Simply Divine (30 page)

'Uuurrggghh,' Everyone was suddenly distracted by a profound groan coming from Oonagh's direction. Head bent over the lightbox, she was examining a set of wedding photographs for the social pages. All that inherited wealth and not one of them seems to own a full-length mirror,' wailed Oonagh, holding one of the offending images between her finger and thumb as if it was something very nasty indeed. 'This poor woman's hat looks as if a poodles

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died on top of her head. And look at all that jewellery. And that
food. Pork chops
for goodness' sake. Talk about swine before pearls.'

'Whose wedding was it?' asked Tish.

'Pandora Smellie-Lewes,' sighed Oonagh. 'She's married someone called Conte Juan Paz de Barcelona de Co] ones de Soto.'

'Who everyone knows doesn't have a bean,' said Tash, 'but poor Dora was
so
desperate to marry a title. Talk about a wannabe.'

'You mean a Juannabe,' snorted Tosh.

Jane was relieved that Victoria, so far, had not made an appearance.

'I'm not sure we'll be seeing Victoria today,' said Tish as if reading her mind. 'Hermione's had a relapse.'

'Hermione?' asked Jane. 'That's not one of her children, is it?' Visions of a distraught Victoria bending over the bed of a sick child flashed before her. Her soft heart dissolved with pity, with a powerful slug of guilt. How
could she
have said all those things about poor Victoria to Archie Fitzherbert?

'No, Hermione's her daughter's kitten,' said Tish breezily. 'Had to be rushed to hospital with a suspected ingrowing toenail or something. But she's fine now. Has a private room with her own nurse. I've sent some flowers from all of us. A card is going round the office for everyone to sign.'

'I see,' Jane blinked. 'Well, anyway, Tish, perhaps you could give me a hand with this interview request. I need to get it out today. Could you type it for me?' She handed a scribbled sheet of paper to the secretary, whose attention was now focused on painting each nail a different colour. She looked up from the paper to Jane in astonishment.

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'I don't do much typing, actually,' she drawled in what, for her, passed for surprise.

'She's not the type,' said Tash, standing at the fax.

Jane raised an eyebrow and opened a file on her computer to type the letter herself. It was a request to Lily Eyre's agent for an interview. Common ankles or not, Jane was determined that
Fabulous
should do something about the pretty actress before everybody else did. As she typed the opening sentence, her telephone rang.

'Hello,' said an American voice. Jane froze as she recognised the businesslike tones of Mark Stackable.

'Hi,' muttered Jane in astonishment. What on earth did he want? Surely having seen her covered in undigested food for the second time was enough to put him off seeking her company for ever.

Apparently not. 'I wondered whether you might be free for dinner tonight?' he said. 'It strikes me that we haven't managed to have a proper conversation yet.'

'Er, yes, I mean no, we haven't,' Jane said, amazed. 'I mean yes, I'd love to.'

'I've booked a table at Ninja,' said Mark. Ninja was a wildly expensive new Japanese restaurant where only the eye-wideningly rich or universally famous had a hope of being admitted. Nonetheless, Jane was surprised at his choice. After the CTM fiasco, one might have imagined Mark would want to give exotic food a rest for the moment.

'Look, I've got to dash,' he said briskly. 'Bit of a salmon day. Meet you in the Ninja bar at eight thirty, OK?' The line went dead.

It was nice, Jane thought, to be in the hands of someone decisive for a change. But that, she determined, was as far as
Mark's
hands were
going to get. At least, until
the

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question of how well he knew Champagne had been satisfactorily explained.

Ninja was one of those irritating restaurants which didn't bother having a sign outside, presumably on the grounds that the people who mattered knew where it was anyway, and those who didn't simply didn't matter. Jane realised she must be in the latter category, after spending ten heart-stopping minutes rushing up and down the street before finally realising the stark, anonymous, utterly signless black glass doors that looked exactly like an office were in fact the portals of Ninja.

There was no sign of Mark in the bar, which was of the minimalist, understated persuasion that looked far better without people. Anyone, however smart, who dared sit on one of its perfectly-aligned beige-covered stools ran the risk of making the place look hopelessly untidy. Intimidated, Jane decided to powder her nose instead.

