Killer Heels (15 page)

‘Good idea,’ Xavier said, winking at her in the friendliest of
conspiracies without making Coco feel that he was criticising
her friend. He had lovely manners, and he was ridiculously cute.
And he looks like a boy
, her inner voice said.
A boy my age
.
When Jacob Dupleix is most definitely a man
.

ictoria’s Town Car set her down outside the Lipstick
Building, the driver zipping round to open the door for
her, ignoring the frenzied klaxon of honks from the Third
Avenue bus, which had had to apply its brakes as the car cut in
front of it and pulled to a halt.

Victoria swung her legs out with a contented smile. Her
lunch meeting at Da Silvano with the Lancôme people had
been hugely successful; they had agreed to practically double
their current advertising spend, which Victoria had finagled
with assurances that she would radically increase namechecks
for their brand. Da Silvano, a famous downtown restaurant on
a fashionable block of Sixth, was a meeting place for actors,
models, and film people, and the Lancôme reps had been
hugely impressed by the number of celebrities who had come
over to greet Victoria. The food was no better than average,
and the prices sky-high, but then few customers were actually
eating anything, and they were all on expenses anyway, so no
one cared.

Another triumph under my belt, Victoria thought complacently. And I simply adore coming back to the office; it’s my
favourite building in the whole of New York. She loved the
Lipstick Building, so-called not only because its post-modern
design was oval, stacked in three layers like a lipstick tube, but
because its glittering, shiny red granite, banded with equally
shiny stainless steel, resembled designer cosmetic packaging
much more than it did a traditional office block. We should do
some sort of
Style
tie-in with the building, she reflected. A
cosmetic line. Lipstick, obviously, and perfume. I must tell
Special Projects to get on with that.

She swept across the lobby’s carnelian granite floor, past the
colonnade of granite, steel-trimmed pillars that reminded her
of Italian baroque architecture, over to the bank of lifts.
Victoria loathed being in a lift with anyone else; if she could,
she would have sequestered one entirely for her own use. She
had achieved the next best thing, however – there was a bank
of elevators that served only the ten floors of the Dupleix
publishing empire, and everyone at Dupleix knew better than
to enter a lift behind Victoria. Employees who walked in, too
busy BlackBerrying to notice her presence, would immediately
jump out again, mumbling apologies.

Victoria was absorbed in thought on the journey up and the
brisk walk back to her office, down the corridors that she had
had painted in her signature shade of greige. One of the
concepts that she had suggested to the Lancôme people had
been perfume-matching to various outfits in fashion spreads, a
way of increasing their editorial coverage, which was always an
advertiser’s dream. She was mulling over whether an upcoming
shoot of Mireille’s – cruisewear on gondolas in Venice – would
dovetail successfully with the Lancôme perfume line. Mireille
would loathe it, Victoria thought contentedly. Always a bonus.
She simply doesn’t get the business side of publishing at all.
But I must be careful not to force through ideas just to annoy
her. They still need to be right for the magazine . . .

She was so deep in thought that she didn’t even notice her
new assistant, Alyssa, jumping to stand behind her desk,
trying to catch her boss’s attention as Victoria blew through
and into her office. And for a few moments, she didn’t notice
the girl on the far side of the office, in the curve of the
windows, sitting on one of the two bone-white Le Corbusier
leather chairs, slung on chrome frames. Very uncomfortable,
very expensive, and exactly the same colour as the girl herself,
which was partially why Victoria didn’t immediately see her;
she blended into the furniture.

But as the girl rose up – and up, and up, because it seemed
to take her forever to unfold her long frame – it was impossible not to notice her. Victoria, in the act of dropping her bag
on her desk, stared over, thinking for a second that it was an
optical illusion; she knew she wasn’t drunk. And then she
thought of nymphs and sylphs, wild mythical river or woodland creatures who lived in half-light or in the depths of
oceans, because the girl’s pallor was extraordinary, as if she
had never seen the sun.

‘Victoria!’ Alyssa, in the doorway behind her, was wringing her hands. ‘I’m so sorry! She’s on a go-see, and I let her
sit in your office because Clemence and Dietrich were out
here shouting at each other, and I meant to move her out to
the waiting area when they went, but I forgot because
Clemence stormed off, and Dietrich wanted me to call
Mario in Brazil and I was explaining about the time difference, and then
he
stormed off, and anyway, I completely
forgot, I’m
so
sorry . . .’

