NICK
Jessica’s office is on the thirty-second floor of a building her father bought her when she turned twenty-five. Glass walls. White furniture. The kind of space designed to look like taste but built on someone else’s money.
I don’t announce myself at reception. I walk past the desk and the girl behind it stands and says “Sir, you can’t—” and I’m already through the door.
Jessica is at her desk. Hair pinned back. Black dress. Red lipstick. Two mood boards behind her on the wall, both covered in fabric swatches and photographs that I recognise immediately because I stood in Emily’s studio this morning and looked at them on three screens.
Emily’s work. Her necklines. Her draping. Her colour palette. The coat that took her three weeks to get right, pinned to Jessica’s wall like s
