As my father wasn’t there, I slept with Mum. Right up against her to draw in her odour and her body warmth and to imprint the memory for when I was all alone over there and missing her terribly. I already knew that I would miss her dreadfully. Unbearably, even. I had no idea how I was going to get by without her and without the rest of them.
Even in the middle of the Marseille summer, tucked up in Mum’s bed, I was starting to feel cold all the time.
I missed Sophie, but I didn’t dare ring her – I’d cancelled all the plans we’d had for July and we hadn’t seen each other for ages. And what would I have said to her if I did ring her? That I was stressing out about the idea of going to work in New York, the city that I had been dreaming of for ever? That I wasn’t sure if I wanted to become a supermodel, something that all the girls of my age dreamed about? That I was afraid of not being able to put one foot in front of the other on the catwalk and that I would have to make do with eating fruit while I was living out the dream? She had her own dreams of studying and becoming a journalist – what would she make of my little existential crises?
Fortunately, Léo was on hand to listen to me. Even though he was much younger than me, I’d always shared a lot with him. Whereas Alexis put me on edge with all his emotional stuff and intimate questions, Léopold listened to me very attentively and responded with tenderness and common sense. He would often say: ‘You tell me about so many things that I’ll be able to become a psychiatrist and I won’t even have to study for it!’ He was so cute when he explained to me that I was beautiful now and so there was just no way that, suddenly overnight, I wouldn’t be beautiful any more. That I was too clever not to make a success of my new life. That I looked perfectly slim to him and he couldn’t see what the problem was. That he was convinced that I would be taken on for all the fashion shows. And above all else, that I shouldn’t worry, because what with Skype and texting and emails, we’d be able to speak to each other every day and they would always be with me. Nothing could separate us from each other, not even the 3,500 miles and the big time difference. ‘And you know what, Vic? We really are all so proud of you. Not everybody has a supermodel for a sister. And at Elite, to boot!’
Dad eventually joined us. I did my best not to spoil the atmosphere, but I just couldn’t shake off my anxiety. Happily, the scales finally deigned to drop again: I was slowly closing in on 51 kilos. So much so that Dad asked me if I was contemplating starting to eat a bit of meat and vegetables again. I think he just didn’t get it. He’d always loved Mum and thought she was the most beautiful woman ever, but it had never occurred to him to wonder how she managed to stay so slim. The fact was that she had the appetite of a sparrow. I’d only ever seen her picking at food, never really eating. There was just no chance of her ever putting on weight. And in fact when Dad looked like he was going to insist on the meat and vegetables, she told him not to worry.
As the thing that scared me the most was the idea of being away from my family, I asked my parents to buy me a cuddly toy that I could take everywhere with me and would make me feel like I had them with me everywhere too. While they went off to look for one, Léo and I gave some thought to the name we could give it. As a lover of Asian culture, he explained to me that Japanese first names had actual meanings and so we went on the internet to have a look. That was a lot of fun. We ruled out Suki, which means ‘love’, Fuku, which means ‘luck’ but which didn’t sound very appealing, and Kasoku, which means ‘family’. In the end, we opted for Yùki, with an accent on the u. That means ‘courage’. Léo said, ‘That way, your courage will never fail you.’ Leo really was so sweet and he was right, too: courage was exactly what I needed.
My parents returned with a cute little white rabbit, all soft and gentle, and I immediately adopted him. I sprayed Yùki with Mum’s perfume and from that point on he never left my side.
We headed home from Marseille, Alex rejoined us, we packed our bags and we set off to the States.
I left on my own a few hours before the rest of them on a different plane, because Silent had taken care of my return ticket. At the end of our family trip, I’d fly to New York from Los Angeles to get straight down to work and they would return to Paris. All of which meant that I was travelling with Air France and had been upgraded to business class like a star! I wondered if this was a foretaste of the new life that awaited me. The armchair that became a bed was a delight, as were the billion options available on my personal in-flight computer and the little complimentary beauty set. True luxury! And just as miraculous was the adorable air hostess who seemed to find it perfectly normal that I turned down my three-star meal in favour of fresh fruit.
I was in a bizarre state: both worried and excited, detached and nervous, grown-up and childlike. It was the beginning of adulthood for me, but I don’t know what I would have done without Yùki there to comfort me.
I got a yellow cab to the hotel. Wow! New York! It was like being in a film, and not in the audience but on the screen: the taxi and all the smells, the car horns, the swarms of people all sweating profusely, Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan skyline … I was in New York, New York! I was sure I was going to love it here.
As soon as my parents and brothers caught up with me, we began to explore every corner of the city. It was all set to be a dream holiday: New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, the five of us together and staying in incredible hotels. We’d been talking about it all year long and were so looking forward to it. And yet, though I didn’t want to admit it, I was having trouble keeping up. I was absolutely knackered, almost certainly because of the jet-lag, which I just couldn’t get over. And also because of that crazy month of July spent running around every which way, fretting over what choices I should make and what I was going to become, worrying about Granddaddy and trying to come to terms with my failure to get into Sciences Po.
And because of the fear, this constant nagging fear.
Traipsing around New York with the boys and Mum and Dad, I couldn’t help thinking that in a fortnight’s time I’d be here again, but all on my own. Central Park, the Guggenheim, the MoMA, Tribeca, Ground Zero, Broadway, the Rockefeller Center and the Statue of Liberty: everything that I’d always dreamed of was there within my reach, at my feet. Initially, it astounded me and then, all of a sudden, it overwhelmed me: I felt like I was losing my grip on the cliff face and that I was going to fall, and go on falling for ever. I didn’t say anything to them about it so as not to ruin their trip.
One great thing here, though, was that the calories were marked on every item of food you bought. That way, I knew more or less what I was doing and it made up for the fact that I couldn’t weigh myself, because there weren’t any scales in the hotel rooms. I tried not to think about it too much. On the day I left Paris, my hip size was 35 inches and I weighed a teeny bit over 51 kilos. I absolutely had to lose at least one more kilo, but two or three would really set my mind at rest …
Just a stone’s throw from our hotel, there was an enormous store: Victoria’s Secret. Mum knew that it was my dream to work for them. Who knew, perhaps in the not too distant future I would be one of their brand ‘angels’? In the meantime, she took me there to treat me to some lingerie. I chose a very pretty black lace ensemble featuring a discreet little pink bow. A ‘size 0’ pair of knickers, which presumably corresponded to a size 34, and a 32A bra. It might have been bad news for me that I’d gone down two cup sizes, because personally I was fond of my breasts, but it certainly wasn’t bad news for fashion week (I had of course noticed that many of the girls on the catwalks were flat-chested). I hadn’t had my period either that month, no doubt on account of all the stress, but I wouldn’t have minded it continuing that way – at least I wouldn’t have that to worry about at work.