Muse

‘I am not spacing out,’ I reply, a touch of anger creeping into Irina’s husky voice. ‘I’m thinking. There’s a difference.’

Gia snorts. ‘Where there’s smoke there’s always fire. I can’t believe you’d jeopardise your comeback like this! We’ve only been working towards this day for months. Honestly, you are your own worst enemy.’

I feel a surge of irrational fury that makes the fingers of my left hand involuntarily curl into talons. I have to stop myself lifting the judgmental little twerp off the ground by the lapels of her cherry-blossom-patterned kimono and giving her a hard shake. She doesn’t understand how far I’ve come just to get here; how I’ve started to do something that I’ve never been able to do before.

I’m beginning to learn. I’m beginning to accumulate knowledge; to make connections again, however random they may seem to you. Like how I seem to have an immediate geographical fix on where I am right now. And how I’m able to recognise Gia’s accent, even Irina’s. And how I’m walking and talking without feeling an ounce of physical distress. I could have been born in this body. It could be my body. From distal phalanges to metatarsals, from calcaneus to crown, it might almost have been mine, ab initio, from the very beginning. That gap that’s always been present, between thought and deed? It’s dissolving.

But most important of all is the fact that I can remember every second I spent as Lela Neill. She may be alive no longer, save in my memory, but I recall everything that happened when I was her. It’s proof that I’m growing stronger, that I’ve started to circumvent the strange blockages in my mind, those obstacles that the Eight have somehow placed there. In some unholy way, I’ve begun to regenerate. Or mutate. Or evolve. And the process is getting … faster.

I think that, like a machine, I used to be set to delete. That’s why I’ve never been able to remember anything more than impressions really, sixteen, thirty-two, even forty-eight lives out of context. But something’s changed. Some things are beginning to stick.

Or maybe, like acid, like flame, some kind of dangerous contaminant, I’m beginning to burn back through. And what’s more, no one has any idea of the extent to which I’m back. Only me.

No matter how high the Eight might try to build up that wall of thorns around me, from now on, Sleeping Beauty is awake. And she’s angry.

There’s no reason I can’t keep to the plan that I started when I was Lela Neill. The face, the body, even the specifics, may have changed, but there’s nothing to stop me just picking up where I left off. Around me, time always gets misplaced, you know? It runs too fast, runs too slow. I’ve always had a problem with chronology, with the order of things. But starting today, I’m taking control before the sucker gets away from me. I ran out of time when I was Lela, and it’s not going to happen again. As soon as I can get my bearings, figure out what Irina’s story is, work out where the exits are, I’m going to reconnect with Ryan Daley and bust my way out of here.

Gia looks startled when I growl in Irina’s heavy Russian accent, ‘You want to quit? Go ahead. I’m not going to stop you.’

I stalk past her, calling her bluff, and fling open the first door I see. It leads into a spacious walk-in wardrobe containing an ironing board, half a dozen heavy white terry towelling robes, blankets, towels, slippers and umbrellas, all embossed with a fancy, crested hotel logo. You could comfortably house a small African village inside the space, but there’s not a single scrap of clothing I could actually wear. I shut the door disgustedly.

‘What are you, uh, doing?’ Gia says uncertainly, as I try another door to the left of the first one. Again, I don’t bother with the light switch. I don’t need to.

I find myself staring into a luxury all-marble bathroom with its own flat screen TV and built-in sound system. It’s covered in enough personal effects to bury a person alive, but there’s nothing in here remotely resembling anything to wear, and even I draw the line at walking the streets in my pyjamas. Only crazies do that.

I might hear voices in my head, but that doesn’t make me crazy.

I slam shut the bathroom door and turn to face the girl on the bed. ‘Where are my clothes?’ I demand.

Gia starts to laugh so wildly, she sounds like she’s crying.

‘Where are my clothes?’ I say again, fiercely. ‘I need to go out. There are things I have to do.’

Top of the list? Locate one of those all-night internet joints I used to frequent when I was Lela. I need to use that seething, wholly man-made ‘web’ I still can’t get my old-school head around to draw Ryan to me, the way I did before. Across oceans, across time zones.

In all this time, I’ve never been able to find Luc and he’s never been able to find me. But Ryan, at least, has a physical location on this earth. He comes from a small town called Paradise that’s as far from it as it’s possible to get. But it’s a real place, perched on an ugly stretch of beach in a country I don’t even have a name for yet. I’d been forced to leave Lela’s body before I’d managed to find that out.

