Bad Brides (18 page)

Edmund grimaced.

‘I hope she’s serving loads of potatoes with that,’ he said. ‘Or bread. Or both. I’ve been shovelling shit all day and I’ve got more of the same this
afternoon.’

‘Were you at the pig farm? I went there today,’ Brianna Jade said, sliding off the slippery coverlet and to the floor, Edmund very solicitously grasping her waist to steady her as
she found her footing.

‘No, chickens,’ Edmund said. ‘Fantastic fertilizer. But that’s an extra reason I wanted to shower. Did you see Abel at the pig farm? You couldn’t possibly have
missed him.’

‘Huge guy? Yeah.’ She walked towards the bathroom to wash herself. ‘He said “ooh-arr” to me. Like, lots.’

‘It’s a standard greeting round here,’ Edmund said, grinning. ‘I can do it for you if you’d like. I slip into the local accent pretty easily, though my mother
always hated it.’

‘You really don’t have to.’ Brianna Jade was laughing now.

‘There’s a dressing gown on the back of the door,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you put that on so you can go back to your room and get dressed? I’ll wait for you and
escort you down to lunch.’

‘We
really
need to get you a new robe,’ she called, dragging on the ancient faded near-rag she found hanging from the hook. ‘I’m going to order one for you, and
I don’t want any argument, okay? I’m throwing this one away as soon as the new one comes. Plus the towels! Why aren’t you using the new ones?’

‘They were my grandmother’s,’ Edmund pleaded. ‘I know they’ve seen better days, but—’

As he protested, Brianna Jade re-entered the room, walked to the bed, picked up one of the discarded towels and held it up in front of her face so that he could see how worn it was: her features
clearly showed through it.

‘Okay,’ he said, yielding. ‘You do have a point. New towels it is.’

‘Hey, I have lots of money,’ she said with disarming frankness. ‘We might as well enjoy it!’

How great is this?
she thought happily as she kissed him on the lips and went back to her room.
Having sex, then talking about actual domestic stuff together, like we were married
already. This is real now.
Not that it had ever felt fake to her. She had liked Edmund from the moment she met him, would never have agreed to the proposed marriage if she hadn’t known
she could have feelings for him; but somehow, the combination of good sex followed by a mutual agreement to throw out threadbare towels was a confirmation that they were embarking on genuine
married life, not just a mutually beneficial arrangement.

She was humming a cheerful tune when she emerged from her bedroom in a fresh linen dress and pretty summer sandals, her hair loose around her shoulders in golden waves, diamonds in her ears.
Edmund was waiting outside for her in the blue and white finely checked shirt tucked into pressed jeans that was the Englishman’s version of smart casual.

‘You dressed up for me!’ she said, delighted. ‘That’s so sweet.’

He took her arm and tucked it securely into the crook of his as they walked towards the main staircase, which was wide enough to descend side by side.

‘Really,’ he said seriously, ‘it was the absolute
least
I could do.’

It was still, occasionally, a surreal experience for Jodie Raeburn, editor of
Style UK
, to walk into her office and realize that it did in fact belong to her. In her
previous incarnation as Jodie Raeburn, lowly assistant to Victoria Glossop, the then-editor, Jodie had sat in the anteroom to this office, a jealously loyal gatekeeper, guarding access to Victoria
as preciously as if it were an audience with royalty, but also, paradoxically, terrified to enter it herself: for every ten times Victoria summoned the assistant she had renamed ‘Coco’
into her office, nine of those were to haul her comprehensively over hot coals for some tiny infraction of the Victoria Glossop Code of Perfection.

There had been an interim
Style
editor between Victoria and Jodie, of course. Jodie had moved to Manhattan as Victoria’s assistant and had swiftly climbed the job ladder there,
from junior editor to launching and editing
Mini Style
, the teen
Style
spin-off, proving herself fully as an editor. She’d changed her name back to Jodie, establishing her
own identity, before she’d returned to London, ready at last to sit in an office once occupied by Victoria.

Filling her killer heels
, Jodie thought, smiling to herself at the thought of the stilettos that, along with the miniskirts and her blonde chignon, were an intrinsic part of
Victoria’s signature look.
As if I could!

