The first week of a second life, counted in small victories and one catastrophic realisation.
This was the part she hadn’t planned for, which was a failure of planning she couldn’t forgive herself for — she had spent so much time thinking about Lucien, about the industry, about Ivy, that she had forgotten her mother existed in 2016.
Mei Hart was sixty-one and still running the small tailoring business she’d started after Lina’s father had died, six years before the marriage to Lucien.
She had been quietly relieved by that marriage, Lina now understood — not because she didn’t love her daughter but because the business was struggling and the Cole alliance had taken the pressure off a debt Lina had never been told about.
In her first life, Lina had kept her mother at a polite distance, embarrassed by the smallness of her origins compared to the Cole world.
She had visited twice a year, brought expensive gifts, and said very little of substance.
Her mother had died when Lina was forty-nine, of a quiet heart attack, and Lina had stood at the grave and realised she didn’t know her mother’s favourite colour.
She would not do that again either.
The phone rang four times before Mei picked up.
“Lina?” Her mother’s voice was careful — the careful of someone who has learned to expect difficult news from certain numbers.
“Is something wrong?” “No,” Lina said.
“Nothing is wrong.
I just wanted to call.” A pause.
“You just wanted to call.” “Yes.” Another pause, longer.
“Lina, it’s eight in the morning.” “I know.
I’m sorry.
I can call later—” “Don’t you dare hang up,” her mother said, and the careful was gone, replaced by something warmer and more startled.
“I’m making tea.
Talk to me.” Lina talked to her mother for forty-three minutes.
She did not tell her about leaving Lucien — not yet, that was a conversation that required being in the same room.
She did not tell her about the ring or the apartment or the pregnancy.
She talked about nothing, mostly: what the city looked like at dawn from her window, a cat she’d seen on the street that had the exact expression of someone who had made a decision they wouldn’t be explaining to anyone.
Her mother laughed at the cat.
Lina hadn’t heard her mother laugh properly in years.
When they hung up, Lina sat quietly for a moment.
Then she wrote on day six of her list: called Mum.
Will do it again.
Day seven: she discovered she was more pregnant than she’d realised.
✦ ✦ ✦ The clinic was small, affordable, and staffed by a doctor who asked no unnecessary questions.
Lina had booked under her maiden name — Hart — and sat in the waiting room with her hands folded and her face composed while three other women around her filled out forms or looked at their phones.
The ultrasound was not as she expected.
“Eight weeks,” the doctor said, adjusting the screen toward her.
“Not six.
Did you miscalculate?” Lina stared at the small grey shape on the monitor.
At the flutter, rapid and determined, of a heartbeat.
“Apparently,” she said.
Eight weeks meant conception in January.
It meant she had been pregnant for two months without knowing, which meant in her first life she had also been pregnant at this point and had simply — what?
Attributed the tiredness to stress, the nausea to the rich food at Lucien’s business dinners?
She turned this over in her mind and felt the particular cold of a thing that cannot be changed.
In her first life she had told Lucien about the pregnancy at ten weeks, carefully, over a dinner she’d prepared herself.
He had nodded and said ‘that’s good news’ and gone back to his phone.
She had spent the rest of the evening convincing herself that was enough.
In this life she had told him at the moment of departure, as a fact, not an appeal.
She would not be appealing to him for anything.
The baby was hers.
The baby was — her eyes went back to the monitor, to that insistent small flutter — “Would you like a print?” the doctor asked.
“Please,” Lina said.
She walked out of the clinic with the ultrasound photo in her bag, tucked behind the divorce papers.
She stood on the pavement for a moment in the cool morning air.
“Alright,” she said quietly.
To herself.
To the eight-week-old flutter who was already two weeks further along than anyone had known.
“Let’s not fall behind again.” She went back to her notebook and added a column she hadn’t made room for yet: medical.
Then she planned the week ahead, and the week after that, and she did not stop until she had mapped out exactly what the next three months needed to look like.
She had thirty-two weeks.
She intended to use every one of them.
……………………………………………….
Everyone underestimates the woman with the cigarette.
Not knowing that is her greatest asset.
Carla Reed had been in the industry for twenty-two years and had developed, as a survival mechanism, an almost supernatural ability to read the gap between what people showed and what they were.
