by Zoë Folbigg
‘Yesss! I’ve got Voldemort. Hand it over, Mamma…’
‘Heyyy,’ said a high and soft Australian voice as Mimi gently peered through the open door.
Daniel and Flora noticed her first from their perches.
A second later Olivia looked across and her face lit up in surprise.
‘Mimi!’
Mimi tried not to cry as she looked at the peaceful idyll. Mother and daughter nose-to-nose playing cards.
‘How are you doing?’
Daniel closed the lid on his laptop and Sofia sprang off the bed.
‘Hey!’
‘Aunty Mimi!’ she squeaked, flinging her arms around a woman who was barely taller than her, in her white vest and black skintight jeans. Flora glanced up and smiled a casual, ‘Hi,’ before looking back down at her phone.
Sofia hugged Mimi’s waist and rested her head on her shoulder. Mimi stroked her soft brown hair.
‘Hey beautiful. How are my girrrrls? How’s my favourite goddaughter?’
‘Er, aren’t I your only goddaughter?!’ Sofia chuckled.
‘Oh no! I have five in Australia. And another twenty in Switzerland. And a couple I forgot about along the way,’ she said with a wink.
‘Youuuuuuuu!’ Sofia laughed, before remembering her news. ‘I’m beating Mummy. She was winning but I had Voldemort and went “evil rating” when I knew she only had Ron…’
‘How did you know I only had Ron?’ Olivia asked with a raised eyebrow. Sofia looked between Olivia and Mimi with a guilty expression and giggled.
‘I saw!’ she confessed, as if it were a surprise to anybody.
Olivia and Mimi both gasped in mock shock, Mimi’s mirth helping veil the water filling her eyes, which she soon hid in Daniel’s T-shirt, as he walked over and pulled her in for a hug.
Mimi rubbed Daniel’s back with her small hands, both comforting each other in the fright.
Daniel kissed Mimi’s head and released her, so she could tentatively approach the bed.
‘Look at you!’ she said in an almost whisper. ‘You look really… well?!’
Mimi wasn’t lying. Olivia was tanned from her holiday, rested from having spent the past twenty-four hours in bed, and the blue hospital gown suited her glow. Olivia had always looked good in blue.
‘I know, right?’ said Olivia, dismissing the severity of the situation.
*
Mimi Sorrentino was Olivia’s best friend at the International School in Milan, having been sent over from Australia when she was 11 ‘to get a European education’. Her grandparents were from the Amalfi coast but had moved to Australia from the Gulf of Naples with their young children as part of the ‘populate or perish’ programme of assisted migration after the Second World War. The family settled in St Kilda in Melbourne, where Mimi’s father Nicola met her Australian mother Carol, and where he opened his first pizzeria, before taking on Lygon Street and Little Italy. Nicola Sorrentino was CEO of Australia’s largest pizzeria chain (made to the highest Neapolitan standard of course) and had made a lot of dough from dough. When Mimi’s older brother Mike hit his teens, started doing drugs and skipping school for cigarettes on the promenade at St Kilda, Nicola and Carol decided to send their children to Europe, for a private education in their terra natale, even though neither Mike nor Mimi had ever been.
Mimi and Olivia were thrown together on the first day of seventh grade when they were paired up in form room and Olivia walked over to Mimi, said hi, and declared she was going to be a fashion designer. Both girls were intrigued by and drawn to the other’s differences.
Mimi was a boarder but loved that Olivia wasn’t and that she had a home from home in Milan where Mimi, too, was welcome for hearty suppers and sleepovers. Olivia stayed with her parents in the top-floor apartment on Via Tiziano, but loved that she could spend nights in school if she wanted to, making out with Mimi’s brother Mike, or any other overseas boy she fancied. Both girls could have the best of both worlds, staying on campus if they liked, eating homecooked dinners in Maria’s kitchen when they preferred.
