by Karen Swan
To Aason
For starting over with such grace
Contents
Prologue
NEW YORK
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
PARIS
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
LONDON
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Epilogue
Prologue
Kelly Hartford looked out of the taxi window and scanned the horizon for a landmark – a loch or a folly or a particularly tall tree – that might give some clue that they were heading in the right direction. It was exactly ten years to the day since she had last visited, and she’d forgotten how far beyond the back of beyond her friend lived. Apart from a few tiny crofters’ cottages on the moor, they’d not passed a house or car in over thirty miles. Kelly didn’t know how Cassie stuck it.
A sunbeam streamed in through the window, dazzling her momentarily, and she rooted around in her bag for a pair of shades. She had also forgotten how much longer the days were up here in the summer. It was the end of August and just coming up to seven o’clock, but the sky was still noon-blue. It would be nearer eleven before the sun doffed its cap for the day and dropped behind the hills.
The taxi took a left fork in the seemingly endless road. Stretching her thumbs out the way her physiotherapist had shown her, Kelly resumed her speed-texting. But not for long. The car started hitting potholes and she had to grab the headrest for support.
‘Jeez-us,’ she muttered as the overexcited suspension tossed her about. ‘It would have been smoother coming by camel.’
The dour driver said nothing, but she knew this pitted farm road was the landmark she’d been looking for. Up ahead, she could see the eagle-topped pillars and lodge house announcing the perimeter of the estate and the end of her long journey. She had been travelling for a full day now – having caught a connecting flight to Edinburgh at Heathrow – and she was desperate for a shower and a power-nap before the party kicked off. She knew she’d been cutting it fine catching the later flight. If she’d gone from Newark, she’d have landed three hours earlier and she could have rested all afternoon and caught up with the others, but who was she kidding? She was a JFK-only girl, and anyway, Bebe was going nuts trying to get the collection finished – she’d practically had a coronary when Kelly had insisted she really did have to leave her post to fly to Scotland for a party. They were in the final two weeks before the collections, and it had been the least she could do to stick around until the very last, hand-luggage-only, gates-closing minute.
The heather-topped moorland stopped abruptly at the gates as they swept into an avenue of towering Scots pine trees whose needles covered the ground like a carpet. Slowly the taxi meandered round high compacted banks of quivering maroon acers, purple rhododendrons and springy lawns of magenta clover. The sudden riot of manicured colour heralded the imminence of the great house, and as the car passed between a pair of gigantic domed yew trees flanking the drive, she thought it looked grander than she remembered – and pinker. Hewn from indigenous rock, it usually looked brown in the customary rain, but tonight, as it basked in the late-summer sun, it positively blushed with delight. Tall, with six gable ends as peaked as witches’ hats, it had a sweep of stone steps up to the front door and heavily leaded windows, of which the centrepiece was a massive picture window which ran across the central facade, flooding the inner hall with light and affording a sensational view of the Lammermuir Hills from the minstrels’ gallery within.
As the taxi slowed on its approach to the front steps, Kelly quickly turned the volume on her iPhone up to max – she didn’t want to miss any calls once inside the enormous house – and purposely dropped her shoulders a good two inches from her ears as she took a series of deep yogic breaths. Bebe would be fine without her. She’d be back on the plane tomorrow night and straight into the office for Monday lunchtime. Most people took longer bathroom trips than that.
The grandfather clock chimed seven times in the hall below, just as the champagne cork popped and Suzy poured them each a glass.
‘Cheers!’ Cassie beamed, her eyes glittering brightly as she tucked her legs underneath her on the bed. ‘To us.’
Anouk tipped her head to the side. ‘Don’t let your husband hear you say that,’ she teased in her silky French accent. ‘Strictly speaking it’s to you and him tonight.’
