Original Sin

‘Not such good news for CTV, though,’ said David. ‘The ratings have been down and one of our big interviews fell through, went to Anderson Cooper.’

‘Ah honey, that’s a bummer,’ she said, genuinely disappointed for him.

‘But …’ He paused and looked at her. ‘… It looks like I’ve got twenty minutes with the Palestinian PM on Sunday.’

‘You’re going to Palestine?’

‘It’s gone crazy over there again.’

Brooke began to protest, then bit her tongue. She knew it was futile reminding David that they had three possible wedding venues to go look at in Connecticut and, anyway, she had to agree that the pressing details of their seating plan seemed slightly petty compared to discussing the finer points of the Middle East crisis with a world leader. Still, it was a blow. She had been looking forward to them spending a little time together for once, getting wrapped up in the romance and excitement of the wedding.

‘I guess I’ll go and look at those venues on my own then.’

‘Come on, honey,’ said David, stroking her cheek, ‘I thought girls loved this stuff. Don’t tell me your DNA skipped the bride gene?’

She laughed, despite herself.

‘Well, maybe you should take your mother?’ suggested David.

‘I’m not a masochist,’ she smiled. Ever since the engagement, they had quickly found that both sides of the family had very strong ideas about where and how they should be married. David’s mother, a grande dame of New York society, had very decided and conservative views about venues that were considered ‘proper’ by ‘the right people’. It needed to be large enough to host all her influential friends, and grand enough for her family. Only a church ceremony would be considered, preferably with a bishop – at the very least – presiding. Meredith, meanwhile, had vetoed every possible reception venue they had been able to find in New York. The Ritz Carlton was ‘too dingy’, the New York Library ‘too public’, and even the many gorgeous venues that Alessandro Franchetti, Manhattan’s premier wedding planner, had tracked down were similarly rejected. Brooke was beginning to think nothing would ever please her mother. It was a feeling she was familiar with.

‘Well, you never know,’ said David. ‘Alessandro might have come up trumps with the place we’re going to see today.’

Brooke gave a wry smile. ‘Don’t hold your breath; he did call it a “wild card”.’

‘We’re going all the way to Duchess County for a wild card?’ asked David, annoyance in his voice. ‘It’s a long way to travel to say no. Anyway, I thought we were picking him up?’

‘We are.’ She leaned forward and tapped Miguel, David’s driver, on the shoulder. ‘We have to detour to Sutton Place.’

David pulled a face. ‘Couldn’t we have met him there?’

Brooke laughed. ‘He’s not that bad.’

‘Oh he is,’ grinned David.

Outside a smart brownstone on Sutton Place South, a short, overly groomed man was standing on the roadside looking at his watch. Alessandro Franchetti was a former bit-part TV actor turned society wedding planner, who had recently made it onto New York magazine’s Hot 100 List. Although there were thirty couples in the city delighted to have Alessandro planning their nuptials at vast expense, the truth was that most of their weddings were arranged by Alessandro’s team. He took on only two weddings a year himself, and this was by far his biggest, possibly the biggest of his career. No wonder he was looking anxious. Brooke and David wanted an early fall wedding and they still didn’t have a venue. Screw this up and he’d never work in New York again.

‘Nice building,’ said David, peering through the car’s tinted windows.

‘The average New York bride spends one hundred thousand dollars on her wedding,’ smiled Brooke. ‘He has money.’

‘At last! My two favourite people in New York,’ gushed Alessandro as he clambered into the passenger seat next to the driver. ‘And I’m so glad to finally have you both together. There is such a lot to talk about.’

Snapping open his briefcase, Alessandro pulled out a spreadsheet and put on a pair of black horn-rim reading glasses. ‘I can only look at this for a second because reading and travelling makes me feel sick,’ he said in an aside.

David’s lips twitched with amusement.

‘I had an early start at the studio,’ he whispered to Brooke, settling back in his seat. ‘I might just grab a little shut-eye.’

Brooke jabbed him in the ribs. ‘No, you don’t!’

Alessandro looked up, oblivious to their whispering.

‘Now, I know everyone is keen to set a date as quickly as possible, but you’ve said no to The Pierre. No to the Four Seasons Pool Room. No to the Plaza, St Regis, the Yale Club and the Frick.’ He turned round and eyed Brooke and David carefully. ‘Do you know how many strings I had to pull to even put the Frick as an option?’

