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‘Harry,’ said Marcus, ‘how are you? It’s been too long.’
‘Ten years at least,’ grinned Harry. ‘But now you’re back in London maybe it won’t be another decade. What about lunch in the next couple of weeks?’ he added.
‘Sure, sure,’ nodded Marcus with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.
‘Get your secretary to call mine and we’ll sort something out.’
‘Fantastic, I’ll do that.’
‘Marcus, this is my girlfriend, Molly Sinclair,’ Harry said.
Molly reached out to shake his hand, holding on to it just a little longer than necessary.
‘This place is amazing,’ she gushed. ‘You must introduce me to Adam. I’ve heard so many good things about him.’
‘Everyone seems to want to meet Adam tonight,’ replied Marcus. Molly thought she detected a grain of irritation behind the cordial smile. Interesting, she thought, filing it away for future use.
‘He’s just out here, showing one of our investors how many flowers half a million pounds can buy.’
Outside, in a courtyard surrounded by trees and flower-beds, there was a raised pond with another fountain cascading foaming water. Standing with his back to it was Adam Gold, surrounded by admirers, holding court. He was wearing a dark suit with a pale blue shirt – ordinary, conservative. But from her first glance, Molly knew he was the sexiest rich man she had ever seen – and she had seen many. She felt an immediate flutter of lust and excitement as they approached. She was wearing stilettos but he was still at least two inches taller than her; he possessed a natural confidence that matched her own and, although he didn’t have Molly’s cheekbones or poise, she knew instantly that they would make the most beautiful couple in town.
‘I think we were both at the Stop Global Warming benefit dinner the other night,’ said Molly, flashing her best cover-girl smile. She searched Adam’s face for a flicker of recognition as he moved forward to shake her hand. Surely he had noticed her?
‘I don’t think we met,’ said Adam in a polite but distracted manner that made her cheeks smart. He touched her arm to indicate that he had other people to talk to. ‘If you’ll excuse me,’ he smiled before leaving their group to go and air-kiss a glamorous blonde, leaving Molly’s mouth hanging open. The bastard.
Karin threaded her way through the lobby of Knightsbridge Heights with the confidence of someone who knew she looked fantastic. For a party this important, Karin had pulled out all the stops, paying a visit to Après Mode, her favourite boutique in Paris. Après Mode was a treasure-trove of 1960s Balenciaga, YSL and other classic labels and she had selected, with the help of the boutique’s owner Madam Vervier, a former couture directrice, a primrose-yellow Ossie Clark chiffon dress. But choosing a dress had only been a minor distraction; Karin’s life had gone into overdrive in the ten days following the benefit dinner. The papers had splashed the event’s red carpet pictures all over their front pages, her phone had rung off the hook with interview requests and the three Karenza stores had reported a fifteen per cent uplift in sales. Karin, however, had barely had time to breathe, let alone bathe in the glory. Instead she had dashed to Paris Fashion Week and a suite at the Plaza Athénée where she had shown her label’s autumn/winter collection to press and buyers. It had been a remarkable success. Even Anna Wintour, the singular editor of American Vogue, had come backstage to congratulate Karin. It was there she had taken the call from Erin Devereux, inviting her to a drinks launch at Knightsbridge Heights. She had snapped her mobile shut with a smile: finally, Adam was chasing.
‘Honey, you look drop-dead!’ oozed Diana, air-kissing her and handing her a drink. ‘Where did you get it? You must have spies in every boutique in the Western world. I’m so jealous, you must tell me.’
Karin just smiled mysteriously and linked her arm through Diana’s as they joined the main throng of the party.
‘So. Tell me all about Paris,’ said Diana.
‘I don’t think you want to talk about Paris, do you?’ said Karin knowingly.
‘Is it that obvious?’ replied Diana glumly, dropping her happy party girl demeanour. Her shimmering black Versace dress suddenly looked funereal.
‘Very obvious, darling. Very.’
Karin had invited Diana as her plus one because Diana was depressed. Her vulgar husband Martin had just disappeared to Aspen with his ex-wife Tracey and their seven-year-old twin girls Chloe and Emma. He hadn’t even bothered to telephone Diana in the last two days.
‘I shouldn’t have allowed him to go, should I?’ said Diana mournfully.
Karin turned to her friend, her face serious. ‘Of course you shouldn’t have allowed him to go,’ she said. ‘Divorced wives only have two settings: desperate and spiteful, often at the same time. If she was dumped, she’ll do anything – anything – to get him back. If she ended the relationship, she still wants to be number one and will play with him like a fish on a hook. Either way, she definitely wants to screw up your relationship with Martin.’ Diana looked stricken as she considered the implications of Karin’s words.
