CHAPTER TWO: DEAD
DAY ONE
Nigel adjusted the lime outfit a little lower on Anastasia's hip and stepped back, pursing his lips thoughtfully. The model stared sightlessly past him, looking bored beyond belief. He couldn't blame her – it had been a long day, although at least they had finally nailed the essentials now.
He readjusted a bronze bangle on her wrist and cocked his head. He supposed it was acceptable, and the light of the sinking sun was certainly optimal right now but he couldn't put his finger on what would really make the scene pop.
If Miranda had been here, she'd take one look and know immediately. But Miranda wasn't here, having roused him at ridiculous-o'clock to inform him she was heading home to New York and hauling Six along with her.
Vera's people were not happy. But what could you do? La Priestly does what La Priestly does. Even they couldn't argue with that.
On the plus side, his illustrious leader had taken with her a case of the swimwear samples to give to his art department assistant. Emily could now finally stop fretting about how little time she'd have to organise this issue's accessories page in keeping with the main style spread. And if she could stop hyperventilating long enough to have it all completely sorted by his return at the end of the week, there might even be hope for Miranda's dedicated but highly-strung former assistant yet.
Like his boss, he lived on hope.
"There, try it like that – and this time tilt your neck a little to the left so we catch the neck piece glittering."
He stepped back and nodded to the photographer and then resumed his fold-up canvas seat.
His phone beeped as he heard the staccato flurry of camera clicks and glanced down to see his assistant's name.
Speak of the devil. He opened the message.
"WHERE *IS* SHE?! SHE MISSED JAPAN TO LA FLIGHT! I NEEDED THOSE SAMPLES **TODAY!** E"
Nigel stared at his phone's screen in complete confusion, his brain not quite processing what he was reading at first.
How could Miranda have missed her connecting flight?
He glanced at his watch and calculated how long Miranda had now been gone. She could have flown to Okinawa and back by now. His heart rate leaped.
This was not good, not good, not fucking good at all.
An icy chill shot through him and he forced himself to steady his breathing, telling himself it was far too early to jump to conclusions.
Jaw working, he slid his eyes back to Anastasia, now assuming a new pose and doing that floppy thing with her wrist she thought was far sexier than it was. Philippe was ecstatically clicking away as though nothing was wrong. As though the ground beneath Nigel's feet hadn't just fallen away.
The art director glanced back to his phone and, with less-than-steady fingers, texted back: "M def on flight to OKNWA. She txted me from Mnla airport untl she had 2 board. N. PS weather all clear."
Message sent he tried calling Miranda's number, which he knew was ridiculous because it was the first thing Emily would have tried. But still, he had to. It clicked immediately through to her answering service, which meant the phone was switched off or out of range. Or broken. He swallowed grimly.
Five minutes went by, then ten. He couldn't call Emily – the reception out here was shitty at best – although texts still got through, albeit after a slight lag. His fingers twitched and he began to drum them impatiently against his chair's wooden arm rest.
He knew better than to text Emily again demanding information but he sorely wanted to. If she had any news, he'd be the first to know. He tried not to let his anxiety leak but when Philippe turned to get his approval on a new pose, he waved his hand dismissively. "Fine," he muttered darkly.
As if an aloof 19-year-old sprawled on a rock in a lime tropicana wrap pouting like a trout mattered now. And for god's sake he did actually know she was really named Jenny. And that she was from Brooklyn.
'Anastasia' my ass.
His phone finally beeped. He read the newest text anxiously.
"Still making calls. Bess helping. E"
He sighed and could hear his heart thundering with adrenalin.
Bess was Miranda's second assistant since Andy's promotion. Well, she was the fourth second assistant since Andy's promotion, but she was lasting the longest to date. She was steady as a Clydesdale, not especially bright but determined and capable of achieving that most important task: center-of-the-sun-hot coffee-retrieval.
Nigel had been one of the few who'd predicted she'd last longer than a week.
The art director decided the combined doggedness of Emily and Bess meant KLM's officials would be coughing up an answer fairly soon - or else wishing to God they had.
He crossed his arms and then uncrossed them. Then went back to his impatient finger drumming, until Philippe shot him an annoyed look.
Twenty minutes later Nigel's phone lit up again. And then a second text landed almost immediately.
He scrabbled for his phone, almost dropping it in his haste. The words on the screen almost made his heart stop.
"PLANE DISAPPERD OFF RADAR! E"
"Chking othr airprts 4 any emgncy landings. Bess"
Nigel gaped, re-reading Emily's message over and over. His thoughts flew about wildly, careering like a mine cart. He lost track of time because, when he glanced up again, the half-lidded vacant-possession Anastasia had dramatically changed poses.
Nigel gave a tight sigh. The dim, multi-tasking part of his brain that still cared about fashion gave her a critical once over.
Jenny from Brooklyn clearly now thought she was Marilyn.
At least Marilyn had a personality. And breasts.
The plane could just be off course, the rest of his brain was screaming at him. Right?!
No use panicking until Bess finds that out. Then … if it's still missing … then…
His phone beeped again. Twice.
This was it.
Shakily he activated the screen.
"No unexpctd 737-800s at other airprts. Lost plane story on all news now. None linking it to M but calling Leslie in PR in case. Bess."
"OMFG! SHES GONE! E."
Nigel gritted his teeth to try and prevent the horrified gasp he was dying to utter. Instead, a sort of strangled half-yelp, half-cry came out anyway which drew every eye to him. He climbed to his feet only to discover his legs were made of jelly.
He found himself, quite against his will, sinking to his knees.
"What's wrong?" Anastasia – Jenny, his brain corrected snidely – asked. The model's already preternaturally wide blue eyes somehow blew out even wider. Her usually bored tone actually sounded concerned. So he must look a sight.
