Sin Tropez (5 page)

‘It’s showtime!’ Reza roared.

With the plane a few hundred feet in the air, its passengers could glance down and smile a satisfied goodbye to southern England, now just a series of concrete clusters divided
by swathes of green fields. Hidden somewhere among the buildings of central London stood the office blocks where both Abena and Tara worked, and the girls considered their careers from this new
vantage point.

Tara had been employed for only three weeks the previous month. She’d fallen into temping after leaving university because she was reluctant to commit to any of the careers on offer.
She’d rather wander homeless through the streets of London than confine her lifestyle to a rigid and mundane routine. Not for her the daily grind of taking a ghastly bus to a drab office
every morning, then sitting in front of a computer with a bunch of people she would never normally have chosen as her friends, before trudging home with just enough time for some supper before bed.
She
knew
that somewhere there was a more glamorous life waiting for her. In the meantime she would temp, accepting only the bare minimum of work. This usually meant three weeks of
secretarial work a month in order to cover her half of the rent.

She found it wasn’t necessary to spend much to maintain a hectic social life, having discovered soon after her move to London that if one is invited to the right parties, a diet consisting
almost solely of canapés is more than substantial. Besides, she was regularly invited on dinner dates, where, despite being a modern woman, she never had any intention, or need, to open her
ostrich-skin purse when the bill came. Cars to ferry her around from restaurant to bar to nightclub or party were normally taken care of by either the date for that evening or a friend, be it the
owner of the restaurant or the PR person for the venue. Tara had soon learnt that being fashionable and connected is not just agreeable, it’s lucrative.

The only thing she sometimes felt she ought to accept more work for was high-end clothing. A connoisseur of fashion, Tara flatly refused to buy clothing on the High Street. Instead, she made do
with a wardrobe of beautifully cut vintage hand-me-downs from her grandmother, mixed with goodie-bag freebies from the shows in Paris and London, sample-sale finds, and a considerable collection of
designer gifts from wealthier friends and a couple of ex-boyfriends. This arrangement would have to suffice until she found herself an eligible man because the only occupations that could possibly
hold her attention were in fashion PR and fashion journalism, neither of which would enable her to afford a cutting-edge Preen wardrobe.

Abena, too, was struggling to achieve job satisfaction. Hugely ambitious, she was determined to make something of her sharp mind and friendly nature. Exotic good looks inherited from her
Ghanaian parents might have helped her charm her way through life, but she wanted to use her ‘interpersonal skills’ to get ahead. She enjoyed surprising people, whether with her
cut-glass English accent or Oxford degree, and what could be better than a career in the media, where she could surprise people by engaging them in issues they might not have been interested in.
She wanted to show disillusioned young people that the world doesn’t have to be a closed place and that they can carve out their own path. She wanted to tell tales of far away, and show
people new places. And so it was with the zeal of a romantic youth who has sailed through life that Abena had pressed the ‘send’ button on her job application to Mallinder Films five
months earlier.

Mallinder Films turned out to be a bitter disappointment. She loathed the tedium of her office routine. Plonked in the accounts department on her first day, she had soon become aware of some
irksome facts about business. Firstly, that even if the product to be sold is an electrifying film, the accounts still need to be tracked daily on a spreadsheet; and Mallinder Films was fond of
spreadsheets. It was fond of targets. And it absolutely loved ‘performance indicators’ for all of its employees. Tracking the number of calls that the tubby head of sales had made last
Tuesday was about as far removed from Abena’s vision of inspirational creativity as a position stacking shelves at Somerfield.

By the same token, although she’d been thrilled to be given her own assistant, the sweet but dowdy Wendy, she was by now bored rigid of hearing about the woman’s home life. No, she
did not wish to see another photograph of Wendy in the garden with her big, black dog Bruno. Or one of Wendy on holiday – with Bruno. Or a group shot showing Wendy’s sister with her
husband, Wendy’s brother with his wife, and Wendy herself with, well, Bruno. It pained Abena to think of Wendy grinding away at Mallinder well into her middle age, getting progressively more
bloated and pockmarked as she bought more dogs and cats. I need to get out now while I still can, she thought.

