Guilty Pleasures (43 page)

‘Nothing’s wrong, far from it. It’s just a surprise that Dad’s still working on stuff,’ she said quietly.

‘I thought he said he wasn’t.’

‘He was lying,’ she said, looking at him sadly.

Behind them the door swung open sending droplets of rain sweeping into the barn. Christopher was standing at the barn door, still in his dressing-gown, his shoulders wet.

‘What are you doing in here?’ he said. His voice was stern, a mixture of anger and alarm.

‘Tom wanted to see the studio,’ said Stella nervously, recognizing the disapproving expression on his face.

‘You told me you’d stopped working,’ she said, walking slowly towards him as if approaching a cornered animal.

‘I have,’ he said, looking away from her.

‘Well, what’s this?’ she said, pointing to the large sculpture in the middle of the room.

‘It’s rubbish,’ he said stiffly.

‘Dad. This is not rubbish, it’s amazing, I’ve never seen …’

‘I said it’s
rubbish!’
he shouted. ‘Can’t you understand plain English?’

He strode over to the table and swept his arm across it, sending his tools and the model flying to the floor.

‘Dad! What the hell are you doing?’ cried Stella, lunging for the sculpture, picking it up, the knees of her jeans covered with dust.

‘Get out of here! OUT!’ roared Christopher, striding through the open door out into the night. Her head whirling, Stella dropped the small sculpture and ran to follow him. It was raining hard outside. She caught up with her father and pulled at his arm, turning him so she could see the rain splashing on his face, hard and cold.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she shouted above the wind.

‘Tell you what?’ he snapped, pulling his arm away. ‘The work in there is nothing to boast about.’

‘Dad, they
are!
They’re wonderful!’ said Stella fiercely.

She could see rivulets of water running down her father’s face and wasn’t sure if it was rain or tears.

‘You don’t know what it’s like to have a talent that the whole world looks up to you for, a talent that people will befriend you for, even marry you for. A talent that gives you fame and money and self-worth. And then to lose it all!’

He met his daughter’s gaze directly.

‘What nature gives you, it can take away,’ he said, holding up his twisted hands. ‘I still have a head full of ideas but I can barely hold a chisel. I don’t want anyone to see my work now. I can hardly look at it. I don’t want people to pity me and think “Oh what a shame! He used to be so good, but now this is all the old man can do.” I want people to remember my work as it was.’

‘Art isn’t for museums, Dad!’ shouted Stella. ‘You told me that yourself once. It’s a living thing, it keeps moving forward. So maybe it’s not your best work, but even your worst stuff is still touched by genius. People still want to see it, touch it, pay good money for it. Don’t be a victim, Dad! Find a dealer, put on a show!’

‘Don’t be stupid, girl!’ he yelled back. ‘That’s all in the past, let it go.’

Stella suddenly felt a surge of anger and she grabbed his arm again.

‘I’ll tell you what stupid is: sitting in your farmhouse wallowing in self-pity with the bailiffs knocking on the door. Because that in
there,’ she said pointing into the barn, ‘is your way of keeping Trencarrow.’

He looked at her, his eyes dead.

‘You’d better go back to your friend,’ he said, his voice noticeably hoarse. ‘Is he your new boyfriend?’

Stella shook her head absently as she took her coat off and put it over his sodden dressing-gown shoulder.

‘Get inside, Dad.’

He looked out in the distance where the black melted into the sea and sky.

‘I’ve missed you.’

‘I’ve missed you too, Dad.’

She stood in the dark watching him go inside. She heard Tom approach behind her. He’d found an old golf umbrella in the barn and held it over both of them.

Stella started sobbing uncontrollably.

‘I can’t help him, Tom,’ she said thickly, as Tom pulled her close with his free arm. She buried her head in his jumper which smelt of smoke and cologne. Tom gently led her back towards the house.

‘We can help him,’ he said in a firm voice. ‘Let me speak to my mother; she knows every top gallery owner and collector in London. There’s more than enough for a small show here. He’d sell out.’

