by Karen Swan
Chloe tried to chuckle, smile even, but the horror of her loud, lanky friend stretched out on a hospital bed with God-only-knows-what injuries meant her body wouldn’t obey. ‘You’re right. It’s for Poppy. She’d hate for her clients to be let down. I think . . .’ She frowned as something came to her. ‘I think it’s Pelham’s daughter’s birthday next week. I’ll need to check the file.’
‘Do that.’
‘And . . .’ She thought back, recalling Poppy’s phone conversation as she’d left the office yesterday. ‘I think she was setting up something on a sub for Mike Greenleve.’
‘Sub? As in submarine?’
‘Yes.’
She heard him sigh again. ‘. . . Okay. Then check on that, see where she got to with it. But this is good. This is what I meant, Chloe – you’re the only one for the job. You know more than you think you do. All those little snippets and passing details. You just need to think back to things you heard and tap in. It’s all in there. Just come back here and start getting up to speed with what she was working on; I’m in Palm Beach at the moment – flying back in an hour – but we’ll touch base again tomorrow. Hopefully by then there’ll be some update from the hospital too.’
‘God, I hope so,’ Chloe said with urgency. ‘Please God let her be all right.’
‘We’ve just got to keep calm and carry on,’ he said, before ringing off. Chloe stared at the phone, marvelling that he’d actually, in all seriousness, used the tea-towel cliché.
But he was right. What other choice did they have?
Chapter Two
Hotel Crillon, Paris, July 2018
Elodie swung a crossed leg as the house model struck a pose, the girl’s eyes fixed on a painting behind her head. She recognized the look in those eyes all too well, the particular blankness that comes from a severely restricted diet and nights spent drinking tequila, the detachment that is inevitable when you are just a frame, a glorious accidental conflation of long bones and tight skin, startlingly visible and yet invisible at the same time.
She brought her attention back to the dégradé tweed cloth of the girl’s jacket instead, the jewelled buttons, the rich ivory-coloured tulle that was so flattering in European light during the winter.
‘Now, that could work for the Amfar Benefit in New York at the beginning of October,’ murmured Raquel, her stylist, who was sitting beside her and clutching a printout of her formidable social engagements for the next four months. ‘The cut would be divine on you.’
‘I have a jacket just like it.’
‘Yes, but that’s in LA and, to be honest, I was never sure about the neck on it. Besides, if we got them to cut this one in the berry colourway, I think it would look so much more vibrant against the dress, don’t you think? It’s a bit too weddingy all in the cream like that.’
Elodie didn’t reply; already she could feel herself being worn down by her stylist’s relentless, voracious acquisitiveness.
‘And that shade of red is so your colour,’ Raquel added.
It was decided then.
The atelier mistress standing off to the side, a vision of efficiency and discretion in a white work coat, nodded her head and the model kicked her foot forward, spinning round on the spot and sashaying from the room, just as another entered in a midnight and white feathered gala gown.
‘Now this, this,’ Raquel said, with a buzz of excitement in her voice, ‘should be just perfect for the Breast Cancer benefit next month. If they can get it done in time.’ She raised her head and addressed the atelier mistress directly. ‘Is that possible, Madame Dubeau?’
‘Of course. It would be prioritized, naturally.’
‘No – it’s sleeveless,’ Elodie said, raising an objection. On this, she wouldn’t be pushed.
Raquel’s threaded eyebrows arched to a perfect point as they always did on this subject. ‘But your arms are exquisite, Elodie, so slim.’
Elodie gave a tiny dismissive shake of her head and held her tongue, knowing her silence was more powerful in putting across her displeasure.
Raquel looked back at Madame Dubeau with a sigh. ‘Could sleeves be put on this style or do you think they would detract?’
‘Peut-être, a narrow bracelet sleeve in the silk chiffon? Or a balloon style in the silk mousseline? We could get the atelier to make up a toile showing the different looks?’
The house model – staring at the same painting behind Elodie’s head – shifted her weight onto the other hip. There, but not.
Raquel looked back at her. ‘What do you think?’ Her tone was confiding, intimate. ‘I think it’s a toss-up between this and the Valentino.’
‘Valentino?’ Elodie queried. There had been so many. How could she be expected to remember?
‘Yes, red satin – you know the one, tiny little bow at the neck, trapeze line, very skinny arms?’
