Gold Diggers

by Tasmina Perry

  ‘What a shame,’ said Molly insincerely. ‘However, it must mean that business is booming.’

  ‘It is,’ agreed Donna, ‘although that’s less to do with our improvements than the growth of the luxury organic sector as a whole. We’re just cashing in on what Prince Charlie’s Duchy Originals and the Bamfords’ Daylesford estate have done before us. But I’m just glad we’ve created something that people enjoy. Something that’s good for them and good for the planet.’

  What a crock of shit, thought Molly, following Donna towards another converted barn on the other side of the manor. Donna’s eco-zeal was less to do with a commitment to the environment and more about her grubby desire to get her fingerprints all over Delemere Manor so that, when the time came, her ‘invaluable commercial input’ would translate into a fatter divorce settlement.

  ‘So has anybody else arrived yet?’ asked Molly as they walked into a big open-plan lobby painted in a palest sage green decorated with vases of lilies and cream squashy sofas.

  ‘Well your roommate Denise is already here, and Karin and Christina are in room one. And do you know Diana Birtwell? She’s here with her friend Rebecca. But that’s it – as you know, this isn’t a full course, just a dry run for the real thing when we get paying guests in, but Angela Appleby – she’s the course leader – will give you the works, don’t you worry!’ she laughed. ‘Now, why don’t you go and unpack? The introductory session begins in forty-five minutes. You are really going to love it.’

  Don’t count on it, thought Molly as she dragged her case to her room.

  Donna’s old friend Denise Jeffries was sitting on a thin single bed in a small twin room that overlooked a field of grazing cows.

  ‘Hi! I’m Denise,’ she said, getting up.

  ‘Molly Sinclair. I take it we’re roommates.’

  Denise was about forty with a head of red curls, a wide mouth and dry-looking skin that desperately needed a facial.

  Molly dumped her case on the other bed and wandered into the hallway to find the other bedrooms. One door was open and she saw Karin and Christina changing into skintight leggings and crop-tops.

  ‘Oh, hello. I didn’t know you were coming,’ said Karin, pulling on a ballet slipper.

  ‘Can you believe we’re not sleeping at the manor?’ replied Molly absently, still looking around and surveying the property. ‘I feel like I’ve arrived at scout camp.’

  Karin pulled a face. It was the first time she had seen Molly since she had sent her on a wild-goose chase to the Villa La Vigie in Monte Carlo. Time, as well as Molly’s dismissal from from the Midas Corporation, had softened the brunt of Karin’s anger but she still found that she could be no more than civil to her.

  ‘Oh, I think there’s something fabulously Zen about Delemere,’ said Christina, stretching her arms in the air to limber up. ‘Don’t you think it’s such a wonderful escape from it all?’

  Fine for you to be slumming it, thought Molly cynically, when you’ve got a yacht and millions of dollars coming your way. In fact, Molly had been delighted to hear that Christina Levy was attending the retreat. If the whispers were correct, Christina’s divorce settlement was shaping up to be a very hefty one, and Molly couldn’t wait to extract as many details from her as possible; she might even be able to sell them on to the newspaper diary pages.

  Angela Appleby’s introductory seminar was perhaps not quite the roaring success she had expected, but then she possibly underestimated the effect of announcing that her charges would have to give up alcohol, all stimulants, red meat and men.

  ‘During a detox, it is best to remove all distractions,’ said Angela in a cheery voice. ‘Your body needs time to heal itself and your mind to become clear. There is a reason Buddhist monks are celibate,’ she added. Having absorbed this bombshell and having been promised that they would all be ‘leaving Delemere on Sunday in a better place’, the six women all adjourned to ‘The Landing’ – the open lobby where a fire had been lit and an organic buffet prepared on a long table covered in white voile.

  ‘Apparently it’s lights out at 9 p.m.,’ said Christina, sipping at a ginger tea. Molly looked out of the window and saw the sky was bruising lilac as darkness was beginning to fall.

  ‘I told you it was like school,’ grumbled Molly still feeling hungry, despite the pumpkin seeds and carrot sticks.

  ‘I didn’t know you were a boarder, Molly?’ said Karin, raising one eyebrow and watching with satisfaction as Molly’s face reddened with anger.

