by Karen Swan
‘Thanks for the offer. But I don’t think Archie would be too pleased about that. Anyway, I’ll be okay. Particularly after I’ve had a hot bath and a ten-hour sleep tonight.’
‘Oooh, get you, spa girl.’
‘Yeah, well, Kelly’s dragged me out literally every night since I got here. Sometimes we go to four parties in one evening! Four! I used to think I was going some if I did four a month! I don’t know how she does it. She’s like a Duracell bunny.’
‘So how come you’re off the hook tonight?’
‘Kelly’s got a hot date. Some guy called Brett who pretended to hit on me to get to her. He saw she was being my bouncer and . . . well, it’s a long story, but I think she’s dead keen on him. They’ve spoken loads on the phone. She was going to cancel with all this going on, but I persuaded her to see him. Despite the brave face, she could do with some cheering up.’
‘Well, keep me posted on how it goes.’
‘Yeah,’ Cassie sighed. ‘So what about you? You up to anything tonight?’
‘Not really. Henry’s back, so we’re all having dinner tonight.’
‘Oh, that’s nice.’
‘I’m not so sure. He’s cooking.’
Cassie chuckled. Henry’s fishfinger sandwiches had been the stuff of legend in their teenage years.
‘He said he saw you guys in New York.’
‘Did he?’ Cassie wondered what else he’d mentioned – the fact that he thought she was a complete fraud and nut job? ‘Yes. It was nice to see him. It’s years since we last caught up.’
‘Yeah. He said you looked really different – “hot” was the word he used, I think!’
‘Really?’ He’d been so disapproving when they’d met.
‘He said he gave you a present to remember him by.’
‘Well, it wasn’t so much to remember him. It was more of a “keep your pecker up” gift. He wrote . . . what was it again?’ she said, walking over to the small brown seed tray by the window and turning over the brown tag. ‘Oh yes – “energy in adversity”, my motto for living in Manhattan.’
She heard a small snort. ‘How very motivational!’ Suzy said wryly, moving on to another cupcake. ‘So what was it?’
‘A packet of seeds.’
‘Seeds?’ Suzy screeched. ‘God, it’s a wonder he’s got a girlfriend! What are you going to do with seeds in Manhattan?’
‘That’s just what Kelly said.’
‘What kind of seeds are they? Probably something from Mum’s garden, I expect.’
Cassie considered. Hattie Sallyford, Suzy and Henry’s mother, was an eminent retired landscape designer, and her gardens at their country house in Gloucestershire were opened to the public every year after the Chelsea Flower Show, drawing huge and international crowds.
‘I don’t think so. I think it was a spur-of-the-moment thing. Anyway . . .’ she said, bending down to the tray on the window sill to inspect the sappy shoots beginning to thrust through ‘. . . I don’t think they’re flower seeds. I think they’re . . . grass.’
‘Grass?’
‘I know. A slightly off-the-wall choice. I expect he thinks I’m missing the countryside at Lammermuir and my own little patch of grass will stop me being so homesick.’
‘That’s kind of sweet.’
‘Yeah.’
‘He can be surprising sometimes, my brother. I always think of him as so gung-ho, going off on dangerous expeditions to unearth triffids and stuff. And then he goes and does something thoughtful like that.’
‘Well, tell him they’re coming along nicely. I’m very good at watering them every day. It makes me feel very . . . zen.’
‘Righto. Oh, that sounds like Archie. I’d better go. Now, look – ring me if there’s anything, okay? Day or night – any time. I’m not just saying it. I’m right here.’
‘I know you are. Thanks, Suze.’
‘And don’t let this incident get you down. I mean, how bad can it be? It’s only a fashion show. She’ll get over it. They all will. They’ll move on to something else next week. You just need to concentrate on keeping going. You’re doing great. We’re all very proud of you.’
‘Bye, Suze. Kiss Arch and Henry hello for me.’
‘Sure thing. Laters!’
The line clicked off and Cassie replaced the phone in the handset, a smile on her face as her fingertips softly brushed the green, green grass of home.
