Guilty Pleasures

by Tasmina Perry

  She walked back to her office in silence, a short shake of the head all she needed to impart her news to Gretchen.

  ‘Who did?’ she asked, knowing Gretchen was popular with all the PAs and secretaries in the company.

  ‘Pete Wise, Jack Johnson, Bob Hatch,’ she said apologetically.

  Pete Wise? The man was an idiot! And what business had Jack Johnson brought in? Despairing, Emma grabbed her coat and headed out into the cold Boston evening.

  The tall office blocks of downtown soared up around her. In front, Boston harbour shimmered like a vat of ink. Suddenly she felt very small and alone.

  Hearing footsteps behind her on the pavement, she turned to see Mark running after her, his breath puffing white clouds up to the skyline behind him.

  ‘Em! Emma!’ he called, panting as he caught up with her.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry you didn’t make it,’ he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. ‘I only found out early today.’

  She jerked her arm away from him.

  ‘Don’t give me that, Mark,’ she said turning on her heel. ‘You knew.’

  ‘Emma. Don’t get so worked up. What’s the big hurry? You’ll make partner next year.’

  She stopped and turned back, her eyes blazing.

  ‘Next year? Or perhaps the next? Or whenever you let Daniel Davies know that I’ve suitably matured?’

  Mark went pale.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Davies told me about your recommendation, that I wasn’t ready for partner. Not quite the same line of bullshit you have been feeding me for the past two months, is it?’

  ‘Now come on,’ he said, putting out his arms towards her, ‘that’s not what I said.’

  ‘Oh really?’ she challenged. ‘He seemed very clear about it.’

  ‘He’s obviously taken what I said the wrong way …’

  The snake, thought Emma, walking off in disgust. Mark chased her, grabbing her arm.

  ‘Davies thinks you brought in the Frost Industries as well. Apparently you told him so. Or did he take that the wrong way as well?’

  ‘Come on Em, let’s talk about this. I thought we were going to have supper.’

  ‘You betrayed me, Mark,’ she said her voice thick with emotion. She was desperate not to cry but she could feel the tears welling up and stinging the backs of her eyes.

  Mark turned away then faced her.

  He looked as if he was about to keep denying it but finally he simply shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘OK. You’re right. I happen to think you’re not ready to be a partner,’ said Mark flatly. ‘You are a good business strategist, but you’re too soft. You don’t even have the balls to fire that dim secretary of yours. You’re an academic, not a corporate player. You’re too nice to make tough decisions. You’re just not ready to play with the big boys.’

  ‘And Pete Wise is ready? Jack Johnson is ready? Does being on your softball team make you ready for partnership? I’m good, Mark,’ she pleaded. ‘You know it.’

  ‘You do well at Harvard and you think the world owes you a favour,’ he laughed scornfully.

  ‘I trusted you to tell the truth,’ she said quietly. ‘I trusted you to tell people like Daniel Davies that I was the best. But no, you surround yourself with yes-men, idiots who will make you look good.’

  ‘Fucking you could have cost me my job and this is all the thanks I get,’ he said sneeringly Droplets of rains began to fall. They were like slaps on the cheek.

  ‘Fucking me,’ she repeated quietly. ‘Is that what it was to you?’

  Mark glared at her, then waved a dismissive hand in the air.

  ‘Ah, you needy women are all the fucking same: Davies is right, you probably do want to run off and have a baby.’

  She looked at him. The man she had whispered ‘I love you’ to, the man she had admired and trusted, had withered to a sycophant and a liar, a man who lived off other people’s hard work and talent. She knew she was better than him, but there was little doubt he had played the game better than her. The likes of Daniel Davies would never know how much she put into the company, how much profit was directly down to her efforts and talent because operators like Mark Eisner took the glory for himself.

  Waves were beginning to whip up in the harbour and rain was beginning to fall more heavily. Lights on the skyscrapers behind her sent a muddled saffron glow into the shallow puddles. She was angry, confused, but she was sure about one thing.

  ‘I don’t ever want to see you again,’ she said as evenly as she could.

  ‘Emma, don’t be ridiculous,’ he said, the tone of his voice softening. ‘We have to work together.’

  ‘Do we?’

