Sin Tropez (2 page)

‘Oh, I, er, well, I came with your friend, my boyfriend Domenico.’ Tara was taken aback by the abruptness of Reza’s question and looked around anxiously for Domenico. She
needed him to come and bridge the gap between them. Where on earth was he?

Suddenly Reza turned purple with fury. ‘Domenico you great big Italian idiot, get the hell out of my pool!’ Tara looked down and was crushed to find a drunken Domenico flailing
around in the pool, looking like a mischievous child caught with his hand in the candy jar.

That was the end of their summer affair. Having had the opportunity to scrutinize Domenico away from the slyly deceiving Riviera sun, Tara came to see him as the sleaze that he really was and
found she didn’t miss him. She was, however, intrigued by the crazy opulence of his set. She was used to moving among the fashionable and the Old Money of English society – she’d
grown up with many of them – but very few had the show-stopping wealth of the international super-rich. Wealth that ran into the billions, not millions; that could commission whole teams of
scientists to design its own chemicals just so that a girl could wear diamonds underwater. So when she bumped into Reza again weeks later, at a showbiz restaurant opening to which she and Abena had
both wangled an invitation, she was secretly delighted that he recognized her.

He asked for her and Abena’s numbers so that he could invite them to what he called a ‘humble gathering’ he was planning for the New Year. This turned out to be a spectacular
concert at the Royal Albert Hall, which he’d hired out for the evening, followed by a huge firework display in Hyde Park. With the world’s most eminent classical performers assembled in
one room, Reza’s guests listened, enraptured, for the first twenty minutes. Then they gossiped, flirted, competed, and scoffed handmade chocolate truffles and champagne for the remaining
hour. The gathering was about as humble as the Palace of Versailles, and immense fun. With so much going on and so many people around, Tara and Abena barely needed to speak to Reza at all and had
themselves a great time instead.

Fast-forward a few months and his assistant was including the young girlfriends on Reza’s summer guest list.

In their flat in a dodgy street in Ladbroke Grove, conveniently close to the more upmarket areas of Notting Hill, Abena and Tara were preparing for a browse around the vintage shops and
boutiques of Portobello Market. Abena picked up her keys, her head still shaking with amusement at the cheekiness of hideous Reza’s requesting a photograph, as though choosing an escort from
a website, and asked Tara whether she was ready to go. She dropped her keys into her roomy, soft, brown leather tote, newly purchased online at a discount. They were immediately lost among the mess
of make-up, fashion magazines, her digital camera, a dog-eared copy of Wordsworth’s poems and several men’s business cards. Really, she seemed to collect these cards in the most random
of places and could never remember who anyone was. Once she’d got so confused that she called up a homosexual masseur, Sam T, to arrange a hot date, thinking he was Sam C who she’d met
at a party. She thought it was odd that he worked at a spa but had just assumed he was on the business side there. Meanwhile a dribbling medic who’d told her she looked like Naomi
Campbell’s petite younger sister and whose card she’d only taken out of politeness thought Christmas had come early when she asked him, instead of Sam T, over to hers for a full-body
massage. Well, she was in a hurry and the damned card said something about chiropractic!

Moments later, the young women were strutting side by side through the stalls of Portobello, watching all the fashionable girls pick up edgy trinkets and garments, and secretly enjoying, but
pretending not to notice, the admiring glances of all the boys. Even among the experimental fashionistas at the market the pair stood out. Abena wore a retro blazer over an ex-boyfriend’s
oversized wife-beater vest knotted at the hip. Skinny blue jeans and towering wedge heels gave her some much appreciated extra inches. Tara had dressed quickly in a black corset which, in her own
inimitable way she had thrown on top of a thin silk Meadham Kirchhoff blouse. She too wore jeans but hers were ripped and wonderfully ancient and were tucked into flat, slouchy, even more ancient
fringed boots.

‘Hon, this would look incredible on you,’ Abena commented as she pulled out a fuchsia silk dress and held it up in front of her friend.

