tried this idea out in her mind, seeing how it felt. Edward wasn’t gone for ever: he had just chosen to leave her. Was that worse or better than if he died? Because if he died, and he still loved her, she’d have that comfort to help her along as she dealt with the pain of being on her own. Yes, she grinned, feeling some crazy sense of relief, in the midst of all this madness, death certainly trumped separation.
On the outside, the forge looked much the same as it had in those pictures Anneliese had seen of Edward and Alice standing outside it as children, laughing as they stood beside the big rain barrel where Lily kept the water that the family used for everything from washing their hair to bathing. Inside it was different, full of character and warmth in the way only someone like Lily could fill a house, with lots of books and pictures of the family, and flowers, mixed with herbs from her garden, scenting the air. There was a beautiful bathroom too.
‘I always swore that, if I had to live in this house, I’d have an inside toilet,’ Lily used to tell Anneliese. ‘When we were kids, we were used to it, nobody had indoor toilets. Except up at Rathnaree; they had the most amazing bathroom installed for Lady Irene, all marble and mirrors replacing the old wooden panelling and a huge cracked tub. None of us had ever seen anything like it. I think everyone on the estate went in to have a look. It was just sheer luxury. I swore, one day I’d have a bathroom like that!’
And she had, thought Anneliese, with a smile. Well, it wasn’t quite like the fabled Rathnaree marble version, but it was pretty luxurious: pure white tiles and a swirling chocolate brown Deco pattern running along the edges. She was glad that Lily had had her lovely bathroom, it was nice at the end of your life to have had the things you dreamt of having. You could look at them before you died and say, ‘I wanted that when I was twenty, and now I have it!’
‘Stop,’ Anneliese said out loud. She was talking as if Lily was already dead, and she wasn’t. But Lily was very old, and maybe this was the way for her to go. Quickly was always better for the person who died, but it was horrible for those left behind. It would break Izzie’s heart if her darling gran died before she had a chance to say goodbye.
Anneliese wondered if she should have offered to phone Izzie to tell her the news. She had an idea from her last conversation with Lily that Izzie was away on a shoot: Mexico, New Mexico…she wasn’t sure about the place or time – time had escaped her these past few days. She barely knew which day of the week it was.
If Brendan hadn’t phoned Izzie to tell her what had happened, she would when she got to the hospital. But now she had to rush, not stand here looking at old photographs and thinking back on Lily’s life. That was no good for anybody. She hurried upstairs into Lily’s bedroom and packed some nighties, underclothes, bed jackets and soft slippers. Hurry, a voice inside was telling her.
Lily looked so frail in the hospital bed when Anneliese walked into the intensive care unit. Even though she’d thought about the possibility of Lily not waking up, the realisation hit her forcibly when she saw that frail body lying doll-like under the covers, winking and beeping machines all around her. The ICU was as quiet as a church with nurses hurrying back and forth, quietly and efficiently, while patients lay still in the ward’s four beds. There was no sign of Brendan at his mother-in-law’s bedside and Anneliese was glad for that. She didn’t want to have to comfort Brendan. Instead, she could sit quietly on the chair beside the bed and look at Lily. The older woman’s eyes were closed and yet she looked more than asleep; the animation that normally shone from her face was absent today. She’d always seemed somewhat ageless in normal life, yet now she looked like a very old lady, with fragile bones and skin delicate as tissue paper. A drip needle was stuck into the back of one of her fragile hands and Anneliese winced at both the pain of the needle and the ache of the bruise that had already settled around the sharp metal.
‘Oh, Lily,’ she said, taking Lily’s other papery hand in her own and stroking it. ‘I’m so sorry, darling. I’m so sorry you’re here and that I haven’t been talking to you. Things have been so dreadful with me and Edward, and I didn’t know how to tell you. I’m sorry, that’s not fair. And now, you’re here and I don’t know what you’d want me to do. We never talked about this. I don’t know if you want heroic measures to bring you back, or if you’re happy to go, my love. I wish I knew. You deserve the dignity of choice.’
It was odd, because Lily could talk about anything. Not for her the ostrich-in-the-sand mentality or thinking that if you didn’t face an issue, it would disappear. Lily faced everything head-on. But death, and what to do in the run-up to death, was one of the last taboos.
Anneliese held the old woman’s fragile hand and prayed for guidance. She wasn’t equipped for this, not now. Because of Edward, she felt as fragile as Lily herself.
‘Oh, Lily, what do you want me to do?’
Cosmetics contracts were the holy grail of the industry. There might be huge kudos at landing a photoshoot for Vogue but the honour was supposed to make up for the lack of cash involved in such a high-profile shoot. Editorial was great for a model’s portfolio, but mascara ads meant a whole lot more cash.
Once a model had signed on the dotted line with one of the cosmetic giants, she never had to worry about badly paid photo-shoots again. Cosmetics contracts guaranteed a lot of money up front and some security in an industry not known for it. A contract made a model more valuable in that a million billboards made her famous, made her a name. Once a model became a name and not just another slender beauty, she had a chance at the big time: more advertisements, television, endorsements. When that happened, everyone – including the model’s agency – got to laugh all the way to the bank.
The day after she’d stared at Joe and his wife outside the museum and had felt her life crashing painfully around her, Izzie had to put her pain aside for a big meeting with a cosmetic company client about a mega-million-dollar campaign aimed at teenagers. The Jacobman Corporation wanted a new model to front their new cosmetic line and Perfect-NY were, through a fabulous piece of luck, in the running to find the girl.
It was a huge slice of business for Perfect-NY and exactly the sort of job that Izzie didn’t want to be doing the day after her heart had been broken.
As she marched into Jacobman’s giant office block on Madison, she looked the part – on the outside. She was fashion perfect in black Marc Jacobs with her hair sleeked back, wearing a solid four ounces of Bobbi Brown nude make-up in order to look as if she was wearing no make-up at all.
On the inside, however, she was tired, dead-eyed, and felt as if she had barely enough energy to lift her coffee cup to her lips.
The meeting was in the Jacobman Corporation’s third boardroom – the first and second ones were big enough to host a Yankees game – and there were only four people present: Izzie, representing Perfect-NY, two people from the SupaGirl! range and a Jacobman bigwig, Stefan Lundberg.
Cosmetic companies spread their net wide when looking for the right girl for their products. But Perfect-NY had been invited to showcase any of their girls who filled the brief because the current Mrs Rick Jacobman Jnr had once been a model at Perfect-NY and had, astonishingly, never forgotten the agency which had launched her career, a rather short one which had then launched her into the arms of Rick, heir to the Jacobman millions. Around the model agencies, Svetlana Jacobman was seen as a model who’d won the ultimate cosmetics contract. Even with a cast-iron pre-nup hanging over her should it all go horribly wrong, Svetlana had joined the ranks of the truly rich.
‘Yeah, she’s fresh-faced, but she’s sorta
