Gold Diggers (32 page)

Delemere Manor sat in the heart of the Delemere estate in the rolling countryside of Gloucestershire. Molly felt a frisson of excitement as her chauffeur-driven town car passed through the main iron gates and along the wide driveway lined with plush oaks. It was a picture-perfect scene of timeless aristocratic Britain. Herds of deer grazed on the greeny-yellow fields, parched with a hot early summer sun. There were proud copses dotted along the horizon, a lake bristling with long reeds, and then there was Delemere House itself, majestic in the distance, the top of its high Georgian windows peeking over a dense wood. Even to Molly, it seemed a little frivolous to turn the home of Donna and Daniel Delemere into an away-day foodie destination for ladies who lunch.

Molly wondered whether she would see Alex over the course of the weekend. Their passionate meetings at the Basil Street Hotel had become less frequent since her move to The Standlings and, besides, Alex could be so conservative. When Molly had suggested an assignation at the Delemeres’ London townhouse, he had reacted badly, calling the idea ‘disrespectful’, so who knew how he would react to Molly appearing at his family seat.

The wheels of the car crunched on the gravel and came to a halt outside the honey-coloured pile, where Donna was standing on the step looking irritatingly beautiful and chaste in a knee-length Marni print sundress, her daughter Evie slung across one slender hip. Molly forced a smile as Donna waved; the fact that her friend came from one of the poorest areas of the northeast and could end up like this never ceased to irk Molly.

‘I am so glad you could make it,’ smiled Donna, popping her head through Molly’s open car window. ‘I really didn’t think this weekend was going to be your thing, but luckily I’ve been able to squeeze you into a room with my old friend Denise.’

Sharing a room?
thought Molly with alarm.
What was this, the girl guides?
She waited a few moments to see if a valet would appear to carry her bags in, but when none was forthcoming she reluctantly took her case from the driver and followed Donna around the side of the manor house, the wheels of the suitcase dragging on the gravel. They came to a large courtyard full of blooming terracotta pots, on the far side of which was the barn that had been converted into the Delemere farm store. Molly paused to pop her head inside, drinking in the delicious smells of fruit, flowers and fresh bread. The shop was full of immaculately groomed women in white jeans and smock tops handling misshapen bundles of organic vegetables and loaves the size of Easter bonnets.

‘I think the farm shop has expanded since the last time you were here,’ said Donna, peering in behind Molly. ‘We’ve had to build a private customer car park round the back. It’s getting so busy, the noise was drifting too much towards the manor house.’

‘What a shame,’ said Molly insincerely. ‘However, it must mean that business is booming.’

‘It is,’ agreed Donna, ‘although that’s less to do with our
improvements than the growth of the luxury organic sector as a whole. We’re just cashing in on what Prince Charlie’s Duchy Originals and the Bamfords’ Daylesford estate have done before us. But I’m just glad we’ve created something that people enjoy. Something that’s good for them and good for the planet.’

What a crock of shit
, thought Molly, following Donna towards another converted barn on the other side of the manor. Donna’s eco-zeal was less to do with a commitment to the environment and more about her grubby desire to get her fingerprints all over Delemere Manor so that, when the time came, her ‘invaluable commercial input’ would translate into a fatter divorce settlement.

‘So has anybody else arrived yet?’ asked Molly as they walked into a big open-plan lobby painted in a palest sage green decorated with vases of lilies and cream squashy sofas.

‘Well your roommate Denise is already here, and Karin and Christina are in room one. And do you know Diana Birtwell? She’s here with her friend Rebecca. But that’s it – as you know, this isn’t a full course, just a dry run for the real thing when we get paying guests in, but Angela Appleby – she’s the course leader – will give you the works, don’t you worry!’ she laughed. ‘Now, why don’t you go and unpack? The introductory session begins in forty-five minutes. You are really going to love it.’

Don’t count on it
, thought Molly as she dragged her case to her room.

Donna’s old friend Denise Jeffries was sitting on a thin single bed in a small twin room that overlooked a field of grazing cows.

