Gold Diggers

‘Yeah, just like Noel Gallagher,’ smiled Charlie, ‘but with better teeth.’

They walked out onto the streets of Belgravia. With the tall white Georgian houses stretching up around them, her hair still in a bouffant, carriage streetlamps glowing like dandelion clocks, she felt like a heroine in a Jane Austen novel. Sally, Stefan and some of the crew were still huddled in the doorway of the house, sheltering from the spitting rain and debating where to go to drink.

‘What about the Blue Bar for a cocktail?’

‘I’m not paying a tenner for a drink,’ grumbled Charlie. ‘Aren’t there any pubs around here?’

‘Well, what about the Grenadier?’ said Sally looking directly at Charlie. ‘I saw Madonna in there once.’

‘No one famous is going to be out tonight,’ said Jenny the make-up artist, lighting a cigarette and taking a long drag. ‘It’s that big party in South London tonight, isn’t it?’

Summer felt a sudden sense of panic. ‘Oh shit!’ she said, and started looking up and down the street for a taxi.

‘What’s up?’ asked Charlie.

‘I promised my mum I’d go out with her,’ groaned Summer.

‘Hot date at the bingo?’

Summer laughed at the image. ‘My mum is probably more rock ’n’ roll than anyone you’ve ever met in the music industry.’

‘Excellent! Get her down to the Grenadier!’ said Charlie.

Summer doubted her mum had been to anywhere as down-market as a pub since the 1970s.

‘What are we waiting for over there?’ said Sally Stevenson irritably, unhappy that Summer was monopolizing Charlie.

A black cab pulled up to the kerb, and Summer quickly spoke to the driver. ‘I’d better go,’ said Summer apologetically, clunking the door open.

Charlie rifled around in his bag and pulled out a CD. ‘My band,’ he said, handing it to her with an endearingly nervous expression, like a twelve-year old schoolboy who’d just plucked up the courage to ask a girl out for the first time. ‘Give it a listen. If you like it, we’re playing at the Monarch a week on Thursday. You should come down and hear us.’

She felt a little spike of affection as he pulled a copy of NME out of his bag and held it over his hair as the rain got harder.

‘And if I hate it?’ she asked.

‘Come down anyway.’

As the cab began to turn back up the street, Summer pulled down the window to tell Charlie she would try to make it. As she passed the group, she could see Sally Stevenson sidle up to Charlie and say, ‘Funny fish, that one, isn’t she?’

She couldn’t hear Charlie’s reply.

4

Karin strode into the Great Hall of Strawberry Hill House to give it one final check before heading back to London to get a blow-dry. It was certainly a magnificent room and Karin had very, very high standards. The marble pillars had been wrapped in gold-tipped ivy matching the mansion’s incredible gilded ceilings. The ballroom was studded with bay trees sprayed white, and a long catwalk extended through the sea of tables – Karin had insisted that the vital ingredient of the night’s entertainment would be a showcase of the Karin Cavendish cruise collection. There were ice sculptures, huge vases of Calla lilies and a small stage festooned with waves of ivory voile on which Havana’s finest jazz band were due to play. She stood back and smiled. She knew she had got it just right.

Karin had spent three months deciding on this venue for the global warming benefit dinner because it had to be perfect. Central London was out; the venues which could accommodate big numbers for dinner and dancing were so over used and frankly, a little déclassé. No, Karin knew that if the Stop Global Warming benefit was going to make a splash, it would have to be somewhere elegant and original, and in Strawberry Hill House, a stunning Gothic mansion fifteen miles outside London, she knew she had found the place. Even being so bloody far from Chelsea had its benefits; at least thirty guests were arriving by helicopter, adding a further dash of exclusivity to the evening. The irony of using helicopters in place of cars or taxis to arrive an event aimed at highlighting the perils of global warming was not lost on Karin, but then her heart was in the party, and certainly not the cause. Global warming! Why on earth would she want to trade her BMW X5 for one of those ridiculous hybrid cars that looked as if they were used to transport OAPs? The way Karin looked at it, if she was raising a few million for the penguins and the polar bears, then they could turn a blind eye to a few teensy helicopters.

‘Hey, look lively, here comes the dragon,’ whispered one of the hand-picked models-cum-waiters who started polishing the crystal goblets frantically as Karin approached. Erin stifled a giggle before putting her head down to examine the table plan.

