he had seen in a catalogue for people with disabilities when he was last visiting his mother.
He made a mental note to get his secretary to order one, as he started the car, the sound of the engine nearly blocking out Celeste’s question.
‘What did you say?’ He wasn’t sure he heard correctly.
‘Do you want me to organise it?’ she asked again, her voice sounding small. ‘I thought it might be nice for me to do it.’
Robert paused, the phone still up to his ear, the engine thumping impatiently.
‘That would be lovely, Celeste, really, if you think you can handle such a sad affair. I need to be looking at the company and all that it entails, so your help would be so wonderful.’
His charm soothed him, and he felt the anxious grip in his chest loosen.
‘Do whatever you need and just send the invoices to Le Marche,’ he said. ‘Now I must go, darling, about to head to a meeting, message me with any details.’
And he hung up before she could speak.
What a gift, he thought happily, as he pulled out into traffic without looking, knowing he wouldn’t be hit by another driver. Who wanted to deal with the insurance on a Bugatti? He laughed as he turned up the radio to a song he didn’t know the words to until it annoyed him enough to change it to the jazz station he loved. Soon John Coltrane was playing Lush Life, and Robert thought that his life was indeed very lush, and once he had Le Marche sold, then he would be the one sailing through the Greek Islands or the Mediterranean and girls like Anika would never leave him for a sheik again.
Everything was looking up, he thought. He was even feeling generous to Henri’s child. Let her have whatever it was Daphné had willed to her, what did he care now. Most likely it was one of her hideous paintings or some jewellery. He was about to get what he deserved and, even though he was fifty-eight years old, he still felt thirty. With this in mind, he dialled another girl he liked.
‘Chloe, my place, twenty minutes?’ he demanded more than asked and she responded as he thought she might and agreed to see him but for double the price.
But what did he care? He was truly rich now and, as his mother always said, the wealthier you become the more life costs you.
His ex-wife’s face came to mind and he felt himself scowl and then stopped. Matilde wasn’t worth getting more lines over, he thought, as he glanced at himself in the rear-view mirror. His blond hair had turned silver, which, he’d decided when he turned fifty, was elegant. He could have dyed his hair, like his grandfather had for years, according to Anna. What a pathetic old man, he thought, thinking of Giles Le Marche.
Robert was very proud of himself for growing up without a decent male role model. His father was inept, his brother too. He was his own creation, and now without his mother’s domineering influence, he would finally, at the age of fifty-eight become the man he was always knew he was meant to be.
Better late than ever, he said to himself, and pressed the accelerator on the car, making sure he would be able to meet Chloe for his celebratory blowjob.
Matilde
Matilde adjusted the collar on her black Dior coat, aware that all the eyes of society were on her, and then genuflected at the altar of Sainte-Chapelle.
She had stopped believing in anything when Camille died, but Daphné had believed in God, or so Celeste had said when she planned this spectacle of a funeral.
Daphné’s coffin was lying in state, covered in what seemed to be one hundred amber roses, the heady scent mixing with the frankincense that was burning in the brass censers on the altar.
Slipping into a pew further down the back of the church, Matilde looked around at the attendance. A decent enough showing of the right sort of people, she thought, and watched as Paul Le Brun walked up the side of the aisle and slipped into a seat.
News of her daughter’s affair with Le Brun had made the gossip pages for a day, until a terrorist threat overtook all other news, and Celeste was spared of too much humiliation. Still, people stared at Paul when he arrived, and she saw their heads joined in covert whispering.
Celeste could do so much better, she thought, as she noted his slightly coloured hair. Matilde was an expert at spotting three things: plastic surgery, hair colouring and sexual attraction.
It had proved to be a very valuable set of skills over the years. She had worked it to her benefit, finding lovers for herself and for her friends, and knowing the exact point in which to topple someone’s ego with a well-placed barb about any work they had done to their appearance.
Matilde was known within her circle as a sharp wit; to those outside of it, she was just a bitch.
More faces, known and unknown, walked into the church and soon it was a sea of black with hushed gossip sending waves through the sacred space.
Finally, Celeste and Robert arrived, arm in arm, Robert’s face looking concerned and upset, but not so much that he might cause any lines, thought Matilde, with a roll of her eyes.
God, being married to a fop with an unquenchable sexual appetite had been exhausting, and even if Camille hadn’t died, she would have left him anyway. She told him then and still stood by her statement. She needed a rest from him, the sex, and his lies.
She saw Celeste glance at her and she raised her head in approval. Celeste had done a wonderful job, with so little time to organise everything. Of course Robert had dumped it on his daughter; he was a lazy son of a bitch, she thought.
Daphné’s funeral had only just made the French rule that all funerals needed to have taken place by the sixth day but Matilde knew that people wouldn’t miss the chance to see the fall of the last of the Le Marche family.
There were more gossips in this church than friends, thought Matilde, as the priest stood at the altar and the ceremony began, and she stood with the rest of the crowd to say goodbye to Daphné Le Marche, the woman who saved her daughter.
* * *
Matilde was the face of Le Marche when she was nineteen, after Daphné decided that they needed to bring in a model to represent the brand and become more current.
By twenty-one, she was dating Robert. At twenty-two, she was pregnant with Camille.
And at twenty-three, she married him, but only after Robert had been threatened with disownment by Daphné.
Camille had changed Robert’s mind about marriage. The moment the child was placed in his arms, he adored her and that was enough for Matilde to forgive him for his transgressions.
There was no father as devoted as him to Camille, and then came Celeste. He would get up to them in the night, which was rare, according to her friends in Paris, and he took them to school. He knew everything that was going on in their lives and their friends and was as much fun as they could wish with a father.
He drove them everywhere. No matter where they wanted to go, he took them, speeding in the latest sports car and
