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‘Good. Good.’ She beamed at Jemima, nodding as approvingly as if a promising pupil had just made a breakthrough. ‘Sit. Take a coffee with me. We will talk about this.’
She’s going mad, thought Jemima. Either that or I am.
As much to steady herself as anything, she said levelly, ‘When I signed up to be the face of Belinda I agreed to do four photo shoots a year and various PR jobs. I’ve kept my side of the bargain.’
Madame President snorted loudly.
With a supreme effort of will, Jemima bit back the pithy response that sprang to mind.
When Elegance Magazine had first discovered Jemima Dare, one besotted staff columnist had described her as having ‘gut-wrenching sensuality allied to Titania’s ethereal provocation’. He would not have recognised her at the moment, golden-brown eyes narrowed and spitting mad. But then that had been four years ago. In the interim she had done a lot of growing up—not all of it pleasant.
Madame President was a new experience. But Jemima was a fast learner. And one of the things she had learned was that in confrontations you had to take control.
Right. Give the old bat something to worry about. ‘Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t walk out of here right now,’ she said.
Silvio nearly dropped the phone. Even Madame President looked taken aback for a moment. Then she gave another of those disconcertingly approving nods.
‘Because you and I can do business together,’ she said simply.
Jemima’s eyes skimmed the worried Silvio. ‘Not if you were thinking of picking my boyfriends,’ she said dryly. ‘We don’t seem to have the same taste in men.’
Madame’s eyes gleamed. ‘Silvio, get out,’ she said without looking at him.
He went.
Madame was talking before the door closed behind him. ‘Okay. Cards on the table. We have a problem.’
Jemima raised perfect eyebrows.
‘Oh, sit down,’ said Madame irritably. ‘It is like talking to a lamp post. Why are models so damned tall these days? When I was a girl in Paris, they were human-sized.’
In spite of herself, Jemima gave a choke of laughter. And sat.
‘That’s better.’
Madame leaned forward and propped her chin on her steepled fingers. The rings glittered but Jemima hardly noticed. The eyes were not a lizard’s any more. They were dark and expressive—and shrewd.
‘The press…’
‘Have decided I’m a spoiled brat,’ supplied Jemima. ‘I’ve just had lunch with my PR advisers. They’ve given me the rundown.’
Madame shook her head. ‘They’re wrong. The press enjoys spoiled brats. Our problem is that they are forgetting you.’
She picked up a handful of magazines and flung them across the coffee table. Jemima saw European titles mixed with North American celebrity titles.
‘Take a look,’ said Madame in a hard, level voice. ‘Show me your name. They’ve got film stars, baseball stars. Even some damned aristocrat who’s been missing for fifteen years. How far off today’s news is that? But no Jemima Dare. And, more important, no face of Belinda.’
Jemima frowned. But she was fair. She went through the magazines rapidly. Madame was right.
Tom and Sandy: will they split? Eugenio takes us into his lovely Florida home. Where is the Duke? The hunt is on…
She pushed the magazines away. ‘Okay. No Belinda. No me. I’ll give you that. So?’
‘Time to do something about it.’
Jemima’s eyes narrowed. ‘This is the One Last Chance chat, isn’t it?’ she said suddenly.
Madame President’s eyes flickered. ‘Yes,’ she said baldly. ‘Have you had lots of them?’
Jemima laughed. ‘My cousin Pepper is an entrepreneur. We share an apartment. I listen to her work problems,’ she said coolly. ‘I know the signs.’
Madame looked annoyed. ‘Then deal with it.’
Jemima smiled. ‘I’d say there was an unless coming. You’ll cancel my contract unless I—what? Dye my hair? Write a celebrity novel? Sing? What?’
Madame laughed unexpectedly. It sounded rusty. ‘I like you, Jemima. You’re gutsy.’
I need to be, with sharks like you signing my pay cheque.
She did not say it, of course. She gave her a demure smile. ‘Thank you. So spit it out. What do you want me to do? Short of dating Francis, that is.’
Madame was temporarily side-tracked. ‘Why not Francis? He’s very talented. He’ll go far.’
Jemima leaned back and crossed her legs. ‘And he’s a complete prune. He asked me out over the head of another girl while I was dressed in nothing but a pair of knickers and a lot of sticky tape.’
Madame was startled enough to allow herself to be sidetracked again. ‘Sticky tape?’
‘He’s into deep, deep plunge this collection.’
They exchanged a look of total understanding. In her time Madame President had been a model too. She nodded.
‘Ah.’
‘What’s more,’ said Jemima, watching Madame from under her lashes, ‘when I said I’d take a rain-check he looked as if he’d been let out of prison.’
There was a small silence. Madame’s lips tightened.
‘How on earth did you sign him up?’ Jemima was genuinely curious.
Madame looked like a lizard about to spit. But she was a good tactician. After a brief struggle with herself, she said curtly, ‘Offered him a joint promotion next Christmas.’
‘Well, he tried,’ said Jemima fairly. ‘So, want to tell me why?’
Madame examined her rings absorbedly. ‘When we were looking for the new face of Belinda, we had a very specific brief in mind,’ she said at last slowly. ‘A woman of today—a woman who made her own decisions, a woman with a career, sure, but a woman to whom other things were important too—friends, things of the mind, love, children.’
