‘Good girl,’ he said, patting the horse’s neck as he dismounted, tying her to a tree and letting her graze while he lit a cigarette and gazed out on to the vastness of the estate, a carpet of green, grey and heather. All mine, he thought with a twisted smile. Well, maybe if I’d played it differently.
Miles had thought about this day many times, the day his father would pass on. He had imagined he would feel triumphant and elated that he had just succeeded his father to the throne. Even though Robert had disinherited Miles, his father’s death still made him head of the Ashford dynasty. The money would go to Connie, he supposed, but for Miles, Robert’s death meant one thing: freedom. No one ever looked down on a reigning monarch and scoffed, ‘Oh, well his father gave him that title.’ Now the king was dead, Miles could finally escape his long shadow.
But Miles felt no note of victory, just an aching sadness that he had seen so little of his father over the last decade, that Robert had never acknowledged his success, never patted him on the head and said ‘Well done’. Because Miles had never hated Robert Ashford, he had just wanted his recognition. All of his drive, all of his achievements had come from a desire to please his father. In fact now Miles could see that without his father’s ultimatum over Chrissy that Christmas, he would probably have frittered his trust funds away like Piers Jackson and all his other friends in London, earning a low-six-figure salary and living in a semi-detached house in Putney or Fulham.
He threw his cigarette away and snorted at the irony. Of all the things his father had done for him, his rejection had been his greatest gift.
‘Thanks, Pops,’ he said quietly.
He narrowed his gaze and saw another horse approaching from the house. He shook his head. It was just like Chrissy to go against his express wishes. But as the animal drew nearer, he could see that the rider was an expert: Connie Ashford.
‘Mum?’ he said, taking her horse’s reins as she dismounted.‘What are you doing out?’
She pulled off her helmet and swept her ash-blond hair back from her face. She looked strangely calm and controlled.
‘The other option is to stay wallowing in the house. I thought blasting the cobwebs out might help.’
‘Are you OK?’ he asked as he tied her horse up.
‘Why shouldn’t I be?’
Miles smiled. ‘No reason,’ he said.
Connie sat down on a fallen log and Miles joined her.
‘So why are you out here?’ she said after a while. ‘Not another argument with Chrissy?’
Miles looked away. He hated how his mother seemed to be able to tap straight into his moods and thoughts. Some sort of maternal voodoo, he supposed.
‘Do you know how much I hate Sasha Sinclair?’ he whispered.
‘Miles, let it go. It’s not worth it.’
He closed his eyes, then opened them again, sweeping his gaze across the stunning rural vista. ‘Do you think Dad ever came up here and looked at everything he had?’ he said finally.
‘Your father was very proud of you, you know,’ said Connie.
Miles looked at his mother cynically. ‘I think he made it perfectly clear how he felt about me at your birthday party, Mum.’
‘That was a long time ago, darling. A lot of things have changed since then.’
‘You’re not telling me he mellowed in his old age?’
‘Not him, Miles. You. He watched you grow up and become a man. He would read about you in the papers and talk about how you should talk to this person about planning, or that bank about funding. He always knew where you were and what you were doing.’
Miles felt his heart lurch. Could it be true? Had his father really cared about his business? Had he really watched him make his way in the world? Miles felt a gnawing in his stomach and he looked away from Connie, turning his face to the sky. There was a pink cast to the clouds and it would be dark in less than an hour.
‘You know our lawyer is coming to the house this evening?’ said Connie.
‘Ah yes, the will.’
‘It’s a big responsibility, Miles,’ she said, looking at him sideways. ‘The assets are considerable.’
‘What’s that got to do with me?’
‘A great deal. I already know the contents of the will and I wanted to speak to you first.’
Miles laughed. ‘Wanted to soften the blow, eh? Not even left me a pair of cufflinks?’
‘No, Miles, he left you the business.’
Miles jerked backwards, almost losing his balance on the log. ‘You ... you’re serious?’ he stuttered.‘But we haven’t spoken in over nine years.’
‘That didn’t mean he didn’t love you, Miles. You were always his son. Ever since that first club, he’s believed you were the best person to move the company on. He was just too proud to pick up the phone.’
Miles could barely take it in. It was an enormous undertaking. Ash Corp. was owned by a complex series of limited companies and trusts, but Robert Ashford had ultimately had control of all of them. The assets would run into billions.
He rubbed his chin nervously. ‘I’m not sure I . . .’ he began, but trailed off. ‘It’s so big a job,’ was the best he could manage.
‘Well, your father’s shareholding has gone to you, but it doesn’t mean you have to be CEO,’ said Connie. ‘Pete Stone could step up.’
Miles gave a short laugh. ‘After the way he handled the PecOil merger last spring? I wouldn’t trust his judgement.’
Connie smiled, obviously pleased that Miles had also been following Robert’s fortunes in the business pages.