He glanced around, unsure how to say it. Everyone was staring at him: the art director of Runway, on his knees, trembling like a sheet, clutching a phone in a white-knuckled grip to his chest.
"Miranda's plane," he gasped out. He stopped, blinking helplessly.
"Her plane…" he tried again. And swallowed the bile he felt rising. He locked eyes meaningfully with the photographer who was staring back at him in horror.
"Non," Philippe said faintly.
"She never made it to Japan. None of them did," Nigel continued. He looked at his watch again and glanced back up. "It's well over four hours overdue."
An awful, gaping silence fell among the group. Eyes shifted around.
"What type of plane was it?" an unfamiliar voice asked from the back.
Nigel peered at a young man anxiously swallowing. He was a holding the soft silver flash diffuser screen. The art director had spoken barely two words to him in the past year.
"737-800."
The man's eyes tilted up and to the right as he appeared to do a quick mental calculation.
"That's only got a 3000-mile range, assuming it flew with a full tank – which isn't always the case."
Nigel stared at him in astonishment.
"My dad's a pilot. You pick up things," the young man said with an embarrassed shrug. "Um, Mr Kipling, sorry to say, but one way or another, there's no way that 800 is still in the air."
Nigel couldn't hear the gasps around him, or see the shocked faces because the sound of blood rushing in his brain was overpowering. He shut his eyes.
La Priestly does not die in a plane crash, for God's sake. Miranda Priestly does not die - period. Wasn't that against the laws of nature or something?
Emily was right. Oh my fucking god indeed.
His eyes flashed open and he rose. "Everyone pack up," he said in a rasping voice that sounded far away to his own ears. "This shoot is OVER."
Everyone obeyed in complete silence. Hundreds of cases of photographic gear and lighting equipment were squared away and yet you could hear a pin drop. Nigel had never seen anything like it. But then there was no precedent for how to act when you hear Miranda Priestly has just …
He refused to finish that sentence. She was alive, damn it. She had to be.
DAY TWO
Nigel pensively stared at the black horizon. New York high-rise building lights blinked back at him, and his eyes drifted ever higher. He had been catching himself doing it for hours, unable to tear his eyes from the skies even though he knew the heavens certainly could not possibly hide Miranda's lost plane.
He had gotten next to no sleep since the frantic nation-hopping race back, and he was running on little more than coffee fumes and adrenalin to try to keep Runway from ripping apart at the seams.
Not many people knew that he and Miranda shared a belief that the magazine was like a living creature. It lived and breathed and thrived when given attention and love. Right now it was limping about and flailing is if trying to understand why it was wounded. Nigel could feel it through every floor, every department - a kind of creeping despair, as people held their breaths. Waiting.
Waiting.
DAY THREE
The media made it all the worse. Everywhere he turned, he saw her. Photos, news stories, stock footage from TV interviews. And Miranda Priestly wasn't just omnipresent in the US. Europe wrote prolifically these stately and austere forelock-tugging 'think-piece' farewells - respecting her genius, her talent, consulting designers who all, to a fawning man and woman, agreed she was one of the greats.
In Japan, which for many years had a peculiar adoring fetish for the larger-than-life Runway icon, every reporter seemed to be breathlessly recounting that she'd disappeared on the way to their shores. She was on every channel's news, every single night.
But it was the 100 point-size screaming headlines that got Nigel. Every single paper, every single day, no matter which street he walked up. Devil disappears! Runway icon's tragic last flight. Priestly perishes. Dragon's flames doused by watery grave.
In the US these stories were still pseudo obituaries, with just enough "assumed deads" and "apparentlys" to give them outs in case she turned up hale and hearty. But even so they did not really bury her yet. Quite the opposite. In fact, despite the pessimistic and lurid headlines, Nigel was surprised how few American newspapers actually had written her off.
It seemed to him that, underneath their love-hate relationship, even the media was in awe of the indomitable La Priestly and her well-founded reputation for always finishing on top. They actually seemed to be desperately hoping she'd bob up at some remote airport, not a hair out of place, demanding a Starbucks and a re-design of someone's entire autumn/winter fashion line, just to remind them of her utter invincibility.
And so everyone in New York and the fashion world waited with bated breath. To see. Because it was now apparent that it was just accepted that if anyone could defy the odds, it would be La Priestly.
Much later, when the real, full-length obituaries finally appeared, the tone was always the same – shock, laced liberally with incredulity and disappointment that she hadn't defied them one last time.
And that Nigel understood all too well.
But, back in those early days, when Nigel still sat in his office, staring at the heavens, there had been some hope.
Even so, the searchers had found not so much as a life buoy, battered suitcase or engine bolt. Nothing at all. And now the inky night had fallen in New York yet again and Nigel felt the worries that came with the dark churn anew, even as he tried to slow his fearful, caffeine-charged thumping heart.
He rose and went to the window of his art studio, one forearm and his head leaning against the bitingly cold glass, as he anxiously chewed the end of his tortoiseshell glasses.
A bad habit, he dimly reminded himself.
He kept chewing.
He considered the twins, their father, Greg, now apparently gallivanting around with some bombshell blonde party planner turned reality TV starlet, much to his daughters' chagrin.
Monica somebody? Who could keep track.
Greg had rung Emily, asking to know the latest news and then promising he had some help lined up for her - something about "fixing" the funeral arrangements. Emily had started laughing hysterically. She'd only spent every spare waking minute trying to organise everyone and everything to perfection for him. And Her.
Her mood swings were getting worse. From despairing to threatening to rip heads off anyone who prematurely referred to Miranda in the past tense. So far only Serena seemed to be able to stop Emily from fully melting down. He could see it in her eyes though – she was only a hair's breadth away from losing it.
