On the other side of the room, Molly Sinclair wasn’t sure what was making her feel more sick, the calorific cupcake she had just eaten, or sheer naked envy. Molly had just been treated to a tour of the house, which had brought home to her the extent of Donna Delemere’s good fortune. Evie’s nursery was bigger than Molly’s entire apartment, taking up a whole floor of the Georgian pile, complete with a nanny annexe and a Mark Wilkinson cot in the shape of Cinderella’s carriage. White French armoires were stuffed with Bonpoint clothes, while a huge photograph of Mummy and Daddy’s wedding hung over the fireplace like a gloating reminder of everything Molly didn’t have.
It didn’t seem two minutes ago since Donna Jones, as she was known back when Molly had first met her, was a bottle-blonde tramp looking for city boys at Legends nightclub. Now look at her, she thought bitterly, taking a long swig of vodka. Donna had swapped her Dolce & Gabbana hot pants for Brora cashmere twinsets the minute she had met Daniel Delemere, an art historian with a huge family fortune, at the Cartier polo three years earlier. But that had been just the start of her incredible transformation into society wife. Her hair was now a soft nutmeg brown, her wardrobe an elegant mixture of Marni and Jil Sander and, bearing the Delemere name, Donna now sat on the most important charity committees and holidayed for the entire summer in the best villas around the Med. Nobody seemed to mention that she had once been a mobile beautician from Hull.
Of course, Donna had only done what girls with humble backgrounds and explosive good looks had been doing for decades. What really needled Molly was that it hadn’t been her. It was an eternal mystery to Molly why she hadn’t managed to elevate herself into this strata of society. Acquiring a husband with an impressive surname and a gull’s-egg sized rock on her finger was something she had expected ever since her modelling career had taken off like a bottle-rocket in the 1980s. She had been voted one of the world’s most beautiful women four times, for Christ’s sake! Not quite in the Christy Turlington league, but Molly had certainly been on the next rung down in the supermodel pecking order. And Molly had weathered well. Even at forty-three, Molly could have passed for someone ten years younger, and the smouldering sex appeal that had made her famous had not been dimmed. Her hair was long and thick with glossy tawny highlights. Her cheekbones were high and noble and her tanned skin, regularly treated with cell-regeneration shots, from a distance looked fresh and young. Today she was wearing a winter-white cashmere sweater and cream trousers, and she looked as if she had stepped off a plane from St Barts that very morning, not out of her home in the slightly more ‘bohemian’ end of Notting Hill.
But no, the good marriage hadn’t happened. Bad luck, bad judgement, bad drugs – who knew? The bottom line was that her mid-forties were around the corner and Molly was still single. Even worse was that she was slowly being shut out from the most exclusive society events. Those girlfriends she had spent night after night with at L’Equipe Anglaise, Tramp and Annabel’s in the 1980s and 1990s had all disappeared to grand Scottish country estates, to Manhattan’s Upper East Side, or to mansion houses on Palm Beach. Every now and then she would receive a invitation to an event like today’s christening, but she was never invited to spend a week at the villas, or to intimate dinners with the prize husbands. It was obvious why. She was a single, beautiful woman and therefore a threat, plus Molly was part of their past, a past she knew they did not want to be reminded of.
She picked on a crab claw before throwing it into a plant pot behind her. She took a deep breath, assuring herself that the situation was purely temporary. She was Molly Sinclair, the supermodel. She had lived longer on her wits than any of these nobodies. She stalked off to the bathroom to take a line of cocaine. She’d show them. All of them.
Karin popped open her compact and checked her reflection. She had to be looking her best for a charm offensive. As godmother, Karin’s attendance at Evie’s christening had, of course, been de rigueur, but it was also an ideal opportunity to drum up business for the charity benefit gala dinner she had planned for the following month. With so many society players in the room in such a buoyant, benevolent mood, it would have been foolish to let the opportunity pass to sell tickets for her ‘Stop Global Warming’ benefit gala. Like many of the women in the room, Karin had dipped her toe in charity work before, but after Sebastian’s death she had needed a more substantial project to sink her teeth into, and an exclusive high-profile dinner for eight hundred was just the solution.