  ‘Anyway, goodnight everyone. I’ve had a hectic week so I could really do with an early one.’

  One by one, the women retired, until Molly and Denise remained alone in The Landing. Molly had warmed to her roommate; she somehow detected a kindred spirit but she couldn’t explain why. Certainly, Denise’s life was the most removed from the other women on the retreat. She had travelled from Esher, where she lived with her husband Neville Jeffries, a scaffolding contractor, and two young sons. She wore no expensive jewellery, except for a large pair of diamond studs which Molly felt sure were just zircona, and her clothes looked like high street. But while Denise was probably the most advanced yoga student in the group, there was something about the lines around her mouth, the creases by her eyes, that suggested that Denise Jeffries had lived a life.

  ‘Ahh, I love ’em to bits, but it’s great to get away from the kids for the weekend,’ said Denise, slumping back into one of the squashy leather chairs.

  ‘My daughter Summer is twenty-four, but she still needs looking after,’ smiled Molly, swivelling her legs up onto the sofa and stretching her toes.

  ‘Wow. I didn’t know you had a twenty-four-year-old,’ said Denise, her eyes widening. ‘Weren’t you modelling back then, not playing mum?’

  ‘You can do both, you know,’ said Molly wryly. ‘It was just a bit more difficult. I always think how far my career could have gone if I hadn’t had Summer. It was tough seeing girls like Yasmin and Linda take off like a rocket.’

  Denise nodded sympathetically. ‘Yes, well, you’ve got a daughter though, haven’t you? And anyway, you were successful. My brother used to love you!’ Molly appreciated the compliment, but she could have done without that word again: ‘used’. He used to love you. She sighed.

  ‘I could so do with a drink right now,’ she said. She had filched a couple of bottles of great claret from the Midas Corporation boardroom and they were lying like forbidden fruit at the bottom of her case.

  ‘Should I see if I can find some tea or something?’ said Denise, standing and walking around The Landing.

  ‘No, a fine place like this calls for a good glass of wine,’ said Molly, testing the water for a drinking companion.

  Denise gave her the smile she was looking for. ‘It’s tempting, but we’re not going find any on Donna’s detox weekend, are we?’

  ‘That’s where you might be wrong,’ said Molly, uncoiling her body and walking upstairs to the bedroom.

  ‘Why did I agree to this?’ slurred Denise. It was near midnight now and the two bottles of claret were lying guiltily on the floor between them, almost drained. ‘I haven’t drunk in ages and Donna will kill us if she finds out.’

  The lights were off and the two women were sitting in front of the crackling amber fire. She was glad Donna had shacked her up with Denise, not uptight bloody Karin.

  ‘How do you know Donna then?’ asked Molly finally, who had waited all night for her moment. She had asked her before the introductory seminar, and her answers had been so vague that Molly had sensed there was much more to it than she was telling.

  ‘We go a long way back, way before Donna lived like this,’ said Denise, wiping a thin trail of red liquid from her lips. Molly noticed an inflection in her voice that she recognized as envy.

  ‘Before she became the queen of detox,’ smiled Molly, encouraging her. ‘I mean, who’d have thought Donna the party girl would have ended up running a retreat?’

  ‘Well, she did always know where there w
as money to be made,’ said Denise.

  ‘It didn’t take a genius to work out that marrying a rich man was going to be a good thing, did it?’ said Molly, probing gently.

  ‘But Donna hit the jackpot, didn’t she?’ insisted Denise. ‘Out of all the girls I knew back then, she was the one I thought least likely to do it. To, you know, get all this.’

  ‘Which girls?’ asked Molly, pouring the last of the claret into Denise’s glass.

  Denise paused before she spoke, fixing her slightly unfocused vision on Molly in what she obviously thought was a piercing stare.

  ‘How long have you known Donna?’ she asked.

  ‘A long time too,’ lied Molly.

  ‘So you know?’ said Denise cautiously.

  Molly nodded convincingly, feeling a sense of welling euphoria that she was on the brink of discovering something potent.