After a near-suicidal attempt in New York to starve herself down to a size zero, Jodie had resigned herself to not being as thin or polished as her mentor. She had had the office completely
redecorated when she arrived back in London, deliberately altering the white and greiges and gleaming transparent glass that had been Victoria’s tonal palette; the previous editor
hadn’t dared to change them. Now the décor was fun, playful, as befitted a young editor. Jodie had been barely twenty-eight when Victoria, now CEO of Dupleix Publishing and
editor-in-chief of the entire
Style
empire, had sent her protégée to London to not only edit
Style UK,
but also simultaneously launch a British
Mini
Style.

‘Sink or swim, and you’d better paddle bloody hard!’ Victoria had said gleefully, relishing her choice of words. ‘You’re taking over at a year younger than I was
when I first edited
Style
,
plus
you have a launch to oversee as well! But then of course, you’ve had the inestimable benefit of being apprenticed to me, so we’ll call
it a wash. I’m giving you the keys to the kingdom. Don’t fuck this up.’

Well, I haven’t yet
, Jodie thought, looking round her office –
her
office! – with its cream walls, orange and red Marimekko rugs, twin burgundy Fritz Hansen
‘Egg’ chairs on tripod steel bases, the flashes of gold in the shelving system and framed prints on the walls; a lavish arrangement of salmon-pink roses on the desk, sent by her
fiancé, were yet another burst of colour that toned with the rest of the room.
I’ve put my own stamp on
Style UK
,
Mini Style
’s flourishing, and, of course,
that means Victoria promptly decided to throw another plate at me to juggle. I know all too well how she loves to test people.

Pulling up her Vitra state-of-the-art chair, she took a seat at her gleaming white laminated Knoll desk, uncapped her bottle of Vitamin Water, took a deep breath, and then activated the
video-conferencing screen which every
Style
editor had been required to install in her office as soon as Victoria had taken the helm at Dupleix. Victoria liked to be visually in touch with
all her minions, perfectly aware that she was even more intimidating when she was both heard and seen. This was a scheduled call, which at least meant that Jodie had had time to prepare for it, but
you still never lost the nerves that fluttered in your stomach at the anticipation of seeing your boss on screen, as perfectly groomed as ever.

Like actors say about performing live – you never stop getting stage fright,
Jodie thought as the screen loaded up and Victoria’s custom-made white leather chair came into
view. It was unoccupied, of course: people waited for Victoria, never the other way around. Ten seconds elapsed, long enough to make the point; and then a swish of fabric was audible, a blur of
crisp white shirt came into view, and Victoria Glossop, editrix-in-chief and mistress of her universe, sat down, crossed her long slim tanned legs in their sharkskin beige miniskirt, and tilted her
haughty features sideways momentarily to take the glass of water her assistant was handing her –
Fiji water, chilled to seven degrees, with a fresh slice of lime dropped into it with
silver tongs,
Jodie remembered all too vividly. She had learnt Victoria’s needs so efficiently that even after several years she knew her boss’s tastes as well as she knew her
own.

‘Too cold, Monika,’ Victoria said to the assistant as icily as the offending water. ‘Take it away and get me one at least three degrees warmer.’

Thank God, the assistant didn’t say a word; you never answered back, that was Lesson Number One. You just nodded, whipped the glass away, considered for a split-second buttoning the glass
inside your shirt and hoping that would warm it up a bit before realizing that your emaciated, starving frame emitted no heat whatsoever. Then you shoved it into the microwave and hoped that just a
couple of seconds in there would fix the problem, which was non-existent anyway since you had taken the Fiji bottle out of the temperature-controlled drinks fridge which was set to the precise
seven degrees that Victoria specified . . .

‘Hi, Victoria,’ Jodie said, grinning with great affection at the fact that her boss would never, ever change –
and that I don’t have to get the bitch her water ever
again.

‘Ugh, I miss Coco!’ Victoria complained, looking down her long aristocratic nose at the young woman who, as Coco, had been the best assistant Victoria had ever employed. ‘Why
couldn’t I just clone you? My God, what are you
wearing
?’

‘Preen blouse,’ Jodie said, her grin deepening. ‘Frame jeans.
And—
’ She leant back in her chair and raised her legs just enough so that Victoria could see
her feet – ‘Isabel Marant Bekket hidden-wedge trainers.’

