Guilty Pleasures

by Tasmina Perry

  Stella felt her cheeks warm under Ralph Wintour’s gaze. She knew from the worn look on Emma’s face that this appointment with Sheldon Saks was life or death, in fact she had suspected the company’s finances were shaky when she had accepted the job. But she reasoned that if Emma was prepared to believe in her, she was prepared to return the favour. For once, Stella felt part of a team and she liked it. Besides this man was trying to frighten her, bully her into backing down. Well, what had her mother always told her to do in that situation? Fight back. Don’t be intimidated and use words as a weapon.

  ‘It’s true, I studied sculpture at the Slade,’ said Stella evenly. ‘But then Tom Ford studied architecture. He wasn’t a big-name designer before he got his chance at Gucci, but his designs transformed the company. Similarly, Miuccia Prada was a mime student before she inherited her family’s luggage company. You’ll also see from my CV that I have three years of experience building up a company from nothing into an award-winning multi-million dollar business.’

  Wintour made a note in a leather-bound book and Stella resisted the urge to wipe the palms of her hands on her dress. Emma looked over at Stella and smiled, but she felt exhausted and her hands were trembling. She carefully folded them into her lap.

  ‘You’ll be aware that we always do our homework at the bank before we lend large sums of money,’ said Wintour. ‘And I was most interested to read that you’d worked at Price Donahue. They have quite a reputation in the States.’

  Emma felt a tightness in her throat. Who had he been speaking to? Daniel Davies? Mark?

  ‘Turns out you actually met my brother Kevin a few weeks ago,’ said Wintour, the hint of a smile on his lips. ‘He’s the CFO for Frost Industries. I hear PJ threw one of his legendary business brunches?’

  Emma’s heart flipped over, suddenly remembering Mark’s story about her bursting into song. He was joking – wasn’t he?

  ‘Kevin said you impressed those old buzzards in Vermont, said you had one hell of a business brain. And d’you know? He actually bet me ten dollars that you’d have paid off the loan in full in three years.’

  Wintour chuckled and spread his hands.

  ‘Who am I to turn down a wager with my brother?’

  For a moment Emma couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  ‘So you’ll lend us the money?’

  Wintour nodded.

  ‘I need to look through the facts and figures, see how it all stacks up. But I dare say we might be in business.’

  To everyone’s surprise, Stella jumped out of her chair, whooping. ‘You rock, Mr Wintour,’ she cried and before anyone could stop her, she leant over the desk and kissed him on the lips.

  ‘Well, thank you very much,’ said Wintour looking pleasantly flustered. ‘Whoever said you English girls were reserved, obviously never met one.’

  16

  Unlike some companies, where the employees dreaded work-bonding and brainstorming sessions, the Rive international conference was always something the editors looked forward to. Held every year in April, the event saw the editors of all twelve editions of the magazine from around the globe, along with selected publishing directors, jetting off first class to a luxury resort, usually in the Caribbean. Once settled in their five-star accommodation and given free run of the spa facilities, they were then expected to exchange ideas and share problems, subsequently returning home brimming with ideas and fired with new-found enthusiasm. In reality, the Rive conference was three days of tanning, bitching and gossip, with each editor jostling to score points from each other and undermine their rivals in front of the directors. As a bonding session, it was a hopeless cause as each editor was in constant competition: for the same cover stars, the same advertisers and even in some cases, the same readers. So while on the surface the event appeared to be a dozen impossibly glamorous women air-kissing and exchanging endless compliments about each other’s hair and swimsuits, beneath the surface it was a frenzy of political manoeuvring and back-stabbing. Cassandra always loved every minute of it.

  This year’s conference was being held at the Paradise Sands resort in the Bahamas’ stunning Harbour Island, two hundred miles east of Miami. The hotel building itself was like a grand ivory plantation house from colonial times, while dotted around the lush grounds between the palm trees and frangipani bushes were twenty cottages painted in ice-cream colours, all commandeered by Alliance for the duration. The beach, metres away from each front door, was a perfect stretch of pale pink sand the colour of a ballet slipper, the clear, warm, Gulf stream waters lapping against it in a hypnotic rhythm.

