Daddy’s Girls

In the six months since Walton’s appointment to the board of Alliance Magazines from a large advertising and marketing agency in Chicago, Cate had had very little to do with him. As his background wasn’t editorial, he showed no interest in Class, apart from the sales figures at the end of every month and any free tickets for the opera, Formula One or art-gallery openings that the features department could throw his way.

‘Really?’ said Cate, feeling a flutter of alarm. ‘What does he want?’

She caught the look on Nicole’s face, which was one of someone who’d just been given an early birthday present.

‘I don’t know,’ said Sadie with a sympathetic look, ‘but his secretary is starting to call every five minutes.’

All alone in the lift, Cate stared at the buttons and wondered what to say to Walton. Despite the sinking feeling in her stomach, she knew she should feel confident: if the reaction she’d got in New York was anything to go by, both the readers and advertisers were finally getting it. She’d spent twelve months redesigning the magazine, and had by sheer strength of will changed Class from a dated, pompous society magazine to a glossy fashionable read for smart, successful women. The catwalk shows had been a wonderful vindication; a raft of prestige advertisers who so far had only ever appeared in Vogue in the UK had suggested that Class would be added to their advertising schedule in the fall. That should please Mr William Walton, thought Cate, as the bell pinged for the top floor.

She walked through the double doors and down the cream corridors lined with giant-sized magazine covers, until she reached an unsmiling redhead behind a computer.

‘Is he busy?’

‘Go straight in,’ replied the woman, not looking up from her computer screen.

William Walton’s office was unlike anything else Cate had seen in the Alliance building. Interior-designed at great expense, it was decked out in walnut wood and shades of taupe instead of the usual Formica and magnolia walls that everybody else had to put up with. The man himself was sitting behind a wraparound leather-top desk. His self-possessed presence filled the room. Powerfully built, with wiry black hair, Walton’s expensive bespoke clothes masked the fact that he had got to the top the hard way. The very hard way. When, twenty years ago, the young William had beaten thousands to win a scholarship to Yale, he had assumed it would pave the way to privilege. He was mistaken. The doors to American society’s elite were still very much closed to a boy from the southside of Chicago and, instead of spending his summers making contacts in Connecticut country clubs, he was forced to fight his way through the mailrooms of Grey’s and Ogilvy & Mather to achieve the status he craved. But he had made it. Power and privilege, he’d learned, were things to be won by hard work and cunning, not born or bought into. All of which explained precisely why William Walton was looking at Cate Balcon with such distaste.

‘I wanted to see you as soon as you got in,’ began Walton. ‘I hear we have a few problems.’ Walton paused, his dark, feral eyes sizing her up. He’d seen her before, of course, and read about her in the society pages she seemed to monopolize along with her sisters. But alone and face to face for the first time, Walton was impressed despite himself. She might not be a patch on that actress sister of hers, but Cate Balcon was still a knockout. The firm, slightly sulky rosebud mouth, the wavy, dark-golden hair flowing over that elegant neck. And then there was the curvy body, no doubt considered plump by the stick-thin Zone-dieted women he’d dated in Chicago, but when he imagined it naked and wet under his shower, her plump lips round his cock, swallowing him whole … He stopped himself and shifted in his seat, motioning her to sit in one of the hard black leather chairs in front of him.

‘As you know, Cate, magazines are a business,’ he began.

She nodded hesitantly. ‘Of course. I had lots of compliments in New York about how we’ve really improved the magazine. The advertising is looking very promising.’

William didn’t seem to notice what she was saying as he flicked through an issue of Class with what looked suspiciously like disdain.

‘Magazines are a business,’ he repeated. ‘And I was brought into Alliance to improve that business. They are not simply entertainment, they are a commodity, and to be honest with you, Cate, I don’t think the numbers Class is selling at the moment really warrants the investment.’

Cate immediately realized that this was not going to be a friendly, ‘How were the New York shows?’ catch-up. She needed to do some firefighting.

‘With respect, we’re showing a definite turnaround in circulation,’ she said as calmly as she could. ‘If anything, William, since I arrived at Alliance, we’ve improved the Class business by at least fifteen per cent. We’ve stopped the circulation rot and improved advertising volume and yield.’

‘I wouldn’t call a hundred thousand sales a month show-stopping business,’ interrupted Walton tartly, throwing the magazine down on the desk.

‘Well, it’s not the News of the World, no. But it’s better than both Tatler and Harper’s,’ said Cate.

Walton steepled his fingers in front of his mouth and regarded her coolly. Cate Balcon was clearly no pushover. But then neither was he.

‘I suspect, however, that the magazines you mention all have a cover for their April issue.’

The hairs on Cate’s neck began to tingle. She could practically see Nicole Valentine’s smile as she whispered into Walton’s ear. She squeezed her nails into her palm and decided that she’d fire Nicole this afternoon and hang the consequences.

Cate took a deep breath. ‘So someone’s told you about Jennifer. I just heard about that this morning, too. It’s not ideal, but it happens. I’ve actually got something in reserve,’ she said, her cheeks flushing lightly at the deliberate lie. But Walton wasn’t watching. He’d got up from his seat and had turned his back on her to stare at the London skyline, absently rolling a golf ball around in his palm.

‘I am not interested in the micromanagement of your magazine, Cate,’ he replied flatly. ‘A picture of my grandmother could go on the cover if you could guarantee me sales. What I am interested in is revenue. I think Class should be a more mass-market, more profitable magazine. I don’t want to be outselling Tatler, I want to be outselling Glamour.’ He turned back towards Cate and banged the golf ball onto the desk. ‘I want to be outselling everyone.’

Cate was used to being bullied by her father – she’d put up with bullying then and would put up with it now.

