TASMINA PERRY

Daddy’s Girls

Dedication

To John

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

Part One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Part Two

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Praise

Copyright

About the Publisher

Prologue

Christmas Day – the present

He was late. The tick – tock of the ornate grandfather clock reminded them how late. The Balcon sisters were never kept waiting for anything. They glanced independently at their watches – Cartier, Rolex, Patek Phillipe – wondering if their visitor was ever going to show. The four girls all had better things to be doing with their time. Their father was dead, there was a funeral to arrange and they had lives – busy, glamorous lives.

Cate Balcon stared out of the French windows of Huntsford Castle, watching as shadows fell into the dark study, snow settling on the sills. Outside, she saw two orbs of light moving up the long gravel drive.

‘I think he’s here.’

A few moments later, the heavy oak door to the drawing room creaked open, and David Loftus, a slim, wiry man, with eyes slightly too close together, walked in.

‘Mr Loftus,’ said Cate, rising to shake his hand. It was cold and dry, with the yellow-stained fingertips of a smoker. ‘This is David Loftus, the friend of Daddy’s,’ she said to the other women. ‘Mr Loftus is a writer. Just moved into the village, I believe. Please, David, take a seat.’

Ignoring her, Loftus moved to the huge open fire, rubbing his hands. ‘Stinking weather out there,’ he said, motioning his head towards the window. ‘The car could hardly get down the drive. Do you know there’s about a dozen photographers by the gates?’

Venetia Balcon nodded. ‘For some reason the press seems to think our father’s death constitutes news.’

‘And you’re surprised by that?’ replied Loftus with a sarcastic look. ‘You’re celebrities. Every hack in the land wants to be in this room today.’

His smile was crooked as he took in the grandeur of the room. The ancient Welsh slate fireplace, the walls lined with leather-bound books. His eyes moved up to the ceiling, all veined like a vintage cheese under the paintwork. Cracked under the magnificent surface. He smiled sourly: just like the Balcon family.

‘Well, now you’re here, what do you want?’ snapped Serena Balcon, who was feeling particularly impatient. Even for an actress, she’d had quite enough drama for one Christmas. She was the one who had found her father’s body in the castle’s moat the morning after the Christmas Eve party, mouth gaping open, skin frozen and spidered with purple veins. She shuddered at the memory as David Loftus watched her.

She was just as gorgeous in the flesh as on the screen, he thought. In fact, all four of Lord Oswald Balcon’s daughters were exactly as he’d imagined them to be. Blonde and beautiful, privilege clinging to them like expensive scent. And that haughty way they carried themselves: they thought they were so special. But now he was the one with the trump card and he was going to savour every sweet minute of it.

Without being asked, he poured himself a Scotch from a Murano glass decanter on the table and swirled it around the tumbler. As a barrister, Camilla Balcon recognized his technique. She’d used it in the courtroom a hundred times before: make your audience wait. Make them nervous.

‘I suppose the police have been round?’ Loftus asked, taking a swig of his drink.

‘And why is it any of your business?’ asked Camilla, her voice prickling with hostility.

‘Oswald was my friend,’ Loftus said. The whisky glistened on his upper lip.

‘Oswald was our father,’ replied Camilla firmly.

Loftus walked to the window, Huntsford’s grounds now just a series of shapes and shadows in the dark.

‘Accidental death? Is that what they’re saying?’

The girls looked at each other, unsure of how much to tell him. ‘Exactly,’ Cate said finally, staring into the fire. ‘He fell from the ramparts. He was watching the fireworks.’

‘Fell?’ said David, lifting one dark bushy eyebrow into a heavy arch.

Camilla flashed him a look. ‘And you are implying …’

Loftus cut Camilla short. ‘You do know that a lot of people wanted your father dead?’

‘He could be a bit difficult,’ responded Cate tartly. ‘But it’s hardly the same thing as being wanted dead.’

‘Difficult? Is that what you call it?’ he asked, tossing back the last of the whisky.

‘Your father was despised by half the people who knew him. No, I don’t think your father fell from the rooftop. I believe he was pushed. Deliberately.’ He paused. ‘I think your father was murdered.’

The fire was spitting and crackling in the background as the sisters looked at him, not daring to speak.

‘And I think that one of Daddy’s little girls killed him.’

PART ONE

1

Ten months earlier

The Honourable Serena Balcon lay back on the top deck of the Egyptian sailboat, La Mamounia, wriggled out of her pink Dior hot pants, and congratulated herself with a lazy swig of a Mojito. What a good decision, she thought smugly, looking up to watch the white sails of the boat fan out like two huge butterfly wings. Back home in London’s Chelsea, she hadn’t been sure whether to accept fashion designer Roman LeFey’s offer of a two-day cruise from Edfu to Luxor. As she received more than one hundred social invitations in the average week, she politely declined everything except the most public and most exclusive – or the odd charitable gesture. But this trip was looking very promising indeed. Only thirty of Roman’s most fabulous friends had been invited to the strictly A-list jaunt and, not only had Serena been invited, she’d been assigned La Mamounia’s Cleopatra Suite, a spacious, exotic cabin at the stern where you could open the shutters and enjoy the receding view from a claw-foot bath. She fished around for a phrase to describe the scene’s subtle grandeur. She smiled. It was appropriate.

‘How incredible is this?’ said Tom Archer, Serena’s boyfriend, leaning over the boat’s railing to get a 360-degree view. One of Britain’s most successful, not to mention fabulously handsome actors, the backdrop of the Nile suited him to a T.

‘Yes, you look very Agatha Christie, darling,’ said Serena with a hint of sarcasm, peering up from under the wide brim of her sunhat. ‘But don’t lean so far out. There could be piranhas or anything in that filthy water and I’m not jumping in to get you.’

Tom had conditioned himself not to listen to Serena’s sniping. Instead he carried on looking at a water buffalo grazing on the opposite bank, next to which an old woman was doing her washing in the tobacco-coloured waters. ‘Look at it,’ he smiled, ‘it still looks so biblical. I keep thinking we’re going to see Moses sitting on the bank.’

Serena glanced up casually. ‘I thought he was dead.’

‘Who?’

‘Moses.’

Tom rolled his eyes and Serena caught the gesture. ‘I saw that,’ she said sourly.

He turned to face her. ‘What?’

‘You just rolled your eyes at me as if I was stupid.’

‘Well, you were being stupid. Of course Moses is dead.’

‘I was joking,’ she snapped, hiding her face with a copy of Italian Vogue. ‘But yes, you’re right. It is rather special.’

Tom gave his girlfriend a wry smile, predicting the answer to his next question. ‘In that case, are you coming with me to Karnak after lunch? Biggest group of temples in the world, apparently. Roman was asking who was up for it. Doubt there’ll be a good turn out from this lot, though,’ he said, motioning towards the mezzanine deck where the rest of Roman’s guests were draining the bar.

‘Don’t be daft, darling. What do you want to go there for?’ asked Serena, dropping her magazine onto her bronzed knees. ‘It will be riddled with flies and tourists. And anyway,’ she sighed dramatically, ‘I’m too busy thinking about where we can have my birthday party. I mean – nowhere in London has a capacity of a thousand. It’s bloody ridiculous.’

‘A thousand people,’ said Tom, eyebrows raised. ‘Do we have that many friends?’

‘You don’t, no.’

Tom tutted.

‘You don’t have that many friends though, do you?’ she glared. ‘Then again, you don’t seem to like meeting people. You haven’t stopped complaining since you arrived and you haven’t made the slightest effort to talk to anyone, which is so rude because I could have invited dozens of friends in your place.’

‘Maybe you should have.’

‘Well, in future I will.’

‘Go on then.’

They glared at each other.

‘Look, just stop complaining and go and get me another drink from that turbanned chappie,’ said Serena finally. ‘I want Cristal. I’m parched.’

Tom strode over and snatched the magazine out of Serena’s hands. He brought his face down so she could see him under the brim of her hat. ‘Well there he is,’ he spat, pointing at a dark-skinned man with a tray of drinks. ‘Get off your backside and go ask him yourself.’

Serena Balcon and Tom Archer’s relationship was in the stage that most therapists refer to as terminal. Held together by familiarity and convenience, even the most innocent conversation quickly became a nettle patch of hostile banter. For Serena, the hostility was brought on by festering disappointment. Tom Archer had started off as a novelty boyfriend; he was cute and uncomplicated, and the complete opposite of the long procession of Serena’s former boyfriends – ex-Etonians, Hugh Grant-alikes and floppy-haired trust-fund banker boys. At first, it didn’t matter that Tom didn’t have pedigree – his mother worked in a factory, his father was a gardener: not a hint of good breeding anywhere in that family tree. But he was hot, the sexiest British film star since Jude Law, and he had increased Serena’s celebrity stock immeasurably.

Before she had met him on the set of a tiny British indie movie five years ago, Serena had been just a posh blonde who dabbled in modelling and importing pashminas. She was famous in the society pages for being one of the fabulous Balcon girls, but who wanted to be stuck in Tatler forever? She wanted a bigger stage, and at Tom’s side she got it. The media loved them – the unlikely but classy combination of Tom, the British-born movie star, and Serena, the sexy daughter of a baron, was potent and irresistible. Her impeccable sense of style wasn’t lost on the fashion press either. Within weeks of their party debut as a couple, she was US Vogue’s ‘Girl of the Month’ and within the year they were a huge Tom & Serena franchise that was like a golden VIP pass into the world of fame.