Their differences were the glue that bound them and made them a great double act. At 11, Olivia was already pretty tall – although her height came with an awkwardness, before she knew how covetable her long legs would become. Mimi was shorter than your average seventh-grader, still flat-chested and childlike. Olivia had rich eyes, olive skin and rusty hair. Mimi had black hair, pale blue eyes and porcelain skin like her mother – whose diktat was to always use sunscreen and wear a hat. Olivia was into boys, partying and happy house music. Mimi was into rock, and would studiously learn her bass guitar while listening to Queen, The Pretenders and Guns N’ Roses. Olivia fancied Calvin Klein models and Marky Mark. Mimi’s idols were Bruce Springsteen and Prince.
As teens, they both secreted bottles of cheap booze in their lockers and smoked weed with the gorgeous boys with curtains hair. But as Olivia’s partying increased, Mimi put her work ethic and musical talent to good use, playing gigs in Milan, and Melbourne during Christmas holidays; moving to London after graduation to make a go of it and find a career in music; later touring the world with her band The Horizontals from her base in Brixton.
After twenty years of life on the road, Mimi was asked to write a musical with a Swiss songwriter called Udo Schär, they fell in love, and settled in the Alps – becoming the world’s most successful songwriting duo, a Taupin and John for the movies. They even went to the Oscars last February. Today she took the Glacier Express, a Schweizerische Bundesbahnen train and two flights to be by Olivia’s side in the hospital in Ibiza.
*
‘How are you feeling?’ Mimi asked quietly.
Olivia looked at Daniel, to give him a signal, and he scratched his brown-bear hair.
‘Hey girls… Wanna get a shake from that gelateria on the corner?’
‘Yay!’ sprang Sofia.
‘Actually, Dad, they’re called heladerias here.’ Flora almost tutted.
‘Even better. Let me get my wallet.’ Daniel rummaged in his daypack as he urged Flora up off the chair. ‘Come on.’
‘Ooh, can I have rum and raisin, Daddy?’ Sofia asked.
‘Cheeky. You already look drunk to me.’
‘Hey!’ she said, angling to jump on his back.
Daniel kissed Olivia on the lips. ‘Back in a bit. Want anything?’
‘No, thanks. I’m good for European royals and magdalenas,’ she replied, wafting a pristine copy of Hola! above the white cotton bedsheets.
‘I’m fine.’ Mimi shook her head, looking far from it as Daniel, Flora and Sofia walked out in search of food and fresh air.
‘Bye Mamma!’
‘Bye. Love you.’
Mimi looked around the quiet room and pulled Flora’s vacated chair up to the bed. The sun was beating through the long, closed window, but the air conditioning made the room feel temperate.
‘Wow, you get your own digs on the Spanish NHS.’
‘Yup.’
‘And the sheets are cleaner than at King’s…’
‘Yep. We – well, I – even had hake for lunch. Nice sauce, fresh tomato and capers. It tasted good too. Flora didn’t get that when they took her tonsils out in Addenbrooke’s.’
Mimi squeezed Olivia’s hand.
‘But are you OK?’
‘I think so. I feel OK.’
‘You look bloody amazing, you bitch.’
‘I know! I feel like such a fraud.’
‘So what happened?’
‘I don’t know. They’ve run a load of tests – the doctors are really nice. I just sort of… fainted.’
Mimi frowned. People weren’t usually admitted to rooms like this for fainting, but she didn’t say anything. Olivia peppered her silence.
‘I’m probably run down. I’ve had so much going on with the business, all the expansion, all the new appointments, moving into bridal… I’ve been super exhausted.’
Mimi still wasn’t sure.
‘I’m just worried f
or Daniel and the girls, for giving them a scare.’ Olivia talked about it in the past tense, as if it was an inconvenience or a misunderstanding they had moved on from.
‘What’s happening with the business? Does Vaani know you’re stuck here?’
‘Yeah, I’ve been speaking to her, she’s on the case.’
‘What about Fashion Week?’
‘Oh, I’ll be back in time for that! I just need a couple of days – should have gone to a spa!’ Olivia was wittering. Mimi knew Olivia wittered when she was worried. ‘I’ve been rushing all over the place lately, running on empty. Daniel just panicked because I hit my head when I fell. That’s what they were most worried about.’
‘Daniel said you were fitting.’
Olivia looked puzzled.
‘Did he?’
‘Yeah, he said you had, like, fits. At the villa and at the airport.’