Even if Ryan hasn’t reached home yet, he’s going to be checking his emails. I can get a lock on him again, I know it.

Gia’s still laughing. ‘Where are my clothes!’ she whoops. ‘Listen to yourself! You sure you’re “clean”?’

I frown, still unable to see the joke.

Gia leads me out of my bedroom and into a massive sitting room that’s decorated in more of the same riotous rococo excess. There are too many occasional tables, mirrors, knick-knacks, table lamps, armchairs, divans, vases of scented, white blooms, hand-knotted silk rugs and footstools for one lone skinny female like me to use.

We pass a coffee table surrounded by deep, winged armchairs, and an elegant dining table with eight chairs around it that’s been placed beneath a set of windows facing out onto the street to catch the light and the incredible view. I’m in part of an old Milanese palazzo, I realise, looking around. The proportions of the rooms are baronial. Beneath all the unrelenting froufrou, the place has old bones.

‘Is all this all … mine?’ I murmur.

‘We’re sharing it,’ Gia says over her shoulder, ‘like we always do. Although you always make sure you give me the smallest room in the suite.’

We come to a stop outside two doors on the other side of the vast sitting area that are painted a discreet olive-grey colour, with inset door panels outlined in gold leaf. Both doors are closed.

Gia points at the one on the right. ‘That one’s mine and it’s off-limits,’ she says matter-of-factly. ‘The last time you asked to borrow one of my vintage Jean Desses cocktail dresses, I found myself at Paris Fashion Week staring at a photo of it on the back of one of your supermodel “friends” at a hotel nightclub opening in Miami. You know, the one who always forgets to put on her underwear before she goes out. You swore you had no idea how it got there and when I finally got it back after threatening legal action, the dress had part of its skirt missing.’

I look at her blankly. She’d lost me at the word vintage and she knows it.

Gia sighs, opening the door on the left and flicking on the light. ‘Does this answer your earlier question?’ she says with heavy sarcasm.

I can see why she’s incredulous. The vast room has had all of its furniture removed and is filled with matching bespoke luggage in an expensive-looking black, tan and white chevron pattern. There would have to be sixteen pieces of the stuff at least, and the initials I.D.Z. are emblazoned across the front of each one in large, bright green script, with a matching navy blue and green racing stripe running down the centre of each piece.

‘Flashy,’ I drawl in Irina’s husky voice.

Gia gives me an odd look. ‘These are just your “essentials”,’ she replies. ‘We had a screaming match over the six other suitcases I forced you to leave at home because we’re only supposed to be here for, like, five days.’

Spilling out of every open case is a wealth of coats, dresses, jackets, tops, skirts, trousers, shorts, sweaters, wraps, jeans, leggings, boots and shoes in every colour and texture imaginable, along with handfuls of filmy lingerie. It’s a sea of leather, denim, fur, feathers, couture, vintage and velvet. Irina is clearly not averse to a sequin. The room is like an Aladdin’s cave of high-end apparel. There’s enough clothing here to dress an army of women for a week without anyone having to lift a finger to do laundry.

When I think about Carmen Zappacosta’s one dingy sports bag, her little boy’s clothes and her much-loved flat, grey toy bunny with its fur all worn-down in places, its reattached glass eyes, I feel almost misty. Ditto Lela Neill’s haphazardly stored collection of threadbare second-hand clothing, most of it past its use-by date the first time around and dyed an unbecoming black, green or purple.

How could one person have so many … things?

‘Are these all mine, too?’ I say idiotically, knowing the question is basically rhetorical and that I fully deserve the look Gia is giving me now. The crazy-long inseams on the crystal-studded, low-rider jeans draped across the nearest case are a dead giveaway. Plus, Irina has long, bony, ballet-dancer’s feet that match the pair of towering snakeskin stilettos slung carelessly near the door. Gia’s feet are like something from the days of Imperial China: doll-sized.

‘You know I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer,’ Gia replies as she ushers me out of the room and back into the warmly-lit sitting room.

She paces across to an antique secretaire against one wall and retrieves a pile of glossy magazines from it, thrusting them in my direction.

‘You’re Irina Zhivanevskaya, remember? Supermodel, tabloid darling. One of the most recognised faces on the planet? Women all over the world copy the way you dress, the way you wear your hair, the places you hang out. They follow your every move, every disastrous hook-up, with morbid interest.’