Five years later, it wasn’t enough. Yes, her family were titled, but much to Serena’s annoyance, the Balcons weren’t a grand English family like the Marlboroughs, the Wellingtons or the Balfours. Serena wanted a home to rival Blenheim, she wanted the tiny ducal crown on her headed notepaper and the state wedding with an engagement ring in the colours of her national flag, just like the one that Prince Rainier had once presented to Grace Kelly. And the fact that her bloody sister Venetia had managed to marry into semi-royalty tormented her even more. Put simply, Serena wanted more than Tom could give her.

She stretched out her long aristocratic legs on her sun-lounger and turned to look at Tom fuming at the rail on the far side of the deck. She smirked. It wasn’t all bad. There was no denying he was gorgeous. That square jaw, the cobalt blue eyes framed by jet black lashes, the mussed-up crop of dark hair and that incredible body peeking out from his open white Turnball & Asser shirt. Tom’s good looks could blend into any social situation. In a pub, he exuded a handsome-boy-next-door ordinariness. At a country house dinner with her father, Tom’s fine English features took on a rather noble, Brideshead Revisited quality. And put him on an LA film set and he glowed with that indefinable X-factor that agents the world over wished they could bottle.

Maybe he wasn’t so bad …

‘Sorry for being a bit cranky,’ she said softly, curving her pillow-soft lips into a pout. ‘Come here …’

Despite himself, Tom could not resist the sight of her stretched out suggestively in her Missoni string bikini. He moved sulkily to the sun-lounger. She straddled him, pulling off her bikini top and pressing her naked breasts against his chest. Tom groaned as she tightened her thighs against his.

‘How about we go back in the cabin and make up properly …?’ she purred in his ear.

‘Oh Serena,’ he said, struggling between two emotions – lust and anger.

‘Serena, Tom. Here you are, you lovebirds!’ Roman LeFey’s singsong voice pierced the silence. The biggest French designer since Yves Saint Laurent, he was a tall, black man with skin the colour of cocoa, his large belly hidden by a dark green kaftan. ‘What are you doing on the top deck in the mid-day sun? Mad cats and the English, hey?’

‘Mad cats exactly, Roman,’ said Tom, slightly abashed as Serena swung her feet onto the deck and slipped a tanned foot into a Manolo Blahnik flip-flop, tying up her bikini top without the slightest hint of embarrassment.

‘Roman, darling,’ she purred, kissing him on both cheeks. ‘I was just persuading Tom to be a bit more sociable.’

‘Looks like it,’ smiled Roman playfully. ‘Now lunch is about to be served, so stop hiding yourself and come downstairs,’ he said, leading them both towards the spiral stairs which snaked down to the boat’s mezzanine area.

‘Oh, I can’t go down in this tiny thing,’ moaned Serena. ‘I must go and change.’

She tip-toed across the top deck and slipped into her cabin, the welcome whirl of the ceiling fan cooling her skin and her mood. She threw open the wooden shutters of her closet and began flipping through a rack of chiffon, linen and silk clothes, thinking how exhausting it was to be known for your taste. An ill-considered outfit at even the most casual of gatherings – well, she shuddered to think about it.

Deciding on a tiny white Marni sundress, she stripped naked and pulled the thin fabric up over her long, lean, tanned body, accessorizing with a huge quartz ring and a copper bangle pushed high up her bronzed arm. She scooped her long layered honey-blonde hair up into a top-knot, patted her face with a towel and dabbed her cheekbones with a light, rose-coloured blush that accentuated her big aqua-marine eyes. At twenty-six she knew she was at the peak of her physical beauty: understated, stylish, stunning. Very Julie-Christie-on-holiday, she thought, looking at her reflection in the glass.

She fixed a pair of Ray-Ban Aviators over the bridge of her nose and walked to the mezzanine deck, taking slow, deliberate steps so that her entrance would be fully noted. She paused for a minute, taking in the scene. A crowd of people were drinking flutes of champagne and nibbling at canapés. The air smelt of cumin; a small band in fezzes played traditional Egyptian music by the bar. She moved through the crowd, away from where Tom was talking to a laughing crowd, and grabbed a martini.

‘What do you think of the dahabeah?’ asked Roman who had appeared by her side and taken her hand.

‘The what?’

‘My baby!’ he laughed. ‘A dahabeah is an Egyptian sailboat.’

‘It’s amazing,’ she said, giving him a playful kiss on the cheek and leaving a ring of pale pink gloss on his skin. ‘And I love our suite.’

‘I thought you’d like the Cleopatra Suite,’ he smiled knowingly, picking up a fig from an overloaded plate. ‘I should be in the studio finishing off the collection for Milan,’ he added, ‘but I can’t help being naughty.’

‘You’re so decadent, darling. That’s why I love you,’ sighed Serena generously, then instantly became businesslike. ‘Now tell me who’s here,’ she said, craning her long neck to survey the crowd. ‘I haven’t really been introduced to anyone yet.’

‘Well, let’s do that now,’ he whispered conspiratorially. ‘Who would you like to meet?’

She scanned the deck, looking for familiar faces or interesting people with whom to network. Someone had told her Leo DiCaprio was coming but she couldn’t see him anywhere. Roman could be so random with his invitations, she thought. She spotted a photographer from US Vogue, a media mogul’s daughter, a Victoria’s Secret model. Perhaps it wasn’t as AAA-List as she’d been led to believe.

‘I don’t really recognize anyone,’ she smiled, trying to hide her disappointment.

Roman stepped up onto a little platform and looked across the deck, lifting a podgy little finger to identify his guests.

‘On this trip, I wanted to invite friends who would appreciate Egypt,’ said Roman seriously.

Serena smiled, trying to look grateful.

Roman went through his guests one by one, giving a potted history on each. The Russian princess, the gay interior designer, New York’s top session hairdresser, a society florist and a three-Michelin-starred chef from Barcelona. In the centre was Michael Sarkis, the billionaire hotelier. ‘Here with the girlfriend,’ whispered Roman.

Her interest was waning.

‘Now there is Rachel Barnaby,’ said Roman, clapping his hands together and pointing to a luscious-looking girl by the bar. ‘She’s going to be huge. Did you read the cover story in this month’s Vogue?’

Serena smiled. Of course she had. The dazzling Welsh girl with her long raven hair, alabaster skin and pillowy lips had been touted as the next big thing. Huge talent. Beyond glamorous. Her jaw stiffened just thinking about it.

‘Well, everybody’s the next big thing in Vogue, aren’t they,’ she replied archly. ‘So many people don’t quite make it though, do they?’

Roman tapped her on the bottom. ‘Don’t be unkind,’ he smiled. ‘You have nothing to fear. She hasn’t even got a proper publicist yet – I had to ring her mother to invite her on the cruise.’

Serena smiled broadly. Of course she had nothing to worry about from a pretty, bland teenager. So Rachel Barnaby had snagged a Vogue cover. Someone must have dropped out. Serena, on the other hand, had the front-row seat at the shows, the two-million-pound cosmetics contract. And OK, so she hadn’t quite scooped a big Hollywood role yet, but those kinky, overweight Hollywood producers preferred malleable trailer-park trash to someone with genuine class and manners. And anyway, she was Serena Balcon. Every move she and Tom made – the holiday frolic, the Ivy supper, the last-minute dash to Harrods for Christmas presents – all made front-page news. Beat that, you Welsh oik, she thought smugly.

Recovering her poise, Serena decided that Michael Sarkis was the best of numerous evils on La Mamounia. She didn’t know much about him, other than that he was born in Beirut – of an American mum and a Lebanese father, so she had once read – and raised in the Bronx. One of the world’s most successful hoteliers, he was a real rags-to-riches entrepreneur who had made a great deal of money peddling gaudy holidays to super-rich Arabs. His hotels were hallmarked by casinos in the lobby, shark tanks in the gardens and gold leaf everywhere; vulgar little places that Serena wouldn’t be seen dead in. But still … he was filthy rich and he was talking to Rachel Barnaby.

She walked over to where Michael was standing by a long table piled high with Egyptian delicacies. There were tiny honey-glazed baklava, twists of pistachio-infused pastries, piles of white peaches and bowls of flat bread cut into rough chunks. It looked like the Last Supper.

‘I hope you’re hungry,’ smiled Serena, popping a plump, dark-green olive into her mouth and unleashing her most dazzling smile on Michael.

‘I hope you’re thirsty,’ he replied, picking up a bottle of wine and pouring Serena a glass. ‘I’m Michael.’

‘Serena. Pleased to meet you.’

Michael put out a tanned hand to shake hers. As he gripped her fingers, she noticed what extraordinarily sexy hands they were. Big and tanned with an artisan’s squareness about them, the fingertips were smooth and manicured – and the chunky expensive gold watch on his wrist didn’t hurt either.

Michael seemed to notice Serena’s interest and allowed himself a smile. ‘Do you like the wine?’ he asked.

‘The wine?’ repeated Serena. ‘Gorgeous. Pétrus, the forty-seven, I think?’

Michael twisted the bottle to read its label. ‘You know your stuff.’

‘Well, the forty-seven was one of the best vintages of the century for the vineyard. It’s even better than the seventy, I think. Really rather wonderful.’ She turned to face Rachel Barnaby. ‘What do you think? The forty-seven or the seventy?’ she asked.

Rachel flushed. ‘I can only just about tell the difference between red and white, let alone anything else,’ she laughed politely.

‘How sweet,’ smiled Serena, flashing her a patronizing look. ‘Still, you’re an actress, not a sommelier.’

Rachel Barnaby suddenly needed the ladies’ room and Serena watched her go.

‘Nice girl,’ said Michael.

‘Very sweet and simple,’ smiled Serena.