He recognised the look in his own mirror every night.
DAY FOUR
Greg was now giving interviews. Nigel was horrified on behalf of Miranda. And it was getting worse as the blousy blonde Monica was starting to turn up in them. Talking about the fashion queen as though she knew her intimately. Explaining how upset Caroline and Cassidy were and how they'd kept them far from TV and newspapers since this "tragic ordeal" had begun.
Miranda would hate the whole charade with a passion.
As the days wore on, the Starbucks cups mounted on Nigel's desk and the sickness in the pit of his stomach grew. Somehow, though, he looked like he'd be getting out the next issue on time. But it was only by working impossible hours, barely leaving his desk, and constantly shaking his dazed staff back into action.
He had caught himself taking nostalgic mental ambles. He and Miranda had come up through the industry together. She had decided to take a chance on a green fashion-design student for the staff of a magazine she was working on overhauling. She liked his impeccable eye for color, she'd told him.
It had been a risk to abandon his own design ambitions, but there had been something so compelling and charismatic about the blue-eyed blonde sliding a contract across his desk.
"Come on, Nigel," she'd purred, "grow a pair. It's time to dream big. I will take you places, I promise you that."
So he'd done it. Thrown his lot in with the ambitious magazine editor on the rise and jumped into the abyss.
He would miss her. God how he would miss her. If she was really gone. It'd still been less than a week since the plane went missing. Anything could still happen.
Right?
There had been cases … somewhere. Like in bushland in the middle of Australia or Africa, where plane crash victims had survived that long - or longer - without food or water. Emily had begun sending him the links to stories like that, all fired off in the small hours on any night when the restless assistant couldn't get to sleep.
Which was now every night.
The searchers were still baffled to have come up completely empty. Nigel was now in discussions with Elias Clarke's chairman, Irv Ravitz, to organise their own paid search of highly trained experts, not whatever the nearest island's locals had been able to put together with limited funds.
The bastard had muttered something about seeing if he could find it in the budget. He hadn't gotten back to him since. Nigel ground his teeth and fired off yet another tersely worded email to Irv.
He had a sudden thought and phoned Emily, sick to his stomach he hadn't thought of it before. "You talked to her parents?"
"Miranda's parents are dead, Nigel," the redhead snapped. "Do you think I'm an idiot? Honestly."
"Not hers," he hissed. "Andy's."
There was swearing, colorful, very British, regretful, appalled swearing. "No. Oh bollocks, what's wrong with me. I'll uh… hell. I forgot. I'll … right now. Oh my God."
The phone went dead.
He hoped like hell Six, wherever she was, would forgive him this inexcusable oversight. Andy Sachs wasn't disposable, even if the whole world seemed to revolve around the missing fashion editor. He knew that she mattered, too. But, God, he'd had less than fifteen hours sleep in five days. He was clearly losing it. Seams unravelling, basic details overlooked.
Miranda wouldn't have forgotten Andy's parents, he told himself. Hell, Miranda wouldn't forget anything. Miranda would take all this in her stride and be fucking amazing. And probably look perfect while she was at it.
Nigel Kipling, all red-rimmed, baggy eyed and white prickling three-day growth creeping along on his jaw, had looked in the mirror lately. He knew he wasn't Miranda. He was a ridiculously poor substitute. An imposter.
He missed Miranda.
The next time his phone rang, Nigel found himself talking to an older woman on the brink of collapse.
"Just tell me about my daughter, Mr Kipling. The State Department was next to useless when they contacted me earlier. I've been so shocked. I-I really don't know what to think."
He tried to compose himself as he took Ellen Sachs through what he knew. Emily had already alerted him before the call that Andy's father had passed away in the previous year.
"She's so young," Ellen finally said raggedly, after she'd processed Nigel's words. "Just 25. What on earth was she doing on that little plane in the middle of nowhere anyway?"
Nigel bit back his first response - that he wished he knew. One of Miranda's whims obviously.
"A very vital work project," he lied softly. "A photo spread that was to have been the highlight of the magazine. We needed somewhere exotic and that's why…"
He faded out. He didn't know if he was particularly convincing and, after a moment, he realised he could hear soft crying on the end of the phone, a faint "thank you, please keep me updated", and the dial tone.
An hour later, Emily figured out exactly why Miranda and Andy had been there, when Stephen, mid-honeymoon after a secret wedding, had made contact, asking if it was true what the news reports were saying about his ex-wife.
After a SECRET wedding.
Dear God. That had to be such a stupid reason to die.
If she was dead, he reminded himself. If.
And worse, goddamn it, worse was Miranda had taken the wide-eyed optimistic assistant down with her.
Nigel had grown particularly fond of Andy, and he knew Emily also tolerated her well enough – the Brit's version of fondness, he presumed – and if anything was a waste it was dying at age 25 to satisfy the dented ego of your boss. A boss who hadn't even loved the bastard she was most likely hoping to embarrass at his wedding.
He exhaled sharply.
Well, not that Miranda had known what would happen when she'd booked their doomed flight. Nigel reached under his desk and pulled out his emergency bottle of scotch. Time to toast the dead.
Then he gave an incredulous snort. This was ridiculous, he told himself for the 100th time. Miranda Priestly doesn't just die.
Ten minutes later he was weeping helplessly, sloshing the amber fluid around in the glass, and slamming it down his throat. Rinse and repeat.
Well, shit, who knew? Apparently Miranda Priestly does die.
He forgot he was still supposed to be playing the 'if' game.
DAY SIX
The families of the victims had lost all hope. The search aircraft had found nothing. The news outlets had begun saying earnest things like "the grim search for bodies appears over as the sea has swallowed the flight and its secrets whole".
