Flawless (9 page)

A sweet kid but highly intelligent and consequently easily bored, Nancy also suffered from being the only child of very wealthy, older parents who spoiled her with material things but left her too much in the care of nannies and were far too overprotective. Yearning for freedom and adventure of the sort she read about constantly in books, Nancy spent much of her early life giving her nannies the slip and running off on her own into the Manhattan streets that became her private playground.

To say that St. Clement’s came as a shock, with its rigid rules and routine, revolting food, and subzero dormitories, would be a serious understatement. She contemplated running away, but Scarlett soon convinced her that there was really nowhere to go—Inverness had little to offer in terms of urban excitements. They would simply have to rely on each other’s company and make their own excitement, tormenting their poor teachers with a litany of pranks and amusing their classmates with tales of their latest misbehavior.

Somehow both girls made it through to graduation without being expelled, and both achieved creditable grades. After Scarlett went to London to model, Nancy raced delightedly back to the States to study journalism at NYU, and the two girls lost touch for a while. But when they reconnected a few years ago, it was as if nothing had changed. Scarlett might now be a hotshot designer and Nancy an up-and-coming Hollywood screenwriter, but at heart they were still the same two mischievous misfits they’d been at school.

“What do you think?”

Nancy had poured herself into a pillar-box-red dress with a ruffled train that clung to her curves like shrink-wrap. All she needed was the beauty spot and little-girl voice and she’d be the spitting image of Marilyn Monroe.

“I think the rest of us might as well not bother,” said Scarlett, truthfully. “You’ll outsex every woman there by a hundred to one.”

“Good,” said Nancy, beaming. “I’m tired of being single, and I’m tired of living in a city where most women’s idea of dressing up is wearing a visible diamante thong with their Juicy sweatpants. I mean, if you can’t go to town at Tiffany’s, right?”

“Right,” said Scarlett. She, too, was tired of being single. She hadn’t had a date since October, and that was a disaster, as the guy had turned out to be married. But between Bijoux and her Trade Fair commitments, there never seemed enough time to look for suitable men. It didn’t help that most guys in
the diamond business were sharper than razor blades and about as trustworthy as John Edwards at a campaign stop. Certainly she didn’t hold out much hope of breaking her romantic losing streak tonight.

The original Tiffany store on Fifth Avenue at Fifty-Seventh Street was such an iconic New York landmark, forever associated with Audrey Hepburn and the glamour of the
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
days, that the decision to open a second Manhattan location featuring younger, hipper designers sent shockwaves through both the jewelry industry and the city. Plans for the new store, its interior and layout, had been more closely guarded than the Kremlin’s nuclear defense procedures, so there was much excitement and anticipation surrounding today’s grand unveiling.

Not until six p.m. were the brown hoardings masking the building at last removed and the red carpet rolled out onto the sidewalk. A huge swath of Madison Avenue had already been cordoned off by this time, as police struggled to hold back the swelling crowd of press and civilian gawkers who’d come to watch the first big celebrity party of the year get under way.

They weren’t disappointed. By six fifteen, a steady stream of limousines was arriving, discharging their famous occupants onto the sidewalk from where, after a quick red-carpet twirl and wave, they’d disappear into the sumptuous new building. Actors, singers, politicians, and a smattering of A-list socialites swarmed into the atrium one after another, mingling with the unknown but usually infinitely wealthier scions of the diamond business, be they producers, dealers, or buyers.

Scarlett, with her designer’s eye, was more struck by the astonishing array of pieces on display in open, laser-alarmed cases, and by the beauty of the store itself, than by the star-studded guest list.

“Have you seen what they’ve done with the light in this foyer?” she gasped admiringly to Nancy. “It’s like standing in the center of a princess-cut diamond and working one’s way out. Each of those anterooms is like one of the facets, do you see?”

“I’ll tell you what
I
see,” said Nancy. “I see George Clooney standing by the bar on his own. I’m gonna try and score a date.”

Once again, Scarlett marveled at her friend’s limitless confidence as she watched her sashay across the marble floor, Louboutin heels clacking and red satin bottom wiggling sexily like Jessica Rabbit. Still, why not? She looked so jaw-droppingly fabulous tonight, Gorgeous George might just have met his match.

Feeling distinctly less fabulous herself—she’d plumped for the gypsy skirt, which was divine but more girlie than sexy, a white ruffled peasant blouse, and flat, jeweled sandals—she lingered a little longer over the jewelry cases by herself before finally steeling herself to go and mingle. Small talk had never been a forte, but there were influential people here who could really help her with her Trade Fair campaign. She’d kick herself in the morning if she hadn’t plucked up the courage to talk to any of them.

Meanwhile, in a busy corner of the mezzanine level, Diana O’Donnell was nodding absently at the South African woman talking to her, wishing she were anywhere but here. Brogan had insisted she come tonight, practically marched her here at gunpoint, but all she could think about was the tiny fertilized egg that was right now working its way out of her body, unable to cling onto life. The doctors were forever telling her not to personalize things.

“Don’t think of it as a baby, Mrs. O’Donnell,” they said. “It’s really only a tiny ball of cells, nothing more.”

But to Diana it was much, much more. It was a child; her child. Each of those tiny fertilized specks contained within it the entire sum of her hopes for the future. Losing one felt like having her heart ripped out, and it got worse every time.