Chapter Nine
Cassie stood at the stop on 86th Street, jigging her leg anxiously. The queue was already thirty-strong and Bas was still nowhere in sight. He’d promised he wouldn’t be late; she’d never caught the Jitney before, but from what she’d heard, it was a bit like the first day of the Harrods sale and she wanted some support – and a bony set of elbows.
It wasn’t as if she’d had to travel by bus. Kelly had taken a limo down to Southampton earlier that morning with Zara, and they’d naturally offered her a ride. But since the Vogue debacle three weeks earlier, Cassie had been lying low. Half of Kelly’s accounts had now defected – and as a result, Kelly had had to let three people go. Cassie knew very well that absolutely everybody blamed and hated her for it. They fell silent when she walked into the room, deliberately didn’t inform her of meetings, and her products kept mysteriously vanishing from the fashion cupboard.
Kelly, of course, was stubbornly trying to remain supportive and upbeat, but as her clients shook their heads and left, and Hartford Communications began to look disaster square in the face, the underlying tension between them was growing like bacteria. In fact, things probably would have come to a head by now had Kelly’s fledgling relationship with Brett not been going from strength to strength. They were seeing each other ‘almost exclusively’, which was apparently just a half-step before engagement out here, and she was rarely in any more, leaving Cassie with plenty of time in the evenings to rest, recover, water her grass and weep. On the nights they did come back, Cassie made her own excuses and caught a cab to Bas’s apartment Midtown, where they drank copious amounts of red wine, played with her hair and tried to understand men.
Cassie pulled her parka closer to her and shivered, just as she saw the legendary bottle-green coach bearing itself proudly through the traffic uptown. She looked around anxiously as the crowd suddenly converged and swelled around the bus stop. There was no way she’d get on and it was two hours till the next bus. Grabbing her phone from her pocket, she tried Bas’s number again. It rang.
‘It’s okay, it’s okay, I’m here, darling,’ she heard his voice drawl – not down the line but behind her.
She turned and threw her arms round his neck in relief.
‘Hey,’ he said, surprised. ‘You didn’t think I’d leave you to this on your own, did you?’ He smiled, took her by the wrist, deftly pulled her around the crowd and walked ten yards further along the street. The Jitney came to a stop smack-bang in front of them, as the rest of the crowd awkwardly disbanded and regrouped at their heels.
‘How did you know?’
‘There’s a pothole by the kerb that smacks the top of the coach into the post if they roll into it,’ he informed her. Cassie looked down. Sure enough, there was a manhole cover set too low in the road.
‘You’ve always got the inside track,’ she smiled as the doors hissed open and they hopped on first.
‘This is my favourite seat,’ he said, walking towards the back. ‘We’re close enough to the coffee machine, the rest-room, got our own TV screen – plus you get the best views on this side.’
‘How did I ever manage without you?’ Cassie sighed, shrugging off her parka and rolling it up.
The coach filled quickly, making another three city stops before they were through the tunnel and past the airport. She felt a bubble of bile leap to her throat as she remembered landing there just hours after her life was forced into a U-turn. It had been the last day of summer and the city had still boasted the deep blue skies of wishes fulfilled. No longer. It was the middle of October now and autumn was
in full stride, with the low sun bouncing off every mirrored-glass surface and bathing the streets in a peachy tint that belied the icy, streaking wind. She’d been here for six weeks, and apart from the fact that she was still managing to breathe in and breathe out, she didn’t have much to show for it. She had one new friend, yes, but an old one was in danger of slipping away, and as much as she adored Bas, she didn’t want to trade Kelly in for him.
She sighed heavily as Bas came back with their coffees.
‘You’re brooding,’ he reproved.
‘I’m the most hated person in Manhattan. I’m allowed to brood.’
‘You are not the most hated. That accolade definitely belongs to Petra Richley – you know she’s snapped up Alex von Furstenberg?’ He paused. ‘Besides, at least everyone knows your name now. There’s a lot to be said for that over here.’
‘Oh yeah, so they know to chuck my CV straight into the bin when it lands on their desks.’
