Даниэла Стил: The Affair

When her assistant answered, Rose asked to speak to Venetia. She came on the line a few minutes later, happy to hear from her mother.

“Sorry, Mom, I was in a design meeting. What’s up?” Rose never called her at that hour. They usually talked when Venetia was on her way home from work in an Uber, which was often the only time she got to herself. Once she got home, she helped the boys with their homework and the kids would monopolize her for hours.

“I just heard something in a meeting that worried me, and I wondered if you know anything about it,” Rose said in a solemn tone.

“Hemlines are getting shorter? If mine get any shorter, my customers will get arrested.” She laughed. But she realized then that her mother sounded serious.

“It’s about Nicolas,” her youngest sister Nadia’s husband. “He’s supposedly having an affair with the girl who starred in his current movie, Pascale Solon. Has Nadia said anything to you? I haven’t talked to her in several days. I’ve been wrapped up in the September issue. I hope it isn’t true. Apparently, they outed themselves at the Cannes Film Festival last week. Doesn’t Nadia go there with him?”

“Yeah, usually. She was installing a house in Madrid, so she probably didn’t go with him this year or she only stayed for a day or two. I haven’t talked to her. We’ve been playing phone tag. I saw something about it on the front page of a tabloid at the grocery store.”

“You buy your own groceries?” Her mother sounded shocked. “What don’t you do?”

“It was my turn to cook for the kids, and I stopped to buy frozen pizza.” They had a housekeeper and a nanny, but Venetia tried to cook for them once a week.

“I feel better.” The women in the family were famously poor cooks, except for Athena, who made up for all of them and was a genius in the kitchen, if you liked vegetables.

“I was hoping it was just the usual tabloid crap, since she wasn’t there. What did you hear in the meeting?” Venetia sounded worried too.

“That Nicolas is having an affair with Pascale Solon, and she might be pregnant.”

“Oh God, I hope that’s not true. Maybe the whole thing is just Hollywood hype, to promote the movie,” Venetia said hopefully. She didn’t want her little sister to get her heart broken. Nicolas had been a flirt when he was younger, but not recently. It was just part of the culture, since he was French, but Venetia didn’t have the feeling it went further than that. Nadia had never complained to her about it, or said he cheated.

As she thought about it, Venetia was wearing one of her creations, signature leopard capri pants, a turquoise sequined sweater, and bright green alligator Hermès high-heeled pumps, with an armload of emerald and diamond bangles on one arm, a bracelet with a huge chunk of turquoise on the other, her red mane pushed up on her head with a diamond chopstick through it. They were standard work clothes for Venetia, and somehow on her it all worked. She was a beautiful woman and could get away with it. She was an icon in fashion and had a style all her own. She had been outrageous with what she wore since she was a teenager, and had made a successful career of it as an adult.

“I hope it’s not true,” Rose said fervently. “I just turned the girl down for the September cover, and I’m sure I haven’t heard the last of it. Especially if the rumor is true, about the affair. I don’t even want to think about a possible pregnancy.”

“That just sounds like tabloid crap, Mom,” Venetia reassured her.

“What do we do now? I don’t want to pry and upset Nadia if she hasn’t heard the rumor,” Rose said thoughtfully.

“I’m sure she has. It’s probably all over the internet.” Venetia clicked on her computer, and there were half a dozen articles to choose from, and some paparazzi shots. “It might be true, about the affair at least,” Venetia said sadly, sorry for her youngest sister. “Call her, Mom. I’ll call her later. Let me know what she says. I can’t believe he’d be that dumb. He has a beautiful wife, a great marriage, they adore each other, two great kids, and he’s making an ass of himself with a starlet half his age? Pathetic. And way too French. Flirting is one thing, but this is awful for Nadia, if it’s true.”

“I’ll call her. I’ll catch you tonight,” Rose promised Venetia, who went back to work a few minutes later, worried about her little sister.

Rose sat at her desk for a minute, thinking of her youngest daughter. Nadia had done her junior year at the Sorbonne, following in her mother’s footsteps. She had met Nicolas then, out with friends one night at a nightclub, and they had fallen madly in love. He was six years older than Nadia and a graduate student in political science, and by the end of her junior year abroad, she said she was too in love with him to leave him and come home to New York. Her parents hadn’t been happy about it, but Nadia had been adamant and stayed in Paris with Nicolas. Nicolas was studying political science but wanted to be a novelist. Nadia transferred to the American University of Paris, and never came back to live in the States again. She had taken decorating classes in Paris after she graduated, and got a job as an intern working for a fancy decorator. She and Nicolas had married eleven years before, when she was twenty-five and he was thirty-one, after living together for several years. She had Sylvie, who was ten now, a year later, and then Laure, who was seven. Nadia was thirty-six and had her own successful business as an interior decorator. And Nicolas’s dreams had come true. He was the biggest bestselling novelist in France. He had been a political journalist for a while, until he wrote his first successful novel. He was charming and very bright. His parents had died in an accident shortly after he and Nadia married and he inherited everything as their only child, including their château in Normandy, which Nadia had helped him restore at the same time she opened her own decorating business.

In some ways, Nadia was different from Rose’s other daughters. Like Venetia, she was artistic, although she applied it to homes instead of fashion. And she had a good head for business. But she was quieter than her sisters, and had inherited some of her mother’s British restraint. The others were all outspoken about their opinions. Nadia usually kept her views and plans to herself, until she did them. She was shy, but self-confident, and her clients loved her for her gentle ways, her discretion, and good taste. She never forced her opinions on them, but always managed to convince them of the choices she preferred and thought best for them, with stunning results. The houses she decorated often appeared on the covers of the best interior design magazines.

While her sisters had argued with each other when they were younger, Nadia quietly forged ahead fearlessly in the direction she felt was the right one, and Rose had always been impressed by how brave she was. She rarely consulted anyone about her decisions, didn’t waver, and trusted herself even when she was very young, as with her decision to stay in France with Nicolas, and she had never regretted it.

He had been good for her, and once they married and started a family, Rose respected how strong their relationship was. Nadia handled Nicolas’s fame with poise, as well as her business and their family. She ran his family château with ease and made it a beautiful home for them, seemingly effortlessly, despite her youth. Nadia always made her mother think of the adage “still waters run deep.” She was one of the most competent of Rose’s children.

Rose often thought Nadia had the perfect life, a happy marriage, sweet children, a husband she adored, and who clearly loved her passionately. Every time Rose saw them together, he could hardly keep his hands off Nadia. Rose liked her son-in-law, and there was no question, he was a talented writer. He’d written five bestsellers in France so far, and was published abroad in translation as well. This was the second movie based on one of his books, and he was well known in France, and even in the States. He had everything he needed to be a happy man, and now he was having a flagrant affair with a young movie star.