‘How are the auction prizes coming along?’ asked Christina, who had already donated a week on the Levys’ yacht the Big Blue as a lot.
‘Fine,’ replied Karin. ‘Except I had to fire the events assistant yesterday. You don’t know anyone suitable, do you? I need someone young, keen, presentable – someone with a brain.’
Christina shook her head blankly.
‘I can ask Martin if you like,’ said Diana. ‘I think his company use some agency.’
‘I’d be grateful,’ said Karin, in her usual cool, efficient manner. ‘They don’t have to be experienced, just keen. I’ll be handling the important matters like guest lists and table plans.’
‘Ahh, I see,’ smiled Diana, playing with a pebble-sized solitaire diamond dangling around her neck. ‘Now you’re single …’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Karin, waving a hand dismissively. ‘I’m only interested in raising as much money as possible. Do you know what’s happening to the icecaps?’
‘Of course I do,’ said Diana. ‘The snow was awful in Megève this year.’
‘Hey, why don’t we ask Molly Sinclair?’ said Donna, nodding towards the tall woman across the room. ‘She’s a consultant at Feldman Jones PR and Events. She must know someone suitable.’
‘If we must,’ said Karin coolly. Karin barely knew Molly, but knew of her; an eighties almost-supermodel, a coked-up has-been, still on the circuit peddling her overt sexuality, trying to bag whatever half-rich man would have her.
Donna waved her friend over.
‘Everyone here knows Molly, don’t they?’ said Donna, getting weak smiles from all three women. ‘Do you know of any good PAs or events assistants, Molly?’
‘What’s it for?’ purred Molly in her smouldering smoker’s voice.
‘Karin’s Stop Global Warming benefit. She’s trying to do it without a committee,’ said Christina sternly.
Karin smiled thinly. A committee was the last thing she needed. She was happy to let a handful of select, connected friends sell tickets on the fund’s behalf, but the controlling streak in Karin would not allow any meddling in her vision. She wanted the glory to be all hers.
‘Will you be coming, Molly?’ asked Diana, absently wondering how Molly managed to look so good. If she’d had a lift, it was amazing.
‘Tables are very expensive,’ said Karin quickly. ‘One thousand pounds a plate and selling out quickly.’
Molly shook her head, hair swooshing from side to side across her shoulders. ‘Can’t make the actual dinner, unfortunately. I have friends coming from the States that night,’ she said, accepting another glass of champagne from a waiter.
Inwardly, Molly was wincing at the ticket price. A thousand pounds! It was outrageous! Her coke allowance for a month. Six months’ gym membership. A good dress. She knew the event was a worthwhile investment, but she just didn’t have that much money sloshing around.
‘Speaking of friends, I tell you who you should invite,’ smiled Christina, taking a delicate sip of a white Russian. ‘Adam Gold.’
‘Who’s he?’ asked Karin.
‘Karin, darling, you’re slacking,’ smiled Christina through glossy lips. ‘New York real-estate and investment guy. He’s behind some of those fabulous new condo developments in Manhattan, Miami and Dallas. He’s also very sexy and very wealthy. Just made the Forbes list this year.’
Molly’s ears pricked up. Forbes list! That meant net worth a billion dollars minimum.
Karin gave Christina her best uninterested ice-queen expression. ‘Billionaire or
not, he’s unlikely to come from New York for a party, even this one.’
‘Oh no, haven’t you heard?’ said Diana, widening her baby-blue eyes. ‘He’s just moved to London. Martin says he’s rolling out his property developing all over Europe, Moscow and Dubai and the Far East.’
‘We could do with a shot of new blood,’ said Christina, smiling. ‘Not that I want to touch, of course,’ she added, stealing a glance at her husband, who was smoking a Cohiba on the terrace, ‘but I do like to look.’
‘Darling, get him invited,’ smiled Christina, touching Karin’s knee meaningfully. ‘The tickets will fly out the door once word gets out that he’s coming.’
‘Well, I am in London that evening,’ said Molly slowly. ‘Perhaps I could pop by afterwards …?’
Karin and Molly’s eyes locked and they recognized in the other something they had encountered many times before. Rivalry.
