Guilty Pleasures (23 page)

‘Sure, babes,’ she said casually, as Clover ran off to her trailer. As soon as she was out of earshot, Stella buried her face in the tweed jacket and screamed with delight.

‘So what did you think?’

Stella was heading back into the main house, her mind fixed on the hot coffee that Emma had said was waiting there, when she heard the voice behind her.

Stella turned round to see Johnny Brinton who she had spotted as soon as he’d arrived with Emma’s cousin Tom that morning. Her whirring overworked brain had registered then how ridiculously good-looking he was, but here and now, up close, without the distractions of the shoot, he was something else. Johnny was tall, rangy and tanned; the collar on his polo shirt looked brilliant white against his golden brown skin. His dark blond hair was swept back, showing off his enormous ice-blue eyes, while his cheekbones
could cut paper. Back in LA, beautiful men just looked vain and overly pampered; Johnny had a casualness about him that was confident and incredibly sexy. Stella actually felt her knees shake. It was the first time in a long time she had felt that powerful lurch of instant sexual attraction. In the last three years she’d had one longish relationship with Ed, a surfer from Laguna Beach, who’d had the same sort of louche good looks as Johnny if not quite as exquisite. She had fallen deeply in love with Ed, but she was never entirely sure it was reciprocated. She’d put up with his dawn starts to catch the tide, the evenings spent on the beach playing touch football or smoking weed, even his regular disappearances with his surf crowd chasing the big waves and swells around the globe. She’d held on until there was nothing left to hold on to. And now she was ready for someone else; Stella knew that she wanted to fall in love.

‘I thought you looked great,’ said Stella realizing, too late, that in speaking her mind she’d sounded incredibly flirty. ‘Sorry!’ she gasped, blushing. ‘I didn’t mean that, although yes, you did look great. Oh, just ignore me. It’s been a long day.’

A wide smile spread across Johnny’s face and he touched her arm making her shiver.

‘So which magazines is the campaign going in?’ he smiled, ‘I did this as a favour to Tom and he tells me nothing. For all I know it could be some jodhpur fetish magazine for bored country housewives.’

‘Nothing so exotic,’ smiled Stella.
‘Vogue, Elle,
I’m not sure they have finalized the plan yet.’

‘Well, you must let me know so I can tell my PR.’

‘PR? What are you promoting?’

‘Just myself,’ he smiled. ‘I’m in a film that comes out in a week’s time.’

‘Wow.’

‘You should see it. I think the press, cast and crew screenings are finished, but the premiere’s next Thursday. Would you like to come?’

Stella felt a rush of excitement at his choice of words. Would you like to
come.
It was a more personal proposition than asking her if she’d like to
go.

‘I’d love to.’

When Stella played the exchange back in her mind later that
evening, it sounded like such a line. It was, of course, but Stella didn’t care, she wanted to get swept up in it. He looked her age but had the confidence of someone older. She’d heard a rumour on set that he had a famous father.
Hey, who doesn’t?
she thought.

‘Here, give me your number,’ he continued.

He fished his mobile out of his pocket and began punching the number in, then looked up at her.

‘I’m Johnny, by the way. Why haven’t we met before?’

‘I’m Stella. And probably because I’ve just moved over from LA.’

‘Well, we’d better start making up for lost time,’ he said, his eyes dancing.

‘How about Thursday?’ asked Stella, feeling suddenly bold.

Johnny grinned.

‘It’s a date.’

‘Is it?’ asked Stella.

He winked and put his mobile back in his pocket.

Tom sat in the beautiful 1956 silver gull-wing Mercedes parked outside Winterfold, watching Stella and Johnny through the glass.
Well, that was a foregone conclusion,
he thought, watching their body language as they strolled along the grass in the pretty dusk light. They looked like young lovers in a Disney film. Tom cursed himself for not acting sooner. He’d had a brief chat to Stella earlier that day, sharing a laugh as they worked out they had once been naked together in the paddling pool in Provence, but it had been nothing beyond friendly chit-chat. For once, Tom’s bravado had failed him and his cheeky-chappy sparkle failed to shine its brightest. Not that it would have made the slightest bit of difference if Johnny had decided he wanted to have Stella for himself. As long as Tom had known him, from the days when they’d first sat next to each other at prep school, Johnny had always got whatever he wanted, whether it was a place on the rugby team, admission to RADA or a swanky penthouse in Notting Hill, paid for by Daddy. Tom was happy for his friend, of course, although there was still a little nub of envy that he couldn’t shake; a frustration at how one person could have so much luck, how everything so constantly and predictably always went his way. Tom was actually glad he and Johnny had drifted apart. In the last couple of months he’d crashed a few weekends in Johnny’s spare room and they’d gone out to a few parties together, but that was about it. Once upon a time, they
had been inseparable, but it had slowly dawned on Tom that having a friend like Johnny was the same as having a sister like Cassandra – bad for your self-esteem.