Coco would never have let this happen
. No one Victoria didn’t
know, and practically no one that she did, was supposed to
wait in her office. It was her sanctum, her eye of the storm.
God, I miss Coco guarding my door. She was a bloody star
.

And this reminded Victoria that, again, she needed to do
something about Coco. The girl had been running the fashion
cupboard for two months now with total efficiency, while
simultaneously training up Alyssa, and she had still found time
to assist Mireille with the cruisewear shoot. Mireille had apparently, according to Clemence, called Coco ‘invaluable’, which
was true – but an absolute bugger. Coco was on her way up,
and Victoria wanted her loyalties to be undivided. There were
so many politics in this job. She needed Coco to be 100 per
cent on her side, and if Mireille was making a play for her, then
Victoria would have to reward Coco’s hard work by promoting her to junior fashion editor – which, frankly, she deserved,
Victoria had to admit. It would be a very fast climb up the
career ladder, but scarcely unprecedented: Victoria herself had
shot ahead just as rapidly.

Okay, then – junior fashion editor it is, Victoria decided.
She’d better not start getting too ambitious, though. Coco
might only be in her mid-twenties, but career-driven girls
that age were already looking high up to the top of the ladder,
to
Style
and
Vogue
and
Elle
, the ultimate glittering prizes.
She’s my protégée, not my rival, Victoria thought grimly.
She’d better not forget that, or I’ll slap her down so hard her
head will spin like that little girl’s in
The Exorcist
. Green
vomit and all.

And in the meantime, Victoria had an assistant to ream out.
She opened her mouth to tell Alyssa exactly what she thought
of the fact that Alyssa had countermanded her strict instructions never, ever to let anyone into her office when she wasn’t
there; and then the girl shifted, adjusting the portfolio she was
holding under her arm, and Victoria’s gaze was irresistibly
drawn to the girl’s irises. They reminded her of husky dogs:
their colour was an eerie and otherworldly pale blue, and, like
huskies’s eyes, they were ringed with dark borders that were a
striking contrast to the pale aquamarine.

‘
Vogue Russia
, last October,’ Victoria commented, looking
the girl up and down. She had an encyclopaedic memory for
not only her own magazines, but everyone else’s too. It was
one of the sources of her power. ‘The cover. I’m right, aren’t I?’

The girl nodded. It was like watching a flower on a long
stem moving gently in a breeze. She had to be almost six foot
tall in her bare feet, but in her stack-heeled boots, she towered
over Victoria. She was wearing a white jersey catsuit with a
long gilet over it, and the fabric of the catsuit was no paler
than her skin. Her hair was pulled back tight to her skull, the
ideal style for a model on a go-see, and it cascaded down her
back in a corkscrew-curling ponytail. She wore not a scrap of
make-up – again, utterly appropriate for a model on a go-see
– and her blonde-white eyebrows and lashes were almost
completely invisible against her skim-milk skin.

