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

‘Damn you, man! Can’t you control him?’ he yelled at Finbar, who was struggling to stay in the saddle as the horse kicked out backwards, whinnying and rolling his eyes.

At that moment, Jennifer and Philip Watchorn arrived, along with Venetia trotting along beside them in her high heels. ‘Come on now, stop all this,’ said Philip Watchorn, seeming to address the horse as much as the two men.

Venetia went over to Fierce Temper and, with soft words and gentle hands, began to calm him down again. ‘You did wonderfully boy, didn’t you?’ she cooed, lovingly stroking his nose. ‘There are greater things to come for you, I’m sure.’ She looked up at Finbar and smiled at the jockey, who was just grateful to be in one piece.

‘Well, we’re not in the winner’s enclosure just yet,’ smiled Philip Watchorn, timidly putting out a hand to pat the gleaming rump of his horse, ‘but we soon will be, won’t we lad, eh Barry?’ He helped the old man to his feet and handed him his cane.

‘Now come on, everyone, let’s get this young man unsaddled. Then let’s all go for a glass of champagne. I think we deserve it.’

‘I still bloody can’t believe it,’ said Oswald once again as he settled back into the passenger seat of Philip Watchorn’s helicopter. They were preparing to go back to the heliport in Battersea. ‘I knew he’d get a race ban, that bloody jockey,’ he grumbled to himself.

‘Will you just stop it?’ laughed Jennifer Watchorn, patting him on the knee good-naturedly as she buckled his safety belt. ‘I think Fierce Temper is doing incredibly well, considering the majority of the horses belong to rich Arabs and come from the super-yards.’

‘That’s right,’ agreed Philip, ‘you know we weren’t getting into this particularly seriously. We’ve got one horse, not three hundred. We were supposed to be doing this for friendship, for the hobby, a bit of hospitality. Remember?’

The helicopter blades chopped into life and whirled into the air, leaving Newmarket behind; a tiny black dot in the sky as it made its journey south towards London. Oswald’s mood began to calm as they passed over the green belts of Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire towards the metropolis. Oswald was staying that night at his Cadogan Garden house rather than making the two-hour journey down to Huntsford. Epsom really is so much more convenient, he thought, shaking his head as he put his key into the royal-blue front door.

He walked in and flung his jacket over a Chippendale chair and stalked into the kitchen, breathing a sigh of relief that Gretchen, the forgetful Ukrainian housekeeper, had remembered he was coming and had filled the fridge accordingly. He helped himself to some big chunks of granary bread and a thick slab of venison pâté and went to sit down in the drawing room with a bottle of claret.

The house, which was only used four or five evenings a month, felt cold and unlived-in. A little bit chilly, he thought, stoking up the fire. He put on his sheepskin-lined slippers and reclined back on the mustard damask sofa to read that day’s Racing Post. That horse had better start earning some money, he thought, shaking his head slowly. Watchorn might not be in this seriously, Oswald mused, but he certainly was. OK, so he wasn’t the Aga bloody Khan with six hundred horses, but if the one he did have was a winner, he would be up there with the best.

Even though the yard fees and training costs were split three ways, Oswald was still feeling the enormous financial burden of ‘just’ one world-class racehorse. It was about time they started winning some decent purses. He knew that Barry Broadbent did not like to field a runner without it having some hope of success. But sod that, he thought angrily, he would tell him to put Fierce Temper in for as many races as possible this season. After all, if you don’t shoot, you don’t score. So the bloody creature might be knackered by the end of the season, but a good run could make BWC Holdings upwards of half a million pounds.

Oswald was just beginning to doze off, having downed the bottle of wine and polished off at least half a pound of the pâté. He was disturbed from his light slumber by the irritating ring of his mobile phone. He picked it up and heard a soft, almost muffled voice. Was that an Irish accent, he wondered, as the caller said his name.

‘Yes? Yes?’ replied Oswald, ‘who is this?’

There was a long silence, disturbed only by some buzzing interference on the line.

‘Is there anyone there?’ snapped Oswald, irritated now, rubbing one eye groggily.

‘Oswald Balcon had better learn some manners,’ said the voice softly but menacingly, ‘Or else –’

‘Or else what?’ asked Oswald shortly, his voice raised to get over the crackling line.

