It was a forest of trees. Spectral, otherworldly trees bowed to the ground under the weight of their branches and drooping leaves. Trees shaped not by some divine hand but by a man and woman who were busy mixing up huge amounts of papier-mâché.
Inge, when she could stir herself, insisted that good art made you feel, and Ellie had always nodded and agreed, but it was only now, on a sticky hot Friday afternoon in a working-class area of Paris, that she finally got it. She was getting tingles, not dissimilar to the tingles she’d got when she’d walked right into David’s arms all those weeks ago. Looking at this enchanted forest of paper trees made her appreciate the fragility and futility of nature, how it celebrated life and death and made her feel humble and a bit teary, but also made her want to jump up and down and clap her hands in delight, because, really? This must have been how Brian Epstein felt when he first heard The Beatles.
She managed to convey some of this to Claude and Marie, the artists, who sat her down, made her some mint tea and showed her a time-lapse film they’d shot of a tree’s year-long cycle. The barren, bare branches of winter, the first tiny buds appearing, the froth of pink and white spring blossom. Then the lush, redolent glory of green leaves and how they lost their vigour in the dog days of August, turning gold and orange as autumn settled in, then becoming desiccated wisps that floated gently to the ground.
Ellie longed to call Vaughn, but she didn’t. She simply gave her card to Claude and Marie and begged them to keep on making paper trees and not to seek any other representation, and of course they could totally stay with her when they came to London for the Frieze Art Fair in October but she’d be in touch way before then.
It was a relief to feel excited and happy. It was even a relief that when the excitement and happiness fizzled out, instead of being sad again, Ellie seethed about the in justice of her imminent unemployment. She still didn’t think she had an angle but she certainly had no compunction about keeping Claude and Marie under wraps until Vaughn played his hand.
Ellie wandered out onto the Rue de Belleville. She’d planned on grabbing a table and a cold glass of citron pressé outside Aux Folies, but there was a fetid scent in the air and she decided to return to her flat. Every artist she met told her that Paris had been anaesthetised and sanitised and had lost its heart and soul, but at least it didn’t smell like a pissoir. Her phone rang just as she was about to descend into the Metro to catch line 11 back to Le Marais.
It was an English number familiar enough that she fumbled to slide the lock on her phone to take the call.
‘Miss Cohen?’ It was odd that her hopes could both rise and fall at the sound of his voice. She couldn’t believe that David’d gone back to that ‘Miss Cohen’ crap even after he’d kissed her, mouthed her breasts, had his hands full of her. He couldn’t make it any more obvious that she was back in the box marked ‘strictly business’.
‘Is there something I can help you with?’ Ellie asked as tersely as she could.
‘I have some documents you need to sign,’ he said, like his brusque tone completely trumped her terseness. ‘I’m sending an overnight courier on a wait-and-return. Address, please?’
‘What documents? What could I possibly need to sign?’
‘Standard documents,’ he insisted. ‘You were meant to sign them when you turned eighteen. I need to get all these loose ends tied up.’
He was also clear that he wanted nothing more to do with her. Ellie felt another little piece of her heart chip away but, God help her, she wanted to keep him talking a little bit longer because even his most clipped chat about contracts was still him talking to her.
‘What’s so important it needs an overnight courier?’ she asked sulkily.
He launched into an explanation so dense with legal terms it could have been Pig Latin or him making up words as he went along. It was impossible to follow, especially when she was buffeted by the Friday rush-hour crowd and a busker to the left of her was belting out ‘La Vie en Rose’ on a mouth organ.
‘What’s the address?’ David asked when he came to the end of his long, legal spiel. ‘And please make sure you’re in at eight tonight to sign the documents.’
‘Don’t they have to be witnessed? I’m not sure I want a courier to witness my signature and I should have time to read them over. Anyway, eight is only a couple of hours away. Is he already en route? You might have given me some warning. I could be in St Tropez for all you know!’