I quickly scan the covers in my hands and Irina’s mesmerising face is on every one.

Gia gives a small laugh. ‘You’re one of the “one name” girls — like Gisele or Daria, Elle, Lara or Iman. You can’t just “go out”,’ she says. ‘You haven’t been able to just “go out” for several years. It takes full hair and make-up and a decoy car or two for you to just get up and leave any place. Let alone here. And especially now.’

She takes back one of the magazines in my hands and flicks through it until she finds the cover story and hands it back to me. I frown as I read about Irina’s latest battle with a very public addiction to drugs that’s left her dangerously erratic. I look up to see Gia’s cool eyes on me.

‘It’s mostly just old gossip hurriedly cobbled together because no one’s quite sure how bad it really is, not even me, because you lie and lie. I’ve quit on you three times already and you’ve somehow always managed to lure me back. You always know which buttons of mine to push. And I’m no fame whore, but I still kind of like the crazy shit that happens around you. Nobody else on earth gets a chance to see what you see, be where you are …

‘I expect you’ll sack me now,’ Gia says, looking down at the floor, ‘for talking out of turn like this …’

I shake my head. ‘On the contrary,’ I reply in Irina’s distinctive smoke-and-whiskey voice. ‘I value your honesty.’

I didn’t used to. When I’d first begun to realise there was something really wrong with me — that the face and body I happened to be inhabiting never seemed to bear any correlation to the person I was inside — I was so wound up and brittle, so wary, that I’d truly believed that honesty was for simpletons. But that was then, and this is now, and I could use more of it. The Eight? Luc, even? They’re all keeping something from me, something bad. I can feel it in my bones.

I rifle quickly through the other magazine articles about Irina and it’s clear that she may be famous, beautiful and rich beyond reason, but she’s a monster. Irina’s been pulled off an aeroplane for slapping a flight attendant who asked her to get off her mobile, she’s thrown champagne and punches at a love rival in a Berlin nightclub, had nude photos uploaded onto the net by a vindictive ex-boyfriend, been filmed scoring, mainlining and passing out, and already labelled a has-been at the ripe old age of nineteen. She’s a bitch-slapping, hair-pulling, tantrum-throwing piece of work.

As I hand the magazines back to Gia in amazement, she says, ‘The fact you’ve had to give yourself a refresher course and don’t appear to remember the highlights from your own life speaks volumes …’

I’m silent for a long while. There’s no getting around it. Irina must be some kind of highly-strung, celebrity clotheshorse. With a self-destructive streak a mile wide. I’m beginning to see the extent of my problem. Somehow, I need to locate Ryan again, vanish Irina right out of her very public life, and give the Eight the slip so that I can rendezvous with Luc back in Ryan’s hometown of Paradise. Have I covered everything?

I curse the Eight under my breath for their eternal interference, the tests within tests they seem determined always to set me.

‘You know this city better than I do,’ I say cajolingly. ‘I have to go out, I have to find someone. Couldn’t we just go — you and me? Walk out of here right now?’

Gia meets my eyes in astonishment. ‘You’d be screwed,’ she replies. ‘Even though the paparazzi are camped outside your usual hotel, as soon as you set foot outside here, a crowd of ordinary Italians with phone cams will be in your face broadcasting your whereabouts to the entire world. Everyone knows who you are and why you’re in Milan. And they’re all waiting for you to fall flat on your face.’

‘I really am “clean”,’ I say simply. ‘And I really do need your help. Because it’s important I find this guy — you don’t know how much.’

Gia rolls her eyes. ‘They’re always “important” until you leave them begging and broken and move on to your next victim. No way,’ she says firmly. ‘I’m under strict orders from management not to let you out on the street during the hours of darkness. You’re too much of an insurance risk these days. It’s not worth my hide to try and smuggle you out.’ Her eyes soften a little as she stares into my mutinous face. ‘I know it’s seemed like a prison sentence lately, but the arrangements are in place for your own good. You know that, don’t you?’

I feel a surge of anger at her words that makes the fingers of my left hand ache. Why does everyone think they know better than me?