Mallinder Films was also excruciatingly tight with money. Abena already knew that most of the staff were paid barely enough to keep them in lovefilm subscriptions. But she hadn’t realized
quite how bad things were until a celebratory team meal was held not at the delicious Arbutus restaurant near their Soho offices but at Bangers and Beans, a greasy spoon two doors down. Olympia,
the CEO, wasn’t prepared to cough up for more. Mallinder Films was clearly far from being the powerful international player in the world of film that Olympia had implied at interview. In fact
Abena quickly learnt that hardly anybody outside of Mallinder Films had heard of Mallinder Films.

But now she was on the plane and by the time the second bottle of champagne lay empty, all thoughts of work were forgotten. ‘Cheers hon!’ Abena raised a glass to
Tara and helped herself to a praline, ignoring Natalya’s disapproving look. She noticed Reza pulling faces and sticking his tongue out at a bewildered Ciara, who giggled uncertainly, sitting
opposite him at the back of the plane with her wide-eyed young friend Francesca.

‘If in doubt, just smile and giggle when it comes to the big boss,’ advised Henry.

‘But what if he’s not joking? Or I’m not amused?’ Abena asked. The faces Reza was pulling were beneath the dignity of a man in his fifties.

‘Trust me, sweetheart, just smile and giggle. He doesn’t do small talk. He mostly talks business and makes party plans, preferably with men. With girls, it’s just smile and
giggle at his jokes.’

Stubbornly, Abena turned to Reza, determined to engage him in normal conversation. When he looked over and caught her eye she leaned forward and raised her voice.

‘Thank you so much for inviting me. This is incredible – so exciting. I don’t even know where we’re staying when we get there? Are we all on your boat?’

Reza looked blankly at her.

Feeling foolish, Abena smiled sheepishly and giggled. Immediately, Reza came alive.

‘Abena, baby,’ he boomed. ‘Have some more Dom!’ He waved at Henry to fill up her glass before turning back to Ciara and flirtatiously pushing a champagne cork down her
vest top.

‘See what I mean?’ Henry raised an eyebrow at Abena before whistling as he reached for the culture section of the paper in front of him. ‘Flaming Nora, I’m in
love!’ he swooned theatrically, fanning himself with a manicured hand. ‘They could be right out of a Bruce Weber shoot.’

‘What? Who?’ Abena and Tara spluttered in unison, peering at the paper.

The headline read: ‘ART WORLD LUMINARY TO PAINT PARTY BOY ADVERTISING HEIRS’. Under this heading was a photograph of two incredible-looking men. They clearly had not been amused to
see the paparazzi but even their scowls could not detract from their amazing beauty. Reading on hungrily, Abena learnt that ‘despite being publicity shy, brothers Alexander and Sebastian
Spectre are known in fashionable circles for their good looks, fast living, rampant womanizing and their jaw-dropping wealth, but now they are making a new name for themselves with this unexpected
collaboration …’

‘I had no idea they looked like that,’ exclaimed a mooning Tara.

‘I’ve never even heard of them. Where have they been all my life?’ Abena said.

‘I think the press have stung them a few times in the past, so you never see their pictures anywhere really,’ said Henry. ‘Last time I saw a photo of the kids was twenty years
ago or so – I was ten, the elder Spectre boy was ten, and even then I was stirred. I think that was when I first knew …’

Seven bottles of champagne later, the plane touched down smoothly in the radiant French sunshine. Henry wiggled off to finalize logistics while the others disembarked at a leisurely pace. To his
large villa by the beach next to Club 55, Reza brusquely dispatched Piers, Darren, Fadi and the two older women, who, it emerged, were best friends called Julia and Anna. They were both single and
pushing forty and, though impeccably groomed, had that weather-beaten quality (possibly helped along by extensive plastic surgery) acquired from a very early start on the party circuit and far too
many years of inebriated sleeping around with unsuitable men. They were quite unlike the yummy mummies and mega-rich divorcees of the Riviera who, though of a similar age, enjoyed an expensive and
well-preserved beauty that lingered long into their forties. These women had benefited from a more restful period while married, and were now guaranteed future privilege due to hefty divorce
settlements. The never-managed-to-marry-a-millionaire contingent, on the other hand, were by this age feeling the strain, and had to rely on the same freebie holidays they’d relied on in
their youth, and these were becoming harder and harder to come by.

