and so frequently won. The famous hair, which had been through every latest style for nearly four decades, almost certainly now needed help to maintain its natural auburn, but looked good. The hazel eyes, though surrounded by a tracery of tiny lines, were still commanding. And the lithe, full-breasted figure seemed to have made no concessions to the years, though less of its toning now came from the gym than from the extraordinary effort of running Hopwicke Country House Hotel.
Suzy was incapable of dressing badly. Other women in the same pale grey T-shirt, jeans and brown leather slip-on shoes would have looked ordinary, sloppy even. Suzy Longthorne could still have stepped straight onto a catwalk. On her even the blue-and-white-striped butcher’s apron looked like a fashion accessory.
In fact, a perfect photo shoot could have been done at that moment – the chatelaine of Hopwicke House in her kitchen. Like the rest of the hotel, the room had been restored by expensive designers to a high specification. Without losing its eighteenth-century proportions or its wide fireplace, the kitchen had been equipped with the latest culinary devices. Hidden lighting twinkled knowingly on surfaces of stainless steel and the copper bottoms of serried ranks of utensils.
The two women had known each other since their late teens, when both had been picked up as potential ‘Faces of the Sixties’. But Jude’s modelling career had stuttered to a quick end. Though she didn’t lack for offers of work (among other things), a couple of long photo shoots and one catwalk show had brought home to her the incredible tedium of the job and she had moved sideways into acting in the blossoming world of fringe theatre and television.
But Jude’s relationship with Suzy had endured. Not on a regular basis – frequently years would elapse between contacts – but it was always there. Usually, Suzy was the one who contacted Jude at the end of another of her high-profile relationships. And the tear-stained famous face would be buried in Jude’s increasingly ample shoulder, while the perfidies of men were once again catalogued and bold unrealizable ambitions for a relationship-free life were once again outlined.
Suzy never seemed aware of what others had observed in their encounters with Jude – that they were the confiders, she the confidant. Jude rarely gave away much information about herself and, though her own emotional life had been at least as varied – if not as public – as Suzy’s, little of it was aired. There were friends to whom Jude did turn in moments of her own distress, but Suzy Longthorne was not one of them.
Yet the relationship wasn’t one-sided. Suzy mattered to Jude. There was a core of honesty in the woman that appealed to her, together with a strong work ethic. And Jude was endlessly fascinated by the problems that accompanied the fulfilment of many women’s dream – that of being born incredibly beautiful.
Suzy Longthorne had bought Hopwicke Country House Hotel with the proceeds from the breakdown of her longest marriage. For thirteen years she had stayed with Rick Hendry, as he metamorphosed from ageing rocker to pop entrepreneur to television producer, and as his tastes had shifted from the maturity of his wife to the pubescent charms of wannabee pop stars. Rick had made his name with a band called Zedrach-Kona, who produced supposedly profound sci-fi-influenced concept albums in the late seventies. The success of these, including the massive seller The Columns of Korfilia, had made him rich and famous for a year or two, then rich and forgotten. But in his fifties, Rick Hendry had found a new incarnation as an acerbic critic on Pop Crop, a television talent show which pitted the talents of manufactured boy and girl bands against each other. His own company, Korfilia Productions, made the show, and so once again for Rick Hendry the money was rolling in.
By that time, being back in the public spotlight meant his ego no longer needed the support of marriage. The divorce settlement had been generous and Suzy had invested it all in Hopwicke House.
The venture had started well. The conversion of the space from private dwelling to hotel had been expensively and expertly completed. The recollected glamour of its new owner gave the venue an air of chic. Well-heeled names from her much-publicized past booked in. Journalists who’d cut their cub-reporting teeth on interviews with Suzy Longthorne commissioned features for the newspapers and magazines they now edited. For a place that marketed itself as a discreet, quiet retreat, Hopwicke Country House Hotel got a lot of media coverage.
Suzy was by no means a remote figurehead in the enterprise; she was a very hands-on manager. Her money was backing the project, and she had always kept an eye on what her money was up to. She was punctilious about the quality of staff – particularly the chefs – who worked for her. The media may have started the ball rolling, but word-of-mouth recommendations ensured its continuing motion.
As the reputation of Hopwicke House grew, the hotel appeared more frequently in brochures targeted at the international super-rich – particularly Americans. Soon the breakfast tables in the conservatory resounded to Californian enquiries as to what a kipper might be, or tentative Texan queries about the provenance of black pudding. The hotel was included in an increasing number of upmarket tours, and played its part in nurturing the delusion of wealthy Americans that England had been created by P. G. Wodehouse and Agatha Christie.
So Suzy Longthorne had cleverly carved her niche, done the appropriate niche-marketing, and looked set fair to reap great riches from that niche.
Until 11 September 2001. Among the many other effects of that momentous day, as Americans ceased to fly abroad and the bottom fell out of the tourism market, bookings at Hopwicke Country House Hotel immediately declined. Unfortunately, the transatlantic market was not alone in drying up. A collective guilt about over-indulgence had struck the Western world, and no amount of inducements in the form of weekend breaks with suicidally low profit margins seemed able to reverse the downturn for Suzy’s business. She had been forced to abandon the exclusivity that had been her cachet and selling-point, and accept bookings from anyone who wished to stay.
It was with this knowledge, on that April afternoon, that her friend Jude asked, a little tentatively, ‘Who have you got in tonight?’
Suzy’s perfect nose wrinkled with distaste. ‘The Pillars of Sussex.’
‘Oh.’ Jude grimaced in sympathy. Though she had never met any members, she recognized the name. Like most British clubs and institutions, it had been founded in the second half of the nineteenth century. Originally, under the grand name of ‘The Pillars of Society’, the group had been initiated for philanthropic purposes, and was still involved in local charity work and Christmas fund-raising. As with many such associations, however, the initial worthy intention soon took a back seat to procedures, rituals, ceremonies, elections, all of which had the same general aim: that those who had achieved membership of the Pillars should feel eternally superior to those who had not. Nothing had changed since an 1836 publication, Hints on Etiquette, had observed that, ‘the English are the most aristocratic democrats in the world; always endeavouring to squeeze through the portals of rank and fashion, and then slamming the door in the face of any unfortunate devil who may happen to be behind them.’
Needless to say, meetings of the Pillars of Sussex involved a great deal of drinking.
What made all this worse, from Jude’s perspective, was that the Pillars of Sussex was an exclusively male organization. She had grown up suspecting that in the absence of female company men get increasingly childish, and experience had turned the suspicion into a conviction. She did not relish the evening of raucous misogyny ahead.
But her views didn’t matter; she was there to help out her friend. ‘What do you want me to do, Suzy? Bar?’
‘No, I’ll handle most of that. Part of being the hostess. Might need some help with the drinks orders before dinner.’
‘Trays of glasses of wine?’
‘I