‘The problem is we all want somewhere new,’ said David, turning on the charm. ‘Somewhere we haven’t been before.’

Alessandro peered over the top of his glasses. ‘Between the two of you, you must have been to every wedding, funeral, benefit, and bar mitzvah in the Tri-State area. New is presenting something of a challenge.’ He sighed, pushing out his tanned cheeks.

‘Are you sure you don’t want it at Belcourt or Cliffpoint?’

Belcourt was the Billingtons’ magnificent family estate in Westchester County, and Cliffpoint was their forty-five-roomed summer house in Newport. There were, of course, other properties the family owned: a villa in Palm Beach, a ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley, and a palazzo in Venice, but the reason for not hosting the wedding at one of the Billington-owned properties was the same.

‘Ahem, how shall I put this?’ said Brooke. ‘It’s important to my mother to have the hosting responsibilities.’

‘And you’ve definitely ruled out Parklands?’

Parklands was the Asgill family home. Three years ago it had been the venue for a large and rather overblown wedding for her sister Liz, who was divorced from her husband twelve months later.

‘Mother doesn’t like the omens.’

Alessandro took off his glasses and sighed. ‘Lord save me from the mother of the bride. Well, never fear, Toots, I’ve got a good feeling about this one.’

The car slipped out of Manhattan, crossing the George Washington Bridge and heading up into New York State, the metropolis quickly thinning out into towns and then fields. Brooke was glad to escape the city. She had always loved New York, she was born and bred there, but lately the Big Apple had started to shrink. It wasn’t that she disliked the attention, but the constant intrusions – people she didn’t know calling out her name in the deli, teenage girls pointing and giggling; she’d even had a death threat – it was all starting to wear her down. It had been nine months to the day since she had met David Billington; despite also being a native of Manhattan, Brooke had had to go all the way to Europe to meet him. She had been in the Alsace region on a nostalgic trip to France to visit a family with whom she had done a summer exchange in her junior year at Spence. Three days into the trip, her host Mrs Dubois had discovered her husband was having an affair. Brooke supposed this might not be a problem for the chic Frenchwoman, but Mrs Dubois kicked him out. Politely withdrawing, Brooke hadn’t wanted to go home, so on a whim she’d headed down to Biarritz. A Park Avenue girl, she had always been athletic and outdoorsy, and she wanted to go surfing on the legendary beaches down there. When she first saw David, she was standing on the shore in her wet-suit.

He had come over to the shore to check she was okay; she remembered thinking he looked vaguely familiar, but she had not been expecting to meet New York’s most eligible bachelor in a wetsuit on a cloudy, blowy day on the Atlantic coast. The attraction between them was instant, although Brooke suspected that David’s interest in her went up a notch when he discovered she was also from a very wealthy New York family. If she was honest, some of that was true for her too. Like most little girls, growing up, Brooke had always dreamt of marrying a handsome prince, but in her case it had almost come true.

Not that it had been exactly a fairy tale; back in New York, the first three months of their relationship had been conducted in secret. Dates were either dinner at unfashionable restaurants in Brooklyn, or ridiculously luxurious hotels in remote locations like the Hudson Valley – sometimes it felt like having an affair with a rich married man. David didn’t explicitly say that he was testing her out before he went public with their relationship, but Brooke knew the rules of dating were just not the same for men like David Billington. Last month, on Valentine’s Day, he had whisked her off to Paris. Well, it wasn’t exactly the fourteenth of February. It had been ten days later, thanks to work commitments in Beirut and Uzbekistan, but it was wonderful nevertheless. The penthouse suite at the Bristol, shopping in St-Germain, where David had treated her to armfuls of gifts from Saint Laurent, then dinner at Le Voltaire. Back at the hotel, he had popped open vintage champagne on their terrace overlooking the city, which had been studded with hundreds of glowing tea-lights. Even so, Brooke hadn’t expected it when he had pulled a ring out of his pocket and dropped down on one knee. They’d been dating less than a year, but the night had been so perfect, it had been impossible to resist.

It was almost seven by the time they arrived in Duchess County. Light was falling out of the sky, the dipping sun casting an orange glow over the lake. Brooke had been there before to visit the Rhinebeck Antiques Fair for its lovely old chests and gilt mirrors, and loved the area’s raw natural beauty.