  ‘I was the one who sorted it all out for Donna,’ began Denise. ‘I had about a dozen girls, pretty party girls or failed models usually, girls that would always be up for anything.’ She took a sip of wine and smiled almost boastfully. ‘I wasn’t always Denise Jeffries the bored housewife from Esher, you know. I was Denise Duncan, girl about town.’

  Molly said nothing, like a shark that had sniffed blood but that was just waiting to move in for the kill.

  ‘Do you know Adnan Hashemi?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Molly. She had of course heard of the now-dead Saudi arms dealer who had been a big player on the London social scene in the 1990s.

  ‘I was his mistress for a little while,’ said Denise. ‘His wife still lived in Jeddah, and I had a little apartment overlooking Hyde Park. And for a small window of time, I had the most wonderful life’, she said, staring at the fire. She turned back to Molly and took another sip. ‘Adnan had friends. They liked British women and I knew a lot of pretty girls. Donna was young, maybe nineteen or twenty. She had come to London to train as a beauty therapist but was out on the circuit a lot. Legends, Tramp, all those, which is how I knew her. She was ambitious, she liked the high life, and Adnan’s friends thought she was wonderful.’

  Molly couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘Does Daniel know any of this?’ she said softly, trying to disguise the surprise in her voice.

  ‘What’s there to know?’ said Denise. ‘That his wife did the international party scene for a little while? That some men gave her money and took her shopping? What’s the big deal in today’s day and age?’ She shook her head, as if trying to clear the fog of alcohol. ‘There’s really very little to tell, and, even if there is, in whose interest is it to go delving too deeply?’

  Molly raised her glass and smiled. ‘I’ll drink to that.’

  46

  Molly hadn’t had so many compliments since she’d had that discreet Harley Street eye-lift two years ago. The turnout was spectacular. At least 200 people were milling around The Standlings’ clipped gardens on a blistering hot summer’s day and most of them were social A-list. There was a senior flight of executives from the Midas Corporation, and important bankers. She had also commandeered a handful of wealthy Europeans who were passing through London. Adam had been in touch with a raft of wealthy friends from New York, a software billionaire, a cosmetic mogul. And all for a little village fête.

  Molly smiled with pride; she’d played this one perfectly.

  As soon as the renovations on The Standlings were completed, Molly had been in a hurry to show them off to as many people as possible, but she knew a string of dinner parties would be both tedious and expensive, so had decided that the best way to showcase the house was to play to its strength as a quintessentially English manor. Her idea of throwing a Saturday afternoon garden fête came to her when she read an article about Liz Hurley’s new life in Gloucestershire. As soon as she’d had the thought, she’d known it was genius. Genius. It would show a softer, philanthropic side, with key people from the village being invited for rustic colour and all profits from the tombola and coconut shy going to anti-seal-clubbing or whatever was hot that month.

  The day of the fête, The Standlings looked like the Garden of Eden. The sun was shining, the flowerbeds were bursting with jasmine and sweet peas, the rose garden was in full bloom and the lawns had been mowed into two-tone stripes of soft and vivid emerald green. All along them, tents and stalls were doing a bustling trade. Molly’s beauty therapist friend was offering Indian head massages by the potting shed, the Women’s Institute were manning a jam stall and the raffle was bursting with all manner of pashminas, jewellery and perfume that had failed to meet their reserves on eBay. In the lower field, there was a bouncy castle in the shape of a pirate ship and the local scout pack were offering pony rides. Oiling the wheels was a jolly Victorian-themed bar run by Len Barry, landlord of the local pub, who had a stonking crush on Molly. Len was also overseeing the barbecue, which was grilling delicious meat and sausages provided by the Delemere farm shop. It was fun, it was elegant, it was respectable.

  ‘I thought we were having a small barbecue,’ laughed Marcus, hooking an arm around Molly’s shoulder. They were standing on the terrace overlooking the lawns, the smell of candyfloss and sausages wafting around them.

  ‘If you’re going to do a job, you have to do it properly,’ she smiled, resting her head on his shoulder.

  ‘You’re wonderful, you know that?’ replied Marcus.

  Molly moved even closer towards him, like a Siamese cat rubbing against its owner, knowing she had scored a bull’s-eye.

