Guilty Pleasures (22 page)

‘Tell me again how the hell Milford got Bret Alexander to shoot their ad campaign,’ said Johnny Brinton, dragging on his cigarette and blowing the smoke in a cool stream towards Winterfold. ‘I mean, he’s only the hottest music video director since Spike Jonze. My agent says he’s starting to cast his debut movie. Well, if he is, he’d better cast me. I tell you, there’s got to be something in it for me today other than five hundred quid and doing you a bloody favour.’

Tom Grand puffed on his cigarette and smiled. It was typical of Johnny; his old school friend and sometime flatmate was never satisfied with his lot.
Typical bloody actor,
he thought. Still, as they leant up against the location van smoking, Tom was feeling uncommonly pleased with himself; he still couldn’t believe they’d pulled it off. When Emma had asked him to round up a dozen of his best-looking, high-profile friends and persuade them to be in a photo-shoot, he’d thought she was having a laugh – and anyway, why ask him? He always screwed things up. He was still feeling bruised from the
Rive
party debacle; he hadn’t spoken to Cassandra since, he had zero job prospects and was increasingly reliant on his mother’s hand-outs which, incidentally, had slowed right down to just a trickle. But for some reason, Emma seemed to have faith in him and when she had offered him two thousand pounds for his trouble, he’d leapt at it. He’d begged his friend Johnny, the son of rock legend Blake Brinton, to get involved and between them they had persuaded every rich, socially connected, good-looking, 20-something bloke in the area to appear in Milford’s ad campaign.

‘I think Brett is a mate of Rob Holland’s – the guy who’s renting Winterfold from my cousin Emma?’ said Tom, tossing his cigarette
under the van. ‘Apparently she said she’d terminate his lease if Rob didn’t help her out.’

‘I thought you said there’d be loads of models here,’ grumbled Johnny, stamping his own cigarette into the emerald grass.

Tom looked around Winterfold’s front lawns, which were humming with activity. As well as the lighting, wardrobe and the stylists teeming around the two location vans, Saul’s classic car collection –
Tom’s
car collection, he corrected himself – had been retrieved from storage and had been parked outside the house in a fan, like a gleaming peacock’s tail. Tom and Johnny’s ten other friends, all wearing jodhpurs, polo shirts and riding boots, were sitting in director’s chairs having their make-up done in readiness for the next shot.

‘Clover Connor is here,’ said Tom. ‘What more do you want?’

‘She’s not up for it though, is she? She’s going out with that junkie Ste Donahue.’

‘Come on,’ smiled Tom. ‘You know you can pull anyone if you try.’

It was true: Tom Grand was popular with the ladies, but it was nothing compared to Johnny. It helped that he was the son of a rock legend who lived ten miles away in a huge mansion rumoured to be the biggest private home in the county. It helped that he was an up-and-coming actor and constantly being name checked on every Hot List in the media as the new Jude Law. It helped that he was a staple of London’s most glamorous social circuit and spent his evenings flitting between Nobu and launch parties. The annoying thing was that Johnny was handsome, charming and confident; he really didn’t need any help bedding any woman who took his fancy. Just then a beautiful blonde girl stepped out of the main house, talking to Emma and Marcus who was art-directing the shoot. Tom’s heart gave a little involuntary lurch: she was lovely. She had a broad sunny smile, an exquisitely pretty face, long legs in tight indigo jeans and what looked like a fine pair of knockers beneath a semi-transparent cream shirt.

‘Who’s
that?’
whispered Tom, squinting in the sun.

‘Whoever it is, she’s out of your league, sunshine,’ smiled Johnny, pulling up his cream jodhpurs so they looked even tighter around the crotch. ‘And anyway, I saw her first.’

‘Uh-uh. I actually think I know her,’ said Tom, the penny dropping.

‘Who is she then? She’s gorgeous.’

‘Stella Chase. She’s the designer here. The last time I saw her was about twenty years ago.’

‘In that case then, you can introduce me,’ said Johnny running his fingers through his tousled hair as he started to walk over. Tom’s heart gave another lurch and he swore under his breath, knowing it wasn’t worth getting into a competition with Johnny.

