Clutching a handful of retouched photographs from the Anguilla shoot, Karin took her freshly squeezed raspberry juice out onto her bedroom’s roof terrace to decide which of the glorious images of Summer Sinclair she was going to use for the Karenza swimwear campaign. For the first week of April it was unusually warm. The air smelt fresh, of grass, spring flowers and promise. It was the perfect morning to plot, plan and think, if only there wasn’t that terrible clatter coming from the guest bedroom.
This is the last time I play Good Samaritan
, thought Karin crossly, swatting the photographs down on the wrought-iron table. Out of the goodness of her heart, Karin had allowed Christina to move in. It was only a temporary arrangement, she had made that clear – or at least she thought she had. Karin tutted and tried to read her copy of
Vanity Fair
, but she just knew she was about to get summoned at any moment.
‘Kay!
Kay!’
Christina’s shrill voice cut through the peace. Used to a maid, chef, butler and masseur at her beck and call, Christina was seemingly unable to grasp the fact that Karin was not hired help. She was constantly bombarded
with requests, demands and criticisms of her lifestyle: ‘What do you mean you don’t have a chauffeur? You drive
yourself?’
‘What’s the thread count on these sheets?’
‘Karin,’ said the voice, more irritable now.
‘What do you want?’
‘I need you.’
Sighing, Karin got up and stalked back through her bedroom and onto the landing, where Christina was standing in a pair of ivory silk pyjamas, one sleeve rolled up. She looked pathetic and helpless and Karin instantly regretted her irritation; after all, Christina had been through a lot since they had returned from St Barts. Ariel was petitioning for divorce on the grounds of adultery, and Jamie Bacon, their new organic gardener, had been cited in the papers. Christina was stunned – it was the only time in the seven-year marriage she had been unfaithful and she’d been caught out royally first time. She knew that British divorce law was not apportioned on blame, but she didn’t want to take any chance with the settlement.
‘What’s wrong?’ said Karin. ‘Do you want to borrow a dressing gown? I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with La Perla.’
‘I don’t want a dressing gown,’ said Christina tartly, ‘I want you to go and get a camera.’
‘A camera, whatever for?’ asked Karin, following Christina into the guest bedroom, which was crowded with Goyard trunks and shoe boxes, couture dresses spilling over every surface. She grimaced at the mess. She
hated
mess.
‘I want you to take a photograph of
this!’
said Christina dramatically, rolling up the sleeve of her ivory silk pyjama top to expose a slim, tanned arm. Just below the shoulder was an ugly lilac and blue bruise.
‘Urgh! What’s that?’ asked Karin.
‘A huge fucking bruise! What does it look like?’ snapped
Christina, pushing it in front of Karin’s nose. ‘Go on, get the camera out. I need a picture.’
‘Whatever for?’ asked Karin, examining her friend’s skin more closely.
‘Evidence,’ replied Christina flatly.
‘Did Ariel do this?’ whispered Karin, frowning. ‘He didn’t hit you, did he?’
For a moment Christina refused to meet her friend’s eye. ‘Not exactly,’ she replied.
‘What do you mean, “not exactly”?’
Christina sat down on the bed, crushing a number of expensive silk gowns as she did. She looked up at Karin and pouted. ‘He didn’t exactly hit me, no. But he could have!’
Christina saw her friend’s disapproving look and shrugged. ‘Look, I went round to the house yesterday to pick up some more things. I mean,
everything
is still there. My riding boots, my Norma Kamali vintage jump suit, that pretty little yellow diamond Graff necklace I wanted to wear to dinner tonight. Everything!’
Karin pursed her lips. Her home wasn’t a hotel.
‘Anyway, I get there and he has only changed the fucking locks! Consuela wouldn’t let me in either. Said Ariel had strictly forbidden it. Can you believe the nerve of the woman? I sorted out her visas, for Chrissakes. She would still be in Manila sweeping shit off the street if it wasn’t for me.’
‘But why’s he changed the locks? Has it turned nasty already?’
‘Not half as nasty as it’s going to get,’ snapped Christina. ‘I think it’s because I sent all his suits to the Salvation Army. If you know any men with a forty-four-inch chest and a thirty-inch leg you should tell them to get down there.’
