He smiles suddenly, though his face and eyes still look tired and haunted, and I quit breathing altogether, just for a moment.
‘You get more and more beautiful every time I see you, do you know that?’ he says.
I feel a pang of sadness, and my words come out more harshly than I intend. ‘Don’t go getting used to this face. She looks nothing like me. I’m no supermodel.’
Ryan smiles again, and this time it reaches his eyes and he’s heart-stopping. ‘It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t matter. I know what you look like, remember? I carry that sketch of you with me wherever I go. You look like the Delphic Sybil — remember we talked about it? — except your eyes are brown.’ He grins. ‘I could definitely get used to your new voice, though. I’d have no objections waking up to that every morning.’
He looks down suddenly, embarrassed, and I’m glad he doesn’t see my face flame in answer to his last remark, see my free hand fly up to my mouth.
No crime against wishing; no crime against dreaming, right? How is it that love and desire can feel so much like physical pain?
There’s movement behind him and I see him turn as Justine thrusts something into his hands off screen. I study his profile greedily, smiling as his fringe of dark hair falls into his eyes and he shoves it back.
‘There!’ Justine says, turning the pages of something noisily. Ryan holds it up to the screen. It’s a glossy magazine.
‘You’re talking to her!’ I hear Justine hiss. ‘Irina! She’s the one who dumped Felix de Haviland — one of the heirs to the multibillion-dollar d’Haviland construction dynasty. She actually stole him off his fiancee, then left him for Will Reyne, the singer from Machine. Dumped him, too.’
Ryan looks at me, raising his eyebrows, and I have to stifle a giggle at his wicked expression. ‘You’ve been busy,’ he murmurs.
I grin at him and he grins back. And for a minute, it’s like we’re back in his crummy, rusting four-wheel drive, scoring pot shots off each other for the pure hell of it.
‘Look!’ Justine exclaims, pulling the magazine out of his hands and turning it over before handing it back. ‘See this? It’s her, too! She’s everywhere.’
He angles the magazine at me again, and I see that he’s looking at a full-page image of a woman’s face. She’s laughing and leaning on her hand. On her wrist is a large, diamond-encrusted watch.
‘Irina’s choice,’ Ryan reads aloud, in the kind of stuck-up voice a newsreader would use. I laugh out loud, in genuine delight.
‘She’s not seeing anyone at the moment,’ Justine goes on. ‘You might have a shot if you play your cards right. Though she’s hardcore, Ryan, she’s trouble …’
‘Don’t need to tell me that,’ he says, winking down the screen at me.
I see Justine peer over his shoulder briefly, eyes round with disbelief. ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe you know each other. Wait till I tell the others,’ she says, so breathlessly that her words run together.
Before I can say, ‘Hey, Juz,’ the way I used to when I was Lela, Justine pulls her magazine out of Ryan’s hand and slips out of the room.
Ryan frowns. He’s always been able to read my mind. ‘Don’t,’ he says quietly. ‘Just leave it alone. Don’t mess with her head. She was hysterical after Lela died. From what Dmitri told me about her, she’s been through a really rough time lately. She doesn’t need to know about you. It wouldn’t change anything — it would just mess up the memories she has of Lela. We’ve already talked about this — the less people that know about you, the better. It’s hard enough on the people who do understand.’ His laughter sounds forced.
‘Who chooses the … bodies?’ he asks when I don’t say anything. ‘Who determines where you go, who you’re supposed to be?’
I don’t reply and he adds uncertainly, ‘Irina’s a little … left field, isn’t she? A bit out there? She’s nothing like Carmen, or Lela. You know … quiet. Uh … ordinary.’ His voice is apologetic.
‘So you’ve noticed, too?’ I say, sidestepping his other questions. ‘I’ll take “ordinary” any day. It’s insane here. I can’t go anywhere without a battery of people following me around, or trying to slip me things. And that’s just Irina’s staff! You should’ve seen it when I showed up for work this morning — it was a bloodbath.’
