Muse

  Bianca inclines her head graciously towards Juliana. ‘Signora Agnelli-Re,’ she says. ‘So good to see you again.’ She ignores Gia altogether.

  ‘With your leave, Mastro,’ she continues smoothly, ‘we’re old enough friends that you might just leave me with Irina today? I’m sure Signora Agnelli-Re has better things to do than listen to Irina and me … gossip.’

  Giovanni starts to reply, but Bianca holds up one slim hand. ‘I’m well aware that the looks I’ve asked you to set aside for me form part of the anniversary collection and are worth in the vicinity of a quarter of a million pounds. I shall treat the gowns with the utmost reverence.’

  I note that she makes no such promise where I’m concerned.

  Giovanni looks helplessly at his niece, who gives him the faintest frown in return that seems to say: What have you done?

  ‘Very well,’ he says reluctantly. ‘Juliana will return shortly to see how you are both … getting on.’

  ‘What the bloody hell are you playing at? This wasn’t part of the —’ Gia’s protests are cut off as Giovanni and his niece bundle her out of the room, shutting the door firmly behind them.

  Bianca weighs me up with her cool, blue eyes before snapping, ‘Our schedules have never lined up, bitch, because you’ve been deliberately avoiding me.’

  I tell myself wearily to duck and weave until I can figure out what the hell she’s talking about.

  I dump Irina’s heavy handbag by the door. ‘Which dress do you want me to start with?’ I say calmly as I head into the dressing room.

  Five separate evening gowns are laid out across a button-backed, ivory leather chaise longue. There’s a futuristic-looking, ankle-length black gown with wicked, sequined, pagoda shoulders, a plunging V-neck and daring front split. Beside it, a slim, one-shouldered sleeveless dress in Giovanni’s signature shade of rosso Re, with a complicated neckline, plunging back and small train. Alongside that is a wasp-waisted, Victorian-inspired, ankle-length gown in hand-dyed silks of gradated purples and pinks, with enormous puffed sleeves and a neat bustle. And beside it, a breathtaking, strapless, 1930s-inspired sequined silver gown that I’m guessing must be Orla’s. Lastly, a slim, floor-length gown that seems entirely made from feathers, hand-painted to resemble the wings of butterflies.

  As I begin to shrug out of my cashmere jumper resignedly Bianca holds up a hand to stop me, saying sarcastically, ‘For a model, you make a great actress. Let’s cut to the chase. I’m not here for the clothes, clearly.’ Her voice starts to shake. ‘I just wanted to see, with my own eyes, the slut Félix left me for. And to let you know, personally, that I’m going to derail your sad, pathetic life even more than you derailed mine. I’ll recover, but you never will.’

  I frown, rummaging through the disorder in my head for the names Félix and Bianca, getting no immediate hits. Irina’s not an over-analyser. She doesn’t keep a journal in that oversized bag of hers that I’m forced to lug around.

  ‘Do you have any idea who you’ve messed with?’ Bianca says. ‘What I could do to you?’

  I shake my head, genuinely perplexed, which only seems to upset Bianca more.

  ‘The chairman of Mondial Publishing and my father are old business partners, and the editor-at-large of the Costa International Group is a longstanding family friend,’ she says threateningly, moving forward so that I’m forced to step back hurriedly to avoid her touching me.

  I find the backs of my legs pressed up against the chaise longue. One of the heavy beaded dresses slithers to the floor.

  ‘Point being?’ I snap. ‘To me they’re just names, just words without context or weight.’

  Bianca’s face is contorted, almost ugly, as she spits, ‘I’ll be lobbying to ensure that none of the fashion magazines published by those organisations ever use you again in an editorial spread. And I’ll also be suggesting that any advertising campaigns you feature in are permanently postponed in their pages until you’re dropped by the companies you represent.’ She jabs me just below the collarbone for emphasis. ‘We’re talking a complete blackout in publications across France, Italy, Russia, China, the Americas, Great Britain, Germany, Spain and the entire Asia-Pacific region. I know for a fact that your management company is thinking of letting you go because you’re more trouble than you’re worth. One tiny push and your so-called career and “A-list” life? Will be over. I’m going to ruin you. Try and take me to court, and the financial might of the St Alban Group will bury you!’

