priscilla, the Italian makeup artist, carefully applied foundation, concealer, contour, and blush before giving me cat’s eyes. This involved drawing a thick line of black liquid eyeliner—with a nice flick at the end—on my upper lid, and then generously adding false eyelashes, each one
applied individually with a pair of tweezers. The effect was amazing—I hardly recognized myself.

  I changed into the 1960s-inspired outfit the stylist from Teen Chic had chosen for me—a short, icy-pink dress and some really great, very high chunky heels in a zingy green. Ten minutes later I was on set…and in Josh Locke’s arms.

  Josh and I stood quietly embracing (per the photographer’s and Teen Chic’s instructions) on the pristine set, while one of the photographer’s assistants moved around us taking light readings. Behind us, the freshly painted, white background dazzled in the afternoon light, while from the side of the set Sam adjusted the strength of the air from the fan that was blowing directly on my hair. I couldn’t believe we had to stand romantically embracing each other like this—and Josh couldn’t help a snide comment.

  “Well, you asked for it,” I reminded him through gritted teeth.

  At that moment the photographer yelled out, “Could the two of you get friendly with each other, please? Remember the storyboard! These pictures are supposed to be romantic, okay? Tell yourselves that you’re in love.”

  “You know,” Josh whispered into my ear (which, by the way, he was way too close to), “we have to do two shots like this, so why don’t we make the best of it and find a subject we can talk about without going for each other’s throats?”

  “Fine. I’m all for calling a truce. But do you think you could pull back from my ear a bit?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. And who says I want to be this close to your ear anyway? In case you didn’t hear the photographer’s directions, I was told to stand like this.”

  The photographer yelled out again, “Friendly, please! Remember: you like each other!”

  “What do you suggest we talk about?” I asked Josh.

  “Why don’t we just start with what we’re doing.”

  “What? Modeling? You want to talk about modeling?”

  “Why not? It’s neutral.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Fine.” I thought about what Jenny had said about giving people a chance to show me more of themselves than just a first impression and decided, reluctant though I was, to give Josh his chance.

  “So how did you start?” Josh asked as he leaned in to me and rested his hands on my waist.

  “That’s better!” yelled the photographer.

  As we stood on set, shifting our weight to one leg, then the other, I told Josh about how I fell into modeling while I was in Paris for Fashion Week. Yes, our conversation was stilted at first. We practically had to squeeze our questions and answers out through our gritted teeth, but we were eager to continue because any conversation—even a challenging one—made the romantic poses we had to do easier.

  Gradually, we slipped into a more natural rhythm, until suddenly I realized that—probably because I wasn’t entirely concentrating on what I was saying (we were working, after all)—I’d told Josh about how I’d found missing French fashion designer Belle La Lune while I’d been in Paris, although I didn’t mention anything about becoming a model so I could work undercover. Instead I made sure to emphasize that I fell into modeling—and finding Belle—accidentally.

  Josh asked me lots of questions as we stood there on our own. (Well, sort of on our own. A crew was watching us, but—and this may sound strange if you haven’t done it before—when you’re on set, you feel as if you’re in a bubble because there’s generally music playing so loudly that unless someone shouts at you, you can’t hear them. Plus, the photographer is hidden behind a camera, and everyone else is standing in the shadows at the sides of the set.)

  Slowly, I began to forget that I was talking to Josh Locke, the famous singer, and started to feel as if I was just talking to Josh, a nice guy I was modeling with. After a while, I think Josh and I were both a bit surprised by how smoothly our truce seemed to be working.

  The spell broke when the photographer yelled at us to take a break before the next shot. There was a bit of weirdness as we walked back onto the set and settled into our next romantic pose—this time we actually had to stand and look at each other as if we were about to kiss—but within a minute we picked up where we’d left off. Josh knew a lot about modeling. He was familiar with the globe-trotting rhythm of castings, go-sees, and bookings—both editorial and commercial—that a modeling career was comprised of. I couldn’t help teasing him about how he must have dated a lot of models.

  “Actually,” he said, “I haven’t dated any models.” That was a surprise. I’d pegged him as a playboy, judging by the way he’d been flirting with the group of models earlier. “Although,” he continued, “you could say it’s in my blood.”

  “So how is it that you don’t date models, and yet it’s in your blood?”

