She moves through the sea of cases and bags with a critical eye and picks out a narrow pair of soft, leather trousers, low-rise, long and lean, in a warm chocolate colour. Then she rifles through some kind of jumbo-sized duffle bag on wheels and pulls out a crew-neck, long-sleeved, body-skimming, dusky-olive cashmere tunic that falls to mid hip. ‘These will have to do.’
She comes to a standstill and scans the room for several minutes until she finds what she wants — a hard travelling case that comes up to just above her waist, filled to the brim with shoes stored in neat pairs. ‘Just what I was looking for,’ she says as she draws out a gleaming pair of black patent heels — so shiny, I can see my face in them — with criminally high heels, six inches at least, and bright red soles.
‘I can’t move in those,’ I protest. They look like the claws of some alien creature.
‘You’ll have to,’ Gia replies, distractedly. ‘You know as well as I do that flat shoes won’t lift the ensemble the way these will. Plus, you’re Irina, and Irina never wears flats. Wedges maybe, clogs at a stretch.’ Gia wrinkles her nose at the idea.
‘Always something with a heel,’ she insists, ‘to make you seem even less like the rest of us mere mortals when you stalk by with your head in the clouds.’
‘Where is it?’ Gia mutters, as she grabs a matched set of silky, floral-print lingerie and throws it at me, too. ‘Did we pack them in the medium trolley case? Or cram them all in the hatbox?’ She laughs triumphantly as she unclasps the fastening on a hatbox as big as a bass drum and draws out a midnight-black felt cloche hat with intricate pleating extending over one ear so the leading edge extends upwards slightly, like a bird’s wing.
‘Perfect. It’ll look fantastic against the warm, neutral tones and all that long hair of yours. And let’s finish it off with that long, black, military-style shearling overcoat Andreas sent you from his studio in Madrid last winter. It’s the only one he ever made in that particular design. You’ve never worn it and I know that hurt his feelings enormously. When I ran into him backstage at the London shows this year, his lips were practically trembling as he asked after you.’
Gia locates the overcoat in a huge case that opens outwards like a mini wardrobe complete with hangers. She drapes it over her arm with the other pieces she’s selected for me, the little hat perched over one small fist. ‘Hop to it,’ she says, wending her way back through the cases and holding her selections out to me.
‘What?’ I say, startled. ‘Right now? Here?’
It’s Gia’s turn to look shocked. ‘You’re, like, a model?’ she exclaims mockingly. ‘You stand around in your underwear all day — if you’re lucky — while fifteen people work on your hair and make-up and shove fabulously expensive clothes over your head. I’m the one who’s always telling you to put some goddamn clothes on, remember? So, needless to say, I’ve seen it all before. But I’ll look away from “the presence”,’ she snorts loudly, ‘if that’ll help.’
I have no choice but to scramble out of the cashmere sleep suit I’m wearing and into the things Gia’s chosen for me, in record time. She looks at me clinically when I’m done, turning me in the direction of a full-length mirror set up in the corner of the room. The colours she’s selected highlight Irina’s cream and roses complexion, her toffee-coloured hair and huge, wide-set, dark eyes fringed by extravagant dark lashes.
Gia tugs the black cloche hat onto my head, twisting and pulling at it until she’s satisfied with the angle of the delicate bird wing arcing above one brow. She pulls a set of bobby pins from a large, monogrammed vanity case and secures the hat firmly.
‘Fabulous,’ she murmurs as she jams the last pin in place. ‘And put these on when we get outside or you’ll be sorry.’ She hands me a soft, sleek pair of short, hand-stitched, shearling-lined, black leather gloves.
I shove them into a pocket of my ankle-length coat and climb reluctantly into the shoes, feeling as if I’m going to tip forward onto my face at any moment.
‘I can’t do this!’ I exclaim, screwing up Irina’s small and exquisite nose.
Gia frowns as she takes in my awkward, slump-shouldered, turtle-necked posture. ‘What you mean is, you can’t do this unmedicated. Well, tough, because it’s not my job to facilitate your self-harming tendencies. Stand up straighter, and it won’t seem like you’re falling downhill. You need to redistribute your weight. I can’t believe I’m telling you this — your memory really must be shot to hell.’
