‘It’s good.’ I bit my bottom lip to keep in a smile. According to the thunderous expression on his face, it was still too soon for smiling. ‘It’s really good.’
He placed the empty juice carton on the side, brushed his hair away from his face and gave me a disbelieving look.
‘Oh, just come with me.’ I grabbed his arm and dragged him back towards the open door. ‘My friend Bertie Bennett would like to have a little chat with you and then we’re going to take some pictures. Does that sound OK?’
‘But how …’ Nick’s eyes lit up and a huge smile broke out across his face. In an instant he’d become someone else, switching from mean and moody to eager and excitable. And as much as mean and moody Nick made my knickers twitch, eager and excitable Nick did something incredibly worrying to my heart.
‘Actually, fuck it, don’t tell me. Where is he?’
‘Outside.’ I moved a step to the left so he could see Off-Duty Santa, who was now whispering to himself while he picked at something I couldn’t see on the top of one of the tables with his thumbnail. I hoped Kekipi wasn’t in trouble. ‘Ta-da.’
‘That’s Bertie Bennett?’ Nick mouthed in surprise. ‘Seriously?’
‘Well, that or he’s some delusional old mental I met on the beach who is pretending to be Bertie Bennett.’ I started to laugh and then stopped. Nick met my terrified expression with one of his own. ‘Oh shit.’
‘No, no.’ He reached a hand out to my shoulder and squeezed gently. ‘I’m sure he’s not some random crazy. And even if he is, I’m pretty certain he’d give me a better interview than Artie.’
‘This is true.’ I breathed out and placed my hand on top of his. Nick smiled. I smiled. It was a little bit nauseating. I liked it. ‘God help me with the pictures, though.’
‘I might stick around while you do those.’ He nodded, laughed and leaned in to kiss me softly on the lips. ‘Thank you, Vanessa.’
And just like that, the spell was broken. I shrugged off his hand, sighed softly and ignored the confused look on his face. What else could I do?
‘You’re welcome,’ I said on my way out of the door. ‘Now come and meet my friend, Al.’
But it seemed as though our interviewee was legit. When our little party arrived at the main house, the woman dusting the pinball machine almost had a heart attack. Within seconds, every pair of eyes inside the four walls had snuck a look at us. Only Kekipi had yet to make an appearance and I had a feeling he wouldn’t be far away. Al popped a disembodied head out from inside a rainbow of dresses and smiled.
‘So how did you get into fashion in the first place?’ Nick asked while Al rummaged through a walk-in wardrobe so big I could have lived in it. And in twenty-four hours, I might have to, I thought quietly in my corner.
‘Women,’ he said, tipping Nick the wink. ‘My dad ran a gentlemen’s outfitters in Leicester, and I used to work there every Saturday. I’d see the wives come in with their husbands and then I’d have to take the chaps into the changing room and measure them up while the ladies sat outside waiting. I was about fourteen when I realized my father had it all wrong. When I took over the buying, I convinced him that we should start carrying women’s fashions. I found the more I knew about the clothes, the more I had to talk to the female customers about, and the more you talk to women, the better your odds are. Am I right, Nicholas?’
‘You are right, Mr Bennett,’ he replied with a smile.
We had locked ourselves in Jane Bennett’s dressing room and it was epic. The walls were lined with mirrors, and against one, there was a white leather fainting couch that held the dresses Al had already pulled out, and in the corner, Nick made himself at home in a chair sitting in front a vanity unit so incredibly pink, Barbie herself would have turned her nose up at it on grounds of stereotyping. He was such a picture of uncomfortable masculinity, I had to snap a photo. His khaki cargo shorts and loose white T-shirt clashed against the prettiness of it all. He looked huge and awkward and out of place. I was worried he would break something just by existing.
‘It’s Al, really. Mr Bennett is my son.’ He stretched an arm into the far reaches of the wardrobe and, with a strained expression, pulled out a huge clothing bag with a flourish. ‘Vanessa, could you take this?’
I took it, I unzipped it and I gasped at the most beautiful ballgown I had ever seen.
‘Archive Valentino,’ Al explained as I held the hanger over my head and made the dress dance. It couldn’t have been more different from the last Valentino dress I’d seen. Acres of lipstick-red silk and ruffles flurried around me and whispered just how much better my life would be if I owned something so very beautiful. ‘One of Jane’s favourites.’