‘I hate to disappoint you, sweetheart,’ said Karin coolly, ‘but there won’t be any after-dinner tickets for the benefit night. It’s just not that kind of event.’
Molly smiled. It was her sweetest, most earnest smile, a smile that had lit up a dozen magazine covers and persuaded many people, people much richer and more powerful than Karin, to do her bidding. Yes, thought Molly, Adam Gold sounded like just the sort of man to get her right back where she belonged, and she wasn’t going to let an uptight, jealous little control freak like Karin Cavendish stop her from getting him. And her smile grew just a little wider.
2
Cornwall in January is beautiful. Not the hazy beauty of midsummer, when the sea shines turquoise and the sun blurs distant hillsides into deep green smudges, but a bleak, eerie beauty so strong, crisp and immediate that it turns your cheeks pink and sends a shiver through your bones. Erin Devereux pulled her scarf a little higher around her chin, too wound up to appreciate the chilly splendour around her. My life is going nowhere, she thought grimly, thrusting her hands deeper into her pockets and marching on along the cliff top. Usually, whenever she felt uninspired, there was nothing like the granite rocks, crashing surf and the whiff of smugglers to get her creative juices flowing. But nowadays, more often than not, she found herself wondering what she was doing in the prime of her life – well, at twenty-four – living in a tiny village at the end of the earth, trying to write a book about … well, nothing very much at the moment. Erin felt so hemmed in by all this open space, she couldn’t get off the first page. She kicked at a pebble in frustration, missing by inches and stubbing her toe on a tree root. She howled in pain and irritation. Just then, as if someone had turned on a tap, it began to rain hard. Story of my life, thought Erin, and began to run for home.
‘These boots are going straight in the bin,’ declared Erin, pushing open the back door of Hawthorn Cottage and feeling the blast of warm, sweet air on her face. She flopped down on the nearest chair, pulled off her sheepskin boots and threw them in the corner.
‘Got writer’s block again?’ said the elderly woman standing in front of a scarlet Aga. Jilly Thomas, Erin’s grandmother, was as small as a mouse, with a shock of wiry grey hair and a proud, handsome face. There was a line of flour across her lined cheek and she was wearing a navy apron smeared with something white.
‘Yep, writer’s block, writer’s clog, writer’s jam, the lot,’ said Erin, pressing her cold toes against a lukewarm radiator.
‘Well, don’t you worry, lovey,’ said Jilly, ‘I’ve cooked you a nice chicken pie and some mash, too – just the ticket to warm you up.’
Erin smiled at her grandmother. No wonder she had put on seven pounds since she’d been back in Cornwall. But her tall frame could take a little extra weight, hidden most of the time in jeans and a thick sweater. Erin glanced in the mirror above the fireplace and saw a ruddy, pretty farm girl. Her lips were full and naturally pink and long russet curls fell down her back. She’d always envied redheads who had startling green eyes – the classic Irish colouring that gave them bold, cat-like strikingness, but Erin’s eyes were cognac brown and it softened the look. Although right now her cheeks had been stung pink by the sea air and ribbons of wind-lashed hair were still stuck to her face. The glamorous authoress, she thought. Erin wrapped her cold fingers around a steaming mug that Jilly had placed before her.
‘The problem is that there’s nothing to write about round here,’ she complained.
‘You make it sound like it’s Cornwall’s fault,’ said Jilly with a hint of a smile.
‘Well – it is!’ said Erin. ‘I’m not doing anything. I’m not experiencing anything. What am I supposed to write about? Seagulls?’
Erin saw a look of sadness pass over Jilly’s face and felt an immediate stab of guilt. She hadn’t meant to sound so critical of the warm, welcoming village she had called home for the last twenty years, nor did she want Jilly to feel in any way inadequate. She owed her grandmother everything. Erin’s father Phillip had committed suicide when she was five, and her mother Hillary had disappeared twelve months later. Erin had immediately moved in with Jilly Thomas, her maternal grandmother and had been brought up as her own daughter. And she had had an idyllic childhood in Port Merryn, running along the beaches, playing in the narrow, twisty streets. It had been like one long summer holiday; even the winters were cosy and warm in Jilly’s kitchen. But, like much of Cornwall, Port Merryn was a dying community. The Atlantic was all but fished out, removing the village’s traditional income, so the quaint stone fishermen’s cottages circling the harbour were being snapped up by rich Londoners as holiday homes. With property prices soaring and no prospect of work, the families had moved to the cities, leaving only a retired community and a handful of locals running tourist-trap cafés and fudge shops. It had been five years since you had been able to buy a pint of milk in Port Merryn, and in the dead of winter the village was like a ghost town.