The first of 189 funerals had started. They went all week long, in all parts of the world. Families grieving. Eulogies spoken. News stories printed. One after the other after the other.
Amidst it all, Irv summoned Nigel and appointed him Miranda's replacement and then immediately explained he would do her job for half her pay and a third her budget. Nigel tendered his resignation immediately.
In a way he was relieved to feel so enraged. It gave him a target at last, instead of some nebulous nothingness.
Irv merely smiled like a cat that got the cream - as though he'd achieved a desired outcome.
Nigel had never felt so perfectly played in his life. Especially when whispers of Jacqueline Follet being brought in from French Runway reached his ears an hour later.
Just perfect.
Emily had been frothingly outraged and threatened to re-create the various techniques for dispatching and disposing of Irv's body that she'd picked up from her secret passion – watching TV crime dramas. Nigel had been surprisingly touched. And a little shocked at the extensiveness of her knowledge of human dismemberment.
After a sleepless night, where he was sure he'd ground his teeth to a nub, he decided to do what Miranda would do: He'd "grow a pair" and wipe the floor with the little toad.
The next day he told Irv he'd be having a cozy chat with the media on the way out the door about how much the chairman had undervalued his tragically departed Runway editor and his opportunistic use of her death. And how Irv had declined to fund their own search for their magazine editor.
Irv, a vicious scowl coating his puffer-fish face, capitulated instantly. A slightly reduced editor's wage remained on offer (Nigel could compromise and it was still a substantial pay bump), but the full Runway budget was restored.
Nigel was secretly half disappointed. It would have been so easy to walk away. The turmoil, the pain, was grinding. The faces on the staff, security, the clackers, everyone - there was like a grey fog and it subdued everything. The living creature that was Runway felt like a sleek, beautiful bunny in its death throes, its neck clamped and bloodied in a steel trap.
If he'd thought there might be dancing in the halls, as Miranda herself had often predicted, neither of them really understood her staff. They were loyal to a fault. He briefly amused himself with the thought perhaps it was some form of Stockholm Syndrome, but deep down he finally understood. They endured not because of her, but for her, because she was who she was: Someone remarkable. She was truly great.
And now she was ... gone. He was almost ready to admit that to himself.
Almost. He reached for his scotch.
DAY SEVEN
Emily had been melting down over organising Miranda's funeral. It had to be perfect, absolutely perfect she seemed to think, or she wasn't honouring the woman she'd idolised for years. He could see it in her eyes, though, she was coming apart in slow motion. And, once he'd moved into Miranda's chair, he also heard it in her voice as she resumed her old seat temporarily and berated the personal assistants of fashion divas and designers up and down the coast if they dared not attend.
As if they'd ever consider not attending.
He called in Serena that afternoon and urged her to take her friend out and relax her for a few hours. The redhead had come back four hours later, deadly. Emily never lost her laser-like focus after that. Nigel suspected she'd taken it as a personal affront that she'd been perceived to be failing in her final duties for Miranda.
He sighed. Trust Emily to see it like that.
And then Greg had surfaced suddenly at Runway and said he would be taking over the funeral preparations for Miranda, given their daughters lived with him now and were her next of kin. He said it dismissively - as though he hadn't been obviously relieved for days to let Emily burden herself with the exhaustive plans she'd hoped would reflect the glory of her late boss.
Instead it came out like an oddly rehearsed speech, eyes flitting all about the office except anywhere near Emily.
His gaudy, cleavage-enhanced girlfriend had no such reservations and eyeballed Emily challengingly.
Nigel flinched inwardly, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It did. Greg revealed he now had a "funeral planner" lined up. As if that was a thing.
Monica, it turned out, being a former party planner, had decided she was amply suited for the task and had smiled widely when Greg dropped this little bombshell.
It was the last straw for Emily who promptly shot to her feet, threw her contact books and funeral schedules on the table for Monica to appropriate, and stalked away muttering furiously.
Emily reappeared the next morning unwilling to discuss any part of Miranda's funeral or That Woman. Instead she slid a plane ticket across Nigel's desk and hissed at him: "Come on, if we leave now we can catch Andy's send-off in outer hicksville."
Nigel had peered at her slightly wild green eyes.
"Why?" he asked. "I mean I know I wanted to go, but you?"
She shook her head. "Don't ask me that. Just … come on." She stood and pulled at a wheeled compact case he hadn't noticed before. "Roy's waiting downstairs."
"I just have to tell Bess… oh, hell. Let's go. I'll text her from Ohio."
NIGHT EIGHT – OUTER HICKSVILLE
Nigel found out later why Emily had wanted to go. He was sitting at the bar of their Ohio hotel next to her, hours after the saddest funeral he'd ever attended, and was proceeding to get as drunk as humanly possible.
For once the redhead didn't make any snide remarks to him about the wholesome clan Andy had come from and all those sweet grandparents and cousins and aunties, some of whom had actually tried to hug and cling to her and sob about how adorable Andy had been. Emily didn't say anything much to him at all, not even after one of Andy's New York friends – Lilly something - made some snide remarks about Runway stealing her friend's soul.
No, Emily didn't say anything at all, beyond one thing. Even then it had been so low he had to strain to hear it.
"Miranda would have wanted to attend."
"What?"
"This funeral. If Andy had just up and carked it out of the blue, Miranda would have wanted to go." Emily's face was deadly serious, her eyes burning into him, willing him to understand.
Nigel had blearily peered at her. Both of her. He was closing in on seriously drunk.
"This from the woman who was always saying to Andy that she was nothing special? One assistant in a sea of them? A million girls could replace her in a minute?"
