Rebecca Lim - Fury

‘Gia!’ I growl. ‘Push off. We’re working something out here.’

‘Ah, young love,’ Gia smirks, ‘so relentlessly hopeful, so nauseating.’

The doorbell to the suite peals loudly and Ryan takes his hands away from his face, looking up at the ceiling. ‘What now ?’ he sighs.

Gia’s expression grows serious. ‘The dresses are on their way, and Tommy’s arriving separately with a ton of looks for Ryan to try out. So stop trying to put the moves on her, Romeo, and haul ass into that bath. You’re a mess. No one in their right mind could possibly want you the condition you’re in. When I come back, you’d better be up to your neck in suds.’

Ryan makes a roaring sound of frustration, throws off the rumpled bedclothes violently, then snares his jeans off the chest of drawers and heads for the bathroom. He shuts the door with unnecessary force, moving so quickly that all we get is a glimpse of long, leanly muscled legs in motion beneath the fraying hemline of his tee-shirts.

‘To die for,’ Gia pronounces lightly, already on her way out. ‘Tight in all the right places. You don’t deserve him.’

For a moment, I get something from her that has the feel of loneliness to it, or envy, before her iron control is back in place.

I sit up, hugging my knees tightly. ‘He doesn’t deserve me , you mean.’

She turns instantly, prepared to defend him, her eyes softening when she sees the anguish on my face and catches my real meaning.

‘I’m weak , Gia,’ I say in a low voice. ‘To allow this to continue, to let it get so far out of hand …’

‘Snatching a little happiness for yourself isn’t weak,’ she replies gently. ‘It’s just human.’

At the look on my face, she says quietly, because there’s nothing else to say, ‘Uh, right. Point taken. I’ll get the food.’

Tommy doesn’t bother to knock, he just barges right in in his OTT brown leather aviator jacket with the oversized shearling collar and cuffs and de rigueur hardware and pocket detailing, skin-tight black leather trousers, black lace-up boots and black knitted beanie, toting an enormous canvas carryall.

‘Where’s the patient?’ he calls out in his light, silvery voice.

His eyes skim over me briefly and without interest before he heads straight for the closed en suite door and throws it open.

Ryan shouts, ‘What the …?’ and I hear a great slosh as he ducks beneath the water so the soap bubbles cover just about everything there is to cover.

‘You want me to disguise that ?’ Tommy exclaims to Gia. ‘ Why in God’s name?’

He sets his bag down on the marble tiled floor and slides his beanie off his cropped, dark blond hair, stuffs it into a pocket of his leather bomber. He starts unbuckling that, too, saying wickedly, ‘It’s hot in here. Are you hot?’ before slinging the heavy jacket onto a gilt footstool near the marble-topped sink. Underneath it, he’s still the last word in street fashion, wearing his customary slogan tees under a fitted leather waistcoat covered in hundreds of glittering safety pins.

Ryan glares at me through the doorway. ‘Get these people out of here!’ he yells.

‘They haven’t even begun to do a number on you yet,’ I say, drifting in and standing behind Gia and Tommy. ‘This is nothing . Consider yourself lucky no waxing or exfoliation will be involved.’

Tommy looks at me again, quizzically. ‘Do I know you?’ he asks. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever worked with you before, but there’s something about you that seems familiar.’

He purses his lips and scans me from head to toe, as if the answer might lie in the shape of my calves or the way I’m standing.

‘I’ve got that kind of face,’ I tell him. ‘What’s in your bag of tricks?’

He kneels and rummages through it, pulling out bottle after bottle of hair dye. ‘Take your pick!’ he says. ‘We can put some highlights or lowlights through it, or take him back to a dirty blond, or maybe a dark auburn — so distinguished. Silver is so last season and will completely wash him out, as will a deep black. Too gothic against his pale skin. We could even go two-tone, like Juliana out there. Radical, but different.’

‘No!’ Ryan exclaims, horrified, from within his nest of bubbles. ‘What’s this all about? You’re not touching my hair.’

Tommy ignores him. ‘I’ve got wigs, weaves, facial hair, lashes, fake goatees, the works — a truckload of man makeup, caps, hats, frames.’ He gives Gia an accusing stare. ‘You were rather cryptic on the phone. I had enough trouble getting the finance department to release the gowns to me and arrange for a letter to be typed up stat saying they were a gift from Atelier Re — Domenica almost burst an artery on the spot when I dictated that part.’

‘Will someone tell me what in hell is going on?’ Ryan splutters. ‘ I’m right here . And the answer is no , to all of it.’

I scan the items littering the bathroom floor and settle on an instrument with a wicked, saw-toothed blade on the end, an electrical cord trailing from it.

‘The dye idea will take too long,’ I say. ‘Can you clip it? Right back?’

‘Sure I can,’ Tommy replies, frowning. ‘But are you sure? It would be a damned shame.’

‘Mercy?’ Ryan says uncertainly, seeing something in all our expressions that tells him this is no joke.

‘Luc likes to wear his hair long as a general rule,’ I say quietly, not quite meeting Ryan’s eyes, ‘when he’s not showing up in the front row of fashion parades in a bespoke three-piece suit and designer stubble. So a buzz cut would be perfect, Tommy, thank you.’

I bend and study the hats and caps on the floor, selecting a dark grey woollen beanie and an anonymous-looking navy baseball cap with a discreet, embroidered logo on it that looks like a quartered wheel. I look up to see Ryan blanching in sudden understanding of what this is all about.

‘It’s got to be lo-fi, Tommy,’ I murmur, shifting my gaze back to the slight young man standing beside Gia. ‘We’ll be on the move anyway, and he’s less of a target if he isn’t staying in the one place. But I can’t change the way he walks, or speaks, his foot size, his hand span or how tall he is. So in case someone does spot him, I need something that will completely change the way they register his face.’

Tommy and Gia exchange glances before Tommy says, ‘Well, it’s obvious really.’ He bends down and picks up a pair of plastic, rectangular-framed, dark tortoiseshell spectacles with clear lenses, and a pair of wraparound sunglasses with impenetrably black lenses, like bug’s eyes. ‘If it worked for Clark Kent,’ he murmurs, straightening up, ‘it’ll work for him . Both frames are so heavy they’ll completely swamp his face. They’ll be all anyone takes in at first glance. Pair them with a hat and he’ll be just another schmo with bad dress sense.’

‘It’ll have to do,’ I murmur, scooping up the electric clippers and handing them to Tommy, who passes me the two pairs of spectacle frames in return.

‘We’ll wait for you outside,’ I tell Ryan gently as Gia and Tommy precede me out of the room and I close the door behind us.

Tommy moves one of the antique dining chairs across the room, and unplugs a beautiful but useless lamp, plugging in the clippers in its place. With the air of someone about to be executed, Ryan finally emerges, clean-shaven, with still-damp hair, from Gia’s rooms in a tee and jeans and bare feet. He sits reluctantly in the dining chair.

As Tommy fires up the clippers, the doorbell to the suite peals again and a concierge wheels in a clothing rack on which hang two gowns, each zipped into a hand-sewn, protective cover made from some diaphanous, shimmering fabric I can’t name. I recognise both gowns immediately as Designs 13 and 28 of Giovanni Re’s final collection: the first one, slim, one-shouldered, sleeveless, in Giovanni’s signature rosso Re , with a complicated neckline and plunging back; and the second, silver, strapless, 1930s in feel and heavily sequined. The night I met Bianca St Alban at Atelier Re, they’d been laid out for me to model for her, but I never got around to trying them on.