‘Sneakers at the office!’ Victoria almost gagged. ‘My God! Thank Christ at least they have a heel, but—’

The assistant returned with Victoria’s water, her slim café-au-lait hand trembling visibly in the corner of the screen as she set it down. Luckily, Victoria was so distracted by the
deliberately oversized pale green suede and light brown leather trainers into which Jodie’s tight jeans were tucked that she completely ignored her hapless PA.

‘They’re absolutely positively the latest thing,’ Jodie said with considerable glee.

‘
Sneakers!
’ Victoria repeated, relishing the horror with which she pronounced the word; she and Jodie had fallen over the years into a kind of older sister/younger sister
relationship, where Victoria ritually mocked Jodie’s clothing choices while secretly acknowledging that Jodie had her finger firmly on the pulse of current trends. ‘They look like you
stuck your feet into a pair of gigantic marshmallows and then spray-painted them the colour of vomit. Model-vomit, the kind that comes up when they haven’t eaten anything for two days and
then they do vodka shots, the silly little bitches.’

‘Don’t hold back, Victoria.’ Jodie sipped some Vitamin Water. ‘Tell me what you really think of my shoes.’

‘I don’t
understand
her as a designer,’ Victoria complained. ‘I don’t get her
ethos
, her
philosophy
. Who wants to make women’s feet
look
bigger
?’

‘Hey, she’s very European,’ Jodie said cheerfully. ‘And big shoes slim the legs.’

True as that was, Jodie had deliberately started a policy of annoying Victoria by dressing in Marant and other designers like Acne whose shabby-chic aesthetic drove Victoria crazy; it was a
clever ploy to distract Victoria from complaints or gripes she had with Jodie or her staff.

‘Sometimes I suspect you of wearing ghastly things in meetings as some kind of calculated provocation,’ Victoria said with frightening perception, her grey eyes flashing as sharply
as the matching grey diamond of her engagement ring as she picked up her glass of water.

‘So,
Style
Bride of the Year,’ Jodie said quickly, wanting to move Victoria on from this dangerous line of speculation. ‘You want to know where I am with that. I sent
through a briefing email earlier – what did you think?’

‘It’s fun, this, isn’t it?’ Victoria sat up straighter, eyes flashing even brighter. ‘Not the wedding part – God, I really could care less about weddings,
they’re like a taste
vacuum,
a
black hole
of tacky
.
All these bias-cut satin dresses the women wear over here make me want to
stone
them with
rocks.
They think they’re chic, but all they are is
bland
.’

Jodie shivered: pretty much the worst insult Victoria could possibly throw at anything was ‘bland’.

‘Well, good news,’ she said, deftly taking this and spinning it to her advantage, ‘my two front-runners are
definitely
not bland! They’re both young, stunning,
super-
photogenic. The grooms are gorgeous too – very different styles. I think the key question here is, what do we want the first issue to say about us? Who’s going to
encapsulate our brand? I mean, last summer was totally the royal year – first Queen Lori of Herzoslovakia.’

‘Fabulous jewellery,
lovely
long neck,’ Victoria muttered in parentheses.

‘Princess Chloe, of course . . .’

‘Safe, safe,
dumpy
– a size
twelve
, for God’s sake.’ Victoria yawned like a cat, perfect white opalescent teeth sparkling between coral-glossed
lips.

‘So this summer, maybe a Countess is too much like the royals? Is she too beauty-queen?’ Jodie clicked on the screen of her laptop, swivelling it round to show Victoria a picture of
Brianna Jade in a recent shoot for
Hello!

‘Teeth and hair and tan,’ Victoria said dismissively.

‘Great bones,’ Jodie countered. ‘Look at those cheekbones. And she’s curvy, but actually she’s barely a ten.’

‘Photographs bigger,’ Victoria muttered, but she was still staring at the picture of Brianna Jade, and she hadn’t said no.

‘That’s muscle tone. She’s very fit – she’d jump for you,’ Jodie said, a code between them: Victoria loved action modelling shots, had made her name on
US
Style
with dynamic, vigorous photographs of models running, leaping, twirling in whirls of fabric and colour.

‘Hmm,’ Victoria mused. ‘Well, she’s polished. I like polished. And the other one? Bit insipid, isn’t she?’