Laura Lake and the Luxury press Trip

by Wendy Holden

  LAURA LAKE AND THE LUXURY PRESS TRIP

  Wendy Holden

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  About this Book

  About the Author

  Table of Contents

  www.headofzeus.com

  About Laura Lake and the Luxury Press Trip

  Laura Lake is the deputy editor of glossy mag Society. She’s been asked to write an exclusive on celebrity getaway Coconut Cay, a private paradise belonging to billionaire businessman James Redmond.

  When a couple of pompous journalists turn up unexpectedly, scuppering Laura’s chances of an exclusive, she decides to enjoy the glittering sea and golden Caribbean sands instead.

  But Laura soon discovers that the hi-tech, haute luxe, seven-star comfort of Coconut Cay hides some dark secrets. And she’s determined to get the scoop before her rivals...

  Contents

  Welcome Page

  About Laura Lake and the Luxury Press Trip

  Laura Lake and the Luxury Press Trip

  London, a month later

  About Wendy Holden

  About Laura Lake Series

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  Copyright

  ‘The layered shag is making a comeback...’

  Laura Lake, deputy editor of Society magazine, was frowning at her computer screen. She was trying to salvage an interview with a big celebrity. An inexperienced writer had made an absolute hash of it and Laura’s ‘recast’ of the piece was not made easier with the noise from the nearby beauty desk.

  ‘...and right now it’s all about faux sun-scorched cheeks.’

  Serafina, the beauty editor, was briefing the fashion team, interchangeable blonde sisters Raisy and Daisy, for a shoot taking place that afternoon.

  Raisy pushed a green-neon fingernail thoughtfully into her pointed chin. ‘But is that going to work with sideless knickers?’

  Serafina’s eyes widened within twin rings of gold mascara. ‘Sideless...?’

  Suppressing a snort, Laura stopped eavesdropping and returned to the job in hand. The heat was on; the deadline had been two days ago and the piece was just in. Tracking it down had involved Laura ringing the writer’s mother, sister and boyfriend before the author herself was discovered in a hair salon having her tresses tended by the tress-tenderer-in-chief to the Duchess of Cambridge.

  And had it all been worth it? Had the completed interview with Annabel Clapham, famous footballer’s wife turned fashion designer, fulfilled the terms of the brief Laura had explained very carefully to the writer in person before following up with a long email? The interview, she had emphasised, not only had to read well, it had to contain some nugget of information that had never been reported before.

  A tall order, this, as Annabel Clapham’s every move was reported on a daily basis. There was practically nothing the public didn’t know about her, or thought they didn’t know. But part of Annabel’s genius for self-promotion was fostering the illusion she was showing everything, while actually revealing very little. Had she revealed anything now?

  The short answer to that was no. Laura had been through the piece with a fine-toothed comb and there was only one conclusion to draw. Annabel Clapham had revealed even less than usual. As well as being spectacularly late, the interview was possibly the least probing in the entire history of journalism. It was a masterpiece of cliché-ridden insincerity.

  ‘I’ve worked really hard,’ Annabel tells me with a dazzling smile. ‘I don’t believe in luck. The harder you work, the luckier you get, right?’

  Had she done this piece, Laura thought, she would have probed into the mystery of who really designed the clothes Annabel Clapham claimed to. But this useless writer parroted whatever she was told. Another opportunity missed because Carinthia wanted to court the aristocracy!

  Carinthia Gold, Society’s mercurial editor and Laura’s boss, was forever hiring titled staff in the belief that their address books would be useful for the magazine – which they might have been if they ever opened them. Instead Laura had to deal with a succession of drawling debs who, despite being dead from the neck up and lacking the first idea about journalism, still got the plum commissions.

  ‘What could be more perfect?’ Carinthia had enthused of this latest interview. ‘The Two Annabels! Lady Annabel Herringbone-Twystleton-Legge interviewing Annabel Clapham!’

  ‘It might not be perfect,’ Laura cautioned. ‘Lady Annabel Herringbone-Twystleton-Legge has never written an article before.’

