The Designer(44)

Having her work accepted by Harper’s on her first attempt had been a huge step up. Seeing herself in print – and her name in the byline for the first time – had been thrilling. Her spare, grim prose had been powerful among the articles about dresses and shoes.

Her dinners at the Ritz with Henry Velikovsky had turned into the highlight of her week. She loved the ritual of meeting him there, and hearing the stories of his adventures, his childhood in Russia, and the romantic world of sleigh rides and winter palaces he had once inhabited. For his part, he made her feel glamorous and special – feelings she hadn’t had for a long time. Their friendship was slowly and almost imperceptibly turning into something deeper, though she didn’t want to admit that yet. After all, she’d specifically told him that she was off-limits. But life had a way of shifting the pieces around the board.

Through him, she had sold two more short pieces to Harper’s Bazaar. Carmel Snow was still interested in stories about Paris, especially those with a fashion angle. And they were eagerly awaiting her Théatre de la Mode story, which she would file when the exhibition took place.

And then there was her third great friend, Suzy Solidor. She found Suzy sitting at her little dressing table, studying her own face in the mirror.

‘I’m worried about you,’ she said, sitting beside Suzy.

‘Pourquoi?’

‘The épuration. Everyone in the club is talking about it.’

‘Don’t be afraid,’ Suzy replied. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong. Those dogs can’t do anything to me.’

‘But they can. They can put you in jail or in an internment camp.’

‘Chérie, the worst they can do is fine me a few francs.’

‘I hope you’re right.’

‘I am right. Don’t worry.’ Their eyes met in the mirror. ‘I am not an angel. But you are, ma chérie. You are a perfect angel.’ She patted Copper’s cheek, her eyes searching Copper’s face. ‘Do you find me disgusting?’

‘Of course not.’

At first, to tell the truth, Suzy’s intensity had intimidated her. The older woman’s company was like absinthe, intoxicating yet dangerous. Suzy didn’t conform to anyone’s rules, which was partly why Copper found her so interesting. Suzy had swiftly become an integral part of her life. She had taken charge of Copper’s education, improving her French, her dress sense, her taste in food and much else. She’d introduced Copper to her favourite writers – Baudelaire, Villon, Rimbaud – and a world of new possibilities.

As with Henry – but in a different way – she had felt herself awakening. Sensuality had crept into her life like a warm breeze stealing into the windows of a room that had been shut up for a long time. Amory had been everything to her, especially at the beginning of their marriage, but his infidelities had wounded her so often and so deeply that she’d stopped having any faith in him. And when faith had died, so had desire. She’d found that she needed closeness and trust more than sex. Desire grew out of trust, not the other way round. So something in her had closed up, like the petals of a delicate flower. And had remained closed until new people had entered her life – Henry and Suzy.

‘And that Russian brute,’ Suzy went on. Copper shivered as Suzy caressed her neck, her fingertips light as butterfly wings. ‘If you don’t sleep with me, do you sleep with him?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Of course not,’ Suzy echoed mockingly. ‘You are a monument to chastity and your marble thighs never part. Really, chérie, you enjoy driving the world crazy.’

‘I don’t at all.’

‘Liar.’ Suzy pressed her lips to Copper’s, clinging and moist. Refined as she was in her dress, Suzy never used perfume or deodorant. The milky smell of her skin and the darker tang of her armpits rose into Copper’s nostrils, intoxicating and erotic. She pulled back quickly.

‘Why will you never kiss me properly?’ Suzy demanded, touching the bright waves of Copper’s hair.

‘I don’t want to kiss you in that way.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s not—’ Copper couldn’t find the right word.

‘Not decent? Not proper? Not genteel?’

‘Not me.’

‘But you want me, just as I want you. I can feel it.’

‘You mean you think you can.’

Suzy took a fistful of Copper’s hair threateningly. ‘Sometimes I would like to hurt you.’

‘Sometimes I wish you would,’ Copper replied in a low voice.



Pearl was in the sitting room when Copper returned from La Vie Parisienne in the early hours of the morning. She was crouched on the sofa, spreading the toes of one bare foot, the needle poised.

‘For God’s sake,’ Copper exclaimed in disgust. ‘Can’t you do that in the bathroom?’

‘It’s freezing in there.’ Pearl injected herself carefully and then lay back on the cushions with a sigh. Copper watched the effect of the drug iron all the lines out of Pearl’s young face, leaving it smooth and dull as dough. Pearl’s relapse into drug-taking had been a bitter disappointment, but she was forced to accept that if Pearl ever escaped from her addiction, it would be on her own terms, not on anyone else’s.