The Debutante Divorcee

by Plum Sykes

  17

  Jailbait Make Out

  There is nothing more chic, I swear, than a white Eres one-piece worn on the deck of a 1920s ski chalet in the French Alps. Tanning when there’s two feet of snow on the ground, the sky is electric blue, and the sun is beating down at 70 degrees has to be the most luxurious thing ever. I think it’s the white-on-white thing. It’s insanely flattering, especially when there’s a mountain of terry toweling robes and matching slippers to add to the effect.

  When Hunter had announced, just a few days before Christmas, that one of his French partners had offered him his ski chalet in Megève over the holiday, I’d packed in a heartbeat. The quaintest village in the Alps, Megève makes Aspen look like the Mall of America. There are twisting cobbled streets, scrumptious patisseries, charming boutiques, and an immaculate church square. Our journey had been exhausting—we’d taken an overnight flight to Paris and an early flight the next morning to Geneva, but it was worth it when we finally arrived.

  Thick with icicles, our little chalet looked like something from Hansel and Gretel. Inside, the drawing room was furnished with faded sofas and sheepskin rugs, and our bedroom was so romantic I wondered if we would ever leave it. The bed was made up with antique linen, and a fur coverlet was thrown across it. It was better than being in a Ralph Lauren Ski ad. Who cared that I couldn’t actually ski?

  “It’s divine, Hunter,” I said, as we dropped our things in the bedroom. We’d finally arrived in mid-afternoon, and the sun was casting its last silvery rays across the pristine mountainside.

  A happy smile on his face, Hunter enveloped me in his arms, saying, “Aren’t you glad we’re out of New York for Christmas?”

  “Yes, I am,” I replied, excited.

  Hunter had been so sweet over the last few days, and looked after me so well on our trip over, that the whole mysterious Barbara Walters episode started to seem unimportant. Now that we were here, in this beautiful spot, the concerns of the last few months dissipated. Just then there was a knock at the bedroom door. A maid appeared with two chocolats chauds on a tray and an envelope addressed to me. I opened it and read,

  Darling Sylvie and Hunter,

  You won’t believe it. I am next door in Camille de Dordogne’s chalet. Come for cocktails tonight?

  xxx Lauren

  Lauren, predictably, had flaked on all three of her Christmas invitations. At the last minute she’d decided to spend the week with Camille, a beautiful, thirty-seven-year-old French countess. Camille was famously happily married to Davide de Dordogne, a banker, to whom she’d lost her virginity at seventeen in the Palace Hotel in Gstaad (“I wouldn’t consider mislaying it anywhere else,” she always says). She married him six weeks later, and her three children were now virtually adults. She ran a chic porcelain store in Paris and loved matchmaking her friends. With Camille’s help Lauren was determined to complete her Make Out Challenge on the slopes.

  “I’m hoping Camille can hook me up with the Monaco son,” Lauren told her friends. “Don’t you think Andrea Casiraghi would be the perfect Number Four? I may even consider marrying him. One offer I can’t turn down is Princess Lauren of Monaco.”

  Hunter and I drove over to Camille’s chalet early that evening—we were tired, and to be honest, fond as I was of Lauren, I didn’t much feel like socializing after our long flight. We decided to drop in briefly, and then go back and snuggle up together in that heavenly, fur-covered bed. Chalet Dordogne had been built by Davide’s family in the 1920s and was half hidden up a steep mountain lane.

  Camille greeted us at the door. She was petite, and dressed in wide tweed pants and a pale blue satin blouse, which hinted at a milky décolleté. How do French women pull off that bourgeois-sexy thing so well, I thought, as I regarded her wonderful outfit. She was an oxymoron—so conservative, yet so provocative at the same time, like a modern Romy Schneider.

  “Ah, bon soir. Mwah. Mwah. Mwah. Mwah,” she said, clutching my shoulders and kissing me twice on each cheek. She then repeated the exercise with Hunter. “Welcome.”

  The drawing room had a high, arched ceiling with an ornate galleried balcony leading to the bedrooms. The house was bulging with guests and children who were gathering around the fireplace for pre-dinner drinks. Just as we arrived, Camille’s husband, Davide, appeared. Neatly dressed in a white shirt, moleskin pants, and loafers, he was the very picture of the suave European banker on vacation—BlackBerry on hand at all times.