‘I don’t see models,’ Victoria said curtly, both to Alyssa and
to Miss
Vogue Russia October
. ‘I’m much too busy.’
‘Mireille sent her in,’ Alyssa explained. ‘She had to rush out
because Clemence couldn’t make it to the Alaia private show
because she was fighting with Dietrich, and Mireille told me—’
‘Too much information!’ Victoria snapped at her assistant.
‘You’re boring me.’
Alyssa heaved in a long, gulping cry.
‘Oh, piss off,’ Victoria said crossly. ‘And call in those skirts
for the circus shoot.’
Alyssa fled precipitately, grateful not to have been fired.
Vogue Russia October
was still standing there, her portfolio
under one arm, a suede drawstring Hayden Harnett hobo slung
over the other shoulder. Hayden Harnett didn’t advertise in
Style
, but it was a brand models loved: Victoria had noticed
that before.
‘You photograph very differently,’ Victoria said, still staring
at her. ‘I remember your cover very well.’
The girl extended her portfolio to Victoria. ‘Everyone says
that. Do you want to look at my pictures?’ she asked, her voice
soft, yet carrying. ‘I know you don’t usually do go-sees . . .’
Victoria paused. But the girl wasn’t pressuring her in any
way, wasn’t apologising, wasn’t eagerly pushing her portfolio
at Victoria; she was simply standing there, over six foot of
white, intriguing skin and bone barely padded by flesh . . .
‘All right,’ Victoria said, flicking her fingers out, waiting for
the girl to place her photo book in her hand. The girl flowed
forward like the river nymph Victoria had initially compared
her to, obeying silently, and Victoria flicked through the book,
her eyebrows rising as she did so.
‘I used to be a dancer,’ the girl said, answering the unspoken
question. ‘But I grew too tall.’ Her solemn face flickered
momentarily into a smile. ‘Much too tall.’
‘You jump very well,’ Victoria observed; it was one of her
highest compliments. Mireille thought her vulgar, but Victoria
knew what sold in America. Her girls had to jump, run, dance,
hail cabs, whirl in motion, smile joyously, not drape themselves
over the furniture like bored mannequins. This was the New
World, and Mireille would have to put a rocket under her arse
and start shooting dynamic, energetic models or watch her
spreads being slashed.
Victoria closed the portfolio and handed it back to the girl,
reading the name on the cover. ‘Lykke,’ she said. ‘What are you
exactly?’
‘The name’s Danish, from my grandmother,’ Lykke said.
‘But I’m Finnish.’
Most models, granted the honour of a one-on-one with the
most influential women in fashion, would have been unable to
resist prattling away, desperate to impress on Victoria what a
great personality they had, how positive and fun they were.
But Lykke stood simply there, looking absolutely perfect, and
limited herself to direct answers containing only the information Victoria wanted and not a word more.
Victoria made a snap decision. ‘Alyssa!’ she called through
the open door. ‘Get me a studio, now! And have a Polaroid
waiting for me in it.’
She nodded briskly at Lykke.
‘Follow me,’ she commanded. ‘I want to do some test shots.’
I haven’t done this in years, she thought, striding out of the
office, Alyssa scrambling to obey her commands, Lykke duly
high-stepping after her with the show-pony gait of a catwalk
model. But it was fun to break routine every now and then,
remind herself of what it was like being a fashion editor, spotting new talent. By the time she and Lykke had taken the lift
down to the floor on which
Style
maintained two photographic
studios, a trembling intern was waiting by the doors, a Polaroid
camera in her clammy hands. Victoria took the camera without a word of acknowledgement and swept through the door
the intern was holding open.
‘Do you—’ the intern started bravely.
‘No,’ Victoria said tersely, and the girl disappeared as
Victoria turned to see Lykke putting down her portfolio and
bag on a trestle table, long-fingered hands poised at the lapel of
the gilet, her near-white eyebrows rising to enquire whether
she should take it off.
‘Leave it on,’ Victoria said crisply. ‘I like the contrast of the
fake fur.’
She positioned Lykke so the light flooding in through the
north-facing windows was full on her face, and snapped a
couple of shots. Lykke was one of those rare models who look
very different, but equally beautiful, from real life in their
photographic image.
Many times Victoria had seen girls who were nothing in
person, but lit up like 100-watt bulbs in front of a camera, or
vice versa: gorgeous creatures who were very unphotogenic.
Then you had the ones who you recognised instantly, exactly
like their photos. This one, however, became someone else
entirely. Maybe it was the translucent skin; her veins pulsed
blue beneath it, haunting and delicate and more visible in the
photographs.