  From her lounger by the infinity pool, Cassandra could see Silvia Totti, Rive’s Italian editor, in a black maillot, getting an early start to her tan, the French editor Françoise Caron was scrolling through her Blackberry and sipping a chai latte, while the Russian and Brazilian editors were still picking at breakfast on the terrace. Cassandra, meanwhile, was hard at work. She had spent the last hour reading the first twenty thousand words of Cassandra Grand: On Style which Giles had delivered to her before she left for the airport. It wasn’t bad at all. Considering he’d had only a week to do it, Giles had managed to convert all her ideas into a smart, stylish read, peppered with just the right amount of autobiographical detail. I must get him a little something when I get back, she thought smiling. Cartier, perhaps. Noting that it was 9.40 – the first session was due to start at 10.00 – Cassandra put down the manuscript and finished off her freshly pressed watermelon juice.

  ‘Didn’t you know this is an unofficial editor’s holiday?’ said a voice. Cassandra looked up and saw Rive’s US editor Glenda McMahon. She was dressed in her Manhattan uniform of a charcoal shift dress and leopard print neckscarf, the only concession to the fact that she was on Harbour Island and not Manhattan Island was that she had swapped her Manolo heels for white leather thong sandals.

  ‘I never like to bring too much work on these things,’ said Cassandra, quickly zipping up her tote. ‘But I wanted to read a hard copy of all the editorial for the July issue.’

  Glenda raised an eyebrow to denote her disdain for any kind of work in such surroundings, but secretly, she was impressed.

  ‘So, how’s everything in New York?’ Cassandra asked her former boss.

  ‘Absolutely wonderful,’ purred Glenda. ‘We’re doing so well this year, I can’t tell you.’

  Cassandra smiled to herself. She’d been taught a few lessons in self-promotion from Glenda over the years simply by observing her. She was always positive and bullish to her public; her house could burn down and she would spin it as a ‘decoration opportunity’ and feature firemen’s helmets as next month’s ‘must have’. And you had to hand it to her, the strategy had worked. Glenda McMahon was not the most beautiful or intelligent woman in New York, but through sheer force of will, she had risen to the very top of Manhattan’s society tree. Married to one of the top investment bankers in America, together they were one of New York’s glossiest power couples and divided their time between a townhouse on the Upper East Side and an estate in Bedford, New York.

  However, as Glenda’s former number two at US Rive, Cassandra had been privy to all her editor-in-chief’s secrets; the speech coach employed to eliminate her Brooklyn accent, the image consultants hired to transform her into a fashion power-player. There were the expensive Japanese hair treatments which transformed her from mousey fuzz to sleek blonde bob and the coloured contact lenses which made her eyes feline and piercing. And then there were the skin laser sessions and vitamin shots, face-lifts, liposuction, tennis lessons, ski lessons, tutoring in French and Italian. Whatever Glenda had, thought Cassandra admiringly, no one could deny she had worked damn hard for it.

  The two women walked from the pool through the shade of the palm trees around to Paradise Sands’ conference room on the far side of the house. A long room with white clapboard walls and pale wooden floorboards, the whole eastern side of the room had concertina shutters which could be pushed back to reveal th
e glinting turquoise waters and allow the smell of the frangipani to waft in on the breeze. Glenda and Cassandra took their seats around a long table with the ten other editors and assorted directors, and at ten o’clock sharp a small man entered and sat at the head of the table. With his five-foot-six frame and clipped white hair, Isaac Grey looked rather timid, but in his case first impressions were far from the truth. As Chief Executive of Alliance Publications and majority shareholder of the NYSE-listed company, Isaac was a media powerhouse with a fearsome reputation. Having inherited the Alliance business from his father at the age of 27, he had spent the last forty years strengthening, launching and acquiring titles, until his company now rivalled Condé Nast as the most prestigious publishing house in the world. The floatation of Alliance five years ago had made him a billionaire and he still owned 51 per cent of the business.

