Face Value (19 page)

You couldn’t keep the sun out all together, though. Each apartment had a small, glass-roofed balcony, which you could get to via French doors in the living room. They called it the sunroom. Kate had noticed from the street an elderly couple, sitting like cats on a heat-drenched wall, lazily enjoying the warmth in the wake of the rain without moving from their wicker chairs.

Apartment 44B, Patty Patrice’s apartment, she had also seen from the street, without knowing it was hers. Patty’s flat had the unusual distinction of having a black sunroom. From the outside it had looked as if black paint had been painted directly onto the glass, transforming the joyful sunroom into a bunker. Where the paint had peeled off in patches, she had caught glimpses of a curtain, thick and woolen, dark. She had thought it was a storage unit, or a communal utility room.

It was to this room that Aurelie now steered her. Dark and airless like a cellar, her eyes blinked as they adjusted. She moved blindly inward, a couple more meters, Aurelie behind her all the way. She couldn’t see a thing. Her breathing quickened, her gold pumps edged their way gingerly. She felt a hand on her shoulder, and jumped, but it was only Aurelie. Her shoulder relaxed under her protection, welcomed the guidance.

It was hot. Her upper lip glistened; she wiped it with the back of her hand, grateful that the one consolation for the darkness was that no one would see. Why wouldn’t they switch a bloody light on?

“Here. Sit down. Let me help you.” Aurelie showed her the way to an armchair. Her eyes, waking up gradually to the shadows, confirmed the shredded threads of the worn-away chair arms that her fingers had brushed as she sat down.

Hot like an old people’s home.

Aurelie was crouching by the side of the chair; she took her hand. “It has to be like this. Dark,” she said. “I’m sorry, it must be kinda weird for you. I’m used to it now. I forget what it’s like for others. Not that there’ve been any others for a while.”

Kate breathed in. She felt nervous. She could not find her handbag, nor her precious Dictaphone. She felt sweaty where her cotton bra rubbed her rib cage. Where was Patty? The panic rose in her throat; she felt as if she was choking.

“It’s so hot in here! Aurelie, I don’t know if I can . . .” She had been about to say she couldn’t stand it, would have to go, her driver was waiting, anything to cut her rising claustrophobia dead in its tracks and get out of here, but Aurelie was there to calm her down once again.

“It’s her circulation,” she explained. “She’s not the same as she was when she wrote the letter. You’ll see.”

And at once, the door opened again, allowing a glimmer of light to silhouette the newcomer.

fourteen

“Kate Miller. Pleasure to meet you.” The woman who stood in the doorway was about five foot four, smaller than Kate. Her voice was soft, wavering. It was as if she had rehearsed this introduction many times, never quite believing she would say it, could say it.

The heat and the dark were suddenly forgotten. Kate tried to stand up from her chair, only to be yanked back down by Aurelie.

“Sit!” she hissed. So that was why she’d been holding her hand—not to keep her calm, nor to give her confidence in the dark, but to hold her back, keep her away from Patty herself. What was she playing at?

“It’s okay,” said Patty, falteringly. “She can come closer, but slowly.”

Kate shook her hand, trying to get away from Aurelie. “I just want to say hello. I’m sorry, but can we turn a light on? I mean, it’s a bit silly, isn’t it, sitting in the dark like this. After all, I’m here to—”

“Shh!” Aurelie commanded.

Kate had had enough. She’d gone along with this so far, but what were they trying to hide? She could make out in the dim light of the doorway the upturned nose, the reddened, almost raw skin. She could see its texture, rough, uneven, almost lunar with its scratchy surface. She’d seen this all before, in the photos.

“Patty,” she began, “look, I’m just not good in the dark.” Maybe she was being selfish, but this was just ridiculous. How was she supposed to interview a victim of plastic surgery when she couldn’t even see her?

“Sit down,” said Aurelie. “Now!”

Aurelie had been alternately threatening, then kind, but always suspicious, never trusting. Now she was being downright rude. Enough was enough.

“All right, that’s it,” said Kate, turning round to the hunched-up Aurelie still crouching by the arm of the chair. “I’m going. I will not be spoken to like this, however . . . unfortunate . . . your friend is.”