“I said to Michael the day I married him,” the South African woman was saying in her piercing Afrikaans accent, “I said, ‘Michael, I don’t care how many diamonds you sell, or how many millions you make. I will
not
share my bed with your
bloody
mobile phone.’ He’s pretty good about it most of the time, but you know what the New Year’s like in our business: hectic, hectic, hectic.” She laughed, looking to Diana for affirmation, and Diana dutifully laughed back.

“Is Brogan addicted to his BlackBerry as well?” asked the woman, grabbing a passing waiter and helping herself to a caviar-and-quail’s-egg blini, which she dispatched into the recesses of her ample stomach in under a second. She really was a remarkably unattractive girl, thought Diana. Like a female sumo wrestler, if female sumo wrestlers got to be sponsored by Ungaro. Then again, her husband, a squat toad of a man deep in conversation with Brogan, was no oil painting either.

“BlackBerry addiction is the least of my husband’s problems,” rejoined Diana, sadly. Then, realizing she might have said too much, added, “But all successful men love their work, don’t they? I think that great, overwhelming drive must be part of their appeal.”

Downstairs on the ground floor, an eight-piece jazz band struck up the first chords of “Night and Day.” A few brave couples drifted idly onto the makeshift dance floor, but most remained glued to the various bars, raising their voices to be able to continue their conversations about how much x stone sold for at auction, or exactly what the markup was on some of the more outrageous Tiffany pieces.

“You’re paying for the name, of course,” Danny Meyer was explaining to a busty television actress, the star of NBC’s latest mobster drama, as he handed her a mojito. “Half of these pieces are semiprecious, but the prices are gemstone all the way.”

“You think you can do me a better deal?” the girl asked flirtatiously. He was a little short, but she adored his confidence and
had already decided that his North London accent was the sexiest thing she’d heard in years. He was definitely more interesting than the standard-issue New York suits who usually asked her out.

“Sweetheart, trust me; I can do you a
much
better deal. I’m purely a diamond man myself, but I work with some of the best private jewelers in the city, real craftsmen. Any of this lot, half price,” he said, sweeping his arm in the general direction of the glass cases surrounding them, much as a market trader might wave away a competitor’s inferior stall of bananas.

“Don’t believe a word he says.” Jake, vulgarly resplendent in a cream Miami Vice suit with a big seventies collar, pink shirt, and silver Sean John silk tie, appeared behind his brother like a grinning ghost. “He’ll rob you blind soon as look at you, won’t you, Dan?”

“Annalise, this is my twin brother, Jake,” said Danny, rolling his eyes melodramatically. “And if you can trust a man in a suit that loud, you deserve to get done over.”

“Hi,” said Annalise, thinking how much she would enjoy being “done over” by Jake or Danny, or perhaps even both of them together. “Your brother here’s been trying to talk me out of buying from Tiffany.”

“I should think so too,” said Jake, reaching across her to grab a mojito of his own. “We’re Jewish, you see. Paying retail’s against our religion. Have you seen who’s here tonight, Dan?”

Danny laughed. “Everyone’s here. Can you be a bit more specific?”

“Up there, boring the tits off Michael Beerens from Cuypers.” He pointed up at Brogan, at the same time puffing out his chest and brilliantly mimicking the great man’s wide-legged stance and self-important, Julius-Caesar-addressing-the-troops posture. “Silly twat. He really thinks he’s Tony fucking Soprano, doesn’t he?”

Annalise giggled. “Who is he?”

“A dirtbag,” said Jake.

“More like a dirt king,” explained Danny. “Brogan O’Donnell. He’s worth billions of dollars. Owns a bunch of diamond mines in Russia and a load of other businesses, mostly in Africa: model agencies, property development companies. Last I heard he was cleaning up in real estate in Cape Town.”

“He’s a dick, though,” said Jake. “Loves the sound of his own voice, always running round town with models on his arm, girls half his age.”

“You can talk!” said Danny. “Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.”

“I’m not married. Or old,” said Jake defensively. “Brogan must be fifty if he’s a day. I reckon he’s had a Michael Douglas eye job since we last saw him and all. Shall we go and take a closer look?”

“In a minute,” said Danny, who wanted to be left alone to get back to the serious business of chatting up Annalise. “Looks like he’s already being accosted at the moment. Hey, hang on? Don’t we know that girl?”

“The one in the gypsy skirt?” said Annalise, curiously. “I noticed her earlier. There’s something very striking about her, don’t you think?”

Jake looked up and saw Scarlett, her chiseled, beautiful face clouded as usual by a furious expression of righteous indignation, like a schoolgirl who’d just been given an unfair mark on her chemistry test. The flouncy shirt and skirt she was wearing didn’t do much to accentuate her to-die-for figure—at last year’s ball in Amsterdam she’d been dressed to kill in a clinging gold Shirley Bassey number that still haunted his dreams—and yet Annalise was right. There
was
something striking about her, even among all tonight’s perfectly coiffed and polished Park Avenue princesses. Or perhaps
especially
among them. Scarlett Drummond Murray was that rare thing, a natural beauty, even if she did do herself up to look like a Scottish flight attendant.

“Yeah, we know her,” he said. “She’s that jewelry designer from Notting Hill who wants to save the world, remember? Bono in a bra. We met her in Amsterdam.”

He wondered what Scarlett wanted with Brogan O’Donnell, of all people. It was clear from her stern, determined face that, whatever was on her mind, she was about to give the poor sod a piece of it.

“Come on,” he said gleefully, grabbing Annalise by the hand and pulling Danny along with her. Jake loved a good scene. “Let’s get a ringside seat before the fireworks start.”