‘Hi! I’m Denise,’ she said, getting up.

‘Molly Sinclair. I take it we’re roommates.’

Denise was about forty with a head of red curls, a wide mouth and dry-looking skin that desperately needed a facial.

Molly dumped her case on the other bed and wandered into the hallway to find the other bedrooms. One door was open and she saw Karin and Christina changing into skintight leggings and crop-tops.

‘Oh, hello. I didn’t know you were coming,’ said Karin, pulling on a ballet slipper.

‘Can you believe we’re not sleeping at the manor?’ replied Molly absently, still looking around and surveying the property. ‘I feel like I’ve arrived at scout camp.’

Karin pulled a face. It was the first time she had seen Molly since she had sent her on a wild-goose chase to the Villa La Vigie in Monte Carlo. Time, as well as Molly’s dismissal from from the Midas Corporation, had softened the brunt of Karin’s anger but she still found that she could be no more than civil to her.

‘Oh, I think there’s something fabulously Zen about Delemere,’ said Christina, stretching her arms in the air to limber up. ‘Don’t you think it’s such a wonderful escape from it all?’

Fine for you to be slumming it
, thought Molly cynically,
when you’ve got a yacht and millions of dollars coming your way
. In fact, Molly had been delighted to hear that Christina Levy was attending the retreat. If the whispers were correct, Christina’s divorce settlement was shaping up to be a very hefty one, and Molly couldn’t wait to extract as many details from her as possible; she might even be able to sell them on to the newspaper diary pages.

Angela Appleby’s introductory seminar was perhaps not quite the roaring success she had expected, but then she possibly underestimated the effect of announcing that her charges would have to give up alcohol, all stimulants, red meat and men.

‘During a detox, it is best to remove all distractions,’ said Angela in a cheery voice. ‘Your body needs time to heal
itself and your mind to become clear. There is a reason Buddhist monks are celibate,’ she added. Having absorbed this bombshell and having been promised that they would all be ‘leaving Delemere on Sunday in a better place’, the six women all adjourned to ‘The Landing’ – the open lobby where a fire had been lit and an organic buffet prepared on a long table covered in white voile.

‘Apparently it’s lights out at 9 p.m.,’ said Christina, sipping at a ginger tea. Molly looked out of the window and saw the sky was bruising lilac as darkness was beginning to fall.

‘I told you it was like school,’ grumbled Molly still feeling hungry, despite the pumpkin seeds and carrot sticks.

‘I didn’t know you were a boarder, Molly?’ said Karin, raising one eyebrow and watching with satisfaction as Molly’s face reddened with anger.

‘Anyway, goodnight everyone. I’ve had a hectic week so I could really do with an early one.’

One by one, the women retired, until Molly and Denise remained alone in The Landing. Molly had warmed to her roommate; she somehow detected a kindred spirit but she couldn’t explain why. Certainly, Denise’s life was the most removed from the other women on the retreat. She had travelled from Esher, where she lived with her husband Neville Jeffries, a scaffolding contractor, and two young sons. She wore no expensive jewellery, except for a large pair of diamond studs which Molly felt sure were just zircona, and her clothes looked like high street. But while Denise was probably the most advanced yoga student in the group, there was something about the lines around her mouth, the creases by her eyes, that suggested that Denise Jeffries had lived a life.

‘Ahh, I love ’em to bits, but it’s great to get away from the kids for the weekend,’ said Denise, slumping back into one of the squashy leather chairs.

‘My daughter Summer is twenty-four, but she still needs looking after,’ smiled Molly, swivelling her legs up onto the sofa and stretching her toes.

‘Wow. I didn’t know you had a twenty-four-year-old,’ said Denise, her eyes widening. ‘Weren’t you modelling back then, not playing mum?’

‘You can do both, you know,’ said Molly wryly. ‘It was just a bit more difficult. I always think how far my career could have gone if I hadn’t had Summer. It was tough seeing girls like Yasmin and Linda take off like a rocket.’