‘Mmmn, that’s stunning,’ Tara agreed, stroking the silky lining before casually checking the price tag. Her face reddened. ‘It
is
a bit mumsy though,’ she
muttered in a change of heart, and placed it reluctantly back on the rack.

Tara wasn’t conventionally beautiful. She was bony and pale, with bad skin, thin and lifeless blonde hair and a smallish mouth so crammed with large teeth that she’d been described
as ‘horsey’ in the past. Yet there was something about her. She knew how to turn her tall, pale skinniness into a fashion statement that people aspired to, and her skin problems she
covered expertly with high-end concealers and foundations. The lankness of her light blonde hair fitted with the slightly grungy look championed by Kate, Agyness and the other top British models
– ultra-groomed, big, bouffant hair was for pop star wannabes and footballers’ wives.

They continued to browse the various collectors’ stands, quietly despairing at some of the prices, until Tara stopped suddenly and turned. Mischief danced in her wide blue eyes.

‘Abbi, we
deserve
a break! Why don’t we take Reza up on his offer and go with them to St Tropez? You know what he’s like; it’s all for show. When has he ever
seriously tried anything on? I mean, I’d be surprised if he can actually get his feeble little dick up any more … And if by some sick twist it turns out that he can, well, I’m
sure one of the ‘models’ will be more than happy to oblige. Come on, a smart holiday – what’s the worst that could happen?’

Abena contemplated this for a moment and hooted with laughter. The way Tara had put it made it seem downright silly to turn the invitation down. She was single, apparently attractive,
twenty-two, and this was her time. She had sailed through school and secured a good degree at Oxford, despite her incessant partying. Now she needed to make a life for herself and fulfil the
potential she knew she had – that everybody has, even if some people are lazy about jumping on opportunities. Why not enjoy a break in the sun with her girlfriend? Who knew, she might meet
the love of her life there. She’d set her sights considerably higher than the chinless types of Notting Hill. Neither were the faux bohemians any better – no matter how grubby your
clothes look, or however many hours of alternative yoga you do, if you can afford the rents in Notting Hill then you ain’t the bohemian free-spirit you fancy yourself to be.

Abena was becoming dismally disillusioned by a seemingly endless string of disastrous dates and disappointing boyfriends. Sod any misgivings. Why not see what was out there? Give herself up
entirely to whatever the summer might bring.

She so desperately wanted to fall in love.

‘OK, let’s do it.’ The pair exchanged guilty grins. ‘Reza and his crew know that neither you nor I are “that sort” anyway.’

‘Exactly,’ Tara affirmed, a touch more strongly than was necessary.

‘Shall we ask a couple of the others – safety in numbers? Perhaps Sarah will want to come along too?’ Abena added as an afterthought.

‘He said WHAT?’ exclaimed Sarah on the phone, wrinkling up her button nose. ‘That is obscene!’ The wholesome, jolly-hockey-sticks side to Sarah left her
unamused by the invitation. ‘There is absolutely no way I am letting a fifty-something Syrian Lothario fly me out to the South of France and put me up on his yacht for the weekend, and
definitely not on the basis of a photograph!’

‘Darling, relax,’ soothed Abena, ‘you’re making me feel seedy.’ Then she saw Tara yawning dramatically at Sarah’s response and, stifling a giggle, felt
better.

Although Abena was immensely fond of her friend Sarah, Tara had always thought her terribly bourgeois and so was not at all surprised to see her putting on a show of middle-class righteousness
at the mere idea of decadence and glamour.

‘God, hon,’ Tara wailed, ‘purlease let Sarah stay at home with her miserable excuse of a boyfriend and her earnest endeavours at the local paper. You and I’ll have much
more fun on the trip as a double act and anyway you’ve never been to the French Riviera have you? Peasant! We can lose Reza and his lot and get into all sorts of compromising scrapes with
rock stars and eccentric aristos,’ she laughed.

