Muse - Rebecca Lim

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small dish with slices of lemon arranged on it in a pretty pattern, and another with butter and two small pots of different varieties of jam. She places these on the table, darting quick, self-conscious glances in my direction.

      She lifts the first silver dome, revealing a plate of mixed warm pastries and toasted bread. Under the second, there’s a small white bowl with a couple of tablespoons of dry oatmeal in it, mixed in with a type of seed and dried berries I can’t identify. She sets these down, blushing beneath my scrutiny, then unrolls two heavy, linen placemats and lines each one up with a dining chair.

      Out of the warming area inside the trolley, she pulls a plate bearing a lavish, English-style breakfast — scrambled eggs, fried bacon, grilled sausages, tomatoes and mushrooms — and places it on one placemat. Then she pulls out another plate, which appears to hold a couple of tablespoons of scrambled egg-white and sets it on top of the other mat. Finally, she removes a small jug of hot milk.

      The woman clumsily lays out two sets of silver cutlery, puts a folded cloth napkin beside each plate before practically bowing her way backwards out of the room. Her eyes are fixed on me so attentively as she lets herself out that she bounces off the doorframe and almost falls in a heap in the hallway outside. Blushing furiously, she staggers upright and shuts the door to the suite behind her with one last anguished look in my direction.

      ‘What was that all about?’ I say.

      Gia follows the direction of my astonished gaze and shrugs. ‘Just another case of insta-girl-crush. People are more accident-prone around you. Remember that reporter from the Argus who followed you around during the London shows three years back when you really began to take off? He wrote an article about it; said you were the human equivalent of walking under a ladder. Total bad news from start to finish. And I should know!’ She gives a burst of genuine laughter before her expression grows wary again, as if she’s said too much and can’t understand how it keeps happening.

      The smell of the food is strangely welcome. I don’t often feel hungry, but today, for some reason, I’m ravenous.

      ‘Let’s eat,’ I say, pulling out the dining chair in front of the loaded, cooked breakfast plate.

      Gia clears her throat. ‘Uh, that would be mine? You’re the one with the agent who insists you limit your daily calorie intake to keep you “competitive”. Your definition of breakfast is two tablespoons of raw oats, linseed and goji berry, slightly wetted with hot, soy milk, capped off with some cooked egg-white washed down with hot lemon water.’ She pulls a face. ‘Yummy.’

      ‘I don’t do starvation diets,’ I exclaim. ‘And the pastries?’

      Gia’s expression is half-sceptical, half-amused. ‘Um, they’d be mine, too. But I’m happy to share.’ She grins. ‘If, for a change, you do as you’re bloody well told.’

      We split the pastries and hot breakfast down the middle, returning Irina’s usual cheerless fare to the trolley. As we eat, I can feel Gia’s eyes on me. But whenever I look up, she glances away.

      ‘Coffee?’ she asks, pouring herself a cup.

      I wrinkle my nose and shake my head. ‘Can’t stand it.’

      She stares at me for a second. ‘That’s not what you usually say.’

      I shrug.

      ‘You know,’ she says finally, when we place our cutlery down, having eaten our way through everything worth eating, ‘you seem so different today. I can’t put my finger on it. But I like this version of you. Much as it pains me to say it, you seem more in touch with your … humanity today. You seem more like the rest of us.’

      I laugh, genuinely amused by her words.

      She can’t help giving me an answering grin. ‘You look startled by the suggestion.’

      ‘You have no idea how much!’ I grin back.

      Then Gia’s smile dies, and she pushes her plate away firmly, as if she’s about to walk into battle. ‘You ready?’

      I lift Irina’s narrow shoulders again in a shrug, let them fall. How can one ever be ready to live another person’s life? To go forth into another person’s day?

      Gia stalks over to the gilt-edged console table by the in-room surround-sound system, her silver jewellery jangling. She picks up the house phone, dials a number and says curtly into the receiver, ‘We’re coming down.’

      After replacing the handset, she walks across to an elegant, button-back armchair near the door and picks up a huge, tan-coloured, crocodile-skin carryall, holding it out to me as she picks up her own shiny, black patent-leather tote off the floor. It’s bristling with external pockets and silver buckles. ‘Okay?’ she says. ‘I mean it, are you ready?’

      I loop the handles of the holdall over one thin shoulder. ‘As ready as I’ll ever be, darlink,’ I say in Irina’s husky voice, as Gia holds the door open to let me through into the hotel corridor.

      CHAPTER 5

      As I teeter down the hallway after Gia, my eyes feel grainy and the ground seems wavy and distorted and way too far away.

      I should have slept last night, but I couldn’t. Sometimes I forget that the human body — as miraculous and complex as it is — is not a machine and cannot be dictated to. Not in the ways that really matter.

      We stalk down miles of lush royal blue and gold patterned carpet, beneath enormous hand-blown Murano glass chandeliers of breathtaking beauty, past hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of original art, statuary and antique demi-lune tables with delicately carved clawed feet, like the feet of predatory animals. As we move closer to the lifts, I see a man holding a lift door open for us with a hand the size of a dinner plate. His eyes seem to linger just a fraction too long upon my face.

      He’s dressed like a suit, though he looks like a thug made good, with a heavy-set frame and a nose that’s slightly left of centre. He’s sporting a five o’clock shadow that must be pretty much around-the-clock, has scarred facial skin and a serious case of perma-tan. His long, thick, unnaturally black hair is pulled tight into a low ponytail and he’s wearing an earpiece. He’s taller than average, and it’s clear from a quick visual inspection that he enjoys a workout. Big head, big hands. Bull-necked. Neat, clipped nails. Expensive gold watch. Expensive shoes for someone in his line of work.

      With a nod, the man indicates we should enter the lift. ‘Irina,’ he rasps, his Russian accent unmistakeable. ‘Zdravstvujte.’

      Hello, he’s saying, and I don’t know how I know this, but it’s the formal way. The way an employee, say, would address his employer, even though this guy has thirty years and about two hundred pounds on Irina, at least, and looks like a wise guy, a hit man.

      ‘Vladimir,’ I reply, thinking back quickly to the names that Gia and Felipe had bandied around. That was the only Russian name they’d mentioned.

      I don’t recall ever speaking a word of Russian, but it’s Irina’s first language and it seems to be making perfect sense to me so far. So to hell with it — what have I got to lose? It’s like how Carmen could sing, and Lela was good with people; and when I was them, I could somehow do those things, too. Because some things the body just remembers.

      A fine sweat breaks out on my forehead as I close my eyes and channel myself inwards, chasing the words I’m looking for down the unreliable pathways of Irina’s brain. When I open my eyes again, it’s like I’ve always known them.

      ‘Kak … tvoyo zdorovie?’ I say — accents on all the wrong places, accents where there shouldn’t be any — testing the unfamiliar weight and feel of the words on my tongue. I think I’ve just said: How’s your health?

      The man-mountain nods slowly, gratified that I seem to remember him. ‘Neplokho,’ he says, shrugging. Not bad.

      I feel a surge of elation, a chemical rush. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe the human body is a machine that may be harnessed, after all. If

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