Gideon covered the mouthpiece of his mobile with his hand and leaned towards Louise.
“Call the Shangri-La, tell them to get the presidential suite ready for Victoria. She’s on her way back there now,” he whispered.
Louise grabbed her phone and dutifully swiped at the screen.
He returned his attention to the call.
“I’ll need you to speak with Edmond, obviously,” Victoria was saying. “And we need to do something about the cosmetics layout. Speak to Stella—”
“Sheila,” Gideon corrected.
“Mm, that one, and tell her no to the greys, we need warmth. Try to do something about the budget preparations; I may be a genius, but I don’t know how I’m supposed to put out a Christmas edition with anything less than four hundred thousand. Tell Louise to prepare my guestroom, I’ll need everything, obviously.”
“Your guestroom?” Gideon questioned.
“Yes, Holly will have to stay with me. We can’t have her roaming the streets of New York, can we?”
Gideon smiled at Victoria’s dramatization. “I thought you’d put her in a hotel.”
“That would be wholly inconvenient. Besides, we know she’s not good at staying in hotels. The last time she stayed in a hotel, she got herself into the mess she’s in now! No. She’ll stay with me. Besides, if I’m going to be legally responsible for her, I need to be able to keep an eye on her.”
“Legally responsible?”
“Yes, please keep up, Gideon.” Victoria let out a sigh. “If I’m to get her out of that hole, then I need to have power of attorney.”
Gideon suspected the facility wasn’t a hole but decided to keep quiet.
“I see,” he said simply.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing, just I see. I understand what you’re saying,” he clarified. “What else can I do?”
“That’s all for now. I’ll email you anything else that comes to me, and I’ll liaise with Claudia in New York. I don’t need to tell you that I don’t want anyone knowing about this yet.”
“Of course, my lips are sealed.” He wasn’t entirely sure how to keep events secret when Louise was about to be asked to speak with Victoria’s household staff to set up the guestroom. There was no point in asking Victoria. She wouldn’t be interested in the how, just the result.
He paused a moment. “How is she?”
“A shell,” she replied honestly. “She’s lost so much weight, not that she didn’t have a few pounds to shed, of course.”
Gideon rolled his eyes. He’d never been a fan of Victoria’s insistence that all women working at the Arrival offices were impossibly skinny. Everyone at the magazine had considered Holly Carter on the heavy side, but to the average onlooker she probably would have been thought of as slim.
“She doesn’t remember me,” Victoria continued.
“That must be a relief,” Gideon mumbled.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she snapped.
“You know what it means, you and Holly weren’t exactly close. The girl was a nervous wreck around you, justifiably so most of the time. It must be nice to speak to her when she’s not in the middle of heart palpitations.”
A tsk was the only reply he got.
As director of photography, Gideon often had to liaise with Victoria’s office. Louise was a frantic mess half of the time, and so he usually communicated with Holly instead. She had been a breath of fresh air, someone from outside the fashion world.
“You should come to the house for dinner one night when she is settled. Maybe she will remember you,” Victoria suggested.
“Maybe. Whatever the outcome, I’d like to see her.”
“I’ll make the arrangements. I should go. You wouldn’t believe the legal hoops I’m being forced to jump through.”
Gideon imagined the exceptional situation probably called for some legal hoops but decided to not mention it.
“Good luck, I’ll contact you when we land,” he said.
As soon as he hung up the call, Louise appeared beside him.
“What is going on?” she demanded.
“Nothing that you need to know about at the moment,” he told her.
He looked up at the departure board and then at his watch.
“Come on, we need to get to the gate,” he said.
“Is this about Holly? What about the schedule? What’s happening?” Louise asked.
“Cancel the schedule for the next few days. Yes, it’s because of Holly, but don’t ask any further questions because I can’t tell you. Suffice to say, you’re going to really earn your paycheck over the next few days.”