‘Well, you’re patently not,’ David snapped impatiently. ‘For goodness’ sake, Ellie, just give me your bloody address!’
Ellie gave him her bloody address, then hung up. She was tempted not to be waiting obediently back at the flat at eight – she had had vague plans to meet up with some friends of Esme and Sue’s for Cuban food – but after talking to David, she wasn’t up to going out. People would expect her to be friendly and engaging, albeit in halting GCSE-grade French, and the effort might kill her.
She’d stay in and wait for the courier, but she bought two bottles of wine on the way home. She could light some candles and open all the windows to let in the breeze and the sound of people carousing in the street below.
By seven thirty, Ellie had tidied up, drunk one glass of wine, eaten three olives and decided that as soon as the courier had been and gone, she was going out. If she stayed in all she’d do was brood and replay every word of their phone call, then rewind the night they’d spent together, though she hadn’t spent such a chaste night with a member of the opposite sex since she was seventeen. By then, she’d have probably got through both bottles of wine, and she’d be drunk and melancholy and desperate enough to do something really stupid like phone David Gold and beg him to love her because she was kind of in love with him.
Ellie prowled around the flat. Originally an atelier, it was a huge triple-height space so she got dizzy just looking up at the ornate ceiling mouldings. A mezzanine floor had been added to one half of the room, though it still felt light and airy, which was where the two bedrooms and the black-and-white art-deco-tiled bathroom were situated. It was a beautiful apartment but Ellie felt hemmed in and she needed to do something that would make her feel better, make her not feel like this, even though the last words Esme had said to her before she left on Sunday morning was, ‘Help yourself to anything, but even think about borrowing any of our clothes or accessories and we’ll kill you.’
Sue had even followed it up with a text message, ostensibly to remind her that Madame Lelong, the concierge who lived in the basement flat, came up to clean on Monday and Thursday afternoons, but really to warn Ellie that she’d ‘hunt you down like a dog if I hear you’ve been seen with my Chanel 2.55 bag’.
Though she planned to own a Chanel 2.55 bag one day, Ellie wanted nothing to do with Sue’s handbags or her chic black, fitted clothes, because Sue was ridiculously small. So was Esme, but at least she had outfit options, and it wasn’t as if Ellie was going to borrow any of them, she just wanted to try them on.
Esme possessed two wardrobes built into recesses, five clothes rails, and the broom cupboard in the hall, which had been customised with cubbyholes each large enough for a shoe box. Stuck to each shoe box was a Polaroid of the pretty, pretty, pretty shoes inside. It was a crying shame that Esme wore a size two and Ellie had size-seven clodhopper feet.
Very carefully Ellie rifled through the rails, unzipping garment bags to gawk at silk and satin and charmeuse and taffeta and chiffon and knits so fine they might have been made from cobwebs rather than wool. There was nothing that was going to fit and most of it was beaded or sparkling; no wonder Esme had found a job where she could wear a ballgown to a Monday meeting if she wanted.
It wasn’t until she was head first in the second wardrobe that Ellie found the dull gold trapeze dress. Made from a soft slubby silk, it was sleeveless and had myriad knife-edge pleats cascading down from a mandarin-collar neckline. It took Ellie many long, tense minutes to ease the dress over her head, arms raised like a champion diver so she co
uld work them through the armholes, then much gentle tugging before finally she was wearing one of Esme’s dresses. It was probably knee-length on Esme but swirled about Ellie’s thighs so if she bent over even a little she flashed her knickers.
Not that Ellie dared bend over or make any sudden movements, because, within scant seconds she realised she’d made a terrible mistake. The collar of the dress was choking her (how could Esme’s neck be thinner than hers?), the armholes pinched her skin and the flimsy, delicate material was stretched perilously tight across her shoulders. Which made it the perfect time for two short, sharp buzzes on the intercom. Walking slowly like she had a big book balanced on her head, Ellie managed to get down the mezzanine stairs to press the intercom.
‘Courier? I’m on the third floor.’