  Carinthia waved this objection airily away. ‘Anyway, Laura, you’re such a brilliant editor you’ll soon bash it into shape.’

  As compliments went, it was distinctly backhanded. And could she bash Lady Annabel’s toadying effort into shape, anyway? Could anyone?

  ‘The only person I’m constantly trying to prove anything to is myself,’ the famous designer tells me. ‘I’m enjoying the journey. But believe me, I feel the pressure. Maybe my ambition should be to keep my ambition in check.’

  Pass the sick bucket, Laura thought, rising to her feet. This really was too much. Or, rather, not enough. She was going to see the editor.

  ‘A sequinned midiskirt with a sage chiffon pussy bow blouse,’ Daisy was saying as Laura strode past the huddle at the beauty desk. ‘It’s all about placement and texture.’

  Serafina was frowning as if about to split the atom or discover the double helix. ‘I’m thinking a slick of alabaster liner along the lower inner lid. A defiant aesthetic.’

  Laura headed defiantly to Carinthia’s corner office. It was in Do Not Disturb mode. On the insides of the glass panels, the slats of the black Venetian blinds were drawn tight shut. When Laura first started at Society she assumed this meant Carinthia was making an important call, or thinking hard. But now she knew she was probably swigging Chablis from her mini fridge.

  Carinthia’s secretary Demelza was at her desk outside the door, playing with the pink neon feather at the end of her squaw-like plait. ‘Her Maj is on the phone,’ she said. ‘A PR’s trying to persuade her to go on a press trip to the Caribbean.’

  Talk about pushing at an open door, Laura thought. Carinthia spent six months a year lounging by horizon pools and calling it work. While she, the magazine’s number two, never got to go anywhere. She usually felt grateful to have landed her dream job, but it was hard when she was stuck in the office till midnight while the fashion and beauty departments were always heading off to Italian designers’ palazzos or scent producers’ Cote d’Azur villas. The interiors editor only last week had been on a luxury trip to Siberia to investigate a source of the newly fashionable fur lampshade. But for the deputy editor there were zero treats. Unless you counted the small plastic-handled knife she had once got as part of a British Apples promotion.

  ‘She’s off now.’ Demelza glanced at the lights on her phone. ‘I’d go in before she’s offered something else.’

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ Carinthia said testily, glancing up from her glass desk as if distracted from matters of world importance. Her gaze raked Laura up and down, taking in every detail of the tight dark jeans, fitted navy shirt and Chelsea boots which comprised Laura’s invariable uniform. Others flinched before Carinthia’s sartorial scrutiny, but not Laura. She knew what suited her rangy figure and she stuck to it. Her make-up routine was similarly minimal – mascara and a slick of red lipstick – and her black hair, long and blunt-cut by her own kitchen scissors when the fringe got too unruly – behaved best when not washed too often. You got more volume that way – a trick she had learnt from her French grandmother.

  She waved her print-out. ‘This is terrible. Lady Annabel can’t write, I’m afraid.’ Laura had decided not to beat about the b
ush. You had to get your strike in first with Carinthia.

  She fully expected what came next: The Gaze – the famous, freezing nine-yard stare that put the fear of God not only into Carinthia’s staff but much of the British Magazine Company’s high command. Laura stared back, unblinking. She was not afraid of The Gaze. Or of Carinthia.

  ‘Lady Annabel has other talents,’ the editor said stiffly. ‘She’s the daughter of the Earl of Cheeseborough, can roll her tongue into a figure of eight and tends to walk off with hotel slippers. When in London you’ll find her at the Groucho with a Swede to her left, an Austrian to her right and a vodka soda in her hand.’

  Laura recognised Lady Annabel’s entry in Society magazine’s annual list of ‘Top Most Invited Titled Totty’. But none of the talents listed, if talents indeed they were, seemed relevant to the current situation.

  She shook the print-out again. ‘It’s hopeless. I’m not sure I can do anything with it.’

  Carinthia’s combative expression became all hurt surprise. ‘But Laura! You’re a genius at rewrites.’

