Little White Lies

by Lesley Lokko

  She stared at him uncomprehendingly for a second, then picked up her bag and walked out. There was a phone box on the corner, just outside the bank’s main entrance. She yanked open the door, slotted in a few pounds’ worth of coins and dialled her mother’s private line. The phone rang, the familiar, high-pitched single ring, but there was no answer. She dialled her father’s office with shaking fingers. Again the phone rang and rang but no one picked it up. She tried all the various different numbers in the palace that she knew off by heart – the chief protocol officer, the press secretary, the kitchens . . . but again, nothing. She hung up, her heart thumping. Something was seriously wrong. She stumbled dazedly out of the phone booth. And that was when she saw it. The headline, splashed across the Evening Standard board. West African Leader Assassinated. Wife and aide also killed in blast. Her knees suddenly buckled under her.

  ‘Hey, you all right, love?’ A passer-by shot out a hand. ‘Woa . . . easy.’ He grabbed hold of her as she stumbled, half slumping to the ground.

  ‘No, no . . .’ Annick couldn’t get her words out.

  ‘Here, you’d better sit down.’ He helped her across the pavement to a bench. He was an older man, in a suit and tie. He looked concerned. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked in concern.

  She felt as though she’d been punched in the stomach. She couldn’t breathe. Everything around her had slowed down. There was a terrible, insistent blush of fear that had burst inside her, rapidly spreading up through her body, all the way through the muscles and organs and flesh and skin. She brought both hands up to her face, pressing them against her cheeks, her ears, her neck.

  ‘Are you all right?’ the man repeated. ‘Is everything all right?’

  She couldn’t hear him. She would never understand how to tell him, how to tell anyone, how to get it all straight.

  42

  Mrs Price was waiting for her at the flat, her eyes reddened from weeping. It was the first time Annick had ever seen her cry. ‘Oh, Annick,’ she said as soon as she walked in the door. ‘Oh, Annick.’

  Annick opened her mouth but terror blocked her words. The dread was like a taste in her mouth, sharp and bitter. She stumbled again and Mrs Price quickly dragged out a chair, helping her into it. ‘I . . . I just saw—’ Annick’s mouth wouldn’t close properly over the words.

  ‘I know, I know. Your aunt phoned a couple of hours ago, that’s how I heard. I didn’t have the news on this morning, like I normally do. We’ve been trying to reach you at the office but they didn’t know where you’d gone. You’re to go to her immediately.’ In Mrs Price’s anguish her Scottish accent suddenly became more pronounced. ‘She says I’m to pack you a few things. No one knows what’s going on down there.’

  ‘How? It said . . . the newspaper said . . . both of them . . . ?’ Annick looked up at her in fear.

  ‘I know, I know. It was a grenade. Someone in the crowd. They were on a parade . . . oh, Annick. Your poor, poor mother. And your father. I don’t know what to say, really I don’t. I don’t know what to think.’ Mrs Price’s voice cracked.

  ‘My aunt wants me to go to Paris?’ Annick tried to focus on what she’d just said. ‘Which aunt?’

  ‘Aunt Libertine. She says I’ve got to get you on a train immediately. She’s afraid they’ll come after all the properties and the money—’

  ‘What money? My accounts have all been frozen,’ Annick said dazedly.

  ‘I don’t know. She just said it’s best for you not to be here. She thinks you’ll be safer in Paris, that’s what she said. Oh, dear . . . oh, Annick.’

  Mrs Price’s voice kept receding off into the distance as more and more urgent, terrible thoughts took hold. One part of Annick’s brain received the information mechanically processing the words, but the other was flooded with a choking sense of terror. ‘What shall I take with me?’ She heard the words as if they’d been spoken by another.

  ‘As much as you can, that’s what she said. You might have to be there for a wee while,’ Mrs Price said, looking around her fearfully as though expecting someone to burst through the door any second. ‘I’m going down to Kent to stay with my sister until . . . until well, until things settle down. I’ll help you pack. Come on, we’ll do it together.’

  Annick allowed herself to be taken by the arm and led her into the bedroom. She looked around her dazedly. ‘What should I take?’ she asked again helplessly.