Jemima regarded her with an unblinking gaze. Then, ‘If you want me to have a baby, forget it.’ Her voice was hard. ‘That’s not a decision I’d take because a cosmetic company told me to. Or any other employer, for that matter.’
To her surprise, Madame looked delighted. Triumphant even. ‘Exactly. That’s the tone I want.’
Jemima flung up her hands. ‘I give up.’
‘Look,’ said Madame, suddenly a lot less dramatic, ‘you were my personal choice for the face of Belinda. I liked the way you presented yourself. You didn’t crave the celebrity circuit. You didn’t worry that laughing too much would crack your make-up. You thought about things and you weren’t afraid to have an opinion. I liked that.’
Jemima was taken aback. ‘Thank you.’
‘Silvio said you weren’t glamorous enough.’
Weasel, thought Jemima. That isn’t what he said to me when he was wining and dining me. Aloud, she said, ‘Really?’
‘But I said that it didn’t matter. This is the twenty-first century, I said. It is time for a change. She lives with her sister and her cousin like a regular person. Besides, they are all three go-getters.’
Jemima grinned. ‘Oh, yes, we’re that all right.’ She thought of Pepper the businesswoman and Izzy the adventure freak. ‘By the bucketful.’
Madame grinned back. She was very charming when she grinned, thought Jemima. For a shark.
‘So I thought—there’s my twenty-first-century woman. Gorgeous redhead who doesn’t spend her life worrying about the size of her bum. Girl with a life. And a future.’
Jemima was touched. ‘Thank you,’ she said again.
‘So how did all go so wrong? What happened to that lovely girl with her feet on the ground?’
Jemima winced.
There was a brief knock and the Vice-President appeared at the door, ushering in a waiter with a huge tray. The waiter poured coffee and glasses of mineral water and left. The Vice-President hovered. Madame waved him to sit. He sank into an armchair with a distinct sigh of relief.
Frowning, she said, ‘When that stupid manager started turning you into a professional partygoer, I told Silvio, “Call him up. Tell him to back off.” Didn’t I, Silvio?’
He nodded enthusiastically. ‘You did, Madame.’
‘But then you fired him. And I thought, Great. The girl has good instincts. We’re back on track.’
Jemima had gone rigid. ‘I didn’t fire Basil.’
Madame ignored that. ‘Only now you don’t go out at all.’
‘I didn’t fire Basil.’
Jemima was starting to shiver, she realised. To hide it, she looked around for her shoulder-bag and fussed through it.
Madame seemed disappointed. ‘That’s not what I heard.’
The shivers down her spine were turning into a positive cascade. ‘I left his management by mutual agreement.’
Madame looked sceptical.
‘It was.’
Well, eventually. When she had threatened to expose the things he’d done—the pills to keep her thin, the break from her family to keep her ‘focused’, as he’d called it. Oh, yes, he’d been glad enough to give back her contract when she’d faced him with all of that. Only now he was having second thoughts, and…
If she wasn’t careful, she was going to start shaking again.
With another of her abrupt changes of mood Madame lost interest. ‘It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you have no life. You don’t date. You don’t go out anywhere unless it’s an assignment.’
Jemima was still shaky. ‘I work. I don’t have time to go out.’
‘Make time.’
‘What?’
Madame said with finality, ‘Go back to being a regular person. You don’t have to disappear and come back a duke. You don’t even have to date a designer if you don’t want to. But date someone.’
‘I—’
‘I’m cancelling the shoot in New York. Take a break. Go meet some guys, like other girls. I want to see you living a life like our customers lead. And I want to see the press stories to prove it.’
She stood up. The interview was clearly over.
Jemima stopped shivering. She was not afraid of Madame.
She tipped her head back. On this dull grey afternoon the penthouse was lit by warm table-lamps. In their light the wonderful red hair rippled like fire, like wine. And Jemima knew it. She knew, too, that the woman who had personally chosen her as the face of Belinda would not want to admit she had been wrong.
She said, quite gently, ‘Or?’
Madame recognised a challenge when she saw it. She might like Jemima personally. But she couldn’t afford to let a challenge go unanswered. Her jaw hardened.
‘We’re already into planning the Christmas campaign. I won’t pull you off that. But it’s your last unless you—’
‘Get a boyfriend,’ supplied Jemima. Her temper went back onto a slow burn. She smiled pleasantly at the shark. ‘I’m almost certain that’s illegal.’
Madame did not care about piffling legalities. She snorted. ‘Unless you get a life.’
‘And if I don’t?’
The eyes were blank and lizard-like again. ‘You’re off the team.’
Jemima flipped off the sofa. ‘Cast your mind back,’ she said sweetly. ‘Like I said, I quit.’
She steamed out before they could answer.
The commissionaire summoned a taxi for her. She sank into the big seat and called the agency.
‘Belinda and I just fired each other,’ she said curtly.
She rang off to squawks of horror.
And then she did what she had been putting off all day. She checked her text messages.
Her fingers shook a little as she pressed the buttons. Basil had stopped leaving messages on her voicemail these days. But he texted a lot. Mostly she managed to zap them unread. But today she saw one she had thought was from her limousine service.
