2
Three thousand miles away, a 747 touched down on the Heathrow tarmac, wobbling from side to side, its wheels screeching to the ground and forcing business-class passenger and nervous flyer Cate Balcon to reach out and squeeze the hand of her grateful neighbour.
‘Sorry,’ she smiled at the old man in a Harris tweed jacket, aware that it was the first contact she’d had with him during the entire trip. The man, who had recognized her from Richard Kay’s page in the Daily Mail as soon as he’d boarded, gave her fingers a little squeeze back. ‘Crosswinds,’ he smiled kindly, ‘nothing to worry about.’
Mildly embarrassed, Cate was on her feet as soon as the engines wound down. That’s the beauty of business class, she thought, slipping her Jimmy Choos back on: the quick getaway. She grabbed her leather holdall from the overhead compartment, peered through the window at the grey, drizzling London day and politely pushed her way to the front of the queue, looking at her watch anxiously. She hated the overnight red-eye flights from New York in the working week; they brought her back into London just too late to slip home for a quick sleep, yet too early to blow out the day’s work altogether. Still, she thought as she darted for the arrivals hall, if her PA had booked a car and it was waiting for her, she might just get back for the twelve noon production meeting.
‘Cate Balcon?’ asked a young, tanned driver as Cate charged through the automatic doors.
‘Yes. Let’s be quick,’ replied Cate officiously, handing him her black wheelie case and tying back her long, thick hair with a tortoiseshell clip as she went. ‘Alliance Magazines, just off Aldwych.’
As Cate settled back into the leather seats of the black Mercedes, the scenery slipping from airport to suburbs to city, she tried to make some use of the time. The New York shows had been particularly good this season, she thought, opening her notebook to look at her scribblings from the front row. The fashion crowd might coo over the Paris leg of the collections for the spectacular fashion theatrics of Dior and McQueen, but Cate loved New York for its elegant, wearable clothes, and for the ideas it gave her for the magazine. They could do an Edith Wharton-flavoured story spinning off the tweed at Ralph Lauren, a safari shoot based on the linen and leather she had seen at Michael Kors and a Great Gatsby-style feature based on the jewelled coloured tea-dresses at Zac Posen.
She pulled out her Mont Blanc pen and started jotting down more ideas, completely unaware that her handsome driver kept glancing in his rear-view mirror at the striking woman with the red-gold hair on his back seat. Cate was oblivious, immersed as always in her work. She told herself that she worked twice as hard as everybody else because everybody expected Cate Balcon ‘the baron’s daughter’ to be twice as idle.
Although it was true that Alliance Magazines recruited its staff from a shallow gene pool – it was an industry joke that you had to be posh and pretty to get past their human resources department – Cate’s appointment to editor of Class, the company’s upmarket fashion and lifestyle flagship publication, had still fired a vicious whispering campaign in the media industry. The tattlers were outraged. Sure, they argued, there was the odd minor aristocrat at Alliance: the social editor on Verve was a countess and there was a viscount’s daughter in Rive’s fashion cupboard, but no one seriously expected them to become editors. The rumour mill had gone into overdrive. How had Cate become editor at the tender age of thirty-one? Whom had she slept with? What strings had Daddy pulled? It added insult to injury that the photogenic Cate Balcon was famous. British editors weren’t supposed to become celebrities – only Anna Wintour had the right to that crown. Cate Balcon simply didn’t deserve it, said the gossipmongers. But then anyone who had ever worked with her knew differently.
‘Morning Sadie,’ she smiled at her curly-haired PA who was sorting through a big lever-arch file outside her office. She glanced around the room at the young attractive women on the phone, rummaging through rails of fabulous clothes or typing away at computers; all noticeably more absorbed in their work the moment Cate arrived.
‘Afternoon, Cate,’ smiled Sadie, looking up at the clock. ‘I think Nicole’s taken the liberty of taking the twelve o’clock meeting on your behalf.’
The two women rolled their eyes at each other. ‘Typical,’ said Cate quietly. ‘Better do me a big favour and make me a strong cup of coffee.’
‘Cate! You’re back,’ called Lucy Cavendish from the other end of the office. Lucy was Class’s senior fashion editor and the nearest thing Cate had to a friend in the office. The six-foot black girl strode over wearing a thigh-skimming miniskirt and over-the-knee Versace boots, looking every inch one of the supermodels she styled.
‘You’ll never guess,’ gushed Lucy. ‘François Nars has said yes to us doing a shoot at his house on Bora-Bora. If you tell me I can’t go, I will die.’
‘Before we arrange the funeral, let’s check the budget with Ciara and we’ll take it from there,’ said Cate, smiling, as she walked into her office.
Lucy followed her in to catch up on the Fashion Week gossip. ‘Did you go to the Zac Posen party? Sorry I missed it but I had to make yesterday’s flight.’
‘Yes, I went and yes, it was fun,’ Cate replied, smiling at the memory.
Lucy gave Cate a mischievous grin. ‘I detect gossip, chief … So who did you meet? What was he like?’
She motioned Lucy into her office, a corner space on the eighth floor, just high enough to have views over the London Eye and the river. Lucy sat down and Cate flopped into her toffee-coloured leather chair behind her desk, quickly beginning to open the huge pile of mail that had accumulated in her absence. She casually tossed each item in front of Lucy as they spoke. Acres of press releases, stiff white party invitations and parcels of gifts from grateful advertisers and retailers. A Jimmy Choo bag and a white designer scarf, a stiff cardboard bag full of beauty products that Cate doubted would even fit through the bathroom door in her tiny Notting Hill mews house. She pushed the bag towards Lucy. ‘Need any of these?’
‘I don’t need products, I want gossip,’ said Lucy. ‘Come on, spill.’
Knowing she was not going to get away with distracting her friend, Cate relented with a smile.
‘The party was excellent. In this huge, amazing loft in the Meatpacking district. And they gave a great goody-bag, you’ll be delighted to hear. A hundred-dollar voucher for some underwear and a bottle of perfume. I’ve got it in my bag somewhere if you want it.’
Lucy flew a dismissive hand across her face. ‘Goody-bags, schmoody-bags! Catherine Balcon, you met a guy, didn’t you? Praise Jesus, tell me you’ve found someone, even if he does live in Manhattan.’
Only Lucy could get away with being so brazen and cheeky. A wide smile spread across Cate’s face, her ripe cheeks rounding out like two Cox’s apples as she conceded defeat. It was so long since she had met anybody decent. Serena’s perma-tanned playboy friends held no interest for her, while straight, single men in London’s media world were as rare as hen’s teeth. She’d had sex with two men in the last two years and not had a proper relationship in – well, too long. She didn’t need a shrink to tell her she had intimacy problems, and the longer it went on, the harder it became. Serena was forever telling Cate that she made herself seem as available as Fort Knox. She was certainly right, except New York had been a bit more productive.
‘He was a photographer called Tim. He was nice. He won’t ring.’ Cate shook her head. ‘Satisfied?’
‘No.