‘I said Verbena roses, not Iceberg roses,’ snapped Karin at Jamie Marshall. Jamie was one of the country’s premier florists, and was currently working like a camp demon on islands of roses for the table centrepieces.

‘But Karin, darling,’ he whined. ‘They are both white roses, who will notice the diff—’

‘Change them,’ said Karin emphatically, and moved on before he had time to object.

‘You!’ Karin had turned her attention to a waiter who was putting the menus on the crisp white tablecloths. ‘Get me some blueberries to nibble on. Organic … And you! Haven’t you been home to change?’

Erin winced, feeling for the poor waiter about to get a tongue-lashing.

‘Erin! I’m talking to you!’ Karin snapped.

‘Me? I … I thought …’ said Erin, flustered. ‘But I have changed.’ She looked down at her outfit, embarrassed. It was a knee-length black shift dress with a little diamanté buckle she had bought at the Next January sale to wear to Richard’s Law School Ball. It made her feel pretty, slim and demure.

She caught Karin rolling her eyes. Five minutes ago she had felt a little like Audrey Hepburn; now she felt hopelessly inadequate.

‘Oh well. At least it’s black,’ sighed Karin.

Since Erin’s first call from the Deskhop Agency, three weeks had passed in a blur. Erin had been surprised to have been offered the job on the spot by Karin Cavendish, especially as she had been so nervous in the interview after recognizing Karin from the society pages of the Mail. Karin had wanted her to start immediately, so Erin had been forced to make the awkward call to Richard asking if she could stay at his flat for a couple of weeks while she sorted herself out and decided whether her future was in London or Cornwall. From her first day at Karin Cavendish, it had been a trial by fire for Erin. Eighteen-hour days were commonplace and the attention to detail Karin demanded was phenomenal. Thankfully, Erin was not organizing the Stop Global Warming event by herself. Karin had recruited a production company to sort out everything from furniture to lighting and a PR company whose responsibility seemed to be keeping the press away from the event rather than persuading them to cover it. Even so, the volume of work required to coordinate everything made Erin’s head ache. It didn’t help that Karin was such a demanding taskmaster. Every bit as particular and exacting as she was glamorous, Karin was the ultimate perfectionist, insisting on signing off every last detail personally. She had spent days hand-picking the best-looking waiters from catering agencies all over London, and would spend hours agonizing over whether to have Tattinger or Perrier Jouet champagne at the reception. As far as Erin had been concerned, champagne was champagne before Karin had explained the difference. Just being in Karin’s company made Erin feel more chic and worldly.

‘I’m going to Charles Worthington in ten minutes,’ said Karin. ‘So we need to run through everything now.’ She held up a finger, then touched her earpiece. ‘Hi, darling. No, can’t talk now. See you tonight, yes? Ciao!’

She sat down at Erin’s table and fingered the cream floral centrepiece critically. ‘You understand that I won’t be anywhere near the door tonight?’ she asked Erin. ‘So I’m leaving that to you.’

It was the thing Erin was most excited about. She was to be in charge of the guest list and would be checking people in as they came through the velvet rope. There were plenty of celebrities on the VIP list: Robbie Williams, Yasmin Le Bon, even Hector Fox, one of Britain’s hottest new actors; Erin had recently seen him as a troubled hit man in an ITV drama and he had made her feel weak at the knees.

‘You have got to be beyond strict,’ continued Karin, snapping her fingers to summon a waiter and barking the word, ‘water.’

‘Remember, no ticket, no entry. And cross-reference with the guest list, I don’t want anyone slipping through. I’m diverting all calls to you from now; they’ll all be blaggers trying to get a last-minute ticket for after dinner; you’ll get loads of press too. Tell them this is a bloody charity night and let them buy a ten-thousand-pound table if they want to come. Anyway, Tatler has the exclusive.’

Karin ran through her list of strict rules and regulations. She wanted a car to be outside for her from 10.30 p.m. and to wait indefinitely until she was ready to go. Under no circumstances was either Erin or any of the PR girls allowed to smoke or drink.

‘Not even water, Erin,’ said Karin firmly. ‘People think it’s vodka tonic and it looks really, really unprofessional.’

Erin nodded solemnly at each instruction and, when Karin finally stalked off, she took a deep breath, part of her wanting to run all the way back to Cornwall, but another part of her more thrilled and excited than she had ever been in her life.