I make subtle adjustments to Irina’s posture until Gia stops frowning.
‘That’s better,’ she says. ‘It’s perfect. A little bit rock and roll, a little bit minimalist-with-an-edge, and the hat is just quirky enough to signal that you’re a fashion insider, you speak the language. You couldn’t take a bad photo in that outfit. From any angle.’
‘It feels like torture,’ I respond dryly, feeling my feet going numb.
Gia laughs. ‘Beauty hurts.’
She’s about to say something else when a doorbell peals so loudly, I almost jump. I’m reminded of the small matter of locating Ryan Daley, which completely slipped my mind during the insane amount of time it took us to find me something to wear. Irina’s heart gives a sudden lurch.
‘You promised you’d help me find him, find Ryan,’ I remind Gia.
She shakes her head warningly, already heading towards the door. ‘Not now,’ she says over her shoulder. ‘That will be Felipe, and Felipe is not accustomed to being ignored.’ Her tone is derisive.
I trail awkwardly after her in the crippling, shiny heels she picked out for me to wear. When she flings open the door to my suite, I see a handsome, sun-bronzed, strong-featured young man standing there. Mid to late twenties, with black, slicked-back hair. He’s shorter than I am in my absurd footwear, and broad-shouldered, muscular, powerful-looking. He’s wearing a single-breasted charcoal grey suit over a black turtleneck, a camel- coloured overcoat and expensive-looking, spit-and-polish black lace-up brogues. He’s carrying a pair of cream and tan, perforated leather driving gloves in one hand. As he follows Gia into the stately sitting room of the suite, I see open admiration in his dark eyes. For me.
Even though I consider myself impervious to all forms of flattery, I find myself blushing suddenly under his appreciative and unblinking scrutiny. Even Ryan never looked at me the way this guy’s doing now. Like I’m good enough to … devour. I don’t know whether to feel pleased, or revolted.
‘?Querida!’ the young man murmurs in a low, musical voice like an auditory caress. ‘Como ardo al pensar en su belleza, a pesar de su maldad infernal.’
Gia shoots Felipe a scandalised look.
I feel Irina’s face suddenly flush with a strange, hectic blood, her heartbeat kick into higher gear. It’s Spanish. I actually recognise it.
But I don’t recall any past facility with Spanish at all. So where is this coming from?
Literally, the guy had said —
Darling! How your beauty sets me on fire, despite your infernal evil.
I don’t know how it’s possible, but when I reach out for the words I need, the words I want to use, they’re somehow there.
‘Que simpatico … como siempre, querido Felipe,’ I reply tersely. ‘But let’s speak English, for Gia’s sake, ?le parece bien?’
There are accents on all the wrong places, accents where there shouldn’t be any, but from the looks on both their faces, I’ve just made perfect sense in a language I shouldn’t even know.
‘You’re speaking English for my sake?’ Gia says disbelievingly.
The confident smile on Felipe’s handsome face falters for a moment, before it’s smoothly re-established. ‘Your Spanish, Senorita Zhivanevskaya,’ he says, his perfect white teeth showing, ‘he has improved very much.’
‘Yes, “he” has,’ Gia mutters. ‘Out of sight. So tell me again, Irina, why you insisted on hiring that creepy translator for the Costa Rican swimsuit shoot last month?’
From the look on Gia’s face, it’s clear that the only languages Irina’s supposed to have are Russian and bitchy conversational English.
‘Sit,’ I tell Felipe, still pretending I didn’t hear Gia’s question. I gesture at the two pairs of elegant winged armchairs facing each other either side of a monumental glass and steel coffee table bearing porcelain cups and saucers and a sleek, silver, lidded jug.
Gia and I take our places across from Felipe and, for a moment, I do not hear the icily correct small talk that the two of them are exchanging. Lela Neill hadn’t spoken Spanish. Neither had Lucy, or Susannah. Or Ezra before them. But with a name like Zappacosta, I’m guessing that Carmen might be able to. And now I can, too? Even though I passed through Carmen’s body … two lives ago? Or does this ability come from somewhere else, some