Someone tapped on the window and Tom opened the door. It was Jamie Curtis, one of Johnny’s West London friends who had been an extra on the shoot.

‘Nice car. Whose is it?’ he asked, climbing in the tan leather passenger seat.

Tom smiled with undisguised pride.

‘It’s mine. Well, it will be in four years.’

‘Four years? Tough luck, mate. Now’s the time you need a bitch magnet like this one.’

‘You’re telling me,’ sighed Tom. ‘Still, I’m taking it for a run round the estate – want to come?’

Jamie smiled, nodding enthusiastically. ‘Fire her up!’

Tom caught Emma’s look of surprise as the thrumming engine turned over and they roared off down the drive. She was probably worrying if he was insured, but what the fuck – the car was his. If he wanted his little James Bond moment then he was sure as hell going to have it. The gravel drive coughed up little puffs of smoke as the car hit forty, fifty, then sixty miles an hour. He squeezed his foot down harder on the pedal, his anger and frustration at Johnny, at Cassandra, at everyone, turning to aggression.

‘You mentalist!’ shouted Jamie as they screamed round the lake at ninety. ‘You got that right,’ said Tom, then put his head out the window and whooped.

Twenty spine-tingling minutes later they were back in front of Winterfold. His mother was standing on the front step with a concerned expression.

‘Uh-oh. I think someone’s grounded,’ teased Jamie when they had pulled to a stop.

‘Grounded?’ replied Tom wounded. ‘I’m 20-fucking-6 not 12.’

‘Johnny said you were living back at home,’ he laughed.

‘It’s purely temporary,’ huffed Tom.

‘In that case, why don’t you come out to Ibiza in the summer?’

Tom looked at Jamie, oozing wealth with his ruddy good looks, upper crust accent and chunky signet ring on his little finger, and felt bitter.

‘I usually try and go but I can’t afford it this year,’ shrugged Tom. ‘I haven’t got a job and my mum is giving me grief for having
to bail me out. Look at her now. She’s practically breathing fire.’

‘But would you like to go?’

‘Of course,’ said Tom getting out of the car. He pulled a cigarette packet out of his pocket and lit up straight away. Jamie slammed the passenger door and walked round to him.

‘Me and some mates are going over, you should come. We’re gonna run a bar and a club night out there. Nothing too big but we want to get the right crowd so we expand next year. We need someone to come in and run the bar. It’s just a little place but it’s got a great location in Ibiza Town.’

‘Me?’ said Tom inhaling on his cigarette.

‘Johnny said you might be up for it. Plus, he said you’d be perfect. You know everyone, you can sort out the music. We need someone who can talk the patter, know what I mean?’

Tom nodded, liking the sound of it.

‘Well, I’ve done a bit of bar work before, but I haven’t got any money to put in.’

Jamie patted him on the shoulder.

‘Don’t worry about the money. We’ve got that sorted.’

Of course you have,
thought Tom. Jamie was part of Johnny’s West London moneyed crowd. His family were Old Money and titled to boot.

‘Obviously you’ll get a smaller cut than the rest of us but so long as you make it work for us, I reckon you’ll clear fifty grand for the summer.’

‘Fifty gees. That sounds like it might be worth it.’ Tom had to stop himself doing a cartwheel.
Fifty fucking thousand!
Where else was he going to make that sort of money, let alone running his own bar in Ibiza?

Jamie’s mobile was ringing angrily.

‘Hey, have a think about it, eh?’ he said, picking up the call. ‘Johnny has my number.’

‘Tom, get over here!’ hissed a voice to their left. They both looked to see Julia, her face like thunder, and Jamie smirked and rolled his eyes.

‘TOM! I need to speak to you,’ shouted Julia angrily.

Tom shrugged his shoulders sheepishly and made the ‘I’ll call you’ sign to Jamie.
Ibiza.
It was a lifeboat. It was time to get a life, get out of the country and do it quickly.
Balearics, here I come.