Signs, it seemed, were not Ninja's strong point. Squinting at the tiny sexless figure on the black marble lavatory door, Jane assumed it was the ladies until she suddenly found herself in the men's. Ricocheting into the women's room, Jane looked at her appearance in despair. The faithful old black jacket and trousers were showing distinct signs of wear and tear; she had realised too late that her only other suit, along with the remains of Tiara's ballgown, was at the cleaners. 'I don't even have any clothes of my own,' she grumbled to herself. 'I just rent them from Sketchley's.'

She had done her best with her floppy, insubordinate locks, but it was still less of a hair-do than a hair-don't. It collapsed in a vague bob about her shoulders, perfumed with the smell of the sandwich bar in which she had queued at lunchtime. Why was it, Jane wondered, that her scent

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faded into nothing only a few minutes after application, while the odour of fried bacon and chips clung on more determinedly than the Ancient Mariners albatross?

It took her a good few minutes to find her way out of the loos. The doors were innocent of anything as cumbersome or unaesthetic as a handle, and Jane scrabbled at panel after relentless panel of shining black marble before finding the one that opened. When, red-faced and flustered, she arrived back in the bar, Mark was sitting in the corner, talking urgently into the smallest mobile phone she had ever seen.

'Look, I'll have to get back to you tomorrow,' she heard him say as she approached. 'I'm late for a meeting now, so I have to go.
Ciao.
Hi there,' he grinned, snapping his mobile away. 'Krug?'

'Yes, please,' Jane nodded, shifting her bottom on to one of the tiny beige stool cushions.

'Shame you had to leave the party,' Mark said.

'Yes, wasn't it?' said Jane, thinking that it was more of a shame Champagne had seen fit to throw a trayful of chicken tikka masala all over her.

'How do you know Champagne?' she asked. There seemed no point in beating about the bush.

'Known her for years,' Mark said breezily. 'Her family's been with Goldman's practically since it started. Nice girl. Knows an awful lot about money.'

A waiter of inscrutable Orientalness came to escort them to their table. Jane decided not to pursue her inquiries further. Why spoil the evening by discussing Champagne? Better stick to drinking it. And what did it matter anyway? What was Mark Stackable to her? There was only one man she really cared about, and she could never find him now.

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At some unseen signal from Mark, the waiter shimmied over with two more chilled glasses of champagne. Jane tried hard not to knock them over as she struggled to push aside with her knees the several layers of thick, white starched linen under the table. It was the type of restaurant where sitting down was like getting into bed.

Mark, buried in the menu, suddenly began to make a succession of noises of mixed agony and surprise which the waiter began to note down. He was, Jane realised, ordering in fluent Japanese.

Til have the same,' she smiled at the waiter, who looked back at her impassively.

'I've already ordered for you,' Mark said, snapping the menu shut. 'I used to work in Japan,' he added airily, 'so I like to get it out and dust it down every now and then.'

'Do you now?' grinned Jane.

Mark, however, did not smile. It dawned on Jane that perhaps his sense of humour was not his strongest point after all. Then again, he was so good-looking, it was probably greedy asking him to be funny as well.

A wooden board of sushi arrived and was placed on the table between them. Jane stared at the neatly arranged diagonals of cold fish and rolled rice and felt her appetite desert her. What she wouldn't give for a vast, steaming plate of spaghetti.

'It's very difficult to find food in London that doesn't destroy your body, don't you find?' Mark observed, plucking his sushi elegantly between tiny chopsticks and dipping it expertly into a bowl of spy sauce. Determinedly Jane nodded, shoved a piece of sushi in her mouth and swallowed it as quickly as possible.

'How was your salmon day?' she asked.

Mark raised his eyebrows and made Tm eating sushi'

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gestures. 'Oh, fine,' he said when his mouth was empty. 'Not too many CLMs in the end.' Mark glanced at her uncomprehending face a trifle impatiently. 'Career limiting manoeuvres?'

Jane noticed that everything he said ended with a strange, upward, interrogative note that made each sentence sound like a question, even when, as almost always, it wasn't.