‘But what if he’s right?’ asked Stella. ‘What if it’s not as good as his old stuff?’

‘It doesn’t matter. A Picasso is still a Picasso. And your father is still one of the most famous British sculptors of the last century. With the right PR, at the right gallery, the art world will still see his genius.’

She looked up at him.

‘Do you really think so?’

‘I’m no expert, but my mother is. And I bet she can’t wait to get her hands on him.’

Roger looked enviously around the grand Hampstead home of his friend Alan Parker, desperate to get the pleasantries over with so that they could talk business. He had little in common with his old school pal and talk at the dinner table of Alan’s life in his City firm of solicitors and the renovation of their new Umbrian villa had almost driven Roger to tears.

‘That was splendid, Beatrice,’ smiled Alan, looking fondly at his wife as she cleared away the remains of the pannacotta.

‘Coffee for everyone?’ said Beatrice, clearly eager to busy herself with more domesticity.

‘Rebecca, why don’t you go and help?’ said Roger. ‘I just have to go and discuss a few matters with Alan.’

Rebecca pulled her mouth into a tiny pout before acquiescing. Roger had called Alan several days earlier for some off-the-record legal advice about the eco-hotels proposition. He hadn’t yet mentioned it to Rebecca – she would have got too excited – without knowing first if he could afford to jump in with Ricardo, both financially and legally.

‘So, to business,’ smiled Alan, walking out of the room and returning with a manila folder and a decanter of brandy. He shut the dining-room door and returned to his seat.

‘You have a 20 per cent shareholding in Milford that you want to get rid of,’ he said, pouring Roger and himself a generous measure. ‘Is that correct?’

‘That’s right. A superb business opportunity has come my way so I want to liquidize a few of my assets,’ said Roger a little boastfully.

‘Do you have to sell the Milford shares?’ said Alan taking a sip of his claret.

Roger bristled at Alan’s implication.

‘Of course not,’ said Roger blustering. ‘but frankly, now Saul is no longer with us I’m losing interest in the company. I feel my money would be better tied up elsewhere.’

Alan pulled a slight face that irritated Roger immensely. A look that said:
I disagree with you.

‘Well, I’m no expert in the luxury goods sector but from what I read in the business pages, your niece appears to be turning the company around nicely. Perhaps if you held off on selling them for another year or so … ?’

‘I shouldn’t be saying this,’ said Roger, leaning forward as if to share a secret, ‘but Milford is all smoke and mirrors. A party in a shop and a few bags hanging off the arms of celebrities does not a corporate renaissance make.’

Alan nodded.

‘In which case, you should take a look at this.’ Alan opened the file and pulled out a thin document which had various paragraphs of text highlighted.

‘Thank you for getting me copies of Milford’s Articles of Association and Memorandum. Have you actually ever read them?’

Roger shook his head.

‘It’s what we pay lawyers to do,’ he blustered.

‘Everything looks very straightforward, nothing too onerous – except paragraph four of the attached shareholders agreement.’

He handed it to Roger whose eyes scanned the page.

‘So other shareholders have a first refusal option on the shares?’ he said, looking up at Alan.

‘Do you think they will want them?’ replied Alan.

Roger shook his head condescendingly. ‘My sisters Julia and Virginia who each have 5 per cent have neither the desire nor the money to do so. But Emma is on such a power trip that perhaps she will be sniffing around them.’

‘She’ll almost certainly want them,’ agreed Alan taking a sip of brandy. ‘Buying your shareholding would take her over 75 per cent and she could control the passing of special resolutions. Essentially it would put her in an unassailable position.’

Roger snorted, his face looked pinched. He hated the thought of Emma claiming an even bigger prize.

‘Well, she might
want
the shares but I seriously doubt she could personally raise the money to buy them. Milford might be a donkey but to somebody who knows what they’re doing, it’s a potentially valuable business. What do you reckon it’s worth then?’

‘I have no idea. I’d need to see the accounts, assess company debts, its assets,’ replied Alan. ‘It’s a recovering company but it’s hardly Gucci.’