‘Well, Martin was the one who filed for divorce from Tracey … do you think that means that she’ll …? Oh God …’
Despite her outward dizziness, Diana was a realist at heart. She knew exactly what her husband was like and she had gone into the relationship with her eyes open. Theirs wasn’t so much a marriage as a merger. She was the class, he was the money, and men like that came with a price: infidelity. Diana had trained herself to imagine Martin with other women, so the pain would be less brutal when his adultery was unveiled. But this was worse, much worse. Now when she closed her eyes, Diana imagined him with Tracey, tucked up in the bar at The Little Nell, Aspen’s most glamorous hotel, drinking Bourbon, Tracey’s recently enhanced breasts bursting out of her Chanel ski-wear. Then they would retire to the penthouse for a night of energetic sex. But it wasn’t just sex with Tracey. They had history and they had the children to bond them back together. No, it wasn’t just sex – it was danger.
Karin could see the crushing look of insecurity on Diana’s face and felt a stab of guilt. ‘I’m sorry darling. I was too blunt. But I do worry that Tracey has never been off the scene since Hotbet.com floated.’
Diana nodded. ‘I know, but how can I say anything? She’s the mother of his children.’
‘But they’re not a family any more,’ replied Karin. She held Diana’s hand and looked into her welling eyes. ‘Look, honey, I’ve seen this happen with divorced friends a hundred times over. One minute mum and dad are playing happy families on the ski slopes pretending they don’t hate each other, the next minute they’re back together for the sake of the kids and his bank balance.’
Diana’s regal features twisted in confusion. ‘So what should I do?’ she pleaded.
Karin took a sip of her drink. ‘Remind Martin why he married you. Remind him that, without you, he is nothing. Look around you, at this place, at these people. Tracey might have his kids, but that little scrubber can’t give him this, can she?’
Karin took the glass of champagne out of Diana’s hand and swapped it for a glass of water. ‘Take this. You get so morose when you’re drunk. Don’t worry, honey, we simply need to show Martin just how valuable you can be to him.’
Karin looked across the crowded lobby and had an idea. ‘And I think I know just the man who can help us.’
Even though Summer Sinclair was twenty-four years old, she had never been to a rock concert. She had lived in London and Tokyo, moved among the rich and famous and felt at ease in some of the world’s most exclusive nightclubs and restaurants, but she had never once been to a live gig. Squeezing her way into the upstairs room at the Monarch, she began to understand why. It was horrible. Claustrophobic, head-splittingly loud and so hot that the air felt solid in her lungs. Summer had to literally force her way between lank-haired surly teenagers to get anywhere near the stage. Her carefully chosen Jimmy Choo ankle boots were getting scuffed on discarded plastic glasses and the soles were sticking to the floor. It was hideous; why did people come to these things willingly? But then the music started.
For a second Summer flinched as a wall of sound hit her. A swaggering rock god had walked onstage holding his guitar. A single distorted chord rang around the room and, when he was satisfied he’d got the crowd’s attention, he jumped into the air and The Riots blasted off. Summer could hardly believe it. Charlie was so unrecognizable from the handsome preppy boy at the shoot that she almost wondered if she’d got the right gig. But it was definitely him, his groomed hair replaced by a tousled surfer-boy look and a three-day stubble, the stuffy suits of the wedding shoot replaced jeans, T-shirt and a lorry-load of attitude. He was so sexy! The songs were amazing too – from shouty rock anthems to ballads that pulled at Summer’s heart strings. This was fantastic!
On stage, the drummer yelled at Charlie to slow down. But he wanted to finish and get offstage. Deep in the crowd, through the glaring lights and sea of faces, Summer Sinclair’s face shone out at him. He charged through The Riot’s set list and ran off backstage, ignoring the pretty girls begging the security guard to be let through.
Please don’t let her leave, he thought, rushing out into the crowd to find her.
‘Hey. You came.’
Summer was just zipping up her jacket ready to face the cold night outside. She turned and smiled.
‘Shouldn’t you be backstage taking coke and drinking whisky?’ she asked, her head cocked in mock innocence.
Charlie laughed. ‘Me? I’m really just a square middle-class boy, but don’t tell this lot that,’ he grinned.
They propped themselves up at the bar as Charlie ordered two lagers, at the same time accepting assorted back-slaps from excited fans.