  “Vin chaud?” he asked.

  “Mmm! Merci,” said Hunter.

  Davide poured a couple of glasses, and we all lounged on sofas by the fire.

  “Lauren brought that amie Marci with her, which is no good at all,” said Camille, with a little frown.

  “Why?” I asked, sipping my wine. It was warming and delicious.

  “Marci isn’t a good influence. She just wants to party, like a teenager. I have told Lauren, she’s been through enough. She must make an executive decision to marry a rich man. None of her friends want to see her suffer.”

  “Lauren would hardly suffer if she didn’t marry a rich man,” Hunter remarked.

  “No one suffers more than a rich woman with a man who isn’t—”

  “—Sylvie! Hunter!” came a voice from above us.

  We all looked up: Marci was leaning over the balcony from the gallery upstairs, waving madly. She looked completely amazing but completely inappropriate in an orange velvet Lela Rose cocktail dress with a huge silk ruffle at the neck. “We’re having the best time. Absolutely no one from New York’s here,” she said. “They’re all in Antigua, poor tragic things.”

  Just then Lauren strolled in, trailed by a tall, good-looking teenage boy. He was in ski pants, with the straps pushed nonchalantly off his shoulders. His matted blonde hair grew straight into his eyes, half-covering his face, which added to his cool allure. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old.

  “Have you met Henri?” said Lauren, with a wink. She was wearing faded corduroy pants and a huge cashmere sweater. She seemed extraordinarily relaxed, compared with the last time I’d seen her. “Ooh! Glühwein! Mmmm. Henri’s going to introduce me to all the cute underage guys out here.”

  “Non! I forbid it!” objected Camille.

  “Maman,” huffed Henri. He poured a vin chaud for Lauren and one for himself, and stretched lazily into an armchair. From there he glared possessively at Lauren while chewing his blonde forelock.

  “Sylvie, why don’t you come up and see my new ski outfits,” said Marci from the balcony.

  “Sure,” I said. “Will you be OK without me for five minutes, Hunter?”

  “I’ll survive, but only five minutes,” he replied sweetly.

  I followed Marci upstairs. When we were in the bedroom she said, “What are you guys going to do for Hunter’s birthday?”

  Hunter’s birthday! It was on Christmas Eve, and I had completely forgotten about it. I felt terrible. I had vaguely planned to do a surprise party back in New York, but with the last-minute Megève trip it had completely slipped my mind.

  “Well, maybe I could do a surprise party out here,” I said. “Our chalet’s perfect for a fun cocktail.”

  “It would be so cute. We’ll help you,” said Marci. “We’ve got three days till the twenty-fourth, which is enough time. It’s going to be amazing. I’ve met so many new people here already.”

  I was worried about Marci. Her mood was relentlessly upbeat, but it seemed forced. Surely she must be missing Christopher?

  “Don’t you love the off-vanilla of the ski jacket?” said Marci, showing off a piece of the gorgeous ski gear that she had bought at Jet Set in St. Moritz. Marci squished the jacket with her fingers. “Isn’t the down filling so…mmm…goodgey. Look, it has this little red star on the collar, which is very Jet Set, and the matching pants have another red star right on the sexy part of your butt—”

  “Are you OK, Marci? Have you seen Christopher?”

  “I am sure I saw that gorgeous S
wedish Princess Victoria at Jet Set. It’s the only place in the world that makes chic ski stuff. There isn’t anywhere else you can get chinchilla snowboots,” continued Marci, holding up a cloud-colored fur boot. “Aren’t they to die?”

  “Marci, what is happening with you and Christopher?” I said, serious.

  “Sylvie, you are so sweet to be concerned, but actually, everything is…proceeding.”

  “What do you mean, proceeding?” I asked.

  “I’ve changed my mind, about becoming a divorcée. It’s seeing all those pictures of movie stars shrinking into a swizzle stick when they’ve become single again. It’s really put me off. I’m trying to gain weight now, can you imagine? Christopher’s saying he wants to come back. So we’re in…negotiations. Sophia’s organizing the whole thing. She’s been so sweet, talking to him and so on.”

  “Sophia?” I hoped Marci didn’t sense my lack of enthusiasm.

  “Yes. She told me to get these. Look.”