  She thought of Winterfold, that crazy jumble of antiques and bric-a-brac, she thought of the lazy village and its single red telephone box, all of it a million miles away from this corporate jungle. Saul had trusted her to take over his entire company. Saul had faith in her. And suddenly so did Emma.

  Suddenly she had a clear sense of purpose, a sense of belonging.

  ‘Happy birthday, Em,’ said Mark, hunching his back against the rain.

  She didn’t turn round. She just kept on walking.

  5

  Briarton Court, one of England’s top boarding schools for girls, had phenomenal resources at its disposal. Its one hundred acres of grounds housed an embarrassment of riches: indoor and outdoor swimming pools, a lacrosse pitch, running track and tennis and petanque courts. In the classroom, Briarton’s pupils – who included the children of politicians, tycoons, ambassadors, billionaires, minor European royalty and good old-fashioned English aristocrats – had the opportunity to study everything from Calculus to Mandarin, not to mention the wide range of extracurricula activities. Apart from the annual ski trip to Klosters, the most popular after-school activity by far was Briarton’s monthly careers evenings which pulled in guest speakers to give the Oxford Union a run for their money.

  That evening’s guest speaker looked around the packed lecture theatre and took a sip of water. Cassandra Grand had been tempted to turn down the invitation to speak as it was slap bang in the middle of London Fashion Week, but when she had heard that in the last two years alone the speakers had included two cabinet ministers, a Nobel prize winner, Richard Branson and an Oscar-winning actress, Cassandra had found time in her diary.

  She was glad she had; forty-five glorious, uninterrupted minutes talking about her glamorous life as a glossy magazine editor and – the girls hung on every word of this – how she had got there. Cassandra would reveal how she had left a similar school to this one eighteen years ago with the sole ambition of wanting to work for an upmarket fashion magazine. How her six months as an intern at US Rive almost killed her: lugging suitcases full of clothes to fashion shoots, unpacking them and ironing them, getting shouted at by the photographer, the art director and the models, running here and there to fetch coffee, batteries or pick up dry-cleaning, then repacking the suitcases, lugging them back to the office late at night before neatly folding the clothes back into padded envelopes for return to the fashion houses. She would tell them how she got her big break when she met Carla Miller, one of the hottest fashion names of the early Nineties, back in London. Carla styled shoots, catwalk shows and advertising campaigns for the likes of Calvin Klein and Versace and it was she who gave Cassandra a job as her assistant. She would tell them how Carla grew so confident in Cassandra’s abilities that she would recommend Cassandra for small jobs that she was too busy, or simply too important to undertake. And she would describe how another chance meeting with Alliance Chairman Isaac Grey landed her a job as fashion editor on US Rive where she rose through the ranks to become their deputy editor and eventually seconded to salvage the UK edition as their editor-in-chief. Cassandra had loved talking about herself and reliving her apparently charmed life, leaving out the ruthlessness, the back-stabbing and political chicanery that was really at the heart of her success.

  She was, howeve
r, unprepared for the onslaught of questions from her eager audience, hands darting into the air like fireflies.

  ‘How much money do you earn?’ asked a blonde in the front row.

  ‘What famous people have you met?’ asked a Chinese girl further back.

  ‘Do you get free clothes?’

  ‘Do you have to be thin?’

  Cassandra looked out onto the sea of eager faces wondering how many of them would make it. The fashion cupboards of glossy magazines, of course, were full of pretty young things like these who wanted to play with clothes all day long, killing time until a rich banker husband came to sweep them off their feet and out to the country.

  ‘What do you need to get to the very top, other than a fabulous fashion eye?’ asked a beautiful blonde girl. Now she looked more promising. Her blouse looked vintage YSL and she had that indefinable X factor. Stylish, confident, focussed. Cassandra smiled at her.

  ‘Having a fashion eye certainly helps, but it’s not essential. People who reach the very top know how to pick the best team, how to get the most out of other people’s talent. What the editor-in-chief needs is passion, determination and a way of thinking commercially. Knowing what the reader wants. Knowing how to woo advertisers like lovers …’ She paused, realizing she had overstepped the mark, but she gave the blonde a helpful, conspiratorial smile. ‘If you want to make it to the top, my dear,’ she said, perfectly seriously, ‘you need to know how to make money.’

