Christmas at Tiffany's (14 page)

The girl got to the end and sank into her back hip, just as the second girl came out and began her march. All the celebrities were watching, appraising their bodies and nodding appreciatively through narrowed eyes at the clothes. The editors were sketching, the photographers whistling and calling as the second model’s jacket shifted, revealing a bare, pert breast beneath.

Cassie started tapping her feet. This was the funkiest thing she’d ever been to – just like she’d always thought a concert might be like, but more exclusive, and with better-looking people. Although she didn’t belong in this world, knew less about it than she did about quantum physics, she felt its draw. No wonder Kelly thrived upon it, no wonder she loved her career and put it first. It was about being part of something. This was the ‘Zeitgeist’ that Kelly was always banging on about.

A man to her right leaned towards her. He looked concerned.

‘I think you might have a problem,’ he said, jerking his head towards a woman who was standing in the shadows of the aisle opposite.

Cassie looked back at him. ‘I do?’ He was crazily good-looking with a fresh tan, two-day old stubble and hazel eyes.

‘Yeah.’

Cassie carried on staring at him blankly.

‘You must know who that is,’ he said finally.

Cassie shook her head but looked back at the woman, feeling a cold shiver beginning to gather in her shoulders.

‘Alexa Bourton?’

Cassie’s face crumpled. ‘But I thought I . . . I mean, I put her . . . she’s over there,’ she protested, looking over at the woman she’d seated, who had taken off her giraffe-print coat and was now sitting with a laptop on her knees.

The man looked at her pityingly. ‘That’s Jazzy Lucas. Other wise known as fashgurl.’

Cassie didn’t respond.

‘She’s a blogger.’ From the tone of his voice, that was a dirty word.

Oh. My. God. Cassie looked from Alexa back to Jazzy, then back to this man. ‘I’m screwed,’ she said, her eyes filling with tears.

There was a silence between them as the music blared all around, cameras flashing out of tempo. ‘Right, you look new to this. I’ll help you out,’ the man said finally, a weary tone in his voice. ‘Get her over here quickly. She can have my seat.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Go!’

Cassie darted over to the other side of the catwalk, getting in the way of the photographers in the process and igniting a tirade of abuse.

Miss? Mrs? ‘Ms Bourton,’ she gasped, wiping her eyes hastily. ‘How wonderful that you made it.’

The woman raised an eyebrow questioningly. Made it? The show had already started by the time she’d got through the standing-room scrum, and she’d been standing here for two minutes now. It was also perfectly clear that someone was in her seat. Not only was there not a space for her anywhere across the entire front row, but her cache of senior editors was broken up by both Olivia Delingpole, her fiercest rival, and a
blogger,
sitting between them.

‘Would you follow me, please?’ Cassie half-pleaded, aware of the eyes beginning to swivel round to watch them. ‘Oh, please don’t look, please don’t look,’ she thought desperately. That would be the death knell – Alexa’s humiliation going public.

Alexa stared disdainfully at Cassie for a long time, hostility radiating from her like a force field. Then she said, in a voice so low that Cassie couldn’t hear but could only lip-read: ‘I don’t think so.’

With the slightest tip of her chin, her clique of editors on the far side of the runway stood up, leaving great gaping gaps in the front row as they conspicuously filed out, making no attempt to hide as they walked side by side with the models coming down the catwalk.

No one could miss it now –
Vogue
was walking out, and absolutely everyone stared as the editors trooped past her, their high-heeled Manolo boots stabbing the carpet in a muted staccato rhythm. The photographers turned their cameras as one on to the drama unfolding offstage now. Bebe’s creations were being ignored. A flock of cameramen swooped out of the room, chasing after Alexa and the Voguettes, desperate for an interview.

‘But . . . but . . . please . . .’ Cassie cried, as the
Harper’s Bazaar
crowd followed suit. They couldn’t be seen to stay at a show
Vogue
had stormed out of.

‘What’s going on? What the fuck’s happening down there?’ Hannah cried down the microphone. ‘Where’s everybody going? Is there a fire alarm? Is there something going on that I don’t know about?!’