‘I think they loved it,’ whispered Summer as one pimply youth told Charlie he was wicked.
‘But what did you think?’
Summer wanted to tell him that his sexual presence seemed to fill this stage, that his heartfelt lyrics of love and loss had made her want to cry. But she couldn’t. She just didn’t know how to be around Charlie.
‘You were brilliant,’ she said simply.
‘Yeah, well,’ he said, looking at the floor, ‘playing the Monarch is a big step up for us. It’s one of the best places to play in London for an unsigned band because there’s always A&R people hanging about. Plus it’s got this incredible history. Everyone’s played here. Oasis, Coldplay, Chilli Peppers. Playing here is either the beginning or the end of the road for The Riots.’
Summer was still staring at her lager.
‘Are you going to drink that or just look at it?’ smiled Charlie.
‘You’ll never believe this,’ she said, ‘but I’ve never had a pint before.’
‘Good God! Where’ve you’ve been living? Mars?’
Her cheeks flushed with awkwardness. ‘No, in my mother’s universe.’
Charlie nodded. ‘Ah yes, someone told me after the wedding shoot that your mum was Molly Sinclair. So what was it? Champagne in your baby bottle?’
‘Something like that.’
He took a long slurp of beer that left a white frothy moustache on his lip. ‘Fuck. What must that be like, to have a supermodel as a mother? I bet your dad loved it,’ he winked.
‘Actually, I don’t really know my father.’
Charlie bowed his head in embarrassment. ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
‘It’s fine,’ said Summer, surprised at how easily she could talk to Charlie. ‘My mum lived in New York for a couple of years before I was born. She had an affair with this rich guy, Upper East side, rebel son from a good family, you know the sort. Anyway, she got pregnant and he dumped her. Seems like it wasn’t in his family’s masterplan for him to settle down with some crazy model. My mum came back to London and never heard from him again.’
‘Don’t you ever want to find him?’
Summer shook her head defiantly. ‘After he abandoned us? No way. Anyway, I guess you don’t miss what you’ve never had.’
By the time Summer had finished the pint of lager, she felt light-headed and happy, and found herself growing more and more attracted to Charlie. It crossed her mind what Molly would think of him; when he had bought their drinks, she had seen him anxiously rattle around a few pound coins in the palm of his hand. She snorted. Molly would go spare.
But she wasn’t here looking for romance, she told herself. She was happy to be chatting to him, enjoying his company; most of all, she wanted Charlie McDonald to be her friend. It embarrassed her to think how few of them she had. She blamed it on her four-year hiatus in Japan, but the truth was that her nomadic youth had left her with few school friends and she rarely met anyone beyond her mother’s party circuit.
‘Can I buy you a drink?’
Summer looked up, expecting to see some spotty youth hitting on her, but it was a forty-something-year-old man in an expensive-looking jacket and jeans and the question was directed to Charlie.
‘Rob Harper,’ said the man, offering his hand. ‘I manage bands.’
‘Oh, wow, Rob Harper,’ said Charlie, ‘good to meet you, man. Yeah, I’ll have a lager.’
Summer could tell from Charlie’s response that he had heard of him. What she did not know was that Rob was one of the most influential band managers in the country, looking after three or four platinum-selling artists.
‘So what did you think?’ asked Charlie, turning on the swagger.
‘I liked you,’ said Rob in a controlled voice. ‘In fact, we need to talk.’ Charlie flashed Summer a panicked expression and she immediately got the message.
‘I’m just off, Charlie,’ she said gently, throwing her bag over her shoulder. She didn’t want to leave but she certainly didn’t want to play groupie gooseberry.
Charlie touched her on the arm. ‘I can meet you in a minute?’
Summer shook her head. ‘Good luck,’ she mouthed.
Charlie took a beer mat off the bar, tore it in half and fished a pen out of his pocket.
‘Write your number on that,’ he said giving her half the mat. And she stepped out into the cold night, knowing he would call.
9 (#ulink_3556c327-5f47-5c51-88a8-4544f067fa7a)
Karin stood by the fountain in the garden of Knightsbridge Heights waiting for Adam. The night had turned chilly and most of the guests were inside drinking and dancing. She knew he would seek her out eventually, quietly confident that she had made a lasting impression at Strawberry Hill House. Of course, Karin did not need to meet Adam Gold at the launch to get to know him better; she was a woman who liked to be prepared. No sooner had she received her invitation to the Knightsbridge launch than she was trawling the Internet for every story, interview and news piece on the Midas Corporation in Forbes, Fortune and the New York Times. Knowledge was a power that she was prepared to use every bit as ruthlessly as her sexuality.