  The knowledge that the editor had just accepted yet another week of free exotic luxury stiffened Laura’s resolve, as did the Soho rain hurling itself against the office’s large windows. ‘This is unrewriteable.’

  Carinthia chose to ignore this. ‘You’re marvellous at them!’ she continued brightly. ‘Simply fabulous! Amazing! No-one does them like you.’

  Flattery will get you nowhere Laura thought. Suddenly weary, she plonked herself down on the yellow sofa opposite the editor’s desk. It seemed only yesterday when, as an unpaid intern so poor she had to live secretly in the fashion cupboard, she had gazed in awe at this piece of furniture and the section editors who had the right to sit there. She had come a long way since then. But that didn’t mean she should be taken for granted. She eyed Carinthia determinedly. ‘Wouldn’t it have been better to get me to write it in the first place?’

  She watched her boss’s long thin pale fingers, glittering with rings, playing with an asymmetric glass object on her desk. It was Laura’s award for ‘Scoop of the Year’, won for the story of the Hipster Weddings. While Carinthia’s appropriation of it was irritating, the sight of the trophy gave Laura courage. She was a proper journalist. There was more to her than rewriting articles for useless aristocrats. She took a deep breath.

  ‘I seem to spend rather a lot of time working on other people’s pieces these days. It’s not really what I was expecting.’

  Still Carinthia said nothing. Her wandering fingers moved to another asymmetric glass object whose gilt base read ‘Special Award For Services To Luxury Tourism’. This actually was Carinthia’s own prize, won the previous year for being the glossy magazine editor who took more press trips than any other. A heightened sense of grievance now fused with Laura’s professional pride.

  ‘And to be honest with you, Carinthia, I’m not sure how much longer I’m prepared to put up with it.’

  As soon as she had said the words Laura regretted them. She had meant only to transmit her frustration, not threaten to resign. She enjoyed working on Society, having tried so long and fought so hard to get the job in the first place. The Hipster Weddings had almost finished her off, but she had emerged victorious having seen off enemies including her ghastly rival Clemency Makepeace. And having made a lifelong friend in Lulu, the ditzy but good-natured international socialite whose Kensington mansion had Louis Vuitton wallpaper and ‘Stella McCarpet’ floorcoverings. Only last week Lulu had been proudly showing Laura her newly-installed Chanel fire extinguishers – dusky pink with the logo in black.

  However, it was too late to take the words back. Carinthia was staring at her, her thin face, for once, expressing genuine emotion. ‘You’re resigning?’

  Laura decided to take a leaf out of her boss’s book and not comment.

  ‘But you can’t!’ the editor gasped, rocking violently back and forth on a large pink plastic Space Hopper. This was the latest treatment for Carinthia’s vertebrus editrix, or ‘Editor’s Spine’, an occupational malady caused by years of heaving oversized designer totes about the place.

  The Space Hopper had been provided at vast expense by Boot Camp Baz, Carinthia’s vastly expensive transgender personal trainer and a man – well these days. anyway – so sought after there were waiting lists to be on his waiting list. Laura could only imagine the thousands that would have been saved by going directly to Toys R Us.

  She remained silent. But the conversation was going in the right direction. Carinthia was desperately clasping the Space Hopper’s pink horns as she lurched fore and aft in consternation. ‘You’re tired!’ she exclaimed. ‘You need a rest! How long has it been since your last holiday?’

  Laura was surprised at her boss’s evident panic. Given her generally offhand manner, it was unexpected that Carinthia so valued her. On the other hand, the editor was not stupid. She must be aware of the fact that Laura pretty much did her job for her.

  ‘Look!’ Carinthia instructed, Space-Hopping up and down agitatedly. ‘We don’t want to make any hasty decisions now, do we?’

  ‘Don’t we?’ Laura wondered at what stage Carinthia would actually fall off.

  The editor’s eyes, skittering wildly round the office as if for inspiration, now brushed over her desk and the vial of Radial Bee Venom which stood beside her thick-leaved Smythson notepad, each creamy page embossed with the words ‘From The Desk Of Carinthia Gold’.