‘This place certainly smells good,’ laughed Brooke, breathing in a cool fresh scent of mist and freshly mown grass through the open window. They came off the road and through a pair of white gates, down a long gravel drive curling around the lake, framed by horse chestnut trees bursting with their long ivory flowers. At the end of the drive was a short pier where a small motor launch was moored.

‘Is it across the lake?’ asked Brooke, excitement in her voice. They all climbed out of the car and up onto the pier, David taking Brooke’s hand to help her on. It smelt of linseed oil. The boat took ten minutes to chug across the lake, finally turning into a bay dominated by a huge white colonial house. Brooke gasped.

‘Isn’t it spectacular?’ grinned Alessandro, spreading his arms dramatically. ‘Now, when we get there you’ll see it’s a little rundown, so I want you to use your imagination.’

‘I quite like the fact it’s not too perfect,’ said David as they swung into the dock.

Brooke gave a small laugh. ‘Is that how your mother will see it?’

‘She’ll like it if we do,’ he said, not sounding entirely convinced by his statement. ‘Anyway, I love the location. It’s private.’

Alessandro clapped his hands together. ‘My thoughts exactly, darling. The paparazzi are going to be all over this wedding, so we have to do what we can to keep everything secure. This is the ideal solution. I’ve even had a word with the local sheriff, who has kindly agreed to enforce a no-fly zone over the lake for the wedding, so paparazzi helicopters can forget it. Now, David, I know your mother wanted a church wedding …’

‘Cathedral,’ smiled Brooke.

‘But, I’ve already spoken to Reverend James, the pastor from your family’s local church. He baptized two generations of your family, I believe? Well, he’s happy to officiate here, which should please your mother.’

Alessandro turned to Brooke and touched her arm. ‘And you, my darling, I know you wanted something intimate, but—’

‘But it’s beautiful,’ interrupted Brooke. ‘Big, but beautiful.’

They walked up through the gardens from the jetty and into the house. The building was even more impressive close to, and the entrance hall was huge, with vaulted ceilings soaring forty feet above them.

‘Wow,’ said David simply.

Alessandro held Brooke’s shoulders and turned her around towards the lake. It was glowing a rippling orange as the sun sank.

‘Look over to the west side of the lake,’ said Alessandro, pointing to the lawns next to the formal gardens. ‘See how it slopes down? It’s a natural amphitheatre. I was thinking very simple cherry-wood pews, a carpet of petals as an aisle, and the vows being exchanged looking out over the water.’

Brooke was silent for a moment, picturing the scene.

‘What do you think, Brooke?’ asked David. When she turned towards him, there were tears in her eyes.

‘It’s just incredible.’

David pulled her close. ‘The bride gene surfaces,’ he whispered.

Alessandro walked a little way off, continuing his commentary like a tour guide. ‘The house used to belong to a very wealthy Manhattan family, in mining or something, I think. Now it belongs to an educational trust, but it’s been used for films in the past, one featuring Johnny Depp, can’t remember which. Anyway, don’t worry about the slightly tired exterior. My ex-boyfriend is a Hollywood set designer and we still speak. I think he can do something very special.’

David and Brooke exchanged a small smile at his rapid-fire monologue.

‘We don’t want to go too high concept, Alessandro,’ said Brooke. ‘No Gone with the Wind fantasy, okay?’

‘Well, if we’re thinking left-field with all this, I was wondering about a dusk wedding? We could line the path around the lake with torches and ferry you over to the ceremony in a little boat covered in iceberg rose petals.’

‘Alessandro,’ said Brooke, gently admonishing. ‘No drama, remember? Although, I do like the idea of getting married at this time of day. When is it available?’

‘Pretty much whenever,’ said Alessandro, flapping his hands vaguely. ‘A fall wedding would be magnificent. Can you imagine those trees over there glistening with scarlet leaves? Oh, but realistically a September wedding is way too tight. I mean, your dress is going to take three, four months minimum, more if we’re thinking lots of Lesage beading. I know one bride who had to put her wedding back because the embroidery was taking so long.’

‘Which leaves us with next spring or summer,’ said Brooke thoughtfully. ‘Winters will be vicious up here and I don’t want to make it too difficult for people to travel.’

‘We definitely wanted the wedding within the year,’ said David, looking at Brooke. ‘I don’t want this one to get away from me.’