‘A fine ambition, of course,’ she said evenly, carefully smoothing down her skirt. God, she was shaking, she thought, looking at her hands. She hated confrontation and tried to imagine what her sister Camilla would do in her shoes.

‘But you’ll be aware that Class magazine is not published on a mass-market model. We are advertising rather than circulation driven, and I think you’ll need a massive repositioning of the product to change that.’

He looked at her, smiling cruelly. ‘Exactly, Cate, exactly. So you’ll understand completely what I’m about to say.’

The bile was beginning to rise in Cate’s throat and she was finding it impossible to open her mouth to speak. ‘Which is what?’ she finally croaked.

Walton wasn’t to be hurried. He’d pictured scenes like this every time he’d been humiliated by a toffee-nosed Ivy-Leaguer in college, and he always enjoyed every second of revenge when it came. He walked around his huge desk, perched on the corner and looked down at Cate.

‘The Honourable Catherine Balcon,’ he said with a superior smirk, and Cate shivered, sensing that the fatal blow was about to be delivered. ‘While it’s obviously wonderful to have someone of your high profile editing one of our titles, I have to wonder what it really brings to the party. If Class is going to be more populist, more popular, I need someone at the helm more in touch with the Great British Public. Not someone whose daddy owns a castle.’

‘What a ridiculous thing to say,’ retorted Cate angrily. ‘My background has nothing to do with whether I can be a good, commercial editor or not. And anyway, if you got to know your employees better, you’d find out that I’m not the out-of-touch aristocrat you clearly think I am!’

Walton took in the long curvy legs hiding under the navy wool pencil skirt and actually began to regret the missed opportunity of getting to know Cate Balcon better. ‘You’re just not my person for the job, Cate,’ he said coldly. He stood up and briskly walked back to his seat. ‘I have immediate plans for Class magazine,’ he continued, already starting to flick through his mobile-phone menu for the number of his lunch date. ‘And I’m afraid that you’re not going to be part of them.’

Cate stared at him, her head starting to feel dizzy. It had all happened so fast. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘In plain Queen’s English, Miss Balcon, you’re fired. With immediate effect.’

Cate felt paralysed. She was unable to move from her chair.

‘On what grounds? That my DNA is wrong?’

Walton didn’t seem to hear. His attention had already wandered to something on his computer screen.

‘Fine,’ said Cate in a quiet, controlled voice, rising unsteadily and moving towards the door with dignity. ‘You will, of course, be hearing from my solicitors.’

William Walton glanced up and took one last look at the long legs exiting his office. ‘Get them to call my secretary.’

3 (#ulink_c3b72bf1-ad38-52c5-8d97-6ec83a9a7f4c)

Karnak was spectacular. Even though Tom had wanted a siesta after the enormous lunch and huge amounts of booze he’d had on La Mamounia, he was glad he’d made the effort to join the very small group of guests visiting the temple complex on the outskirts of Luxor. He wandered through the huge sandstone pillars, the long shadows dancing between the tall shapes stretching into a cornflower blue sky. He smiled to himself. Celebrity had a habit of making you feel so tall, so special, but here he felt like an inconsequential speck. He could stay here all afternoon, he thought. The last thing he wanted was to get back to Serena, even though it had irked him over lunch to see her talking to that slimy Yanky letch.

Serena. The first two years of their relationship had been wonderful. Tom had thought her cranky, dramatic ways were perversely adorable. Having had little contact with the upper classes before he’d met her, he assumed that’s how they were: self-obsessed and spoilt. He’d never once considered it might just be Serena’s personality. But now he was convinced that she had ice water running through her veins. While he understood it – the Balcon family were clearly seriously dysfunctional, irritation rather than affection was the overwhelming emotion he felt for her. He had even started fancying the barmaid at the Pig & Piper back in the Cotswolds village where he kept a house. He liked her wonky teeth, her fleshy breasts and the pink blushing cheeks when she served him his pint. Above all, he liked her warmth.

Then the Sheffield lad in Tom caught himself. Was he mad? He lived with Serena Balcon! One of People magazine’s Fifty Most Beautiful People, or so he had read at the airport newsagent. They were right, of course: she was stunning. From the moment he’d seen her on her trailer step reading a script, her feet bare on the ground, her fair hair blowing gently in the breeze, he had thought she was the most fabulous-looking creature he had ever seen. He would never tire of looking at Serena, but he was sick to death of listening to her – those plummy tones, the inane babble. Tom had struggled through a tough comprehensive, to university, to RADA, clawing his way up, desperate to improve himself, so he couldn’t quite believe he was living with a woman whose idea of current affairs were the party pages in Vanity Fair.

He flicked at a fly buzzing around his face. So why couldn’t he leave her?

The thought had crossed his mind a hundred times. But when he really imagined life without her, he was caught between a sense of sheer relief and horrible insecurity. What would happen to Tom without Serena? They were as inseparable as Siamese twins. He shuddered despite the heat.

‘Tom Archer! Come and join the group, you naughty thing.’

Jolene Schwartz was a brazen, heavily tanned fifty-something Texan who had married well and divorced better. She came sashaying towards him, twirling a frilly white parasol above her like a deep-fried Dolly Parton.

‘Just coming,’ called Tom, getting to his feet. ‘Are we leaving?’

‘We were supposed to meet at the Great Hall twenty minutes ago to head back to the boat.’ She wagged her finger at him at the same time as fixing him with a flirtatious smile. ‘I’m going to have to put you over my knee.’

Unconsciously, Tom found himself looking at Jolene’s legs and her unnaturally smooth knees – an obvious product of the latest surgery craze that was sweeping New York. He tore his gaze away and gave a weak, cracked smile.