Desperately Cassie swung round, looking for the stranger who’d tried to help. But his seat – along with many of the others – was empty.

‘Oh, poor you,’ Suzy soothed, noisily slurping her tea at the other end of the line.

‘No, not poor
me
, Suze. Poor Kelly. I’ve completely dropped her in it. I mean, I’ve made her look an absolute laughing stock. She must be the only fashion PR in New York with an employee who doesn’t know who Alexa Bourton is. I mean, I thought . . . you know . . . um, what’s-her-name . . .’

‘Anna Wintour?’ Suzy suggested helpfully.

‘Yes. I thought she was the editor. Even
I
knew what she looked like.’

‘She left two years ago, Cass,’ Suzy said sympathetically.

Cassie groaned.

‘But look, Alexa Bourton’s a fashion insider, Cass. She’s well respected, but she doesn’t have the same stature. Most people on the street don’t know who she is yet.’

‘But I’m
not
a person on the street any more. At least I’m not supposed to be. I’m a PR at Hartford Communications. No one else would have made this mistake.’

There was a sound of heavy munching.

‘What’re you eating? Don’t tell me it’s one of those cupcakes?’

‘Mmmm . . .’ Suzy mumbled. ‘But all in . . . the name of . . . research, you understand.’

‘Of course,’ Cassie concurred; even her empty tummy was too dejected to rumble. There was a comfortable silence as Suzy ate cake and Cassie ruminated on what the press had dubbed ‘The PR Supremo’s PR Disaster’.

‘Oh God,’ she wailed, putting her head in her hands. ‘This all such a mess. I mean, what am I doing out here, Suze? I’m completely out of my depth. Kelly’s spent nine years building up this company and I’m going to pull it down within a month.’

‘You’re being way too hard on yourself.’

‘No I’m not. She’s already been fired from the Bebe account because of this. And that’s not even the worst of it – the
Vogue
girls and all the other magazines at Condé Nast are refusing to call in any products from our other clients. They’ve blacklisted us. They’ve already reneged on an At Home piece with Maddy Foxton to launch her new collection with Oscar, and he’s terminated their alliance for next season.’

‘Oscar?’

‘De la Renta,’ Cassie mumbled.

‘Hmmm, well it doesn’t sound like you’re
that
naïve,’ Suzy said, impressed.

‘Honestly, Suze, I’m not exaggerating. I’ve screwed up massively. It’s only a matter of days before the other clients drop us too – it’s like a game of dominos. I’ve made Kelly look a joke.’

‘Has she fired you?’

‘No. I keep telling her that I’ll go and do some temping somewhere else, but she won’t hear of it. In fact, she’s actually insisting it’s
her
fault for forgetting to give me the list beforehand so that I could swot up on who everyone is. Can you believe that?’

‘Loyal to a fault, that one.’

‘Mmmm. I think she thinks it’ll tip me over the edge if I lose my job as well as my life.’

‘You haven’t lost your life, Cass,’ Suzy protested, sounding aghast at the bleakness of her comment.

‘Well, I have. I’ve lost my life
as I knew it
. I’m having to start from scratch and reinvent myself.’ She stared out of the window, watching the lights come on in the building opposite. ‘And I’m doing a shit job of it, frankly. I have to read from a notepad Kelly leaves out for me so I know how to put my outfits together in the morning. I only eat what she says, when she says. I basically pay a man to beat me up every other day, I’m bollocks at my made-up job and everyone there hates me, and I’m spending whatever money I do earn on maintaining a new look that’s so alien to me, I don’t even recognize my own reflection in shop windows.’

There was a short pause. ‘D’you want me to come over?’

Cassie shook her head down the phone. ‘You’re in London! You’re thousands of miles away. You can’t just hop on a plane.’

‘Sure I can. I could be with you by breakfast.’

Cassie sighed, touched by her friend’s generosity. Suzy, bossy though she was with Anouk and Kelly, had always been gentle with her.

