Sin Tropez
Authors: Aita Ighodaro
| Sin Tropez |
| Aita Ighodaro |
| Corvus (2010) |
For best friends Tara and Abena, an invitation to stay on a luxury yacht in St Tropez is a chance to indulge in riotous hedonism and reckless adventure. For Latvian model Natalya, it is a long-awaited opportunity. Dazzlingly beautiful but haunted by her childhood, she wants to find an oligarch who can fund her future - and help her forget her past. But when Abena becomes embroiled in a passionate and dangerous affair, Tara's partying spirals out of control, and Natalya discovers the dark consequences of getting what you wish for, the jet-set lifestyle starts to look a lot less glamorous...
'A satisfyingly guilty read' Independent 'A blast of sun, string bikinis and glinting rolexes' Daily Mirror 'Thrilling and scandalous' Closer 'Dark, dangerous and delicious - Money, intrigue, sex, hedonism and even a little bit of a conscience - it's all here - Go on, you are worth it!' Lovereading.com
While studying at Oxford University, Aita Ighodaro took a year out to work as a fashion model in Europe. Since graduating, she has worked for a leading documentary film distributor and producer and also written for a number of publications including Independent and the Sunday Express. This is her first novel.
Tropez
Aita Ighodaro
read modern languages at Oxford University. While studying for her degree, she supported herself by working as a fashion model in
Europe, where she attended shoots in glamorous locations like St Tropez and Cannes. As her own experiences of life with the rich, the beautiful and the jet-set became ever more extraordinary, Aita
began collecting the stories that would eventually work their way into her fiction.
Since graduating from Oxford four years ago, Aita has worked for a documentary film producer and as a freelance journalist, and is now a full-time writer.
Sin Tropez
is
her first novel.
Tropez
Aita Ighodaro
First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Corvus,
an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.
Copyright © Aita Ighodaro 2010.
The moral right of Aita Ighodaro to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously.
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-84887-662-0
eBook ISBN: 978-0-85789-252-2
Printed in Great Britain.
Corvus
An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd
Ormond House
26-27 Boswell Street
London WC1N 3JZ
For my sisters, Enida and Natasha, with love
Part One
RE: St Tropez!
Please email me all your details and a picture if possible as we are starting to arrange our summer in the sun. Let me
know what passport you have and if you need a visa for France. Yeah, yeah, yeah, summer is on its way!
Tara Wittstanley read the message aloud to her best friend, Abena Ankrah.
‘Ah donnt belive eet!’ Abena thundered with a wildly exaggerated Ghanaian accent – a departure from what was actually her cut-glass English one, which always cracked Tara up.
‘A picture?’
‘Sweetheart,’ Tara replied, ‘this
is
Reza we’re talking about. Absolutely nothing would surprise me. I’m just astounded his assistant hasn’t asked for
our cup sizes and sexual preferences too. This, darling, is what you’d call a mind-bogglingly rich, spoilt and depraved little man.’ But her eyes were flashing fire and her heart was
beating hard and fast.
Tara had been introduced to Reza months earlier through the gorgeous Domenico, who she’d met in Milan during fashion week. In order to get the time off university so
close to her final examinations, she’d told her old tutor at Oxford that she was having ‘Women’s Problems’. Those two simple words were enough to put terror into his
bespectacled eyes and, rather than have to delve any deeper into the nature of said ‘Problems’, he advised her to take a week off her studies with immediate effect. And so Tara spent
her entire student loan that term on a trip to Milan for a week of fashion parties and hobnobbing with editors, designers, models and photographers. She went mainly because she felt like it, but
also with a vague secondary interest in securing contacts for a job in fashion after she graduated. That hadn’t worked, but she
had
met Domenico.
Domenico was well dressed, in that flamboyant way she pretended to hate, incredibly good looking and, at just twenty-seven, was already running an unusually successful men’s clothing
retail company. The ‘Women’s Problems’ quickly developed into a full-on ‘Woman’s Crisis’ and the pair embarked on a passionate but doomed fling. They spent
Tara’s second week off uni at Domenico’s spanking new penthouse on the seafront in Monte Carlo, where Tara fell completely, unashamedly and far too quickly for everything she’d
always felt was so wrong with the Riviera. She was seduced by the way he deftly handled his red Lamborghini while stroking her thigh, which glistened in the Mediterranean heat. She was seduced by
the feel of the wind blowing through her long, sun-bleached hair and floaty cotton dress (worn without undies) as she thought to herself how glamorous they must look, speeding down the empty road
in their open-topped love machine.
