Love

Praise from London for
Love: A User's Guide

O
rgasm. It was the most perfect word. Eliciting all it could, easing meaning out of every syllable. O … a large perfect Oh, the softly parted lips, the promise of the never-ending union. Gas … gasp, a shuddering intake of breath, a sensation to savor and the arching curving back as you sink into the mmmmm … the bliss. Yes, it was a great word, Amy thought. She'd had a fair few in her time, some deft and delicious, others more hit-and-miss affairs; she'd been thinking about that word all morning as she basked in the afterglow of sex like early morning sun on her face. What she doesn't know, but we do, is that there are greater and better things to come (as it were) for Amy, more Ohs than she can dream of, enough gasps to take your breath away, and an abiding mmmmm of satisfaction that would keep any girl smiling. Yes, there's a lot for her to look forward to, only she doesn't know it just yet.

Amy crawled on the floor looking for a pin to hold together the spare wisps of silk in the model's organza creation. Her boss rushed forward and tugged it from her hand.

“Come on, come on. OK, Amy, the shoes are wrong, pass me those blue Patrick Coxs.”

Amy groveled on the floor a bit more.

“Cloud or duck egg, Lucinda?”

“Those, those. Here, pass them here.”

Another Monday morning, another undernourished teenager to be got up in the spirit of the lazy days of summer. Amy shivered in the biting February chill of the studio. Carefully ironing between the beads of a pair of Lacroix harem pants, she lapsed to thoughts of herself as a Matisse muse, reclining plumply on a chaise longue, fauvist colors warming her bare breasts, one hand propped above her head, a harlot's smile flickering about her lips, and the divine beaded Lacroix creation adorning her gently rounded, golden-tanned stomach. And Luke Harding—she knew it had just been a one-night stand but she couldn't resist casting him in the role of libidinous painter (sorry, Matisse). When Luke could no longer keep a steady brush he strolled to her side and placed indolent, painterly kisses all over her courtesan form …

“Amy, the Lacroix, quick. Today purleasse.”

Lucinda was a bitch from hell on a shoot but then so were all fashion editors. They had the artistic sensibilities of the photographer to worry about—“more tits, darlin', pull it down a bit” (this was
Vogue
, by the way, not
Big and Bouncy
)—and the poor model who bit her lip and cried as she exposed an inch more of her pigeon chest; the makeup artist who sulked at the model's spots and shouted if the shell pink of the clothes clashed with the navy blue lipstick he was
about to apply; not to give credence to a multitude of hairdressers and PR girls on the end of the phone demanding the aforementioned shell-pink number back for a
Marie Claire
shoot in an hour's time. This made for a pretty hellish time for the editor, but it was perdition for the lowly fashion assistant, i.e., Amy, who was the only emotionally balanced person in attendance. Allegedly.

Postnightmare, Amy and Lucinda sat nibbling the remains of the model's lunch. Cucumber isn't really a square meal but it provided an excuse for them to natter purposefully and wind down from Lazy Days of Summer hell. Lucinda kicked off her scarlet satin Manolos and grilled Amy about the weekend and the smart wedding she'd been to. She was a girl who knew her social onions, so a wedding of society pages' significance was always a treat. Who was there? Did Lady Blah get pissed again? What possessed the bride to wear Ozbek and most importantly who snogged whom? Amy deliberately filled in each of the former first.

“Miranda looked like an angel, naturally,” Amy began.

“Naturally,” echoed Lucinda.

“It was Josh's parents' place down in Surrey, there was a kind of wood nymph theme I think, I couldn't quite work it out. I thought the bridesmaids had wings but the woman I sat next to at dinner said they were just weird veils. Anyway, they looked lovely.” Lucinda lapped up the details. “And the house was amazing but most of us stayed at this hotel down the road.” Amy
suppressed a smile at the memory of the hotel. “And Josh cried during his speech, which was quite cute, I suppose.” They both gave a perfunctory nod on the understanding that, yes, it was cute, but not something they'd put up with in their own husbands. Once Amy had exhausted her repertoire of ways to describe lace and hats, she broached the subject closest to both their hearts and blushingly admitted to having a bit of a ding-dong with some guy called Luke she'd fancied for years.

“Woweee, ohmigod, you didn't? Tell all!” Lucinda exploded.

Amy flushed with pride and hid her delight behind a slice of cucumber. “Well, his name's Luke Harding, I haven't seen him for years but—”

“Not Luke Harding with the very little bottom?” Lucinda furrowed her brow.

“Well, I suppose so, now that you mention it. Why?”

“Ohmigod,
quel
rat!” darted Lucinda. She was imbued with the spirit of
Breakfast at Tiffany's
and could often be heard shrieking Holly Golightly phrases with a little less grace than la Hepburn.

“Because, darling, he's been living with my friend Kate forever. Oh. My. God. Poor Kate.”

Amy choked, horrified. She wiped the traces of spluttered Evian from her chin. “I knew he had a girlfriend, but … God, Luce, not your Kate.”

Lucinda nodded so hard her rouge noir lipstick became a fuzzy streak of color against her alabaster face. The effect was like fairground lights from the Big Dipper. Amy felt sick.

“Yes, my Kate. Shit, darling.” She paused, sternly contemplating the infidelity. “Was he good in bed?”

They were hysterical with tears and Evian all over the place when the photographer walked back in, stifling the deluge of tales relating to Luke Harding's willy. He looked at them, turned round, and left. Cue more laughing like drains.

A
s she sat in the studio later, picking up pins and Polaroids, Amy mulled over the weekend. It must have been the hat, she thought.

Cecil Beaton, yes, the hat sealed it, a still from the Beaton hall of fame alongside wasp-waisted, arched-eyebrowed beauties of the past. Amy stood back from the mirror and felt pleased with today's look. Her black trouser suit fell around the lean lines of her body; her shoes, a wild black-and-white animal print, and her new black hat, wide brimmed and striking, invited that finishing touch, two fresh white roses.

Her pride in her outfit would have been frowned upon by her growing coterie of those “for her own gooders”: those friends who seemed rather cross that at the age of twenty-four she was beginning to blossom. Her artistic flair lent her appearance, already fine and aristocratic, a flicker of eccentricity which was at once endearing and glamorous. Her friends, Amy felt, preferred her as the long-limbed teenager, bending her knees beneath her billowing skirt to conceal her height, laughing tomboyishly with the lads. Now, they thought, her ego was a little out of control, she was way too involved in the
one-too-many novels she'd read, and saw life a little too rose-hued for their liking.

She picked up her handbag, fraying at the seams, and shot downstairs to the waiting minicab. Miranda had been a friend for many years, always very beautiful, with luxuriant black locks and lips of such curvature and plumpness that only a handful of mathematicians in the world could have solved the equation of their rare shape and symmetry. Today, Miranda was getting married to Josh, a fitting match for such a sublime young woman.

As Amy stood in the church, her hat obscuring her eyes but her berry mouth duly responding to the emotion of the ceremony—a spectral smile at the gentle fluffing of the lines and a worried retraction of her lips at the prospect of “till death us do part”—she was only vaguely aware of the attention she attracted. Only vaguely aware in the way that all women are constantly a bit alert to the impression they are creating, the ticktock of self-perception taking up a little corner of their brain. So that as they cry hysterically they dab desperately with a tissue, hunting down wayward smudges of mascara; when pursued by a wailing police car they glance discreetly into the rearview mirror in order to assume the correct aspect of gravitas. It comes of being brought up to worry first about the cleanliness of your knickers before giving a thought to the fact that the ambulancemen are rushing to gather your limbs up off the road.