Francesca usually bowed to her boss’s better judgement but she felt she must stick up for her junior fashion editor, knowing just how hard she had worked on the story.
‘But Cassandra, it’s going to be the bag of the season,’ she offered nervously. ‘There’s a lot of buzz around Milford right now. Everyone was going wild for them at the press launch.’
‘I do not want Milford bags in this magazine,’ said Cassandra flatly.
Belle looked as if she was on the verge of tears. ‘The story is not going to work without it.’
Cassandra’s happy mood had now disappeared completely. She carried on flicking through the clothes with noticeably more disdain than only a few minutes before.
‘No. No. No,’ she said curtly, discarding piece after piece. ‘Where are the bloody advertisers? And what’s this?’
She picked up a long, ivory evening dress, sparkling with a thousand encrusted crystals.
Belle looked at the editor, petrified.
‘It’s a Marc Abrams bespoke piece. The one he made especially for this shoot,’ said Belle, clutching at the fabric. Cassandra vaguely remembered discussing it. It would have cost the up-and-coming London designer a fortune to make, knowing full well that exposure in Rive would be crucial publicity for his fledging brand. Well right now, she didn’t give a fig how much it cost him. What was she, a charity?
‘Do you know what?’ said Cassandra pushing her mouth into a sullen pout. ‘I don’t think this story works at all.’
‘But we’re leaving for Porto Cervo on Friday,’ said Belle, her voice almost a whisper.
‘Well, you’d better think of a back-up plan, because I’m not going to press with a dozen blank pages.’
There’s a lot of buzz about Milford. She couldn’t stop the words ringing in her head. She turned and strode out of the fashion department to the sound of Belle sobbing.
21
‘Tell me again how the hell Milford got Bret Alexander to shoot their ad campaign,’ said Johnny Brinton, dragging on his cigarette and blowing the smoke in a cool stream towards Winterfold. ‘I mean, he’s only the hottest music video director since Spike Jonze. My agent says he’s starting to cast his debut movie. Well, if he is, he’d better cast me. I tell you, there’s got to be something in it for me today other than five hundred quid and doing you a bloody favour.’
Tom Grand puffed on his cigarette and smiled. It was typical of Johnny; his old school friend and sometime flatmate was never satisfied with his lot. Typical bloody actor, he thought. Still, as they leant up against the location van smoking, Tom was feeling uncommonly pleased with himself; he still couldn’t believe they’d pulled it off. When Emma had asked him to round up a dozen of his best-looking, high-profile friends and persuade them to be in a photo-shoot, he’d thought she was having a laugh – and anyway, why ask him? He always screwed things up. He was still feeling bruised from the Rive party debacle; he hadn’t spoken to Cassandra since, he had zero job prospects and was increasingly reliant on his mother’s hand-outs which, incidentally, had slowed right down to just a trickle. But for some reason, Emma seemed to have faith in him and when she had offered him two thousand pounds for his trouble, he’d leapt at it. He’d begged his friend Johnny, the son of rock legend Blake Brinton, to get involved and between them they had persuaded every rich, socially connected, good-looking, 20-something bloke in the area to appear in Milford’s ad campaign.
‘I think Brett is a mate of Rob Holland’s – the guy who’s renting Winterfold from my cousin Emma?’ said Tom, tossing his cigarette under the van. ‘Apparently she said she’d terminate his lease if Rob didn’t help her out.’
‘I thought you said there’d be loads of models here,’ grumbled Johnny, stamping his own cigarette into the emerald grass.
Tom looked around Winterfold’s front lawns, which were humming with activity. As well as the lighting, wardrobe and the stylists teeming around the two location vans, Saul’s classic car collection – Tom’s car collection, he corrected himself – had been retrieved from storage and had been parked outside the house in a fan, like a gleaming peacock’s tail. Tom and Johnny’s ten other friends, all wearing jodhpurs, polo shirts and riding boots, were sitting in director’s chairs having their make-up done in readiness for the next shot.
‘Clover Connor is here,’ said Tom. ‘What more do you want?’
‘She’s not up for it though, is she? She’s going out with that junkie Ste Donahue.’
‘Come on,’ smiled Tom. ‘You know you can pull anyone if you try.’
It was true: Tom Grand was popular with the ladies, but it was nothing compared to Johnny. It helped that he was the son of a rock legend who lived ten miles away in a huge mansion rumoured to be the biggest private home in the county. It helped that he was an up-and-coming actor and constantly being name checked on every Hot List in the media as the new Jude Law. It helped that he was a staple of London’s most glamorous social circuit and spent his evenings flitting between Nobu and launch parties. The annoying thing was that Johnny was handsome, charming and confident; he really didn’t need any help bedding any woman who took his fancy. Just then a beautiful blonde girl stepped out of the main house, talking to Emma and Marcus who was art-directing the shoot. Tom’s heart gave a little involuntary lurch: she was lovely. She had a broad sunny smile, an exquisitely pretty face, long legs in tight indigo jeans and what looked like a fine pair of knockers beneath a semi-transparent cream shirt.
‘Who’s that?’ whispered Tom, squinting in the sun.
‘Whoever it is, she’s out of your league, sunshine,’ smiled Johnny, pulling up his cream jodhpurs so they looked even tighter around the crotch. ‘And anyway, I saw her first.’
‘Uh-uh. I actually think I know her,’ said Tom, the penny dropping.
‘Who is she then? She’s gorgeous.’
‘Stella Chase. She’s the designer here. The last time I saw her was about twenty years ago.’
‘In that case then, you can introduce me,’ said Johnny running his fingers through his tousled hair as he started to walk over. Tom’s heart gave another lurch and he swore under his breath, knowing it wasn’t worth getting into a competition with Johnny.
Since the afternoon of the pool party in Winterfold’s walled garden, the Milford ad campaign had quickly snowballed, mainly due to the efforts of Rob Holland who had been keen to show Emma he wasn’t the decadent layabout she had presumed him to be. Rob had enlisted Ste Donahue into his scheme and together, they had gently persuaded Clover to defy the advice of her agent and agree do the Milford shoot, in return for a ‘mates rates’ fee, the entire range of the company’s Autumn/Winter line and an assurance from Rob that he would seriously consider her demo tape. Through Stella they had found Marcus Lynch, an old friend from her student days who was now the art editor of an achingly trendy French fashion magazine and he had agreed to art-direct the shoot. Emma thought she would have to hire one of the big advertising agencies to produce the campaign at mind-boggling expense but it turned out that this was the way fashion houses operated; working with a tight cabal of art directors and fashion photographers to produce their advertising imagery, only using media buyers at agencies to secure ad space in magazines. Because fashion was such a small world Emma had initially been wary of Marcus, wondering whether he might be a stooge sent by Cassandra to sabotage the shoot but she had worried unnecessarily. Marcus had once been fired by Cassandra as a young designer and he didn’t have a good word to say about her. Emma was also encouraged when, despite his trendy sensibilities, Marcus agreed that they should cash in on Milford’s English heritage to create their brand imagery – in fact it had been his idea to shoot