Killer Heels (33 page)

Oh, I’ve been where you are right now, my dear
, Mireille’s
gaze said.
I’ve seen myself supplanted, eventually, by a new interest Jacob has taken up. I’ve watched as he promoted you, made
you editor of
UK Style
and then brought you to New York to be
my boss
.

oco was cringing at the memory of the look Victoria had
given her. Hours later, it was still seared into her memory
so vividly she felt branded by it. Coco had, Cravenly, she had
hidden from Victoria after the Chanel show, had buried herself
in the thronging mass of lower-level fashion junior editors and
PRs at the Givenchy and Dior catwalks, and had chosen the
Chanel after-party to attend that evening specifically because
she was sure that Victoria wouldn’t be present.

She’s barely been to any parties at all this time, Coco had
calculated. Not in Milan, not in Paris. She’s staying in, because
of the pregnancy, and maybe because she doesn’t want to
bump into Lykke and have any gossip flare up again. And
Lykke will definitely be here – which means that if Victoria
goes to any parties at all, they’ll be Givenchy or Dior.

Coco actually didn’t know what to think about the Victoria
and Lykke situation. She trusted Emily, and Emily had sworn
blind that she’d seen Lykke come out of Victoria’s suite in St
Louis. But the more Coco thought about it, the more unlikely
a scenario it seemed that Victoria and Lykke had actually been
having sex.

Not only had there never been any lesbian rumours about
Victoria before, there hadn’t been any at all about her cheating
on Jeremy.

The world of fashion was insular and tightly knit: gossip
spread like wildfire through a redwood forest, fast and furious.
If Victoria was attracted to women as well as men, it seemed
very implausible that no one had ever noticed or reported any
sign of it before now; there hadn’t been a single instance, even,
of Victoria adjusting a model’s clothes a touch too intimately,
walking in on one while she was changing, repeatedly booking
a favourite for lingerie shoots, all the little giveaway signs of an
editor who was crushing on a model.

Besides, Victoria and Jacob were an item for a while, Coco
thought. And no one knows better than me that Jacob’s as straight
as they come – and very sexually demanding. I can’t imagine a
gay woman wanting to go through some of the things Jacob asks
you to do . . .

Coco was glad of the darkness surrounding her in the nightclub; any thought, no matter how brief, of Jacob’s sexual tastes
made her go turkeycock red.

At the time, I’m so caught up I don’t even think about what’s
happening. To be honest, he doesn’t leave me any room to think at
all. The intellectual part of my brain completely turns off. It’s all
feeling, reaction, emotions
.

Coco had never said ‘no’ to anything Jacob did to her. He
had given her a safe word, but it was her own name, and she’d
have felt ridiculous calling out her real name: having no experience in the world of S&M, she didn’t know that it was the
submissive who chose the safe word, not the dominant.