‘I can’t tell you what to do, Miles,’ she said. ‘I’m so proud of you, what you have done and if the Globe and your own business interests in America are your life now, then so be it. But I’d like you to come back to Ash Corp. Forget New York. I’d like you to come back to England.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Both me and Grace, eh?’
‘I’m not trying to use your father’s death to emotionally blackmail you both, if that’s what you’re implying,’ she said tartly.
‘I didn’t mean that,’ he said, putting a hand out to touch her knee. ‘I just . . . oh, I don’t know what I meant. But I can’t make a decision now, Mum.’
‘I don’t expect you to,’ she said carefully. ‘But this is what your father wanted, Miles. Come back and fulfil your promise.’
46
March 2002
The weeks after Robert’s death passed by in a daze. The ferocity of her emotions had taken Sasha by surprise, her grief made worse by the fact that she had to face it alone. She could count on one hand the number of people who knew about her relationship with Robert, so most people assumed that her complete withdrawal from the business and the social circuit were due to the injuries she had sustained from the accident. There were whispers, of course. The death of one of England’s most prominent businessmen had been a big story, but the Ashford PR machine had done a good job in containing the story. Only gossip linked her to Robert now, a thought that gave Sasha no comfort whatsoever.
‘You have a visitor,’ said Sally, her housekeeper, coming into the room and plumping the cushions. ‘Lucian Grey.’
Sasha looked up from the copy of the Financial Times she had been reading on her table by the window.
‘Thank you,’ she said, fastening her silk robe tighter and limping through her apartment into the living room. She still had to use a stick to walk even short distances, but she could feel she was getting stronger every day. Somehow, that just added to her anger; it seemed like a betrayal of Robert that she could recover when he never would.
‘Sasha, how are you feeling?’ Lucian rose from the red velvet sofa to gently embrace her. An elegant sixty-year-old with four decades of experience in the fashion industry, he was fair and wise, with an instinctive fashion sense which was rare in a money man. Sasha had recommended him to the private equity house as a replacement for Philip when they had bought the company. He was one of the few people she trusted entirely.
‘I’m getting there,’ she said. ‘You know I’m coming back in to work on Monday?’
‘Are you sure?’ he said with concern. ‘I thought you’d been signed off for six weeks.’
‘It’s my company, Lucian,’ she said firmly.
He didn’t press the point and Sasha was grateful. It wasn’t her body that needed to recover, but her heart, her mind. Sitting around in her apartment with only Sally and occasional visits from the physiotherapist, she had nothing to do but dwell on might-have-beens and she feared that if it went on any longer, she might not crawl out from under her black cloud. The truth was the company was the one thing in her life she could control. Yes, there were other forces at work – competitors, the economy – but it stood or fell by her own efforts, her own decisions. That was what she loved about it.
Sally brought in a tray of coffee and Lucian helped Sasha to the Venetian glass table, sitting opposite her.
‘You know the press office have been swamped with interview requests for you,’ he said. ‘No one’s saying it out loud, of course, but they all want the story on the crash. Everyone has heard the rumours.’
She groaned. ‘That’s the last thing I need.’
‘You should do it,’ said Lucian, reaching for the silver pot. ‘A bit of notoriety never hurt anyone.’
‘I don’t want this to be painted as some of sort of Ted Kennedy at Chappaquiddick.’
‘Don’t underestimate the power of your lifestyle, Sasha,’ said Lucian. ‘I might be old, but I haven’t lost my nose for this. I can’t remember when there has been so much excitement for a growing business. You are our greatest asset; people look up to you. Handled in the right way, this can help us. This is tragedy, not notoriety.’
‘I don’t want to make money from Robert’s death,’ said Sasha bitterly.
Lucian shook his head.
‘You’re not; you’re making money from your life, Sasha.’ He took a sip of coffee and gave a small smile. ‘And I think making money is something Robert would have approved of.’
She stared out of the window. ‘You should know that Robert left me his shareholding in the US business in his will,’ she said quietly.
‘When will probate clear?’
‘I don’t know yet,’ she said. ‘As you can imagine, I haven’t exactly got a hotline to the Ashford family any more.’
Lucian didn’t smile. ‘Well we need to get that moving as soon as we can,’ he said urgently. ‘Because Absolute Capital are looking to sell.’
Sasha looked up with alarm. ‘Because of the accident?’
‘No, because they’ve had their investment with us for four years and because they think it’s the right time to exit.’
‘Do you?’
She respected Lucian’s opinion. He was tougher than Philip, although she missed the sense of a shared journey she’d had with Phil, that they’d built it up together. But Lucian knew business better and he didn’t spare her feelings.
‘Yes. It’s absolutely the right time to sell. Share prices of luxury companies are rocketing. Plus celebrity is the new currency and you have it by the bucketload.’