Reza’s proposed sleeping arrangements put all the younger girls with him on his boat – the winningly named
Deep Pleasure
– along with Henry and Anders, who, being
homosexual, would have no intention of spoiling his fun.

‘Oh no!’ exclaimed Tara. ‘That’s such a shame as, er,
Deep Pleasure
sounds fantastic but I just cannot sleep on water. Never been able to – since I was a
child. I get so horribly seasick. I ’d be no fun whatsoever on the boat.’ She sighed in anguish then pouted in that spoilt-child manner that certain men like. Abena, imagining the
logistics of trying to escape Reza’s advances when surrounded by deep water, added that she ought to stick with Tara. Julia and Anna then made it difficult for Reza to protest by immediately
proffering their own services for the boat instead. Very tired services at that, Reza thought. He hadn’t wanted to invite them but Henry had informed him that Piers liked a mature woman.

The teenagers tugged at their low-cut tops and pulled them down further to reveal more of their perky chests as they giggled. Anna and Julia might have been right when they’d huffed that
seventeen was an optimistic estimate and that these girls could well be minors, mused Abena. Poor things, they seemed so young and out of their depth. ‘Hi girls’ Reza kept saying, to
increasingly uneasy laughter.

‘OK, listen up please everyone,’ Henry called out. ‘We’re going to get you all in cars and after everybody has had a chance to settle in and freshen up we meet for dinner
at Villa Romana, where we’ll link up with Eric and his lot, and some more very lovely ladies who we’ve flown out on commercial flights.
Poooohee
!’ He held his nose.

‘Get on with it you miserable little fairy, I’ve got a conference call in ten minutes,’ snapped Reza.

‘ And then after that I’ve organized the best table, a king-sized table, a
Reza
-sized table, in the VIP section at Les Caves. Yeah, yeah, yeah!’

Piers ushered the girls to the first waiting car and, beating the driver to it, held open the door for them. Abena noticed how much he resembled her old tutor at Oxford. ‘He’s got
something of Professor Hughes about him hasn’t he? A masterful quality …’

‘Only
you
’d be able to see the good in that navel-gazing bore. I think my tutor was a eunuch,’ laughed Tara.

‘I just like men who I can learn from,’ Abena protested.

Piers climbed into the passenger seat, a dimple forming in his cheek as he asked what outfits he would be dazzled with later. ‘You girls had better start getting ready right away –
it’s almost five o’clock,’ he teased. Although Piers was joking, the girls were already planning what to wear as they were driven towards Reza’s villa in the uplifting sun,
fully aware that London rules don’t apply in St Tropez. Here, it was all-out glamour and sex-appeal. The adjectives ‘tasteful’ and ‘understated’ were obsolete in this
part of the world and the girls knew that this was as much the resort’s triumph as its failing. As they were transported past picturesque pastel-hued cottages and café-lined cobbled
squares they felt nothing but love for the place.

The tall gates to Reza’s villa were flanked by dense rows of palm trees. They opened to reveal a magnificent example of cutting-edge architecture set back in the gravelly grounds. The
asymmetric front wall was painted a bold red and slanted dramatically from a single storey on the north side to three storeys on the south. It was breathtakingly audacious.

‘Look at those windows!’ Abena exclaimed, astounded by the glass shapes embedded into the wall. There were stars, moons and circles big enough to let in tons of light, but nothing
resembling a standard rectangle.

An assortment of uniformed staff emerged and lined up on the front steps as the car approached. As soon as the driver braked they burst into a flurry of activity, unloading baggage and helping
the girls and Piers out of the vehicle. A maid attempted to show Abena and Tara to their rooms but they sped past her in their haste to explore the villa, taking in the surprisingly minimal,
spotless white spaces.

The sun went down but the evening remained warm and inviting. A butler brought a silver tray of Mojitos up to Abena’s room, where the girls were getting ready together,
and then, before they knew it, it was time for their driver to take them to dinner.

The Italian restaurant was furnished sumptuously, unapologetically overdone with gold-leaf furniture and mythical oil paintings adorning its walls. It hummed with the loud buzz of excited and
exciting people. As the large group began congregating at the long corner table that overlooked the entire room, heads turned to stare at the unfolding spectacle.