  With that Marci popped a pair of huge, Jackie O style sunglasses on her nose. They looked even bigger than Nicole Richie’s eyewear, if that’s possible.

  “From the Hermès store down in the Place de l’Église. They’re the only polarized Jackie sunglasses in the world. You can ski in them. You can see three miles in them. Four hundred and fifty euros! But you feel so good skiing in them. I won’t regret these. No.”

  “Four hundred and fifty euros is a lot for a pair of sunglasses.”

  “I’m worth it.” Suddenly Marci took the Hermès shades off and looked at me with a mischievous smile. “Listen, don’t tell a soul this, but Sophia told me something.”

  I looked at Marci, my eyebrows raised.

  “She’s having an affair,” she said.

  “Sophia’s always having an affair,” I remarked, blasé.

  “With a married man.” Marci put the glasses back on and turned back to the mirror, admiring herself. “Hasn’t she got the best taste?”

  Who cared that I couldn’t ski, I said again to myself as I regarded the Alps from the deck of the chalet the next morning. They really do look as fresh and clear as the pale blue mountains on an Evian bottle. I couldn’t wait to be up there in the clear air.

  “You’re going to love it,” said Hélène, the ski instructor Hunter had hired to teach me. She was twenty-three years old, with dark hair and intensely freckled skin. She’d appeared at 9 A.M. that morning to pick me up, wearing a bright yellow instructor’s jacket, and a headscarf printed with strawberries.

  “I’m excited,” I said.

  We’d arranged to meet Hunter, who’d left very early that morning to ski a black run, at a mountainside restaurant, La P’tite Ravine, at midday for lunch.

  Three hours later, a burning pain shooting into my foot, and with my right ankle wedged at a sharp right angle to my calf, I couldn’t have been more desperate to get off the slopes. Why people called skiing a vacation I could no longer fathom: this wasn’t a vacation, it was like being the guy who almost died in Touching the Void, I thought miserably as I tried to move. Two toddlers shot past me on mini-skis. How were they doing that, and why were they smiling? Didn’t they know they were about to die? God, being married is a nightmare, I thought, feeling the agony sear up into my ankle. Suddenly, just because you’re married, you have to join in a husband’s life-threatening pursuits, like skiing, while they do not have to join in on your life-enhancing ones, like Pilates classes.

  “We must go up,” said Hélène. “Your husband is expecting us, and there’s no way to find him now.”

  “I can’t,” I wailed miserably. Maybe I had fractured my ankle.

  “Then we have to go back down in the car,” said Hélène.

  “I just…can we just stay here and…” I burst into tears.

  Suddenly I felt a tap on my shoulder. I twisted my stiff neck to find myself looking up into a man’s mirrored sunglasses. They belonged to Pierre, Sophia’s ex-boyfriend from Paris.

  “Pierre,” I groaned.

  “Oh my God, are you all right?” he asked, concerned.

  “She won’t get up,” said Hélène, with a frustrated sigh.

  “Are you in pain?”

  “Yes, and I promised to meet Hunter at P’tite Ravine. I can’t even move.”

  “Here,” he said, gently pulling me up with Hélène’s help. I managed to stand, shakily.

  “You should go home. I’ll go find Hunter.”

  “Really?” I said gratefully.

  Pierre nodded. Why Sophia had let this one go for a married man I knew not.

  “You must come to Hunter’s surprise birthday party at the chalet,” I said, regaining my composure a little. “It’s on the twenty-fourth.”

  “I’d love to,” said Pierre. “Now, you should be going.”

  Melania Trump wouldn’t get on at all well, clothes-wise, in Megève. There are only two nights of the year when one is allowed to dress up—Christmas and New Year’s. The rest of the time, the dress code is strictly informal, or smart-casual at the dressiest. The most important accessory at a Megève party, I soon realized, is a cell phone with a camera. As the drawing room filled up with guests the night of Hunter’s birthday, all they did between sips of champagne or bites of raclette was compare pictures of each other mid-ski jump. By ten o’clock the chalet was packed, and Hunter seemed to be having a great time. There was only one person missing: Marci. She hadn’t appeared, and endless people she’d invited were showing up asking for her. Where was she?