  ‘Let’s start with your clothes and any personal things you might want, photos and such. We . . . we don’t know when you’ll be back, that’s the thing.’

  Annick couldn’t speak. She watched as Mrs Price hauled down two of the big suitcases from on top of the wardrobe. They were covered in dust, which she hurriedly wiped off with her sleeve. It was such an unlikely gesture for someone as fastidious as Mrs Price; Annick’s sense of panic deepened. She began to cry as Mrs Price flung clothes into the suitcase, pausing every now and then to hold up something, a wordless question. This? How about this? Clothes, photographs, books . . . all quickly disappearing as she efficiently packed up Annick’s life.

  At last it was done. She put an arm around the still-weeping Annick and led her back into the kitchen. ‘You’d better have something to eat,’ she said, opening the fridge.

  ‘I . . . I can’t,’ Annick shook her head. ‘I can’t.’ She looked round the kitchen, at the pale green walls that hadn’t been painted in years; at the new white fridge that she’d bought only the other month to replace the one that had stood in its place since she’d moved in; at the worn Formica countertop and the stainless steel kettle that sat to one side. There was a vase of flowers on the windowsill – Mrs Price must have put them there. Her eyes filled with tears again. Her world was coming apart. Again.

  43

  TASH

  London, England

  Trouble was brewing. As soon as she stepped out of the lift she could sense it. The office was quiet; always a bad sign. Genevieve, the bubbly receptionist wasn’t at her desk. That too was a bad sign. Genevieve was always at her desk. She walked into the large, open-plan office overlooking the High Street that she shared with four others and found it empty. That was the worst sign of all. An almost empty office meant one of two things: either everyone was in the bathroom, crying their eyes out, or they were upstairs in Rosie Trevelyan’s office, possibly also crying. Neither scenario appealed. Rosie Trevelyan, Tash’s boss, was the glamorous editor-in-chief of indeterminate age of Style, one of the most respected magazines in the fashion industry. They were three weeks away from signing off on the July issue. Tash had been at Style long enough to know that the last three weeks were always the most stressful. She was also smart enough to find as many reasons to be outside the office as possible in that time. Today she’d slipped out early to scout out a couple of locations for an upcoming shoot and had managed to turn it into an all-day event. Her colleagues, Michelle Riddle, the senior fashion editor and Holly Wilkes, the fashion features editor, could handle whatever Rosie chose to throw at them, or so she hoped. The fact that neither was in the office, however, was ominous.

  She walked over to her desk, shoved a pile of papers out of the way and sat down. If the entire team was upstairs receiving a drubbing, there was little that could be gained from joining in. Better to just sit tight and get on with her own work. If Rosie felt like yelling at her too, she’d summon her soon enough.

  She surveyed her desk with a mixture of dread and satisfaction. There wasn’t a spare inch of its surface that wasn’t covered by layouts, printouts, photographs, torn-off newspaper and magazine articles, scraps of fabric samples and (the one thing she’d learned from working at Lady Davenport’s), dozens of yellow Post-it notes covered in her trademark scrawl. Call Testino re: Rome. Get milk. Call Mama re: doctor’s appointment. Don’t forget Emma’s birthday Friday. There was nothing of such importance that it couldn’t wait until she got home. She quickly suppressed the urge to smile. Home. After three long, horrid years of flat sharing, she’d finally, final
ly got her own place. At thirty-seven square metres (not counting the bathroom, thank God) it was hardly big enough for a bed and a sofa (a sofa-bed solved that problem) but it was in Earl’s Court, not too far from the flat in Kensington where she’d spent the first twenty-three years of her life with Lyudmila.

  It was a funny thing, she mused to herself as she waited for her computer to boot up. For years Lyudmila had nagged her to move out and find her own place. No sooner was she gone, however, than Lyudmila began to complain she was lonely. It was true. Lyudmila had few friends and, these days at least, even fewer gentleman callers. She spent most of her days at home, watching TV, drinking cheap wine and smoking. When Tash came round, which was at least three or four times a week, she’d begun reminiscing about life in the Soviet Union. Food, clothing, holidays, life . . . everything in the Soviet Union was better. It was patently untrue. Tash wondered if it was simply old age. How old was Lyudmila? She was vague about her age . . . fifty-something, perhaps even sixty? She’d always been vague about it. Tash tried to compare her to Embeth, Rebecca’s mother, but couldn’t. There was a gulf between the two women that had little to do with age.

