Tasmina Perry 3-Book Collection: Daddy’s Girls, Gold Diggers, Original Sin

I’d been fired four times by the time I was your age. Then I thought, bugger them. I’ll do it my own way.

Still wrapped in the eiderdown, she leaned out of the bed to drag her big Mulberry bag onto the mattress. Inside was a black plastic folder filled with notes, photographs from fashion shoots, and rough magazine layouts. She flipped it open and pulled out a mocked-up cover which featured a beautiful image of Serena lying in a hammock. The elegant masthead read ‘Sand’. She smiled. This was her labour of love. It had been eighteen months ago, at Alliance Magazines’ summer drinks party, that she’d been approached by the then managing director with an idea. Cecil Bradley, William Walton’s predecessor, could not have been more different from the boardroom shark. A cuddly, affable man of sixty, Bradley had been impressed by Cate’s quiet ascent through the ranks of the company, her experience in New York and her reputation as a creative editorial force. He’d cornered her over a Pimms in the hot August sunshine and asked her to come up with a concept to expand their existing women’s magazine division. The project wasn’t allowed to interfere with work, he’d warned her with a wink, but there was a board meeting in October and, if she could get a proposal ready by then, he would see if he could move it into development.

Cate was ecstatic. This was her dream. For two months she spent night after night poring over UK and international magazines, looking for the gap in the market, tearing out images that captured her imagination, listing names of photographers she knew would work for her. And celebrities who, through Serena, she knew would agree to appear. From market research commissioned for Class, she knew that travel and style were big growth areas in the upmarket magazine sector. Sand would create a delicious lifestyle for cash-rich, time-poor couples to embrace. Less fashion than Vogue, more lifestyle than Condé Nast Traveller, Sand would be crammed with exotic holidays, fashionable shopping breaks, fantastic clothes and dreamy interiors, all with a dash of class and glamour from a bygone age.

The thought of all that sunshine was making Cate feel cold. She plugged in a tiny electric fan heater in the corner of the room, which chugged out a little stream of warm air. She lit another candle for more light, drained her boozy cocoa, and spread all the images over the bedspread, stroking the dummy layouts that her art-editor friend, Carol Shelley, had designed in return for a Chanel bag. They were beautiful, graphic, impressive. And such a waste.

Cate thought back to when she’d been told, two weeks before the October deadline, that there had been a management buyout of the company. Cecil Bradley and the older members of the executive were paid off into retirement, and in came the hotshot marketing and money men like Walton. An email went round to say that all launch activity was to be temporarily halted in favour of ‘rationalizing and restructuring’ the company.

Cate had been gutted. She’d briefly thought about taking Sand to another company, but then she’d been offered the Class editorship and she’d consigned her precious dummy to a box file under her bed. This afternoon she’d rescued it and made a list of which companies – Emap, Condé Nast, Time Warner – she might take it to. But still thinking about Philip Watchorn’s words: why couldn’t she try and launch it by herself? Jann Wenner had started Rolling Stone from his kitchen, likewise Tyler Brulé and his style magazine Wallpaper. It was certainly a more competitive climate these days, and the odds never favoured the little guy, but why couldn’t she give it a try?

She felt a tingling in her tummy. An enthusiastic planner, Cate pulled out a blank sheet of paper and, eyes straining in the dim light, started writing a ‘to do’ list: meetings to arrange, paper costs to research, advertising directors to talk to – not to mention the thorny issue of financial backing. She knew there was no point turning to her father. After forty-five minutes she was exhausted. She walked over to the windowsill to blow out the candles and stumbled back to her cosy canopy bed in the pitch black, feeling her way in the dark. It was something she was going to have to get used to.

6 (#ulink_80b36649-e218-5bb2-8d99-a15063d6fa6a)

The kitchen at Huntsford was the warmest room in the castle. Buried in its west wing, heat spewing out of the claret Aga and always smelling of freshly baked pies, it was a cosy sanctuary that everyone was drawn to. As a child and well into her teens, Serena would spend hours there, sitting at the big farmhouse table and stuffing her face with warm muffins when she should have been revising, or practising the piano, or tidying her room. Mrs Collins the cook should have sent her away or reported her to Oswald, but she was always such entertaining company, gossiping about school or making fun of her father, she didn’t have the heart. It was no surprise to the Huntsford staff that Serena had relied on her good looks and charm to make her way in life.