She stood up again. Aurelie yanked her back down.

“Enough! Please!” implored Patty, her voice rising to a shouted whisper. They were quieted, like two kids fighting in the back of a car. “Turn the light on.”

“You sure?” said Aurelie. “I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Turn it on!”

She let go of Kate’s sleeve and walked to the door. The light flooded the room. Kate’s eyes studied her face and for a split second as she again compared what she saw now with the photos she had seen earlier, there was a comforting silence. It wasn’t as bad as in the pictures. The face, still a mess, but softer looking, less red. The nose job had settled slightly, although there was still scarring around the edges. She couldn’t see much else as Patty was wearing a white blouse, and . . .

“Oh! Your arms! Wh-what happened?”

Now she understood why they wanted to keep the lights off. A crisscross of cuts from her forearms to her hands were in the process of healing, livid and red, not fresh, but weeks old, she guessed. A bandage was wrapped tightly and professionally around her left wrist. She drew a sharp intake of breath as she realized. Patty had tried to kill herself?

“I’m so sorry, the light! I’m so sorry, so sorry . . . how completely insensitive of me!”

Patty moved her right hand over her left wrist, trying to mask the bandages, a futile endeavor as they were far too broad to hide with just the width of her slight hand. She looked away from Kate as she spoke. “I didn’t want you to know. Thought you might decide not to write about me, might think I was, I don’t know, crazy or something.”

Aurelie dimmed the light.

“No! No, of course not.” Kate stood up abruptly, gestured to her chair. “Sit down, please, how rude of me, you’re standing there, and I’m just looking—and—oh, God, when did it happen? ” “It” somehow made Patty’s suicide attempt passive. When had she slashed her wrists, tried to kill herself, end it all? There were many ways to describe the act, but in this dank, dark greenhouse, they were all too close, too intense. She had never wanted to get out of anywhere this badly.

Patty walked slowly over to the other chair and sat down. She had known where the furniture was, hadn’t needed to be guided there, was used to the darkness, liked life with the lights off.

Quietly, she said, “It was a cry for help, that’s what my therapist says.” She took a sip of water from a small table to the side of the chair. She put the glass down and looked at Kate, taking in the dress, the gold pumps. She didn’t seem embarrassed to be checking her out in this way, all the while avoiding eye contact, as if it was her due to make sure this young journalist was worth her story. “So, I cried for help, and you came along.” She smiled. A thin, weak smile, the corners of the mouth barely lifting. “Now what do you need?”

“Details,” said Kate, her calm restored by the matter-of-fact manner in which Patty had discussed and dismissed her suicide as something that was disconnected from their current business. It was better that way.

For the next hour and a half, she fired off questions: dates, names, the duration of the operations, the cost, who had assisted JK, his manner, if she had signed forms, if there were any witnesses who could corroborate her story.

Witnesses. Yes, of course there were. Aurelie. She had been helpfully fetching papers, herbal tea for Patty, coffee for Kate, seemingly happy in her role as ally, confidante, assistant, but now she stood in the doorway, tray in hand, and looked serious.

“I’ll help, of course I will. But not now. I’m more useful to you where I am, working with him. When you’re ready, when the article is published.”

It seemed like a good plan. Kate could have happily continued—perhaps “happily” was the wrong word here, as she found the whole situation incredibly distressing—were it not for her mobile ringing. Clarissa warned her she had a dinner to attend in one hour, and her hair and makeup people were waiting. Hair and makeup people? It seemed so wrong to be leaving Patty to have dinner with a bunch of beauty editors, to be getting her hair and makeup done. She made her excuses and left, promising to call in a few days when she had written the article.

In the car on the way back to the hotel she gazed out of the window, taking nothing in, writing in her head all the time. Occasionally she jotted ideas down in her notebook. It was raining again. Thunder shook the skies like rockets in a war-torn city in another land. Danger was always somewhere else, she mused. And when it was under your nose, very often you’d pretend you couldn’t see it.

fifteen

“So right now, I find that by eating three grapefruits before three p.m., then eating only protein for the rest of the day, I’m never hungry, and I look great!” The woman speaking to Kate on her right was, it transpired, the publicity agent for a new brand of health foods. Diana Alterus had signed a contract promising to keep her weight down to the ultimate in desirable dress sizes, a size zero, otherwise she would be fired. How could they sell a slimming bar, her clients could argue, if their representative was anything less than perfect?