I don’t want to say ‘no’ to Jacob, anyway
, she told herself
firmly.
I want to go wherever he takes me
.
It was as if she had been looking for someone like Jacob for
as long as she could remember. Coco had always known that
she was different from the rest of her family, who were easygoing, unambitious, content with their lives, like trams happy
to pootle back and forth on familiar rails. Her brother Craig
had always assumed he would follow in his father’s tracks,
had taken a job in Baggage Services at Luton airport as soon
as he had left school; her sister Tiff was more than happy
working at Boots, so much so that she’d emailed Coco
recently to say that she’d been offered a promotion which
would entail moving to a London branch, but hadn’t wanted
to shift that far from home.
I can’t imagine it, Coco thought. I can’t imagine having the
opportunity to get out of Luton and not taking it like a shot.
Coco had had no role models when she was growing up, no
older figure to look up to and pattern herself on. Teachers at
school had wanted Coco – Jodie, as she was then – to go on
to university, and had been disappointed when she told them
that she couldn’t wait three years to get into the workplace
and embark on the brilliant career of which she’d been
dreaming, ever since she found out that editing a glossy fashion magazine was a real job. They’d told her that a media
studies or journalism degree would be a passport into the
magazine world, would help her into internships and give her
useful contacts, but Coco had researched the careers of her
idols – Victoria Glossop, Anna Wintour, Liz Tilberis – and
discovered that none of them had taken that kind of conventional route to becoming editors of the best fashion magazines
in the world.
Instead, she had taken a word-processing course, got herself
on the books of temp agencies, hassled them incessantly to
place her in media-related jobs, snagged a week’s work on
Wow!
and parlayed that into copy-editing stints, freelance
writing and eventually a staff job. With no family connections
to help her out, no relatives already working in journalism or
the media, unlike so many of the middle-class girls, Coco had
had a long hard struggle; nothing had been beneath her. She’d
freelanced for most of the cheap weekly magazines, exposed
love rats, ghosted ‘true-life confessions’ of women who’d accidentally dated their long-lost brothers, had plastic surgery
which had gone horribly wrong, or squandered their life
savings to toyboy husbands met on holiday in Turkey or Ghana.
She’d done pieces on cats with two heads, teenagers who had
affairs with their boyfriend’s fathers, women who hadn’t
known they were pregnant till a baby popped out of them on
a RyanAir flight to Magaluf.
She’d even been asked once to write a bonkbuster novel
that a D-list celebrity, with a boob job and an affair with a
football manager as her claims to fame, would put her name
on. Coco hadn’t been shocked at the offer itself – none of the
glamour girls in modelling or TV wrote their own novels, they
could barely scrawl their own name in them when they did
supermarket signings – but had turned it down because they’d
proposed paying her much less per word than she could make
writing for
Take A Break
or
Woman’s World
.
And at least with those – mostly – she got her name on the
article.
No one had helped her, no one had given her a leg-up:
everything Coco had achieved had been done all on her own.
That was why, when she had finally snagged the job at
Style
,
she’d worked so hard to make a success of it, to ensure that she
was the best assistant Victoria had ever had.
And it had made her uniquely susceptible – and attractive
– to Jacob Dupleix. No wonder that Coco would do anything
he wanted, pass any test he put her through, never think of
letting the safe word pass her lips. Jacob was the mentor, the
father figure, for whom she had been searching her whole life
without even knowing it.
But suddenly, she couldn’t help wishing that Emily or Lucy
were here in Paris too. She missed hanging out with girls her
own age. Being with Jacob was a whirlwind of luxury and
glamour, and although the Dupleix travel department had
booked her a room in a Paris hotel, she hadn’t even checked in;
she was staying in Jacob’s suite at the Ritz. It was ridiculous:
she had a marble bathroom to herself which was no doubt
bigger than the entire room to which the travel department
had assigned her.
I’m at one of the trendiest clubs in Paris, and I’d kill to have a
couple of girlfriends to scream to about being freaked out that
Victoria’s hating me for being with Jacob, and then to hit the