‘Jane Bennett, like in Austen.’ Nick smiled at me. Of course Nick read Jane Austen. Obviously I didn’t read Jane Austen, but unfortunately for him, Jane Bennett was a character in the mini-series that had Colin Firth coming out of the pond all piss-wet-through and gorgeous, so he could piss off if he thought he was going to make me look stupid.
‘It was her favourite,’ Al nodded. ‘Always said I was her Mr Darcy. Tall, dark and bloody annoying.’
‘How did you two meet?’ Nick asked while I mooned over the love story and the Valentino.
‘Like I said, it’s a numbers game.’ He gave us both a sad smile and disappeared back into the racks while I carried on staring. ‘Sometimes your lucky number comes up. Jane came into the shop one Saturday morning in May with her fiancé. They were looking for a suit for their wedding.’
‘Al,’ I admonished, tearing my eyes away from the World’s Most Beautiful Dress. ‘You didn’t?’
Nick gave me sharp look and pressed his finger to his lips. Oh, right. I was supposed to be a silent observer of the interview. Some hope of that.
‘Vanessa, I did.’ He waggled his white eyebrows up and down. ‘She was the one. I knew it as soon as I saw her, all tall and beautiful with that bright red hair and such a furious look on her face. All I wanted to do was make her smile. And I’ll have you know, I was so good at my job, her ex didn’t even return the suit when she called off the wedding.’
‘And when did you make the move to New York?’ Nick was tapping away at his laptop while Al continued to toss bag after bag of beauty at me. I glanced over at my phone to see if Paige had returned any of my calls, but there was nothing. I’d knocked for her on the way up to the main house, but a large sheet of white paper torn out of a notebook and taped to the front door declared she was ‘SHOPPING’ in large, back scrawl. Shopping and not checking her phone, clearly. I hoped her phone call with the magazine hadn’t gone badly.
‘Jane wanted to get away after the scandal.’ Even now, Al clearly couldn’t contain his delight at winning his wife. The tiny, ebbing glow of romance left in me thought it was sweet, but the cynical, weary London woman wanted to roll my eyes and declare him a typical man. ‘And she had some family over in America. Her mother was Irish and they’d come over in the twenties. We came, we set up a little shop, and, well, that was it, really.’
‘I’m not sure anyone is going to let me let you get away with calling Bennett’s a “little shop”,’ Nick said, scratching his head with a grin. ‘I’ve been to Bennett’s. Bennett’s is a behemoth.’
‘It is now,’ Al agreed. ‘But when we moved to New York, it was a little shop. Just one floor, just three racks. Still on Madison, but Madison and 83rd. About twenty blocks away from where it is now.’
‘And what was the secret to your success? Couldn’t just be luck.’ Nick gave a non-commital shrug when Al held up a deep teal evening gown that rustled when he flicked his wrist. Al silently shook his head and put it back in the racks. I pouted.
‘No secret,’ he said, brandishing a black garment bag and throwing it directly at me. ‘It was Jane. She loved fashion and I loved her. That really was all there was to it.’
‘She must have had quite the eye.’ Nick watched as I pulled down the zip on the most glorious little black dress with a full silk skir
t and acres and acres of netting underneath. ‘These are all hers?’
‘Dior,’ he said with a happy sigh. ‘And yes. She did. And they are. But she didn’t like the limelight or the drama of the fashion world, so I did all the outside business while she picked all the clothes. After a while, her taste started to rub off on me, thankfully. After she had Artie, she wasn’t nearly as interested in the store any more. She still loved clothes, though. She always looked stunning, did my Janey.’
I swallowed a lump while Nick cleared his throat in a very manly fashion and sat up in his chair. His pink padded gilt chair that was sitting at a pink padded gilt dressing table. It really was an adorable scene.
‘That’s what so many people get wrong about fashion now.’ Al clucked and passed me one more bag. I pressed it against my chest and waited for him to finish speaking. ‘It shouldn’t be about the trends or the size zeros or who’s using fur and who isn’t; it should be about love. It should be about a woman walking into a shop, seeing a dress and her face lighting up, just like yours, Vanessa. And as the buyer or the designer or even the shop assistant, you’ve got to know that. If you don’t love what you do, love seeing that look on a woman’s face when you’ve found her the perfect frock or her dream pair of shoes, then you’re in the wrong business. It shouldn’t be a popularity contest. It’s about love.’
