Zelda’s Cut. Philippa Gregory

turned and pulled on the blonde wig, clumsy in his embarrassment. Without meeting his own eyes he looked into the mirror and painted a little dab of scarlet on his lips, which were still slightly stained from before. He turned to her judging look. He shrugged his shoulders, trying to hide his sense of shy embarrassment. ‘Ridiculous,’ he remarked.

      Slowly Isobel shook her head. ‘You look beautiful,’ she said. ‘A beautiful woman in a man’s beautiful suit. You look wonderfully – ’ she searched for the word ‘ – ambiguous.’

      ‘You put on the other wig,’ he suggested.

      They stood side by side before the dressing table, like a pair of girls sharing the mirror in the Ladies cloakroom. Isobel pulled on the blonde wig and fluffed out the bouffant hair. With her eyes on Troy’s reflection she reached forward and painted her own lips to match his scarlet. They stood in silence: twin girls, twin women.

      Watching himself, watching the movement in the mirror, Troy slid his arm around her waist. Isobel, watching them both, turned inside his arm and the mirror saw his beautiful face full-on under a cascade of blonde hair, and her absorbed profile. Troy watched from the corner of his eye as his blonde hair fell forward when he turned a little and bent to kiss her. He felt the warm taste of the lipstick as they kissed gently, and then deeply, taking in the heat of each other’s mouths, the touch of the tongue, the smooth glide of the waxy coloured lips.

      Troy released Isobel and she stepped back a little, her grey eyes very dark with desire.

      ‘This is extraordinary,’ he said, a slight quaver in his voice.

      She nodded, she did not trust herself to speak.

      They stood in silence for a moment.

      ‘You’d better start to get ready,’ Troy said, clearing his throat. ‘We have to be at the Savoy at one.’

      He turned back to the mirror and pulled the wig from his head, placed it gently on the stand, wiped the scarlet from his mouth. He saw her looking at him in the mirror, he saw the naked desire in her eyes.

      ‘I’ll make us a nice cup of tea,’ he said.

      When Troy came back into the bedroom, carrying the tray, he recoiled at the sight of her. Isobel was gone, completely gone. In her place was Zelda Vere. Zelda was seated before the dressing table naked but for the silky bustier and a tiny pair of high-cut satin pants. Her breasts were tightly encased in the lace, her hips moulded by the stretchy satin. Her arms were raised above her head, teasing further height out of her mane of blonde hair. Her eyes, dark-lidded, freighted with the weight of the false eyelashes, shadow, eyeliner, mascara, looked back at themselves in silent adoration from the mirror. Her skin, Isobel’s smooth, always-concealed skin, gleamed like white marble in the shadowy room. Her long, pale, bare legs were flexed to hold her feet on demi-point on the floor. The slack of her thighs, Isobel’s office-chair thighs, was concealed by the tense pose, perched on the dressing-room chair like a piece of fifties pornography, modest by today’s standards, but gleaming with the gloss of glamour.

      For Troy, who had first seen a half-naked woman on the paperback books in the carousel at the corner shop, and glimpsed calendar girls at the back of the petrol station, she was an echo of adolescent desire, resonant with meaning. She was an icon, gilded with the longing of a boy’s half-recognised guilty desire.

      Isobel heard the chink of the tea pot against the cups as Troy trembled at the sight of her, and she turned and put down the comb with unshakable serenity. ‘Come in,’ she said silkily to Troy in her Zelda voice. ‘I’m dying for a cup of tea.’

      ‘Perhaps you’d like champagne?’ Troy stammered, trying to keep pace with this transition.

      ‘D’you have some chilled Roederer?’

      Troy nodded.

      ‘Perhaps later,’ she said.

      He poured the tea and put a cup at her right hand on the dressing table. She leaned forward and added another flicker of blusher with the thick sable brush, then she leaned back.

      ‘How do I look?’

      ‘Beautiful,’ Troy said.

      She turned from the reflection and looked at him. ‘You want me,’ she stated.

      Troy cleared his throat. ‘I don’t know what I want,’ he said honestly. ‘I can’t answer you. I don’t even know who you are. I don’t know who I am, nor what I want. I thought we were doing a brilliant scam here, to get Isobel Latimer a proper deal for once in her career; but we seem to have unleashed something else. Something much more powerful.’ He paused. He drew a shaky breath. ‘Please, it’s my job to make sure that we get the contract signed. Let’s concentrate on that first, and talk about the rest later?’

      She thought for a moment, and then to his relief and to his disappointment, he saw the sultry, sexual look pass from her face. She nodded, as Isobel would have nodded at an appeal to her common sense.

      ‘Of course,’ she said briskly. ‘You’re right. I apologise.’

      ‘Isobel?’ he asked tentatively, as if there could be some doubt.

      She nodded. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s very – er – taking – being her.’

      ‘I know,’ he said. He drank his own tea. ‘You can be her all lunchtime, and then we’ll go and buy her some more clothes.’

      ‘All right,’ she said. ‘And then we’ll come back here and talk?’

      Troy felt himself shrink from the suggestion that any of this heated ambiguity could be pinned down in Isobel’s matter-of-fact words.

      ‘All right,’ he agreed.

      Zelda Vere was seated between the publisher David Quarles and her editor Susan Jarvis at lunch and they plied her equally with champagne and promises. She smiled and accepted both. Troy watched with what he recognised as absurd concern as Zelda drank three glasses of champagne and let them pour a fourth. When they had finished eating and coffee was served, a photographer appeared and Zelda was photographed, listening attentively to Susan Jarvis and laughing merrily at a joke from someone else. The whole restaurant, alerted to the fact that a celebrity was lunching, took care not to look in their direction, while managing to scan them and speculate about the event.

      When the coffee had been poured the publicist, quietly delighted that she had managed to get a photographer to come to the hotel, and that he had established so effectively the importance of the new author, laid before Zelda the plans for the publicity tour they would want her to embark on in January.

      Zelda glanced at the first page and looked in horror towards Troy.

      ‘We have to preserve Zelda’s privacy at all costs,’ he said quickly, reading over her shoulder.

      ‘Of course.’ They all nodded.

      ‘Daytime television,’ Zelda quietly pointed out.

      ‘Yes,’ the publicist said. ‘We were especially lucky to get that. They’re doing a special feature on lucky breaks the week after next. I hoped you would talk about a rags to riches story. How your talent has brought you an amazing advance.’

      ‘It’s just so …’ Zelda broke off.

      Troy, separated from her by the table, could only look at her inquiringly.

      ‘So … public,’ she said. She scowled at Troy but could find no way to warn him that Philip watched daytime television while Mrs M. was clearing up the breakfast things, and then generally left it on while he was doing his crossword and drinking his coffee. He affected to despise it, but the truth was that he seldom missed a programme, and often talked at lunch about the immense folly and waste of time of the whole premise and how amazing it was that anyone watched such drivel.

      Troy grasped at once what she was saying. ‘No-one from your childhood would recognise you now,’ he said quickly. ‘It’s OK, Zelda, I promise you.’

      ‘And