  For a second Laura wondered if Carinthia was going to hand the small bottle over. Her boss was devoted to the venom, extracted from the stings of queen bees and with the power, she claimed, to turn back her neck clock by twenty years. Laura had noticed that Carinthia had stopped using a bulldog clip to gather the saggy bits together at the back. It had once been her favourite trick for official photographs.

  Then she saw that the editor was reading something on her pad. Laura guessed that these were the notes Carinthia had just scrawled with her gleaming black Mont Blanc fountain pen during the phone call to the Caribbean-freebie-offering PR. After some moments of confusion – Carinthia routinely couldn’t read her own handwriting but was outraged if no-one else could – Laura saw the scrunched editorial forehead smooth out.

  ‘Ever been to Coconut Cay?’ Carinthia asked casually.

  Laura blinked. What sort of a stupid question was that? Of course she’d never been to Coconut Cay; it was the famously private paradise of famous billionaire businessman James Redmond. She shook her long dark hair in a ‘no’.

  ‘Want to go?’

  Laura’s impatience increased. Go? Her? How was that going to happen? Redmond only invited A-list celebrities, with the occasional world leader thrown in. Quite literally thrown into the pool; the vibe was famously relaxed and jokey. Barack Obama had once windsurfed round the island dressed as a giant chicken. ‘Don’t you have to be famous? Or an ex-president?’

  Carinthia smiled one of her wintry smiles. ‘They’re opening a new hotel for very rich civilians.’ Non-celebrities, Laura translated as her boss detached the top piece of thick laid paper from her pad and waved it.

  ‘They want Society to do the first piece on it. Should be quite something. Redmond’s ploughed millions into it. Hi-tech haute luxe. Seven-star comfort setting stratospheric new standards. First-class BA to Barbados, transfer by PJ.’

  Laura felt a surge of excitement. She had never been on a private jet before.

  Laura leant forward and plucked the paper from her boss’s pale thin fingers before she could change her mind. ‘Thanks. Are these the PR’s details? I’ll call her now.’

  *

  The PR, Georgia, seemed strangely put out when Laura contacted her. ‘But Carinthia Gold was invited,’ she kept saying. ‘She’s the editor.’

  ‘Yes, and I’m the deputy,’ Laura returned firmly. ‘It’s not as if we’re sending the intern from the fashion cupboard.’ Georgia didn’t know how lucky she was. Carinthia was so spoilt she’d find nothing but fault.

 
She decided to concentrate on the positives and entered Coconut Cay Hotel into her search engine. Nothing came up. Presumably it was too exclusive to be seen on the common old internet. And of course, no-one had written about it yet. Now Georgia had finally given in, she was going to be the first!

  There was plenty of material about the island’s larger-than-life owner, however. Handsome in a Viking sort of way and with a vigour belying his sixty-plus years, James Redmond was a billionaire businessman in the Richard Branson mould.

  Laura read about him with interest. He seemingly stopped at nothing to promote both himself and his businesses, which ranged from health clubs and hospitals via banks to restaurants and railways. Here he was, waving from the cab of one of his trains. Here he was again, presenting a giant cheque from one of his banks. Here he was in a balloon, or climbing Everest, or jet-skiing, or windsurfing.

  And here he was, picking up yet another woman. In the sense of physically elevating them for a photo opportunity. It seemed to be his trademark greeting; there were countless shots of him heaving females into the air. Famous actresses and models usually but sometimes more serious figures. In one image, at an international conference, Angela Merkel seemed to have skipped aside just in time and was glaring at him warningly. But Theresa May had been less fortunate and was clinging desperately to her skirt as James Redmond swung her upwards, her kitten heels dangling from her stockinged toes. Redmond seemed either oblivious to or unconcerned by the plight of his victims. In all pictures he grinned relentlessly at the camera with his enormous, persuasive, white square teeth. Laura wasn’t sure how pleasant he was.

  There was also a lot about a recent wedding in the family. The union of Merlin Redmond, the heir to the dynasty, with an actress called Willow Bailey didn’t ring a bell with Laura, even so. It had taken place the year before, when she was still living in Paris, where non-French celebrities were of zero interest.