‘Ah,’ Elodie nodded, not quite sure if she genuinely did remember it or if Raquel’s earnest tone had simply convinced her she did. ‘Well, if the Valentino’s already got the sleeves . . .’
‘You’re right of course. I doubt Karl would thank us for tinkering with the fine-tuning of his creation.’ Raquel looked over at Madame Dubeau. ‘We’ll pass on this.’
Madame Dubeau nodded again and the model kicked her foot forward in the identical fashion of the previous girl, leaving the room just as the elevator ‘dinged’. Everyone looked up and Elodie felt that frisson that she always felt when her husband walked into a room. It was as though the molecular set-up actually changed – compressed somehow, sucking out the air, making the colours shimmer.
She watched as he strode down the outer hall, walking through the open arch to the drawing room of their suite, his eyes pinned upon her. He had been away for seventeen days now – Berlin, London, New York, Chicago and elsewhere besides; he didn’t usually leave her for so long.
Her eyes followed his every move, her heart beating harder as it always did in his presence, but she didn’t stir from her seated position on the little gilt chair and she watched as he took in the scene – little girls playing dress-up.
‘You ladies look like you’re enjoying yourselves.’ Amusement curled in the words like a sleeping cat. His dark-suited silhouette, strong-shouldered and compact, looked hard-edged and blocky in the elegant, ethereal room where extravagant domed displays of white peonies – as big as snowmen’s heads – sat on spindle-legged tables, and the pale-celery silk-lined walls were hand-drawn with wispy chinoiserie.
‘Darling, you remember Madame Dubeau from the Chanel Atelier,’ Elodie said in a quiet voice. ‘And Raquel, of course.’
‘Of course,’ he murmured, inclining his head fractionally in agreement even though Elodie knew he had absolutely no idea who the sleek-bobbed brunette to her right was. He had met Raquel a dozen times before but he always greeted her as a perfect stranger. ‘Enchanté, ladies.’
Another model stepped through from the spare bedroom that was being used as the dressing area, a startled look crossing her face and causing her to falter momentarily in her long-legged stride as she saw the client’s husband’s sudden, unexpected bulk behind the silk sofa, an almost violent intrusion of masculine energy in what had been a cocoon of feminine activity. But then again, power and the illusion of it often had strong effects on people. It stunned, sometimes frightened, other times excited.
The poor girl resumed her walk – suddenly, the task looked difficult, the jet-beaded evening dress ridiculously de trop in the mid-morning light.
‘Raquel and I are refreshing our memories of the collection. We have a busy autumn schedule coming up,’ Elodie said, watching him watch the model who had struck her pose and was now frozen on the spot, trembling like a deer, eyes unblinking on that damned painting behind her.
‘But is this necessary?’ her husband asked with a hint of a wry smile climbing into his eyes. ‘All this . . . drama?’ A fractional tip of his head indicated the immaculate, serenely quiet room. ‘If you need a new wardrobe, my love, just buy
the lot.’
Beside her, Raquel startled as though prodded by a red-hot poker. ‘Sorry?’
But Elodie fell ever more still. She knew what her husband wanted, what he was really saying.
‘Darling, you’re too good to me,’ she said quietly, holding his gaze for a moment before turning back to the other women in the room. ‘And you’re busy, Madame Dubeau, I should have realized there are so many others who need your attentions; I’m being selfish detaining you here.’ She smiled, allowing a beam of radiance to escape from her as she rose from her seat and formally ended the proceedings. ‘Could you please arrange for one of everything in my size, excluding the previous dress? But we’ll take the jacket from Look Twelve in the berry red. And my usual requirements apply.’ Nothing above the knee. No bare arms. No extreme cleavage or cut-outs.
‘Bien sûr,’ the atelier mistress nodded, too elegant to allow her jubilation to show on her face as the house model clipped past at a pace. ‘And would you like it to be delivered here, or to one of the other addresses?’ They had five on file for her.
‘Here’s fine.’ Her hands were clasped in front of her but impatience was folded in the gesture and Madame Dubeau, understanding, discreetly took her leave. They had her measurements. The finer details could be arranged another time.
Raquel, on the other hand, was oblivious to Elodie’s subtlety, her almost-black eyes bright with the excitement that came from coolly dropping half a million on a single designer’s collection for a season’s worth of parties.