  She’s shouting now, and I’m reminded of that red-faced reporter screaming at me earlier: Who are you seeing now that you’ve very publicly dumped Félix de Haviland and Will Reyne?

  ‘You’ll be lucky if you can get hand-modelling work for your local discount chain!’ Bianca yells. ‘That is, if the drugs don’t get you first and you end up a very minor postscript in the Obituaries section of the New York Times.’

  I hear Justine’s voice telling Ryan: She’s the one who dumped Félix de Haviland … She actually stole him off his fiancée. And something goes click in my head.

  ‘What do you have to say about that?’ Bianca shrieks, knotting her hands into the front of my sweater, tears in her eyes.

  ‘You’re the fiancée?’ I blurt out.

  Bianca goes off. ‘The fiancée?’ she shrieks, gripping me by the upper arms and shaking me like a rag doll.

  ‘Don’t. Touch. Me,’ I warn and she lets go of me abruptly, covering her mouth with both hands, weeping as if something inside her is irreparably broken.

  ‘The future I thought I’d be living just vanished. It’s gone,’ she wails. ‘Everything I loved about Félix — his family, his friends, the places we used to go, the things we used to do, his stupid, disgusting dogs, the apartment we shared, the life we shared — you took them all from me. Everything they say about you is true — you contaminate everything you touch. Destroyer. Destroyer!’

  I’m so stunned at her words that for a moment I think she’s talking about me. Then I remember that we don’t know each other, that she’s a stranger to me and all of her anger is for Irina.

  I gaze at her with compassion. Before, I would have had trouble recognising the emotion; it would have seemed an abstract concept, a human construct. But that was before. A lot of things have happened since then. I’ve suffered my own losses.

  ‘You really loved him, didn’t you?’ I say quietly, and I am wholly unprepared when Bianca looks up sharply at my words and slaps me hard across the face.

  We both freeze. And I feel something dangerous leap inside me. I have to stop myself from retaliating in kind, because the way I’m feeling, I could kill her.

  Bianca stares at me wide-eyed, sucking in a hurt breath as she massages the fingers of her right hand. I can see her wondering why the force of the blow didn’t make me fall down, break down, or even flinch.

  ‘You’re like a heartless stone,’ she gasps. ‘You don’t feel anything for anyone, do you?’

  ‘How dare you?’ I find myself roaring. ‘You’re the one with no idea. All I have left are feelings. How dare you judge me?’

  I can see from her frightened gaze that she doesn’t understand what I’m saying. She begins, almost imperceptibly, to back away from me, like a cornered animal.

  ‘What do you want me to say?’ I snarl, my voice rising as I follow her across the room. ‘Sorry? Well, I am sorry. Sorry the pretty, shiny life with the rich husband didn’t work out, didn’t even get off the ground. But don’t expect me to empathise with you, or feel scared, belittled or even ashamed, because you don’t know me, you will never know me. Never know that there are worse things in life than a broken engagement. You can’t know what I’m feeling inside, what it’s been like for me. You’re right. People like you always recover, because you can.’

  Bianca glances back through the velvet-curtained doorway towards the outer door with genuine fear in her eyes, and something seems to take hold of me as I yell, ‘Be grateful that you’ll never be forced into an arranged marriage with a
husband that beats you. Be grateful that you’ll never have to live hand to mouth at the mercy of a drug-dealing de facto. Be grateful that your fate isn’t to be locked in a homemade dungeon while someone you once trusted keeps you chained like a dog in the darkness and does unspeakable things to you against your will. Be grateful that you are not me.’

  I raise my burning left hand, struggling to stifle that impulse to lash out, to wound. I’m so sick of all the hatred, all the haters, all the people whose fears and motivations and vengeances and cruelties I will never understand.

  Then I hear: Mercy.

  I look around wildly, though his voice is only inside my head.

  Don’t, he says quietly, as if he has appointed himself my conscience. You don’t need to do this. You’re frightening her, and you’re better than that. It will soon be over, one way or another.