‘Ball park?’ said Roger eagerly. ‘Fifty million? Which would make my shareholding worth nearly ten mill.’ He had stood up now and was pacing around the room. ‘I figured about ten million,’ he muttered as if he was talking to himself. ‘Emma couldn’t afford that. So we’d throw it open, maybe get a few companies interested. I was thinking LVMH or the Richemont Group, or maybe one of those private equity organizations. That would push the price up – there’s plenty of people prepared to pay top dollar for a heritage company like ours.’

‘Possibly,’ said Alan sagely. ‘But in my opinion, in the light of the favourable press she’s been getting, Emma might be able to raise the funds to buy you out even if a company valuation went higher than fifty million pounds.’

‘Well she’s going to have to pay me top-whack, same as everybody else.’

Alan looked awkward.

‘Ah, well, there’s your problem, Roger. Should Emma or any other shareholders wish to buy your shares they can do so on the “fair valuation” principle. It’s a fairly standard clause in family-owned companies.’

Roger stopped pacing and looked at Alan.

‘So we fix a mutually agreeable price?’

‘In principle, yes. However, fair valuations in my experience tend to be at a rate far below the price you would get on the open market. Because as you yourself point out, the company has only just turned a corner, Emma could get them for a steal.’

Alan puffed out his cheeks and looked up to the ceiling. ‘If the company did have a valuation of fifty million, to sell a 20 per cent shareholding to a fellow shareholder … I don’t know. I suspect she’d be looking to pay about two million quid.’

Roger looked at him in horror. ‘For 20 per cent of the company! I thought you said
fair valuation!
That doesn’t sound bloody fair to me!’

Alan put up his hands.

‘Don’t shoot the messenger, old boy. You’ve come to me as a friend, Roger, and I’m telling you how it is – or could be.’

A cloud of anxiety crossed Roger’s face. He thought of Rebecca in her St Tropez villa or at the penthouse suite in Ricardo’s Bahia development or the Chelsea townhouse, all the places they’d always talked about owning when they finally realized their money.
But two million?
Two million quid wouldn’t even buy them a three-bedroom flat in Cadogan Square, let alone the beautiful Glebe Place mews Rebecca had her eye on.

‘So what should I do?’

‘If you want the maximum worth of your shareholding, the last thing you want is for Emma to buy them. You need to persuade the other shareholders to sell, to off-load Milford lock, stock and barrel to a luxury goods conglomerate or a private equity house.’

‘And how do I do that?’

Alan laughed.

‘Put the feelers out to the big boys on the quiet. If the price is right, I think the shareholders will snap their hands off – it could even tempt Emma. However well Milford is doing at the moment, it’s a volatile business and if one of the big luxury firms comes knocking she’d be crazy to turn them down.’

For a moment, Roger smiled, thinking of the prospect of all that money, but then he remembered Emma and her ludicrous ideas of running a business and his smile faded. It might take a bomb to shift her from that chairman’s seat.

‘Thanks, Alan,’ said Roger, raising his glass, ‘you’ve given me an excellent idea.’

Rob didn’t call Emma the Monday she knew he was returning from New York. He didn’t call her on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, by which point the silence was hurtful and distracting. Analytical by nature, Emma ran through in her head the reasons why she had not heard from him. There was a slim possibility he was still in the States, but as hope paled into disappointment, the likely explanation was that he was avoiding her and that in his mind at least, the night in Somerset had been a grade A mistake.

It was almost ten o’clock on Thursday night and she was still at work. She loved the security of her office, a space where she felt in control, and vocation filled the loneliness.

Closing down her computer, she yawned and slipped on her coat, knowing the last few hours hadn’t been especially productive and mocked herself; she was the CEO of a company, why couldn’t she do something as simple as call him? But the thought of the conversation, of Rob’s apologies and polite excuses, made her squirm. The truth was, she’d been stupid. She knew Rob’s reputation and his limited attention span with the opposite sex. She should have known better and now she had to deal with it, wondering how best to do that as if she were stamping out a business problem.

Her phone went as she strode out of the foyer.