Elodie headed her off at the pass, leaning forward to air-kiss her cheeks. ‘It was so good of you to arrange this, Raquel, thank you. I’ll let you get back to your day. You must be so busy at this time in the couture schedule.’
‘Oh – well, yes,’ Raquel stammered as Elodie took her hand in her own and shook it lightly. The butler was standing waiting by the arch to lead her out. ‘But we’ll need to talk about the Valentino. I still think—’
‘Absolutely. I’ll call you.’
‘And I’ve got Dior booked for Thursday.’
‘Wonderful.’
Elodie’s stillness had been cultivated over many years; her stunning looks had exposed her to a lifetime of hungry stares and jealous scrutinies which she had always struggled to endure. She had never enjoyed being in the limelight, never liked having her photograph taken, and her wedding day, in which she was subjected to all those things, had been an agony. It had been many years before she had come to notice how her guarded demeanour actively unnerved people, that the more quietly she spoke and the more still she became, the more agitated and restless they became in turn, as though they had to fill and occupy the vacuum she created. Usually they could endure a few minutes at most before they were compelled to move off, leaving her to the peace she craved.
She was working it right now, seeing how they scattered. She smiled but said nothing, her dark eyes blank and unreadable, and Raquel scrabbled for her bag, shoving in the notebook with her elaborate – but quite unnecessary – sketches of each outfit she had earmarked for her client. ‘Such a fabulous decision; the entire collection’s to die for; you’ll be a vision,’ she said, blowing extravagant kisses as she dodged sofas and side tables and followed the butler through to the ante-hall.
Elodie waited for the click of the suite door closing before she slid her eyes over to her husband’s. He was waiting, one hand reached out to her, the palm up and open.
‘Shall we, darling?’
Chapter Three
New York
The office had been designed with the wow factor in mind. Visitors, upon stepping out of the lifts, were faced with a double-height space – the advantages of taking the top two floors of an old factory – and a run of wall-to-wall khaki steel windows that looked straight onto the river. But if the carcass of the building was industrial, the fittings were super-luxe, with matt-black walls and banks of ivory leather desks grouped in rectangular clusters through the open-plan space. What enclosed spaces there were, were smoked-glass cubes of various sizes – the smallest for receiving guests and confidential tête-à-têtes, others for bigger department meetings, and the biggest of all for Jack’s office. The idea behind it was inclusivity – no hidden agendas, no political power plays behind locked doors and shuttered windows – but it had led to something of an office ritual to lay bets on the colour and design of Jack’s dandy socks each day as he came in and invariably pushed his shoes off, whilst sitting at his desk. (If she remembered correctly, Friday’s had been Dennis the Menace motifs on black.)
The Poggenpohl kitchen, at the opposite end, just down from the lifts, boasted four Gaggia Naviglio coffee machines and a vast Meneghini La Cambusa fridge, which was freshly stocked with sushi every morning for employees to nibble on at will; the kitchen abutted a vast soft-seating area put together from vintage orange-velvet Bellini chairs, with board games and noise-cancelling headphones left out for anyone who needed them. The pièce de résistance, however, had to be the giant graphic world map that ran one full room height along the nearside wall. White on a black background, tiny lights flickered on it intermittently like peeping stars on a cloudy night, indicating requests coming in from members across the globe and providing an at-a-glance guide to which regions were awake and active at any given time.
Chloe wasn’t sure she would ever forget Jack’s partner Tom Elliott’s face when he had received the architects’ final invoice, but Jack had been adamant – how could they promote a luxury lifestyle to their customers if they didn’t deliver it to their staff? It was about ‘integrity’, Jack had insisted; that was his favourite word whenever he was trying to get his way on something. But perhaps he’d had a point – Architectural Digest had run a feature on Invicta’s new American headquarters when the space had been unveiled and plenty of other features had run on it since, buying them invaluable publicity and inculcating them on the radar of Manhattan’s most asset-rich, time-poor denizens.
But there was no wow factor for Chloe as she walked in now, at almost midnight on a Saturday night. On her way in, she had seen the whirl of blue lights, police tape flickering around a protected area further down the street, and the sight of it had almost made her throw up. Poppy. She knew that was where it had happened, she just knew it. Her friend’s favourite juice bar was half a block along. Had she been going to get herself one, a treat after yet another Saturday in the office?