‘Can you take your hair down?’ Victoria said, an order
phrased as a question, still looking at the Polaroids. ‘It’s not
naturally that curly, is it?’
‘No. They did this for a shoot yesterday, and I liked it,’ Lykke
said, taking out the elastic that had been holding back her long
mane of hair.
Victoria put down the Polaroids and walked briskly towards
her, lifting the curls and arranging them over Lykke’s shoulders
to her satisfaction. It was the most extraordinary hair. In the
clear pure daylight of the studio, Victoria could see that it did
not have the slightest hint of blonde at all. It was as white as
snow, and soft as silk. Like something out of a fairy-tale.
‘I’m half-albino,’ Lykke said, pre-empting the question
Victoria was about to ask. ‘Even Finns aren’t this pale.’ She
smiled fleetingly again, and Victoria noticed that even her lips
had hardly a touch of colour. ‘I was very lucky I didn’t get the
pink eyes.’
‘That would have looked . . .’
Victoria was about to say ‘amazing’, but she met Lykke’s
eyes, her hands still in Lykke’s extraordinary hair, and the
sentence died on her lips. Lykke was like a watercolour,
painted with just the faintest hint of colour on the brush. The
blue of her eyes was so delicate, the rings around the irises so
defined, that Victoria, who had been equally close to every
single one of the most beautiful and famous models in the
world, was utterly hypnotised. She stared up at Lykke, at the
silky white eyelashes that framed those pale blue eyes, and
could not say a word.
Nor did she move. It was Lykke who lowered her head, like
a blossom folding over, her hair the petals that fell around
Victoria’s face as Lykke’s lips met hers.
Victoria’s entire body went into shock. Lykke’s long,
reed-slender body was pressed against hers, the points of
Lykke’s hipbones digging gently into Victoria’s flat lower
belly, and the light pressure sent a kaleidoscope of sensation
through that precise area, bright swirls of colour, light and
heat. It was such a dizzying feeling that it took her a while
to realise that her eyes were closed, her mouth opening
under Lykke’s, that Lykke’s arms had come round her, and
Lykke’s hands were in the small of her back, holding her
tilted up to meet her kiss.
Wait!
Victoria thought frantically. Later, she would
remember that her objection had not been to kissing a
woman; that hadn’t even registered as what was wrong, what
was triggering her panic. It was that she had entirely lost
control of herself. Lykke was kissing her, stroking her up and
down her spine in long, lovely caresses, and Victoria was
responding eagerly, kissing her back, arching her pelvis into
Lykke’s narrow frame, wanting more and more of those
spirals of delicious sensation.
Only Victoria’s brain – used to dictating terms and conditions for absolutely everything – was resisting, utterly panicked
by being overridden.
Stop!
it yelled.
Wait! I need to process this,
I need to decide what comes next, I need to be in charge . . .
It managed to connect to Victoria’s hands, telling them to
push Lykke away, to catch her breath. Victoria complied, but
when her hands sank to Lykke’s shoulders, she found herself
clutching on instead. She couldn’t obey her brain, couldn’t
push Lykke away. Her fingers sunk in, entranced by the lean,
steel-fine muscles of Lykke’s arms, her back . . .
Her brain gave up, overmatched. Victoria’s tongue twisted
around Lykke’s, wet and hot, her hands tangling in Lykke’s
amazing hair, pulling her even closer. She groaned as Lykke
ground her pelvis against hers; it was too high, Lykke was too
tall in her heels, she needed it lower down, between her legs,
and she needed it
now
. Everything was rising inside her, churning, swirling, and she would explode if she didn’t get what she
wanted right now . . .
She had never felt like this before, ever. She had barely had
sex with Jeremy since they came to New York; she’d just been
too busy. And she certainly hadn’t missed it. She had never
thought, in fact, that she had much of a sex drive at all. It had
never been anything like a priority for Victoria; she’d always
got her thrills from power, not sex. She had done what Jacob
wanted her to do during their affair, had kept the entire thing
secret from Jeremy, simply because it was the fastest way for
her to get where she wanted to be. And she had enjoyed almost
all of it; Jacob had always made sure her needs were met, even
if his own were fairly risqué.
But she had never melted like this in his arms, never kissed
him back with this passion and sheer, driving
need
.
Victoria wrenched her mouth free, her lips damp and swollen, her chignon coming loose.
‘I—’ she began, a typical Victoria opening to a sentence, but
Lykke already knew, was backing her against the trestle table.
The two women, in their high heels, moved like a beautiful,