"No," Emily said with a bitter smile. "It pains me to say it, and of course I wouldn't if I wasn't nine sheets to the wind on this ridiculously potent Ohio swill, but the irritating, smart, fat girl WAS special to Miranda. She treated Andy differently."
She pouted and rattled her glass of ice and spirits, before draining it, slamming it onto the bar and snapping her fingers for the bar tender to refill it.
"How so?" Nigel asked. He had often wondered if he was seeing things on that score himself.
"Ever since Harry Potter. She looked at her like …"
"Like?"
"Well like she was waiting to see what Andy would surprise her with next. I think half the reason she set her impossible tasks was just to see if she could meet them. Fuck, I was so flaming jealous."
Nigel laughed sloppily at that, barely keeping his balance on the bar stool. "No kidding, sweetheart," he said and rolled his eyes. Then he wished he hadn't as the world briefly tilted.
"You don't think Miranda would have eventually grown sick of her or vice versa?" Nigel pondered aloud. "We both know how this goes: Miranda gets bored playing or the assistant burns out. One or the other. It's a killer being in the center of her white-hot focus 24/7."
Emily accepted another drink placed in front of her. "No," she shook her head vehemently. "No," she sighed and thumped the bar in front of her pointedly. "I was waiting, Nigel. Watching. The bloody creature had no chinks in her armor, there was nothing to burn out."
"Why are you here then?" Nigel probed again. "If you didn't even like her?"
"I never said I didn't like her," Emily said and gave a dismissive wave. "You know that. Hell even she knew that. I only said I was jealous of her. And even that I'll deny if you tell a bleeding sod tomorrow."
He raised an eyebrow expectantly. "OK…? So spell it out, real slow for me then - you're here because….?"
"For bloody Miranda Priestly," Emily admitted.
And then her eyes began to leak and his proud assistant crumpled before his eyes. Nigel thought it was the most depressing sight he'd ever seen. The formidable Emily Charlton never cried. Her face was welded on each morning, he was sure of it. Now, though, all evidence to the contrary greeted him as two watery streaks slid down her cheeks, and she brushed them angrily away. She looked impossibly young, like a broken child discovering there were no happy endings. Ever.
"I'm here for Her, because she can't be. Because I know my insanely impossible-to-understand boss would have definitely wanted to be," Emily said as her voice faltered. "I know it. I know it in my heart, as surely as I know my Gaultier from my Valentino."
Her watery eyes met his and he felt her aching sadness echo back in his own heart.
She suddenly glared at him. "Don't look at me like that. Save it for her little monster twins. Oh those girls. Her poor girls." She looked down and shook her head. Then she mumbled: "Save it for A-Andy."
Her tears began again, her fists now balled tightly in her eye sockets smearing mascara down her cheeks. More words tumbled out, in a rush, spilling across the space between them like some tortuously wrung-out confession.
"Sod it, since you're holding my feet to the fire, I did like Andy under that horribly cheery disposition and hideous perfection and stupid not-entirely-fat ass. Oh bollocks," she groaned, "I really need to get drunk tonight. And I'll thank you not to ever remind me of this conversation tomorrow."
She sniffled helplessly and he wordlessly passed her a tissue. She spent a few minutes mopping herself up. She did it furiously, like she was angry at her weakness - or just angry in general.
One never really knew with Emily.
Nigel glanced down and peered at his drink, giving it an absent-minded swirl in his hand, watching the ice go around. "My lips are sealed. So change the topic?"
Silence fell for a few minutes. All they could hear was a battered jukebox on the other side of the room blaring out some bouncy uneven mess of country/folk music.
"How do you think they died?" Emily suddenly asked, sounding back to herself, even if she looked like she'd done ten rounds with a blind make-up artist. "I mean - instant or what? I can't stop thinking about it. I know it's macabre but I keep having nightmares all the bleeding time."
Nigel carefully placed his drink squarely back on its coaster. He looked at the mirror behind the bar and could see the tiredness etched on his face.
"I like to think she was napping and they went into the water and she never knew what hit her."
"Miranda doesn't nap," Emily scoffed. "I think she orders her eyeballs to stay alert at all times. Only mere mortals nap."
"I know. That's why I said I like to think that." He poked at the outside of his glass with his index finger, watching the condensation trails. "It's a real shame they never found the crash site. A lot of relatives need that for closure. You saw Ellen – she really wanted to bury her daughter today, respectfully, not some empty casket."
"A shark could have got them."
"Emily!"
"You've thought it. We all have."
"No shark would dare touch Miranda Priestly," Nigel retorted indignantly. "It's a professional courtesy. And, by extension, that means fins off her favorite assistant, too."
Emily gave a wan smile. "Funny. Oh hell, Nigel, I still can't believe it. It's so… wrong."
"That it is. Now drink up and I'll be a gentleman and escort your ass back to your room before you get swept away by the charms of one of these wholesome local lads – or ladies – looking for company."
"Oh please, as if," Emily sniffed in derision but Nigel was amused to note her eyes did a quick dart around the establishment to check out the quality of talent she'd just rejected. Satisfied there were none worthy of a second glance, she rose shakily to her feet. He threw some cash on the counter and then attempted to loop a supportive arm around her waist, but gave up when he missed twice. Instead they leaned against each other and zig-zagged unsteadily towards the exit.
DAY FIFTEEN
The funeral for fashion goddess Miranda Priestly was as grand as Andy Sachs's was simple. The Devil in Prada was the last person in the world from KLM Flight 2142 laid to rest.
In New York the Priestly farewell had become the social event of the decade, with live TV crosses, crowds lining the street, a 100-member gospel choir and the magnificent St Patrick's Cathedral pressed into service.
