‘Mercy Williams isn’t exactly white, is she? No – there’s another reason that you’re far too nice to guess. Why do you think all these stylists and agents and PRs and so on are overlooking you, when you’ve got such a fabulous pressbook and all those awards?’

‘Bad luck?’

‘Yes, you could call it that. I prefer to call it Maya Rodean.’

Isabelle gasped. ‘What do you mean? You can’t be serious.’

‘Well, as I was saying to dear Mercy, my New Best Friend, it’s such a shame that she’d never got a chance to try on a Cissé dress before, because obviously they were made for her, and she was made for them. She agreed, she said she loved your stuff and had asked her people to get it for her, but she’d been told that Cissé was going out of business and that you were in trouble with the police, or something.’

‘What?’

‘So I said, well, that’s news to me, and even though Isabelle can be an ungrateful little bitch and has long since stopped confiding in me, I think I’d know if either of those things were true.’

‘It’s a fair cop.’

‘But she said no, that’s absolutely what everyone in Hollywood was saying, and when I asked her who exactly everyone was, can you guess what she said?’

‘Maya Fucking Rodean.’

‘Well those weren’t her exact words, but two out of three ain’t bad. Yes, our dear old friend Maya Rodean. She’s been going round town telling everyone that Cissé is done for. Considering that she’s just signed with Laruche, the timing was rather good, wasn’t it?’

‘She wanted to get into the Oscars.’

‘And you, my dear, are the competition.’

‘The bitch. What are we going to do?’

‘I’ll tell you what we’re going to do, Princess. You’re going to design the most beautiful dress of your entire career for Miss Mercy Williams to wear on the red carpet. Then we’re going to fly out to Los Angeles and we are going to make sure that nothing, I repeat nothing, stands between us and the Academy Awards. Is it a deal?’

He held out his hand; she shook it.

‘It’s a deal. Hollywood, watch out. The British are coming.’

Chapter 27

Chapter 27

Everyone was going to the airport.

Christine decided that if her daughter would not come to see her, she would go and see her daughter, and if necessary give her a lift to Heathrow. Isabelle was on a lunchtime flight to Los Angeles (Will had divulged the information), Christine was flying at six o’clock to Nice; plenty of time, then, to kidnap her own daughter and tell her what was on her mind while they were both in the car.