  “It’s not that I have something against dating models,” he said, laughing. “I would if I met the right one. As for my modeling connection, that’s easy. My mom and granny were both models. My granny was even quite famous. So, I’ve heard about modeling my entire life.”

  That took me completely by surprise, and before I knew it, I was hearing all about how his mother had worked during the heyday of supermodels like Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, and Linda Evangelista.

  “She wasn’t quite in their exalted league,” said Josh, “although she wasn’t that far behind. The thing is, my mom didn’t want to leave London, and at that time London was definitely not the place to be if you wanted to hit the top of the modeling pyramid. Plus she had me fairly early on, so my arrival sort of nipped her career in the bud. My granny, on the other hand, was a real supermodel—although the term didn’t exist at that time.

  “Ever heard of Jodi Lipton? She was modeling in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and at that time London was really happening, so her career got off to a good start. Eventually she did end up spending a lot of time in Paris and New York. She worked with the best magazines, editors, and photographers of the time, and she was friends with all the supermodels of her day like Jean Shrimpton, Twiggy, and Veruschka.”

  As I listened to Josh’s story, I’ll admit I felt a twinge of guilt about the way I’d behaved just an hour earlier. In fact, I was learning a lot. Josh was interesting, and once he was on his own without his fawning fans getting in the way, it was as if the fame cloud evaporated and I was just talking to another friend.

  As I got sucked into his story, I began to ask more and more questions. A thought started to flit through my mind… Could Josh’s grandmother have known Clarissa Vane? From what Josh was saying, his grandmother had modeled in the same circles. I had an urge to ask Josh if I could meet his grandmother, but after our rocky start, why would he want to help me?

  I waited until we needed touching up before I decided to ask him. Josh and I stood quietly on set while Priscilla and Sam finished working on us. Then, as we slipped back into our pose, I opened my mouth to speak, but the words seemed stuck in my throat. I wanted it to seem as casual as possible, to avoid any difficult questions. The photographer’s assistant hovered around us for a minute or two, measuring the light, before I finally managed to say, “Josh, I’d love to meet your grandmother and talk to her about her modeling days.”

  My question took Josh so much by surprise that he pulled back and looked at me. The photographer loudly reminded us that we were supposed to be in a romantic pose. We both laughed. “Well, I can’t say that we’re romantic exactly,” Josh said as he pulled me closer to him and looked into my eyes again, “but at least we’re talking now.”

  “That’s great!” the photographer called.

  “So you want to meet my grandmother?”

  I nodded. “Uh…yes, please, if you think she’d be up to talking about her past to a perfect stranger.”

  “She would be if I introduced you, and I’ll happily arrange it. But can I ask why? Why would my grandmother’s fashion past interest you so much?”

  Great. Exactly the que
stion I’d been hoping he wouldn’t ask! “You’ve underestimated my passion for fashion, Josh!” I answered. It didn’t quite ring true—and to his credit Josh picked up on that.

  “Really? Even though you fell into modeling ‘by accident’?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  He looked at me through narrowed eyes, a smile playing on his lips.

  “That looks great!” the photographer interrupted. “Keep your eyes narrowed just like that, Josh!”

  I couldn’t help giggling.

  “Fine, don’t tell me,” Josh said, “but be warned.” He smiled as he leaned in closer. “I plan on figuring out all your secrets.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But I’m afraid you’ll be sadly disappointed.”

  He laughed. “I’ll be the judge of that.”

  We finished our second shot and the day came to an end. While the photographer and his assistants began to put the equipment away, and Sam, Priscilla, and everyone else started packing up, Josh phoned his grandmother, true to his word. As he hung up, his eyes found mine. A smile played on his lips as he said, “It’s all set up. She’s more than happy to speak to you. And she’ll even do it in person…that is, if you’d like to. At ten tomorrow morning, if that works for you. If it does, I can pick you up and take you there,” he said as he put his phone back in his pocket.

  I wasn’t sure how to answer. It was super sweet of Josh to organize the meeting—and of his grandmother to even agree to speak to me, let alone actually meet me! I was thrilled to have found a potential new source of info on the Vanes but surprised that I’d be meeting her together with Josh. It almost felt like a date. When he saw me hesitate he quickly said, “Think about it, and you can let me know tonight when I see you.”

  “Tonight? When I see you?” What was he talking about?

  “At Belle’s party. She told me you’d be there.”