That the fashion icon had been raised Jewish apparently seemed to matter little. Her lifelong donations to the Cathedral's benevolent society for the ongoing upkeep of the building apparently crossed all denominations. Miranda always had been a fan of stylish New York architecture. And the cardinal had been a big fan of hers. And her purse. And the exceptional free global publicity.
If anyone had asked Caroline and Cassidy, the sight of seeing their mother's empty, flower-adorned coffin arriving on Madison Avenue by horse-drawn carriage to a crowd of stylish gawpers, frenemies and salivating media was repugnant in the extreme.
But no one had asked Caroline and Cassidy.
Nigel made sure he sat with them, and held their hands as often as he could throughout the event, reassuring them that the horrific public sideshow would be over soon.
Because that's what it was. It seemed Monica, in her haste to further her name as a party planner to the stars, forgot that funerals were about grief. Which was mystifying to Nigel given she was now largely living with Greg, and by extension, Miranda's bereaved twins.
The girls clung to Nigel throughout the service, their eyes red-rimmed, occasionally pointing out some new absurdity they were witnessing in devastated whispers. But when the coffin arrived inside, shiny and black just like Miranda's favorite Prada heels, they were inconsolable, burying their faces into each side of his jacket, their small shoulders going up and down in sobs.
Nigel met Greg's stricken green eyes over their heads. He seemed genuinely upset and more than a little appalled at the public pantomime around them. He gave a helpless, slightly dazed glance around the showy room, and then took Cassidy on his lap, enfolding her in a hug, burying his face into her hair, while Nigel mirrored the action with a tear-stained Caroline.
Nigel patted Miranda's oldest daughter (by three minutes) comfortingly on the back as she hiccuped helplessly into his charcoal Armani suit and decided to excuse Greg his dreadful taste in two-bit fame-whores. Just this once. Greg wouldn't be the first man in history to have made critical decisions using his lower brain. Even so, his heart seemed in the right place.
The fashion world had responded to this must-attend event of the decade in droves. A who's who of designers and models, magazine denizens and business leaders, politicians and socialites were all out in force, paying their respects. The mayor was there. So was the Secretary of State. Tissues dabbed at heavily mascara-ed eyes under wide-brimmed stylish hats which erupted into waterfalls of lace.
"Not a dry eye in the room," The New York Post had reported breathlessly, while also discreetly noting the labels various celebrities had been adorned in. The room had been awash with flowers, the story said, and the freesia centerpiece had looked "stunning".
Freesias. Nigel had slumped in dismay the moment he saw them and Emily had choked back a horrified cry when she clapped eyes on hundreds of Miranda Priestly's most loathed flower.
"I only told That Woman six times NO FREESIAS," Emily hissed to him. "SIX TIMES. She did this on purpose."
Nigel sighed. Of course Monica had. Because funerals should be about one-upping dead exes, apparently.
The Post's coverage had added that particularly moving had been the tribute by art director Nigel Kipling who "emotionally observed that it had taken the intervention of an entire plane going down to remove from this world the otherwise indestructible Miranda Priestly." Without this, he'd explained, he "would not be in the slightest bit shocked if she chose to live forever".
The newspaper's extensive photos - Pages 1, 3, 6-9, and 24-33, showed the funeral procession, well-dressed, powerful and beautiful creatures drifting around it, some angling themselves just so for the best photos. And in the middle of it all was the heartbreaking sight of two little redheaded girls, holding hands with each other in tight grips, tear-stained eyes looking resentfully at the paparazzi while their father ushered them hurriedly away, down the grand cathedral steps.
A busty blonde in candy-pink lipstick, almost-wearing a little black dress, was pictured trailing along after them. Her fishnet stockings may have been overkill but for once the media exercised some restraint in deciding that it was bad form to have the grieving ex's new girlfriend top the worst-dressed list at his first wife's funeral.
Apparently even they had some lines.
As an aside, the paper mentioned in a scandalized tone that onlookers were stunned after the service when Priestly's former first assistant, one Emily Charlton, was spotted hurling the freesia centerpiece to the cathedral floor, while she "cursed repeatedly and tearfully in expressive British idiom".
A small footnote to the story mentioned the funerals for other victims of the air disaster had already taken place, including one for a Miss Andrea Sachs, Priestly's first assistant. That private event had occurred in Ohio. Close family and friends attended along with several colleagues, including Kipling and Charlton.
Charlton was quoted by local media as she exited the funeral: "Andy left dreadfully big shoes to fill. Ugly shoes. But big. She will be sorely missed. Now bugger off and chase an ambulance or something."
The Sachs family declined to comment.
No picture of Andy Sachs was used with the story.
DAY 23
Three weeks after its disappearance, a sizeable part of the tail section of KLM Flight 2142 washed up on the shore of a small island near Japan. It was so far off course that the search and rescue team was blindsided and forced to completely rethink their original search grid.
As they homed in on the crash site, more wreckage was discovered. Luggage, clothing. A part of the fuselage. There was little doubt no one had survived. How could they? There wasn't even land anywhere near the point of impact that searchers had now extrapolated.
No life jackets or bodies were found, either. The sea had, indeed, swallowed 189 passengers and crew whole.
Nigel was ropeable. This was exactly why he'd wanted to bring in professional searchers – in case, as he'd feared, the locals were incompetent, under-resourced, myopic, or all three. He railed to Emily about the evil that was Irv Ravitz for a good half an hour until she poured him a scotch from his emergency bottle stashed under the desk.
He'd been a little startled she knew its hiding place. They drank in silence to remember Miranda and Six.
Then, after Emily left, he drank to forget them, too.
The days moved on and life along with it. There were pictures in the papers of the Priestly twins returning to school at Dalton. They looked shattered and angry. Nigel couldn't help but think how furious Miranda would be that their privacy had been so badly violated. She'd have made mincemeat out of the entire editorial staff of any paper that had dared to do this.