She stood for a moment, staring at Poppy’s desk. Nothing tangible had changed. It remained exactly as Chloe had left it the evening before, except that the drained cup of green juice was now in the bin; but her chair was left on a half-spin, facing away, as though she’d jumped out of it – which was quite likely, knowing Poppy.
At the very end of the space, the lights from the out-of-hours desk pooled onto the corridor floor, the team’s voices just a low murmur behind the door as they dealt with the bread-and-butter requests of securing restaurant reservations, getting members onto club VIP lists and booking last-minute hotel suites.
Chloe sank down, weak-kneed, into her friend’s chair and looked around her with teary eyes, the evening’s earlier beers beginning to make her head throb. Tentatively, as though trying on the space for size, she ran her hands over the smooth surface of the desk, her eyes hopping like a robin over the eclectic gathering of miscellanea – a fig-scented candle almost burnt to the base; a black and white photo of Poppy with her four siblings, all of them dangling from the giant sweeping branches of an ancient yew tree; the pink starfish she had bought in Little Exuma in March and used as a completely useless paperweight; the patchouli and rose otto meditation mist she would spray, ‘Omming’ loudly, whenever Serena click-clacked past looking officious; the severely chewed lids of her favourite red Bic biros; a half-empty pack of spearmint gum. And Chloe knew without opening it that there was a small pot of Marmite in the top right drawer, ‘for emergencies’.
Poppy’s desk was barely five feet from her own, and yet everything looked different from this
vantage. She had an unobstructed view to the kitchen and lifts, which from Chloe’s desk were partially hidden by an exposed brick pillar, and the small mirror affixed to the top of her monitor, which Chloe had assumed was for applying make-up during one of her famous quick-change transformations – Poppy had a model’s chameleon-like ability to transform herself with a quick twist of her hair and a hint of dress – actually reflected not just the main glass-walled meeting room but also the happenings on Serena’s desk and in Jack’s office behind her.
To her right, the white world map winked, so unbalanced with demands as to seem that it might tip over. The West Coast was speckled with pinpricks still but the body of the country behind it lay in darkness; Europe was only just stirring and wouldn’t hit peak activity for another few hours yet, but it was lunchtime in China and the Asian continent was ablaze with flashing lights. It had always struck Chloe as peculiarly meditative to see the way the lights steadily swept across the wall throughout a day.
She checked the time in Greenland – almost 4 a.m. there. Was Subocheva still there? Chloe didn’t know anything of his itinerary once the iceberg dinner was completed, although the fact that Poppy had been in here today suggested she had been following up on his plans. Pulling open one of the side drawers where she knew Poppy kept her client folders, she found the five names she was looking for: Subocheva, Mike Greenleve, Pelham, the film director Christopher Proudlock and Rosaria Bertolotti, the opera singer. It was their lives – global, connected, demanding – that had dominated Poppy’s every waking hour and now, until she came back, they would dominate Chloe’s.
With a weary sigh, she sat back in the chair, her double espresso still steaming through the sip-slit in the lid, and began to read. It was time to get up to speed.
Monday came round with two sweeps of the map, the bright lights swinging east to west like a prison-ground’s search-light, the out-of-hours teams switching shifts as night turned to day and back to night again. She had spent the entire weekend camped out here and she had the stiff, aching body to prove it, only returning to her apartment to catch a few hours’ sleep before coming back to read and revise Poppy’s files like a cramming student. She had learnt about her newly adopted clients’ careers and family lives, the exact locations of their international homes and the favourite suites and hotels they preferred to stay in when travelling, their dietary requirements, allergies and cosmetic surgery histories, musical and cultural tastes, preferred designers, names of their pets, the cars they drove, the schools their children went to, the dates of their birthdays, their families and loved ones. She had trawled their social media accounts, making notes of anything extra she thought to be pertinent in shot, and even though she had yet to meet any of them face to face, she felt confident she now knew them better than their mothers, spouses, kids, best friends or bosses. She had the three-sixty view on them, the profile that only built up when their multiple different public faces were superimposed onto one body in a way that could never happen in life. The business associate would never know her client as a friend; the mistress would never know her client as a spouse; and the friend would never know her client as a business rival. But she did, and their every peccadillo – be it a specific Mont Blanc fountain pen for signing a contract, or forty-eight white long-stemmed roses for a new lover – was on her list and in her head. She had done all she could and now it was Monday and the phone would ring. It would begin.