Christmas at Tiffany's (2 page)

‘Oh no? Then how come you get tinier every time I see you?’

‘I am Parisienne,
chérie
,’ she shrugged, as if that explained everything. ‘It’s in my DNA.’

‘Hmph, that old chestnut.’

‘What are you wearing tonight?’ Anouk asked Cassie, still pinching away at her cake. ‘I trust you have frittered away the family trust on something fabulous?’

Cassie shook her head, knowing the consternation this would cause. ‘Afraid not. The shooting season starts next week and I’ve been up to my eyes in the kitchens, trying to get ahead. It hasn’t helped that we had a bumper crop of damsons this summer and I’ve been trying to get everything off the tree and jammed.’

Anouk dropped her hand in disgust. ‘You ditched a new dress for
damsons
?’

‘It’s never jam tomorrow in this house, is it?’ Suzy muttered, rolling her eyes.

Cassie shrugged. ‘I’ve not been able to get off the estate for over a month now,’ she said, getting up and walking over to the wardrobe. ‘And anyway, Gil always liked this black velvet dress that I bought a few years ago for New Year. I’ve probably only worn it three or four times.’ She held it against herself – knee-length, off the shoulder with a velvet rose centrepiece. ‘It
is
Laura Ashley.’

‘Laura . . .’ Anouk mouthed, looking aghast at Suzy.

‘Hey, I know it doesn’t look anything on the hanger, but honestly, when it’s on . . .’ She caught sight of Suzy’s sceptical expression. ‘Look, I’ll put it on now. Then you’ll see it’s not so bad.’ She wriggled out of her dressing gown just as the door burst open.

Kelly took one look at Cassie in her once-white Playtex bra and baggy knickers and her jaw dropped. ‘Oh my God! It’s worse than I thought.’

Cassie shrieked and bounded over, swamping Kelly in a delighted hug.

Anouk picked up the velvet dress, grimacing. ‘It is
so
much worse than you thought,’ she said to Kelly, who was peering at her over Cassie’s shoulder. She threw the dress down on the bed and lit a cigarette.

Suzy poured a fresh glass of champagne and sauntered over, waiting for Cassie to release Kelly. ‘You’re still a stranger to colour, I see,’ she tutted, handing Kelly the glass and kissing her affectionately. ‘And you’ve lost weight. You’re too thin.’

‘There’s no such thing,’ Anouk purred, holding her cigarette behind her as she kissed Kelly on each cheek.

‘Exactly,’ Kelly agreed. They’d always been partners in crime and were both rampantly, defiantly single and at the height of their seductive powers. They even looked similar. Kelly was also a shimmering brunette, though her hair was reed-straight and longer than Anouk’s, her nose more retroussé, her eyes hazelnut-coloured and almond-shaped.

‘I see I’ve come at just the right time,’ said Kelly, taking Cassie by the shoulders and giving her a Paddington Bearlike hard stare. ‘What the hell are you doing to Anouk?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She’s French, Cass. You can’t walk around in underwear like that. She doesn’t have the constitution for it.’

‘Well . . . I . . . But . . .’ she stammered, looking between her tragic bra and Anouk, who had one hand on her hip and one eyebrow raised to heaven. ‘Well,
Gil
doesn’t mind,’ she blustered.

‘Honey, right this instant, it’s a
mystery
to me how you two have got to ten years together.’ Kelly took a sip of her drink. ‘You’d be kicked out of bed in Manhattan!’

‘Institutionalized in Paris,’ Anouk drawled.

Cassie looked to Suzy for the final nail in the coffin. ‘Sorry, sweets,’ she shrugged. ‘Can’t help you. London’s definitely not calling.’

‘Urrrgh, you’re a nightmare, the lot of you,’ Cassie said defensively, reaching for the towelling dressing gown heaped on the floor. ‘I’d forgotten how high-maintenance you all are. I don’t know how your men put up with you.’

She hated it when they ganged up on her like this. They might all live in different countries and be products of different cultures, but it seemed as though ‘sophistication’ was an international language that linked her glamorous, urbane friends together. It wasn’t as if their day-to-day lives overlapped: Kelly had her own fashion PR consultancy in Manhattan, Suzy was a high-octane wedding planner in London and Anouk was a sought-after jewellery designer in Paris, who refused to sell through boutiques and would only accept new customers if they had contacts with at least three of her existing clients. And yet the three of them invariably used the same miracle moisturizer, carried the same Balenciaga bag, read the newspaper on their iPad and minimized their bottom in MiH jeans.