dancefloor with them, let our hair down, be silly for a change . . .
The memory of dancing with Xavier at Urge flashed into
her brain, and she pushed it firmly away.
If I were with Xavier, I’d never even have got in here tonight. No
one invites lowly junior editors to Chanel after-parties at L’Arc.
L’Arc’s owners had named it after the Arc de Triomphe,
which was only a few hundred metres away, down the Champs
Elysées. From the outdoor terrace, where all the smokers
congregated, the view of the arch by night was stupendous; lit
up spectacularly, it glowed golden through the trees planted
elegantly along the avenues which led to it like spokes of a
wheel. Inside, L’Arc was as dark and sexy as the Parisian night:
booths of black quilted leather, tables dominated by large
silver ice-buckets, walls and bar illuminated by flashes of bright
pink and cobalt and lime neon.
Coco was used by now to seeing A-list celebrities at play,
but she had never, since these last few weeks of shows, seen so
many all together, chattering away; it was still a breathtaking
sight. She noticed one small, Oscar-nominated actress, a tiny,
slender girl, join a group of fashion insiders, realise that she was
next to skinny Lykke, over six foot tall in heels, and immediately, without even breaking step, move across the group so
that she was standing next to André Leon Talley,
Vogue
’s editorat-large, whose much larger frame was an infinitely more
flattering contrast to hers.
‘Darling!’ Jacob, who had been circulating in the thick of
the party, leaned over the side of Coco’s booth. ‘Why are you
hiding away here? You should be in the thick of it.’
‘I have been – really,’ Coco said, tilting her head up to his.
‘I’m just a bit . . .’ Her voice tailed off.
‘What?’ Concern flashed across Jacob’s face. ‘You’re young,’
he said jocularly. ‘You’re supposed to be partying till dawn.’
He slid into the booth beside her, familiarly close, his hand
immediately finding its habitual position on her thigh. ‘What
is it?’ he said, squeezing her gently.
‘Oh, nothing,’ Coco mumbled.
I’m so lucky to be here – this party is like the centre of the
particular universe I’ve wanted to join ever since I was a teenager.
Here I am, with my unbelievably influential, rich, successful
boyfriend, and I’m complaining. How spoiled is that?
Jacob’s hand tightened on her leg; now that she was so
much slimmer, his big fingers covered her entire quadriceps,
wrapping around the lower part of her thigh as well. For a
second, his grip dug in more deeply, a reproof to her, and she
added quickly, ‘Sorry. I know you don’t like it when I do the
“nothing” thing.’
‘Say what you mean, mean what you say, and stick by it,’
Jacob said, lifting his hand to tap the tip of her nose playfully.
‘Be like a man in business. What are the main rules?’
‘No self-deprecating, no apologising,’ Coco said, smiling at
him. ‘Attack, don’t defend.’
‘Exactly! Good girl.’ Jacob’s finger trailed to her lips, and
she kissed it. ‘So,’ he continued, his voice deepening as he
watched her kiss his finger, ‘tell me clearly and simply what’s
on your mind, and we’ll see what we can do to fix it.’
‘It’s just –
Victoria
,’ Coco blurted out, cuddling up to him as
his hand returned, heavy and warm, to her leg. ‘The way she
looked at me at the Chanel show today. I hate that she’s angry
with me. She’s done so much for me – she gave me a job as her
assistant when, honestly, I had probably the worst
CV
of anyone
who interviewed for it.’
‘And you worked your ass off for her,’ Jacob reminded her.
‘You earned that job. Victoria told me you were the best assistant she ever had.’
‘She did?’ Coco flushed with pleasure.
‘Hey! No self-deprecating.’ Jacob squeezed her leg again,
hard.
About to say ‘Sorry’, Coco remembered one of the other
main rules, caught herself, and shook her head instead.
‘Okay,’ she said obediently.
‘Quick as a whip,’ Jacob said appreciatively. ‘I saw that
straight away, the first time I met you.’
As always, Jacob’s approval made Coco warm with pleasure.
‘I’ve been talking to Vicky,’ he started, but just then Coco
jumped in surprise as, from the crowd jostling with their drinks
in front of their table, she saw a familiar face turn towards her.
Pink and green light fell on his smooth skin, his high flat cheekbones, his jet-black hair.
What’s
he
doing here? she thought, confusion roiling
through her at the sight of Xavier. She had seen him at some
of the shows, and been grateful for the fact that he seemed just
as keen to avoid her as she was to avoid him; they had traced
paths deliberately parallel to each other’s, never crossing, their
