Chapter 4 — The Wife Security Removes
The audience took three seconds to understand what Kit had said.
Ottilie watched comprehension travel across the front row in lifted chins and lowered eyes. A buyer from Milan stopped clapping. Two editors bent over the same telephone. Mina Dawes, standing behind the camera line, didn’t look at the screen in her hand. She looked at Ottilie.
On the runway, Kit remained inside the white square taped for the broadcast. He held the statement card at his side. Saskia stood with the design team several feet behind him, Orchard Ashes fitted close to her body, the stolen gold branches bright beneath the stage lights.
Kit didn’t look towards the wing.
He took two questions. Ottilie heard the words independent review and provenance procedure.
He said the show would proceed because the house had obligations to its craftspeople and guests.
He didn’t say the original scans were hers.
He didn’t say the assignment was unsigned.
He didn’t say he had told her, less than twelve hours ago, that the world would see her name.
The first model moved to her mark.
Ottilie stepped towards the runway. The security officer blocked the narrow entrance with one arm, careful not to touch her.
“Your access is suspended,” he said.
“By whom?”
He showed her the instruction on his device. Executive authorisation: C. Harcourt. Temporary removal from all production and archive systems pending investigation.
The list included the fitting room, the backstage rail and the workroom where her coat and medicines remained. Ottilie asked for a female officer to retrieve them and required an inventory before the bag closed. The officer called his supervisor. Behind them, music covered the delay.
Saskia’s first look crossed the runway using Ottilie’s painted silk while Ottilie waited for permission to collect her own shoes.
Ottilie stepped into the runway entrance.
The security officer moved with her. “Mrs Harcourt, I need you to remain backstage.”
“The company has just suspended me from company activities.”
“I have instructions to escort you to the production exit.”
“Then the model cannot wear Look One.”
The officer was broad, young and visibly unhappy to be the person closest to her. “I can’t advise on the garments.”
“Neither can the man who gave you the instruction.”
The opening music started. A bass note travelled through the floor and up Ottilie’s legs. On the other side of the curtain, Kit left the centre mark. The audience applauded again, thinner now, as the first model walked out in a coat lined with Ottilie’s marbled silk.
Tom appeared behind the security officer.
“Give me your backstage pass,” he said.
The laminated card hung from a black ribbon around Ottilie’s neck. It carried the name OTTILIE HARCOURT, not Vane, and classified her as Executive Family / Creative Access. She had complained about both phrases when the passes arrived. Tom’s office had promised to replace it.
She pulled the ribbon over her head.
“My personal notebooks are in the workroom,” she said.
“The legal hold covers all design material on site.”
“They predate this collection.”
“Nothing leaves until counsel reviews it.”
The next bass note landed. A second model joined the runway.
“My coat and bag.”
Tom nodded to a production assistant, who hurried away.
Ottilie held the pass between two fingers. “Who instructed security?”
“Kit approved the suspension. I implemented access control.”
“Before or after he stood in front of the camera?”
Tom’s face closed. “We are not discussing the investigation here.”
“There is no investigation. There is a forty-eight-hour acquisition problem, and you have decided my name can hold it.”
A dresser passing with shoes slowed, then continued. The security officer looked at the floor.
The production assistant returned with Ottilie’s canvas bag and cashmere coat. The bag’s zip was open.
“Who searched it?” Ottilie asked.
“Legal asked us to secure design material,” Tom said.
She checked the contents. Wallet. House keys. A scarf sample Devika had dyed for another client. Her small paper notebook was missing.
“Return the notebook.”
“It contains collection references.”
“It also contains private work and supplier formulas.”
“Counsel will arrange copies of anything personal.”
Ottilie put on her coat. Her hands were steady enough to fasten every button.
“Tell counsel they have until noon to seal it without copying. After that, my solicitor will ask a judge.”
“Ottilie—”
“You chose to call me that after removing my professional credit.”
She placed the pass in Tom’s palm and walked towards the service corridor. The security officer fell into step beside her.
The route to the production exit ran behind the length of the runway.
Through gaps in the black drape, Ottilie saw flashes of the collection she had built: rust silk lifting behind a model’s calves, indigo lining opening inside a sleeve, Night Iris waiting beneath muslin for the finale. Each glimpse lasted less than a breath.
At the far end of the corridor, a side door opened. Kit came through with his statement card folded once in his hand.
The security officer stopped.
Kit looked first at Ottilie, then at the man assigned to remove her. His eyes settled on the badge in Tom’s hand.
“Give us a minute,” he said.
Tom didn’t move. “Legal said no unrecorded discussion.”
“I said give us a minute.”
Tom gestured to the officer. Both men withdrew only as far as the fire door.
Kit came closer. “The statement is temporary.”
Ottilie could still hear the show music through the wall. “Did you sign it?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know the registration was false?”
His jaw moved once. “I know your source work predates it.”
“That was not my question.”
“Yes.”
The clean answer hurt more than the broadcast. There was no misunderstanding to excavate, no missing fact that might return the man she had trusted.
“Why is Saskia still wearing my silk?”