Michael looked her up and down with a deep penetrating stare that unnerved her. Slowly running one finger up and down the stem of his glass, he gave her a slow, flirtatious smile. ‘So, how are you such an expert on wine?’ he asked, taking a sip of his drink.

‘My father’s a wine buff,’ said Serena, unconsciously tracing her lip with her finger.

‘Lord Balcon?’ asked Michael, lifting a bushy black eyebrow into a scruffy arch.

‘That’s right, do you know him?’

‘Not really,’ replied Michael, his brow furrowing. ‘He’s on the committee of a club in London that just turned me down.’

Serena watched a dark cloud cross his face and realized instantly that Michael Sarkis was a man not used to being turned down for anything. ‘Which one? White’s? Annabel’s?’

‘Hamilton’s, actually.’

She picked up a canapé and laughed out loud. ‘What do you want to go there for? Full of stiffs my father knows from school. I had you down as a Bungalow 8 or Billionaire kind of guy.’

‘I have my own clubs, too,’ he smiled, ‘but sometimes you want to try something new.’

He moved nearer to her and rested his hand on her hip. It was a sudden and intimate gesture that sparked a jolt of desire through her. Unsettled, she struggled to rationalize it. Wasn’t he too old? It was hard to place an age on the dark-haired man. He could be forty, maybe even fifty. She’d hardly call him good looking: the hooked nose was too long, the dark eyes narrow and beady, his head too small for his body; but like so many older, more powerful men she had met through her father, he oozed an arrogant, almost dangerous allure that was definitely sexy.

‘Where are you going after the cruise?’ he asked in a way that suggested an imminent offer.

‘It’s not as hectic as usual,’ she smiled coyly, trying to leave herself open. ‘Got to do some press for To Catch a Thief but, other than that, the world is my oyster.’

‘Oh, I heard you were doing that remake.’ He smiled appreciatively. ‘The Grace Kelly role, of course.’

‘Of course,’ smiled Serena, flattered that he knew about her work. ‘And David Clooney as Roby the handsome jewel thief. It’s a great cast.’

‘Where are the junkets?’

‘Oh, it’s tedious. London, New York, LA,’ she said, showing a fashionable lack of interest at being flown privately all around the world and having half the world’s press fawn at her feet.

‘When you’re in LA, give me a ring so we can hook up. Where do you live?’

Serena flushed slightly and pushed a stray tendril of hair behind her ear. ‘Actually I live in London at the moment. But I’m thinking of getting a couple of other places: go bicoastal. In the meantime I’m staying at The Viceroy.’

She looked up at his face, which lay somewhere between disappointment and puzzlement.

‘What’s the matter?’

He smiled. ‘It’s nothing.’

‘No, what?’ she repeated almost petulantly.

‘I just wondered why you still live in London.’

‘What’s wrong with that? I live just off Cheyne Walk.’

His look bordered on bemusement. ‘I thought a woman like you would be thinking bigger.’

Her brow fell into a sharp crease. ‘I don’t quite understand.’

Michael paused. His head was bowed and he was smiling to himself, as if in an internal dialogue he was telling a joke.

‘I was at dinner last week in LA. My friend Lawrence owns Clerc, the jeweller’s. Do you know them?’

She nodded. They had lent her a pair of yellow diamond drop earrings for last year’s Oscars.

‘They’re looking for a “face”, a spokesperson, whatever you want to call it. They’re talking about the obvious names: Julia, Gwyneth, Catherine. Someone mentioned you and, having met you now, I would say you’d be the perfect choice.’ He stroked her cheek lightly. ‘You are incredibly beautiful.’

Serena looked away.

‘But … your name was dismissed for not having – ah, shall we say – international appeal.’

Her mouth immediately curled into a wounded, pained expression. ‘For your information I have a lot of visibility in the States,’ she retorted, straightening her back. ‘Vanity Fair are desperate to do a profile. I’d hardly say that was parochial.’

Michael spread his hands in a gesture of appeasement. ‘My mistake, I just thought you’d like to know.’

‘Well, thank you for your opinion,’ said Serena frostily. ‘Now, I think I’d better go and see Roman.’ She turned away, suddenly consumed with a fury about Tom’s irrational obsession: to stay living in London. And how dare she be overlooked for a major advertising campaign? She was a huge star. She had breeding – didn’t the Americans love all that ‘lady of the manor’ stuff?

A dark flicker of insecurity exploded in her consciousness.

Serena moved purposefully through the crowd, her mind already working on meetings with agents, real-estate buyers and publicists, her ambition to conquer Hollywood completely refuelled.

2

Three thousand miles away, a 747 touched down on the Heathrow tarmac, wobbling from side to side, its wheels screeching to the ground and forcing business-class passenger and nervous flyer Cate Balcon to reach out and squeeze the hand of her grateful neighbour.

‘Sorry,’ she smiled at the old man in a Harris tweed jacket, aware that it was the first contact she’d had with him during the entire trip. The man, who had recognized her from Richard Kay’s page in the Daily Mail as soon as he’d boarded, gave her fingers a little squeeze back. ‘Crosswinds,’ he smiled kindly, ‘nothing to worry about.’

Mildly embarrassed, Cate was on her feet as soon as the engines wound down. That’s the beauty of business class, she thought, slipping her Jimmy Choos back on: the quick getaway. She grabbed her leather holdall from the overhead compartment, peered through the window at the grey, drizzling London day and politely pushed her way to the front of the queue, looking at her watch anxiously. She hated the overnight red-eye flights from New York in the working week; they brought her back into London just too late to slip home for a quick sleep, yet too early to blow out the day’s work altogether. Still, she thought as she darted for the arrivals hall, if her PA had booked a car and it was waiting for her, she might just get back for the twelve noon production meeting.

‘Cate Balcon?’ asked a young, tanned driver as Cate charged through the automatic doors.

‘Yes. Let’s be quick,’ replied Cate officiously, handing him her black wheelie case and tying back her long, thick hair with a tortoiseshell clip as she went. ‘Alliance Magazines, just off Aldwych.’

As Cate settled back into the leather seats of the black Mercedes, the scenery slipping from airport to suburbs to city, she tried to make some use of the time. The New York shows had been particularly good this season, she thought, opening her notebook to look at her scribblings from the front row. The fashion crowd might coo over the Paris leg of the collections for the spectacular fashion theatrics of Dior and McQueen, but Cate loved New York for its elegant, wearable clothes, and for the ideas it gave her for the magazine. They could do an Edith Wharton-flavoured story spinning off the tweed at Ralph Lauren, a safari shoot based on the linen and leather she had seen at Michael Kors and a Great Gatsby-style feature based on the jewelled coloured tea-dresses at Zac Posen.

She pulled out her Mont Blanc pen and started jotting down more ideas, completely unaware that her handsome driver kept glancing in his rear-view mirror at the striking woman with the red-gold hair on his back seat. Cate was oblivious, immersed as always in her work. She told herself that she worked twice as hard as everybody else because everybody expected Cate Balcon ‘the baron’s daughter’ to be twice as idle.

Although it was true that Alliance Magazines recruited its staff from a shallow gene pool – it was an industry joke that you had to be posh and pretty to get past their human resources department – Cate’s appointment to editor of Class, the company’s upmarket fashion and lifestyle flagship publication, had still fired a vicious whispering campaign in the media industry. The tattlers were outraged. Sure, they argued, there was the odd minor aristocrat at Alliance: the social editor on Verve was a countess and there was a viscount’s daughter in Rive’s fashion cupboard, but no one seriously expected them to become editors. The rumour mill had gone into overdrive. How had Cate become editor at the tender age of thirty-one? Whom had she slept with? What strings had Daddy pulled? It added insult to injury that the photogenic Cate Balcon was famous. British editors weren’t supposed to become celebrities – only Anna Wintour had the right to that crown. Cate Balcon simply didn’t deserve it, said the gossipmongers. But then anyone who had ever worked with her knew differently.

‘Morning Sadie,’ she smiled at her curly-haired PA who was sorting through a big lever-arch file outside her office. She glanced around the room at the young attractive women on the phone, rummaging through rails of fabulous clothes or typing away at computers; all noticeably more absorbed in their work the moment Cate arrived.

‘Afternoon, Cate,’ smiled Sadie, looking up at the clock. ‘I think Nicole’s taken the liberty of taking the twelve o’clock meeting on your behalf.’

The two women rolled their eyes at each other. ‘Typical,’ said Cate quietly. ‘Better do me a big favour and make me a strong cup of coffee.’

‘Cate! You’re back,’ called Lucy Cavendish from the other end of the office. Lucy was Class’s senior fashion editor and the nearest thing Cate had to a friend in the office. The six-foot black girl strode over wearing a thigh-skimming miniskirt and over-the-knee Versace boots, looking every inch one of the supermodels she styled.

‘You’ll never guess,’ gushed Lucy. ‘François Nars has said yes to us doing a shoot at his house on Bora-Bora. If you tell me I can’t go, I will die.’

‘Before we arrange the funeral, let’s check the budget with Ciara and we’ll take it from there,’ said Cate, smiling, as she walked into her office.

Lucy followed her in to catch up on the Fashion Week gossip. ‘Did you go to the Zac Posen party? Sorry I missed it but I had to make yesterday’s flight.’

‘Yes, I went and yes, it was fun,’ Cate replied, smiling at the memory.

Lucy gave Cate a mischievous grin. ‘I detect gossip, chief … So who did you meet? What was he like?’