Cassie shrugged happily and sighed. Anouk was right, of course. They’d managed ten years together in a day and age when most couples couldn’t manage two, and to celebrate they were throwing a huge bash that was as big as, if not even bigger than, their wedding. But even though Cassie was proud of their achievement – not least because it meant she’d upheld her side of their ‘agreement’ – she was even more excited about the fact that it was the perfect opportunity to corral her best friends from their far-flung corners of the world. She knew that Suzy, Anouk and Kelly all hooked up reasonably regularly. After all, London, Paris and New York were practically commuter routes for them – but diversions up to the Scottish Borders? Not so much. This was the first time they’d all be together since her wedding – well, once Kelly got here.
Cassie watched as Suzy carefully lifted up a pale blue box with chocolate-brown polka dots from the far side of the bed. ‘Well, the champagne may be for you and Gil,’ she said, grinning, ‘but these are for us.’ Inside were four overscaled cupcakes, all frosted with the palest lemon icing and topped with a white rose.
‘Magnifique,’ Anouk sighed, leaning over to pass one to Cassie.
‘Oh my God – they’re so cute,’ Cassie squealed, holding hers up to the sunlight. ‘They’re like baby bunnies.’ Dundee cake was a far cry from the chichi delectations that flirted from the bakery windows in Pimlico, Cassie mused.
‘They’re passion fruit?’ she asked, spraying crumbs everywhere.
Suzy nodded. ‘You like? I’ve been developing the recipe with the bakery for a wedding I’m doing. It’s taken for ever to get it right – one lot was too gloopy, the next not tangy enough. But I think it’s there now – don’t you?’
Cassie swooned in agreement.
‘Is the bride behaving herself?’ Anouk asked, reclining against the pillows and eating her cupcake in t
iny little pinches.
Suzy rolled her eyes. ‘Do they ever? Just about the only thing she hasn’t changed her mind about is the groom – and with a month to go, there’s still time.’
Anouk giggled, shaking her head. ‘I don’t know how you put up with it. All that stress you’re absorbing.’
Suzy eyed her rounded tummy. ‘Well, I could do with absorbing a lot more. Why is it that my brides always lose at least a stone for their weddings, but I only ever seem to put it on? I mean, I’m the one with all the hassles – dealing with the florists, double-booked venues, unreliable bands, coked-up DJs, truculent vicars . . . You name it, I’ve dealt with it. You’d think I’d be the one losing weight.’
Cassie sighed. For as long as she’d known her – which was since birth – Suzy had been permanently on a quest to make herself smaller. Already five foot ten by the age of twelve, with a build that had been athletic even at her thinnest, she’d always felt like she took up too much room, and the adolescent desire to conform had never left her – particularly, it seemed, as she now worked with diminishing brides on a daily basis.
Still, whatever Suzy felt about her weight, Cassie thought she looked better than ever – younger than her thirty years, for a start, with her velvety, rosy-hued complexion, her dark brown ‘Bambi’ eyes and a layered style she’d settled on that made the most of her too-fine dark blonde hair.
Anouk, on the other hand, was Suzy’s opposite in every way. Dark, petite, knowing. Her thick chestnut-brown hair was expensively cut in a long tousled bob that cut in perfectly beneath her pronounced cheekbones, her nose was straight and fine, and her full pout was tantalizingly offset by a hint of overbite. Compared with Suzy, she looked older than her thirty years, though not because of wrinkles or anything as bourgeois as ageing – Cassie well knew that the contents of Anouk’s bathroom would out-stock Space NK and that she had a beauty regimen that would put Cleopatra to shame. Rather, she had a worldly air, a sophistication that was rarely worn on such dainty shoulders but was more often seen on women ten, even twenty, years her senior.
‘Honestly, I think living in these cities is bad for your health,’ Cassie said reprovingly. ‘From what I can see, it makes you all neurotic about your figures. No one thinks twice about things like that up here.’
‘Why not?’ Anouk asked. ‘What’s wrong with looking after yourself?’
‘But that’s just the thing. It’s not looking after yourself. It’s denying yourself. All of you always seem to be starving yourselves to some ridiculously low weight that just isn’t sustainable. Everyone should just relax and . . . enjoy cupcakes,’ she sighed, taking the last remaining bite.