Summer’s taxi arrived outside her basement flat in a slightly scruffy house in W10, a shade after 8 p.m. She had promised the taxi driver a ten-pound tip if he could get her home in fifteen minutes and he had screeched into Basset Road with seconds to spare.

‘Here you go, love,’ he beamed, shoving the notes into his breast pocket. ‘Hope he’s worth it.’

As the cab pulled away, Summer turned and looked up at the tall thin terrace and sighed. It was home, she supposed, although living with her mother at twenty-four wasn’t exactly her ideal life plan. Molly had bought the building for a song fifteen years earlier when a boyfriend had convinced her that Ladbroke Grove would one day be the new Chelsea. Not that Molly had waited around for that to happen. Living for most of the nineties in various apartments paid for by lovers, by the time Molly moved back into the property after the demise of yet another relationship, Ladbroke Grove had gentrified sufficiently to be acceptably bohemian. Summer had moved into the basement flat directly under Molly’s house after her return from Japan. Theoretically that made her independent of Molly’s interference, but it seemed nobody had bothered to tell her mother. It was like being twelve years old again, only this time, she was expected to accompany her mother to parties instead of wait at home with the babysitter.

Summer closed the front door, then used another key to let herself into Molly’s apartment. Molly was sitting in the lounge in her bra and knickers, her hair set in a mountain of curlers, feet propped up on a desk as she painted her toenails scarlet. Summer thought she looked like an Ellen Von Unwerth photograph.

‘You’re about an hour late,’ said Molly tartly, putting the bottle of polish down on the table.

Summer noticed that the laptop Molly had open on the desk beside her was blinking on the eBay home page. It was her mother’s latest source of income, converting gifts from boyfriends into cash – a Hermès scarf here, a Tiffany cocktail ring there; in the last twelve months she had made at least £50,000, tax free.

‘What are you selling this time?’ asked Summer, trying to deflect her mother’s annoyance.

‘Suleiman gave me a Kelly bag,’ sighed Molly.

‘And you’re getting rid of it?’ asked Summer, surprised. She herself had always coveted the legendary Hermès bag, but had never been in the position to part with £3000.

‘You have a Kelly when you’re over fifty, a Birkin when you’re under fifty,’ said Molly patiently, looking at Summer as if she had suggested that the sky was green. ‘So, what kept you? I thought the shoot finished at six.’

Summer slipped off her coat and flopped onto the plump cream sofa. ‘It ran on a bit. The crew wanted to go for a drink. I got away as early as I could.’

‘You went for a drink when you could have been home getting ready to go out with me?’ snapped Molly. ‘I hope you weren’t wasting your time with any bloody photographers. Did he tell you he can get you in Vogue? Believe me, the only thing you get from a fashion photographer is an STD.’

‘I didn’t even go for the drink,’ said Summer tetchily. ‘Anyway, it’s only eight o’clock and we don’t have to be at the party till ten.’

‘Which would be fine if it wasn’t in Surrey. Honestly Summer, you drift back from Japan, I let you live downstairs paying half the rent I could be charging somebody else, and this is what I get: selfishness and inconsideration. Oh well,’ she huffed, ‘you might as well be useful and tell me which dress you prefer.’

Summer followed her mother upstairs into the bedroom feeling wretched. Molly knew exactly the right buttons to press to make her feel guilty and ungrateful. Not for the first time since she got back from Japan, Summer wondered why her mother actually wanted her in such close proximity, considering she spent so much time making her feel like an inconvenience. But then it was a familiar feeling; Summer had always felt as if she had personally held Molly back, both in her modelling career and her love life. Even though a string of cheap Swedish au pairs had been a fixture in the Sinclair household, it couldn’t have been easy for Molly to jet off on a modelling job to Manhattan or Marrakech with Summer weighing her down like a ball and chain. Worse than that, Summer felt she had scuppered Molly’s chances of finding love. Despite being one of the most fabulous women in the world, Molly had never married and it was obvious why – what man wanted a screaming brat in tow? So Summer had learnt not to complain when she constantly changed schools as Molly drifted from lover to lover, had never complained when Molly left her alone all night to romance the latest rich target, hoping that one of these ‘uncles’ would become a permanent fixture and rescue them from the nomadic lifestyle. If she was lonely and frightened, Summer would never show it, because she knew that her mother was trying to find a man to marry, to provide a better, safer, more stable existence for them both and she didn’t want to blow it.