‘I’m sorry, gran, I didn’t mean to make it sound like I wanted to leave …’
‘Now, now, lovey,’ said Jilly, wiping her hands on her apron and reaching over to touch Erin’s hand. ‘You’re only saying the truth. I know you love the village, but it’s no place for a young girl, not when you’ve seen what’s on the other side of the hill.’
Erin nodded with melancholy. It had seemed like a good idea to move back to Port Merryn after she had graduated from university six months ago. She could save on rent, and move to the city when she’d made a proper start on her writing career. At least, that had been the plan, but it hadn’t quite worked out that way. Raised on a diet of Daphne Du Maurier and John Fowles – Jilly had always made sure the house was full of books to enrich and inspire her granddaughter’s mind – Erin’s one ambition had been to write the Great British Novel, and had spent every spare moment of her time at uni crafting her debut book. By the end of the last term it had been ready: 120,000 words, double spaced and printed on one-sided white paper. She sent it to a dozen agencies and waited. She had almost given up hope when she had been summoned by Ed Davies, senior partner in Davies & Sisman Literary Agency, to his office in London. Almost numb with excitement, Erin had spent three days deciding what to wear in order to give the right balance of ‘literary genius’ and ‘commercial winner’ and had spent the whole journey there planning her Man Booker Prize acceptance speech. She had thus been badly deflated when Ed Davies had sat her down in his Holborn office and spent twenty minutes telling her why he thought her novel sucked. However, he had seen enough promise, he said, that he was prepared to represent her.
‘I’m taking a chance on you,’ the agent had told her, ‘and this book certainly isn’t going to be your debut novel. But if you can come up with the right premise and execute it as well as I think you can, then I want to be the one negotiating your first deal.’
Erin looked across at her battered old laptop sitting at the desk by the window, almost buried under a mound of papers and notebooks. The screen blinked at her, an open document white and empty. The novel, her great escape route from the village, just wouldn’t come,
however hard she tried.
‘Someone called for you while you were out,’ said Jilly, waving an oven glove towards the phone. She was removing a thick crusted pie from the oven, which she placed on the gingham tablecloth.
‘Who was it?’ asked Erin, picking up a Post-it note scrawled with illegible writing. ‘Richard?’ Her relationship with her boyfriend at university was still limping along, even though Erin was now back in Cornwall and Richard was based in London.
‘No, lovey,’ smiled Jilly sympathetically. ‘Katherine someone from an agency, I think?’
Erin felt a rush of excitement. ‘The Deskhop Agency?’
‘That’s the one,’ nodded Jilly. ‘Who are they, then?’
‘It’s a secretarial agency in London,’ said Erin slowly.
‘Secretarial work?’ said Jilly, raising one eyebrow. ‘What about the book?’
‘Gran …’ she replied, hoping not to sound too exasperated, ‘the Deskhop Agency acts for all sorts of media and publishing companies. I thought I might be able to get in through the back door. But don’t worry, it probably won’t come to anything.’
Her grandmother smiled kindly and put her oven gloves down. ‘Erin, don’t you dare go worrying about me. You have a talent, and a talent should take you places, not leave you stranded in a cold little backwater with a pensioner and her stodgy cooking.’
‘But I love the village and I love your cooking!’ protested Erin.
‘I know you do, love,’ said Jilly, running her hand up and down Erin’s arm, ‘but you’re climbing the walls. It’s about time you got out and had some fun while you’re young.’
‘I don’t have enough money to move to London.’
‘You know you do,’ said Jilly.
‘But I can’t use that …’
Erin thought about the nest egg sitting in the bank. Her father had died almost bankrupt, but over the years he had squirrelled away money for his daughter, which had added up to a tidy sum. Erin had never touched it, keeping it for ‘something important’.
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