It amazed Colette how the Americans adored the Royal Family and she had put that awe to impressive use when she had showed society matrons photos of Kensington Palace and the Orangery and formal gardens, and more or less implied that she had met Princess Diana and other royals who ‘lived just down the road from her in Kensington’, and who ‘dropped into’ Dickon and Austen’s to buy paintings and sculptures.
When the shocking news broke that the Princess had died in a car crash in Paris, she had received many calls from her American acquaintances and friends expressing their shock, dismay and grief. Indeed, Colette had been, like millions, stunned at the news. She had held a discreet ‘memorial lunch’ on the day of the funeral to which she had invited the guests she and Des had decided were most useful and influential. Gratifyingly when word got out that she was hosting such a lunch an invite became quite the prize.
Dressed in a Chanel LBD and her highest Louboutins, and wearing a single piece of jewellery – a gold Paloma Picasso necklace – she had welcomed her guests to view the funeral on their enormous TV. Her maid had served Cristal champagne with beluga caviar, and Perugian white truffles, and, for afters, delectable petits fours from Duane Park Patisserie in Tribeca, an occasion of sin Colette had happened upon when she had first moved to New York that served the most exquisite hand-made French delicacies.
That little social gathering had led to Des meeting the husband of one of her guests at a soirée they had been invited to, and a job offer at JPMorgan that had increased his earnings eventually to the seven-figure sum he was now on. She had been over the moon when they had finally moved into a rental apartment on the Upper East Side. That was when Colette and Des knew they had it made.
‘Sherman McCoy and Gordon Gekko have nothing on you, Des,’ his father-in-law had commented sardonically, walking under the elegant long green canopy at the entrance to their building, to be admitted by Ryland, one of their liveried doormen, into the foyer of their posh new residence.
‘Hell, don’t say that,’ Des exclaimed as they glided silently upwards in the sparkling mirrored elevator. ‘Look what happened to them! Those “Masters of the Universe” went belly up and I know people the likes of whom those characters were based upon, Frank, and I’m not one of them.’
‘Excellent,’ said his father-in-law wryly. ‘That’s good to hear. Colette and Jasmine are in safe hands.’
Frank and Jacqueline had flown over to New York to spend a long weekend with them in their new fifteenth-floor eyrie, with its parquet floors, Italian marble bathrooms, ‘European’-style kitchen and a view in the lounge, from a corner window, of ‘the Park’! It was still a view, corner window or not, Des had assured her proudly.
It was hard to believe that was almost five years ago, Colette sighed, as a boat drifted by on the aquamarine sea, red sails billowing in the trade winds. She reached out to take a sip of her G&T, luxuriating in her solitude. She had been as ambitious and eager for success as Des in those early years. She had revelled in their glitzy lifestyle that often saw her change her outfit five times a day to cover a coffee morning, lunch, launch, cocktail party and dinner she was regularly invited to.
But in the last year or so she had begun to weary of the constant treadmill their lifestyle subjected them to. Des worked practically seven days a week and was expected to be contactable by his boss 24/7. The more money he made the more he wanted. Last year’s bonus always had to be topped.
She was constantly entertaining his clients or potential clients as well as their social set – at home, or in Nantucket during the summer months. Or co-hosting gala events with some of her peers for this charity or that one. Colette exhaled deeply. The charity circuit was not for the faint-hearted. The events she’d attended or organized in Dublin and London had not prepared her for the cut-throat viciousness that was a fundamental trait of the immaculately coiffed, face-lifted, plastic-surgery-enhanced, designer-dressed socialites who frequently reduced each other to tears of fury and jealousy – in private of course – despite the air kisses and gushy greetings of endearment. The patrons of the New York charity scene made piranhas look tame, Colette reflected glumly, taking a rather large slug of her cool, refreshing drink.
The breeze whispered against her face and she felt some of the tension flow out of her limbs. She hadn’t realized just how stressed she was until she was alone. Wilted, that was how she felt, completely wilted from making small talk to people she hardly knew, and being constantly on the lookout to see that their every need was being met.
Chuck Freemont and his fat-thighed wife Dorothy had guzzled champagne from the minute they’d arrived on Friday evening, and had eaten their way through every expensive titbit put their way, as well as polishing off an entire box of hand-made chocolate liqueurs that had been placed in their guest suite.
Shirley, stick-thin wife of Brandon van der Graffe, Des’s boss, had eaten nothing, except a few birdlike nibbles of lettuce and a couple of flakes of organic Irish salmon. She was constantly disappearing into their suite and looked
