Chapter 1
Elise
The rain was starting to smear the city lights against the floor-to-ceiling windows of my Brooklyn apartment; a blurred, grey watercolour that matched my mood perfectly. I didn’t turn the lights on. I liked the shadows; they were the only things that didn’t demand I be anything other than a silhouette.
I walked to the kitchen, my heels clicking sharply against the polished concrete floor, and poured a glass of wine; the expensive, heavy kind that felt like a sedative.
The invitation had been sitting on the counter for four days.
Cream cardstock, French calligraphy so precise it felt like a summons, the gold embossing catching the pale light from the street below. I’d moved it twice; from the front door mat to the counter, from the counter to the windowsill, and then back to the counter, where it had settled with the quiet authority of something that intended to win.
I was reaching for my wine glass when the phone buzzed. The vibration on the marble cut through the silence like a saw.
Mother.
I let it ring until the final chime. Then she called again.
“Elise.” Her voice came through clipped, airy, wrapped in that performative concern she reserved for conversations that were really about herself.
“You’ve received the invitation, I trust? Sophie was worried it might have gone to your old address, but I told her you would have updated your details by now.”
“Hello, Mother,” I said. My voice sounded steadier than I felt. I leaned against the counter, eyes on the envelope. “Yes. I got it."
“Good. Good.” She didn’t sound satisfied. She sounded like she was checking a box on a list of family duties. “It’s a castle, Elise. Ballyross, in Ireland. It’s quite the affair. The whole family will be there, and well, it’s been such a long time since we’ve all been in the same room. People are asking.”
“Asking what, Mother?”
The pause that followed was the kind she deployed deliberately; meant to be filled with my own realisation of my shortcomings.
“Whether you’re doing well. Whether you’ve settled. It’s important to show you’re fine, dear. The family will be watching, and we wouldn’t want you to be the only one who didn’t manage to move on.”
The one who didn’t manage to move on. Even after three years, she could slice through armour with a single sentence.
“I’ll be there,” I said. The words felt like glass going down.
“Oh, wonderful.” Her relief was sharper than the insult had been. “We’ll save you a seat. And do try to dress appropriately, Elise. We don’t want you looking as though you’ve been living in that frantic, lonely New York bubble.”
She hung up before I could, which I suspect was the point.
I set the phone down and stood in the kitchen for a moment, the only sound of the rain tracking down the glass. Then I picked up the invitation, slid the card free, and read it for the first time.
Mr and Mrs Henri Fontaine joyfully invite you to celebrate the marriage of their daughter, Sophie Anne Fontaine, to Mr Oliver James Hartley.
Oliver.
I read his name twice. That was all it took; two seconds, two syllables, for three years of careful architecture to develop a hairline crack. The familiar fist around my lungs. The full weight of knowing what I’d lost and in what sequence.
I stood with it for a moment. I let it be what it was.
Then I set the card down on the counter and picked up my wine.
My mother was right about one thing: I was going. Not going would be its own statement; an admission I wasn’t willing to make. If I arrived alone, I’d be the footnote at their altar, the cautionary tale in the corner, the sister who still hadn’t managed to be happy for them.
I needed a buffer. A suit of armour in the form of a human being.
My laptop was already open at the other end of the counter, cursor blinking at a search bar I’d been avoiding for an hour.
I wasn’t a woman who hired dates. I was a brand strategist. I kept my life compartmentalised, curated, and controlled. But the card was on the counter in front of me, and Oliver’s name was still sitting in my chest, and I suddenly understood, with great clarity, that control had always been a facade I’d simply had the discipline to maintain.
I pulled the laptop toward me and typed:
Professional companion hire, events, New York.
Then, after a moment’s search through a referral I’d seen circulated in a private group months ago and quietly bookmarked for reasons I’d never examined:
Companion Co., London.
I found this site. I read it with the focused, efficient attention I gave to creative briefs. Then I filled in the inquiry form: dates, location, context, the minimum required; and at the very end, where it asked for additional notes, I typed one line:
I have one rule: keep it professional.
I hit send at 1:47 a.m.
I set the laptop aside and stood in the kitchen in the dark, the rain still running down the glass, the wine barely touched. I had just done something irreversible in the most controlled, efficient way I knew how.
That, I thought, was either my greatest strength or the root of all my problems.
It was probably both.
The performance of a lifetime wasn’t just starting; it was being designed.