Cassandra pushed back in her chair and rubbed her tired eyes. She had just spent the last twenty minutes in front of her computer screen poring over the week’s sales figures. Thursday afternoons were either heaven or hell for Cassandra. When they had good sales she felt on top of the world, but today she felt sick to the pit of her flat stomach.
Rive’s
June cover had been the worst-selling issue of the last twelve months. Sitting halfway through the fashion season, June was never a strong-selling issue for fashion magazines, which was why publishers often propped it up with holiday-friendly freebies taped to the cover – free flip-flops and make-up bags, the sort of tat Cassandra despised with a passion. But even taking the giveaways into consideration,
Rive
had done poorly. Cassandra reached up to the Scandinavian blonde wood shelf where all the recent issues were lined up and pulled down the June edition. She looked the cover over critically. The cover-lines were good, the features inside strong and the fashion shoots were some of the best they’d done in years. Which only left the choice of cover-star: Ludvana, the 17-year-old Eastern European beauty. Ludvana was fashion’s newest superstar, six foot two, with straight ice-blonde hair falling to her waist and she had just landed campaigns with Gucci to Victoria’s Secret.
Rive
had hired Patrick Demarchelier to shoot Ludvana as Lady Godiva riding through the streets of Manhattan on a horse. The shoot had cost them $100,000, not to mention weeks of wrangling with New York’s City Hall to get permission to stop traffic and block streets – and for what? Sales figures were down 20 per cent on the Gwyneth Paltrow cover the month before. Cassandra had agreed to Ludvana against her better judgement and evidently,
she had been correct. While Ludvana had made the right statement to the fashion industry, she was
so
hot,
so
new, that half
Rive’s
readership wouldn’t even know who she was. It had been a classic case of not seeing the wood for the trees. The success of
Rive
was down to their breadth of readership, not just St Martin’s fashion students or chic, urban 20-somethings desperate to read about the latest trends.
Rive
also had to appeal to the chic yummy-mummy holding onto her youth and the elegant 60-year-old with a closet full of vintage Halston. The
Rive
reader was anyone who wanted to aspire to the high fashion lifestyle of gloss, glamour and escapism the magazine served up month after month.

Cassandra sank back into her chair, biting her lip. To the outside world editing a fashion magazine was child’s play, all you had to do was look fantastic, go to three parties a night and then wait for all the hot designers to send you free handbags. But magazine publishing was a business just like any other, and at the end of the day, it was figures that counted and this one bad issue would drag down the rest of the year’s good sales, giving the impression of a mediocre year, when up until now,
Rive
had been doing very well.

‘Mum! Mum! Listen,’ said Ruby, bursting through the door without knocking.

‘Sweetie, I’m busy,’ said Cassandra sternly. ‘I thought Laura was taking you on the London Eye?’

‘We did that like,
hours
ago,’ said Ruby, flinging herself down on an Eames chair and spinning around on it like a carousel. ‘Anyway, I’ve just been in the art department. David Stern took a picture of me and turned it into a
Rive
cover. He’s just printing it off now so I can see it. Isn’t that cool?’

Cassandra sighed. Not for the first time, she doubted the wisdom of bringing Ruby to the office, but this time she didn’t have any choice. It was half-term, Julia was busy in the gallery and Ruby had complained so much about being left at school with all the girls whose parents were in the forces that Cassandra had relented. Monday had been spent taking tea at Claridge’s and shopping in Harvey Nichols, Tuesday afternoon Ruby had been taken to Hari’s salon in South Kensington for a facial. But by Wednesday Cassandra could no longer stay away from the office. She had a lunch scheduled with Aerin Lauder, who was always charming company but as her family’s company owned everything from Estée Lauder to Origins there was no way she could ask her to rearrange. So she
had left Ruby alone in her Knightsbridge apartment, telling Gerald the concierge to check on her every hour. By the time Cassandra had arrived at her desk, there were already three increasingly frantic messages from Gerald, complaining that Ruby had set off the building’s fire alarm, having tried to make a cheese toastie by jamming all the ingredients into her Kitchen Aid toaster. There was nothing for it but to bring her into the office.

‘Ruby, please,’ sighed Cassandra as Ruby swung her feet up onto the table and knocked a vase of calla lilies flying.

‘Sorry,’ said Ruby, looking anything but.

Cassandra glanced at her watch. It was already 6.30 p.m.

‘So are you ready to go out?’ she asked, getting up from behind her desk.

‘Go out where?’ asked Ruby with a suspicious frown.

Cassandra sighed. ‘Darling, we went through your itinerary this morning. Giles is taking you for burger and shakes at Automat and then to see that new Disney movie. I promised Disney’s chief exec I’d tell him what you thought. Then a car is taking you back to the apartment and Grandma is meeting you there as soon as she can get here from Oxford.’