It was not an ideal situation. Ellie didn’t want some motorbiking desperado in the flat while she was fashion-incapacitated and showing far too much leg. She’d send him away until she’d begged Madame Lelong to come upstairs and extricate her from a dress that probably cost more than three months’ salary and commission.
Ellie heard someone come up the stairs, then a knock on the door, and even reaching up to open it put a terrible strain on the dress.
But that was nothing compared to the terrible strain on her heart because standing there in a crumpled suit and carrying two M&S carrier bags was David Gold.
Camden, London, 1987
‘You’re going to be all right, Ari,’ Billy said calmly.
He helped her get dressed, buttoned her into her leopard-print faux-fur coat and led her out into a world covered in snow to catch the number 24 bus to the Royal Free Hospital.
The pain was constant and all Ari could do was sway on the spot as she was asked questions she couldn’t answer because she’d never kept any appointments or taken any tests, and someone really needed to call Carol.
‘I will,’ Billy said. Ari wanted to beg him to stay because he was a calm, still presence in the corner of the room as she was hooked up to machines. She couldn’t do this alone; suffer pain that started deep in her spine and ripped through her in never-ending waves. ‘And I need a cigarette. I’ll be back in ten minutes, baby.’
Billy didn’t come back in ten minutes. He wasn’t back in two hours, and Ari stopped caring because she couldn’t think about Billy any more. All she could think about was how stupid, how dumb she’d been to only think about the baby in the most abstract way and to imagine childbirth as something you screamed your way through while your partner mopped your face. It wasn’t like that all.
Labour was a silent battle between her and her body. Ari curled up in a ball and for the first time she could sense the baby as an insistent pull, a compelling voice in her head. ‘You’ll be OK. I’ll be here soon. Everything’s going to be all right.’
Then she was being told to push, but her body wanted to do that anyway and it took for ever, then no time at all until someone said, ‘It’s a girl. Congratulations! You have a daughter!’ A squalling, bloodied red scrap of flesh and bones was held up for Ari’s inspection.
It had lots of dark, curly hair. The midwife said that was why Ari had had indigestion for months – nothing to do with Billy breaking her heart on a weekly basis. And for what? So she could birth his daughter, who looked like a furious little monkey: fists clenched, chicken legs pistoning, wet mouth open wide on a scream.
Carol should be here. This was Carol’s moment, not hers, and where the fuck was Billy? They whisked the baby away, still screeching, then it was back, and before Ari could tell them she wasn’t interested, no thank you, not today, she’d made alternative arrangements, a nurse dumped the baby on her chest.
It was terrifying. Ari didn’t want to touch this thing, this angry thing that she’d made, and then it shut its mouth and stared at her and she felt it.
‘Oh God, nobody told me,’ she whispered, and cradled her perfect daughter to her.
Before this moment nothing in Ari’s life had been real, but this tiny beautiful girl was real.
It wasn’t possible that Ari deserved such a prize – and then she remembered that she wasn’t allowed to keep her.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Ellie wondered if the dress was cutting off the flow of blood to her brain and David was actually a hallucination because he was smiling at her like he was pleased to see her.
If she’d been able to, Ellie would have raised an arm and pinched him to see if he was real but she settled for a hoarse, ‘Why aren’t you in London?’
His smile became more conspiratorial. ‘I left London just after lunch. Technically, I suppose I bunked off. I’ve never bunked off anything in my life.’
Ellie would have done anything to smile back at him but she was too shocked and she was slowly being garrotted, and smiling might cause her neck to expand even further. ‘Yeah, but what are you doing here?’
David’s smile dimmed a little. ‘I told you I needed your signature.’
‘You said that there was an overnight courier coming.’
‘Yes, but I didn’t say exactly who the courier would be.’
It was too much to hope that he’d come here to see her, but why else would he be standing on a landing of an apartment building in the fourth arrondissement? It was time to call his bluff. ‘So, what exactly do you want me to sign?’
‘Well,’ David said, and he stared down at the tips of his immaculately polished black brogues. ‘Well, I’ve given this a lot of thought.’