Since the afternoon of the pool party in Winterfold’s walled garden, the Milford ad campaign had quickly snowballed, mainly due to the efforts of Rob Holland who had been keen to show Emma he wasn’t the decadent layabout she had presumed him to be. Rob had enlisted Ste Donahue into his scheme and together, they had gently persuaded Clover to defy the advice of her agent and agree do the Milford shoot, in return for a ‘mates rates’ fee, the entire range of the company’s Autumn/Winter line and an assurance from Rob that he would seriously consider her demo tape. Through Stella they had found Marcus Lynch, an old friend from her student days who was now the art editor of an achingly trendy French fashion magazine and he had agreed to art-direct the shoot. Emma thought she would have to hire one of the big advertising agencies to produce the campaign at mind-boggling expense but it turned out that this was the way fashion houses operated; working with a tight cabal of art directors and fashion photographers to produce their advertising imagery, only using media buyers at agencies to secure ad space in magazines. Because fashion was such a small world Emma had initially been wary of Marcus, wondering whether he might be a stooge sent by Cassandra to sabotage the shoot but she had worried unnecessarily. Marcus had once been fired by Cassandra as a young designer and he didn’t have a good word to say about her. Emma was also encouraged when, despite his trendy sensibilities, Marcus agreed that they should cash in on Milford’s English heritage to create their brand imagery – in fact it had been his idea to shoot at Winterfold and get a dozen handsome polo-clad extras. He’d also jumped on Rob’s suggestion that they use a music video director to shoot it to stop it looking too soft and nostalgic.

‘Whaddayathink?’ asked Bret, showing Emma the latest digital shots on his laptop. There were three setups: one was a close-up of Clover framed by the majestic backdrop of the house. In the next, Clover was astride a shiny chestnut pony surrounded by
Johnny, Tom and half a dozen other polo hunks. In the third she was climbing out of Saul’s 1967 gunmetal Aston Martin, wearing a long white Grecian gown, slit from hem to thigh to show one long length of bronze leg. They were elegant, but sexy. They were fantastic.

‘Absolutely beautiful,’ said Emma softly. She looked at Bret and he grinned at her reaction.

‘I aim to please,’ he said. He was a big bear of a man with a loud belly laugh and a crooked smile, nothing at all like the pretentious fashion photographer Emma was expecting.

‘But I’m not sure there’s enough bag in the shot,’ said Emma quickly, nervous that all she could see was a curved leather handle and the side of the 100 Bag.

Bret started laughing.

‘Honey, fashion is all about building dreams. Ralph Lauren was a Jew from the Bronx, just like me, but it didn’t stop him creating an empire based on a WASP way of living. You walk into a Ralphy shop, it’s like stepping onto the freeking Great Gatsby set; it’s goddamn genius. And it’s what you got here. People don’t want to see a bag, they want to see a fantasy they can buy into.’

‘Are you sure?’ asked Emma looking to Marcus for reassurance.

He nodded. ‘And what you’ve got here is genuine, too. This is gen-u-ine blue-blood Britishness. Old money and elegance. Style not fashion.’

‘Style not fashion.
I love that,’ said Emma. ‘Can I use it for the slogan?’

Emma turned as a black 4×4 crunched down the gravel drive and stopped.

The door opened and a woman stepped out of the passenger seat. She had a glossy, buttery, blonde bob, large expensive sunglasses pushed back on her head and she was so slim and delicate that her kitten heels didn’t seem to sink in the grass. At first Emma thought she might be another model for the shoot before Rob jumped out of the driver’s side. Unless she’d had a radical makeover, this was not the naked girl in the jacuzzi at the pool party.
Not another one,
thought Emma. Then Rob went round to the back of the car and helped a little girl wearing pink stripy tights down and onto the grass.

‘How’s it going everyone? Hey, Bret, how are you?’ Rob walked over to the group and shook the director’s hand.

‘If we don’t shift a million handbags after this ad then I’m a fucking Chinaman,’ smiled Bret, picking up his camera and heading back to Clover.

The blonde woman pulled a face and put a protective arm around the child. ‘You’d think he’d tame his language in front of Polly,’ she whispered to Rob.

‘Emma, this is Madeline,’ said Rob with a hint of awkwardness. ‘And this,’ he said, looking down at the girl with what could only be described as adoration, ‘is my daughter Polly.’

Emma was stunned.

‘You
have a daughter?’ she said before she could stop herself.

This time, Madeline gave a little tinkling laugh.

‘That’s how everyone reacts,’ she said, putting out a delicate hand for Emma to shake. Emma caught Rob rolling his eyes and felt guilty; she didn’t want to sound unkind. Rob had been incredibly generous with his time and contacts, even if she suspected his motives were to curry favour and buy time at Winterfold.