‘I don’t know about fits… You know me, I’m a drama queen. Anyway, you should see the hot doctors here.’
Mimi didn’t take the bait. She was more troubled by this than Olivia. Her friend was usually honest and matter-of-fact about things. Now it seemed she was trying to brush it under the carpet.
‘Do you want me to take the girls home? I can take them back to the UK, or the mountains if they fancy an Alpine adventure for the rest of the holidays?’
Olivia squeezed Mimi’s hand back.
‘Thanks, but that’s not necessary, I’ll be out of here in a day or two I’m sure.’
Thirteen
December 1996
London
In the upstairs function room of a downbeat Soho pub, Olivia stood wearing a dress that looked like a binbag. Mainly because it had been fashioned out of binbags. She had been to the annual freshers’ Christmas party – a Central Saint Martins tradition, where all first-year fashion students were given a roll of black binbags and charged with creating an outfit of any description. The lecturers, who once taught the fashion designers the students grew up admiring, critiqued the outfits, usually worn by the students themselves or model friends, in an old warehouse behind Poland Street, before the after-parties would commence at Soho’s dingiest pubs.
‘Nice dress,’ said Vaani Bhalla, with scrutinising eyes. ‘Not my style, of course…’
Olivia had turned her roll of binbags into a Marie Antoinette style creation (with the help of a bustle made from old wire coat hangers) shaping stinky black plastic into rococo ruffles, frills, ruching and a corset – to great plaudits from her hard-to-please tutors. But still she was having a shit night, alternating glasses of vermouth with tequila shots to get through it.
‘Nice suit,’ Olivia replied flatly, though she was genuinely impressed by how sharp Vaani’s lines were. She had tailored her roll of black binbags into a tux Yves Saint Laurent might be proud of.
Vaani gave a nonchalant nod as if to say I know.
‘Chin up, I reckon this Versaille… ensemble… will propel you to the top of the class next term.’ Even when Vaani was saying something supportive, her face had a look of disdain.
Olivia rolled her eyes as if to say she didn’t care.
‘What’s wrong?’ Vaani asked rather impatiently.
‘They’re all arseholes Vaani. Privileged, superior arseholes.’
Olivia looked around the room, almost in panic, in a dress that didn’t suit her insecurity when she should have been feeling royally triumphant. The tequila wasn’t doing its usual trick either.
Vaani Bhalla was the daughter of a Mumbai steel magnate, and another Milan International School alumni who didn’t quite fit in with the rock stars’ daughters or the down-at-heel artists studying at Central Saint Martins.
Vaani had already spent a year in London doing her foundation, so although they weren’t that close in Milan, Olivia had drifted to her for advice on living in the city; for someone to hang out with in the early months when she was becoming accustomed to the strange sensation of not having any friends. Vaani had a flat in Belsize Park paid for by her dad, and was comfortable with being an outcast. Her harsh but beautiful resting face and large dissecting eyes didn’t make Vaani friends easily, but she was more comfortable in her own company than Olivia was in hers.
‘We’re privileged arseholes Olivia,’ Vaani shrugged unapologetically. ‘I mean, if you look at us from the outside. Take her…’ Vaani nodded towards Edie, a girl from the northeast with blue skin and a space-age-looking outfit. ‘That girl on my course… erm… Whatshername—’
‘Edie.’
‘That’s it, Evie.’
‘It’s Edie.’
‘Whatever,’ Vaani said with a wave of her arm and a curl of her nose. She didn’t care much for people with blue skin. ‘Well, she must hate spoilt students like us. And you hate people like them…’ Vaani nodded over to the rock stars’ daughters, all coked up and chain-smoking Marlboro Lights around the fireplace in slip-like binbags which were surely about to melt.
‘Edie would hate you even more if she knew you didn’t know her name – she’s on your course not mine!’ Olivia had sat next to her in a few History of Fashion lectures they all shared.
‘Well, just look around the pub. Or any of the other after-parties. Pockets of people in their tribes, and most of them see us as privileged arseholes. “The International Students”,’ Vaani added with a snarl in finger commas. ‘It’s all just a hierarchy of hate.’ She couldn’t help but laugh at her own joke.