‘Or else,’ said the voice quietly, ‘we’re going to kill you.’

23 (#ulink_ffb0e900-8cfd-523e-84c2-bcdf84e50b82)

Camilla cursed herself. What had possessed her to take the lonely B-roads on the route back to London rather than the motorway? It had seemed like a good idea to drive through the pretty Lincolnshire countryside rather than down the busy M1, but now she was exhausted; all she wanted was to get back to the flat, creep under her goose-down duvet and drift asleep. That prospect seemed a long way off as she pulled her slate-grey Audi to a stop at a lonely crossroads, craning her neck to read a signpost. Dammit, even Bedford was still forty-eight miles away.

It was getting dark, a sooty dusk had seeped over the fields that stretched flat for miles on either side of her. She let the car window purr down, giving her face a blast of cold air. What a day, she sighed, glancing at the time on the dashboard clock: 8.35 p.m. It seemed a lot later. Camilla was used to long stressful days debating in court, but this was something harder, more personal. The Selection Weekend at the Tory Party’s residential centre in Melton Mowbray had been gruelling – more like a mental assault course than an away-day. Hours of interviews and psychometric testing to gauge her suitability as an approved candidate. Had she appeared ambitious or ruthless? Confident or cocksure? She had answered honestly on her views on Europe, foreign policy, education – but were they close enough to the party line? It was just the first rung on the political ladder and she really hadn’t thought it’d be so rigorous. There were so many duff MPs in Parliament; how they had managed to jump through all those hoops?

Feeling tired and thirsty, she reached over for a bottle of mineral water on the passenger seat, wedging it between her knees to unscrew the top. She took a long gulp, her heavy eyelids closing for just a moment as it soothed her gravelly throat. Opening her eyes again, she saw a large van approaching fast behind her, its headlights blaring in the dark. As she quickly tried to screw the lid of the bottle back on, it slipped from her grip and tipped over on her lap. Just then, the van moved to overtake her.

Its driver had misjudged the width of the lane and it came within inches of her Audi. Instinctively, she turned the steering wheel away, trying to pull her car as close to the side of the road as she could.

As the car’s wheels bounced off the verge, the water bottle rolled on her thighs, spilling cold ribbons of liquid over her Comme des Garçons trouser suit. Shit, she thought, reaching down to brush the water off the expensive fabric. Panicked and distracted, her eyes dazzled from the headlights, she noticed too late that the road was banking sharply left. Camilla slammed her feet onto the pedals, but it was too late. The car ploughed straight into a hedge.

In a split second, a decade-old memory dislodged itself from the back of Camilla’s mind. Another night, another country lane, another car out of control. Traces of blood smeared on the headlights of an old Renault. Her father’s face staring at her in fury. No! She screamed out loud, her body jarring against the steering wheel as the car skidded to a halt.

At first, she felt nothing. Then she was sucked back into the moment with a jolt. Physically, she was unharmed. The car had brushed the bushes aside and bounced to a halt in an open field. But she felt shattered. The memory had been unlocked, an awful truth that she realized in a flash could devastate her future. A flood of nausea seized her body as she yanked the car door open, vomiting violently on the grass. No one could ever know what happened back then, no one. She had not worked so long, so hard, to let it bring her down.

Behind her a car stopped at the side of the road and an old lady approached her battered Audi. ‘Are you all right, love?’ she asked cautiously, skirting around to the driver’s side where Camilla was sitting, her head hung hopelessly between her knees.

She nodded weakly and wiped her mouth with a proffered tissue, breathing deeply and rubbing her eyes as if erasing an image she did not want to see. She looked at the woman, then turned away, her eyes drifting off to the horizon where the sky was turning midnight blue.

‘I’ll be all right,’ said Camilla softly, her fingers squeezing into a tight fist. ‘I’ll be all right.’

24 (#ulink_55e0f687-a539-54d3-a32c-460ba68847e1)

It was simply not possible to squeeze another computer, pot plant or Post-it note into the Sand offices, thought Cate, looking round her new workplace with a grimace. Every inch of floor and shelf space was crammed with boxes, piles of magazines and press releases. She pushed her chair away from her desk, only moving two feet backwards before it collided with a filing cabinet. She rubbed her eyes, needing a moment or two away from the blank stare of the computer.