Alessandro coughed politely. ‘Maybe I’ll leave you two alone for a few minutes,’ he said.

‘So what do you think?’ asked Brooke when Alessandro was out of earshot.

‘I love it.’

‘Oh honey, I’m so glad you said that,’ she gushed, her face lit up like a little girl’s. ‘It’s the perfect spring venue, isn’t it? I mean, smell that air. New beginnings.’

She could see David stifle a wry smile. He was too polite to laugh. He wrapped his arms around Brooke’s waist. ‘It’s perfect.’

‘It’s big though, isn’t it?’ said Brooke, biting her lip. ‘All that talk about amphitheatres.’

‘We have a lot of guests.’

‘Your parents have got a lot of guests,’ she said.

Brooke was a Pisces, a romantic; perhaps that’s what drew her to books. In her mind her wedding would have all the trappings of the fairy tale – the beautiful white dress, the huge cake – but she’d always thought of it as a private ceremony, conducted in front of people she knew and loved. The last thing she wanted was a circus.

‘Should we run off to City Hall and just do it?’ said Brooke impulsively.

David shook his head slowly. ‘You know we can’t do that.’

She looked at him and saw sadness in his eyes; it was the weight of expectation, and most of the time he wore it well. David might be a television reporter right now, but that was not where his future lay. Already he was being touted in serious magazines as a White House hopeful, despite having not a jot of political experience to his name. Their wedding would be talked about and written about for years to come; in many ways, it needed to be a circus, even if it was not a three-ring circus.

‘Honey, are you sure you’re ready for this?’ he asked softly.

She looked at his dark-blue eyes and couldn’t believe that out of all the women in the world he had chosen her.

‘Do you mean have I passed the point of no return?’ she asked.

‘No, I mean are you ready to be a Billington wife?’

Brooke felt a shiver run through her and wondered if it was the chill in the air.

‘Is anyone ever ready to be a Billington wife?’ she sighed. ‘I don’t know if I am. Who could? But what I do know is that I’m ready to marry you.’

David’s face lit up in a broad grin.

‘That’s good enough for me,’ he laughed, and pulled her down into the grass.

3

Standing inside the glass elevator that ran along the west-facing wall of midtown’s magnificent Somerset Tower, Liz Asgill pushed the brushed-chrome button labelled ‘penthouse’. She turned to Enrique Gelati, Manhattan’s most in-demand hair colourist, as the lift began its swift ascent.

‘It takes thirty seconds to go forty-three floors,’ she purred as night-time Manhattan disappeared beneath them, revealing the blackness of Central Park, the taxis buzzing around it like yellow wasps. ‘It’s the Ferrari of elevators, nought to sixty in two point five seconds.’

‘I hope the spa is also as good,’ said Enrique in a syrupy Spanish Cuban accent. ‘Asgill’s is not such a good name, no? Asgill’s is not La Prairie, I think.’

Liz turned and smiled thinly. Enrique had a reputation for being difficult, but he got away with it as he was regarded as a genius in his field. Great with brunettes, even better with blondes, half the Park Avenue Princesses owed their glorious honey-coloured manes to Enrique Gelati. Liz even knew of one household name who came to him to get her muff colour-corrected every six weeks. No wonder the waiting list at his Madison Avenue salon was three months long. As Allure magazine had said many times, ‘It’s easy to spot an Enrique Gelati blonde, but it’s impossible to get an appointment.’

‘I think you’ll be surprised at the spa,’ said Liz confidently. ‘The Skin Plus brand is a completely separate brand to Asgill’s. We’re just backed by the company money.’ She smiled warmly. Inside she was fuming, but she had to keep him on side. The Skin Plus Spa launch was only a month away and having Enrique as the salon’s creative director would be a huge coup.

Unlike many great businesses, Liz Asgill’s latest brainchild had not begun with a small idea but a very big, very ambitious one. She had decided to create Skin Plus as Asgill’s new up-market ‘cosmeceutical range’, a line as removed from the frumpy dead-duck family brand as a Rolls-Royce from a cart and horse. Liz’s plan was to start, not with the range of beauty products, but with a spa so sensational, so exclusive, it would have all of America talking. So far it was looking good. The spa’s interiors had been designed by Kelly Wearstler, she had poached spa therapists from Chiva-Som in Thailand, and colourists and cutters were decamping from John Barrett and Frédéric Fekkai to join her. There was just one problem. Liz needed a star, a big-name creative director for the hair salon, preferably someone who could bring a long list of celebrity clients with them. In this town, it was vital to have a name because New Yorkers were the most status-conscious women in the world. She could name a dozen Upper East Side socialites who had their hair cut by ninety-dollar local stylists but told their friends that their blonde buttery shags were the work of Sally Hershberger.