‘It was just bad luck. It wasn’t your fault that Gucci have reduced their ad spend in the glossies to court the bloggers.’ He leaned in conspiratorially. ‘And when I say bloggers, I specifically mean fashgurl. Did you hear she holidayed with both Dolce & Gabbana and Valentino on their yachts in Europe this summer?’ He shook his head in admiration. ‘That’s strictly A-list territory. Most of those editors have spent fifteen years enduring ritual humiliation to work their way up to those privileges. It’s like fagging for the fashion industry. But fashgurl? She’s been around for three seasons, and look! She’s already stealing Alexa Bourton’s seat at the shows.’ He whistled softly. ‘Times are a-changin’. It was just a classic case of putting the wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time. Drink your coffee.’
Cassie took a slurp and stared out of the window as Manhattan shrank from view. It was the first time she’d stepped off the island since arriving, and she felt her spirits gradually lift as concrete steadily gave way to grass, and tower blocks to trees. The buildings that they did pass were no longer thrusting and dynamic monoliths, but clapboard houses in pretty pastels with freshly painted picket fencing and old-fashioned country stores selling ride-on mowers and horse feed; normal-sized mongrels replaced the mini toy dogs, children on bikes replaced the size-zero shoppers and scarcely any of the cars parked had blacked-out windows or V12 engines.
‘This is us,’ Bas said two hours later, gathering his bags. They disembarked and Cassie looked around her as Bas tried to locate the car Kelly had sent for them.
‘So this is Southampton,’ she said to herself, looking up and down Main Street and taking in the art galleries, the branch of Saks, the quaint boutiques selling tapestried cushions and monogrammed slippers. The roads were wide and tree-lined, with wooden benches dotted up and down the pavements inviting you to sit and idle and watch.
Though she’d never heard of the Hamptons in her previous life, she’d heard of little else since living in New York, and absolutely everyone she met regaled her with stories of their summers in Sag Harbor or Amagansett, East Hampton or Southampton. Supposedly they all had a distinct identity and reputation, and which one you spent your childhood summers in said as much about you as your hair, shoes and watch – the markers of status in Manhattan. As far as Cassie could tell, holidaying in Southampton meant you were even more exceptionally loaded than if you holidayed in the others. Kelly had mentioned that George Soros had a place here, and Bas had entertained her during their two-hour journey with the nefarious activities of the members of the golf club, where the membership fee alone was six hundred thousand dollars.
Their car pulled up, a sleek gunmetal-grey Lincoln, and after they’d stowed their bags in the boot and Bas had nipped off for another round of coffees to go, the driver took them to the house where the shoot was happening. Kelly’s own summer place, where the two of them would be staying, was over in Sagaponack. It was a two-bedroom condo she shared with a friend, but they were prepping at the Southampton house today, and wouldn’t get back there till late. Bas, the make-up teams, the model and the photographer, meanwhile, were all staying at a guest house in the centre of Southampton Village.
It didn’t take long to get there. The roads were quiet, the throng of summer trippers had long since departed back to the mainland, and the Hamptons International Film Festival, which drew out the summer season a little longer, had finished the weekend before.
The car turned through some electronic gates and swept up a long, gently curving drive. The house was rendered in beautifully aged cedar shingles which had weathered to a discreet silver-fox hue, and there were chunky off-white wooden casement windows and a wide, half-glazed front door. A covered verandah crept round the left-hand side of the first floor, but it was the two white-trimmed pointy gables – one central, the other positioned over the right-hand wing of the house – which most enchanted her, fluttering out at the ends like curled lashes.
‘Look at that,’ she whispered. It was like something Martha Stewart had fashioned from a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale.
‘Looking’s about all we can afford to do,’ Bas sighed, patting her knee as the car came to a stop. ‘That baby would set you back fourteen million dollars. In this market.’
Cassie raised her eyebrows as the driver opened their doors and they stepped out. Kelly came skipping down the steps to greet them, her welcome almost imperceptibly warmer for Bas than for Cassie.
‘You’re just in time. Luke was just asking how you’ve interpreted the brief.’ She leant in closer to the lanky hairdresser. ‘Remember, nothing too freaky, Bas. Selena’s got hair like a fricking kelpie, so don’t count on it working with you.’
‘Darling, the only time I do freaky is Halloween.’ He gasped and took Cassie’s arm excitedly. ‘You haven’t done Halloween States-style, have you?’
Cassie shook her head, no idea what he was on about.