eyes occasionally meeting and then sliding straight away again.
Coco had never been any good at the kind of casual sex that
meant you could fuck someone’s brains out one night and then
have a coffee with them the next day as if nothing had
happened. That night with Xavier, for her, had changed their
relationship permanently, and clearly it was the same for him
too; neither of them was capable of managing a fuck-buddy
situation. At least not with each other.
It had been a relief for Coco to assume that, in the evenings,
she wouldn’t bump into her one-night stand. The restaurants
and parties to which Jacob took her were far above Xavier’s
pay grade. No way did a junior editor at
Men’s Style
snag an
invite to the Chanel after-party – and you couldn’t blag your
way into one of these dos; the bouncers were the toughest
she’d ever seen. How on earth had he got in?
A woman’s hand on his arm, slender and dark on his tightfitting white shirt, caught her attention, and a second later
Coco recognised one of the models from the show, Haymanot
– a stunning Ethiopian girl with dramatically-hollowed cheekbones and red-brown skin like rich earth. She was laughing up
at Xavier, her hand wrapping around his forearm possessively.
He must be her plus-one
, Coco thought.
Well, good for him
.
But she was oddly distracted by the sight of Xavier.
It’s because I was thinking before about dancing, letting my
hair down, being silly, acting my age, she told herself. And the last
time I really went for it, he was there. That’s why. It’s just an automatic association.
She had been looking at him for this whole time, and Xavier
couldn’t fail to be aware of a gaze on him; turning, Haymanot
still attached to his arm, he spotted Coco sitting in the booth
and froze, looking back at her, his eyes widening fractionally.
‘Friend of yours?’ Jacob said casually. But Coco, who was an
excellent observer, knew him well enough to be aware by now
that the more casual Jacob sounded, the more focused he actually was.
‘He works on
Men’s Style
,’ she said lightly. ‘A group of us
used to go out some evenings.’
‘Xavier, right? Xavier Fan?’
Jacob was famous for his attention to detail at Dupleix. He
raised one hand to summon Xavier over, smiling widely at
him. The other hand, the one on Coco’s thigh, slid up under
the hem of her mini-skirt to the wide ribbed lace of her stocking tops. Coco’s purchases at La Petite Coquette, the lingerie
store to which Jacob had sent her in the Village, had been very
much guided by the manageress, who, in the nicest and most
tactful way possible, had made it clear that Coco was not the
first young woman who had been sent there to make purchases
on Jacob’s account, and had discreetly steered Coco towards
the ranges that she knew from experience would appeal most
to her wealthy client. Nothing slutty, nothing remotely trashy;
nothing black, nothing red. Coco had bought lace bras that
lifted and presented her breasts like white velvet apples,
basques that narrowed in her waist, silk knickers that tied with
matching bows on each side, and a whole selection of garter
belts, some retro and boned, some flimsy little straps.
Jacob’s attention to detail was not just for work. He disliked
tights, and Coco had duly given all hers away to Goodwill.
Hold-up stockings were tolerated, if they were particularly
attractive, but really, he preferred garter belts, and Coco’s
unlimited account at La Petite Coquette,and the Bloomingdale’s
charge card he had recently given her, made it possible for her
to indulge his tastes as fully as he wanted.
Plus, I save on knickers, Coco thought ironically, as his
fingers stretched up beyond the top of her stocking, twisting
around the clip of her garter. Because Jacob prefers that I don’t
wear any when we’re out together . . .
‘Hey, Coco,’ Xavier said, stepping over to their table.
Haymanot, distracted by a comment Lykke had made to her,
let go of his arm, turning away, and Xavier propped both his
hands on the black glass tabletop. ‘Mr Dupleix.’ He nodded
respectfully at Jacob.
‘Oh, Jacob, please,’ Jacob insisted, smiling even wider. And
his fingers slid further up Coco’s leg, pushing aside the fabric
of the mini-skirt, tracing up the garter strap, brushing against
the soft skin of her groin.
‘Jacob, then,’ Xavier said gamely. He barely glanced at Coco
now, his dark eyes firmly fixed on his boss. ‘Great shows today,
didn’t you think?’
Xavier’s being pretty cool, Coco thought. This can’t be easy
for him – chatting to the big boss, trying to ignore the fact that
he’s had sex with the big boss’s girlfriend . . .