‘That’s what’s so hateful about you,’ Suzy snarled. ‘You’re slim without even thinking about it. At least I can take comfort in the knowledge that Anouk and Kelly suffer terribly to stay thin.’
‘I do not suffer,’ Anouk pouted, looking insulted that she should ever be thought to do anything so inelegant.
‘Oh no? Then how come you get tinier every time I see you?’
‘I am Parisienne, chérie,’ she shrugged, as if that explained everything. ‘It’s in my DNA.’
‘Hmph, that old chestnut.’
‘What are you wearing tonight?’ Anouk asked Cassie, still pinching away at her cake. ‘I trust you have frittered away the family trust on something fabulous?’
Cassie shook her head, knowing the consternation this would cause. ‘Afraid not. The shooting season starts next week and I’ve been up to my eyes in the kitchens, trying to get ahead. It hasn’t helped that we had a bumper crop of damsons this summer and I’ve been trying to get everything off the tree and jammed.’
Anouk dropped her hand in disgust. ‘You ditched a new dress for damsons?’
‘It’s never jam tomorrow in this house, is it?’ Suzy muttered, rolling her eyes.
Cassie shrugged. ‘I’ve not been able to get off the estate for over a month now,’ she said, getting up and walking over to the wardrobe. ‘And anyway, Gil always liked this black velvet dress that I bought a few years ago for New Year. I’ve probably only worn it three or four times.’ She held it against herself – knee-length, off the shoulder with a velvet rose centrepiece. ‘It is Laura Ashley.’
‘Laura . . .’ Anouk mouthed, looking aghast at Suzy.
‘Hey, I know it doesn’t look anything on the hanger, but honestly, when it’s on . . .’ She caught sight of Suzy’s sceptical expression. ‘Look, I’ll put it on now. Then you’ll see it’s not so bad.’ She wriggled out of her dressing gown just as the door burst open.
Kelly took one look at Cassie in her once-white Playtex bra and baggy knickers and her jaw dropped. ‘Oh my God! It’s worse than I thought.’
Cassie shrieked and bounded over, swamping Kelly in a delighted hug.
Anouk picked up the velvet dress, grimacing. ‘It is so much worse than you thought,’ she said to Kelly, who was peering at her over Cassie’s shoulder. She threw the dress down on the bed and lit a cigarette.
Suzy poured a fresh glass of champagne and sauntered over, waiting for Cassie to release Kelly. ‘You’re still a stranger to colour, I see,’ she tutted, handing Kelly the glass and kissing her affectionately. ‘And you’ve lost weight. You’re too thin.’
‘There’s no such thing,’ Anouk purred, holding her cigarette behind her as she kissed Kelly on each cheek.
‘Exactly,’ Kelly agreed. They’d always been partners in crime and were both rampantly, defiantly single and at the height of their seductive powers. They even looked similar. Kelly was also a shimmering brunette, though her hair was reed-straight and longer than Anouk’s, her nose more retroussé, her eyes hazelnut-coloured and almond-shaped.
‘I see I’ve come at just the right time,’ said Kelly, taking Cassie by the shoulders and giving her a Paddington Bearlike hard stare. ‘What the hell are you doing to Anouk?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She’s French, Cass. You can’t walk around in underwear like that. She doesn’t have the constitution for it.’
‘Well . . . I . . . But . . .’ she stammered, looking between her tragic bra and Anouk, who had one hand on her hip and one eyebrow raised to heaven. ‘Well, Gil doesn’t mind,’ she blustered.
‘Honey, right this instant, it’s a mystery to me how you two have got to ten years together.’ Kelly took a sip of her drink. ‘You’d be kicked out of bed in Manhattan!’
‘Institutionalized in Paris,’ Anouk drawled.
Cassie looked to Suzy for the final nail in the coffin. ‘Sorry, sweets,’ she shrugged. ‘Can’t help you. London’s definitely not calling.’
‘Urrrgh, you’re a nightmare, the lot of you,’ Cassie said defensively, reaching for the towelling dressing gown heaped on the floor. ‘I’d forgotten how high-maintenance you all are. I don’t know how your men put up with you.’