What the hell was Greg doing, Nigel and Emily had both wondered aloud.
A week later and the man in question seemed to crack under the media attention. Unlike his ever-present girlfriend, Greg had never been that much into the limelight. And Nigel now strongly suspected his earlier and often media appearances were at her urging. One day there was a scuffle with cameras. The next a punch was thrown. There was an assault charge. And, just like that, Greg was no longer a media darling.
At his court appearance, Monica suddenly decided she was too busy to attend. A few days later she was seen nuzzling an NBA star.
When asked, Greg told the world most grumpily that he had "no comment".
The media seemed surprised by this.
Nigel simply muttered: Finally.
DAY 34
It was just after 4am. The beeping of a text woke Nigel from a not-entirely-dreadful sleep. For once it was in his own bed, not the couch at work, or worse, pressed face-first into his drool-coated papers on his desk.
With a soft growl, he fumbled for the phone to read the message through slitted eyes: "Bloody hell! You're not going to believe this. Miranda's spotters now have her in Tokyo. Best one yet! Click the link."
Nigel glared at his cell phone, and by extension his assistant, for waking him up for no good reason. This had been an ongoing problem since Miranda's disappearance. The fashion legend's fans and crazies worldwide kept claiming sightings. Some were silly, some were crudely aimed to be funny, but all were just cruel hoaxes. He wondered what Emily was even doing up at this hour. He remembered she was still having trouble sleeping. But that didn't mean she should rob him of sleep.
He tossed the cell phone to the end of his bed, ignoring the link and rolled over to go back to sleep.
Ten minutes later the landline phone on his bedside table rang shrilly.
"Emily," he mumbled into it. "Go. Away. Some of us have plans to actually be awake and functioning at work tomorrow."
"Mr Kipling? Nigel?"
Nigel sat up instantly, recognising the voice and rubbed his eyes. The voice still haunted him, and had done since her teary eulogy at Six's funeral about how Andy was the kindest daughter a mother could have.
"Ellen?" he asked softly.
"Yes. I just had the most impossible call," she said, her voice wavering. "I-I the State Department says two women were found at sea near an island off Japan. They were clinging to plane wreckage. Nigel – they say it's Andy. My Andy! And Miranda Priestly. They say they're ... alive."
Nigel stared at the phone. Stared and stared at it. This could not be real.
"Nigel?"
"Ah … could you repeat that Ellen? I thought you said… Oh god. Please."
"Andy and Miranda are alive."
"..."
"Nigel?"
"I…. Oh. Oh. God."
And then he could only hear Ellen Sachs weeping with joy on the end of the phone.
Tears filled Nigel's eyes and spilled over. "Alive," he whispered at the impossible word and wiped the wetness away. Then he wondered why. Why would he hide evidence of the greatest event in his living memory? "Oh hell." He laughed. And then cried again. Then he seemed to do both all at once.
He tried to collect himself, all the while making redundant remarks to Andy's mother as she spoke about what she'd been told. "Just typical," he would say and then the tears would start again. "Of course."
When they finally had a conversation lull, he heard: "They were sent to the US embassy in Tokyo at six in the evening Japanese time. They have about five hours of medical checks and treatment and observation ahead – they're both badly malnourished the official told me – and then they have some sort of debriefing interview with an embassy person and then they get to come home."
Nigel blinked rapidly at the word 'Tokyo', remembering Emily's text, and wiggled towards the end of the bed, fishing for the errant phone.
"Do Miranda's girls know?" he asked as he patted around the blanket near his feet. "I hope they do. They miss her so much. They email me almost every day now, I think because I remind them of her. Because I worked so much with Miranda. Or something like that."
He wiped away some tears blurring his vision. It still broke his heart every time he saw a Priestly email in his inbox and he knew who it wouldn't be from. Her little girls had bonded with him at the funeral and now shared all their secrets. Of bad dreams. Hating Monica. How much they'd really liked Andy, because she'd spend so much time talking to them. And how they slept together now, clutching their mother's favorite night gown because it smelled like her.
He wiped his eyes and wished selfishly he could have been the one to tell them she was alive. They'd get big hugs when he saw them next. He smiled a watery smile into the darkness.
"I imagine so," Ellen was saying, "the official I talked to said he was contacting all the next of kin."
"Good, that's good," he said and suddenly laughed as he remembered the most amazing part. "God damn it, Miranda Priestly actually cheated death! She really is invincible."
"And my daughter did, too – don't forget that." Ellen said it indignantly, and Nigel felt suitably chastened. Not everything was about Miranda Priestly, despite how the media carried on. Andy was a legend now, too. She was tough as hell. No wonder the two women meshed so well.
"Oh I won't forget, Ellen, they're both as determined as each other. They have surprisingly a lot in common."
"So it would seem. Look, dear, I have to go," she said. "I have a lot of family to let know the news but I know how close you were to them both, so I thought you deserved to know next."
"Thanks, I appreciate it," he said, greatly touched. The phone clicked in his ear.
He laughed again. Goddamn if you can't kill the devil in Prada. Or Six for that matter.
He finally found his cell and, with shaky fingers, clicked on Emily's link. Someone had uploaded to YouTube footage of a pair of skeletally thin women, wrapped in medical blankets being carefully led into a non-descript building by Japanese officials, backlit by the late afternoon sun. One woman had a sweep of familiar white hair and the other long brown hair.
Their faces were gaunt, badly sunburnt, but their posture … Oh wow. Nigel stared, stunned. You can't fake the way someone moves, or turns, or smiles. He'd recognise Andy's blinding, beautiful smile anywhere. And the way she had glanced up at her companion … His breath caught. He watched as Miranda – because, no matter what Emily assumed, it had to be her – put a protective, scarily thin arm around Andy's back as they went inside the building.