  The village fête idea appealed to Marcus’s closeted country-gent side, the side that wanted to keep horses and play lord of the manor in his big house in the Chilterns. Ever since the drink-driving episode, she had felt her relationship with Marcus cool a little. He could be such a sanctimonious little prick sometimes, demanding she stop drinking, smoking, having fun. Well, if he wanted the dutiful little village wifey with no vices, he could have it, she thought slyly – the image of it, anyway. But today’s triumph seemed to have warmed things right up and she knew her timing was perfect. When Marcus thought she was doing Pilates in the bedroom, she was listening, always listening. She had loitered outside his study late at night, eavesdropping, waiting for some nugget of information. And now, it seemed, it was here. Stock options. Cashing in. It was all music to Molly’s ears. Something was brewing at the Midas Corporation and, one way or another, she was going to have part of it.

  Karin was secretly seething. Either Marcus had instructed some top-flight events company, or she had underestimated Molly. The Standlings village fête was fabulous; traditional without being stuffy, fun without being cheesy. She had even won a Hermès scarf on the tombola. And the turnout was remarkable; even the sprinkling of Great Horsham village locals gave it a certain homespun charm, although the presence of Diana and Christina – apparently they and Molly had all struck up some sort of bizarre friendship at the detox weekend – had made her bristle. But what had irked her the most was the presence of that glamorous blonde banker Claudia Falcon, whom she had spotted laughing with Marcus about ten minutes ago at the jam stall. The woman certainly looked good today. Her blonde bob had been pulled back into a chignon, she looked relaxed in a pair of wide linen palazzo pants, some Grecian sandals and a beautifully cut vest-top. Stop being so paranoid and relax, thought Karin. She took a deep breath and reminded herself what Lysette had said in Paris: How do you know it’s her?

  ‘You don’t get this in Manhattan,’ said Adam, coming up behind her, carrying a tankard of beer. ‘It’s a really good day, isn’t it?’

  ‘You fired Molly from the Midas Corporation, remember? Now is not the time to start eulogizing about her work. She’ll have you for unfair dismissal before you know it.’

  ‘I didn’t fire her,’ replied Adam, still smiling. ‘Her contract was up. She was working on a case-by-case basis.’

  Yeah, right, thought Karin, sipping her iced tea. Nothing to do with her shagging around on your best friend.

  ‘Anyway, what are people like Cl
audia Falcon doing here?’ she asked innocently. ‘I didn’t know Marcus wanted it to be a work thing.’

  ‘It isn’t. But why miss an opportunity like today to keep good people happy?’

  ‘Kay, honey, there you are,’ said Christina, trotting up with a large tumbler of Pimms and taking her arm. ‘Come on, Molly is desperate for us to come look at the house. Diana and Donna are already in there.’

  Karin rolled her eyes as Adam kissed her on the cheek and went to join Marcus and Claudia at the tombola.

  ‘Can you believe this place?’ said Karin to Christina, still trying to keep her eye on Adam. ‘It’s like a Jilly Cooper wet-dream.’

  ‘I think it’s rather fabulous. Highgrove chic,’ said Christina as they climbed the stone steps away from the gardens into the house.

  ‘She’s hardly Camilla Parker Bowles is she?’ said Karin.

  ‘Not yet, darling, not yet.’

  Inside, they found Molly was giving the guided tour to Diana and Donna in the master bedroom.

  ‘Marcus didn’t want anything structural done to the place so it’s all cosmetic,’ said Molly, pointing out the newly hung eau-de-nil silk damask walls and cream shot taffeta hanging at the windows. ‘As you can see there’s bags of room up here and lots more scope for improvement: a second study, nursery.’

  ‘A nursery?’ said Karin, lifting an eyebrow, ‘and who would that be for?’

  ‘You never know,’ said Molly tartly, looking Karin up and down. ‘Some of us are still of age.’

  Molly took Karin and Diana downstairs for a look at the drawing room, then showed them through the French windows so they could sit out on the patio away from the crowds. They watched Molly and Christina walk arm in arm over to the bouncy castle, their high heels sinking into the grass.

  ‘Can you believe she’s thinking about a nursery?’ laughed Karin. ‘I bet her ovaries dried up about five years ago.’