  Then I see him — looking at me from out of the flat surface of the mirror to the right of the velvet-curtained doorway in which Bianca cowers, oblivious to his presence.

  ‘K’el?’ I say.

  I look around the room for him, but he’s only visible in the reflected world, not the real one that I’m standing in. ‘K’el?’ I say again, stumbling with outstretched hands towards his reflection that is no reflection.

  He’s so hyper-real, so hyper-beautiful, with his gleaming olive skin, his dark gold hair, his tawny wide-set eyes — like the eyes of a young lion. And in his face is that unspoken longing and self-loathing he seems unable to hide when he’s around me. He’s watching me because he has to, and because he can’t help himself.

  ‘Now?’ I plead. ‘Is it to be now?’

  Because maybe if They move me again, I’ll stop feeling so numb. And maybe this time, those of the Eight that remain will be merciful and will do the job properly and somehow make me forget Ryan Daley forever. I don’t want to have to find him and then lose him all over again.

  I walk towards K’el’s gleaming form so that he and Irina and I seem to converge for an instant, before he walks away from me into the next pane of silvered glass. And the next and the next — his tall frame crossing smoothly from one mirror to another, as if such a thing could even be possible. Until he’s circumnavigated the entire room and is standing, facing me again, in the last mirror to the left of the velvet-curtained doorway.

  I see him shake his head in negation, in warning. I hear his voice in my mind like a breath of fire.

  Soon, he says. Be ready.

  Then the looking glass is suddenly empty of his image. Only Irina and I are left there, staring, ashen-faced.

  It’s a long time before I realise that Bianca’s made it all the way to the outer room, her eyes wide, her face drained of all colour.

  ‘Who are you?’ she says shakily. ‘You’re not Irina.’

  I move out of the dressing room towards her and she places the leather tub chair and ottoman between us, for safety.

  ‘Who do you want me to be?’ I say wearily, bypassing her entirely and heading for the outer door. I feel her surprise more than see it. ‘You’ve said what you came to say,’ I mutter. ‘Go ahead and ruin Irina’s life. I’m not going to stop you. Not today. I’m tired. There are too many of you to guard against, to guard, to save. Maybe Gabriel was right, maybe I should’ve just kept my head down all along and done nothing. Let life tear each of my fragile charges, my flawed vessels, to pieces, while I simply stood by, watching. It’s what my kind does best, after all. Watch.’ My voice is bitter. I hope K’el hears it.

  I place a hand upon the outer door, heartsore and on edge. I know it must seem crazy that Irina’s talking about herself as if she isn’t even in the room, but I’m tired of pretending. I’m never going to see this girl again, so what’s a burning bridge or two?

  ‘I’ve got enough going on in my own messed-up existence,’ I add quietly, ‘without having to deal with people like you coming at me for things I don’t even remember doing. Félix is a cheater. He showed you his true colours. You got lucky that it happened now, and not twenty years after the happy day. Be grateful and move on. That’s the best advice I can give you.’

  Bianca cries, ‘Wait!’

  Though I shouldn’t be able to hear them through the soundproofed wood, I can discern Gia’s voice and Juliana’s, in the hallway outside, as they talk to each other in low voices, in Italian.

  And it’s spooky, but as I listen to them, their words seem to meld together in my mind and reform, growing comprehensible to my ears.

  ‘Dopo un anno? Forse …’ Gia says. After another year, perhaps.

  ‘Then maybe I’ll come and work for you, eh?’

  ‘You should,’ Juliana replies earnestly. ‘Tommy has only the best things to say about you. We could use your skills very much at Atelier Re. You would be the perfect fit, in talent, in personality.’

  Hour by hour, minute by minute. Everything’s slowly coming back to me except the one thing I so desperately crave. Freedom.

  ‘Wait!’ Bianca says again behind me, so forcefully that I turn and regard her with surprise. What she sees in my face makes her flinch, but she stands her ground bravely. ‘I saw something.’

  I growl in Irina’s heavy Russian accent, ‘And I’m telling you, I don’t care what you saw — do your worst. Descend upon Irina like a plague. She’s Teflon-coated anyway. She’s got nine lives, maybe more. She’ll survive anything. Now, since you’ve gotten everything you wanted to say off your chest, I’m going back to my hotel so that I can get up again in the morning and take my clothes off in front of more strangers, okay?’