‘Here you are!’ Cate stood at the doorway in bare feet, holding a mug of coffee, and smiled to herself at the familiar scene. Dressed in an old pair of corduroy trousers and a tiny white cotton vest that stretched just far enough over her pert breasts, Serena had her feet curled up on the oak bench and was picking at a banana muffin, looking rather sorry for herself. She looked beautiful now rather than merely pretty, as she had done in her youth, thought Cate, but it still could have been a snapshot from ten, fifteen years ago.

‘Muffin?’ Serena’s voice was feeble and wobbly, her wide mouth downturned and sombre as she held out a conker-coloured cake in Cate’s direction. ‘Mrs Collins made me a batch but I can’t eat a thing. I just feel sick to my stomach.’

‘Hungover, perhaps?’ asked Cate with a smile. ‘Bananas, a diet coke and a brisk walk always do the trick for me.’

Serena looked at her incredulously. ‘What do you mean, “hungover”? I am sick with misery. In case you weren’t paying any attention last night, my relationship has unravelled.’

Cate was used to treading on eggshells around her sister – the slightest thing could easily set off a diva hissy fit, and it was clear that today she had to be extra careful. She went over to give her sister a hug; she felt thin and delicate in Cate’s arms. Her hair, pulled back into a ponytail, smelt fresh, but the red eyes from last night’s performance remained.

‘I still think we should take that walk. How about it?’

‘I have to wait for my PA to come over,’ sighed Serena. ‘I’ve got nothing suitable to wear, unless you call a kaftan suitable for a bloody miserable February.’

‘Well, borrow something of mine,’ said Cate.

Serena let out a snort. ‘I’m a size eight.’

They turned their heads as Venetia strolled into the kitchen, wearing a pair of Katharine Hepburn trousers and a slim-fitting olive cashmere polo neck, with a stack of newspapers under her arm and a frown on her face.

‘You’d better take a look at this.’ She threw the papers onto the tabletop and they spread out in a fan. Serena’s name was on every front page.

‘What the hell?’ Serena’s face went deathly pale as she saw images of Tom jumping off Roman’s dahabeah splashed across the front page of every tabloid.

‘Tom In The Drink – Serena Splits’, read one. ‘Nile Nookie Sends Serena Spare’, screamed another.

‘The papers were going to find out sooner or later,’ said Venetia, trying to strike a positive tone.

‘This is precisely what I pay a publicist thousands of pounds a month to keep out,’ hissed Serena as she frantically rifled through the papers. ‘I am going to fire her arse as soon as I get back to London.’

She stopped dead in her tracks as she read the first spread in the Sun. It carried a picture of a heavy-breasted girl in a bikini pouting next to a superimposed shot of Tom.

‘Archer tried to pick me up.’ As she read out the words, Serena’s voice began to wobble. She spun round to face Cate, stabbing the newspaper with her finger so hard it made a hole.

‘Just who the fuck is this tart? Who?’ she screamed, finally bursting into tears.

‘Come on Sin,’ Cate offered, using her youngest sister’s oldest nickname. ‘She’s just some nobody after a fast buck,’ she continued, putting her arm around her sister’s heaving shoulders.

Serena looked up suddenly, stopping the tears as quickly as they had started. She looked at Cate hopefully. ‘This isn’t true though, is it? Tom would never cheat on me, would he?’

Cate looked over Serena’s shoulder to read the story, while passing her sister a mug of tea. ‘I’m sure it’s just some silly barmaid in his local pub,’ replied Cate reassuringly. ‘She probably mistook Tom giving her a tip for a come-on. It’s amazing how people’s memory can change once they’ve had a big Fleet Street cheque waved in front of their nose.’

Outside the big mullioned window they could hear the clip-clop of horses’ hooves in the kitchen yard. Cate unbolted the big oak kitchen door to see Camilla climbing off a big bay mare. She was dressed in a pair of cream jodhpurs and fitted navy hunting jacket.

‘If there’s coffee on the go, I’ll kill for it,’ she called to Cate. She took off her riding hat, her blonde hair tumbling onto her shoulders.

‘Watch your step,’ Cate whispered as she approached the door, ‘Serena’s about to kill someone herself. Her story’s broken in the papers.’