At Al’s encouraging, I unzipped the final bag and gasped. Somewhere deep inside me, the dying romantic stuck herself with a shot of adrenaline, knocked back a Red Bull and punched the cynical London bitch in the face.
‘Oh, Albert Bennett,’ I gasped. ‘We can’t use this in the shoot.’
‘Yes, we can,’ Al said, overruling me and reaching across Nick’s crossed legs to pick up a silver frame from the crowded dressing table. Amongst the matching trinket boxes and hairbrushes that sparkled in the sunlight as though they had been polished that very morning (and I was almost certain they had) was a wedding photo. Smiling as if he had just found out that his football team were guaranteed to win the FA cup every year for the next century, a beardless and considerably younger Al stood beaming beside a tall, beautiful redhead who was wearing a distinct look of happy resignation on her face, as well as the most gorgeous dress I had ever laid eyes on. It was the dress I had in my hands. ‘It’s my article and I get to pick the dresses. Every single gown I chose after the wedding was influenced by this one. We have to include it.’
The dress was a masterpiece in simplicity. Holding it up by the hanger, it didn’t look like much. Off-white, heavy but simple. A straight neckline ended in cap sleeves and the full skirt emphasized a waist so tiny, my still empty stomach started to eat itself. All wrapped up in itself, it was only half possible to see how wonderful the dress might look on the right woman, but in the photograph Al held so carefully, it was clear that the right woman made the dress look spectacular. The black Dior sobbed quietly in the corner.
‘It’s Givenchy couture,’ Al intoned with appropriate reverence. Even Nick was holding his breath. ‘Elizabeth Taylor wanted it, but I said no. Audrey Hepburn wore a knock-off in Funny Face.’
‘Audrey Hepburn wore a knock-off?’ I squeaked, suddenly shaking as I realized that this dress was probably worth more than my life.
‘Not a knock off per se.’ He waved one hand in the air and brushed his thumb along the glass of the silver frame unconsciously. ‘Hers was Givenchy too. But tea length instead of a full ballgown. And she didn’t have quite so much of an underskirt. My Janey was taller; pulled it off better, if I do say so myself.’
For a moment, there was nothing more to say. I pulled the zip back up on the garment bag and gave it a hug. Mostly because I wanted one.
‘I’m going to go and get Martha.’ I hung the dress on the to-shoot rack we’d set up by the door and gave myself a shake. ‘I’ll be back in about half an hour with my camera.’
‘We’ll be here,’ Al said with a cheerful smile.
‘Can’t wait to see what you’re going to pull out your arse,’ Nick said with a sarcastic smirk.
‘If you get your head out of yours, you’ll be able to see,’ I said, skipping off down the hallway of the Bennett mansion before he could reply.
That man.
‘Martha,’ I called quietly, knocking as loudly as I dared on her front door. While I wanted my favourite model to come and help out with the reshoot, I did not want to deal with Ana. It was after ten in the morning but her curtains were still shut, and I was hoping she was a heavy sleeper. It was beyond me how anyone could sleep through a day in Hawaii, but I supposed she was used to visiting exotic locales on other people’s money. And also, it was worth remembering she was a complete bastard. ‘Martha, it’s Vanessa. Are you awake?’
‘I am,’ a voice snuffled from behind the door while the lock rattled. These doors locked? In London, I had to put the deadbolt on before I could even run to the toilet for a drunken wee, but it hadn’t even occurred to me to lock the doors here. ‘Is everything all right?’
Even red-faced and puffy-eyed from lack of sleep and sobbing so relentless that she couldn’t stop it to say good morning, Martha was obscenely beautiful. Even a paper bag over the head wouldn’t help ? it would probably just bring out her swan-like neck. But this wasn’t the time for pointless jealousy; this was the time for cold teabags and hopefully some very expensive eye cream to work their magic.
