always be described as a looker too.
She wiped her eyes and blew her nose on a clump of Kleenex she had stuffed under the pillow. OK, she told herself sternly, enough self-pity for one evening. She picked up a tatty copy of Madame Bovary from the little bookshelf by the bed, but still she couldn’t concentrate.
It was bad enough she’d been sacked, but from what she’d learnt from her PA Sadie that afternoon, she’d also been outmanoeuvred. Sadie had been asked to book Nicole Valentine a Eurostar ticket to Paris – for the shows – two weeks earlier. Someone knew that Cate wasn’t going to be around to take her front-row seat …
Cate couldn’t stop thinking about Philip Watchorn’s words at dinner.
I’d been fired four times by the time I was your age. Then I thought, bugger them. I’ll do it my own way.
Still wrapped in the eiderdown, she leaned out of the bed to drag her big Mulberry bag onto the mattress. Inside was a black plastic folder filled with notes, photographs from fashion shoots, and rough magazine layouts. She flipped it open and pulled out a mocked-up cover which featured a beautiful image of Serena lying in a hammock. The elegant masthead read ‘Sand’. She smiled. This was her labour of love. It had been eighteen months ago, at Alliance Magazines’ summer drinks party, that she’d been approached by the then managing director with an idea. Cecil Bradley, William Walton’s predecessor, could not have been more different from the boardroom shark. A cuddly, affable man of sixty, Bradley had been impressed by Cate’s quiet ascent through the ranks of the company, her experience in New York and her reputation as a creative editorial force. He’d cornered her over a Pimms in the hot August sunshine and asked her to come up with a concept to expand their existing women’s magazine division. The project wasn’t allowed to interfere with work, he’d warned her with a wink, but there was a board meeting in October and, if she could get a proposal ready by then, he would see if he could move it into development.
Cate was ecstatic. This was her dream. For two months she spent night after night poring over UK and international magazines, looking for the gap in the market, tearing out images that captured her imagination, listing names of photographers she knew would work for her. And celebrities who, through Serena, she knew would agree to appear. From market research commissioned for Class, she knew that travel and style were big growth areas in the upmarket magazine sector. Sand would create a delicious lifestyle for cash-rich, time-poor couples to embrace. Less fashion than Vogue, more lifestyle than Condé Nast Traveller, Sand would be crammed with exotic holidays, fashionable shopping breaks, fantastic clothes and dreamy interiors, all with a dash of class and glamour from a bygone age.
The thought of all that sunshine was making Cate feel cold. She plugged in a tiny electric fan heater in the corner of the room, which chugged out a little stream of warm air. She lit another candle for more light, drained her boozy cocoa, and spread all the images over the bedspread, stroking the dummy layouts that her art-editor friend, Carol Shelley, had designed in return for a Chanel bag. They were beautiful, graphic, impressive. And such a waste.
Cate thought back to when she’d been told, two weeks before the October deadline, that there had been a management buyout of the company. Cecil Bradley and the older members of the executive were paid off into retirement, and in came the hotshot marketing and money men like Walton. An email went round to say that all launch activity was to be temporarily halted in favour of ‘rationalizing and restructuring’ the company.
Cate had been gutted. She’d briefly thought about taking Sand to another company, but then she’d been offered the Class editorship and she’d consigned her precious dummy to a box file under her bed. This afternoon she’d rescued it and made a list of which companies – Emap, Condé Nast, Time Warner – she might take it to. But still thinking about Philip Watchorn’s words: why couldn’t she try and launch it by herself? Jann Wenner had started Rolling Stone from his kitchen, likewise Tyler Brulé and his style magazine Wallpaper. It was certainly a more competitive climate these days, and the odds never favoured the little guy, but why couldn’t she give it a try?
She felt a tingling in her tummy. An enthusiastic planner, Cate pulled out a blank sheet of paper and, eyes straining in the dim light, started writing a ‘to do’ list: meetings to arrange, paper costs to research, advertising directors to talk to – not to mention the thorny issue of financial backing. She knew there was no point turning to her father. After forty-five minutes she was exhausted. She walked over to the windowsill to blow out the candles and stumbled back to her cosy canopy bed in the pitch black, feeling her way in the dark. It was something she was going to have to get used to.
The kitchen at Huntsford was the warmest room in the castle. Buried in its west wing, heat spewing out of the claret Aga and always smelling of freshly baked pies, it was a cosy sanctuary that everyone was drawn to. As a child and well into her teens, Serena would spend hours there, sitting at the big farmhouse table and stuffing her face with warm muffins when she should have been revising, or practising the piano, or tidying her room. Mrs Collins the cook should have sent her away or reported her to Oswald, but she was always such entertaining company, gossiping about school or making fun of her father, she didn’t have the heart. It was no surprise to the Huntsford staff that Serena had relied on her good looks and charm to make her way in life.
‘Here you are!’ Cate stood at the doorway in bare feet, holding a mug of coffee, and smiled to herself at the familiar scene. Dressed in an old pair of corduroy trousers and a tiny white cotton vest that stretched just far enough over her pert breasts, Serena had her feet curled up on the oak bench and was picking at a banana muffin, looking rather sorry for herself. She looked beautiful now rather than merely pretty, as she had done in her youth, thought Cate, but it still could have been a snapshot from ten, fifteen years ago.
‘Muffin?’ Serena’s voice was feeble and wobbly, her wide mouth downturned and sombre as she held out a conker-coloured cake in Cate’s direction. ‘Mrs Collins made me a batch but I can’t eat a thing. I just feel sick to my stomach.’
‘Hungover, perhaps?’ asked Cate with a smile. ‘Bananas, a diet coke and a brisk walk always do the trick for me.’
Serena looked at her incredulously. ‘What do you mean, “hungover”? I am sick with misery. In case you weren’t paying any attention last night, my relationship has unravelled.’
Cate was used to treading on eggshells around her sister – the slightest thing could easily set off a diva hissy fit, and it was clear that today she had to be extra careful. She went over to give her sister a hug; she felt thin and delicate in Cate’s arms. Her hair, pulled back into a ponytail, smelt fresh, but the red eyes from last night’s performance remained.
‘I still think we should take that walk. How about it?’
‘I have to wait for my PA to come over,’ sighed Serena. ‘I’ve got nothing suitable to wear, unless you call a kaftan suitable for a bloody miserable February.’
‘Well, borrow something of mine,’ said Cate.
Serena let out a snort. ‘I’m a size eight.’
They turned their heads as Venetia strolled into the kitchen, wearing a pair of Katharine Hepburn trousers and a slim-fitting olive cashmere polo neck, with a stack of newspapers under her arm and a frown on her face.
‘You’d better take a look at this.’ She threw the papers onto the tabletop and they spread out in a