  She brought up a hand to her face. It had been five years since she’d spoken to either Annick or Rebecca. The truth was, she just didn’t know how to. She didn’t know how to explain things to herself, let alone to them. When Sylvan Betancourt came upon her on the terrace that night, she didn’t know who he was at first. It was dark, for one thing, and she’d had quite a lot to drink. She’d lost count of the number of quick slugs she’d had that evening – she knew of no quicker way to calm the thudding in her chest and her clammy palms. It was in that state of mind that he’d stumbled across her on the terrace. She’d been so surprised to see a grown man crying that it had made her forget her own nervousness. He’d offered her a cigarette and then one thing led to another and by the time she figured out who he was, well, by then, something else had taken hold of her and she couldn’t have stopped herself, even if she’d wanted to. When he bent his head to kiss her, she couldn’t believe it was happening to her! At long last! Rebecca and Annick had no idea what it was like to always be the one no one wanted, to be the girl no one ever looked at, especially when Annick was around. She brushed it off, of course, and she’d have sooner ripped out her tongue than admit it, especially to them, but it hurt. It hurt like hell. And now here was someone – a grown man, old enough to be her father if she’d ever had one – and he wanted her. It was both more shocking and exciting than anything she’d ever experienced. The voice in her head that shouted out, ‘Stop!’ was drowned out by the unexpected thrill of it all . . . and then it happened so fast that she didn’t even have time to think. He wanted her. That was all she could think about and her body responded quicker than her mind. That was it, really. She’d followed his lead until the moment she walked round the corner and saw Rebecca and Annick . . . and that was when it really hit her. That was when she realised who he was and what she’d done. She’d crossed a line then and there was no going back.

  Rebecca tried to talk to her in the days that followed. Annick couldn’t, of course, and as for Sylvan . . . he promptly disappeared. But she couldn’t get the words out, not even to Rebecca. What could she have said? Deep down I wanted it. Why? Admitting to wanting to be like Rebecca and Annick would have been to admit to something she couldn’t even bring herself to think about, much less say out loud. Around them, she felt lesser, somehow, in a way that wasn’t just to do with money and her perpetual lack of it. She’d grasped pretty early on in life that poverty was something to be overcome. If you worked hard enough and made sure you never let go of your ambition in the way Lyudmila had done, you could manage, perhaps even come out on top. But the other stuff – being beautiful or interesting enough to attract someone wasn’t something you could control, at least not in the same way. Her failure in that department was a failure of the deepest sort precisely because she could do nothing about it. It didn’t happen. Month after month, year after year, from the sidelines of the friendship, she watched Rebecca and Annick plough through suitors. Not once in all that time had they ever asked her what it felt like not to have one. Not once.

  Her phone rang suddenly, jerking her out of her uncomfortable reverie. ‘Hello?’ she picked it up warily. It was Michelle.

  ‘Upstairs,’ Michelle said brusquely. ‘We’ve got a bit of a problem with one of the layouts.’

  ‘I’ll be right there.’ Tash grabbed a notepad, her heart sinking, and headed upstairs.

  Walking into Rosie’s office never failed to produce a sharp thrill of pleasure whatever the occasion. Rosie was sitting at the head of the oval glass table that occupied roughly a third of the room. She had the entire penthouse suite to herself; everyone else at Style was pushed into the three lower floors of 65 Marylebone High Street that Style occupied. The entire glass-walled, 200-square-metre space on the fifth floor was hers. As it should be. Just standing in the doorway, looking out over the treetops towards Regent’s Park and down onto the fashionable bustle of Marylebone High Street below, was a potent reminder of the power and sheer style of London’s most influential fashionista.

  ‘Ah, Tash. At last!’ Rosie barked out. In a bad mood, Rosie was the most terrifying person Tash had ever encountered. She’d never quite recovered from the experience of having an ashtray hurled at her head over some mistake or other she’d made – she still wasn’t sure what. She hadn’t known whether to duck or laugh. Today, Rosie was dressed in a stunning lemon-yellow silk dress that matched her auburn hair perfectly – Stella McCartney, Tash noted. A slim, snakeskin belt and matching snakeskin high-heeled court shoes – Fendi, possibly Prada – and a chunky black-glass necklace completed the outfit. But for all her rages, Rosie was not only the most stylish person Tash had ever clapped eyes on, she was also fun. She played with fashion, was endlessly inventive, curious, daring, bold . . . all the things Tash secretly longed to be, but wasn’t.