Gia jerks a thumb at the bed. ‘Ask me again in daylight, okay? It can at least wait until after sunrise. Now get some rest. Final fittings begin in about three hours and they’ll be brutal. Giovanni’s already warned me that he won’t stand any more tardiness or attitude from you or you’ll lose the global print advertising contract, as well as the catwalk gig. Remember, you’ve only got this because your management called in all their favours. Somehow, the great Giovanni Re still has a soft spot for you even though you’ve always been a complete bitch to him. No one else is prepared to touch you right now, so don’t stuff this up. Sleep. Now. Capiche?’

I climb into bed reluctantly and she stares down into my face. ‘Let’s just start over, okay? Let’s just get through today as if none of this …’ she gestures in the air between us, ‘ever happened. I still might quit, you know. If I don’t kill you first.’

Gia walks over to the windows and draws the curtains shut again before heading back towards the door. She snaps off the light and closes the door firmly behind her.

I pull the plump, feather-light bedclothes right up under my chin and lie there in the dark, looking up at the ceiling.

It’s covered in an original Renaissance fresco, with lots of fine brushwork in gold and blue and blush pink. Maybe Tiepolo? Definitely in the style of Tiepolo, with all those luminous clouds and long-limbed, vigorous people. Who seem, like so much else, achingly familiar, but so very far beyond my reach.

CHAPTER 3

I’m unable to sleep, even though I want to so badly. In all these years, sleep has been my only source of solace. In dreams, I feel most like myself, capable of anything, not limited by the human face and form I happen to be wearing.

And in dreams, I have access to that most longed-for of things — time with Luc. Though even that, the Eight would deny us, if They could.

When Luc first picked me out of that throng of elohim — each more beautiful than the last — to be his love, he said, to be his queen, some small part of me had refused to believe that it would last. Because when I looked at him, and then looked at me, I couldn’t understand what he saw in me, what set me apart from all the rest. But in a funny kind of way, we have lasted. Though it’s been years since we last touched, or even met face to face.

Gabriel told me himself that while I sleep — when the linkages between soul and body are at their weakest — Luc somehow still has access to my thoughts, access to me. It’s a connection that has persisted despite everything the Eight have done to keep us apart.

And though in my dreams, Luc sometimes seems more angry, more goading, more desperate, cruel and spiteful than I have ever remembered him to be, just the sight of him — golden-skinned, golden-haired, broad-shouldered, snake-hipped, long and lean, with eyes as pale as living ice, like broken water — is like a shot of pure adrenaline to the heart. He’s the most beautiful thing in creation, more beautiful than the sun. Call me shallow — and I’m sure plenty have; it’s just a feeling I get — I’ve always loved beautiful things.

I could use Luc’s devious counsel now. There was no one better at getting what he wanted. No one. But for the past few hours, I’ve lain here, tossing and turning, unable to reach out to him, unable to conjure up the necessary pre-conditions for him to reach out to me. I’ve just been stuck in a kind of waking trance, replaying Lela’s last moments — our last moments together — over and over. Feeling that fatal gunshot, wondering if there was anything I could’ve done differently.

There’s a sudden, sharp rap on the door and Gia Basso enters the room again, dressed in street clothes this time. She marches across to the curtains and yanks them open with a skittering sound. It’s still dark outside but lightening just a little, at the horizon. My internal clock says it’s still very early: six; maybe six fifteen, at most.

Gia’s wearing a tough-looking, black leather jacket with rows of brass studs on the lapels over a bunch of layered, artfully ripped tee-shirts and tank tops and a vintage-looking, beat-up waistcoat; skin-tight jeans and towering black leather ankle boots criss-crossed by a welter of leather straps. There’s jangling silver jewellery at her ears and on her wrists, a couple of long and floaty patterned scarves slung around her neck, and she’s wearing a striking dark purple lipstick and strong, smoky eye make-up combination that somehow work together, even though they shouldn’t. With her glossy, China-girl hair, she’s the most stylish creature I’ve ever beheld, and I say so, admiringly.

She frowns, giving me a sharp look as if she thinks that I’m — what’s that phrase I puzzled over so much when I was Lela? Ah, yes, taking the piss. Making fun of her. I’m not, but she ignores my comment and barks, ‘As soon as people get a lock on your location, a huge contingent will materialise out of nowhere. It’ll be like a flash mob, I guarantee it. You’re “so hot right now” and not for the right reasons. Get ready to run the gauntlet. Breakfast is on its way up. We can plan our route with Felipe while you eat.’

