Caught in His Gilded World

‘I wasn’t told the theatre had a character.’

More laughter.

She looked around, as if thrown by the lack of support, and unexpectedly his conscience stirred.

‘Nobody is going to be asked to take off their clothes,’ he said, exasperated. Hell, he didn’t know what would happen here. Go on as before, bleeding funds, because after the dose he’d had of French spleen over the place only a fool would touch it? He’d be lucky to give it away.

Red, however, seemed to be under the mistaken belief that there was something here worth saving.

‘Voulez-vous, filles?’

Jacques Danton began clapping his hands at the other dancers and their audience began to break up.

‘Maintenant, Gigi,’ he snapped.

She was clearly torn between doing as she was told and continuing to question him about their jobs, but Khaled could already see she wouldn’t stand up to her boss.

Just him.

Which was a first, given that men with a lot more wherewithal than this girl—industrialists, Duma members, Moscow gangsters—stepped carefully around him. Then again, those men didn’t have her lavender eyes or, frankly, her sexual pull.

She was by no means the most beautiful girl backstage, but she was the only one he couldn’t take his eyes off.

Something to do with her bold features and lively eyes, and an innate sensuality she appeared to be entirely unaware of.

Pity she danced here...

Shame he was flying out tomorrow...

Another dancer—the frowning little brunette—had edged up to her. She took Red’s hand with a furtive look of disapproval in his direction and tugged her away. Smart girl.

Red...Gigi...kept glancing over her shoulder at him before the rest of the dancers swallowed her up.

It was a slender shoulder, as finely designed as the rest of her, and it put him in mind of the Spanish painter Luis Ricardo Falero’s amusing, graceful mythological girls. He knew he was done here, and yet he found his eyes following the red pigtails, bouncing amidst the crowd of other girls as the famous Bluebirds vanished into the rabbit warren of corridors.

* * *

That evening the dressing room was noisier and more lively than usual before the first performance.

Khaled Kitaev was the sole subject of discussion.

‘The rumour is that the Russian supermodel Alexandra Dashkova had herself wrapped in a rug, Cleopatra-style, taken up to his hotel suite in Dubai last month and unrolled before him like war booty.’

This was greeted with various oohs and aahs and had Gigi hesitating in the act of applying three-ounce lashes to her eyelids.

‘No one’s got a chance with him, then,’ groaned Adele at Susie’s announcement, and the cramped dressing room was filled with sighs and grumbles and more speculation.

‘C’est vrai.’ Solange regarded her breasts with satisfaction, adjusting her diamante-studded costume. ‘He’s asked for me by name. I’m having a drink with him after the show tomorrow.’

Gigi’s hand slipped and the fake lashes ended up part-way down her cheek.

‘Great,’ grumbled Lulu under her breath, leaning forward to pluck the feathered blob from Gigi’s cheek and pass it to her. ‘Ten to one she’ll sleep with him and make the rest of us look easy.’ Only being Lulu she didn’t actually say easy—she mouthed it.

There was a neat little division down the centre of the Bluebirds. The dancers who accepted invitations from the visiting Hollywood A-listers and rock stars who came to the shows, and those who lined up each night after the last show for the courtesy bus.

It was something Gigi had organised when a couple of the girls had complained about not feeling safe leaving the venue at night, given that the theatre was bumped up against the red light district, and now the bus was a regular thing.

Gigi and Lulu never missed the bus. Solange took every invitation that came her way. Apparently she’d taken this one too.

Not that there was anything wrong with that, Gigi told herself. She only cared because it confirmed her worst suspicions about Kitaev’s plans for them.

She slapped down the lid on her make-up case.

‘Sorry G,’ said Leah, obviously alerted by the bang of Gigi’s case and not sounding sorry at all. ‘You went to all that trouble for nothing.’

‘Not for nothing,’ Lulu rallied back loyally in her defence. ‘We all got a good look.’

Too good, thought Gigi fiercely. Any hope that Khaled Kitaev was going to take ownership of the cabaret seriously was out of the window. As of now the Bluebird was in serious jeopardy.