  ‘Sorry,’ Tash said, slipping into the nearest vacant seat. ‘I . . . I was out. Location scouting.’

  ‘Something’s not quite right with this.’ Rosie paid her no heed. She pointed to a series of A3 sheets spread out across the table. She tapped one with a perfectly manicured fingernail. Chanel. 576. Beige Pétale. Tash made another mental note. It paid to pay attention to what Rosie was wearing. ‘I’ve asked everyone else and sadly, no one seems to have a clue.’

  There was complete silence around the table. Tash could see Michelle fidgeting nervously out of the corner of her eye. She scrutinised the offending image. ‘It’s the colours,’ she said finally. ‘They’re too strong for the period. We either need to touch them up post-production, or re-shoot.’

  Rosie looked at the layouts again. ‘You might be right,’ she muttered finally.

  There was an audible sigh of relief around the table. A ‘might’ in Rosie’s mouth was as good as a ‘Yes, you’re right.’ Michelle mouthed a silent ‘thank you’ to Tash as they crowded round the prints again.

  ‘Look, it’s Paris in the 1920s. It’s Louise Brooks and Jeanne Lanvin . . . delicate colours, simple lines, lots of draping, embroidery. But it doesn’t work here. Her make-up’s wrong. Reds and blacks are far too overpowering. She needs a more muted palette. It’s fantastic that we’re actually using Lanvin again. Ortiz’s got the same eye for detail . . . look at that dress, the colour. That was Jeanne’s favourite shade, the Quattro-cento blue, but we need pale make-up, not bold. The models look out of place – that’s what’s wrong. The exact historical details aren’t all that important,’ Tash said firmly, casting a quick glance at Rosie’s impassive face, ‘but I think that’s what’s caught your eye. Colours are wrong.’

  ‘Right. Let’s re-shoot.’ Rosie straightened up, clearly buying Tash’s explanation. ‘See what happens when Lucy’s away?’ she asked no one in particular, though everyone heard the remark as though it were directed at them. Lucy Brocklebank was Style’s art director and the one person whose job Tash a
bsolutely coveted. Rosie adored Lucy, which meant that there was no chance of moving up the ladder into Lucy’s spot, but she’d recently had a baby and Rosie had (exceedingly reluctantly) agreed to six weeks’ maternity leave – which was why there were problems with the Flapper Girls shoot in the first place. Lucy would never have made the same mistake. ‘Will someone please call the photographer and get the new prints to me by the end of this week. Right. Any other business?’ There was none.

  Six relieved Style executives beat a hasty retreat. ‘Oh, Tash?’ Rosie’s voice rang out just before she’d reached the door. ‘Just a minute.’

  Tash hung back, her heart suddenly beating fast. ‘Of course, Rosie.’

  ‘MoMA’s opening a new exhibition next week. American Glamour. I’d like you to come.’

  Tash’s brain refused at first to work. MoMA? Where the hell was MoMA? MoMA in New York? Rosie wanted her to go to New York? ‘New York?’ she spluttered in disbelief. ‘You want me to go to New York?’

  ‘Is there something wrong?’ Rosie’s large green eyes were on her. ‘Do you have another, more pressing engagement?’

  Tash shook her head vigorously. ‘No, no . . . of course not.’ She swallowed nervously. ‘W-when is it?’

  ‘We leave on Thursday night. Opening’s on Friday. There are a couple of people I’d like you to meet. Back on Monday morning. Give Katie your passport. She’ll sort out your tickets and your visa. The car’ll pick you up from home.’

  Tash quickly gathered her wits. ‘Er, yes, thanks. Thanks, Rosie.’ She backed out of the office, still dazed by the news. As she walked down the stairs to the floor below, dizzy with delight, she realised that still, even after five years, the only people in the whole world she wanted to call were Annick and Rebecca.