  ‘No, you don’t understand,’ Bianca whispers, and there’s fear but also wonderment in her voice. ‘I saw something. Back there, before you started talking to yourself. Just a flash. But I saw something. Someone. You don’t even talk like Irina, do you know that? Oh, I mean you sound like her, you sound Russian. But she just complains and complains about everything. Nothing’s ever good enough. And she hardly ever meets your eyes unless she wants something from you. She’s a vicious mix of towering arrogance and total insecurity. But she’s not even here, is she?’

  My eyes fly back to Bianca’s as I finally grasp what she’s saying, and I feel Irina’s heart skip a beat.

  ‘If you say you saw something,’ I challenge, mouth suddenly dry, ‘describe it. Describe what you saw.’

  ‘I saw a, a … young woman with brown hair that hangs down just past her shoulders and brown eyes. She was very pale and very tall, and I don’t know how it’s possible, because she was so faint, but I could kind of see her within you, or around you, like a … glow. She looked beautiful. And kind. And very, very sad.’

  Tears spring suddenly to Irina’s eyes, roll down her cheeks, her hands fly up to her wet face and all of these things are like reflex actions.

  Kind? What would I know of kindness?

  Now, sadness. Sadness is something I’m acquainted with.

  Bianca could see me, if only for a moment? How would that even be possible?

  Was that what Felipe meant when he screamed ¡Demonio! in my face? Had he seen something of me, too? In the driver’s mirror?

  Crying is for humans, reminds that voice in my head, as I cry.

  And what am I these days? I tell myself, dashing tears off my face with the back of my hands, if not human?

  ‘It was just a waking dream,’ I say aloud through the strange ache in Irina’s throat, ‘an hallucination.’

  When what I want to tell Bianca is: Yes, that’s me. You’ve described me perfectly.

  I realise that the linkages between myself and Irina must be at breaking point if Bianca could somehow see me inside Irina’s skin with her human eyes. Though I haven’t felt a thing this time: no jarring shift, no sense of dislocation, of unlinking, nothing. It had just happened.

  I close my eyes, willing myself to dissolve, to search out and test those invisible bonds that somehow anchor me to Irina.

  The hard knot that binds me to her is still there; it still holds firm. Irina’s still
there, too, locked away. That part hasn’t changed. And though I struggle and twist within her boundaries, I cannot draw away from her entirely, however desperately I might wish to. Then, abruptly, I feel myself pulled back, as if by a cord, or an elastic band.

  Bianca moves a little closer, fascinated despite her dread. ‘All I see and hear is Irina but I’m getting someone else completely.’

  She walks around me, studying me from every angle in silence and I meet her gaze steadily. ‘No ghosts, no evil spirits here,’ I challenge quietly.

  Bianca’s eyes well again suddenly as if she might cry. And I know how she’s feeling, because I’m feeling it, too. I move away from her and lean back against the door, crossing my arms tightly to try and ward off the hurt that always accompanies the thought of Ryan Daley being out there in the world without me. And then I see Luc’s eyes again — that strange mixture of fury and dark need in place of the love that used to greet me — and the pain intensifies, making me lean forward and draw a quick, sharp breath. How much more must I be made to bear?

  Bianca hesitates, picking up her designer bag and slinging it back over one narrow shoulder like a shield, ‘Well … Irina,’ Bianca says with a small, sad smile, ‘you’ve pulled off at least one miracle today. All I’ve wanted to do, ever since Félix decided he didn’t want me any more, is murder you with my own hands. I did think about doing that today, but … fate very kindly intervened.’

  ‘Fate?’ I murmur. ‘Fate has nothing to do with any of this.’

  I turn and open the door before Bianca can say anything more. Gia and Juliana look up immediately, then hurry towards me.

  ‘You’re still alive,’ Gia says wonderingly.

  ‘What of the dresses?’ Juliana queries, shooting Gia a warning look.

  I glance back at Bianca, and she returns my gaze steadily before she replies, ‘The red and the silver, I think. Designs 13 and 28.’