‘But I don’t want to go,’ whined Ruby.

‘You
like
Giles,’ said Cassandra, who had no time for a teenage tantrum. ‘You had a great time yesterday when he took you to the Canaletto exhibition at the RA.’

‘I don’t want to go and see the Disney movie. I want to go and see that thing you’re going to tonight.’

‘Darling. It’s a premiere, a work thing.’

‘Johnny Brinton is in it, isn’t he? He’s gorgeous. Surely you can get me a ticket.’

‘But it’s a 15 certificate,’ said Cassandra, her patience running out.

‘Loads of people say I look 18.’

‘You can’t come.’

‘Why not?’ said Ruby, her voice now raised considerably. ‘I want to see Johnny’s film and I know there’s a party afterwards. I want to
go
!’

‘Stop it!’ screamed Cassandra, smacking her hand on her desk. Her yell seemed to hang in the air, then she heard the sound of gentle sobbing from her daughter. Softening, Cassandra reached for her, but Ruby shook her head violently away.

‘Sweetheart I didn’t mean to shout. Come here.’

She pulled Ruby over to the soft leather sofa. Cassandra was not a demonstrative woman beyond the thousands of air-kisses she distributed each season, but she sat close to her daughter and rested her hand gently on Ruby’s knee.

‘You never want to spend any time with me,’ sniffed Ruby, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her cotton dress.

‘Now you know that’s not true,’ said Cassandra firmly. ‘We had a wonderful trip together during the Easter holidays, didn’t we?’

A travel PR had arranged for Cassandra and Ruby to go to the latest luxury resort in the Maldives. Although Cassandra could barely afford the time out of the office, they’d spent five days in a deluxe water villa where she had topped up her tan and edited the manuscript of
Cassandra Grand: On Style.

‘No!’ pouted Ruby, ‘it was just where
you
wanted to go, just like you want to go to the premiere without me.’

‘Sweetheart, I work very hard. When I go to a party it’s not to have fun. I stay thirty minutes, talk to the most important people in the room, people who can help me,
help us,
and then I leave. I’m not trying to stop you from having fun when I say you can’t go tonight but you have to understand what I do and why I do it. I don’t have any choice.’

‘You
do
have a choice,’ said Ruby, sobbing, ‘You always have choices. Like you choose not to see me most weekends when half the girls at school go home. You choose to give me presents instead of your time. You even have the choice whether to work so hard. What would happen that’s so bad if you didn’t stay at the office so late or go to all these parties? What would happen if you didn’t have so great a job? Would we starve?’

‘Ruby, stop it.’

‘You say everything is to help us,’ she said, her eyes blazing in hurt and anger. ‘But how does it help
me
having a mother I never see? Did you stop to think about where
I
would like to go on holiday? Or whether I like going to a boarding school? Milly Steele goes to a day school.’

‘Oh, and I suppose you’d prefer to be one of those sad media children like Milly Steele growing up in the Groucho or round a campfire at Glastonbury?’ replied Cassandra tartly.

‘At least her parents want her with them,’ wailed Ruby, the tears flowing swiftly now. ‘You just don’t want me around. You buy me
off and farm me out. What’s wrong with me? Am I not pretty enough? Not enough of a perfect accessory? Don’t you love me? Or maybe you just don’t love me as much as you love your job!’

Ruby stared at her mother, a brave, challenging look that was part courage and part disappointment and Cassandra felt a strange mixture of both pride and sadness.

‘Darling, it’s not like that at all. You know I love you very, very much.’

‘Do you?’

Cassandra stood up and strode over to her desk, picking up the phone.

‘Giles? Could you step through please?’

Ruby bowed her head, shaking it gently.

‘Giles,’ said Cassandra as he walked into the office, ‘there’s been a change of plan.’

Ruby spun round and looked at her mother.

‘I want you to take Ruby round to the fashion cupboard and sort her out with dress, bag and shoes.’

‘It’s a very pretty dress she has on,’ smiled Giles.

‘Yes, but tonight we’re going to a very high-profile event, one where Ruby has to look at least fifteen. That dress that came in today, the aqua Dolce? I think that would look very nice with her skin tone.’

‘I can go to the premiere!’ squealed Ruby.

Cassandra gave a little half smile. ‘I’m giving Giles the night off, yes.’

Ruby ran round the desk and threw her arms round her mother.

‘Darling, be careful not to mark the Balenciaga,’ she said, carefully peeling her off. ‘And Giles? Can you see if Lianne is still here and get her to clean up these lilies.’