She ruthlessly hauls the coverlet off my body, her eyebrows flying up in surprise when I rise immediately and head into the OTT marble ensuite to splash water onto Irina’s perfectly symmetrical, heart-shaped little face, jumpy with nerves at the thought that Operation Get Me Outta Here is about to find itself back on track.

Gia watches me narrowly, exclaiming in a passable Russian accent, ‘You’re not going to call me a heartless beeetch today?’

I shake my head and look around. Scattered across the enormous stone vanity unit are at least a dozen hairbrushes in as many styles: barrel-shaped, paddle-shaped, oval, square, mini-sized, maxi-sized, natural or synthetic. I can’t move without tripping over a plush white bath towel on the floor, and I pick up each one I come across, folding it quickly and neatly into a precise square, until there is a stack of them on top of the gilded footstool near the basins. Gia folds her arms and leans in the doorway. I feel her eyes follow me around the room.

Next, I pick out a large, flat brush that looks like an instrument of torture and yank it through Irina’s long, caramel-coloured mane, her hair crackling beneath my brushstrokes.

The room is filled with towering floral arrangements, all in white; groupings of half-burnt scented candles with base notes of cinnamon, myrrh and orange blossom; and the heavy artillery of glamour — hair straighteners, large and small, curling tongs, hot curlers, eyelash shapers, hair dryers, tweezers, combs, hairpins, hair spray, lacquer, fudge, gel, mousse, styling wax, treatments for dry hair, damaged hair and coloured hair, bottles of perfume of every size and description, enough make-up to fill a store, not to mention all the gear required to take it off again. Clearly, it takes a lot to be Irina Zhivanevskaya. I frown. She looks okay to me the way she is. How much of this stuff am I expected to use? And how do I use most of it?

As I hesitate, I see that Gia wants to say something, then literally has to bite her tongue to stop herself.

I look back towards the massive stone vanity above which our three faces — mine, Irina’s, Gia’s — are reflected. I meet Gia’s eyes in the mirror. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

Gia’s eyebrows disappear into her slanting, razor-cut fringe. ‘What do you mean you don’t know what to do?’ she exclaims. ‘Do what you usually do. Do you know how insane you sound?’

She’s right. Even a junkie supermodel is going to remember how to get herself dolled up for work. It’s clear that I’m going to have to recycle the cover story I’d used when I was Lela. The last thing I need right now is for Irina to be sent back to rehab because she’s making no sense.

‘I’m clean, Gia, I promise you,’ I say. ‘It’s just that I’ve never told anyone this before …’ I lower my voice so that she has to lean forward to hear ‘… but I can’t … remember things. It’s a disease, you know? It’s been happening for a while now, and lately it’s been getting worse. But I’m too scared to have it properly checked out …’

I’m no actress, but I make Irina’s expression as scared and as mournful as I can. Gia looks genuinely shocked and I can tell she believes me.

‘You mean all those times I thought you were strung out, you might actually have been …’

I nod quickly. ‘I haven’t been very good at hiding my … affliction. I have mood swings, you know? I find myself doing things I know I’ll regret later. I’m so afraid I’m going to die that I deliberately do things I know might kill me anyway …’

I have to bite back laughter. Once I get going, I’m pretty unstoppable. Luc used to say that I was almost as good as he was at making things up, that I was a natural. I frown at the sudden recollection.

Gia takes me by the sleeve, bringing my attention back. ‘Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’ she says softly. ‘You let me believe all those awful things about you. If the press knew about this … brain thing of yours, then maybe they wouldn’t make up so much shit about you all the time. You should let me feed the story to a couple of the more sympathetic editors. Make sure it gets around …’

I shrug and look sadly at the floor. But the lie’s worked. A little of Gia’s ingrained wariness around me, her brooding irritation, seems to have dissipated.

‘Come on,’ Gia sighs, leading me back through the palatial sitting area into the room littered with luggage and clothing.

‘Now, you’ve got just over half an hour to pull a look together,’ she says crisply. ‘Clothes first, war paint after. We cannot be late. It’s Giovanni’s fiftieth anniversary in the biz and he’s rumoured to be retiring after the runway show is over, and announcing the new designer who’s taking over from him. Which, if true, is huge news. And he’s picked just you — not the usual battalion of hollow-cheeked fembots — to open and close. So act appropriately. No falling off the catwalk; no lewd or criminal behaviour at the afterparty — not unless you never want to work again.’ She’s already backing towards the door as she adds, ‘And the faster we leave, the more chance we have of avoiding the press.’