“Of course, you might get osteoporosis, bowel cancer, or several other deadly diseases as you get older, but who cares!” retorted the woman on Kate’s left, Vivienne Fox, a beauty reporter from one of the TV networks with her own TV program from backstage at the fashion shows.

Kate laughed. She was the only one who got the joke. The thirty or so other women who sat round the table, of varying ages, but with minuscule dress sizes and perfectly blow-dried hair in common, carried on talking to one another.

“Did you go to the Nova perfume launch?” said one within earshot.

“No, I sent my assistant.”

“You got away with that? Wow! I had a three-line whip to go! Publisher went nuts when I said my workload was intense and I had two other launches at the same time. Honestly, I feel like some beauty queen, wheeled out on parade to attend these things. Just send me the goddamn perfume!” She waved the waiter away as he presented a plate of delicious-looking zucchini fritters to accompany her organic salmon.

“Well, it was a big mistake, my not going. They pulled the ads—or threatened to. Our ad team is still in negotiations, but it’s tough out there! Smells like crap anyway.”

“Hey, did you get that titanium-plated DVD player from Biocorp?”

“To tell me how to use their new skin care range? Yeah, it’s great, isn’t it?”

"The skin care?”

“No! The DVD player. Mine had my name engraved on it.”

“By the way, who’s doing your Botox? I just did an article on Dr. Bagshclinkoff—you know, the Russian one?—and the bastard’s gone on holiday, and I’m desperate for a touch-up!”

And on it went. Kate had been chugging along, feeling like she could almost pass herself off as a beauty director, thanks to the consistency of the work she’d been handing in. But this was something different. What did she have in common with any of these women?

“Tedious, isn’t it?” said Vivienne Fox, on her left, slugging back a glass of champagne as a waiter hovered by her side ready to refill it. “Imagine how I feel, I’ve been doing it for nearly twenty years!”

Kate gasped. The woman didn’t look more than thirty-five. Even to Kate’s uninitiated eye, she was more East Coast than West Coast, with a honey brown sleek chin-length bob, smooth skin, and a wrap dress. The only giveaway to her age was a slightly crepey neck and weathered hands. She would never have been able to spot that a few months ago.

“Yes, I know. Don’t look that old. But believe me, honey, it’s like the picture of Dorian Gray round here, and you should see the hideous secrets in my attic! Oh, they suck you in—quite literally sometimes, ha! Must use that! You get everything for free, and you forget what brought you here in the first place. It’s a very seductive job, believe me! Now, you look like a new one, are you?”

“I’m very new. Well, not that new as a journalist, but as a beauty director, very new.”

Vivienne removed her glasses and looked closely at her face.

“Hmm . . . let’s see. No signs of dishonesty or corruption around the eyes. Mouth beginning to show the benefits of a good lip-plumping cream . . . I can smell a discreet, industry insider perfume, something like . . . Fracas, possibly even an original before they tampered with it. I’d say you’ve been doing it a couple of months, with a head start on most thanks to extra enthusiasm and a commitment to hard work!” She laughed, affectionately. Kate laughed, too.

“How did you get into it?” asked Kate.

“Now you’re really making the illustrious career of a beauty editor sound like a program for alcoholics!” laughed the woman. “It was different back then. You know, a launch was a big deal.

Perfumes were rare, exquisite things, not knocked off in a couple of months by the marketing team of some big beauty corporation, looking to fill a gap at Christmas. Yves Saint Laurent and Opium. Coco Chanel and Chanel No. 5. These were great perfumes, created by great designers, and their great ‘noses’! Not that I was around back then, dinosaur I might be. And there wasn’t this big plastic surgery industry, for sure. No Botox. No surgeons. No celebrities—ugh! The bane of our lives!”

She stopped to refill her glass.

“No phone calls from readers asking where they could get their noses to look like Michelle Pfeiffer’s! And it was an honor to write about these things; you didn’t do it for the gifts or the clothes.”