Page 73 of Guilty Pleasures

‘Me?’ said Tom inhaling on his cigarette.

‘Johnny said you might be up for it. Plus, he said you’d be perfect. You know everyone, you can sort out the music. We need someone who can talk the patter, know what I mean?’

Tom nodded, liking the sound of it.

‘Well, I’ve done a bit of bar work before, but I haven’t got any money to put in.’

Jamie patted him on the shoulder.

‘Don’t worry about the money. We’ve got that sorted.’

Of course you have, thought Tom. Jamie was part of Johnny’s West London moneyed crowd. His family were Old Money and titled to boot.

‘Obviously you’ll get a smaller cut than the rest of us but so long as you make it work for us, I reckon you’ll clear fifty grand for the summer.’

‘Fifty gees. That sounds like it might be worth it.’ Tom had to stop himself doing a cartwheel. Fifty fucking thousand! Where else was he going to make that sort of money, let alone running his own bar in Ibiza?

Jamie’s mobile was ringing angrily.

‘Hey, have a think about it, eh?’ he said, picking up the call. ‘Johnny has my number.’

‘Tom, get over here!’ hissed a voice to their left. They both looked to see Julia, her face like thunder, and Jamie smirked and rolled his eyes.

‘TOM! I need to speak to you,’ shouted Julia angrily.

Tom shrugged his shoulders sheepishly and made the ‘I’ll call you’ sign to Jamie. Ibiza. It was a lifeboat. It was time to get a life, get out of the country and do it quickly. Balearics, here I come.

22

Cassandra pushed back in her chair and r

ubbed her tired eyes. She had just spent the last twenty minutes in front of her computer screen poring over the week’s sales figures. Thursday afternoons were either heaven or hell for Cassandra. When they had good sales she felt on top of the world, but today she felt sick to the pit of her flat stomach. Rive’s June cover had been the worst-selling issue of the last twelve months. Sitting halfway through the fashion season, June was never a strong-selling issue for fashion magazines, which was why publishers often propped it up with holiday-friendly freebies taped to the cover – free flip-flops and make-up bags, the sort of tat Cassandra despised with a passion. But even taking the giveaways into consideration, Rive had done poorly. Cassandra reached up to the Scandinavian blonde wood shelf where all the recent issues were lined up and pulled down the June edition. She looked the cover over critically. The cover-lines were good, the features inside strong and the fashion shoots were some of the best they’d done in years. Which only left the choice of cover-star: Ludvana, the 17-year-old Eastern European beauty. Ludvana was fashion’s newest superstar, six foot two, with straight ice-blonde hair falling to her waist and she had just landed campaigns with Gucci to Victoria’s Secret. Rive had hired Patrick Demarchelier to shoot Ludvana as Lady Godiva riding through the streets of Manhattan on a horse. The shoot had cost them $100,000, not to mention weeks of wrangling with New York’s City Hall to get permission to stop traffic and block streets – and for what? Sales figures were down 20 per cent on the Gwyneth Paltrow cover the month before. Cassandra had agreed to Ludvana against her better judgement and evidently, she had been correct. While Ludvana had made the right statement to the fashion industry, she was so hot, so new, that half Rive’s readership wouldn’t even know who she was. It had been a classic case of not seeing the wood for the trees. The success of Rive was down to their breadth of readership, not just St Martin’s fashion students or chic, urban 20-somethings desperate to read about the latest trends. Rive also had to appeal to the chic yummy-mummy holding onto her youth and the elegant 60-year-old with a closet full of vintage Halston. The Rive reader was anyone who wanted to aspire to the high fashion lifestyle of gloss, glamour and escapism the magazine served up month after month.

Cassandra sank back into her chair, biting her lip. To the outside world editing a fashion magazine was child’s play, all you had to do was look fantastic, go to three parties a night and then wait for all the hot designers to send you free handbags. But magazine publishing was a business just like any other, and at the end of the day, it was figures that counted and this one bad issue would drag down the rest of the year’s good sales, giving the impression of a mediocre year, when up until now, Rive had been doing very well.

‘Mum! Mum! Listen,’ said Ruby, bursting through the door without knocking.

‘Sweetie, I’m busy,’ said Cassandra sternly. ‘I thought Laura was taking you on the London Eye?’

‘We did that like, hours ago,’ said Ruby, flinging herself down on an Eames chair and spinning around on it like a carousel. ‘Anyway, I’ve just been in the art department. David Stern took a picture of me and turned it into a Rive cover. He’s just printing it off now so I can see it. Isn’t that cool?’

Cassandra sighed. Not for the first time, she doubted the wisdom of bringing Ruby to the office, but this time she didn’t have any choice. It was half-term, Julia was busy in the gallery and Ruby had complained so much about being left at school with all the girls whose parents were in the forces that Cassandra had relented. Monday had been spent taking tea at Claridge’s and shopping in Harvey Nichols, Tuesday afternoon Ruby had been taken to Hari’s salon in South Kensington for a facial. But by Wednesday Cassandra could no longer stay away from the office. She had a lunch scheduled with Aerin Lauder, who was always charming company but as her family’s company owned everything from Estée Lauder to Origins there was no way she could ask her to rearrange. So she had left Ruby alone in her Knightsbridge apartment, telling Gerald the concierge to check on her every hour. By the time Cassandra had arrived at her desk, there were already three increasingly frantic messages from Gerald, complaining that Ruby had set off the building’s fire alarm, having tried to make a cheese toastie by jamming all the ingredients into her Kitchen Aid toaster. There was nothing for it but to bring her into the office.

‘Ruby, please,’ sighed Cassandra as Ruby swung her feet up onto the table and knocked a vase of calla lilies flying.

‘Sorry,’ said Ruby, looking anything but.

Cassandra glanced at her watch. It was already 6.30 p.m.

‘So are you ready to go out?’ she asked, getting up from behind her desk.

‘Go out where?’ asked Ruby with a suspicious frown.

Cassandra sighed. ‘Darling, we went through your itinerary this morning. Giles is taking you for burger and shakes at Automat and then to see that new Disney movie. I promised Disney’s chief exec I’d tell him what you thought. Then a car is taking you back to the apartment and Grandma is meeting you there as soon as she can get here from Oxford.’

‘But I don’t want to go,’ whined Ruby.

‘You like Giles,’ said Cassandra, who had no time for a teenage tantrum. ‘You had a great time yesterday when he took you to the Canaletto exhibition at the RA.’