‘Now, I do hope you’re going to be more sociable tonight,’ said Molly as they walked into Molly’s bedroom, which had dresses of every colour and size strewn over the floor, bed and chairs. ‘You can be so sullen when you want to be, and there’re going to be some very promising men at this benefit.’

‘Well, as long as you don’t abandon me with some fat seventy-year-old with wandering hands like you usually do,’ said Summer, moving a £2000 Dior gown from the corner of the bed so she could sit down.

‘Oh, don’t bring that up again,’ said Molly. ‘Sir Lawrence just happens to be a very tactile man. Anyway, you can hardly blame him, when you’re always playing this moody “hard to get” game with everyone I introduce you to. It’s almost as if you’ve got something against rich men.’

Well, maybe I have, thought Summer.

Two months after Summer’s fifteenth birthday, Molly came home terribly excited. She announced that she had met a man called Graham Daniels, an electronics tycoon who apparently ‘ticked all the right boxes’. Within a week, Molly and Summer had moved into ‘Tyndale’, Graham’s huge house in Ascot. Summer liked Graham. Unlike many of Molly’s other boyfriends, he didn’t treat her like an irritation. In fact he treated her as an adult, even letting her sit behind the wheel of his red Ferrari Testarossa and kangaroo-hop up and down the gravel drive in front of the house. Summer enrolled in the local private girls school, where she made lots of new friends, and was given her own pink bedroom with an en-suite bathroom and a balcony that overlooked acres of wooded grounds. Summer loved her pink bedroom until one night when Graham came to say goodnight. Summer could still hear the click of the door opening and see the white of Graham’s teeth smiling in the shadows. On that first night, Summer had felt fear as his hands moved under her nightgown. On the second night she had felt a terrible sense of shame for the unfamiliar but pleasurable feelings her young body had experienced. On the third night, Graham Daniels forgot to lock the door. He froze like a rabbit when the door creaked open and Molly’s silhouette loomed in the doorway. Summer had pulled her candy-striped duvet tightly around her body, waiting for the screams and anger to erupt. But none had come.

‘Get out,’ Molly had said quietly, as Graham scampered across the floor on all fours, then fixed her daughter with an icy stare. ‘Get dressed,’ she said, bundling Summer’s belongings into a rucksack. Molly did not stop to collect her own things or even to change out of the floor-length silk negligee before she grabbed her car keys and dragged Summer from the house, bare feet crunching across the gravel.

The next day, Summer enrolled back into her old comprehensive school in Ladbroke Grove. They never saw Graham Daniels or his magnificent Ascot mansion again.

‘So, which do you think?’ asked Molly, jolting Summer out of her thoughts by waving two silk Cavalli dresses in front of her face. Summer pointed to the scarlet red halter-neck with the dangerously low back.

‘It matches your toes.’

‘Good. That’s what I thought. I want everybody to see me coming tonight,’ she winked. ‘Did you want to borrow the other one?’ she continued, holding out the older, plainer black gown.

‘No. It’s okay. I’m just going to pop downstairs and have a quick shower.’

Molly nodded towards Summer’s hand. ‘What’s that?’ she asked.

Summer was holding a CD box she had just pulled out of her bag.

‘This? Oh, one of the guys on the shoot gave it to me. It’s his band.’

‘Pass it here. I might as well entertain myself while you’re getting ready.’

‘Great,’ smiled Summer, pleased at Molly’s interest. ‘Charlie wants to know what I think of it.’

‘What? Charlie?’ said Molly distractedly as she fished around in her handbag and producing a wrap of cocaine. She put the CD case on the bed and tipped the cocaine onto it. ‘Did you want some?’

Summer felt a plunging sense of disappointment. She didn’t approve of her mother’s lifestyle, but Molly was her mother. Molly had made sacrifices and it was Summer’s duty to accept the choices she made. She’d never had the power to do anything else.

5

Sitting in the back of a midnight-blue Bentley, Karin tried not to smile as she felt the driver’s eyes on her in the rear-view mirror. She didn’t need the admiring glances of a chauffeur to know that she was looking sensational. Her glossy raven hair fell loosely onto her bronzed shoulders and her strapless jade organza gown floated around her body like a cloud. She had sourced the outfit at the LA vintage couture store, Lily et Cie; having tried on the best that Bond Street had to offer, she decided that she could simply not take the chance of another guest turning up in the same dress. Including flights, a three-day stay at the Beverly Hills hotel and the actual cost of the dress … well, it had cost her a fortune but, as her father had always told her, you have to speculate to accumulate. Daddy was always right, thought Karin.