‘Yes, but what’s all this got to do with the bruise?’ said Karin glancing at her Cartier Tank. It was 10.30 a.m. Adam
was due in thirty minutes and she still hadn’t put on her make-up.
‘I was forced to enter through a window,’ said Christina grandly, as if she was giving evidence in court. ‘Consuela always leaves one open when she is cleaning. I mean, imagine the humiliation of it. Anyway, as I was climbing in, I banged my arm on the ice machine. But, as far as my lawyers are concerned, Ariel did it when I was trying to collect some belongings. He
assaulted
me.’
‘But he didn’t,’ replied Karin. ‘I’d be an accessory!’ She understood Christina’s tactics but was making her sweat a little in return for all the jibes about her chauffeur and sheets.
‘He
could
have done,’ repeated Christina. ‘Oh, you’ve got to help me Kay, I can’t take chances. We have a pre-nup. The courts might not take any notice of it but, if they do, I’m fucked. One million for every year we’ve been married? Jesus! That’ll buy me a three-bedroom maisonette in South Ken if I’m lucky. I’ll have to have the prix fixe at San Lorenzo,’ she added, shuddering.
‘So what’s the bruise got to do with anything?’
‘Everything,’ she whispered. ‘My lawyer told me that a recent case has revived the concept of blame in divorce. It can affect the payout. At the moment it’s my word against his, and I’ve got photos to prove it.’
Karin scooped her hair up into a ponytail, shaking her head. ‘There’s a Polaroid camera in the dressing room for the shoes; do it yourself if you must. Listen, I’m going to Adam’s friend’s house tonight. Will you be here?’
‘I’m tempted to give Jamie a call. I feel so uptight, I could do with a release, but I had better keep my nose clean,’ she said with a wink.
Karin laughed and Christina wandered off in the direction of the dressing room.
Karin sat at her carved mother-of-pearl dressing table. She rubbed some tinted moisturiser onto her face, added a little blusher on the apples of her cheeks and a slick of lip gloss. She wondered idly how Christina’s life would change. One minute she was in a detached house in Mayfair with a staff of seven, a private jet at her disposal and nothing to do except plan the next extravagant party. The next minute she was in Karin’s spare room, forging criminal injury, and sneaking around after a twenty-two-year-old labourer. She was sure that Christina would land on her feet, although she also suspected that Ariel would play dirty to hold on to his fortune.
The doorbell ding-donged. She slipped on a pair of Tod’s loafers, picked up her holdall, carefully packed for a weekend in the country – trainers, jodhpurs, silk dress, and a tiny coffee-coloured lace teddy she had picked up in Paris – and ran down the stairs. Adam was standing at the door holding the car keys to his Aston Martin. He smelt of pomegranate cologne, soap and shaving foam.
‘Are you ready, honey?’ he asked. ‘I said we’d be there in time for lunch.’
‘I just have to get my coat,’ she said, running to the concealed closet in the hall for an acid-yellow leather jacket, perfect for the bright, fresh morning. As she turned back towards the front door, she saw Christina coming down the curving staircase. Her dark, wet hair was scraped back off her face, her damp body glistening like diamond dew, covered only by a minuscule white towel that stopped at the top of her thighs. She tiptoed over to Adam to give him a light kiss on the cheek.
‘You two have a fabulous time,’ she smiled, before springing back up the stairs, sending a coquettish smile over one shoulder.
Adam was grinning like a Cheshire cat while Karin picked
up her holdall and walked to the car without another word, vowing that she’d have that bitch out of the house as soon as she got back to London.
Standing in front of the dressing-room mirror in the master bedroom of The Standlings, Marcus Blackwell’s Buckinghamshire farmhouse, Molly was in an whirl of indecision about what to wear for lunch. Adam Gold and Karin Cavendish were coming for the weekend and she wanted every detail to be just right. She had changed outfits half a dozen times, trying to anticipate what Karin would be wearing; Molly’s outfit had to trump her, but only in a very subtle way. With Marcus out at the local golf club, she had tried on the entire contents of the increasingly large wardrobe she kept at the house. She decided on a elegant scooped-necked dove-grey jersey top with bracelet sleeves, perfectly offset by a pair of deep indigo jeans so tight and sexy they made Molly’s long legs look even longer. Her hair was left long and tousled, and she finished off with a handful of gold jangly bangles and some chocolate-brown loafers. It was a look that said modern, off-duty chatelaine.
