He shook his head. ‘Takes too long. You need to make the biggest splash in the smallest space of time. Your field of expertise is magazines so let’s start there.’
‘Launch my own magazine? That’s expensive unless I wanted to start small – and small’s not my thing.’
‘No, private equity won’t look at start-ups,’ continued Max, ignoring Cassandra’s look of disappointment.
‘So what do you suggest?’ She was so unfamiliar with asking for help that her voice was almost a rasp.
‘Launch Grand magazine on somebody else’s money but take a stake – 50 per cent ideally. Time Warner backed Martha Stewart who later bought out their shareholding. That’s where you start.’
She looked at him. He was so sure, so confident, so brilliant. What did he see in someone as timid as Laura?
‘Next you use the magazine company to spin off into other areas: clothes, cosmetics, interiors, using private equity cash. That’s where I can help you,’ he smiled. ‘In the meantime, if Milford stalls, you’ll have more business credentials and collateral to raise the cash to buy her out.’
She felt a surge of an unfamiliar feeling.
‘You believe in me,’ she said feeling aroused.
‘You are beautiful, you are smart and you are hungry. And Grand magazine is where it all starts.’
He said the word ‘hungry’ as if it was their special word.
‘I want this to work for you,’ he said, stepping off the bed before coming round to hold her from behind. She leant back into him and took a breath. His words had been cruel, but they had been a wake-up call. She groaned, feeling his lips on her neck. Sunshine streamed in through the shutters, warming their bodies and speckling their skin with light. Max Carlton was the other half of her circle. She didn’t just want her brand. She wanted it all. She wanted him.
28
Even though Tom Grand was of a generally optimistic disposition, life as the manager of Ibiza Town’s Sugar Bar was turning out better than even he could have hoped. He had pretty girls lining up to sleep with him, a cellar full of cold beer and he got to sleep in until noon; it was as if some genie had granted him three wishes without bothering to ask. He swivelled the pink Plexiglas stool away from the bar and sat back, sipping a cool San Miguel and letting the late afternoon Mediterranean sun warm his face. Not for the first time in the four weeks he’d been in Ibiza, Tom looked around him and offered up a prayer of thanks. The Sugar Bar was tiny, but it was in a perfect position. On the corner of the harbour front and the wide lane leading to Ibiza Town’s main square and beyond it, the castle, it was the ideal place to catch the party crowd as they geared up for a night in one of the big clubs outside town. Tom’s bar had a small seating area inside, but the main action was focused on the wide, red neon bar that faced onto the street. With a DJ spinning the party sounds, frozen daiquiris lined up on the bar and the inevitable gaggle of babes-in-hot pants surrounding Tom, the Sugar Bar acted like a honey pot attracting bees: it had been crammed every night, often with hundreds of happy clubbers gathering outside in the lane. And all Tom had to do was chat up the girls and count the money at the end of the night. Well, that wasn’t strictly true; he’d had a hard afternoon of it today, auditioning promotions girls. The set-up was that the Sugar Bar acted as a ‘feeder’ bar for Spice, the club night his partners Jamie and Piers ran at Desire, a brand new superclub in Ibiza Town’s marina. Accessible only by a boat known locally as ‘the disco tub’, Spice was achingly exclusive and aimed at the fashion and jet-set crowd. Jamie had ambitions for it to be the new Pacha and had spent a fortune on refurbishing the place in gold and black, complete with an ergonomic ‘floating’ bar. The trouble was that so far, Spice had proved far too exclusive for its own good. It was certainly a beautiful crowd, but there simply weren’t enough of them to compete with the real Pacha, despite Jamie and Piers’s extensive London contacts. Their contract was for a twelve-week run from the end of June to the closing week parties at the end of September and with Spice only running at half-capacity Tom had been given the task of funnelling more glamorous high-rolling punters their way.
‘Give us a twirl, darling,’ said Tom, as Melena, a pneumatic pole dancer from somewhere in the Baltic States arrived to try out for the promo gig. Frankly, all the girls had to do was walk up and down wearing go-go boots and a tight T-shirt emblazoned with the word ‘Spice’, but Tom liked to be tho
rough with the recruitment process. Currently, he’d narrowed it down to Peaches, the former Manumission podium dancer and Suki a vivacious blonde with the biggest silicone tits he had ever seen. But then again, Melena’s ticking all the right boxes too, thought Tom with a smirk. Unfortunately, Melena didn’t speak very good English, so sadly she was ruled out – for the promotions job, anyway.
‘I’ll give you a call, babe,’ he said, thinking that he’d do exactly that. Tom had quickly found that as manager of the bar he had a never-ending supply of gorgeous women desperate to get in to bed with him in return for getting on the guest list to one of the big clubs; he just couldn’t miss out here. Plus there was always someone willing to supply him with drugs on the never-never. It was something like paradise.
He was distracted by the sound of a scooter pulling up outside the bar, tooting its horn as it approached. Jamie pushed his sunglasses off his face and balanced the bike on its kick-stand.
‘Wotcha.’
‘All right, Jamie? Just sorting out the promotions girls. Have you got the flyers sorted yet?’
Jamie pulled a face and took Tom’s beer, knocking it back.
‘No, they’ve been held up in customs, or some such rubbish,’ said Jamie. ‘I don’t know why someone on the bloody island couldn’t do gold-leafing, but this is the shit I have to put up with. Now I’ll have to go down there and bribe the fucking customs to get them released. I hate this fucking place sometimes.’
‘Hey, maybe we could …’ began Tom.
‘Yeah, and “Maybe you could” shut up,’ he snapped. ‘Honestly Tom, running a business is not all just leaning on the bar and banging the barmaids, you know. While you’re twatting about down here, Piers and I are working our arses off dealing with much bigger financial matters.’
Tom looked at his friend and noticed for the first time that he had dark bags under his eyes. The truth was, Tom had no idea what the other two were doing most of the time and he had even less of a clue how the finance worked. All he knew was that the bars themselves were owned by a Spanish businessman, rumoured to own a sizeable chunk of Ibiza Town. Jamie and Piers had put the money up front for a lease on the bar and the club, while Tom was a partner in name only. For this arrangement Jamie and Piers were to get 45 per cent of the net profits to Tom’s 10 per cent at the end of the season. In the meantime Tom was working for a basic salary which was enough to rent a small apartment on the outskirts of town. Clearly there was more to it than that, but looking at Jamie’s frowning face, Tom was glad he wasn’t involved.
They both jumped at the sudden blare of a car horn. Tom turned to see a battered and dusty delivery lorry parked by the rear entrance to the bar.
‘Doors are open!’ yelled Tom to the driver who waved and jumped down from his cab. They had a deal with the Spanish owner to provide the bars with cheap alcohol which was a gift for Tom. In the weeks before he arrived he’d heard all sorts of scare stories about the island being overrun by Russian and Romanian gangsters, but if it were true, they had been left alone so far.
‘We’re off back to London on Tuesday so you’ll be manning the fort until Friday,’ said Jamie. Tom looked at him in surprise.
‘You’re going again?’
‘We are working over there, you know,’ said Jamie, finishing off the beer. ‘Which is actually what I wanted to speak to you about. We’ve got a big meeting with the PR next week because we’ve got a bunch of dance journalists coming out. We’re pulling out all the stops, putting them up at the Hacienda Na Xamenda. You know how fucking demanding journalists can be so I want you to plan some sort of sexy itinerary for them. Nude beaches and girls in the day, drugs and girls all night. Maybe throw in a boat-trip to Es Vedra, that freaky pagan islet down south; you know, tell them it’s spiritual and shit, give them some acid. Make it memorable.’