‘We’re here, miss,’ said the driver, taking the opportunity to give Karin another long look. ‘Do you want to go to the front or in the back way?’

‘The front, of course,’ she replied aloofly.

She was not going to miss this for the world. The driveway of Strawberry Hill House was lit by a string of torches in a glorious ribbon of fire, while its spotlit Gothic frontage was pure Brothers Grimm fairy tale. She picked up the well-thumbed guest list and the paper crackled like crisp pound notes. There were well over 800 on the list, with 2000 more begging for tickets. Not even the £1000-a-plate price tag seemed to have presented any sort of obstacle. There was so much money in London right now, thought Karin, a thin smile growing on her highly glossed lips – bankers, Russians, footballers, actors, and powerful old-money families – and they were all on the list. The car crunched up to the house, the light from the windows illuminating Karin’s guest list just as her manicured fingertip rested on one final name – Adam Gold. Smiling, she pulled a fox fur around her tanned shoulders and stepped out of the car to the pop of paparazzi flashbulbs. It was going to be a good night, she could feel it. Her father would have been proud.

Karin’s father, Terence, was a good-looking East End boy with the gift of the gab who, during the jazz boom that hit Soho in the 1950s, had discovered a love of fashion. As the big bands and zoot suits gave way to bebop and modernists in the early 1960s, Karin’s father had spotted a trend and had made a killing supplying the young designers of Carnaby Street with fabric imported from Morocco and the Far East. His enemies called him ruthless and whispered of cut-throat business methods. His friends, who numbered many, called him a charming success story; the embodiment of Harold Wilson’s new Britain: dynamic, classless and very well dressed. When the heat of Swinging London finally cooled and SW3 was no longer the epicentre of the western world, Terence married Stephanie Garnett, a stunning Pan Am air hostess as socially ambitious as he was and moved to a mock-Tudor mansion in the Surrey countryside. By the time their first and only child Karin was born, Terence was a millionaire several times over, but he had moved among enough lords and earls to know that it would take more than a pile in the bank to remove the stain of his lowly background. So, from the age of three, Karin was packed off to ballet class, French tuition and the Pony Club – anything that might help her fit into the world of the upper classes. At thirteen, she was dispatched to Briarton, a liberal, cosmopolitan institution with a student register made up of rock-star offspring and pretty daughters of super-rich Greeks.

‘But I want to go to Downe House, Daddy,’ the young Karin had complained as she packed her shiny new monogrammed trunk ready for school. ‘That’s where Abby and Emma from Pony Club are going.’

But Terence didn’t want Karin mixing with daughters of stockbrokers and solicitors; he wanted her to befriend Euro-royalty and billion heirs. ‘You go to Briarton, my darling,’ he had said, ‘and you make friends with the richest, most connected girls that you can, and you keep them for life.’

‘How do I do that?’ Karin had asked, never wanting to disappoint her father.

‘Don’t you worry, baby, you are beautiful like your mother and strong like your father,’ Terence had told her, stroking her hair. ‘You will be popular. Trust me.’

It was Karin’s five-year stay at Briarton, tucked away in the Berkshire countryside, which was to shape her desires and ambitions for life. Karin was a bright girl and, by thirteen, already a beauty, with long chestnut hair, greeny-grey eyes and, thanks to her parents, a highly sophisticated dress-sense that got her noticed. While some of her classmates had closets full of couture, Karin experimented with cast-offs from her mother – Halston, Bob Mackie and Ossie Clark, mixed together with bargain finds from Chelsea Girl. A strikingly beautiful and offbeat character around the corridors of Briarton, her father was correct; she became popular with the richest girls in a very rich school. Rarely did a half-term break pass without a trip to one of her friend’s homes overseas. By the age of sixteen she had skied in Gstaad, sunbathed in Palm Beach and shopped in Hong Kong. She became an expert in excuses as to why her roster of glamorous friends should not be invited to her parents’ large home in Surrey which, in contrast to Fernanda Moritez’s cattle ranch in Brazil, Juliette Dupois’s chalet in St Moritz, and Athena Niarchios’s villa in Greece, seemed rather small and unremarkable indeed.