'Best overcome and remedied by efficient blamestorming and arsemosis?' said Mark. 'Blamestorming,' he explained, rather tersely, 'is like brainstorming, but the idea is to find some other guy to blame for when everything goes wrong?'

Jane giggled nervously, hoping he wasn't going to do the corporate talk all night. She knew nothing about the financial world. Her idea of a bear market was the cuddly toy section at Hamley's.

Mark gestured to the waiter to fill up her glass again. 'I can see I'm going to have to teach you a thing or two about the City?' he remarked, reading her thoughts alarmingly easily. 'Do you, for example,' he asked, shoving in a mouthful of rice and seaweed, 'know about leverage?'

Mark's mobile phone shrilled just as she was about to confess that she didn't. Flashing her a terse look which Jane interpreted as 'This is important so you'll have to excuse me?' Mark got up quickly and walked to the bar, his heels clicking on the marble like Fred Astaire.

After what seemed an eternity, Mark clicked back again. 'Sorry, but I'm afraid I'm involved in a pretty mega project at the moment?' he said. Jane was beginning to find his note of permanent inquiry maddening. 'Big bucks, if it comes off?'

Mark's eyes, Jane noticed, positively blazed at the mention of money. Perhaps the City was exciting after all.

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Being rich
must
be interesting. It struck her as strange that, although he ended each of his statements with a question mark, Mark had yet to ask her a single question about herself. She hadn't noticed before, being too drunk the first time she had met him, and not having had time

the second, but his mind, she -was beginning to realise,

had a strangely incurious cast. The only thing he seemed to be interested in was interest.

She laid down her chopsticks and drank the rest of her champagne. The room was starting to spin faster than Alastair Campbell.

'I'm not too hungry either?' Mark said, noticing Jane had stopped eating. 'Too much at lunchtime?' he added, patting his perfectly flat stomach. 'Tell you what, why don't you come back to my flat for, um, a peppermint tea? It's just around the corner?'

A corner half an hour away by taxi in the depths of Clerkenwell, as it turned out. Jane could have lived in the entrance hall of Mark's apartment block alone, she thought as she was ushered through the gleaming, concept-lit brick-lined space which seemed very different to the chandeliers-and-gilt-lobby she remembered going back to after Amanda's dinner party.

It was. 'Like it?' said Mark as they zoomed upwards. *My new loft apartment. It's awesome. So cool. I've only been here a week or so.'

'When did you move?' asked Jane. She felt embarrassed. She had been meaning to move for months and hadn't done as much as look in an estate agent's window.

'Last week?' said Mark. 'I saw this place after a meeting and just had to have it. I had to get out of Cheyne Walk. There's no buzz there any more?'

Almost as soon as they had closed, the lift doors sprung

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open again, straight into a vast, light room which Jane realised must be the sitting room. 'Yeah, the lift opens straight into the flat?' said Mark. 'Cool, huh?'

It was completely empty apart from two colossal white sofas which faced each other, as if squaring up for a sumo wrestling match, over a huge expanse of polished, honey-coloured wood. Behind them, a spiral staircase of the same wood wound up and away into the ceiling, and, further back still, two huge windows covered with thin-slatted Venetian blinds stretched film-noir-like to the floor. On a glass coffee table between the two sofas, a single white lily rose from a huge glass flowerpot. It was the barest room Jane had ever seen.

'Space,' Mark said, spreading his arms and grinning at her eagerly. 'The ultimate luxury, don't you think?'

Jane managed a smile. The discovery that Mark's idea of a good thing was basically thin air was not encouraging.

'And this is the cuisine,' said Mark, leading her into a vast white kitchen illuminated by a sloping glass roof. Its expanses of stainless steel and smooth white surfaces were more suggestive of an operating theatre than anything to do with eating. The vast fridge, which Mark proudly opened to show how it was shaped like a huge mobile phone, was bristling with ice-makers and water dispensers. Definitely a fridge too far, thought Jane. The front of the stove had so many buttons and lights it looked like the flight deck of Concorde. 'Not that I use it?' Mark confessed, mock-embarrassed. 'Haven't eaten in for, gee, must be five years?' he added proudly.