Sasha thought of Robert and that evening in Canary Wharf when he’d first suggested getting private equity investment, how he’d told her he loved the way she took risks. It had been a risk ditching Ben, it had been a risk expanding into America. And it had been a risk loving Robert. But she had done it all and she was glad she had, even with all the pain it had caused.
‘Let’s do it,’ she said, feeling some of her fire return. ‘As soon as the shareholding comes through, let’s sell.’
Lucian smiled. ‘That’s my girl,’ he said.
Nine months later Rivera Holdings were taken over by another private equity company. The big fashion conglomerates of LVMH, Richemont and PPR had again refused to bite, but the one hundred and ten million sale price paid by Duo Capital more than made up for it. The agreement banked Sasha more than thirty million pounds, while also allowing her to keep hold of a small stake in the company and retain her position as president and creative director.
Steven Ellis, the new CEO installed by the owner of Duo Capital, was a sombre fifty-something Scot with sharp suits and even sharper business instincts, who had turned around a failing Swiss watch company and made it the horological must-buy for the new Russian money. He had a degree from Yale and an MBA from Insead, the French business school, and Sasha could tell from the minute she met him that he could do great things with her company. Six months later, after a few well-placed interviews and dozens of sessions of therapy, it was business as usual, the hole in her heart mended, a pile of party invitations on her desk. Sasha Sinclair was ready to face the world again. And this time, she thought, the world could take her as she was.
47
September 2003
Miles was enjoying being back in London. He walked to the window and peered out into the garden of his Notting Hill townhouse. The long sloping lawn was slightly unkempt and the rose beds were scattered with unraked leaves, but the very thought of having a garden made him smile. In New York you were lucky if you had a window box, but here you could smell flowers, hear birds, watch the changing seasons; he had forgotten how much he missed it. Since the growth of the Globe empire in the States, he had spent less and less time in England. He had a management team to deal with the Covent Garden club and gym while the concierge service was raking in hundreds of thousands with virtually no investment, but the real money had been in the States, where the Globe Country Club franchise was going stratospheric, with seven locations along with golf courses and spas. But that was nothing compared to the global reach of Ash Corp.
Sitting down at his heavy wooden desk – an antique the dealer had assured him had come from one of the Duke of Wellington’s residences – Miles flipped through a file showing all the businesses Robert Ashford had owned or had a significant interest in. There were literally hundreds, based in hundreds of cities around the world. Miles shook his head with dismay as he ran his eyes down the list. Alongside the manufacturing and commercial property wings, Ash Corp. owned a dry-cleaning chain, a business card supplier and a haulage firm which specialised in frozen goods. Frankly, it was a sprawling mess. Robert Ashford had been a shrewd investor, no question of that – and individually, Miles felt sure that most of these businesses would turn a good profit – but such a wide spread of interests had made Ash Corp. flabby and unfocused. Somewhere along the line, Robert Ashford had taken his eye off the ball.
Possibly around the time he started screwing my ex-girlfriend, Miles thought bitterly. But then again, the evidence in front of him suggested the old man’s brains had been going soft long before that affair began.
The problem was that Ash Corp. hadn’t moved with the times. In the sixties and seventies, Robert Ashford had built an empire by taking a series of calculated risks coupled with some audacious yet well-timed takeovers. He quickly gained a reputation as someone who could sniff out trends and capitalise on them. In the early eighties he had seen the need for out-of-town supermarkets; the experts had derided it as foolhardy, but he had been right.
So what went wrong? wondered Miles, reaching over for a decanter of Scotch and pouring himself a generous measure. Clearly his father had been resting on his laurels for the best part of a decade. Yes, Ash Corp. had a number of other profitable divisions, but they were stodgy, meat and potatoes operations; nothing creative, nothing exciting. Miles turned to the section dealing with the hotel division. Ash Corp. owned a number of hotel chains and resorts in all the best locations – the Bahamas, Hawaii, the French Alps – but they were old-fashioned and fusty, appealing to an ageing clientele, while the young money was going to the new rash of funky boutique hotels. People wanted stylish, they wanted modern, they wanted to feel that they were part of a select elite. They didn’t want a snooty manager in pin-stripe trousers looking down his nose at them because they didn’t have a title. The Ash Corp. hotels – and indeed the rest of the company – des
perately needed to be stripped right back and rebuilt from the ground up. And that was why Miles felt that London was the perfect place to begin restructuring. Since he had opened the first Globe Club ten years ago, London had transformed from a moderately important if bustling city into the most exciting city in the world. You could feel the energy in the boardrooms, the nightclubs, even the arrivals lounge at Heathrow. Cool Britannia was over, but it had left behind a vapour trail of talent and wealth. Rag-trade billionaires, restaurateurs, a melting pot of Italians, South Africans, Swiss, Indians and Americans. It was the most exciting time to be in London in decades, and Miles was right at the centre of it all, in charge of one of the biggest international corporations in the capital.
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