‘You shall be my sacrificial virgin,’ he beamed, grabbing her hand.
They walked into the house together. It had a large square hall with rooms going off to each side and a cherry-wood staircase ascending across the back. To their left, in the sitting room, a skinny leg, visible from the knee down, was swinging over the arm of a sofa in time to the tinny acoustics of an iPod. Bas went up and squeezed it, making the owner jump and give a screech so high you’d think only dogs could hear it.
‘Bas, baby! I was hoping it would be you.’
Bas reached down and pulled back up by the wrist a languid beauty with dark-as-sloe eyes and waist-length raven hair. She sat on the arm of the sofa appraising Cassie, who, lacking the eagle-eyed scrutiny of Kelly lately, had put together an outfit that looked like it was having an identity crisis of its own.
‘Hi, I’m Cassie,’ she said with a friendly smile. ‘You must be Selena. I’ve heard so much about you.’ The Prada, Louis Vuitton and Burberry contracts, namely.
‘Mmm. And you must be Cassie,’ Selena smiled cruelly. ‘I’ve heard so much about you.’
‘Now, now, Selena,’ Bas said, cutting straight in. ‘If you bitch to my friend Cassie here, I’ll make your plaits too tight,’ he said, stroking her distinctly unkelpie-like hair.
Selena gave him a sweet smile, but retreated, sliding backwards off the arm on to the sofa again.
Great. Another flying start. Cassie looked over at Kelly nervously, but Kelly was looking straight ahead, a determinedly impervious smile stuck to her face. ‘Drink, anyone?’ she asked, turning on her heel and heading towards the kitchen. Bas and Cassie shot each other a look before following after her.
Kelly was grabbing a bottle of wine from the fridge.
‘Who else are we waiting for?’ Cassie asked, fingering the glasses anxiously.
‘Only Molly. Luke’s already here. He’s outside taking a recce in the grounds. The weather’s supposed to be bright tomorrow, and he’s trying to find somewhere that isn’t covered with yellow leaves.’
‘Oh, why’s that?’ Cassie asked, before being kicked in the ankle by Bas. ‘Ow! What?’
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Bas rolled his eyes.
‘Because this campaign is for the spring-summer season, Cassie,’ Kelly said wearily. ‘It won’t do to have autumn leaves everywhere in a March issue.’ She didn’t mention that the planned shoot in Antigua had had to be scrapped after only six orders came in for the collection after the show.
‘Yes, of course,’ Cassie replied quickly, stung by the boredom in her friend’s voice. She just wasn’t picking up quickly enough on the fast-forward nature of the fashion calendar. Trade fabric shows a year in advance, catwalk shows six months, magazine issues three to four months . . . When she’d tried to impress Kelly by conspicuously swotting up on the trends in the October issue of Vogue, Kelly had snatched it off her, telling her not to bother. Those trends were for civilians now, and therefore over in fashion terms.
‘When’s Molly getting here?’ Bas asked as Kelly poured five glasses. He had worked with Molly Kentish at many of the shows this season, and they were old friends.
‘On the next Jitney. She was waiting for some product to arrive before she left.’
‘And dare I ask . . . ?’
‘No,’ Kelly said abruptly. ‘Bebe’s not coming. It was Luke’s condition for doing the job. He’s going to email her the edit tomorrow night.’
Cassie frowned, still baffled as to what was going on with this job. Bebe had fired Hartford Communications on the day of the show, yet one call from the photographer and they were rehired, albeit only for the ad campaign. ‘Closure,’ Kelly had said soberly when she’d taken the call. ‘We worked on that collection together. I’m second only to Bebe herself when it comes to sharing her vision for the line.’
It still didn’t make sense, though. Why wouldn’t the photographer let the designer attend her own ad campaign? But she kept her puzzlement to herself. She’d only put her foot in it with Kelly again.
A door banged behind them and Cassie turned to see a man wiping his feet on the mat, a camera slung from a strap over his shoulder. His shag of light brown hair was wavy and brushed his collar, and his cheeks were flushed from the dusky chill that was beginning to settle outside. He seemed familiar somehow. The door opened again and a skinny redhead followed him in. She was carrying a light-bouncer under one arm and a tripod under the other.