  ‘Some of you might think this is an unofficial holiday. It is not,’ he began, pouring himself a glass of iced tea and looking around the table. Cassandra and Glenda exchanged a small smile.

  ‘Yes, the annual Rive conference is meant to be fun, but it’s also a valuable chance to exercise our considerable collective brainpower and confront the challenges of the year ahead. This year, as I’m sure you all know, we have a specific challenge coming our way and that’s going to be the focus of today’s forum. I want to hear brilliant ideas from everybody here,’ he said with meaning.

  Isaac then formally introduced the conference attendees for the benefit of international colleagues who had not attended the previous year. There were welcomes to the recently appointed South African Editor Charlize Marten, the editor and publishing director of the soon-to-be launched Indian edition and finally Jason Tostvig.

  Cassandra could feel herself smarting just looking at Toxic. On the flight over from Heathrow, she’d been forced to sit next to him and listen to his inane chatter about his many professional triumphs and sexual conquests. He was particularly excited about the trip as Isaac Grey had called him personally – a word Jason emphasized, presumably to impress Cassandra – to invite him along. In the end, Cassandra had been forced to feign fatigue in order to shut him up. Pretending to be asleep, she could still hear him boasting to the flight attendants.

  ‘This morning’s session we are going to be considering the threat of Project Diamond, the AtlanticCorp magazine launching in the US in September,’ continued Isaac, sounding more like a general addressing his troops than a publisher. ‘Here’s what we know: it’s weekly and they are aggressively targeting our advertisers, so we can assume they will be stepping on our toes editorially. We also know they are supporting the new launch by advertising in their newspapers and on their cable channels, which makes them very dangerous. So I need your best thoughts on this one, people.’

  ‘But I heard they were about to fire their editor,’ interjected Glenda with the confidence of the most senior editor in the room. Isaac nodded – it clearly wasn’t news to him. ‘Which suggests they are having a few teething problems, but we have to assume that this is merely a blip. A company like AtlanticCorp is not going to launch anything which is not the best it can be,’ he looked at Glenda meaningfully. ‘It would be a fool who doesn’t consider them a threat.’

  Isaac then handed over to Greg Barbera who instructed the group that he wanted each of them to think of how their edition would cope with the threat of a Project Diamond launch in their territory.

  ‘Go grab a fruit juice,’ he said, ‘find yourself a shady corner and go and “imagineer”! Brainstorm in pairs if you like, but I want you to present individually. We want to hear what you think.’

  Cassandra was the first to leave the conference room. She walked through the early morning sun to her cottage where she freshened up and retrieved some notes she had brought with her. By the time she emerged ten minutes later, the grounds were dotted with Rive employees, an editor in the hammock under a palm tree, another under a thatched parasol on the pink sands. A couple of editors were working together but most seemed to be alone. That figures, she thought, as they would all be aware that this was less about safeguarding Rive’s position and more about showcasing their own talent.

  ‘Jason,’ she smiled. Cassandra’s shadow fell across Tostvig’s face and he squinted up at her from his sun-lounger. He had taken off his shirt and Cassandra couldn’t help noticing he had a nice body. Lean and firm, with a rippled six-pack that was the distinct bronzed colour of St Tropez self-tan. Cassandra snapped her eyes away, angry with herself that she was becoming a little aroused. A waiter came over and put a beer on the table next to Jason’s lounger.

  ‘Working hard?’ she asked, pointing at the blank pad next to the glass.

  ‘Imagineering,’ said Jason sarcastically, shielding his eyes.

  ‘Well, I expect this is where your newspaper experience is going to come into its own for once,’ said Cassandra tartly.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Jason, sitting up and putting on his sunglasses.

  ‘Oh, you know; newspapers are good at this sort of added-value thing. Free CDs, DVDs, collect the vouchers and get your own library of Danielle Steele books, that sort of thing. Get the right item and you’ve got a guaranteed sales boost. Isaac was desperate for us to get free flights a couple of years ago, but nothing ever came of it.’

  ‘Well, if you sit down and be a good girl I might tell you how we did it at the Herald.’

