One hundred and twelve

Ghita took a taxi to C.I.L., one of the old French quarters patronized by the city’s bourgeoisie.

There were no designer clothes shops there or little boutiques selling jewellery or shoes, but there was something far more in demand by the jet-set ladies from Anfa – Chez Louche.

An extrovert of the most sensual nature, coutured from neck to toe in pink satin, Laurent Louche was the most sought-after man in town. His clients booked weeks and, sometimes, months in advance, to be pampered and pored over in his salon. An appointment at Louche was an entrance ticket into the most exclusive of sororities. Merely being seen in the salon was in itself a mark that one had arrived.

Laurent Louche specialized in obscure beauty treatments, the kinds that only ladies with abundant free time and extraordinary wealth could afford. These included caviar facials, and gold leaf face masks, bull semen hair treatments and even snake massage.

The more extreme, the higher the price, and the more the clientele demanded them.

Ghita had dressed up in a profusion of couture, pieces that had not enjoyed any takers on the streets downtown. Her scarf was by Fendi, and her dress by Chanel, the hat a Fleur de Paris creation, and the belt was Hermès. A gift from Ghita’s father, it was far too precious to sell, even by a spiteful daughter.

Unlike the Ghita Omary of old, she now felt self-conscious at being so overdressed. But she knew very well that the only way to be taken seriously at Chez Louche was to be way over the top.

Swaggering towards the entrance, she allowed the pair of towering Nubian guards to pull the doors apart, while the Chinese dwarf attendant scattered rose petals at her feet. More importantly though, she made an effort to appear completely nonchalant and bored by it all, as if she had seen it a thousand times before – which of course she had.

Her foot hadn’t taken a single step through into the leopard-skin interior when Laurent Louche himself waddled up and air-kissed Ghita’s cheeks.

‘My darling!’ he swooned. ‘Where have you been? I have been worried sick about you!’

‘Monaco,’ Ghita replied conceitedly. ‘But it is so tiresome in winter. You know how it is.’

‘So drab,’ screamed Laurent. He gave a snigger. ‘But who has been doing your hair my darling? Not that monkey at the Salon Mustique?’

He snapped his fingers and a gaggle of fledgling attendants slipped out from crevices. Dancing around her with garlands and scattering yet more petals, they directed Ghita to a throne-like seat, and the business of beautifying began.

Laurent himself swanned about, fussing over his clientele, he lavished superlatives, and his own inimitable wisdom.

‘You must leave him, but only after taking him for every penny he’s got,’ he told a pretty Italian woman dressed in pea-green silk. And he said to another: ‘What do you think beauty is for, if not as a tool to get what you want from a man?’

One of the reasons that Chez Louche was such a financial success was that its proprietor decided what treatment he would administer to each woman who came through the door. He would not have dreamt of allowing them to decide for themselves.

By rationing the most expensive techniques, he created an insatiable demand. A day didn’t go by without a craggy matriarch from the good side of Anfa begging for one of the more extravagant procedures, and being turned away.

A team of fourteen staff laboured at the throne on which Ghita perched, a glass of chilled vintage Krug in her hand.

After forty minutes, Laurent Louche glided up with an antique mirror. It had once been owned by the English mistress of Napoleon III. He held the glass to Ghita’s face.

‘Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?’ he giggled.

‘You work wonders my darling,’ she said.

Louche blushed, and fell at her knees, his lips pressed gently to the back of her hand.

Choosing the moment, Ghita looked into Laurent’s eyes and blew him a kiss.

‘I have a favour to ask you, my dearest,’ she said.

‘If it’s not a big one I shall be cross.’

‘I feel awful at asking anything of you at all,’ Ghita said, moistening her lips with champagne.

Laurent Louche tapped a fingertip to his ear.

‘Whisper in here my darling,’ he said, ‘and your wish shall be my command.’