Denise nodded sympathetically. ‘Yes, well, you’ve got a daughter though, haven’t you? And anyway, you
were
successful. My brother used to love you!’ Molly appreciated the compliment, but she could have done without that word again: ‘used’. He
used
to love you. She sighed.

‘I could so do with a drink right now,’ she said. She had filched a couple of bottles of great claret from the Midas Corporation boardroom and they were lying like forbidden fruit at the bottom of her case.

‘Should I see if I can find some tea or something?’ said Denise, standing and walking around The Landing.

‘No, a fine place like this calls for a good glass of wine,’ said Molly, testing the water for a drinking companion.

Denise gave her the smile she was looking for. ‘It’s tempting, but we’re not going find any on Donna’s detox weekend, are we?’

‘That’s where you might be wrong,’ said Molly, uncoiling her body and walking upstairs to the bedroom.

‘Why did I agree to this?’ slurred Denise. It was near midnight now and the two bottles of claret were lying guiltily on the floor between them, almost drained. ‘I haven’t drunk in ages and Donna will kill us if she finds out.’

The lights were off and the two women were sitting in
front of the crackling amber fire. She was glad Donna had shacked her up with Denise, not uptight bloody Karin.

‘How
do
you know Donna then?’ asked Molly finally, who had waited all night for her moment. She had asked her before the introductory seminar, and her answers had been so vague that Molly had sensed there was much more to it than she was telling.

‘We go a long way back, way before Donna lived like this,’ said Denise, wiping a thin trail of red liquid from her lips. Molly noticed an inflection in her voice that she recognized as envy.

‘Before she became the queen of detox,’ smiled Molly, encouraging her. ‘I mean, who’d have thought Donna the party girl would have ended up running a retreat?’

‘Well, she did always know where there was money to be made,’ said Denise.

‘It didn’t take a genius to work out that marrying a rich man was going to be a good thing, did it?’ said Molly, probing gently.

‘But Donna hit the jackpot, didn’t she?’ insisted Denise. ‘Out of all the girls I knew back then, she was the one I thought least likely to do it. To, you know, get all this.’

‘Which girls?’ asked Molly, pouring the last of the claret into Denise’s glass.

Denise paused before she spoke, fixing her slightly unfocused vision on Molly in what she obviously thought was a piercing stare.

‘How long have you known Donna?’ she asked.

‘A long time too,’ lied Molly.

‘So you know?’ said Denise cautiously.

Molly nodded convincingly, feeling a sense of welling euphoria that she was on the brink of discovering something potent.

‘I was the one who sorted it all out for Donna,’ began
Denise. ‘I had about a dozen girls, pretty party girls or failed models usually, girls that would always be up for anything.’ She took a sip of wine and smiled almost boastfully. ‘I wasn’t always Denise Jeffries the bored housewife from Esher, you know. I was Denise Duncan, girl about town.’

Molly said nothing, like a shark that had sniffed blood but that was just waiting to move in for the kill.

‘Do you know Adnan Hashemi?’

‘Yes,’ said Molly. She had of course heard of the now-dead Saudi arms dealer who had been a big player on the London social scene in the 1990s.

‘I was his mistress for a little while,’ said Denise. ‘His wife still lived in Jeddah, and I had a little apartment overlooking Hyde Park. And for a small window of time, I had the most wonderful life’, she said, staring at the fire. She turned back to Molly and took another sip. ‘Adnan had friends. They liked British women and I knew a lot of pretty girls. Donna was young, maybe nineteen or twenty. She had come to London to train as a beauty therapist but was out on the circuit a lot. Legends, Tramp, all those, which is how I knew her. She was ambitious, she liked the high life, and Adnan’s friends thought she was wonderful.’

Molly couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘Does Daniel know any of this?’ she said softly, trying to disguise the surprise in her voice.

‘What’s there to know?’ said Denise. ‘That his wife did the international party scene for a little while? That some men gave her money and took her shopping? What’s the big deal in today’s day and age?’ She shook her head, as if trying to clear the fog of alcohol. ‘There’s really very little to tell, and, even if there is, in whose interest is it to go delving too deeply?’