A Time for Friends

and only time she’d mitched off school with a friend one wintry December day, when they had gone to see the first Star Trek movie on a weekday afternoon, so desperately infatuated with Mr Spock and Captain Kirk they couldn’t wait until the weekend. The movie had been disappointing, she remembered, with none of the humour and panache of the TV series; nevertheless it had been beyond exciting sitting in the darkened cinema with all the other devoted Trekkies, watching a shot of the USS Enterprise fill the huge wide screen of the Savoy. A sense of decadent exhilaration had filled her then, as she thought of her fellow classmates stuck at their desks studying geometry, and a similar feeling of decadent self-indulgence enveloped her today, lying in bed after midday on a Saturday when there was so much to be done. Let them at it, Hilary thought languorously as the words blurred on the page. She was stepping away from life’s daily grind for once, and if they weren’t careful she’d take tomorrow off as well.

C

HAPTER

T

WENTY

-T

HREE

Colette stretched cat-like on the luxurious emerald-green cushions on her lounger and gazed at the fine white silky sands and the translucent turquoise waters of the Caribbean. She was alone. Delightfully, desirably solitary at last. Jazzy was at boarding school. Her husband and, most thankfully, their house guests had flown back to New York on the private jet Des had hired to fly them all down to Turks and Caicos for the weekend. She’d had a stress headache since the previous night that had only begun to ease when the limos had pulled away from the villa and disappeared round the curve of road on Grace Bay that led to Providenciales Airport.

She glanced at her diamond-encrusted Baby Graff watch. The plane should be taking off in the next few minutes and the relief she felt at not being on it couldn’t be described. She was taking a scheduled flight in two days’ time to JFK via Miami, first-class of course. ‘I need that time to myself, Des,’ she’d insisted when he’d pointed out how expensive it was to hire a private jet, and a luxury villa in TCI, and then have to pay for a first-class flight back to New York when there was no need.

‘I don’t care, I’ll pay it out of my own money,’ she retorted. ‘And that’s rich to say that to me, considering you were talking about hiring the Gulf Stream, which is way, way more expensive than the Bombadier,’ she snapped. ‘That’s crazy money you’re spending on those stuck-up Wasps.’

‘Look you have to spend money to get money. You know what these people are like. It’s all about the image. Don’t forget Chuck Freemont knows Bernie Madoff and Steve Cohen personally. These are the biggest big cheeses in wealth and hedge fund management you could meet and I want an introduction. If you think we’re doing OK now, babes, we will be on the pig’s back when we start investing with these guys.’ Her husband’s eyes gleamed with anticipation.

‘I know who they are,’ she retorted. ‘I read the Journal of Finance and the Wall Street Journal too,’ she added tartly, irritated that Des sometimes forgot that she wasn’t some ditzy blonde airhead who was only interested in lunching with the ‘girls’.

‘Well then you know that Cohen’s SAC had 70 per cent returns riding the high-tech wave last year and the year before. 70 per cent, Colette. The guy’s a financial genius! I want to work with him! Madoff’s another one; the returns on his investments are high, high, high! Hell, some of my clients can retire because of the fortunes his company has made for them,’ Des retorted. ‘I’ve worked my butt off for the last ten years and climbed higher than I ever thought we would over here, and now it’s time to make a killing and if your pa had any sense he’d listen to me and invest a million with Madoff.’

‘Des, we’ve had this conversation before. None of the major Wall Street firms invest with him, none of the major derivatives firms trade with him. They think his numbers don’t add up and he’s not legit. I’m warning you, don’t risk our money and all we’ve worked for on a gamble with him.’

‘For crying out loud, he’s a former non-executive chairman of NASDAQ . He runs a multibillion-dollar operation. Of course he’s legit. You’re dad’s a wuss not to take an opportunity if it comes his way and so would I be,’ Des scoffed.

‘Whatever, Des, just play it safe,’ Colette said wearily.

‘Colette, did you ever think we would be living in a swanky apartment on the Upper East Side, or own a condo in Aspen, and three villas to let in Florida, or have a house in Nantucket, or a share portfolio that would make your pa’s eyes water? Have I not managed our investments very well over the years?’

‘I suppose so,’ she conceded. ‘And we’re doing fine, so why do we need to be inviting these’ – she was tempted to call them freeloaders, but he would go ballistic – ‘these acquaintances, on a weekend trip that’s costing a fortune? I mean spending over a hundred thou for a weekend’s entertaining is way over the top.’

‘Contacts, honey, contacts. Money is no object to them – we must let them see it’s no object to us. Perception is everything. It’s time to take it up to the next level. This weekend will pay for itself one hundred times over, for the contacts we will make, trust me,’ he said expansively.

Her husband was right: contacts were everything, Colette admitted. Mixing in the right circles opened doors that led to opportunities that they had taken every advantage of. The first few years of their