  At that point, Miss Lamarr, head of the Sixth Form rose to her feet. ‘I think that’s enough questions now,’ she said briskly. ‘Miss Grand is a very busy woman. I’m sure she has plenty of fashion shows to attend,’ she added light-heartedly.

  A burst of eager applause bounced around the wood-panelled room. As Cassandra descended from the stage, she was surrounded by girls wanting to shake her hand or get an autograph. A flustered Miss Lamarr motioned to Cassandra who escaped through a side-door into a quiet corridor, shutting the pandemonium behind her. She took a deep breath, energy buzzing around her body. She felt like a movie star.

  ‘Hiiiiiii,’ squealed a loud voice to Cassandra’s left. Before she could even turn, a lanky female body wrapped itself around her, almost toppling her over.

  ‘Can you believe they wouldn’t let me watch the lecture?’ gushed the voice, not releasing the embrace. ‘No year nines allowed, apparently. Rules are rules even if it’s your mother speaking they said!’

  ‘Darling, how are you?’ said Cassandra, disentangling herself, before kissing the girl warmly on the cheek. Cassandra hadn’t seen her daughter Ruby since Christmas and couldn’t believe how much she had changed in only eight weeks. She had always been tall and gangly, but Cassandra was convinced she must have grown another inch since New Year. Already she was five feet eight and even the drab Briarton school uniform could not disguise her blossoming figure. A size six, thought Cassandra, trying not to feel envious: the perfect sample size. If there was one thing Ruby’s father had given her, it was good genes, with olive skin, raven hair spilling down her back and eyes that could change from grape green to emerald depending on the light and time of day. She would have looked like Pocahontas were it not for a long vivid orange streak across Ruby’s fringe.

  ‘What on earth is that?’ she exclaimed in horror.

  ‘I know,’ said Ruby, shrugging her shoulders. ‘It didn’t quite work out as I imagined. Sienna said I’d look good with some contrast in my hair. Now I look like a sun-tanned skunk.’

  ‘What were you thinking? What the hell did you use?’

  ‘Bleach.’

  ‘Don’t you know some of the best hairdressers are at my disposal? Do you never listen …?’ she exhaled dramatically. ‘Maybe Daniel Galvin will do a house call,’ she said thoughtfully, still angry that this was yet another problem she had to sort out.

  Cassandra had been 21 years old and on a photo-shoot in Miami when she had met Narcisso, a half America/half Cuban male model. She had been too young to say no to sex with someone incredibly good looking – and hell, why not? So they’d had a one-night stand. It was the most fantastic sex of Cassandra’s life. It was not until five months later that she found out she was pregnant. As a rule, Cassandra ate very little to keep her rail-thin figure, which had sent her menstrual cycle haywire to say the least. Cassandra had thought it was the end of the world: it was too late to abort it, too far gone to hide it and she had no intention of contacting the father again. The thought of adoption had crossed her mind for a moment but – against all previous instincts – Cassandra found she had a maternal side. The baby was her. A part of her, a product of her. How could she give that up? She quickly came to regret such romantic thoughts. Holding Ruby in her arms was the first time she could ever remember feeling helpless and she hated the feeling. Added to which, almost immediately, having a baby interfered with her career. She couldn’t travel, couldn’t work late, couldn’t attend all the parties so essential to maintaining a profile in the fashion world. Cassandra had no choice: she moved her daughter in with her mother and went back to work. At eight, Ruby was sent to boarding school. Ruby had her own room at Cassandra’s Knightsbridge apartment, although it was rarely used. Cassandra had fought hard to hold onto her career, but now she was glad she had Ruby. Unlike thousands of career women her age she didn’t have to worry about the ticking biological clock or finding the right man because she had a child, one that was becoming more self-sufficient by the day. They climbed into the back seat of the Mercedes and Cassandra ordered the driver to take them into Rye.

  ‘Here. Some of the older girls asked me to give you these.’ Ruby thrust her hand into her Marni tote bag and pulled out a handful of CVs. ‘You’ve made me very popular with the upper sixth.’