Walking over to the long windows overlooking the grounds, her eyes were drawn out into the distance, where the Chiltern Hills beckoned and a pale blue sky stretched out, cloudless, above a sweep of russet trees. Even though Molly had only been dating Marcus for a couple of months, she felt quite at home at The Standlings. Their relationship was progressing quickly and, ever since she had been fired from the PR company, she had practically moved in, complaining to Marcus about ‘being cooped up all day in Kensal Rise’. With time on her hands and a need to impress her new boyfriend, Molly had discovered quite a talent for keeping house. Although she had taken to describing The Standlings to friends as ‘the manor’, in reality it was a substantial eighteenth-century
red-brick farmhouse with ten acres of grounds. Marcus had bought the place from a wealthy elderly couple three months earlier, and it was badly in need of some TLC. Declaring the farmhouse far too chintzy for the vice president of a luxury property development company, Molly had persuaded Marcus to embark on a programme of renovation and redecoration, which, of course, she would supervise personally. Kitchen planners from Mark Wilkinson had already visited, and they had decided on Tuscan-style units, granite worktops from Germany, and an island in the middle of the room on which Molly fantasized about having sex with a handsome live-in French chef. Still, that was all to come, and the unrenovated Standlings would have to make do for this weekend. Not that Molly had left anything to chance. She had commissioned her favourite West London florist Orlando to create huge centrepiece blooms of red roses and lilac rhododendrons all over the house, which made the house smell as if it had been dipped into a bottle of cologne. A local caterer had just delivered huge bowls of salads, freshly prepared lobster ravioli and tiramisu, all of which she fully intended to pass off as her own, and bottles of Cristal were chilling in the fridge.
She was just sitting down at the farmhouse table, sipping a small tumbler of vodka-tonic to kick-start the day, when she heard the grumble of Marcus’s Maserati on the driveway and stood up to see Adam’s black Aston Martin following close behind.
‘Molly. Good to see you again,’ said Karin, trying to inject some warmth into her voice as she slipped off her jacket and looked around the farmhouse.
‘I thought you weren’t getting here until one,’ smiled Marcus, embarrassed at just beating his guest home.
‘Oh, Adam drives so fast I thought we were going to take off,’ she smiled.
Karin had to admit Molly had done a good job in the lounge; if you liked that English country house sort of thing, of course. Ruby-red velvet curtains and squashy chocolate-brown sofas blended with antique cabinets and beautiful lamps with bronzed sculptured bases. More quaint than luxurious, thought Karin; certainly not the sort of place Karin had in mind for Adam: that would be a very special property indeed. Something Grade I listed, perhaps, in the Cotswold triangle, with an arboretum, trout fishing, possible previous royal occupiers. She would enjoy the search when the time came –
if
the time came. Karin had felt needled all the way up to Buckinghamshire, unable to shake off the image of Christina parading herself in front of Adam like the Venus di Milo – how
dare
she? And he didn’t help matters, lapping up the attention. Still, she felt better now, as she eased herself back into the soft leather of the sofa, feeling comfortably superior. Sitting next to Adam, his hand lightly placed on top of hers, she felt like the prom queen with her king. She had never considered Molly a serious player in the social stakes and, watching her sitting beside her latest conquest, Marcus, in her too-tight jeans, only confirmed Karin’s opinion while bolstering her own credentials. Marcus was a decent enough bloke – intelligent, yes, sober, a little dull, but he was an also-ran; one of life’s runners-up. The second tier country house, the vice presidency, his pleasant but nondescript looks. Karin felt a little sorry for him, wondering how long it would be before Molly traded him in for a better model.
‘Is it true you have Christina Levy staying with you?’ asked Molly with faux concern. ‘Awful, what’s happened to her.’
The St Barts story was circulating like wildfire around London – a cautionary tale for anyone getting too comfortable or careless in their relationship.