The headlines she found spoke for themselves:
GOLD DEVELOPMENT THE BIGGEST IN SE ASIA
MIDAS SHARE RISE BREAKS HANG SENG RECORD
ADAM GOLD MAKES ANOTHER KILLING
The more she read about Adam, the more she felt they were kindred spirits. She recognized a drive, ambition and entrepreneurial spirit in Adam that she felt in herself. His background was one of wealth: his grandfather Aaron Grogovitz, a Hungarian emigrant who had settled in New Jersey in the 1930s and changed the family name to Gold, had made a fortune developing property in the post-war years. A devout Jew, the only thing he priced above family was his religion. So when his son David, a handsome college graduate on whose shoulders Aaron pinned the entire hopes of his empire, declared that he was to marry pretty classmate – and gentile – Julia Johnson, Aaron cut him off without a penny.
According to most accounts, David didn’t seem entirely distraught, happy to raise his family running a small real-estate agency in Yonkers. His son Adam, however, was a different animal altogether, having inherited every ounce of his grandfather’s drive and ambition, he won a full scholarship to Yale, but dropped out in the first year – why waste time in a library, he reasoned, when there were fortunes being made on Wall Street? Luther and Katz, Adam’s first employers, were a small New York investment house muscling in on the junk bond market championed by Michael Milken, and their traders were making a lot of money very, very quickly. After Milken’s arrest in 1987, Adam got out while the going was good, sinking his $10-million fortune into the business that was in his blood – real estate. He bought buildings in Tribeca for cash, converted them into designer lofts and sold them at a premium to wealthy traders. But his business really took off in 1992, when he bought landmark Manhattan buildings for peanuts out of the rubble of the property crash.
Suddenly Adam Gold was richer than the bankers, businessmen and celebrities to whom he sold £20-million apartments, richer than the CEOs who occupied his office blocks. His Manhattan home was one of the most talked-about townhouses in ‘The Grid’, the name given to the most exclusive blocks in the Upper East Side, as well as properties in Nassau, Lake Como and Dark Harbor in Maine. At forty-five, Adam Gold was eligible with a capital ‘E’ and speculating who would get him down the aisle had become a sport in the American society pages.
Karin was still lost in thought, turning all this information around in her head, when she heard a whisper in her ear.
‘Earth calling Karin …’
‘Adam,’ she smiled, turning to kiss him lightly on the cheek. ‘Sorry, I was miles away.’
‘Literally, I hear. I thought you were in Paris for the collections.’
She nodded. ‘For work not pleasure. My label shows there, plus I have to attend a trade fair to look at new fabrics for next season.’
‘Premiere Vision?’ asked Adam, gently taking her arm to steer her further down the garden.
‘You know it?’ asked Karin surprised. ‘I don’t meet many men who know so much about the fashion industry.’
‘I spend half my life with interior designers,’ he shrugged. ‘The gap between fashion and interiors is shrinking all the time.’
‘Umm, I guess we’re both selling a lifestyle to the same sort of people.’
Now he had led Karin to a quieter part of the Winter Garden where the background noise of the party had faded to a hum. She wondered what he was thinking. Was he sensing the same crackle of chemistry between them? Was he thinking about how long they could wait before they should end up in bed? She looked at him shrewdly. His face certainly wasn’t giving anything away; it was impassive and thoughtful, like a chess grand master waiting for her to make the next move.
‘Well, I think the apartments are incredible,’ said Karin quickly. ‘I heard a rumour that you’ve kept the best apartment for yourself.’
He nodded. ‘I could show you if you like, then you can make up your own mind.’
Karin felt as if they were in some elaborate Regency dance, both skirting around one another, slowly observing and sizing each other up, each trying to stay three moves ahead of the other.
‘I should really go and find my friend,’ said Karin with some reluctance. ‘She’s a little depressed and I’m worried she might throw herself into the fountain if I don’t stop her.’
Karin was scanning his face, willing him to look crestfallen at her refusal, but he merely nodded. ‘Maybe some other time, then.’
Karin returned the nod, determined not to show her own disappointment. Finally Adam smiled. ‘You know, you’re still the only woman I’ve had a decent conversation with in London,’ he said, as if it was a private joke between the two of them.
‘I didn’t know you were keeping count,’ smiled Karin, feeling a small flame of triumph.
‘So would you like to go for dinner?’ he asked.