‘What’s the matter?’ Camilla strode purposefully into the kitchen where Serena now had her head in her palms. She looked up as her sister entered.

‘Camilla. Thank God. There must be something legal we can do about this,’ she moaned.

‘But it’s true, darling,’ interrupted Cate delicately. ‘You and Tom have split up.’

Serena rounded on her sister crossly.

‘Thank you for the recap.’

Camilla was speedily running her finger over the text in professional mode.

‘We can potentially get an injunction to stop other things appearing – but we’ll be lucky to catch the News of the World coming out tomorrow.’

‘Anyway,’ said Venetia, curling a lock of hair around her finger, ‘it’s not entirely negative. I think you come out of it quite well,’ she said, pointing to the Mirror’s lead story, headlined, ‘Fairy Tale Over’.

‘What fairy tale?’ spat Serena, flinging newspapers across the room. ‘Beauty and the Bloody Beast? How can you possibly think I have come out of this “quite well”? Quite well is a multimillion-dollar divorce settlement, not tabloid humiliation.’

Having managed twenty-six years of Serena’s tantrums Venetia knew the best thing was to quash it as soon as possible. ‘Come on, let’s all go and get some fresh air,’ she said firmly, clapping her hands and herding them outside like a party of nursery-school children. ‘This will be old news by next week.’

Reluctantly Serena pulled on a pair of gumboots, grabbed Mrs Collins’ old multicoloured poncho from the back of the chair and slung it over her shoulders as they walked out into the grounds. The castle faded slowly from view as they walked further and further, the windows of the house glowing like a pumpkin against the dark drabness of the morning. From a distance Huntsford looked particularly grand, neo-Gothic with striking castellations, and the dramatic hills rising in the background cradled Huntsford like an emerald womb. Oswald had made some impressive renovations to the property since he inherited it; re-excavating the moat and adding a cricket pitch, a maze, a stunning light-filled orangery – and even a nuclear bunker in the eighties when everyone was feeling particularly jumpy about the Russkies. Even though it was looking a little ragged round the edges – the moat where Oswald used to take a daily swim was now full of moss, leaves and lichen – it still looked stunning at this time of day.

Serena was in no mood to sit back and enjoy the landscape. Her emotions were running riot. Anger. Hurt. And weaker forces she could hardly let herself admit – embarrassment and fear. It didn’t make sense, she thought, furiously stomping through the damp grass. Why would Tom be interested in some fat country girl, when he had her? She was sure Tom wouldn’t have been unfaithful, no matter what the papers said, but she was disappointed that she hadn’t found him waiting at the house when she’d returned from Egypt. After he’d finally been fished out of the Nile, Tom and Serena had had a prickly conversation about ‘spending some time apart’. Tom was going to take the first flight out of Cairo, while Serena had gratefully accepted Michael’s offer of his Gulfstream.

As there’d been no hordes of paparazzi waiting for her at Northolt, the RAF base in West London used by many celebrities to land their private planes, Serena had supposed that their bust-up had gone undetected by the media. She’d been relieved. On home soil she was sure she and Tom could work things out amicably, make a few choice appearances at the Ivy, smiling and holding hands to dispel any rumours, and take things from there.

But so far there had been nothing. No tearful appearances from Tom, no midnight phone calls, no expensive ‘forgive me’ Paula Pryke flower arrangements. Not even a text message to see how she was coping. The selfish bastard.

Having never suffered the indignity of being dumped before now, she couldn’t understand how their relationship had unravelled so fast, much less why Tom would want to end it so suddenly. What scared her most was what else it might be the end of – the best beds by the pool at the Eden Roc, the best table at the Cipriani, the invites to the couture shows, yacht parties, the Oscars. She felt nauseous thinking about it.

‘The worst thing,’ said Serena, getting suddenly aggravated and spinning round to face her sisters, ‘the very worst thing is that I’m in New York in a few weeks. Vanity Fair is hosting a party to celebrate my new film while I’m doing the East Coast junket. How can I turn up alone? I mean, Graydon isn’t even single any more.’

Cate and Venetia looked at each other cynically, looping an arm each through Serena’s as they walked along the long, dew-sodden grass as it sloped down towards the lake and the boathouse.