She’d given the best years of her life to a man who’d discarded her like a used condom at the first signs of ageing, moving on with his new wife and new life without a backward glance. No house, no pool, no diamonds would ever make up for that humiliation.
Flora Fitzwilliam, on the other hand, was engaged to be married to a wonderful, kind, handsome, intelligent, rich man. Mason Parker was the best thing that had ever happened to her, period. The second best thing was her job. At only twenty-three, straight out of design school in Rhode Island, Flora had landed her dream job, the dream job in interior design, working for the great Graydon James in Manhattan.
Graydon James, designer of the new Gagosian Gallery in San Francisco and the stunning limestone and curved glass Centre des Arts in Paris. Graydon James, who had built New York’s ‘Nexus’, a neoclassical hotel voted ‘Most Beautiful New Building in America’ by InStyle magazine and World of Interiors’ ‘Top Luxury Hotel’ for three years in a row. Graydon James, whose vision could vary wildly from project to project, but always within the context of clean lines and a famously pared-down aesthetic, an alchemy that no other living designer could ever quite seem to match. From private homes to libraries, from Spanish nightclubs to Middle Eastern palaces, Graydon was a design master long before his lifestyle brand propelled him into the ranks of the super-rich and made him a household name from Dubrovnik to Dubai.
All Flora’s classmates at RISD had been spitting with envy when she’d landed the job with Graydon James.
Of course, most of them envied Flora anyway. Not only was she uniquely talented as a designer, with a true artist’s eye, but she was also the most lusted-after girl on campus. Which wasn’t to say she was necessarily the most beautiful. At only five foot two, with her Puerto Rican mother’s curvaceous figure – tiny waist, big boobs, big bum – and her English father’s blond colouring, Flora was more of a Fifties pin-up than a modern-day model. Plenty of girls at RISD were taller, thinner and more classically pretty. But Flora’s brand of seaside-postcard sauciness was a huge hit with all the men. One ex-boyfriend observed that Flora always looked as if she should be winking, sitting on a sailor’s lap and wearing his cap at a jaunty angle (with not much else on underneath).
There were always malicious rumours flying around during her college years, that Flora had flirted with her RISD professors to achieve her top scores. But at least no one could accuse her of flirting her way to the top with the famously gay Graydon James. Only last year James had been quoted in Vanity Fair talking about his ‘vagina allergy’ and the fact that ninety per cent of his workforce were very young, very handsome men.
When Graydon looked at Flora Fitzwilliam, all he saw was talent.
True, the pay was terrible, barely a living wage. And true, the hours were endless, and many of the clients were abusive and unreasonable, just like Lisa Kent. But Flora was working with Graydon James. The Graydon James, design genius and now heir apparent to Ralph Lauren’s taste and lifestyle empire, thanks to an aesthetic as chic and classically understated as Graydon himself was flamboyant and loud. Many people found it bizarre that someone as flamingly gay, extravagant and attention-seeking as Graydon, with his penchant for Cavalli silk shirts, heavy eyeliner and preposterously young lovers, could produce houses and hotels and museums of such breathtaking simplicity and class. But Flora understood perfectly. Through his art, Graydon fulfilled a yearning that he could never satisfy in his own real life. There was a peace to Graydon’s designs, however grand, a calm constancy that spoke of history and permanence and beauty and depth. The spaces Graydon designed were the antidote to his shallow, excessive, restless party life.
His art was his escape. Flora, of all people, could understand that.
Now, three years into the job, she had become Graydon’s right-hand woman. Now Graydon James asked her, Flora Fitzwilliam, for advice on designs. He relied on her, entrusting her with major projects like Lisa Kent’s thirty-million-dollar Siasconset beach house. And next month Flora would be starting work on probably the single most coveted job in international interior design: the restoration of the idyllic Hanborough Castle in England’s famously beautiful Swell Valley. Professionally, artistically, the Hanborough job was a dream come true.
At least it would be, just as soon as her Nantucket nightmare was over.
I must not complain, Flora thought, gazing out across the Siasconset bluffs at the roiling grey waters of the Atlantic.
She’d been here a week now, staying at a quaint little guesthouse in town, but Nantucket’s famous charm seemed to have eluded her. In fact Flora found the island deeply depressing, with its grey, clapboard houses, cranberry bogs and miles of windswept beaches, not to mention the sour-faced locals, who always seemed to glare at you as you passed, as if you were engaged in some deeply personal dispute with them, but no one had bothered to tell you what it was. Everyone here seemed to be at war with everyone else. The über-rich residents of Baxter Road, like Lisa Kent, were daggers drawn with the local fishermen and year-round islanders, who resented them shipping in tons of sand, at vast expense, to try to shore up their crumbling properties. Flora couldn’t imagine living in such a poisonous atmosphere of envy and loathing every day. It seemed to her as if the grey clouds gathering in the May skies were heavy not with rain, but with the islanders’ petty resentments and grievances. A thunderstorm would do all of them good.
The situation with the ‘Sconset bluffs would be funny if it weren’t so tragic – the arrogance of rich New Yorkers believing they could hold back the mighty Atlantic Ocean. That a big enough cheque would stop global warming in its tracks and save them and their precious beach houses from inevitable disaster. Talk about the foolish man building his house upon the sand! You couldn’t make this stuff up.
The site foreman turned to Flora. ‘What do you want me to do? We can’t start digging a pool. The town hall will shut us down in a heartbeat.’
‘Of course you can’t,’ Flora agreed. ‘I’ll talk some sense into her.’
The foreman raised an eyebrow. He liked Flora. She worked hard and got on with it, not like most of the poncey designers out here. Of course, it didn’t hurt that she looked like Marilyn Monroe. But she’d clearly bitten off more than she could chew with this Kent bitch.
‘Good luck with that,’ he said to Flora. ‘And until you get her to change her mind? What should I tell my guys?’
‘Tell them they can take the day off. As many days as it takes, in fact. Mrs Kent will pay for their time. She can afford it.’
Snaking his way through rain-slicked country lanes, Henry smiled as he eased his foot down on the accelerator of his new Bugatti Veyron, delighting in the roar of the engine as the car surged forwards. The Veyron was the man-made equivalent of a leopard, he decided. Or perhaps a black panther was a better analogy. Dark, sleek, elegant and insanely powerful. Henry loved it.
He felt the last flutterings of guilt in his chest over his latest slip-up with Georgina. But they soon faded, like the dying wingbeats of a trapped butterfly. Guilt was a waste of time. Eva didn’t know, and what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.
He would do better next time.
He did feel bad about missing the fete, mostly because he knew Eva really cared about all that ‘community spirit’ bollocks. Traffic out of London had been so horrendous that not even the mighty Veyron could have got Henry to Fittlescombe on time. But Seb had already texted to say he’d filled in with the raffle prizes.