‘Hey, chill – it’s not like I’m surprised, or even disappointed,’ Kelly said, winking as she unzipped her overnight bag and pulled out a petal-pink tissue-wrapped bundle. ‘Because I just so happen to have a little gift for you.’

Cassie took it gingerly, looking slightly afraid of what she might find in there. She shook open the paper and a midnight-blue silk dress slid out. ‘Oh! What a beautiful nightie!” she exclaimed, running her hand over the fabric, her indignation instantly forgotten.

The others burst out laughing.

‘Shall I wear it tonight?’ she asked coquettishly, holding it against herself.

‘Oh, you’ll wear it tonight, all right,’ Kelly laughed. ‘But to the
party
. This ain’t no nightie!’

‘What?’ Cassie said, alarmed. ‘But it’s so . . . skimpy. Gil would be mortified if I . . .’

‘
Au contraire
, Gil will be delighted to see his wife look so alluring,’ Anouk asserted. ‘Put it on.’

Knowing she had no choice in the matter, Cassie slid the dress over her head. The silk felt exquisite next to her skin and she noticed, now that it was on, two tiny lace peekaboo crescents arced over her hips. A tiny but incredibly sexy detail.

‘Wow!’ Suzy gasped.

‘New season?’ Anouk asked Kelly.

Kelly nodded. ‘Bebe Washington label. Gisele’s walking in it in the show in a few weeks.’

‘I want it,’ Anouk purred.

‘You shall have it. Got anything special in mind?’ Kelly asked.

‘Oh yes,’ Anouk said, refusing to elaborate.

Cassie couldn’t stop looking at herself in the mirror. She looked so . . . different. Not like herself, somehow. She wasn’t sure what Gil would say, despite the girls’ assurances. She looked at the clock. Seven-thirty. Outside, the piper had started playing, beckoning the revellers towards the Lammermuir estate as he paced solemnly back and forth across the lawn.

She wondered whether Wiz would be able to get here early. She’d said she would try.
Wiz
’d tell it to her straight. After all, she was her go-to friend up here, her rock, her lunch companion and closest confidante – the one who’d taken her under her wing when she’d first arrived, not yet twenty-one, fresh from the air-conditioned climes of expat living in Hong Kong and new to the nuances of grouse-moor farming.

She looked down at the trio of childhood friends who were sitting together in a gaggle on the floor, examining a heap of shoes that had been upended from one of Anouk’s many bags. Their friendship had been arranged practically before their births. Their fathers had all been CEOs of the multi-national cosmetics conglomerate Neroli – Kelly’s for the Americas in New York; Anouk’s for Europe, excluding the UK, in Paris; Suzy’s for the UK in London; and Cassie’s for Asia in Hong Kong. Before the girls were even born, their mothers had all been good friends, meeting regularly around the world for coffee and shopping trips as they accompanied their husbands to AGMs and conferences. And when the girls had been born, all in the same year – surely a collaboration by their mothers? – the friendship was handed down a generation as they shared crèches, rattles and nannies. Their parents couldn’t have been remotely surprised when, aged thirteen, the girls mounted a pressure group to be sent to the same boarding school in England, and they’d enjoyed five blissful years together, as close as sisters, sleeping in the same dorm, playing in the same lacrosse team, swooning over the same boys . . . until Cassie had blown it.

Perhaps ‘blown it’ was too harsh, but she’d always had the feeling that by marrying Gil so early, she’d popped their sealed bubble. She’d met him at the Grosvenor House Ball in London and he’d swept her off her feet, not just with his extraordinary confidence and intelligence, but more particularly with his voice: crystal-cut with a whisper-soft burr. She would do anything for that voice – it had seduced her away from her virginity, taken her away from her friends, made her wait for the baby she yearned for . . .

There was a knock at the door.

‘Cassie?’ Talk of the devil.

Cassie’s eyes widened in panic. He couldn’t see her looking like this – half-dressed in a nightie over her ‘grubby’ underwear with no make-up on.