On their first evening in Monaco he took her to Jimmy’z nightclub, where even a glass of water cost more than her budget airline flight to Milan. They danced all night on tables outside,
relishing the fresh sea air, the starlit sky and the music that blared so cockily loudly. Like they owned the whole world and didn’t care who heard. They had no plan whatsoever, only to dance
and dance and dance. With the wild, frenzied movements of their long limbs they kept knocking over full bottles of expensive champagne. But it didn’t matter because there was always more.
There, dancing on a table under the stars with this man, nothing mattered. She was far away from her parents and Willowborough Hall, with all its history and unspoken demands and expectations, far
from the relentless social whirl of London and far, far away from her dreary Oxford don. She knew it was love.
Domenico declared he couldn’t live without her, so they rushed back to his apartment and in a state of post-coital and drunken euphoria logged on to the internet where Domenico booked a
flight to London for the first weekend after Tara’s finals and then every weekend for the rest of the summer. He wanted to book in every weekend for the rest of his life but Tara stopped him,
saying she’d come and visit him in Italy and Monte Carlo too.
On her flight home she was called aside by immigration officers and questioned as to why her passport had been defaced with hearts and kisses and possibly, therefore, invalidated. She had talked
her way out of that one, luckily – if the situation had escalated she’d have had trouble convincing everyone at Oxford that a trip to Monaco was the best cure for Women’s
Problems. All awkward questions deflected, she sent word to Domenico that she was safely back home. He kept his promise and flew to London weeks later, and that’s when she first met Reza.
It turned out Domenico knew a lot of people in London already. He invited Tara along as his date to a series of lavish parties hosted by his profligate friends, where the finest wines,
champagnes and available girls flowed in abundance. Once there, however, he all but ignored Tara, making constant suggestive comments to other women and basically enjoying catching up with people
she neither knew nor particularly liked, and many of whom she found trashy.
The parties culminated in the much older Reza’s fiftieth birthday extravaganza. This began with various dinners and luncheons held at Nobu Berkeley and the original Nobu, and at China Tang
and Cipriani. Restaurants where babies are conceived in cupboards, where all the American Express cards are black and unlimited, and all the women eye-wateringly hot. To crown the celebrations,
Reza hosted a party for four hundred guests at his Mayfair mansion. For the occasion Reza had commissioned a life-sized sculpture of himself and had it positioned in the triple-height hallway on
the spot where a replica of Michelangelo’s David usually stood. On arrival, all guests were given an iPod packaged in an ornate platinum case. It came ready loaded with pictures of Reza
throughout his fifty years, many of which Tara suspected had undergone a healthy amount of Photoshopping. Reza’s favourite music was also on there, along with a tribute song recorded by a
variety of well known personalities, including someone who sounded suspiciously like the Pope.
Tara was astounded when the smooth black floor of one of the five main reception areas suddenly turned transparent, revealing the indoor pool below. A troupe of topless female swimmers in
diamond- and ruby-encrusted thongs began performing a synchronized routine to a recording by the recently deceased musical genius Cantonelli. Reza caught and enjoyed her gasp of surprise and
strutted over, running a deeply tanned hand over his thinning hair, dyed brown to disguise the grey. Without bothering to introduce himself to Tara or ask her name, he stood beside her and gazed
down through the glass at one of the swimmers below. She was face down in the rippled water and her muscled legs were now parted in a rather undignified split. It looked painful, and even more so
with a row of priceless gems wedged between her buttocks.
‘Infuriating that Cantonelli died just days before he could perform here. I had him scheduled to play in person. I would have been the very first person to have Cantonelli perform at home.
If he’d only died just a week later, I’d have been the only man ever.’
Tara didn’t quite know what to say to that so Reza continued talking, eyes still glued to the girl in the pool. He licked his lips. Tara thought he was sweating a little. He hadn’t
looked at her once since he’d come over and that in itself was annoying her. She was in her purple velvet off-the-shoulder vintage mini-dress, which revealed acres of leg. Her
grandmother’s diamond-and-pearl earrings shimmered at her earlobes and her newest sample-sale find – super-high, nude patent ankle boots from Christian Louboutin – finished off
the outfit. She had teamed this with minimal makeup and artfully messed-up hair falling out of a loose knot on top of her head. Was Reza ever going to tear his pervy eyes from that girl’s
bum?
‘I’m getting nervous about those gems,’ Reza declared. ‘But at least I’ve had my team of specialists develop special chemicals to make sure the water doesn’t
diminish their sparkle. Of course the chemicals are not great for the girls, but …’ With that he finally looked up and met her eye. In heels she was far taller than him and had a clear
view of the bald patch he’d attempted to cover up. ‘Why are you here?’ he asked.