‘Everything is fine.’ I clutched at my camera bag and tried not to drop my tripod. I’d had the best idea for the shoot and was so excited I couldn’t stand still, but I needed Martha’s help. If she wasn’t up for it, I was left with Ana. And that wasn’t happening. ‘Are you all right?’
What a stupid question.
Rather than do something obvious like answer with words, Martha burst into deafening, heart-wrenching sobs and buried her face in my shoulder. I slid my tripod onto the floor, ignoring the unpleasant clattering sound as it struck the ground, and patted her back.
‘Don’t cry, he’s not worth it,’ I told her in between comforting taps. I’d been managing a team of almost entirely women for five years. I knew an on-the-job boy breakdown when I saw one.
‘I’ve been trying to hold it together, but I just caaan’t,’ she wailed. ‘He’s seeing someone else. He’s coming home to me every night after he’s been out shagging someone else. I don’t know what to dooo.’
Wow. Men even cheated on models? There really was no hope for us mere mortals.
‘That’s awful,’ I said as sympathetically as I could manage, prising her arms off me. ‘And we should have a drink and talk about it, but, I was wondering, is there any way I could borrow you for a couple of reshoots?’
‘Oh shit, yeah, of course.’ In a heartbeat, Martha snapped into professional mode. Professional model with a runny nose. I couldn’t have loved her any more. ‘When?’
‘Now?’ I held up my camera bag. ‘And, um, there’s no make-up artist and I sort of thought we’d do it without Ana.’
‘Thank God,’ she sniffed and tossed her long black hair out behind her. ‘I can’t stand that cow. Let’s do it. Anything is better than sitting around here. I just can’t seem to stop thinking about him. What’s the plan?’
‘I’ll tell you on the way.’ I sighed with relief, understanding exactly how she felt. ‘Prepare yourself for some pretty epic dresses.’
‘Better than preparing myself to dump that wanker when I get home, isn’t it?’ she said sadly. ‘Lead the way.’
‘She looks amazing,’ Nick whispered as I moved Kekipi’s arms into just the right position with my light reflector. He tutted, sighed and tossed his head like an angry pony, but he did as he was told. As photographer’s assistants went, he was ? well, he was terrible, but he was willing, so that was something.
Martha was sitting at Jane’s dressing table, gazing into the mirror as she touched up her impeccable make-up – someone had been paying attention over the years – wearing the red Valentino dress. Al stood in the wardrobe, still in his board short
s and T-shirt, beaming with his memories of Janey wearing the dress. I wished we could have opened up his head and scooped them all out, but the way his smile shone through the lens of my camera, it was almost as though I had. ‘This is perfect.’
‘The way Al was talking about it all,’ I said, not taking my eye off the scene, ‘it all just made sense. The pictures needed to be intimate, they needed to be about him and Jane, and this room is her.’
‘Yeah. I felt a bit weird being in here at first,’ Nick said, peering over my shoulder at the image showing in the back of my camera. ‘It’s like when people make the bed for their dead husband or set a place at the table every night ten years after they’ve carked it, but this just feels right. Really happy.’
‘I know.’ I paused to signal to Kekipi to lift up the reflector. Lazy bastard. ‘Did you notice how all her silver brushes and frames and things look brand new? But it’s not weird.’
‘Which is, oddly enough, a bit weird,’ Nick said, placing a gentle hand on my waist. ‘These photos are going to be perfect. Thank you.’
I blushed and made an awkward shrugging motion, waving him away, not knowing what to say. ‘Um, Martha, I think we’ve got this dress. Shall we try the next one?’
‘The wedding dress?’ She sounded as though she was asking if she could finally have a ride on a pony. ‘The Givenchy?’
The second we’d walked into the dressing room, Martha’s heartbreak was forgotten. She still had a slightly preoccupied, wistful look in her eyes in the images, but the look on her face when she’d seen Jane’s wedding dress was unbelievable. I’d considered getting her to call her boyfriend and break it off then and there, she was so consumed by it, but instead I just let her make breathless squeaks at Al and jump up and down, arm stretched out but never quite touching the fabric of the dress. It was a fashiongasm. Al seemed quite pleased.
‘Are you sure about this, Al?’ I asked. I had my reservations. Everything else looked so incredible. The magazine wouldn’t know they weren’t getting this and it just seemed so personal. ‘Really?’