The girls clearly had the same thought and sprang up off the floor to group around her like a footballer’s wall, just as Gil peered in. He took in the scene of desolation – the empty cake box, the half-drunk bottles of champagne, the piles of shoes, the dresses on the beds and the huddle of women, two of them in identikit towelling robes and hair turbans.

‘I thought I’d find all of you in the one room together. Heaven forbid you should get ready in
your own rooms,’
he quipped.

He stepped into the room, looking relieved that everyone was ‘decent’. He was already dressed for the festivities, wearing a bottle-green velvet smoking jacket and trousers in the family’s dress tartan. His sharp, hawkish features – which always looked so intimidating in his barrister’s gown and wig – were softened by the anticipation of the night’s revelries.

‘You’ve put me in the Faerie Room, Gil,’ Suzy said accusingly, hands on hips. ‘Don’t think I’ve forgotten that’s the one that’s haunted. You weren’t the only one who didn’t sleep a wink on your wedding night.’

Gil laughed softly at her allusion to the lap-dancing pole the girls had put up in his room. ‘I’m sorry Archie couldn’t make it this weekend. It would have been good to see him.’

‘Well, you’re not as sorry as he is,’ Suzy replied on behalf of her errant husband. ‘Camel racing with clients in Abu Dhabi is not his definition of a good time. The poor boy’s terrified. I had to give him the beta blockers I keep on standby for my nervous brides.’

Gil chortled and looked at Kelly, dressed top to toe in black – the only one who didn’t look as if she was staying at a spa. ‘And how was your flight, Kelly?’

‘Oh, you know . . . a supermodel in full tantrum in front, a drunk sleeping on my shoulder and an air hostess with rage issues. The usual,’ she said drily.

He looked at the women clustered around Cassie, whose blonde curls were poking out from the middle of them. ‘Why’re you all standing like that around my wife?’ he asked suspiciously. ‘You haven’t done anything to her, have you?’

‘No. We’re just getting her ready,’ Suzy said quickly.

‘It looks like you’ve got her so drunk she can’t stand.’

‘
Non!
’ said Anouk.

‘It’s just bad luck for you to see her before it’s time,’ Kelly explained.

‘It’s bad luck for me to see her in her wedding dress,’ he said, frowning. ‘Not at the anniversary party
ten years later.
’

‘Pah! You say tom-
aaaah-
to, I say tom-
ay
-to,’ Kelly argued, making him grin.

‘Fine,’ he said, holding his hands up in defeat. He stood on tiptoe, trying to catch sight of his wife. ‘Well, just so you know, darling, our guests are arriving.’

Cassie nodded from behind the wall of friends. ‘Ten minutes.’

‘Uh-huh,’ he said knowingly, backing out of the room. ‘I’d like to see the odds they’re offering for that.’ He shut the door on the telltale sounds of women in a rush – zips opening, wardrobe doors banging, the shower running. It was going to be half an hour, minimum.

Cassie was still looking at herself in the mirror when Kelly got out of the shower. ‘You can see my knickers through this dress,’ she hissed, panicking. She knew the girls were going to make her wear the dress, and that Gil would disapprove. The girls knew it too – why else would they have hidden her from him?

‘Don’t wear any,’ Anouk said across the room as she applied her eyeliner.

Cassie looked at her in horror.

‘I’ve already thought of that,’ Kelly said, going over to her bag and throwing a plastic packet on the bed. ‘Flesh-coloured too.’

Cassie picked it up. ‘Spanx? What’s that?’

Everyone rolled their eyes. ‘Sausage knickers, Cass!’ Suzy said. ‘They hold your fat bits in and give you a smooth line under the dress. I make all my brides in bias-cut wear them.’

‘What shoes have you got?’ Kelly asked, already dreading the answer. Don’t say pumps. Don’t say—

‘I’ve got some nice kitten heels I bought in the L.K. Bennett sale last Christmas.’ There was a heavy silence. ‘What? They’re my best ones.’

Anouk sighed and went to the jumble of shoes in the middle of the floor. She picked up a strappy gold Louboutin with a four-inch heel. ‘Try that. We’re the same size.’

‘Oh, you have got to be joking. I don’t wear anything higher than a welly-boot all year round. You can’t seriously expect me to get down the staircase in those. I’d have to slide down the banisters.’