  They drove out of the school gates and made the twenty-minute journey into Rye. Andrew dropped them outside the Mermaid Inn, the best restaurant in Rye. It had a slightly run-down rickety feel, with uneven floors and low beams, the sort of place you could imagine well-heeled smugglers frequenting. Sitting by the window, Cassandra could see up towards the medieval church and the half-timbered houses. There was an undeniably eerie beauty to the town. Not quite Nobu, thought Cassandra, but charming nonetheless.

  ‘Isn’t it great?’ said Ruby, bouncing in her window seat, ‘Johnny Depp stayed here once.’

  ‘Did he?’ said Cassandra, slightly mollified. ‘I’m not at all surprised.’

  ‘So how was the funeral?’ asked Ruby, her young mind already on other things. ‘I still don’t understand why I couldn’t have gone. I saw Uncle Saul more than you did and I really wanted to go and say my goodbyes.’

  ‘Roger thought it best if there were no children and for once I agreed with him.’

  ‘Mother, I’m not a child,’ said Ruby, affronted. ‘I’m thirteen years of age.’

  ‘By the way,’ said Cassandra crisply, ‘Saul left you £10,000 in his will.’

  ‘Wow! Brilliant!’ squealed Ruby slurping her drink. ‘Can I have it now?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Cassandra fiercely.

  ‘And did you get the company?’ she replied playfully.

  Cassandra almost smiled at her daughter. Straight to the point, just like her mother.

  ‘No. Saul, in his infinite wisdom, gave it to my cousin Emma.’

  ‘Ah, so that’s why you’re in a really shitty mood,’ she smiled cheekily.

  ‘Ruby!’ said Cassandra. ‘I don’t pay £25,000 a year for your education to hear you swear.’

  Ruby leant forward and held her mother’s hand.

  ‘What did you want that boring company for anyway?’

  ‘I wanted it for us, darling,’ said Cassandra, squeezing her daughter’s fingers with a warmth that surprised her.

  ‘But why?’ asked Ruby. ‘You have a cool job. We have money. If you’d got the company, we’d have had to move back to the village. Uncle Saul used to tell me that it was a perk of owning the company living in that house. Some perk! It’s so creepy! I bet it’s got gh
osts.’

  Cassandra moved her hand from her daughter’s grip, smarting at her daughter’s casual dismissal of her ambitions. What did that ungrateful wretch think she did this all for? How did she think she got such an expensive education? A few ghosts was the least of it. Cassandra took a deep breath, trying to get her emotions under control. Only Ruby could make her shake like this, she thought.

  ‘So … what did you think of the March issue?’ she asked, trying to change the subject.

  ‘It was great. Although I think you do too much modern art.’

  ‘Darling, lots of our readers are collectors or fancy themselves as collectors.’

  ‘But it’s all a bit rubbish, isn’t it?’ laughed Ruby. ‘I mean the way you called that painter who does the orange circles a genius. How is he a genius compared to say Leonardo da Vinci? Did you know Da Vinci was probably one of the most all-round talented people ever? He designed helicopters, solar heating, rockets, everything.’

  Cassandra smiled.

  ‘Am I to assume you’re studying the Renaissance period at the moment?’

  ‘You got it,’ grinned Ruby, happy her mother had taken the bait. ‘… And seeing as I got an A in my paper, are you going to take me to Paris? You did promise at Christmas … ?’

  The fact that Cassandra was the mother of a 13-year-old girl was an open secret in the industry, but it was not something she flaunted. There was no shame; over the years, Anna Wintour’s child Bee Shaffer and French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld’s daughter Julie had been seen on the front row. But Ruby looked nearer eighteen than thirteen; Cassandra was only 35, and did not want people doing the maths and getting it wrong.

  ‘Now, darling, I know I promised you could come to a couple of shows this year but Rive is throwing a big party in Paris and I don’t think it would be appropriate for you to be there. Maybe for couture in July, mmm?’

  ‘I really wanted to go to the Louvre,’ said Ruby in a low, disappointed voice.

  Cassandra so wanted to please her daughter, to give in to her demands. She’d love to show Ruby off, but she had to be strong. She couldn’t let Ruby’s disappointment interfere with her plans, not now. She was doing it for both of them – didn’t she understand that? Sometimes she felt so close to her daughter that she was almost part of her, other times it seemed as if they lived on different planets.