  I spotted Camille, her seventeen-year-old daughter, Eugenie, her son Henri, and Lauren sprawled on the sheepskin rugs picking at bowls of flocon de Megève by the fire. Maybe they would know where Marci had got to. Hunter and I went over and joined them.

  “There’s an eighties moon-boot revival going on,” Camille was saying. She was sporting a giant pair of fluffy white boots. They looked like enormous marshmallows on her feet.

  “They’re a little out, Mom,” said Eugenie, regarding her mother as one would a loser cousin. “All the Monaco kids were wearing the pink and violet puffy boots après-ski last year. Now it’s all about seventies snowboots.”

  Eugenie got up and headed over to her friends, who were all clad in skin-tight jeans, fur gilets, and vintage boots of pony skin or tan suede. Their look was very Ali MacGraw in Colorado.

  “She’s unbelievably cute,” I said, as she walked off. I sat down next to Camille.

  “Isn’t she?” said Camille, looking fondly over at her daughter. “Now, Sylvie, please encourage your friend to remarry.”

  “I’m not sure if I can under the circumstances. Husbands make you do things like ski,” I joked.

  “Husbands are terrible, darling, aren’t they?” said Hunter, kissing my hand affectionately.

  Everyone laughed. My ankle had been so inflamed by my fall that I’d avoided the slopes and spent the last few afternoons at the spa at Les Fermes de Marie getting physiotherapy. Today I’d stopped by the Hermès boutique, where I, like Marci, had been seduced by the Jackie O ski glasses. When I’d gone to pay for them I realized that Marci had wildly underestimated the price tag: they were actually y650, a price based on Hermès’ rule that anything by Hermès costs at least seven times as much as it would anywhere else. Still, the glasses were so fabulous I was sure they would speed my recovery. I wouldn’t regret them.

  “Lauren,” continued Camille, “you are spoiled. You are rich. You like incredible homes, a lot of travel. You should marry an older man. Otherwise you’ll be bored—”

  “Camille, I’m not interested in marriage. Old, rich guys are boring. The only one I could do is Barry Diller,” joked Lauren. She looped her arm over Henri’s shoulders and sighed, with an exaggerated wistfulness. “But this little Henri here! Soooo cute!”

  She took Henri’s hand and dragged him off into the crowd. Camille rolled her eyes and groaned.

  “Camille, have you seen Marci yet?” I asked.

  “She’s having dinner with Pierre,” she said. “
Then they’re picking up Sophia D’Arlan and coming late—”

  “But I didn’t invite Sophia D’Arlan tonight,” I interrupted, slightly annoyed.

  “You don’t get Pierre without Sophia,” said Camille.

  “But Sophia isn’t dating Pierre anymore,” I said.

  Just then, I saw Marci squishing into the crush on the far side of the room. She looked flushed and excited from the cold night air. Behind her followed Pierre, and after him, Sophia. Why was she always around? Wherever Hunter was, Sophia was, it seemed. Or…maybe I was being unfair. Maybe she was just here with Pierre, by chance. After all, I had invited Pierre myself. As it turned out, Sophia immediately disappeared into the guest bedroom with Pierre. No one saw either of them again all night. I didn’t even get to say hello to her that evening, which was a relief.

  Christmas day in Megève is like something from The Snow Queen. A heavy overnight snowfall made the village look like it had been dipped in Chantilly cream, the church providing a meringue-like spire. After a charming church service, Hunter and I bought chocolats chauds in the main square, then went home and spent most of the afternoon relaxing in the hot tub on the deck.

  “Thank you for organizing the party, Sylvie,” said Hunter as we sat in the steaming bubbles. “It was so wonderful, and so different from New York.”

  “I loved it too,” I said, wrapping my dripping arms around him and kissing him. Everything was so sexy and romantic here. “You are the best husband—”

  Just then, I heard my BlackBerry beeping. I’d left it on the side of the tub, knowing that my family would send a few emails today. Gingerly avoiding covering it with water, I picked it up and read the email out loud:

  To: Sylvie@hotmail.com

  From: Lauren@LHB.com

  Re: Jailbait Make Out

  Darling Sylvie,

  Henri is so growth-spurty and awkward. That geeky teen thing is so cute. He thinks he fell in love with me last night, which might be a bit tricky with his mom and dad. I’m not in love, but I highly recommend making out with someone less than half your age at least once in your lifetime.