She motioned Lucy into her office, a corner space on the eighth floor, just high enough to have views over the London Eye and the river. Lucy sat down and Cate flopped into her toffee-coloured leather chair behind her desk, quickly beginning to open the huge pile of mail that had accumulated in her absence. She casually tossed each item in front of Lucy as they spoke. Acres of press releases, stiff white party invitations and parcels of gifts from grateful advertisers and retailers. A Jimmy Choo bag and a white designer scarf, a stiff cardboard bag full of beauty products that Cate doubted would even fit through the bathroom door in her tiny Notting Hill mews house. She pushed the bag towards Lucy. ‘Need any of these?’

‘I don’t need products, I want gossip,’ said Lucy. ‘Come on, spill.’

Knowing she was not going to get away with distracting her friend, Cate relented with a smile.

‘The party was excellent. In this huge, amazing loft in the Meatpacking district. And they gave a great goody-bag, you’ll be delighted to hear. A hundred-dollar voucher for some underwear and a bottle of perfume. I’ve got it in my bag somewhere if you want it.’

Lucy flew a dismissive hand across her face. ‘Goody-bags, schmoody-bags! Catherine Balcon, you met a guy, didn’t you? Praise Jesus, tell me you’ve found someone, even if he does live in Manhattan.’

Only Lucy could get away with being so brazen and cheeky. A wide smile spread across Cate’s face, her ripe cheeks rounding out like two Cox’s apples as she conceded defeat. It was so long since she had met anybody decent. Serena’s perma-tanned playboy friends held no interest for her, while straight, single men in London’s media world were as rare as hen’s teeth. She’d had sex with two men in the last two years and not had a proper relationship in – well, too long. She didn’t need a shrink to tell her she had intimacy problems, and the longer it went on, the harder it became. Serena was forever telling Cate that she made herself seem as available as Fort Knox. She was certainly right, except New York had been a bit more productive.

‘He was a photographer called Tim. He was nice. He won’t ring.’ Cate shook her head. ‘Satisfied?’

‘No. Not satisfied. Getting any personal detail out of you is like drilling for deep-sea oil! If I had met a gorgeous New York hunk, I’d …’

Lucy’s fantasies ground to a halt as a willowy, size zero blonde in a cream Chloé trouser suit waltzed into the office and sat proprietorially on the arm of the sofa, crossing her legs and dangling a Manolo off her foot. ‘So how was New York?’ asked Nicole Valentine, her voice hard and nasal.

Cate looked up at her deputy editor, annoyed that she had interrupted a rare moment of confession.

‘Hi Nicole, it was fine,’ she said. ‘Look, Nicole, we’re talking …’

Nicole ignored Cate and turned her attention to Lucy. ‘The fashion cupboard is a tip,’ she barked. ‘And why have we got racks of clothes in the meeting room? I need it cleaned, Lucy. Like, yesterday.’

Lucy flashed a look at Cate and left. Cate turned to her deputy. ‘Nicole. There is no need to talk to a senior member – any member – of staff like that.’

Nicole raised a perfectly threaded eyebrow at her boss. ‘As you wish,’ she replied defiantly. ‘However, we have more important things to worry about.’

‘Is that why you started the meeting without me?’

Nicole paused dramatically, playing smugly with the five-carat Asscher-cut engagement ring on her finger. ‘I started the meeting because we need to start getting things done. I spoke to Jennifer’s publicist last night and it looks like the April cover isn’t going to happen.’

Cate felt panic starting to flutter around her body. ‘What do you mean, isn’t going to happen? We’ve done the shoot. We’ve designed the cover. It looks great,’ she started, then rubbed her forehead. ‘Bloody hell. We go to press in a week. What went wrong?’

‘We said we’d give picture approval and when we sent the images over to her publicist – well, they don’t like the shoot.’ Nicole pursed her lips into a self-satisfied smile that said, ‘So, what are you going to do about that?’

Cate looked at Nicole and thought – not for the first time – how much the New Yorker unsettled her. Everything about her deputy, from the platinum-blonde highlights to her Manolo Blahnik heels was hard. Cate was a tough but fair boss: she gave respect and courtesy and received it in the same way from a grateful staff that, she was sure, had been enjoying life on the magazine since Cate became editor a year ago. But her relationship with Nicole was awkward and competitive and she regretted the day she’d hired her from W magazine in New York. Nicole was cold, efficient and ambitious, and it was that ambition that scared her, knowing how often it went hand in hand with deceit and disloyalty.

Sadie popped her curls round the door. She was holding a steaming china mug. ‘For my jet-lagged editor,’ she said, placing it on a flower-shaped coaster on the desk. ‘And William Walton has called three times this morning. He said could you pop up to see him as soon as you’ve settled in?’

In the six months since Walton’s appointment to the board of Alliance Magazines from a large advertising and marketing agency in Chicago, Cate had had very little to do with him. As his background wasn’t editorial, he showed no interest in Class, apart from the sales figures at the end of every month and any free tickets for the opera, Formula One or art-gallery openings that the features department could throw his way.

‘Really?’ said Cate, feeling a flutter of alarm. ‘What does he want?’

She caught the look on Nicole’s face, which was one of someone who’d just been given an early birthday present.

‘I don’t know,’ said Sadie with a sympathetic look, ‘but his secretary is starting to call every five minutes.’

All alone in the lift, Cate stared at the buttons and wondered what to say to Walton. Despite the sinking feeling in her stomach, she knew she should feel confident: if the reaction she’d got in New York was anything to go by, both the readers and advertisers were finally getting it. She’d spent twelve months redesigning the magazine, and had by sheer strength of will changed Class from a dated, pompous society magazine to a glossy fashionable read for smart, successful women. The catwalk shows had been a wonderful vindication; a raft of prestige advertisers who so far had only ever appeared in Vogue in the UK had suggested that Class would be added to their advertising schedule in the fall. That should please Mr William Walton, thought Cate, as the bell pinged for the top floor.

She walked through the double doors and down the cream corridors lined with giant-sized magazine covers, until she reached an unsmiling redhead behind a computer.

‘Is he busy?’

‘Go straight in,’ replied the woman, not looking up from her computer screen.

William Walton’s office was unlike anything else Cate had seen in the Alliance building. Interior-designed at great expense, it was decked out in walnut wood and shades of taupe instead of the usual Formica and magnolia walls that everybody else had to put up with. The man himself was sitting behind a wraparound leather-top desk. His self-possessed presence filled the room. Powerfully built, with wiry black hair, Walton’s expensive bespoke clothes masked the fact that he had got to the top the hard way. The very hard way. When, twenty years ago, the young William had beaten thousands to win a scholarship to Yale, he had assumed it would pave the way to privilege. He was mistaken. The doors to American society’s elite were still very much closed to a boy from the southside of Chicago and, instead of spending his summers making contacts in Connecticut country clubs, he was forced to fight his way through the mailrooms of Grey’s and Ogilvy & Mather to achieve the status he craved. But he had made it. Power and privilege, he’d learned, were things to be won by hard work and cunning, not born or bought into. All of which explained precisely why William Walton was looking at Cate Balcon with such distaste.

‘I wanted to see you as soon as you got in,’ began Walton. ‘I hear we have a few problems.’ Walton paused, his dark, feral eyes sizing her up. He’d seen her before, of course, and read about her in the society pages she seemed to monopolize along with her sisters. But alone and face to face for the first time, Walton was impressed despite himself. She might not be a patch on that actress sister of hers, but Cate Balcon was still a knockout. The firm, slightly sulky rosebud mouth, the wavy, dark-golden hair flowing over that elegant neck. And then there was the curvy body, no doubt considered plump by the stick-thin Zone-dieted women he’d dated in Chicago, but when he imagined it naked and wet under his shower, her plump lips round his cock, swallowing him whole … He stopped himself and shifted in his seat, motioning her to sit in one of the hard black leather chairs in front of him.

‘As you know, Cate, magazines are a business,’ he began.

She nodded hesitantly. ‘Of course. I had lots of compliments in New York about how we’ve really improved the magazine. The advertising is looking very promising.’

William didn’t seem to notice what she was saying as he flicked through an issue of Class with what looked suspiciously like disdain.

‘Magazines are a business,’ he repeated. ‘And I was brought into Alliance to improve that business. They are not simply entertainment, they are a commodity, and to be honest with you, Cate, I don’t think the numbers Class is selling at the moment really warrants the investment.’

Cate immediately realized that this was not going to be a friendly, ‘How were the New York shows?’ catch-up. She needed to do some firefighting.

‘With respect, we’re showing a definite turnaround in circulation,’ she said as calmly as she could. ‘If anything, William, since I arrived at Alliance, we’ve improved the Class business by at least fifteen per cent. We’ve stopped the circulation rot and improved advertising volume and yield.’

‘I wouldn’t call a hundred thousand sales a month show-stopping business,’ interrupted Walton tartly, throwing the magazine down on the desk.

‘Well, it’s not the News of the World, no. But it’s better than both Tatler and Harper’s,’ said Cate.

Walton steepled his fingers in front of his mouth and regarded her coolly. Cate Balcon was clearly no pushover. But then neither was he.

‘I suspect, however, that the magazines you mention all have a cover for their April issue.’

The hairs on Cate’s neck began to tingle. She could practically see Nicole Valentine’s smile as she whispered into Walton’s ear. She squeezed her nails into her palm and decided that she’d fire Nicole this afternoon and hang the consequences.

Cate took a deep breath. ‘So someone’s told you about Jennifer. I just heard about that this morning, too. It’s not ideal, but it happens. I’ve actually got something in reserve,’ she said, her cheeks flushing lightly at the deliberate lie. But Walton wasn’t watching. He’d got up from his seat and had turned his back on her to stare at the London skyline, absently rolling a golf ball around in his palm.

