Zelda’s Cut. Philippa Gregory

I didn’t expect it all to happen so soon.’

      ‘We have the contract ready to go,’ David Quarles said. ‘We’re working on the artwork for the jacket already, we’ll have something to show you within a month. We’re hoping to publish in the winter season. No point wasting time or good publicity opportunities.’

      Zelda looked towards Troy. He nodded firmly. She pinned her cherry smile on her painted face‘ course.’

      They had ordered a limousine to take her home from the Savoy. Zelda stepped into it and arranged her long legs. Troy got in the other side. ‘Harrods,’ he said to the driver. ‘And then wait.’

      He pressed the button and the glass screen slid up between the passenger seats and the front seat.

      ‘Don’t worry,’ he said.

      Isobel’s apprehensive expression gleamed through the confident mask of Zelda. ‘It’s Philip,’ she said. ‘He never misses a programme.’

      ‘He’d never, never recognise you in a million years,’ Troy assured her. ‘Honestly. No-one would. And you’ve not said a word, have you? Not one word?’

      ‘No,’ she said.

      ‘And we’ve kept all of Zelda’s stuff at my house so he won’t even recognise the clothes. You underestimate how little attention men pay. Really. He’ll have the television on in the background and he’ll look up and glance at the screen and see a woman who looks like all the others. Zelda is part of a look. She’s a genre. He wouldn’t even be able to tell her apart from the others. They all look the same.’

      ‘But I’ll have to be away that night.’

      ‘Can’t you lie to him? Make up a literary conference or something?’

      ‘I said I might do a series of lectures at Goldsmiths,’ she confessed. ‘I was sort of preparing.’

      ‘Very sensible,’ Troy commended. ‘Tell him that you’re doing them and that they’re on different days. We’ll always have plenty of notice of these things. Look, this is a fortnight ahead. Come and stay with me the night before, I’ll help you with your makeup. I’ll come to the television studios with you. I’ll be there every step of the way. We’ll do it together.’

      She nodded, but she still looked doubtful.

      ‘Let me show you something,’ Troy said. He drew an envelope out of his pocket and spread the thick document out on his dark-suited knee. ‘This is your contract. D’you see what it says here? It says £350,000. D’you know how many Isobel Latimer novels you would have to write to earn that?’

      Isobel shook her head. ‘I hadn’t thought of it that way.’

      ‘Seventeen. D’you know how many years you would have to work?’

      ‘Thirty-four years,’ she said precisely. ‘Longer, if I got stuck.’

      ‘It’s a lifetime’s pay,’ Troy said. ‘For one book. And all you have to do now to earn it is to wear some beautiful clothes and go on television and be polite to some idiot of half your intelligence before a daytime audience that is barely watching.’

      ‘If Philip recognises me …’ she began quietly.

      ‘If he recognises you he can lump it,’ Troy said brutally. ‘He wanted a swimming pool, didn’t he? He wanted the lovely house, didn’t he? He left you to earn it, didn’t he?’

      ‘He can’t earn,’ she said indignantly. ‘You know how ill he is. That’s terribly unfair.’

      ‘But he does spend,’ Troy said, going to the very heart of the burden on Isobel. ‘He wanted something that you would never ever be able to provide unless you wrote this sort of novel. So you did it. And you did it for him. And you even lied to protect him from the hurt of knowing about it. If he ever finds out he should go down on his knees and kiss your feet.’

      He was afraid that he had gone too far. She turned her blonde head away from him and looked out of the window at the slowly moving traffic.

      ‘You don’t understand,’ she said in a small voice.

      Troy could have let it go. He could have agreed that he did not understand. But some strand of mischief in him led him on to nurture her doubts. ‘I think I understand very well,’ he said flatly. ‘And I know that if the worst comes to the worst and he recognises you as Zelda, then he will take Zelda’s money just as he has taken Isobel’s money and he’ll find one way or another to make himself feel all right about it. Because he doesn’t mind leaving you to carry the can. He doesn’t care what you’ve got to do as long as he has he gets what he wants.’

      The car drew up outside Harrods and she forgot to wait for the driver to open the door. She got out of the car with Isobel’s hurried graceless speed. Troy jumped out too, strode after her and caught her as she pushed her way through the doors into the store. He touched her arm and she turned to him.

      ‘Calm down,’ he said. ‘We both had a bit to drink. This is a big deal for both of us. Let’s go and get a cup of tea and then look at some clothes for Zelda.’

      ‘You didn’t mean what you said about him?’ she demanded.

      Troy shrugged. Words cannot be unsaid, their effect lasts even when they have been denied. ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘Who knows him better than you do? I was just worried about you.’

      She nodded. He opened the door for her and stepped back as she went through with Zelda’s swaying stride.

       Seven

      This time they were more confident of Zelda’s taste. They chose her clothes themselves, wandering in great sweeps of the designer-clothes floors, selecting and rejecting. They agreed that Zelda did not need another suit but that she should have a couple of dresses, one with a matching coat for the cold days of spring when she would be on tour, and another evening dress. Isobel especially wanted to buy some silk pyjamas and a matching silk gown. ‘For lounging around in,’ she said.

      Troy made no comment, it was obvious to them both that any lounging around that Zelda might do would take place at his flat with him.

      They found one beautifully cut simple shift dress which Isobel would have bought. Troy shook his head. ‘Too tasteful,’ he said. ‘Isobel Latimer would wear it. Zelda is much more barmaidy.’

      ‘She needs a winter coat,’ Isobel said.

      ‘A fur,’ Troy ruled.

      ‘Surely not!’ Isobel was shocked. ‘Nobody wears fur.’

      ‘Nobody used to wear fur,’ Troy corrected her. ‘That was the immensely tedious political correctness of the eighties. People wear fur now. Rich women wear fur.’

      Isobel was about to argue. ‘Let’s go and look,’ Troy said persuasively. ‘See if there’s anything we think she would like.’

      They went outside to the street and strolled down the road into the first fur shop they encountered. When they stepped over the threshold they were both, at once, persuaded. The place was filled with the scent of cool pelts. It was an irresistible perfume of wealth. The coats were chained to the rail with small, light chains as if they were too priceless even to be looked at without permission. The assistants came forward to serve customers with keys at their waists like eighteenth-century chatelaines. A man sat at a desk by the door and served no-one at all but bowed his head and smiled as they came in as if it were his own exclusive private club.

      One of the saleswomen accompanied by an assistant came forward and as Troy pointed to one fur coat and then another, they unlocked them in a reverent ritual and then slipped them off the hanger and slid them over Isobel’s shoulders. They draped her in dark mink, in pale ocelot, they contrasted her blonde hair with the