‘Yeah, well then they’d better be of the moneyed kind, not the impoverished stock you’re from,’ Abena hit back. ‘Little Miss Worldly, one of my exes has an
apartment in Monaco. It might do you good to remember that while you were pissing around with Domenico, I was even further away, having a wild time in Lagos watching Kunle play polo for his
father’s team. Harrumph.’ Abena grinned.

‘True,’ Tara replied. ‘Sadly neither of us was back at Oxford where we should have been.’

‘Well, all’s well that ends well – we got our degrees didn’t we? And the real fun starts here.’ Abena bopped up and down on the spot then planted a big kiss on
Tara’s cheek. This was going to be one hell of a holiday.

****

The biggest bruise stretched across her ribs, forming an ugly red blotch under her heart.

Natalya stood naked in front of the mirror and surveyed the damage before turning and climbing into the marble bath. She lay back, closed her eyes, and let Mozart transport her to a kinder
world. She lay dreaming for some time while the water soothed her young body, still aching from the previous night. Had the beeping of her mobile not jolted her back to reality, she would have lain
longer, enjoying its gentleness. Drying herself with a fluffy white towel and wandering through to the bedroom, she reached for her BlackBerry. The message made her gasp:

Natalya trembled. Though it was only April, Reza was already thinking about jetting out to St Tropez, and this breezy message from his young assistant, Henry – permanently bronzed and
waxed like Reza himself, except that Henry was blond and gay and Reza was dark and very straight – confirmed what Natalya had been hoping for. That she would be accompanying Reza and his set
on some of their weekend jaunts to the French Riviera. She would be flown from one glamorous location to another in Reza’s private plane. She would stay on the 120-foot yacht, moored far
enough from the shore to distance the privileged party from any less fortunate onlookers, but certainly close enough to ensure that all could admire the splendour and opulence of the vessel, and
the glamour and beauty of the girls aboard it. She might get a shopping trip thrown in – a new Cartier watch, perhaps. Most importantly, though, here was a chance to escape Gregory’s
brutal and unsophisticated clutches and seek out a gentler, more malleable man. Perhaps he’d be even older; less libidinous, more giving … appreciative of the beauty of youth.

Natalya skipped across the room to her walk-in wardrobe. Pushing aside rack after rack of designer gowns, jeans and fitted sweatshirts, she burrowed her way to the summer section at the back and
emerged with an armful of cut-out swimsuits, bikini briefs and tops. Starting with the bejewelled two-piece, she worked her way carefully through each bikini outfit – adding a beach skirt
here or a kaftan there – until she’d tried on her entire collection. At long last she studied her reflection for the final time. Standing hand on hip in a pink tasselled Dior two-piece,
a wide-brimmed straw hat, giant dark shades and five-inch Cavalli heels, she groaned before throwing herself back on to the magnificent four-poster bed. No, she decided, I look hot as hell and I
know where that always gets me.

Natalya had intended to avoid Gregory for a while after his especially rough handling last night, but she needed to be taken shopping. And since her last modelling job had been another
‘hugely prestigious editorial’, which would secure her great exposure but no pay cheque, she was left with no other choice than to make amends. Reluctantly, she picked up her mobile and
dialled Gregory’s number. He answered immediately, his heavy breathing perceptible even before the phone had reached his mistress’s ear.

‘Baby is that you? Why didn’t you return my calls? Did you get my messages?’

She rolled her eyes. As she purred into the phone, a sexy Latvian twang could be detected in her accent. ‘I hef been missing you bébé …’ she breathed.
‘Come over to Knightsbridge. I want cock.’

In a tiny, run-down flat on the outskirts of Latvia’s capital city, Daina’s weary face cracked into a smile of motherly pride. She ran a bony finger across the page
ripped from the latest edition of
Harper’s Bazaar
. Natalya’s chiselled features, golden hair and smooth, honey skin seemed to jump out at her like a ray of light in the darkness
of her surroundings. Her brave darling must be doing so very well now, she prayed.