‘I am not interested in the micromanagement of your magazine, Cate,’ he replied flatly. ‘A picture of my grandmother could go on the cover if you could guarantee me sales. What I am interested in is revenue. I think Class should be a more mass-market, more profitable magazine. I don’t want to be outselling Tatler, I want to be outselling Glamour.’ He turned back towards Cate and banged the golf ball onto the desk. ‘I want to be outselling everyone.’

Cate was used to being bullied by her father – she’d put up with bullying then and would put up with it now.

‘A fine ambition, of course,’ she said evenly, carefully smoothing down her skirt. God, she was shaking, she thought, looking at her hands. She hated confrontation and tried to imagine what her sister Camilla would do in her shoes.

‘But you’ll be aware that Class magazine is not published on a mass-market model. We are advertising rather than circulation driven, and I think you’ll need a massive repositioning of the product to change that.’

He looked at her, smiling cruelly. ‘Exactly, Cate, exactly. So you’ll understand completely what I’m about to say.’

The bile was beginning to rise in Cate’s throat and she was finding it impossible to open her mouth to speak. ‘Which is what?’ she finally croaked.

Walton wasn’t to be hurried. He’d pictured scenes like this every time he’d been humiliated by a toffee-nosed Ivy-Leaguer in college, and he always enjoyed every second of revenge when it came. He walked around his huge desk, perched on the corner and looked down at Cate.

‘The Honourable Catherine Balcon,’ he said with a superior smirk, and Cate shivered, sensing that the fatal blow was about to be delivered. ‘While it’s obviously wonderful to have someone of your high profile editing one of our titles, I have to wonder what it really brings to the party. If Class is going to be more populist, more popular, I need someone at the helm more in touch with the Great British Public. Not someone whose daddy owns a castle.’

‘What a ridiculous thing to say,’ retorted Cate angrily. ‘My background has nothing to do with whether I can be a good, commercial editor or not. And anyway, if you got to know your employees better, you’d find out that I’m not the out-of-touch aristocrat you clearly think I am!’

Walton took in the long curvy legs hiding under the navy wool pencil skirt and actually began to regret the missed opportunity of getting to know Cate Balcon better. ‘You’re just not my person for the job, Cate,’ he said coldly. He stood up and briskly walked back to his seat. ‘I have immediate plans for Class magazine,’ he continued, already starting to flick through his mobile-phone menu for the number of his lunch date. ‘And I’m afraid that you’re not going to be part of them.’

Cate stared at him, her head starting to feel dizzy. It had all happened so fast. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘In plain Queen’s English, Miss Balcon, you’re fired. With immediate effect.’

Cate felt paralysed. She was unable to move from her chair.

‘On what grounds? That my DNA is wrong?’

Walton didn’t seem to hear. His attention had already wandered to something on his computer screen.

‘Fine,’ said Cate in a quiet, controlled voice, rising unsteadily and moving towards the door with dignity. ‘You will, of course, be hearing from my solicitors.’

William Walton glanced up and took one last look at the long legs exiting his office. ‘Get them to call my secretary.’

3

Karnak was spectacular. Even though Tom had wanted a siesta after the enormous lunch and huge amounts of booze he’d had on La Mamounia, he was glad he’d made the effort to join the very small group of guests visiting the temple complex on the outskirts of Luxor. He wandered through the huge sandstone pillars, the long shadows dancing between the tall shapes stretching into a cornflower blue sky. He smiled to himself. Celebrity had a habit of making you feel so tall, so special, but here he felt like an inconsequential speck. He could stay here all afternoon, he thought. The last thing he wanted was to get back to Serena, even though it had irked him over lunch to see her talking to that slimy Yanky letch.

Serena. The first two years of their relationship had been wonderful. Tom had thought her cranky, dramatic ways were perversely adorable. Having had little contact with the upper classes before he’d met her, he assumed that’s how they were: self-obsessed and spoilt. He’d never once considered it might just be Serena’s personality. But now he was convinced that she had ice water running through her veins. While he understood it – the Balcon family were clearly seriously dysfunctional, irritation rather than affection was the overwhelming emotion he felt for her. He had even started fancying the barmaid at the Pig & Piper back in the Cotswolds village where he kept a house. He liked her wonky teeth, her fleshy breasts and the pink blushing cheeks when she served him his pint. Above all, he liked her warmth.

Then the Sheffield lad in Tom caught himself. Was he mad? He lived with Serena Balcon! One of People magazine’s Fifty Most Beautiful People, or so he had read at the airport newsagent. They were right, of course: she was stunning. From the moment he’d seen her on her trailer step reading a script, her feet bare on the ground, her fair hair blowing gently in the breeze, he had thought she was the most fabulous-looking creature he had ever seen. He would never tire of looking at Serena, but he was sick to death of listening to her – those plummy tones, the inane babble. Tom had struggled through a tough comprehensive, to university, to RADA, clawing his way up, desperate to improve himself, so he couldn’t quite believe he was living with a woman whose idea of current affairs were the party pages in Vanity Fair.

He flicked at a fly buzzing around his face. So why couldn’t he leave her?

The thought had crossed his mind a hundred times. But when he really imagined life without her, he was caught between a sense of sheer relief and horrible insecurity. What would happen to Tom without Serena? They were as inseparable as Siamese twins. He shuddered despite the heat.

‘Tom Archer! Come and join the group, you naughty thing.’

Jolene Schwartz was a brazen, heavily tanned fifty-something Texan who had married well and divorced better. She came sashaying towards him, twirling a frilly white parasol above her like a deep-fried Dolly Parton.

‘Just coming,’ called Tom, getting to his feet. ‘Are we leaving?’

‘We were supposed to meet at the Great Hall twenty minutes ago to head back to the boat.’ She wagged her finger at him at the same time as fixing him with a flirtatious smile. ‘I’m going to have to put you over my knee.’

Unconsciously, Tom found himself looking at Jolene’s legs and her unnaturally smooth knees – an obvious product of the latest surgery craze that was sweeping New York. He tore his gaze away and gave a weak, cracked smile.

‘I’d better get a move on then, hadn’t I?’

They walked as quickly as the hot sun would allow to the entrance, where a black Range Rover was waiting for them. Tom wedged himself into the cream leather back seat between Jolene and Roman’s boyfriend, Patric, a handsome, grey-haired, softly spoken architect from Provence.

‘So, who are you going to introduce me to on the boat?’ said Jolene playfully to Patric as the car began to weave through traffic towards the docks. ‘I haven’t worked out who’s single yet.’

‘What about Frédéric?’ suggested Patric playfully.

She spluttered, ‘But he’s queer!’ She looked at Patric’s mock-crushed expression and quickly corrected herself. ‘Sorry, sorry. I love gay men. I just don’t want to date one.’

‘What about Michael Sarkis?’ asked Tom. ‘I’m sure he’s not gay.’

Jolene looked at him and giggled. ‘Now honey, that’s where I draw the line. In New York they call him the cat burglar. Always after other people’s pussy,’ she giggled with a smoker’s rasp. ‘I don’t know anyone he hasn’t screwed.’

Patric shifted uncomfortably in his chair as Jolene smiled at him.

‘No, what I want is someone like this one,’ she said, squeezing the top of Tom’s knee.

Catching Tom’s frozen expression, Patric tried to change the subject. ‘Did you enjoy Karnak, Tom?’ he asked. ‘It’s sometimes good to get away from that boat, yes?’

‘Yes, the Mamounia was getting a little busy,’ said Tom diplomatically.

‘I know,’ replied Patric sympathetically, ‘I’m the less social one in our partnership, too. Roman, he loves to throw parties even when he should be working. But me …’ He trailed off.

‘Sounds a lot like our household,’ smiled Tom, trying to edge away from Jolene’s thigh.

‘How is life with you and Lady Serena?’ chimed in Jolene, keen not to be left out of the conversation.

‘She’s not a lady.’

‘So I’ve heard.’

Tom smiled thinly. ‘No, I mean that in England a baron’s daughter has the title “The Honourable”. A lady is like a duke or earl’s daughter or something.’

‘Lady or not, she’s so beautiful,’ said Patric approvingly. ‘I know Roman can’t stop giving her clothes. She wears everything so incredibly. I think she may be becoming the ambassador for the line this year.’

‘More clothes,’ laughed Tom, looking out of the window at the chaotic traffic. ‘Our house can’t stand any more clothes! I mean, did you know she has nearly a thousand pairs of shoes! They have their own room where they sit on these little carousels. Why does anyone need shoe carousels?’

‘If you were a woman, you’d know,’ laughed Jolene, touching his arm lightly.

‘This is life with the beautiful,’ shrugged Patric. ‘Wonderful, but high-maintenance.’

Tom laughed to himself. Patric didn’t know the half of it. Serena was broke and it was he who was supporting her jet-set lifestyle. She had got though a small trust fund left to her by her mother years ago and there was little obvious income from the Balcon family trust. Old money? No money was more like it, if you listened to the rumours about Oswald’s financial difficulties. And while Serena still earned something in the region of two million pounds a year in advertising contracts and film roles, her expenditure was enormous: the Cheyne Walk townhouse, the six-thousand-pound-a-year John Frieda highlights, the agent and publicist’s fees, the Dior couture clothes, the weekly manicures, pedicures and facials – the list was endless and her tastes were expensive. ‘Keeping up with the Jemimas,’ she called it. So it was left to Tom to mop up the bills for the Necker Island holidays, the Hermès bags, the San Lorenzo suppers and the brand new Aston Martin. Having been brought up in a house where everyone knew the price of a loaf of bread, and not knowing whether his movie career would last another three or thirty years, the level of spending was making him nervous. It was a high-maintenance lifestyle indeed – for both of them.

