Ten months earlier
The Honourable Serena Balcon lay back on the top deck of the Egyptian sailboat, La Mamounia, wriggled out of her pink Dior hot pants, and congratulated herself with a lazy swig of a Mojito. What a good decision, she thought smugly, looking up to watch the white sails of the boat fan out like two huge butterfly wings. Back home in London’s Chelsea, she hadn’t been sure whether to accept fashion designer Roman LeFey’s offer of a two-day cruise from Edfu to Luxor. As she received more than one hundred social invitations in the average week, she politely declined everything except the most public and most exclusive – or the odd charitable gesture. But this trip was looking very promising indeed. Only thirty of Roman’s most fabulous friends had been invited to the strictly A-list jaunt and, not only had Serena been invited, she’d been assigned La Mamounia’s Cleopatra Suite, a spacious, exotic cabin at the stern where you could open the shutters and enjoy the receding view from a claw-foot bath. She fished around for a phrase to describe the scene’s subtle grandeur. She smiled. It was appropriate.
‘How incredible is this?’ said Tom Archer, Serena’s boyfriend, leaning over the boat’s railing to get a 360-degree view. One of Britain’s most successful, not to mention fabulously handsome actors, the backdrop of the Nile suited him to a T.
‘Yes, you look very Agatha Christie, darling,’ said Serena with a hint of sarcasm, peering up from under the wide brim of her sunhat. ‘But don’t lean so far out. There could be piranhas or anything in that filthy water and I’m not jumping in to get you.’
Tom had conditioned himself not to listen to Serena’s sniping. Instead he carried on looking at a water buffalo grazing on the opposite bank, next to which an old woman was doing her washing in the tobacco-coloured waters. ‘Look at it,’ he smiled, ‘it still looks so biblical. I keep thinking we’re going to see Moses sitting on the bank.’
Serena glanced up casually. ‘I thought he was dead.’
‘Who?’
‘Moses.’
Tom rolled his eyes and Serena caught the gesture. ‘I saw that,’ she said sourly.
He turned to face her. ‘What?’
‘You just rolled your eyes at me as if I was stupid.’
‘Well, you were being stupid. Of course Moses is dead.’
‘I was joking,’ she snapped, hiding her face with a copy of Italian Vogue. ‘But yes, you’re right. It is rather special.’
Tom gave his girlfriend a wry smile, predicting the answer to his next question. ‘In that case, are you coming with me to Karnak after lunch? Biggest group of temples in the world, apparently. Roman was asking who was up for it. Doubt there’ll be a good turn out from this lot, though,’ he said, motioning towards the mezzanine deck where the rest of Roman’s guests were draining the bar.
‘Don’t be daft, darling. What do you want to go there for?’ asked Serena, dropping her magazine onto her bronzed knees. ‘It will be riddled with flies and tourists. And anyway,’ she sighed dramatically, ‘I’m too busy thinking about where we can have my birthday party. I mean – nowhere in London has a capacity of a thousand. It’s bloody ridiculous.’
‘A thousand people,’ said Tom, eyebrows raised. ‘Do we have that many friends?’
‘You don’t, no.’
Tom tutted.
‘You don’t have that many friends though, do you?’ she glared. ‘Then again, you don’t seem to like meeting people. You haven’t stopped complaining since you arrived and you haven’t made the slightest effort to talk to anyone, which is so rude because I could have invited dozens of friends in your place.’
‘Maybe you should have.’
‘Well, in future I will.’
‘Go on then.’
They glared at each other.
‘Look, just stop complaining and go and get me another drink from that turbanned chappie,’ said Serena finally. ‘I want Cristal. I’m parched.’
Tom strode over and snatched the magazine out of Serena’s hands. He brought his face down so she could see him under the brim of her hat. ‘Well there he is,’ he spat, pointing at a dark-skinned man with a tray of drinks. ‘Get off your backside and go ask him yourself.’
Serena Balcon and Tom Archer’s relationship was in the stage that most therapists refer to as terminal. Held together by familiarity and convenience, even the most innocent conversation quickly became a nettle patch of hostile banter. For Serena, the hostility was brought on by festering disappointment. Tom Archer had started off as a novelty boyfriend; he was cute and uncomplicated, and the complete opposite of the long procession of Serena’s former boyfriends – ex-Etonians, Hugh Grant-alikes and floppy-haired trust-fund banker boys. At first, it didn’t matter that Tom didn’t have pedigree – his mother worked in a factory, his father was a gardener: not a hint of good breeding anywhere in that family tree. But he was hot, the sexiest British film star since Jude Law, and he had increased Serena’s celebrity stock immeasurably.
Before she had met him on the set of a tiny British indie movie five years ago, Serena had been just a posh blonde who dabbled in modelling and importing pashminas. She was famous in the society pages for being one of the fabulous Balcon girls, but who wanted to be stuck in Tatler forever? She wanted a bigger stage, and at Tom’s side she got it. The media loved them – the unlikely but classy combination of Tom, the British-born movie star, and Serena, the sexy daughter of a baron, was potent and irresistible. Her impeccable sense of style wasn’t lost on the fashion press either. Within weeks of their party debut as a couple, she was US Vogue’s ‘Girl of the Month’ and within the year they were a huge Tom & Serena franchise that was like a golden VIP pass into the world of fame.
Five years later, it wasn’t enough. Yes, her family were titled, but much to Serena’s annoyance, the Balcons weren’t a grand English family like the Marlboroughs, the Wellingtons or the Balfours. Serena wanted a home to rival Blenheim, she wanted the tiny ducal crown on her headed notepaper and the state wedding with an engagement ring in the colours of her national flag, just like the one that Prince Rainier had once presented to Grace Kelly. And the fact that her bloody sister Venetia had managed to marry into semi-royalty tormented her even more. Put simply, Serena wanted more than Tom could give her.
She stretched out her long aristocratic legs on her sun-lounger and turned to look at Tom fuming at the rail on the far side of the deck. She smirked. It wasn’t all bad. There was no denying he was gorgeous. That square jaw, the cobalt blue eyes framed by jet black lashes, the mussed-up crop of dark hair and that incredible body peeking out from his open white Turnball & Asser shirt. Tom’s good looks could blend into any social situation. In a pub, he exuded a handsome-boy-next-door ordinariness. At a country house dinner with her father, Tom’s fine English features took on a rather noble, Brideshead Revisited quality. And put him on an LA film set and he glowed with that indefinable X-factor that agents the world over wished they could bottle.
Maybe he wasn’t so bad …
‘Sorry
