down her throat. She heard his footsteps behind her and felt a pair of strong arms wrap themselves around her waist. For one moment, she didn’t look back, enjoying the sensation of his fingers touching her skin through the silk of the kimono. She could tell he was naked, too, feeling the shape of his penis push in against her back.
‘So leave him,’ whispered Jack.
Venetia spun around, stunned. ‘I can’t leave Jonathon,’ she said flatly.
‘Why not? You’ve told me you don’t like the way he makes you feel; you don’t have any kids. Do you even love him?’
She angrily pushed the hair back off her face and put the glass down on the marble, unfathomably finding herself wanting to defend her marriage. ‘Love hasn’t got anything to do with it. Jonathon is my husband.’
‘Love has got everything to do with it, Venetia.’ He looked at her, shaking his head, uncharacteristically losing his temper. ‘You’ve serious fucking issues.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning that you make excuses for people, stay loyal to people, no matter how badly they treat you, because that’s how you expect to be treated – badly. You will never be happy until you learn to say no, learn to walk away or learn to just be a little more selfish.’
His words were so raw and truthful and brutal, that she physically ached. ‘If you’d had my father, you’d understand,’ she said softly, too pained to respond with any anger.
Jack came and held her chin between his fingers. ‘You deserve to get whatever you want, Venetia. Don’t let your father make you think you’re not worth it. Because you are.’
She nodded.
‘I love you,’ he said quietly.
Venetia went to take a breath, but nothing seemed to happen. Her throat felt clamped in a vice with a sense of rising panic. He loved her. It seemed about two minutes ago, that night under the stars in Seville when they’d first kissed. Now he was suggesting breaking up the fabric of her life as she knew it.
She pressed her fingers against his back, pulling him as close as she could. She knew what she wanted. She wanted Jack Kidman. But she didn’t know if she was strong enough to have him.
It was half past twelve by the time Venetia got back to her shop. Brix Sanderson was waiting for her on the roof terrace, sipping a cup of Earl Grey tea – no milk, but a thick wedge of lemon. Brix was London’s top fashion PR and one of the capital’s most fabulous dykes. She had a long mane of auburn curls, an eighties nose-job and the urgent manner of someone who always got things done.
‘Nice spread,’ said Brix with a wicked smile as Venetia strode onto the terrace.
‘Sorry?’ said Venetia.
‘This!’ said Brix, motioning towards the table. ‘You’ve got such sodding good taste!’
Even a cup of tea at Venetia Balcon’s shop was an event. The wrought-iron table was covered with an ebony-coloured linen tablecloth. The china was sparkling white, Art Deco in design. Sachets of tea sat colour-coded in another circular china bowl, while napkins, starched white and stiff, were folded like Origami figures on the table.
‘Thanks for coming to the store,’ said Venetia, pulling up a chair. ‘And sorry I had to cancel lunch, I’m too busy to even think about going anywhere other than here or home,’ she said, feeling slightly guilty that she’d had enough time to spend the entire morning in bed with her lover.
She knew that Brix would have been equally busy in the throes of Fashion Week. Her agency, Blue Monday, did the PR for many fashion labels not dealt with in-house, plus numerous other premium brands such as a large champagne house and a luxury make of car. Venetia was delighted to have secured Brix’s services for the launch of the Venetia Balcon women’s-wear range. Hovering around the age of fifty, Brix had three decades’ experience of the fashion world under her belt. It also did no harm that she lived with Ginger Foxton, the country’s most influential fashion writer.
Venetia poured herself a cup of tea from the pot, letting the tobacco-coloured leaves whirl through a silver strainer.
‘So what did you think of New York?’ she asked Brix, knowing that she had arrived back in London from Manhattan that morning where one of her clients was showing at New York Fashion Week.
‘Really gorgeous,’ she gushed, throwing a clump of dark red curls over one shoulder. ‘I usually get much more excited about Fall collections, but this year – well, put it this way, you’re right on the money.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Venetia, puzzled.
‘Well, from what I’ve seen over there, next summer is going to be all about little tea dresses, crisp tailoring and lovely sorbet colours.’
Venetia thought nervously about the collection she was preparing to show on the following Wednesday in London. Tennis whites, sheer cashmere, butter-soft accessories, long pale palazzo pants and vintage-feel camisole tops.
‘Oh, that sounds rather like where I’m coming from,’ she said, her voice betraying her disappointment.
‘Don’t worry darling,’ Brix laughed at Venetia’s fashion naivety. ‘It’s cool to be thinking along the same lines as the other big names. You don’t want to be channelling military if Marc Jacobs has decided it’s going to be all about boho this year. It’s good commercial sense that you’re in the same ballpark as all the other big designers, although the Venetia Balcon range does have its own unique twist, which is great. Anyway,’ said Brix excitedly, pulling off her Fendi leather jacket and flinging it over the back of the chair, ‘guess who’s coming to your show?’
‘Who?’
‘Only Miranda Seymour!’ beamed Brix, putting her cup down with a rattle.
‘No! Christ, that would be such a coup!’
Miranda was America’s most influential glossy magazine editor. Feared and admired in equal measure, she had the power to make or break any designer. Certainly she had the clout to pull a struggling novice from obscurity and make them the next Donna Karan. Despite the fact that Miranda was English, she very rarely made an appearance in her native city for Fashion Week, choosing to go straight from the New York shows to Milan a week later. Her thinking was that London just wasn’t a significant enough fashion capital for her to deign it with her presence.
‘But why on earth is she coming to my show?’ said Venetia, still in shock.
‘I knew you’d be pleased,’ laughed Brix, clearly delighted. ‘She doesn’t usually bother with London, but she’s collecting some gong from some university or other. Her assistant called me and asked for a ticket for the Venetia Balcon show while she was in town. If you ask me, the woman is just obsessed with the whole English upper-class thing. I mean, you do tick all the right boxes, don’cha?’ said Brix, her south London accent becoming deliberately more pronounced. ‘You’re an aristo, you’re Serena Balcon’s sister, and you live this glamorous life with the hedge-fund husband. No doubt she saw your house in American Vogue. Put on a good show, young lady, and mark my words, she will champion you.’
Brix pulled a large brown lizard-skin notebook from her Mulberry bag and began running through her notes with Venetia. ‘As you