As they arrived at the dock, the sun was much lower in the sky, smudging the blue with purple and apricot, and crisscrossing the walnut decking of La Mamounia with long grey shadows. As Tom walked up the gangplank into the bowels of the boat, he could immediately see Serena through the crowd. For a moment he stopped to watch her. Her head tipped back laughing, the blonde hair spilling down her back, one strap of her sundress falling off her shoulder leaving it round and bare like a scoop of ice cream. He began to smile, then noticed that Serena’s hand was on Michael’s shoulder, while the playboy’s fingers were reaching like a predator’s to touch her arm. Tom’s stomach tightened. The mixed feelings he’d been having all afternoon – regret, pity, sadness – all crystallized into one clear emotion. He grabbed a large gin from a passing steward and drank it in one gulp, striding over to where Serena and Michael stood laughing.

As Tom approached, Michael walked away towards the bar.

‘Where’ve you been?’ demanded Serena immediately.

‘I’ve been to Karnak with Patric and Jolene. Not that you would have noticed since you’ve been glued to that playboy since I left.’

‘Oh, was it fascinating in the desert, professor?’ taunted Serena sarcastically, her words slightly slurred. ‘You must tell me all about it.’ Her eyes looked glassy and her voice had the edge of aggression that came with cocaine.

‘Let’s go to the cabin,’ he said, struggling to control his voice, ‘I need to change.’

‘And why would I want to come and watch that?’ said Serena mockingly. ‘Anyway, I’m talking to Michael, and he’s getting us drinks.’ They both looked over to the bar where Michael was collecting two flutes of kir royale.

‘Come on, we’re going,’ said Tom, grabbing her arm to pull her away. The drink and heat had hit him and his touch was a little too heavy.

‘Get off me,’ Serena yelped, pulling her arm away and rubbing her bare skin. ‘I’m talking to Michael. He’s invited us to stay at his boutique hotel in the Valley of the Kings after the cruise. At least he has some manners.’

Tom brought his face close to hers. ‘We’re not going to any more sodding hotels,’ he hissed, ‘particularly not his. You know I’ve got a meeting in London on Wednesday. I’m not missing it on account of him.’

Serena’s eyes blazed defiantly. ‘Well, I want to go.’

Tom laughed cruelly. ‘Oh, I bet you do.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘You want to fuck him, don’t you?’

‘What did you say?’ spat Serena incredulously.

‘You. Want. To. Fuck. Him,’ said Tom, his voice turned hard and emotionless.

Serena gasped, her face contorting into disgust. ‘You are revolting,’ she said quietly, her voice a malevolent whisper. ‘You can take the boy out of the gutter …’

Tom felt his heart pound so fiercely he thought it would explode. Never before had she seemed so snobbish, so shallow, so ugly.

At that moment Michael appeared by her side, sipping the kir. ‘Have you told Tom about coming to my hotel?’ he asked, as if it was a little secret between them.

Tom looked him up and down, taking in the white shirt with the black tufts of hair creeping over the collar, the sweating narrow face, the veins bulbously protruding from the side of his forehead. What can she see in him? he thought for a moment, then became angered by the very notion.

‘OK, let’s go,’ said Tom, taking Serena’s arm again. Serena was outraged now and shrugged him off, edging closer to Michael. Tom bridled as he watched Michael’s fingertips brush against the side of her thigh.

‘So you’ll both come for a couple of days?’ said Michael, misunderstanding. ‘It’ll be fun.’

‘I wasn’t talking to you,’ said Tom, his head now spinning.

Michael placed a hand on Tom’s shoulder in a placatory gesture. ‘Come on, it’s a very beautiful place, and I know you will love the Presidential Suite.’

‘Get off me. We’re going to our cabin,’ snapped Tom, reaching for Serena’s arm again.

Michael stood back as Tom and Serena’s eyes locked. ‘Fine,’ said Tom finally, dropping his hand, ‘you go where you want.’

‘I think she wants to stay here,’ said Michael, interrupting the moment between them.

‘I don’t give a fuck what you think,’ said Tom, turning towards Michael, his voice full of anger.

‘I think you’d better come with me,’ said Michael, turning to lead Serena away to the bar.

Before he knew what he was doing, Tom turned and landed a stinging punch on the side of Michael’s face.

Michael stumbled back onto the deck, his glass smashing. Serena screamed. Instantly, a crowd gathered around them, mouths agape. The band had stopped playing and an embarrassed mutter rang around the crowd. Roman LeFey pushed his way through the crowd and crouched down to help Michael from the deck. He turned to look at Tom, his eyes full of disappointment.

‘I’m sorry,’ whispered Tom, rubbing his sore knuckles. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I think you’d better go,’ said Roman softly.

Tom looked at Serena desperately, but she refused to meet his gaze.

Feeling more alone than he had ever felt in his life, he turned and walked to the back of the boat. Grasping the rail and hoisting himself up, he looked back for Serena once more. Then he jumped into the waters of the Nile.

4

Camilla Balcon felt the enormous rush of orgasm wash over her and bit her lip to muffle her moans of desire. Even so, the sound of sexual climax still filled the room as Nat Montague thrust deep inside her one last time, shouting out with pleasure as he collapsed onto his girlfriend’s naked breast.

‘Will you please be quiet,’ hissed Camilla, pushing him away until his cock slid gently from inside her. She had felt a real illicit thrill when Nat had grabbed her on the four-poster bed as she had shown him around her old room in the east wing of Huntsford Castle, but now Camilla was annoyed that she’d allowed him to seduce her. It was the only time she ever lost her poise. Nat wasn’t to be so easily brushed off, however, lowering his head to seek out her hard, round, raisin-like nipple with his tongue.

‘Scared someone will hear us?’ he teased, kissing his way down her long slender body.

Nathaniel Montague, one of London’s most eligible bachelors, had bedded half the models and society girls in the capital, but Camilla Balcon was something else. Her honey-blonde hair, usually held up in a prim ballerina bun, was now spread wantonly across the pillow, surrounding an angular but striking face still flushed from her pleasure. He loved her contradictions, the way Camilla was outwardly a severe, upright career woman but in bed was bold, hungry and passionate. Many times he had met her after work in Lincoln’s Inn, just to seduce her in the close confines of her legal chambers, tearing off her starched suit and taking her across her wide desk, papers and files flying. He felt his groin stir at the thought and reached for Camilla again, a sly grin on his face, but Camilla slapped his hand away.

‘No, Nat. We’re supposed to be downstairs for dinner in ten minutes and I want to take a bath,’ she said, her lily-white buttocks perched on the end of the bed, ready to leave. ‘Do you want to use the shower room next door?’

Nat wrapped his chunky rugby player’s arm around her waist and pulled her back. ‘Why don’t we just go down reeking of sex?’ he whispered into her ear. She pulled away and threw a white fluffy robe at his head.

‘Go down smelling of sex?’ She laughed harshly at the suggestion. ‘Daddy would just love that!’

‘I thought you didn’t care what he thought,’ said Nat, his ardour finally cooled.

‘I don’t, but you know how the slightest thing can set him off.’

Sighing, Nat bounced off the bed, pulled on the robe and made for the door, rubbing himself against Camilla’s naked body as he passed her. ‘You’ll be begging me for it later, baby, you know you will,’ he smirked.

As Nat’s footsteps faded away down the polished wood of the hallway, Camilla walked over to the claw-foot bath and slid one leg into the water that had now gone cool. The bathroom was dark, lit only by two candles that sent an eerie shadow of her naked body dancing up the rich red paintwork.

I thought you didn’t care what he thought?

She sunk down into the tepid water and soaped her skin vigorously, irritated by Nat’s observation. If Nat was so right about her ambivalent feelings towards her father, why was she here? She was almost thirty, a strong, intelligent, independent woman, old and wise enough to recognize that she despised her father’s company. Unlike her sisters Venetia and Cate, who seemed to feel obliged to visit Huntsford no matter how bad Daddy’s behaviour became, Camilla Balcon was ambitious, ruthless, tough – that’s how she’d been described in a recent Legal Week article – and, as one of the most feared young barristers in London, the word ‘sentimental’ didn’t even enter into her vocabulary. As far as Camilla was concerned, the only positive thing her father had given her was a desire to get away from his crumbling castle and the drive to succeed in spite of what he had done to her – to all the girls – when they’d lived under this godforsaken roof.

So what did bring her back? And why was she feeling so on edge? Of course, deep down, Camilla knew the reason; she had spent years suppressing it, pushing it down into a corner of her mind where it couldn’t do her any harm. But here, where the memories were still so fresh … Suddenly a rush of dark images filled Camilla’s head and she squeezed her eyes tight, not allowing herself to think of the one thing that pulled her back to Huntsford. She rubbed soap into her face, blew the bubbles from her nose and submerged her head under the water before she could think about it any further.

Downstairs in Huntsford’s Great Hall, Lord Oswald Balcon, tenth baron of Huntsford, paced around irritably, glancing at his watch in the vain hope that there might be time to take one of the classic cars parked outside the house for a quick spin. Driving hell-for-leather through his Sussex estate, hood down on the car, the precision engine muffled by the wind in his ears was the only time he really felt happy these days. Certainly bombing through the grounds at top speed was far preferable to the pointless socializing he was about to subject himself to that evening.