‘Thanks for the offer. But I don’t think Archie would be too pleased about that. Anyway, I’ll be okay. Particularly after I’ve had a hot bath and a ten-hour sleep tonight.’

‘Oooh, get you, spa girl.’

‘Yeah, well, Kelly’s dragged me out literally every night since I got here. Sometimes we go to four parties in one evening! Four! I used to think I was going some if I did four a month! I don’t know how she does it. She’s like a Duracell bunny.’

‘So how come you’re off the hook tonight?’

‘Kelly’s got a hot date. Some guy called Brett who pretended to hit on me to get to her. He saw she was being my bouncer and . . . well, it’s a long story, but I think she’s dead keen on him. They’ve spoken loads on the phone. She was going to cancel with all this going on, but I persuaded her to see him. Despite the brave face, she could do with some cheering up.’

‘Well, keep me posted on how it goes.’

‘Yeah,’ Cassie sighed. ‘So what about you? You up to anything tonight?’

‘Not really. Henry’s back, so we’re all having dinner tonight.’

‘Oh, that’s nice.’

‘I’m not so sure.
He’s
cooking.’

Cassie chuckled. Henry’s fishfinger sandwiches had been the stuff of legend in their teenage years.

‘He said he saw you guys in New York.’

‘Did he?’ Cassie wondered what else he’d mentioned – the fact that he thought she was a complete fraud and nut job? ‘Yes. It was nice to see him. It’s years since we last caught up.’

‘Yeah. He said you looked really different – “hot” was the word he used, I think!’

‘Really?’ He’d been so disapproving when they’d met.

‘He said he gave you a present to remember him by.’

‘Well, it wasn’t so much to remember
him.
It was more of a “keep your pecker up” gift. He wrote . . . what was it again?’ she said, walking over to the small brown seed tray by the window and turning over the brown tag. ‘Oh yes – “energy in adversity”, my motto for living in Manhattan.’

She heard a small snort. ‘How very motivational!’ Suzy said wryly, moving on to another cupcake. ‘So what was it?’

‘A packet of seeds.’

‘
Seeds?
’ Suzy screeched. ‘God, it’s a
wonder
he’s got a girlfriend! What are you going to do with seeds in Manhattan?’

‘That’s just what Kelly said.’

‘What kind of seeds are they? Probably something from Mum’s garden, I expect.’

Cassie considered. Hattie Sallyford, Suzy and Henry’s mother, was an eminent retired landscape designer, and her gardens at their country house in Gloucestershire were opened to the public every year after the Chelsea Flower Show, drawing huge and international crowds.

‘I don’t think so. I think it was a spur-of-the-moment thing. Anyway . . .’ she said, bending down to the tray on the window sill to inspect the sappy shoots beginning to thrust through ‘. . . I don’t think they’re flower seeds. I think they’re . . .
grass
.’

‘Grass?’

‘I know. A slightly off-the-wall choice. I expect he thinks I’m missing the countryside at Lammermuir and my own little patch of grass will stop me being so homesick.’

‘That’s kind of sweet.’

‘Yeah.’

‘He can be surprising sometimes, my brother. I always think of him as so gung-ho, going off on dangerous expeditions to unearth triffids and stuff. And then he goes and does something thoughtful like that.’

‘Well, tell him they’re coming along nicely. I’m very good at watering them every day. It makes me feel very . . . zen.’

‘Righto. Oh, that sounds like Archie. I’d better go. Now, look – ring me if there’s anything, okay? Day or night – any time. I’m not just saying it. I’m right here.’

‘I know you are. Thanks, Suze.’

‘And don’t let this incident get you down. I mean, how bad can it be? It’s only a fashion show
.
She’ll get over it. They all will. They’ll move on to something else next week. You just need to concentrate on keeping going. You’re doing great. We’re all very proud of you.’

‘Bye, Suze. Kiss Arch and Henry hello for me.’

‘Sure thing. Laters!’

The line clicked off and Cassie replaced the phone in the handset, a smile on her face as her fingertips softly brushed the green, green grass of home.