‘Well, I hate them,’ nodded Olivia. ‘In Technical Skills last week they were totally mocking me. Made me scrabble around for cutting scissors when they had three pairs on their worktop; laughed and cackled when I admitted I didn’t know who Hussein Chalayan was…’
Olivia didn’t admit to Vaani that she’d gone back to her flat that night and got through two bottles of wine on her own while watching ER.
‘Olivia, everyone knows who Hussein Chalayan is around here,’ she said, rolling her eyes fondly.
‘Well, now I do!’
The pecking order was thick in the stagnant pub room as Olivia inhaled a cigarette nervously and Vaani batted the smoke out of her eyes with a frown. But unlike Olivia, Vaani didn’t give a hoot about where she stood in it. She was just there to study fashion communication and business. She loved London and she loved the course.
Like Mimi, Vaani was petite and looked odd standing next to Olivia. But her boyish cropped haircut, slight silhouette and androgynous wardrobe gave her a gravitas in the leaky corridors of Charing Cross Road, even if people often called her ‘young man’ at art galleries, book launches and in lectures. Vaani was so comfortable in her skin, so accustomed to being mistaken for a boy, it didn’t bother her, and she made the gentlewoman style all her own.
Vaani put her hands in her pockets and looked down at her Russell & Bromley brogues (bought from the boys’ section, her feet were that delicate).
‘Everyone will have settled down after Christmas,’ she said authoritatively.
‘You think?’
‘Yeah, give them a chance…’
Olivia hadn’t ever struggled to make friends before. She had a terrible feeling of discomfort in the pit of her stomach and quashed it by downing her Martini Rosso as if it were lemonade. She looked like she might cry.
Vaani didn’t drink alcohol, so she nursed a tonic water in a plastic half-pint glass. It went quite well with the binbag fabric. ‘Look, are you going home for Christmas?’ Vaani wasn’t very soft and she certainly wasn’t going to hug Olivia, but she could tell she might need one.
Olivia nodded, lost for words.
‘A few weeks in Milan will make you miss London, I’m sure.’
Olivia shook her head. She thought of her birth city, its Baroque piazzas, Art Nouveau mansions and Gothic churches – a city where everyone looked good and everything smelled good, from the ristretto vendors serving syrupy black coffee to the perfume of the women wafting through ornate shopping gallerias. She thought of her happy place in Parco Sempione, but she didn’t feel
joy – she was dreading going back. Her forehead kept crumpling as she tried to stifle a cry.
Vaani’s enormous round eyes widened.
‘It’ll be good for you. Eat a shitload of panettone…’ Vaani surveyed Olivia’s meagre bones.
‘I’m not sure I can face it. Christmas without my dad won’t be Christmas.’
Vaani stopped short of putting her hand on Olivia’s.
‘The mean girls get me down… but at least they’re a distraction.’
‘It’ll be good for you.’
Olivia didn’t look sure.
‘You can stock up on Baci – bring me some back. None of this Cadbury’s shit.’ Vaani’s family still lived in Mumbai, she had no reason to go back to Milan in the holidays and stock up on her favourite confectionery. Olivia cracked a reluctant smile and Marie Antoinette started to loosen up. ‘The chocolate’s just not the same here, Italians do it better…’ Vaani mused. ‘Anyway, can you smell melting plastic?!’ Vaani and Olivia looked over to the rock chicks and models draped around the armchairs by the fireplace, and started to giggle.
Fourteen
August 2017
Ibiza, Spain
‘You sure about this?’
‘Don’t worry! Udo wasn’t expecting me back in a hurry. The whole of Switzerland shuts down in August, and we write better apart anyway.’ Mimi nodded reassuringly. ‘I’ll stay at yours as long as you need. Feed the cats. I can work from your gorgeous house – it feels like a chalet anyway!’
‘We don’t have cats,’ Daniel said with a concerned frown.
‘Goody. In which case I won’t accidentally feed the cats Weetabix and the girls Whiskas. I did that with Mike’s two…’ Mimi gave Daniel a playful nudge. ‘Really, it’s fine! They can show me around. Maybe I’ll take them into London, see a show. I could do with checking in on my flat too. And it’d be nice to see Jim and Wesley and the boys.’