For years Oswald had been the Great Entertainer, throwing open his doors for huge Christmas balls or shooting weekends – kings, dukes and celebrities had all visited Huntsford during those glittering decades. But of late playing host had been far more inconvenient than enjoyable for Oswald, not to mention expensive. His friend Philip Watchorn in particular had impeccable and gluttonous taste in wine, and Oswald knew that by Sunday his reserves of Dom Pérignon, Châteauneuf du Pape ′58 and vintage Rothschild would be gone.

He caught sight of himself in the long looking glass above the fire and allowed himself a smile. He was sixty-five but looked fifty. Still a handsome man, he thought, adjusting the collar of his Ede and Ravenscroft dinner shirt. His tall frame was still strong and wiry from years of competitive polo, his eyebrows were thick and grey but distinguished, framing bright blue eyes that, in his glory days, had frozen enemies and melted admirers.

Thoughts of the old days reminded Oswald of the profile piece the Telegraph had run on him last month and he frowned, swilling his Scotch around in its tumbler. What Oswald had thought was going to be a glowing piece about his life in politics had turned into a hatchet job describing him as ‘the robber baron who frittered away the family fortune on harebrained schemes, gluttony and excess.’ He had briefly considered legal action before he realized he really didn’t want certain details of his life being dredged up in court. But what had annoyed him more was the way the piece had dwelt so much on his daughters. He could still remember one particularly galling sentence: ‘Queens of the scene, the Balcon Girls are Huntsford’s crown jewels and saviours of the Balcon legacy.’

It was a raw nerve for Oswald. He still hadn’t pinpointed the exact moment when his daughters had become a national obsession. There had always been some interest in the Balcon family, of course. His wife Margaret had been a beautiful model and a sixties’ icon – an aristocratic foil to Twiggy’s East End quirks. Wealthier than Jean Shrimpton and David Bailey, better-looking than John Paul and Talitha Getty, Oswald and Maggie Balcon had been society’s power couple. But Maggie’s death, shortly after Serena’s birth, had dulled some of the Balcon glamour. It wasn’t until Serena’s career took off that the media began to take an interest again, especially when they realized that Serena was one of four beautiful, successful sisters.

As if those ungrateful wenches had done anything except spend his money.

The whoop of a helicopter’s blades snapped Oswald from his thoughts and he peered out through the long windows to see Philip Watchorn’s ink-black helicopter settling on the lawns. Typical of Watchorn to arrive in such a vulgar fashion, he thought. He’d better not scratch my cars with his damn rotors. Flash bloody Jew.

‘Philip. Jennifer. So glad you could make it.’ Oswald embraced Watchorn at the door and gave Philip’s wife the benefit of his broadest smile. A fellow homme du monde during the sixties and seventies, Oswald had met Philip Watchorn on their first day at work at a city stockbroker’s. The two men had been close friends throughout those heady years, cutting a swathe through the miniskirts of the ‘swinging’ nightclub scene before Oswald inherited his title and Philip disappeared to become one of the most formidable corporate raiders of the eighties.

‘We’ve brought Elizabeth with us for the evening, hope you don’t mind,’ said Philip as a short redhead in a velvet suit bustled through the door. Oswald groaned inwardly. The Watchorns had a terrible habit of bringing Jennifer’s younger sister with them to social occasions, apparently under some deluded matchmaking pretext. It wasn’t that he resented the sentiment; after Margaret had passed away, he had been more than open to the possibility of marrying again, but in his mind there were two types of women that circled in the top flight of society – beautiful, well-off girls of one’s own station whom one could marry and who might well be useful in terms of money or land. And then there were the cheap, gold-digging sluts who wanted to marry you and take you for every penny. Elizabeth was very much in the latter category. Just like Philip’s wife, Jennifer, in fact: a former air-hostess turned society wife. Cheap whores, the pair of them.

‘Dear Elizabeth, how wonderful to see you again,’ gushed Oswald, taking the woman’s brown leather suitcase and handing it to Collins the butler.

‘You ladies go and settle in. Collins will show you where you’re sleeping and I’ll see you for a drink in a minute.’

Philip put an arm around Oswald’s shoulders and led him towards the drawing room. ‘So, tell me. Who’s up this weekend?’

‘Charlesworth, Portia, Venetia, Jonathon. Camilla and her chap Nathaniel Montague. I think you know his father? Eleven, including myself and Catherine,’ said Oswald, as Collins appeared at their side with a silver tray bearing two generous Scotches.

‘Eleven? Not like you, Oz. What happened to “the more the merrier”?’

The more the merrier! Did Watchorn think he was made of money? Besides, Oswald was keen to keep numbers down after the Telegraph piece. He didn’t want people accepting his hospitality and sniggering at him behind their dessert spoons.

‘Just a select group tonight, old boy,’ said Oswald, slapping Philip on the back a little too hard. ‘Speaking of which, where the bloody hell are my children …?’

Venetia Balcon pulled up outside Huntsford Castle in her BMW four-by-four. She was in a very bad mood. Her husband Jonathon hadn’t said one word since she’d scraped the car’s wing mirror against a stationary truck twenty miles back, and she knew better than to force conversation when he was in this frame of mind. Cate had been no help either, sitting sullenly in the back seat for the entire ninety-mile journey. And they were late. Venetia hated being late for anything, especially one of her father’s soirées – she knew she’d get blamed for their tardiness, even though she’d sacrificed having an eyebrow wax and an Alpha Beta peel to be early.

Walking into the family dwelling only served to depress her further. To most eyes, Huntsford would be an incredible place to call home. From the outside it was a rambling, honey-coloured stone wedding-cake of a building, with romantic castellated turrets, long mullioned glass windows and a vast oak front door approached by a sweeping arc of gravel drive. On either side of the building sprawled hundreds of acres of grounds, from woodland studded with foxgloves to open fields of lush grass – but inside the castle it was a different story. Despite the Old Masters that lined the panelled walls, and the hand-painted frescoes and chandeliers that decorated the ceilings, Huntsford just made Venetia shudder. As one of the country’s most successful interior designers, she saw the house as gloomy and tired and getting more faded by the visit. The once-lustrous walnut panels were cracked and mottled like old leather, the plasterwork was crumbling, the French crystal chandeliers hung unpolished and dull. Huntsford had become a shabby shadow of the immaculate palace it had once been. Venetia, whose career had been built on the sympathetic renovation of old family houses, had made countless offers to redesign her beloved home but, so far, her father was resistant to any modification of the place, apparently content to let it slip quietly into decay.

As she stood looking around the room, Oswald appeared at her side and placed a chilly hand on her shoulder. Venetia flinched at his touch, turning away to disguise her discomfort. ‘So you’ve finally decided to make it,’ he said tartly.

‘Sorry we’re late,’ she said, pushing her hair behind her ears. ‘Jonathon didn’t finish till six. Then we had to pick Cate up from home. The traffic was terrible.’

‘It would have helped if she hadn’t almost crashed the car on the way over,’ muttered Jonathon.

Oswald immediately sided with his son-in-law. ‘Yes, Jonathon, that can’t have helped, can it?’

The chilling disapproval of a childhood scolding flashed before Venetia.

‘And what’s wrong with Catherine?’ Oswald said tartly, pointing to his other daughter who was taking the bags out of the car boot. ‘Face as long as a racehorse’s. Tell her to perk up, can’t you? I need her to entertain Jennifer Watchorn and her ghastly sister with some London tittle-tattle. Perhaps that magazine job of hers is actually good for something.’

‘Oh actually, Daddy,’ Venetia said quickly, ‘Cate has had a rather horrid day at work today, so if you could keep away from shop talk …?’ She caught a whiff of his breath and immediately regretted her words. Her father was obviously in a belligerent mood and whisky always roused the devil on his shoulder. She certainly didn’t want to give him any more ammunition. She was just about to turn back to her father when her attention was caught by a shimmering blonde coming down the stairs. ‘Camilla!’ cried Venetia and Cate together as they both ran up the stairs to hug her.

Oswald stood watching them, his anger building. Saviours of the Balcon legacy indeed! He snorted into his whisky. Look at them! Venetia: airhead, a silly puppy desperate for attention. Cate, uptight and unsmiling, always on that bloody mobile phone of hers, as if women’s bloody magazines were high finance or some such, while Camilla was defiant, truculent …

With the exception of Serena – whose beauty and A-list celebrity secretly delighted him – he was increasingly disappointed in his girls. Every time they came down it was the same: clinging together like monkeys, gossiping and giggling in the corner without a thought for their father who had raised them with pain and sacrifice. Oswald took another pull of his whisky and looked across the room to where Jonathon and Nat were greeting the final guests, Oswald’s old friends Nicholas and Portia Charlesworth. At least Venetia and Camilla had had some success in attracting the right partner, conceded Oswald. Montague was from an established family – new money, of course, but he seemed solid enough – and Jonathon – von Bismarck, well, he was definitely cut from the right cloth. Of course he had recognized the ruthless City player as a scoundrel from the first. He had heard wild rumours about Jonathon: his exotic sexual preferences, the endless stream of discreet and not-so-discreet affairs. But Jonathon came from a long line of Austrian aristocracy, and that made him a useful addition to the Balcon line – whatever his extra-curricular activities.

Collins the butler clanged a gong and dinner was served in the Red Drawing Room. Rich scarlet curtains framed high French windows, the walls, hung with a rose-pink damask, blushed apricot in the candlelight, while the enormous marble mantelpiece was lined with photos of Oswald posing with various dignitaries: Thatcher, Reagan, Amin. A sharp observer might have noticed the lack of family portraits beyond the dark, disapproving faces of Balcon ancestors staring down from the gilt-framed portraits high on the walls.