It was only noon but she was already exhausted. The late nights and fifteen-hour working days were catching up with her. Still, it was worth it, she thought, looking up at the magazine layouts they had pinned to every inch of wall-space. It was better than she could have dreamed, a feat made all the more remarkable by the fact that it had been put together by the nine people crammed behind the jumble of desks in front of her. To think she’d had a staff of forty at Class magazine – and she had thought that was difficult.

‘Here’s everybody’s itinerary for the cover shoot,’ announced Sadie Wilcox, moving around the office, putting sheets of A4 paper on desks. How strange it was being back working with her old PA, who had been fired within a month of Nicole Valentine becoming editor. Of course, Sadie wasn’t her PA this time round: there were no luxuries like that at Sand Publishing. Here Sadie was junior writer/office manager and general lifesaver rolled into one rather poorly paid package. Not that Sadie seemed to mind; in fact she seemed to be thriving in the tiny office. The same seemed to be true of the entire Sand team, and Cate was touched on a daily basis by the hard work and commitment the whole staff was channelling into the magazine. She made a mental note to buy some pink champagne for their Friday night drinks.

The phone rang. It was Nick, calling from the luxury of his office. ‘Cate, can you just pop through for a minute?’ he said.

Cate smiled. Nick’s workspace was only on the other side of a thin plasterboard partition, and he could just as easily banged on the wall to get her attention. Cate walked through to the office, a space no bigger than the gun room at Huntsford, where Nick sat behind a desk looking at a copy of Sadie’s cover-shoot budget.

‘W’sup?’

Nick pulled a face that Cate instantly recognized was about money.

‘This cover shoot is costing a bloody fortune,’ he said, punching a bunch of numbers into his calculator.

‘Yes, well cover shoots cost money,’ said Cate, ‘especially when we want it to be as good as a Vogue cover. Agius is shooting for free; we’ve got the rooms at a fifty per cent discount in return for some coverage – and the rest? Well, the rest costs money, Nick. Sybil Down is one of the world’s top models at the moment, and when you do something with her it has to be a big production.’

‘Yes,’ said Nick impatiently, ‘but does she really have to go business class? I mean, the flight to Nice is only about an hour and a half. All you get in business class on those short hops is a curtain and your lunch served on a porcelain plate. I’m not paying an extra three hundred quid for that!’

Cate smiled indulgently. ‘What do you expect? Do you expect Sybil to travel down on EasyJet?’

Nick waved a hand and then pressed its heel against his temple. ‘OK, I get the picture. Just don’t forget that our entire editorial budget for one issue is about the same as a Class fashion shoot, OK? Just be careful, you know?’

Cate looked at him and raised one eyebrow warily. ‘It’s my money, my business too, you know, Nick.’

His face softened and he smiled. ‘I know, I’m just being a budget Nazi. It took so long to get this bloody money – I hate to see a penny wasted.’ He took a deep breath and pushed the paper away from him. ‘Anyway, fancy going for lunch in about half an hour? We could take a walk to Borough Market. They do the world’s best falafel.’

She hesitated. Cate was still trying to avoid situations where the two of them would be alone, but the sun was pouring through the small window and the first issue was nearly finished. ‘Just let me go and get my bag,’ she said.

‘Before you go, boss!’ shouted Sand’s fashion editor Vicky Morgan, clutching a huge white floppy-brimmed hat. ‘D’you wanna look at the rail of clothes for the cover shoot?’

Cate walked over and pulled a handful of skimpy fluorescent tropical-print bikinis from the pile. ‘I love these Missoni and Pucci prints. Honestly, Vicky, thank you so much for sorting out this shoot with Sybil. She is such a perfect cover girl for us.’

Cate had been very lucky to get her old friend to work at Sand. Vicky’s fashion eye was the best in the business, and her contact book of model agencies, photographic studios and top photographers was bulging. From Vicky’s point of view, the flexible working week suited her; she could still freelance as a stylist to a long list of actors and pop singers, and she knew a stunning magazine idea when she saw one.

‘Yeah, well, I did that Victoria’s Secret campaign with Sybil six months ago,’ shrugged Vicky modestly, ‘and she said she really wanted to work with me again. I gave her a ring, and here we are. It’s going to be fabulous!’ she laughed, holding a leopardskin bikini top up to her chest and posing.