‘I don’t know why there was anything to think about,’ Ellie said, and she still refused to let herself believe. ‘You said you needed my signature. On what?’
‘OK …’ He took a deep breath and shut his eyes. ‘I did think about opening my shirt and pointing in the general direction of my heart and saying, “On this,” but I decided that it wasn’t really my style. Far too cheesy.’
Ellie would have liked to fold her arms but it was impossible in her current predicament. She settled for looking unamused, even though on the inside she was doing a series of air punches. ‘Beyond cheesy,’ she confirmed. ‘I would have just gone with a simple, “I’m here because I really missed you.”’ She forced herself to look David right in the eye, which wasn’t hard when he was watching her cautiously like she might be about to slug him. ‘Because, God knows, I’ve tried not to, but I’ve missed you.’
‘I have missed you,’ he said. ‘I’ve even spoken to Melanie and the woman you met at Glastonbury, whose name is Karen, and told them that I’m not in the market for a friend with benefits right now.’
‘Are you still Billy Kay’s lawyer?’ Ellie asked hopefully, but David shook his head.
‘I am but I came to Paris on the spur of the moment. I hate doing things on the spur of the moment,’ he said plaintively. ‘That has to count for something.’
‘Oh, it does, it really does,’ Ellie assured him. She should have felt relieved, ecstatic even, but she still couldn’t believe he was here, that this was happening, and also the collar of the dress was still choking her. ‘Why don’t you come in?’
‘I’d much rather kiss you,’ he said. He carefully put his M&S bags down on the floor and stepped forward with a resolute glint in his eye.
Then he was holding her face in his hands, gazing at her more tenderly than he’d ever done before, and he kissed her. It was a whisper-soft, gentle kiss for no more than five seconds, until Ellie sighed, and his tongue drove into her mouth, and he was pulling her towards him and—
‘No! Don’t touch me!’ Ellie shrieked, slapping his hands away, which was really hard when she had to keep her own arms pinned to her sides.
David looked utterly confused. ‘But I thought you wanted me to touch you,’ he said waspishly, because Ellie was being the poster girl for mixed signals.
‘I do!’ she protested, especially when he licked his lower lip and everything south of her navel turned liquid. ‘I want it more than anything.’
‘Is this about me representing your father b
ecause—’
‘Don’t say that! Not right now,’ Ellie hissed. ‘I’m trapped! Trapped in a couture dress!’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ His eyes travelled over her and stayed locked at the spot, mid-thigh, where the hem ended. ‘Why don’t you just take the dress off? I could help, if you liked?’
As plans went it got Ellie’s vote, but things were never that simple. She explained her predicament to him as he put away the contents of one of the M&S bags, which contained everything for a Friday night dinner from ready-cooked chicken to apple strudel, why her size-eight-to-ten body was stuck in a size-four dress.
By the time she finished, with a detailed description of the terrible revenge that Esme would exact, they were in Esme’s room. Apart from the clothes there wasn’t much in it except the ornate bed, which rose up out of an ormolu frame and was canopied with acres of gold and white tulle. It had been constructed as the centrepiece for a runway show, then deconstructed so it could be reconstructed in Esme’s bedroom.
David stared at it in repulsed fascination, then shifted his attention back to Ellie, who was sure she was turning blue. ‘I need your help!’ she all but wailed. ‘It’s getting hard to breathe.’
‘You need to stop panicking for a start,’ he said sharply, because he wasn’t a man who’d go soft simply because he was soft on a girl. ‘Let’s deal with this logically.’
Dealing with things logically meant that David frisked her in his search for a concealed zip, hands resting in places for so long and so caressingly that it almost counted as foreplay, though he didn’t even crack a smile. But there were no concealed zips and his next two suggestions, to cut her out of the dress or lube her way with washing-up liquid, were non-starters.
‘How did you manage to get it over your head in the first place?’ David asked. ‘Or get your arms through the armholes?’