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.’