‘Daddy, you said you’d show me the ponies again,’ said the little girl.

Rob took Polly’s small hand in his big one and looked at Madeline.

‘Take her,’ said Madeline briskly, ‘I’ll be fine here.’

Emma could feel herself redden slightly in the elegant woman’s presence. She assumed Rob and Madeline weren’t still together, but with someone like Rob, you never could tell. Had he been keeping a wife secreted away in New York while he’d been playing Hugh Hefner in England? He’d certainly kept the child quiet. Emma thought of the naked blonde in Winterfold’s jacuzzi and suppressed a wince. Poor Madeline.

‘So. You and Rob are …’ Emma let the sentence hang politely.

Madeline smiled. ‘We were together a long time ago. Polly was the result of that time.’

‘Great! That’s wonderful,’ said Emma a little too eagerly.

‘Polly and I live in New York,’ said Madeline, not surprising Emma in the slightest. Madeline was so polished and groomed she reeked of the Upper East Side. ‘Polly is on her Easter break, she’s staying here while I go to Paris. My partner is doing some work over there.’

The conversation slipped into pleasantries. While Emma didn’t find herself particularly warming to Madeline – she had a certain
froideur
not dissimilar to her cousin Cassandra – she couldn’t help but be impressed by this woman’s obvious accomplishments; she was a former lawyer, who had given it all up to raise Polly and in her own words fundraise an impressive roll call of causes from a ballet school for underprivileged African-American children to a theatre for disabled adults. Not Rob’s type at all, she decided.

‘So were you and Rob married?’

‘No, thank God,’ smiled Madeline, warming up slightly. ‘I was just out of college when we met. Rob had just started working for his father’s record company, which to my impressionable 22-year-old mind seemed rather cool.’ She half laughed, half winced at the memory. ‘I stayed the night at his loft in Tribeca and never moved out. But by the time I was 26 I felt a different person. Rob is adorable but immature and our relationship was breaking up just as I found out I was pregnant.’

‘Were you not tempted to stay together?’

‘For the sake of our child?’ said Madeline. ‘He asked me but I knew we were doing the right thing for Polly by splitting up.’

Madeline paused and examined Emma critically.

‘Are you and he …’ Madeline wagged her finger between the two of them.

Emma shook her head, embarrassed that she had been asking so many questions. But she’d been interested to find out about the Rob Holland she hadn’t so far seen. The man who proposed to his pregnant girlfriend even though they were not in love. The man who, unlike every other man on the shoot, was ignoring Clover Connor to run up and down the lawns with a little girl on his shoulders.

‘I didn’t think so,’ said Madeline briskly. ‘And take it as a compliment.’

Light was fading from the sky, the clouds were stung with pink while the spread of oak trees to one side of Winterfold looked as if they had been dipped in molten copper. It was a lovely evening. They’d been shooting for almost twelve hours but not even exhaustion could dampen Stella’s mood. Today was the first day she’d really felt she had made the right decision moving back to England. After the fraught meetings with the bank, after the coldness Roger Milford and many of the factory workers had shown towards her, after spending 75 per cent of her time locked away in a studio, she
finally felt as if they were getting somewhere. And more than that, Stella really felt that she was something to do with it all.

‘That was wicked,’ said Clover, handing Stella the tight tweed jacket she’d been wearing for the last shot of the day. ‘Bret was fabulous, plus he told Ste he’d love do the next Kowalski video too, so you can imagine how chuffed
he
is.’

‘Not as pleased as I am, the way the shoot has gone today. You were wonderful,’ smiled Stella. Although Clover seemed down-to-earth with her Northern accent, chain-smoking and frequent cackles, Stella had been in the fashion industry long enough to know that talent had to be fawned over all the time and she was sure Emma was too naïve to do it.

‘I’m going to Cannes for the film festival in a couple of weeks,’ said Clover. ‘Karl has made me this wonderful dress. You couldn’t make me a bag to go with it?’

Stella’s heart leapt, but she tried to keep cool. Clover asking
me
to make
her
a bag! She knew that Ruan would scream at her that the workshops were already at full stretch, but this was huge; it was gold-dust to have a big star walk the red carpet with one of your products. Stella knew Clover would look amazing, that the look would be dissected and talked about in a hundred magazines and newspapers around the globe and that her two-minute appearance outside Cannes’ Palais des Festivals would be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds in advertising for Milford.