Oswald took his place at the head of the table and surveyed the room, while animated conversations about politics, parties and business bounced around.

What was Watchorn going on about now? thought Oswald, catching the end of a story. Philip was telling Nicholas about his recent stay at Chequers. Although he nodded and feigned interest – Chequers! How marvellous! – Oswald was silently bristling at his friend’s growing proximity to the Cabinet. It wasn’t so long ago that Oswald had been the one with the high-flying political connections and tales of the corridors of power. As a proud peer of the realm, Oswald had taken his Lords’ duties very seriously, making the journey to London to sit three times a week in the upper chamber. But that was before New bloody Labour culled over eighty per cent of Britain’s hereditary peers in Parliament in one fell swoop. It was the end of the twentieth century and the end of Oswald’s life as he knew it. Now Oswald’s days were empty, occasionally dropping by the Balcon Galleries in Mayfair, which had been thriving for years with very little input from him. He had also written a well-received book about the Viceroy George Curzon and his time in India. But that wasn’t real work.

‘Been over to St Bart’s today,’ said Philip, turning to face Oswald.

‘Fabulous!’ gushed Venetia. ‘We wanted to go there for New Year, didn’t we Jonathon? The hotels get terribly booked up, though.’

Philip raised an eyebrow. ‘The hospital,’ he said.

Oswald looked over. ‘Trouble?’

‘No, no. Not me. Haven’t you heard about Jimmy?’

‘Jimmy Jameson?’ He shook his head. Although Jimmy had been part of the crowd in the sixties and seventies when a big group of them would frequent Annabel’s and various other Mayfair watering holes, Oswald had been deliberately poor at maintaining the friendship. He frankly did not want to get his nose too dirty. Jameson had been the business partner of Alistair Craigdale, another friend of the group, who had sensationally disappeared in the seventies after shooting his wife’s lover dead. ‘The Craigdale Killer Case’ was how the tabloids had luridly referred to it. Oswald had taken the scandal as a prompt to leave that life of gambling and carousing behind – in public at least – and while Philip, Nicholas and a handful of other useful friends had remained in his circle, the likes of Jimmy Jameson had been axed from his life.

‘It’s awful,’ said Jennifer, her voice slurring slightly from an enthusiastic intake of wine. ‘Cancer,’ she whispered.

‘Bloody broke my heart to see him,’ said Philip, wiping his mouth with a crested napkin. ‘You know what a big lad he was, Oswald? Mustn’t be more than nine stone now. Doctors say visitors are keeping his spirits up. Apparently a lot of the old crowd have popped down this week. I’m sure he’d love to see you.’

‘Of course, of course,’ replied Oswald, having absolutely no intention of making the trip to London. ‘Anything for an old friend.’

Across the table, Cate was dying a slow death of her own. Why am I here? she asked herself as she answered another mindless demand for celebrity gossip from Jennifer and Elizabeth. The truth was, Cate had been so desperate to see a friendly face after her confrontation with William Walton that the threat of her father’s disapproval had seemed a small price to pay. Now, as she looked at his frowning face, she wasn’t so sure.

At the best of times, Cate had a real love-hate relationship with Huntsford. Her earliest memories were fond: her mother reading them stories, the smell of a warm apple crumble, Camilla on a tricycle being chased by their nanny through the hall. But those later memories – well … Cate was well practised in sweeping them under the carpet. But they had a nasty way of tripping you up.

‘So, Catherine, what’s this fracas at work that Venetia’s been telling me about?’ said Oswald, cutting through Cate’s thoughts. ‘Horrid was the word, I believe.’ He rolled the word off his tongue mockingly.

Cate shot Venetia a look. She had hoped to get to Huntsford early in order to tell her father about her dismissal, but now there was nothing for it but a public announcement of her unemployment. She took a deep breath and stared at her plate.

‘Actually I was fired this afternoon,’ she said quietly. ‘Apparently for being too posh.’

Nicholas Charlesworth, a card-carrying member of the upper classes, pro-hunt and pro-class division, spluttered with outrage. ‘How utterly ridiculous,’ he cried. ‘I hope you’re seeking legal advice, Catherine.’

Camilla looked over at Cate in shock. ‘Oh Catie. I’m so sorry – I had no idea. I know an excellent employment lawyer if you need one.’

Cate shook her head. ‘As much as I am furious, I don’t think it would be sensible to take it to an industrial tribunal. You know how it works, blotting your copybook in the industry.’

Philip Watchorn gave Cate a good-natured smile. ‘Take it from an old man, Cate,’ he said. ‘If you get through your working life without ever being fired, you’re doing something wrong. I’d been dismissed –’ he began counting on his stout fingers silently – ‘four times before I was your age. Then I thought, bugger the corporations, I’ll do it my own way.’ He spread his hands as if to say, ‘I rest my case.’

Oswald’s face, however, seemed set in granite. ‘Thirty years old, with no job and no man. Things aren’t looking too good, are they?’ he smiled thinly.

Cate met his eye for the first time. ‘Actually, it’s thirty-two, soon to find a better job, and waiting for the right man,’ replied Cate with as much dignity as she could muster.

‘That’s one way of looking at it,’ said her father, his laughter strained with cruelty.

Feeling her eyes well up, Cate rose from the table. ‘I think I’ve had enough,’ she said politely, moving quickly for the door. ‘I hope you’ll all excuse me.’

‘Oh Catie, don’t …’ said Camilla.

‘Cate, please …’ echoed Venetia, watching her leave the room.

‘Let her go,’ mumbled Oswald with a casual wave of the hand.

Camilla began to rise to follow her sister, but froze at the sound of her father’s palm banging the tabletop. ‘What did I just say?’

Camilla and Oswald’s eyes locked.

Nicholas Charlesworth looked around the room and began quickly talking about the fishing. ‘Think it’ll be a good year, Oswald?’

‘Always a good year in these waters,’ replied Oswald, his eyes still on Camilla.

‘Thought we’d return the hospitality next month if you’re up for it,’ continued Nicholas. ‘Got tickets for Così Fan Tutte at the ROH.’

Concerned about Cate, but keen to diffuse the tension, Venetia seized her opportunity to change the subject. ‘Speaking of opera,’ she began tentatively, clearing her throat, ‘Did I tell you, Daddy, I’m in the middle of a commission for Maria Dante?’

Nicholas Charlesworth noticeably perked up and Philip Watchorn whistled.

‘The singer? Not exactly Pavarotti, is she?’ said Oswald moodily.

Philip playfully chided his friend, hitting him with the end of the napkin. ‘Don’t be so uncharitable, Oswald. Maria Dante is as good as Callas. Better looking, too. What’s she like, Venetia? Feisty young bird, I should imagine.’

‘Quite. You should hear her speaking to the builders.’

‘Where’s the property?’ asked Jennifer. She was always eager to collect information for her social database.

‘Three-storey stucco in Onslow Square. Needless to say she wants a very theatrical look for the house. All blood-reds and purples. Awful. I’m sure she wants Dracula’s castle.’

‘That’s the wops for you,’ said Oswald.

‘Actually,’ said Venetia, turning to Philip, ‘she was thinking of arranging a musical event for sometime before she flies to the Verona festival in July. She would perform, of course, possibly get some friends of hers on the bill – Lesley Garrett, maybe even Dame Kiri – and the proceeds would go to charity.’

‘What about a venue?’ asked Philip, quickly grasping that such an event would be a wonderfully original occasion to invite clients to. ‘She’ll be lucky to get a slot at the Barbican or Royal Festival at this late stage, won’t she?’

Venetia took a deep breath, her hands shaking slightly under the table. She knew Huntsford would be perfect as a venue, but she was also aware of her father’s distaste of commercial ventures. ‘I actually suggested Huntsford to her,’ said Venetia, avoiding her father’s eyes. ‘It’s so beautiful here in early summer, and the proximity to London is perfect.’ She paused. ‘It would be a hotter ticket than Glyndebourne.’

Oswald leaned forward in his chair. ‘Under no circumstances am I allowing anything like that to occur at Huntsford,’ he said, glaring at his daughter. ‘Unlike your bloody sisters, who can’t seem to keep out of the newspapers, I value the privacy of this family.’

‘We could do it for the Royal Marsden,’ chimed Jennifer Watchorn, always eager to join a charitable committee.

‘Balls to charity,’ boomed Oswald, ‘it will ruin the lawns. There’ll be bloody Japs everywhere with their sushi picnics. Christ, I suppose you intend making the orchard a car park?’

‘Give it some thought, Oz,’ said Philip, taking a cigar from the wooden casket Collins was passing round. ‘I thought you were supposed to be a patron of the arts,’ he said teasingly.

‘Yes, well. Not at the bloody expense of my property,’ he said, pouring a glass of port.

Just then there was the sound of raised voices from the hallway followed by a loud crash. ‘What the hell?’ Oswald quickly strode to the far end of the room and pulled the doors open. Sprawled on the floor, dressed in a pair of white jeans and a green kaftan, was Serena, half buried under a suit of armour. She looked up at her father with a chastened expression, her huge aquamarine eyes pinched and rimmed with red. Then she burst out laughing.

‘Serena, what the hell’s going on?’ boomed Oswald as the rest of the guests gathered behind him in the doorway.

Serena slowly picked herself up, trying vainly to regain her poise, staggering against the heavy oak doorway like a music-hall drunk.

‘Hello, everybody,’ she slurred, waving a half-empty champagne bottle. ‘Guess what? I’m home.’

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