Guilty Pleasures

Stern nodded.

‘I got Xavier to send over what he had. Awkward bastard. Said he wanted to retouch his selection before he would send anything.’

‘To which you replied …’ asked Cassandra.

‘Send over everything you have tout suite before Cassandra makes sure you never work for any magazine in the company ever again.’

‘Good answer,’ she said with a thin smile. She hated the power which photographers seemed to bestow upon themselves. If it wasn’t enough dealing with stroppy publicists, managers and agents, now she had photographers throwing diva hissy-fits. Well, Cassandra employed a zero-tolerance policy. If they wouldn’t play ball – her ball – then they would be dropped without a backward look. Rive was bigger than the sum of its parts; they could get a pensioner with a Brownie camera to shoot a fashion story and he’d be hailed as ‘the next big thing’.

David reverently laid three A4 prints on Cassandra’s desk, the pick of the shots from the Phoebe Fenton shoot. She stood up, and rested the palms of her hands on the Perspex to examine them. They were sensational. All shot three-quarter length, with Phoebe wearing just a pair of high-waisted cream jodhpurs so tight that they looked as if they’d been painted on.

In two of the frames, her long chestnut hair was covering her breasts, with just a cream triangle of navel visible. In the final image her hair had been blown away from her, fanning out like some Greek goddess. Christ she looks good, thought Cassandra. Phoebe Fenton had been the supermodel of the moment a decade earlier, but that was then and twelve months ago Cassandra would have laughed if she had been mooted to appear in British Rive. After Phoebe’s surprise marriage to Ethan Krantz, a New York property billionaire seven years ago, Phoebe had retreated into a world of Upper East Side gallery openings and benefit dinners for land-mine victims. Far too conservative, far too worthy and way, way past it. Phoebe belonged to the US edition of Rive with their airbrushed fantasy versions of big Hollywood stars and wholesome celebrities. But things had changed. Choosing who to put on your cover was not just about who but when. Timing was everything and a sudden scandal in a cover model’s private life could add 50,000 to a magazine’s sales; much more if your timing made it an exclusive. And Phoebe Fenton’s private life had suddenly gone into meltdown; her husband Ethan had run off with a Ukrainian model thirty years his junior. Phoebe and Ethan were now in the throes of a nasty divorce and Ethan was fighting hard for the custody of their three-year-old little girl, Daisy. Rumours were everywhere of Phoebe’s behaviour: drink, bisexuality, orgies, drugs. In the space of weeks, Phoebe had gone from all-American girl to all-American fuck-up. But up until now there hadn’t been anything solid beyond one grainy long-lens paparazzo photograph taken in St Barts of someone who may, or may not have been Phoebe Fenton kissing a mystery brunette and thus Phoebe’s public persona was as beautiful and gracious as it had always been.

Cassandra smiled. The images in front of her were the sexiest pictures she had ever seen of Phoebe. She congratulated herself for having picked Xavier to shoot her because these photos were fresh and fierce, erotic even. Shot by another photographer, Phoebe’s naked breasts might have looked salacious, but in the hands of the man the fashion industry was calling the new Helmut Newton they looked delicate, exquisite, artistic. Pure fashion.

At that moment Laura Hildon, Rive’s pretty blonde fashion editor, ran through the door, already talking.

‘What do you think?’ she gabbled. ‘It was the best we could do, she hated everything except the jodhpurs.’ She looked anxiously at Cassandra who was now holding the bare-breasted shot aloft.

‘What happened to the Vuitton waistcoat?’ she said icily. ‘I told you we needed to get Vuitton on the cover this issue. They haven’t had a cover credit in nine months and they are beginning to get tetchy.’

Laura looked stricken.

‘Actually, I don’t know what happened to the Vuitton top. I came into work to collect the clothes for the shoot on Friday morning and it had gone.’

‘Gone?’ asked Cassandra.

‘I think someone took it from the rail on Thursday night,’ said Laura, embarrassed. ‘I should probably bring this up another time but I think Francesca has been taking things from my selection for her shoots.’

Cassandra flashed a look at David, back to Laura and then waved a hand to dismiss it. ‘We’ll sort this out later. In the meantime, what are the inside shots like?’

It was Laura’s turn to shoot a look to David.

‘Haven’t you told her?’ she asked breathlessly.

David cleared his throat before taking a seat on Cassandra’s sofa.

‘It started off normally enough. Laura managed to get her in a couple of dresses, then after lunch the stylist turns up. Her stylist, I should add. Someone called Romilly, I’ve never heard of. They kept disappearing into the loos and they were glugging champagne like it was water. Phoebe went… well, she went a little weird after that. By five o’clock Romilly was saying that Phoebe wanted to show off her body. That she wanted to do her last great set of nudes.’

‘I think she was drunk,’ whispered Laura.

Cassandra couldn’t stop herself from smiling.

‘What’s the copy like?’ she asked, snapping back into business mode. ‘Jeremy?’

Jeremy Pike, her features editor, was tall, slender and effeminate, dressed as always in a slim-cut suit and a neckscarf.