She hated it when they ganged up on her like this. They might all live in different countries and be products of different cultures, but it seemed as though ‘sophistication’ was an international language that linked her glamorous, urbane friends together. It wasn’t as if their day-to-day lives overlapped: Kelly had her own fashion PR consultancy in Manhattan, Suzy was a high-octane wedding planner in London and Anouk was a sought-after jewellery designer in Paris, who refused to sell through boutiques and would only accept new customers if they had contacts with at least three of her existing clients. And yet the three of them invariably used the same miracle moisturizer, carried the same Balenciaga bag, read the newspaper on their iPad and minimized their bottom in MiH jeans.
‘Hey, chill – it’s not like I’m surprised, or even disappointed,’ Kelly said, winking as she unzipped her overnight bag and pulled out a petal-pink tissue-wrapped bundle. ‘Because I just so happen to have a little gift for you.’
Cassie took it gingerly, looking slightly afraid of what she might find in there. She shook open the paper and a midnight-blue silk dress slid out. ‘Oh! What a beautiful nightie!�
� she exclaimed, running her hand over the fabric, her indignation instantly forgotten.
The others burst out laughing.
‘Shall I wear it tonight?’ she asked coquettishly, holding it against herself.
‘Oh, you’ll wear it tonight, all right,’ Kelly laughed. ‘But to the party. This ain’t no nightie!’
‘What?’ Cassie said, alarmed. ‘But it’s so . . . skimpy. Gil would be mortified if I . . .’
‘Au contraire, Gil will be delighted to see his wife look so alluring,’ Anouk asserted. ‘Put it on.’
Knowing she had no choice in the matter, Cassie slid the dress over her head. The silk felt exquisite next to her skin and she noticed, now that it was on, two tiny lace peekaboo crescents arced over her hips. A tiny but incredibly sexy detail.
‘Wow!’ Suzy gasped.
‘New season?’ Anouk asked Kelly.
Kelly nodded. ‘Bebe Washington label. Gisele’s walking in it in the show in a few weeks.’
‘I want it,’ Anouk purred.
‘You shall have it. Got anything special in mind?’ Kelly asked.
‘Oh yes,’ Anouk said, refusing to elaborate.
Cassie couldn’t stop looking at herself in the mirror. She looked so . . . different. Not like herself, somehow. She wasn’t sure what Gil would say, despite the girls’ assurances. She looked at the clock. Seven-thirty. Outside, the piper had started playing, beckoning the revellers towards the Lammermuir estate as he paced solemnly back and forth across the lawn.
She wondered whether Wiz would be able to get here early. She’d said she would try. Wiz’d tell it to her straight. After all, she was her go-to friend up here, her rock, her lunch companion and closest confidante – the one who’d taken her under her wing when she’d first arrived, not yet twenty-one, fresh from the air-conditioned climes of expat living in Hong Kong and new to the nuances of grouse-moor farming.
She looked down at the trio of childhood friends who were sitting together in a gaggle on the floor, examining a heap of shoes that had been upended from one of Anouk’s many bags. Their friendship had been arranged practically before their births. Their fathers had all been CEOs of the multi-national cosmetics conglomerate Neroli – Kelly’s for the Americas in New York; Anouk’s for Europe, excluding the UK, in Paris; Suzy’s for the UK in London; and Cassie’s for Asia in Hong Kong. Before the girls were even born, their mothers had all been good friends, meeting regularly around the world for coffee and shopping trips as they accompanied their husbands to AGMs and conferences. And when the girls had been born, all in the same year – surely a collaboration by their mothers? – the friendship was handed down a generation as they shared crèches, rattles and nannies. Their parents couldn’t have been remotely surprised when, aged thirteen, the girls mounted a pressure group to be sent to the same boarding school in England, and they’d enjoyed five blissful years together, as close as sisters, sleeping in the same dorm, playing in the same lacrosse team, swooning over the same boys . . . until Cassie had blown it.