‘Emma,’ she said briskly.

‘It’s Rob. Sorry it’s late.’

She felt a surge of pleasure.

‘How are you?’ she said as casually as possible.

‘I got back from New York yesterday. It’s been hectic’

‘How’s your father?’

‘We had a few difficult meetings,’ he said, his voice sounding on edge.

There was a long yawning pause.

‘So are you around this weekend?’

‘Mostly,’ she said cautiously.

‘I thought we could have lunch on Saturday at the house.’

Her first thought was that she didn’t want to see Morton in what could be construed as a first date. Her second thought was that it was lunch. Not dinner as he had suggested at the cider farm.

‘From your silence you don’t fancy lunch at Winterfold.’

‘I was thinking.’

‘So how about we go for a ride?’

‘Very well,’ she said, unable to stop herself smiling broadly into the receiver. ‘I’ll see you on Saturday after my run.’

Winterfold’s stables, on the west perimeter of the estate, had been leased to a local riding school for several years. Rob kept a horse there, a sixteen-hand chestnut, and had arranged for Emma to ride a beautiful strong-looking bay. They had agreed to meet there; Emma was late, having changed clothes three times before deciding that her cherry-red sweater and tight cream jodhpurs were perhaps just a little too sexy but they were, at least, appropriate.

Rob had already saddled up and was sitting astride his horse without a riding hat, looking cavalier and certain.

‘I never had you as the equestrian type,’ she smiled, wedging her foot in the stirrup.

‘You know I like to keep you on your toes.’

She bit her tongue, feeling they were already on the verge of some teasing banter. She wanted today to be easy and already she felt as nervous as a teenager.

‘Where do you want to go?’

She knew immediately. The lake in the northern corner of the grounds. It was quiet and pretty and romantic.

They barely spoke on the way up there and were just content to take in the magnificence of the Winterfold estate. It never failed to take her breath away no matter how often she saw it. Today bright winter sunshine skimmed the long grass, turning it blonde like champagne.

The lake dazzled silver. There was a diving board at one end which looked as if it hadn’t been used in a decade. They dismounted
and tied the horses up to a tree and went to sit on an old gnarled log by the water’s edge.

Their hands were inches away from each other’s resting on the log. The sunshine on her face was making her feel bolder. She reached her fingers along the log until they touched his, feeling deliriously contented for one split second before he edged his hand slowly away.

That tiniest of movements was like a slap across the face.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, pushing his fingers back clumsily towards her.

Emma gave a low, cynical laugh. The look on his face was transparent. Embarrassment, regret, kindness. She shuddered. Or was it
pity?

‘It was a mistake,’ she said before she could think. She meant it to be a question, but self-preservation meant it came out more a statement of fact.

‘You think so?’

How maddening language could be,
thought Emma, trying to read the subtleties in his voice, subtleties that change how one was understood. Had he emphasized the word
you
which suggested that he didn’t think it was a mistake?

‘You’re embarrassed about Somerset, aren’t you?’ she said finally.

‘Embarrassed, no.’

‘But it was a mistake.’

‘In so much as I can’t commit to anything right now.’

Her eyes didn’t leave his face. Was he totally clueless or completely insensitive? Either way, she was angry. Angry with him for bringing her out for a romantic ride only to let her down. Angry at him for spoiling her special spot on the Winterfold estate. Angry at herself for learning that Rob couldn’t commit to any woman and for allowing herself to think that it would be different between them. Emma was not a naturally gifted actor; even as a young child she had found lying awkward, not just because of her integrity but because she knew she would always get found out. But this time, needs must.

‘You and me both,’ she smiled with as much brightness as she could muster. ‘It’s such a relief you said it.’

‘Right,’ he smiled slowly.

He kissed her on the cheek. It felt like a brief goodbye. There certainly felt like no reason to stay by the lake.

Untying their horses he shouted over to her.

‘Race you back to the Stables.’

As she galloped along, her horse edging in front of Rob’s, the cold, fresh air slapping against her face, two small tears raced down her face and she convinced herself it was just the wind.