He couldn't read Japanese but based on all the exclamation marks and mentions of "Miranda Priestly" in comments about the clip, he was not alone in thinking he'd just witnessed his world-famous boss and her assistant resurrected from the dead.
With sweaty hands, he dialled Emily. Or tried to. He was shaking so hard he had to try tapping her number twice.
"Well?" Emily demanded immediately, picking up on the first ring. "That was definitely the best one yet, wasn't it?"
"Emi…"
"Nice attention to detail, too, finding women who actually looked thin enough to have not eaten for a month. I think our hoaxers are getting cleverer…"
"Emily," he tried again.
"Although as if Miranda would ever let her hair frizz up like that at the front – I think she'd be flopping over in her watery grave right about now if this one goes viral like that silly cartoon one from Taiwan. Although part of me loved her punching animated sharks with her Prada heel. But this one is way, way up there – and putting them in the blankets with a medical insignia on them? Really a nice touch."
"Emily!" he virtually shouted in exasperation.
"What?!"
"It is them."
"What? Don't be daft. They're dead! We were at their funerals for God's sake."
"Emily, I just spoke to Andy's mom. The State Department called her to inform her they were found clinging to plane wreckage off Japan earlier today. They are in Tokyo as we speak."
The gasp was almost comical. By the time Emily finished shrieking for a solid minute, Nigel was sure he had a permanent loss of hearing in one ear. It was worth every decibel.
There were a lot of "bloody hells" and "bollocks" and "typical that the fat girl would be buoyant", immediately followed by "Oh hell I didn't mean that. Forget I said that!"
He lay back and just listened to the delight for a while, savouring it like a wine, barely speaking. God it felt good. So good.
"This is the dream," he finally said. "For us at least. Pity the other 187 passengers and crew aren't getting phone calls like this one."
Emily fell silent. "No."
There was a long pause. And Nigel felt like he'd just kicked someone's kitten.
"Sorry," he finally spoke. "That killed the mood."
"Don't be ridiculous," Emily huffed after a moment, and he could hear the grin in her tone "Nothing can kill how I feel right now."
"Which is?" he asked playfully.
"Relief, you bloody troll. Elation. You might be a less demonic boss by far, Nigel Kipling, but she is The Legend. And Andy … is … well … tolerable and she makes Miranda happy, so of course I'm glad."
"Happy?" Nigel sat up, and it was as though some missing puzzle piece long eluding him had not only fallen into place but smacked him in the face on the way past. "Andy makes Miranda happy?"
His mind flew back to the protective arm. Miranda willingly touching her assistant, but even more than that, shielding her from unknown harm. It had been more than just the bond of two people long-used to each other's presence. It spoke of ownership and caring. Two things Miranda never freely gave. Except to her daughters.
And, now, Andy it seemed.
Andy. Yes, there had also been that blinding smile. The young woman had shot Miranda such a brilliant, unguarded, adoring smile that, even as clearly malnourished as she was, she suddenly seemed bursting with life.
There was a silence as he digested what all this meant. Then he realised Emily hadn't answered the question. Maybe she was digesting it, too.
"Well I suppose, yes, she does make her happy," Emily finally replied, slowly. "You know, I didn't even realise I thought that until I said it. She just … I don't know … smiles more since Andy."
Nigel ran his fingers across his bald pate. He wasn't ready for the rest of this conversation. Not with Emily. Not at this ungodly time of day and not after hearing this miraculous news.
He gave a long sigh, as he thought about the past hour.
"Nigel," Emily whispered hesitantly after a beat. Her voice sounded so small. "Is this really real? Can we unbury them now?"
"Yes. As my last order of business as official Runway editor, I say: 'With pleasure'."
They both chuckled and thoughts drifted for a few moments.
There was a low groan from the redhead.
"Oh God, she's going to hate Monica's 'funeral to the stars' when she hears about it," Emily suddenly said.
"And all those newspaper articles on the death of a dragon," Nigel agreed and rolled his eyes. "They got a bit carried away, laying on all the metaphors so thick that I think they forgot she was still just a woman underneath that ridiculous persona. And a mother."
"The twins," Emily wailed, "Oh hell, the twins have been all over the news. Greg's going to cop it in the neck for that. And good thing, too. Fancy giving his trashy, opportunistic, taste-deprived girlfriend free reign to further her career by party-planning Miranda's funeral."
"I don't think Greg ever envisioned it turning into the free-for-all fashionista circus it was. Did you actually see Naomi on the steps outside? Hand on hip like it was a Paris Fashion Week shoot, waiting for the paps to get her best angles?"
"She wasn't the only one," Emily muttered. "They were all at it. It was so tacky I wanted smack their smug horrible faces."
"What about the 100-member gospel choir?" Nigel suddenly remembered. "What was that about? Miranda hates gospel music. Well that and everything religious. Something about her ultra-orthodox Jewish father - I never did get to the bottom of it. Oh lord, wait till she finds out about the full-on cathedral service and the hymns. You can't make this stuff up," Nigel added, his mood sinking.
Suddenly Emily hissed in fear. "Oh bleeding hell, Nigel, I just had the worst thought."
His heart clenched. "What?!"
"Oh no, no, no. Miranda will blame me, too. I know she will. Sod it, I should have killed that vindictive little trollop of Greg's when I had the chance. And you know I know how. Say what you will about CSI and SVU, but it is factually accurate, educational viewing."
"Emily, you're rambling. For God's sake, breathe, and then spit it out."
"Nigel," Emily finally ground out, almost hyperventilating now, "Miranda's funeral was filled with freesias."