The girl — Lina Hart, walk-in, no referral, sold her wedding ring on day one, living in a hotel that week and an apartment the next — was one of the most interesting gaps she’d seen in a decade.
She didn’t look like someone starting over.
She looked like someone executing a plan.
Carla had been in enough pitch meetings to know the difference.
Desperation had a particular texture — the over-bright eyes, the too-controlled voice, the way people held themselves like they were bracing for the word no.
Lina Hart didn’t have any of that.
She was calm in a way that wasn’t performed.
She listened more than she spoke.
When she did speak, she said exactly what she meant and nothing else.
Twenty-three years old, apparently.
Carla would have guessed thirty-five.
She was reviewing the catalogue test shots on her laptop on a Thursday afternoon, cigarette burning in the ashtray that technically wasn’t allowed in the office but that everyone had silently agreed to ignore, when her assistant knocked.
“Ms Reed?
Lina Hart is here for the contract sign-off.
She’s early.” “Send her in.” Lina came in and sat in the chair across from Carla’s desk without being invited to, which Carla noted.
Not rudeness — economy.
The chair was there; sitting was the logical thing to do.
“The brand confirmed,” Carla said, pulling up the file.
“Full catalogue, Tuesday through Thursday next week.
Per-day rate is here.” She turned the screen.
“It’s not glamorous.” “It’s fair,” Lina said, glancing at the number.
“I’ll take it.” “You didn’t negotiate.” “The rate is fair.
Negotiating a fair rate down for no reason other than practice is how you tell people you don’t actually know what your time is worth.” Carla picked up her cigarette.
“Where did you work before this?” A small pause.
“I didn’t.
Not in this industry.” “What did you do?” “I was married,” Lina said.
The way she said it closed the subject entirely without being rude.
Carla studied her for a moment.
She had spent twenty-two years in a business that consumed women and she had learned to recognise the ones who would survive it.
They had something in the eyes — not hardness exactly.
More like depth.
Like they already knew the worst possible outcome and had decided it wasn’t going to be them.
“The brand rep asked about you,” Carla said, changing direction.
“Specifically.
They want to know if you’re available for an additional two days in April for the summer preview.” “I’m available.” “You don’t have a diary conflict?” “I don’t have a diary yet.
I’m building one.” Carla exhaled a thin stream of smoke.
“Lina.
I’m going to ask you something and I need a straight answer.” “Alright.” “Are you pregnant?” The silence lasted exactly two seconds.
Then Lina said: “Yes.” “How far along?” “Eight weeks.” Carla set the cigarette down.
This was, technically, the moment where the contract became more complicated.
Certain brands had clauses.
Certain shoots had physical requirements.
And more to the point, she had taken on girls in difficult situations before and it had cost her — time, money, reputation capital she couldn’t always afford to spend.
She looked at Lina Hart sitting across from her with her hands flat on her knees and her green eyes giving nothing away, and she thought about a version of herself at twenty-three that she hadn’t visited in a long time.
“Alright,” she said.
“Here’s what happens.
You do the catalogue, which is straightforward — nothing that creates a physical problem where you’re at.
I’ll flag your condition to the brand team as a scheduling consideration, not a liability.
If they have an issue, that’s between me and them and it won’t affect your rate.
In return—” she picked up the cigarette again “—you tell me your due date and you don’t book anything through another agency without talking to me first.
I don’t like surprises.” “October fourth,” Lina said.
“Estimated.
And I understand about the exclusivity conversation — I’d want that in writing, with a clause about what happens to bookings if I need to pause.” Carla stared at her.
“What?” Lina said.
“You said you’ve never worked in this industry.” “I said I haven’t modelled before.
I’ve watched people get eaten by contracts that didn’t have exit clauses for years.
I’ve learned to read the fine print.” Carla laughed, short and genuine.
“Get a lawyer to review the amended terms.
I’ll have them ready by tomorrow.” She stood, which was how she ended meetings.
“And Hart—” Lina was already standing.
“Don’t lose the composure,” Carla said.
“This industry will try everything to shake it.
It’s the only thing no one can photograph out of you.” Lina nodded once.
She didn’t say thank you.
She didn’t need to.
Carla watched her leave, then turned back to her laptop and the catalogue shots.
The camera loved those eyes.
More than that: the woman behind them knew exactly what she wanted.
In Carla’s experience, that was rarer than beauty and worth considerably more.