conjoined, mythical creature as they staggered back and
Victoria’s bottom hit the edge of the tabletop. She dragged up
the hem of her mini-skirt, so short and tight that she needed to
wriggle a little to get it up to her waist, and was shoving her
hand between her legs to give herself the satisfaction she so
desperately needed when Lykke’s hips slammed into her,
widening the opening of her thighs. Lykke’s pelvis swivelled
against her expertly, driving the lace of her g-string into her
crotch, an extra little rub of friction that sent Victoria’s eyes
rolling right back in her head as she arched back and started to
moan: ‘Fucking Jesus God, fucking Christ, that’s so bloody
fucking good, oh God, yes, fuck me there, fuck me really hard,
do it, do it
now
. . .’
Her hands were grabbing onto the edge of the tabletop,
bracing herself, her hips thrusting up to meet Lykke’s. Her
thrice-weekly Pilates classes gave her complete control over
her core, her tight abdominal muscles curling her into a crunch
that sent her wet, hot pussy exactly, precisely, into the seam of
Lykke’s catsuit, their bones grinding together, Lykke’s hipbones
digging into the soft inside flesh of Victoria’s bare thighs, her
crotch rubbing and rubbing in circles and hard fast strokes just
where Victoria was so desperate to be touched.
‘Fuck!’ she wailed. ‘Don’t fucking stop, don’t you fucking
dare!
Fuck my cunt like that, I’m – Jesus Christ, God yes, that’s
it, that’s bloody
it
, yes, fuck you, fuck you, fuck
me
. . .’
Lykke’s palms were flat on the table, wide on either side of
Victoria’s body, her white hair spilling down, her gilet falling
open, revealing the outline of her nipples, hard little stubs
thrusting against the fabric of her catsuit. Her milk-white
cheeks were flushed, her mouth almost red with kisses, her
eyes aflame, and the sight of her, so beautiful, so extraordinary,
fucking her so perfectly, sent Victoria into spasms of ecstasy.
‘Are you fucking coming?’ she panted, the first time in her
life that she had actually asked a partner what they were feeling. ‘I want to watch you come – fucking
come!
I want to
bloody watch you fucking come, fuck my cunt and come—’
Desperate, suddenly, to touch Lykke’s pointed nipples, to
feel her breasts, Victoria managed to drag her hands free, to sit
up and close her palms over them. Lykke’s breasts were tiny
soft swells of flesh, almost flat to her chest, the sharp hard
nipples in exquisite contrast to the softness that cushioned
them, and Victoria rubbed her palms over and over them,
making them even harder, even more pronounced, as Lykke
moaned at the back of her throat and jerked frantically into
the spread V of Victoria’s legs. Victoria wrapped her thighs
tightly around Lykke, her ankles locking in the small of Lykke’s
back, and gave herself completely up to the endless stream of
orgasm. Lykke was coming in waves and waves; Victoria closed
her eyes, sank her hands into Lykke’s shoulders and held on for
dear life, a constant stream of obscenities pouring from her
mouth, shoving herself into the woman in her arms, between
her legs. She had no idea which one of them was coming from
one moment to the next; it was as if they were both in stormy
seas, battered by the waves, clinging to each other like liferafts, tossed up and down, gasping in breaths, moaning them
out again as they came again and again on the cross of each
other’s bodies.
Eleanor
, Victoria thought suddenly, a name from the past
flooding into her consciousness, a pretty little face, a girl from
school she hadn’t thought about for years, almost decades.
Eleanor Johnson-Smythe. My God, Eleanor
. They’d been
fourteen, obsessed with boys and romance at their all-girls’
boarding school in the middle of the Shropshire countryside,
marooned miles away from anything resembling testosterone,
and they’d turned to each other, best friends who spent every
break they had acting out complicated and elaborate romantic
stories culled from the Regency romances with which they were
obsessed, taking it in turn to play the male hero, pressing themselves against each other, kissing excitedly with closed mouths.
It had never gone beyond that, never even turned into
French kissing. Never had one of them climbed into the other’s
narrow dormitory bed, or touched each other beyond dry
presses of lip to lip, or inexpert, enthusiastic caresses of hair
and upper arms. But it had been enough to attract the attention of their form teacher, who had spoken, Victoria had the
vague memory, to Eleanor’s parents. Probably, Victoria thought
now, she didn’t dare speak to mine. Judge Glossop would have
given short shrift to any teacher why had even mentioned to
him that his beloved daughter might not have been completely
‘normal’, as he would have considered it . . .