‘Sorry I’m late, Cassandra,’ he said deferentially. ‘But I don’t think you’ll mind when you see this.’ He waved a sheaf of typed paper in the air. ‘I’ve just been waiting for Vicky’s copy to come in. She called me up over the weekend to tell me how the interview had gone and she was beside herself. Anyway – she’s just filed. Have a read of that.’

Cassandra read in silence, occasionally lifting her head to look at Jeremy, her eyes wide. Vicky Thomas had outdone herself this time. Vicky was one of the country’s best celebrity interviewers. Over fifty and overweight, she was the antithesis of everything Cassandra usually demanded in a Rive reporter. But an appearance that suggested a jolly cuddly aunt was just a ruse she’d use to get celebrities to let their guard down. Many stars who should have known better had fallen into her honey-trap and admitted to things they had never told their own partners. Publicists hated her; it could take years to undo the damage she caused. And now it appeared that nice Auntie Vicky had weaved her magic once again.

‘She interviewed her in Claridge’s before the shoot on Thursday,’ said Jeremy grinning. ‘Apparently it was so dull, Vicky said she might as well have handed her a press release. Luckily Vicky was at the shoot and suggested they go for a drink afterwards. That’s when it got interesting.’

Cassandra looked up from the copy. ‘I’ll say it did. She asked her about the mystery brunette photo.’

Jeremy nodded.

‘Yes, Phoebe actually admitted to being bisexual,’ he squealed, clapping his hands in delight. ‘She says everyone’s at it these days. She even named names.’

‘Was the tape running?’

‘All the time,’ smiled Jeremy.

Cassandra’s eyes scanned the page, her eyes growing wider as she read Vicky’s expertly-worded piece. It was perfectly balanced, managing to stay suitably fawning, while still letting the reader know exactly what was going on. She read out a passage to the stunned office.

‘“… Accompanying us to Annabel’s was the beautiful Romilly Dunn, the stunning New York stylist known for her colourful sex life, who proceeded to get cosy with Phoebe as the night rolled on.”’

‘Vicky says she can amend the copy to say Phoebe and Romilly were all over one another if you like,’ said Jeremy, ‘but she wanted to run it past you first.’

Cassandra knew she had more than a cover story here. Her passion and her expertise was fashion, but her journalistic skills were much wider than that. Ever since she had been parachuted in to British Rive three years earlier with a mission to bring the magazine back from the edge of extinction, she had constantly surprised the industry with what legendary Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown referred to as ‘the mix’, running beautiful fashion pages next to heavyweight intellectual essays, shopping tips next to campaigning reportage. Aware that the UK market was something of an also-ran in the fashion magazine arena compared to the mighty American publications, Cassandra had worked hard to harness London’s creativity, mixing high society with high fashion and street-level cool, bringing in artists, philosophers, DJs and schoolgirls, including them all in the super-luxe Rive world. Each month she made Rive an event, each issue contained a surprise, whether it was running shocking photo-spreads among Moscow tenements, or convincing Damien Hirst to design the sets for her couture shoots. At a time when magazines were getting more anodyne with airbrushed photo-shoots and fawning celebrity interviews, Cassandra dared to push her luck, constantly delivering the surprising and the innovative. It was an audacious, not to mention expensive and highly risky approach, but it had paid off. Rive wasn’t just the number one fashion magazine, it was the number one women’s glossy. And this month Phoebe Fenton was going to take them to a new level.

‘This is absolute dynamite,’ said Cassandra in a low voice, eager to now end the meeting and run the copy past the company lawyer.

‘OK, back to work,’ she barked, waving a hand in dismissal and swivelling around in her chair. She snatched up the phone and was just about to call the legal department when she noticed the red light on her second line was flashing.

‘I didn’t want to disturb you while you were in the meeting,’ said Lianne apologetically, ‘but Phoebe Fenton has been on the phone twice in the last ten minutes. She’s still holding.’

Cassandra groaned, holding her hand over the phone’s mouthpiece as she debated whether to wait until she had called the lawyers. But curiosity got the better of her and it was nothing she couldn’t handle.

‘Put her through.’

There was a click, then Lianne’s voice.

‘I have Cassandra Grand for you, Ms Fenton.’

‘Phoebe, darling,’ purred Cassandra settling back into her ergonomic chair. She knew Phoebe a little, as they had met at numerous shows and fund-raisers over the years, but she wasn’t a real acquaintance. Cassandra couldn’t afford get too close to celebrities, for obvious reasons. One week they could be hotter than the sun, the next in fashion Siberia.

‘Cassandra, honey, how are you?’ said Phoebe warmly. ‘Did you enjoy the shows?’

‘Vintage Kors. Calvin was a little predictable. Some wonderful colours at Matthew Williamson and Zac Posen. It was a shame you were in London but then I’m sure you had great fun on our shoot.’

‘Actually that’s why I’m calling,’ replied Phoebe.

‘Yes, I’m so looking forward to seeing the shots,’ said Cassandra enthusiastically. ‘I love Xavier’s work.’

There was a brief pause before Phoebe began again. Cassandra could tell Phoebe was picking her words very carefully.

‘Cassandra … I’m a little concerned about how things went.’