  ‘I don’t need your help, Jason,’ said Cassandra coldly.

  Tostvig smiled.

  ‘Suit yourself. Oh, by the way, why don’t you wear shorts more often in the office?’ he asked, looking her up and down.

  Cassandra knew she looked stunning in a pair of black cotton shorts and a white silk vest top with gold gladiator sandals weaving their way up her legs. For once she didn’t mind his eyes raking over her body.

  ‘I might, if you lend me your sunglasses for the next couple of hours.’

  Jason took them off and frowned at them.

  ‘What do you need them for?’

  ‘Nothing …’

  ‘Nothing you do, Cassandra, is for nothing.’

  ‘Ain’t it the truth,’ she smiled, whipping the shades from his hand and walking away.

  Fifty minutes later, Silvia Totti kicked off with her plan for freezing out Project Diamond.

  ‘Without the raw materials, this magazine will be nothing. If they cannot use the best photographers, the best models, no one will take them seriously and their fashion advertising will dry up,’ said the Italian editor with a half-smile. ‘With the right pressure applied in the right places, AtlanticCorp could find that all the supermodels are booked. Photographers too, stylists, make-up artists,’ she purred like some Machiavellian queen. For a second, the room nodded their approval at Silvia’s master-plan until Isaac pointed out that if everyone started playing dirty, AtlanticCorp also owned a movie studio and could put an embargo on numerous Hollywood stars ever appearing in Rive. Silvia sat down quickly.

  Sheri Ellison, the Australian editor, talked about budget cuts and producing less original material, even though the Australian issue already had a budget a third the size of the UK edition and used over 75 per cent of material from the US and UK editions. Glenda was nodding like some elder statesman. Like she understands budget cuts, thought Cassandra. As long as they didn’t affect her.

  Glenda’s vision was radical: she proposed to turn Rive into a weekly. Overrunning the allotted five-minute presentation slot by twenty minutes, her proposal was sweeping and convincing; she had clearly done her homework, throwing in projected sales figures and promising a 40 per cent increase in profit within five years. Cassandra wasn’t surprised she sounded more like a publisher than an editor. Glenda was a businesswoman first and foremost: that’s why she had survived in the industry for so long. There was a long and heated debate after her presentation about whether the industry could sustain multiple fashion weeklies but Isaac had looked impressed and had been making notes constantly throughout. Cassandra knew
she would have to produce something special to beat it.

  ‘I started this exercise by putting my old newspaper executive hat on,’ began Jason Tostvig, instantly captivating the largely female audience with the wattage of his broad white smile.

  ‘In the line of attack, Rive needs to offer more value for money. At the Herald we found that everybody – rich and poor – loves a freebie.’ He pulled a white linen laundry bag from under the table and tipped out the contents. Cassandra heard a couple of gasps from around the table and smiled when she saw Isaac’s face pale. Jason, however, carried on confidently, unaware of the reaction.

  ‘These are the sorts of covermounts which could run. Sunglasses, postcards, spa slippers,’ he said holding up some flimsy towelling flip-flops that were given out free by the pool. ‘The ladies love this sort of crap.’

  He carried on for the full five minutes, boasting about his contacts in Taiwan and how he was confident he could source Rive sarongs for thirty pence a unit. ‘And, Isaac, if you want a free flight offer, look no further. I can sort it out in a heartbeat.’

  As he sat down and poured himself a glass of iced tea, Tostvig didn’t seem to notice the silence in the room. Cassandra rose to her feet.

  ‘Well, while I think that Jason is well-meaning with his, ahem, supermarket sweep for the front cover, I believe that if we start acting like a company under siege, the advertising community will start believing it,’ she said. ‘Project Diamond is a weekly but they don’t intend to be direct competitors with Rive,’ stated Cassandra boldly. ‘The feel will be very middle market. You only have to look at their personnel: the features team is good but the fashion is very weak. I suspect they will struggle to get anyone decent to shoot for them and without the photographers, the model agencies will be nervous. No photographers and no models equals no fashion advertising.’