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 Felix 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 Felix 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 Felix 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 Felix de Haviland … She actually stole him off his fiancee. 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 fiancee?’ I blurt out.
Bianca goes off. ‘The fiancee?’ 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 Felix — 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