“Because taking her off camera after the confrontation would create an admission before we have protected the buyer.”
“Protected the buyer from the truth.”
“Protected the transaction while we correct the title.”
“The title doesn’t need correcting.”
“The company’s contractual position does.”
The distinction was one Kit might have expected a room to accept because the words fitted neatly beside one another. Ottilie looked at the statement card in his hand. He had folded it along the line beneath creative theft.
“You let them call me a thief so Marwick Cale would not learn you sold them work you didn’t own.”
“I have not sold them your work. Closing has not occurred.”
“You warranted it.”
His silence confirmed what she had not yet known.
The fire door opened behind Tom. A communications assistant leant through and said Kit was needed for a live buyer interview. The next model had missed her cue because half the dressers were watching the corridor.
Kit glanced towards the voice.
Ottilie recognised the calculation. Time, exposure, consequence. He had spent their marriage making impossible arrangements seem inevitable by deciding which fact the room could afford to hear.
“Look at me,” she said.
He did.
The control in his face was nearly complete. Only the pulse below his ear betrayed him.
“Tell the cameras I made the work,” she said. “Tell them the company never acquired it. Tell security to return my notebooks, and take my silk off Saskia’s body.”
“I can do all of that after the buyer agrees a revised structure.”
“When?”
“Forty-eight hours.”
“You had six months.”
“I believed the assignment would be completed.”
“You believed I would eventually sign what you needed.”
“I believed we would agree terms.”
“After valuation. After the world had seen the work. After refusing became expensive enough to look unreasonable.”
Kit’s voice lowered. “I am asking you not to make an irreversible decision in the middle of this.”
On the runway, applause rose for a coat Ottilie had spent two weeks correcting because the printed wool twisted off-grain. Her name was not in the programme. The person asking restraint of her had used a live broadcast to remove it.
“The irreversible decision has your signature on it,” she said.
Tom looked at his watch. The gesture was meant for Kit, but Ottilie felt its pressure applied to her.
She turned towards the exit.
Kit caught up before she reached the door. He didn’t touch her. At least some part of him understood that permission had narrowed.
“Where are you going?”
“To find out what your statement has already cost me.”
“Come home. We can speak after the show.”
The word home sounded misplaced in a corridor where his employee held her searched bag and his security officer waited to remove her.
“Have my notebook delivered to Felicity Marr’s office, sealed. No copies.”
“Felicity is not your current solicitor.”
“She will be by noon.”
Kit’s face changed then. Not surprise that she knew a lawyer. Recognition that the forty-eight hours would not belong solely to him.
The security officer pushed open the production exit. Rain streaked the narrow street beyond it. Three freelance photographers stood beneath the opposite awning, alerted by somebody inside. Their cameras lifted as soon as Ottilie appeared.
One called, “Did Harcourt fire you?”
Another shouted, “Are the designs Saskia’s?”
Ottilie stepped into the rain. The officer remained in the doorway, making the image complete.
Her telephone had accumulated hundreds of notifications. She silenced them without reading. A message from Devika sat above the rest.
I have seen it. Tell me where you are.
Ottilie typed the street name.
The photographers crossed when traffic paused. Questions came at the same time: whether she had taken files, whether Saskia had replaced her in the company and in Kit’s marriage, whether security believed she might damage the clothes.
Ottilie held her searched bag against her side. “The company removed my access after issuing a statement I dispute. I will respond with evidence.”
“Did you copy Saskia?”
“No.”
“Did your husband know?”
She looked towards the open production door. Kit remained inside, speaking to Tom. “Ask him what he knew before he signed.”
The answer travelled immediately into microphones. Ottilie regretted giving the cameras anything shaped like a challenge, but not enough to withdraw it.
She photographed the officer in the doorway, the pass in Tom’s hand and the open zip of her bag. The security officer asked not to be photographed.
“Your company is documenting my removal,” she said. “I am documenting it too.”
He stepped aside, leaving only the door and Kit behind it. Ottilie took one photograph of the empty threshold, then put her telephone away. The officer was carrying out an instruction; his face didn’t need to become part of the company’s defence or her own.
A black car bearing Harcourt credentials pulled towards the kerb. The driver opened the rear door for her. Ottilie shook her head. Accepting the car would give the company her destination and turn removal into transport arranged for her convenience.
She ordered an ordinary taxi under her professional name and waited in the rain.
Behind her, Kit said, “Ottilie.”
She turned. He stood just inside the company’s door, dry beneath the security light.
She kept her voice low enough that the photographers could not catch it, and clear enough that he could not mistake the limit.
“You have forty-eight hours to retract it,” she said. “After that, I stop asking you to remember who made you.”
Kit asked where she would go.
The question carried the old assumption that concern entitled him to an address. Ottilie said, “Somewhere your security system doesn’t administer.”
Her taxi arrived. She photographed the registration number and sent it to Devika, not Kit. As the car pulled away, the Calder Rooms screen remained visible through an upper window. Saskia’s name filled it above a pattern Ottilie had painted on her mother’s kitchen floor.