The lift door pinged open and they stepped out into the 25,000-square-foot space that occupied the top floor of Somerset Tower, a space that had taken Liz six months of ruthless negotiating to secure. Enrique’s eyes opened wide as he saw it and, although he was trying to play it cool, she could tell he was impressed.

‘Welcome to heaven,’ she said, sweeping an arm out.

They walked into a domed roof atrium of Venetian glass, with silver and ivory silk wallpaper and a long white leather reception desk. Liz led Enrique into a large room to the left.

‘This will be the waiting room for the salon,’ she explained. It had been repainted five times until Liz was satisfied with exactly the right shade of white.

‘The spa and hair salon areas are to your left and right. The organic restaurant is through there,’ she said, pointing down a long ivory corridor. There’s a champagne and juice bar and VIP spaces in all zones. The colour studio is over here,’ she continued, gesturing up to the glass ceiling. ‘Obviously in the daytime, it has fantastic light, which I think is crucial for you.’

Enrique nodded.

Liz felt a crackle of excitement as she showed off the rest of the premises to Enrique. For the first time in her career, she had been able to see an idea through from concept to launch, consuming so much of her time and energy over the past five years that it had cost Liz her marriage; but, as far as Liz was concerned, with success came sacrifice. She had a six per cent shareholding in Asgill Cosmetics, conservatively estimated at being worth about twenty million dollars, but it was a shareholding that was falling in value all the time. Since the death of her father, Asgill Cosmetics had been pitched into a downward spiral. Her brother William was now CEO, and nothing he did seemed to be able to stop the rot. Liz knew she was the only one who could save it, and this spa was the vehicle by which she would do it. She spun round on her five-inch heels to face Enrique. Before the guided tour, she had spent two hours buttering him up with pleasantries and compliments over dinner. Now it was time for business.

‘The deal is that I would like you to come and headline the salon, working three days a week here,’ she said.

Enrique pulled his long black ponytail out of its band and shook his hair onto his shoulders.

‘Liz, I tell you at dinner that I am very busy. As you can imagine, my phone is ringing all the time with proposals from people like you.’

Liz pursed her lips thoughtfully. ‘Well, that’s funny, because in the light of everything that’s going on at your salon, I think the offer I’m making is a very attractive one indeed. A lifeboat, as it were.’

Enrique frowned. ‘I don’t understand you.’

‘I hear things aren’t too great with Gary,’ she said flatly. Gary Eisen was Enrique’s long-time business manager and backer.

‘He’s fine,’ said Enrique, tossing back his black hair. ‘He’s on the West Coast right now, checking out real estate for an LA salon.’

‘Really? I heard he was on the West Coast to check into Promises rehab clinic.’

‘Bullshit,’ he replied defensively, but his eyes betrayed his panic. Liz smiled, enjoying the moment: knowledge was power and she intended to use what she knew to her advantage. For the last month she’d had a corporate investigations team look into Enrique’s business and had found that, despite Enrique’s profile, his salon was being woefully mismanaged. Their plans to launch an Enrique hair-care range had not come off, and minuscule profits suggested that Gary was siphoning off money for his expensive coke habit and love of Brazilian rent boys.

‘Enrique,’ said Liz, ‘you need to face facts. You’re never going to make any serious money with just one salon, no matter how many celebrities you’ve got on your client list, especially when that salon is badly run. The money is in product ranges, selling twenty-dollar colour shampoo to secretaries in Cleveland. But …’ Liz took a deep breath. ‘… We both know that no one wants to work with you to produce those products because you and Gary are too unpredictable.’

‘Bitch. How dare you?’ he hissed. ‘It’s taken me fifteen years to have my own salon. I worked for everything I got. No rich daddy gave me mine.’

Little Latino prick trying to play hardball, she thought, but then Liz was not in the business of trading niceties. She was glad she towered above him in her Giuseppe Zanotti heels. Hands on hips, bright-red lips, complete intimidation.