‘So when can I come out?’ Ryan says suddenly, brushing that agonisingly familiar fall of dark hair out of his eyes with his long fingers. My breathing stills again. ‘When Gia called, I’d just hung up from the funeral home. The timing was freaky. Total rollercoaster.’
I don’t ask him whether he wept when Lela died, because I know he did. It’s in his voice. And a sudden wave of love and regret and longing threatens to send me to my knees. He’s so … sweet. So very human.
He adds quietly, ‘Karen and Lela will be buried side by side as soon as Lela’s body’s released by the coroner. Should be Monday at the latest.’
Grief roughens my voice. ‘They’d like that.’
‘You speak as if they’re still with us,’ Ryan replies.
‘They are,’ I say, as a door is pushed open further back along the corridor I’m standing in. A young woman shrieks, ‘Tell him to take his cliched silver evening gown and —’
‘Now, now, Orla,’ interrupts a light, male voice coaxingly. His accent sounds a little like Ryan’s. ‘You know it’ll make all the covers — it’s easily the most stunning evening gown in the entire collection. Your face will be everywhere.’
I don’t hear the woman’s reply because there’s the sound of a door slamming shut, then a loud exhalation. And that light, male voice exclaims behind me, ‘Gia, darling. At last, a sane person. Orla’s on the warpath. Hates both the dresses she’s been allocated. Barely got out alive. Love the boots. So fierce.’
‘Mercy?’ says Ryan. ‘What happens n—’
‘Irina!’ Gia’s voice cuts in.
I turn my head to see her standing some distance away, outside the door marked Studio 1. There’s a slender young man beside her, with a narrow grey fedora pushed back on his head of short, dark blonde hair. He’s the latest word in street fashion, with his skin-tight, distressed indigo jeans bristling with hardware, his narrow, buttoned-up, hound’s-tooth waistcoat over a faded grey, long-sleeved tee with a slogan on it I can’t make out, sharp-looking shoes, wrapped leather bracelets encircling both wrists, bristling with studs. He’s very pale and looks very young. He gives a little wave, blows me a kiss.
‘Showtime,’ Gia says to me apologetically. ‘Wrap it up. You can pick it up again later.’
The young man scans me critically, up and down. ‘Lookin’ fly, Irina,’ he calls out, head on one side, one hand cupping his cheek. ‘Ready to get your freak on, babe? Loads to get through.’
‘Mercy?’ Ryan’s voice issues loudly from the phone in my hand. I look back down at his face. ‘Justine can take it from here,’ he says insistently. ‘She doesn’t need me any more. You just tell me where and I’ll be there. I’ll be there.’
I close my eyes for a second, imagining that world — where Ryan could step onto a plane and I’d be there waiting for him, and we could be together for always, with no complications.
‘Irina?’ Gia says again sharply, and I turn and see a beautifully groomed, middle-aged Italian woman, her dark hair in a sleek, low knot, a measuring tape around her neck, entering the corridor. She’s wearing a gorgeously tailored black suit and low-heeled shoes, and she looks at me, then at Tommy and Gia for a second, before saying, ‘I can start with Miss Sebsebe in Studio 3 …?’
Tommy shakes his head. ‘Irina’s our number one priority now that Giovanni’s gone and arranged a private showing straight after her fitting. We need to get a move on, people.’
‘Give me a minute?’ I plead as my imagined world slips quietly from view.
Gia holds up one hand, five fingers outstretched, to show me that those are all the minutes I’m getting. I turn my back on them, stare into Ryan’s dark, electronically mediated eyes. My own eyes are stinging fiercely. I can’t cry. I don’t do tears. I’m not human. I’m not human.
‘Merce?’ Ryan says tenderly, from out of the palm of my hand, from so far away.
He could be Luc’s brother, he could be his twin. Save that he is mortal, and gentle; dark to Luc’s light, night to Luc’s day — or is it the other way around? I wonder when those things started to become qualities and things that I revere. They’re both so different. But they look so alike. Just another riddle without an answer in my fogbound, floating life.
‘Where, Mercy?’ Ryan insists. ‘I’m already on my way.’
As is Luc, reminds that small voice inside me gravely, always one beat ahead of my waking self. He’ll be
