Players Page 2

  She checked her watch. He hadn’t rung – but then she’d known he wouldn’t. The New York flight was due to leave in twenty minutes. She pressed her fists against her eyes as she faced up to the fact she was out of choices. If she was going to stop him getting on that plane, she was going to have to play her hand.

  Navigating her way past the abandoned toys and strewn clothes – Greta could pick them up – she marched past the children’s bathroom, just as Felicity, her youngest and barely three, clambered over the side of the bath.

  ‘Mummy!’ she yelled. Darting past the towel Greta was holding wide like a windbreaker and throwing her arms around Cress’s legs – her long, wet hair slapping Cress’s thighs – she rugby-tackled her to a halt. Cress wobbled and fell forwards on to her hands in a rather ungainly downward dog position.

  ‘Oh Flick, get off!’ Cress said crossly, trying to push Felicity off her legs. ‘You’re getting me soaked.’

  ‘But you’re already wearing a towel, Mummy.’

  ‘No. It’s Juicy Couture and it’s dry clean only,’ she said huffily.

  ‘Now you know that’s not true,’ said an amused voice.

  Cress tried to look back over her shoulder, but being still a dog that was downwards and not suitably warmed up, she couldn’t. She peered through her legs instead.

  ‘What are you doing home so early?’ she cried.

  Mark was standing at the top of the stairs, pulling off his tie. ‘Meeting ended early,’ he grinned, faint laughter lines tucking in around his clear blue eyes. He oozed mischief and looked considerably younger than his thirty-nine years. Even the sprinkling of salt in his pepper-black hair seemed to twinkle. ‘And clearly you were thinking what I was thinking.’ He walked up to her and planted a kiss on her butt cheek. Even after nine years of marriage, the chemistry between them was as strong as it had been the night they first met, when she had been embroiled in an affair with his married boss and he’d had to smuggle her out of the bank’s summer party after his boss’s wife made a surprise entrance.

  Felicity extricated herself from her mother’s heap and – along with Orlando, four, Jago, six, and Lucy, seven – threw herself at her father instead. Mark disappeared under a wriggling mass of pink limbs and downy hair.

  ‘Come on, you lot. Bedtime story,’ he said, giving Flick a piggyback up to the nursery rooms on the top floor. ‘I’ll be back for you in a few minutes,’ he winked to Cress.

  Cress winked back, and blew goodnight kisses to the children, who didn’t notice. She blanched at their unintentional slights but decided to put that one down to the excitement of the moment.

  Anyway, she had other things on her mind. She didn’t notice Greta standing in the bathroom, holding the damp towel across her chest and listening to every intimate word between husband and wife.

  Cress stalked across the landing to the master bedroom, her perfectly pedicured feet sinking into the plush cream carpet, and shut the door behind her. Picking up the red leather Smythson diary she’d left on the bedside table, she flicked through the pages until she found the number she was looking for.

  She stared at it. Her destiny lay in those digits. Everything she had ever worked for, striven for – hell, neglected her family for – came down to this. It was do or die.

  Her company, Sapphire Books, had risen to spectacular heights in eight short years, presciently foreseeing the blogging phenomenon as a kissing cousin to the publishing industry. While the naysayers decried these web books as the Napsters of the publishing industry, she saw beyond the initial drift. Though the most successful blogs boasted millions-strong readerships, they appealed mainly to the computer-nerds. Cress knew most people preferred to read from a physical page. They liked the feel of a book in their hands when they were in bed, on the bus or at the poolside. And she knew that her precision editing and slick polish could package the same material to an even broader audience.

  Her first six blog-books had gone straight into the top ten of the Times best-seller lists, but sales on titles since had cooled and she needed to look beyond diarists and virtual lives. She couldn’t afford to stay so niche. The blogging trend was peaking and Sapphire Books needed to break into the mainstream.

  As usual, luck had been on her side. Her first foray into fiction had been picked by Richard and Judy’s all-powerful book club and sales were now nudging a million copies. But she had nothing with which to follow it up.

  So when that innocuous brown envelope had landed on her desk, handing the biggest name in publishing to her on a plate, it had seemed too good to be true. Clearly, it wasn’t something she could show to her legal team. She had to do this alone. It was dodgy ground. Oh, who was she kidding? It was criminal, face it.

  She’d tried doing it straight, meeting him socially at various parties in London, New York and Boston, letting the acquaintance bud until she felt she could table a meeting with him.

  They’d met up at the Portobello Hotel – small, intimate and off the corporate track, like Sapphire – and she’d delivered a sensational pitch, boasting of Sapphire’s impressive profitability and its reputation as the fastest-growing, most dynamic publishing company around. They were the mavericks, just like him. The chemistry between Harry Hunter and Sapphire – between him and her – was sizzling, and Harry had been surprisingly impressed.

  He’d only agreed to the meeting, intending to get to the pink and black lace balconette bra she was wearing beneath her grey georgette blouse. But her impressive engagement ring had winked at him like a jealous child on a single mother’s first date – no woman kept her ring freshly polished after nine years of marriage unless she was still in love with her husband – and when he’d suggested finishing the meeting ‘somewhere more private’, they had stalled.

  He liked a challenge, but he didn’t have the time he’d usually devote to breaking and bedding her. Manhattan was waiting, and she wasn’t even in the same ball-park when it came down to money. Reluctantly, he’d had to let her go for the time being but, not wanting to burn his bridges – knowing they’d bump into each other again on the publishing circuit – he’d left it that he’d ‘consider’ her proposal.

  The minutes had ticked by all week and she’d barely slept. She’d fingered the brown envelope constantly, like a worry bead. Did she dare cross the line?

  Now, she couldn’t put it off any longer. Time, tide and air traffic controllers wait for no man. She had to do it.

  The phone rang five times before he picked up.

  ‘Cressida,’ he smiled, though there was a faint note of impatience in his voice, now that she was no longer an imminent prospect. ‘I’m sorry. I meant to get back to you. It’s been a crazy week.’

  Cress had seen the pictures of him in the Mirror, tumbling out of Whisky Mist with a blonde on each arm.

  ‘I know. I won’t keep you,’ she said levelly. ‘I just wanted to check you weren’t getting on the plane.’

  ‘What?’ he said, alarmed. ‘Has something happened? Is there a security alert?’

  Cress could hear a rumble of commotion around him.

  ‘No. No security alert. Nothing like that.’ Cress heard him break off to reassure the passengers around him. ‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to panic you,’ he was saying, with what she could well imagine was a boyish grin. There was another pause. ‘Yeah, sure. Who should I make it out to?’

  He came back on the line.

  ‘Sorry. Autographs,’ he said, clearly cradling the phone on his shoulder. Cress visualized him scribbling on various people’s magazines, cheque-book stubs, arms – breasts, no doubt.

  She waited.

  His voice was distracted. ‘So are you ringing to tell me there’s something new you can do for me?’

  ‘In a way, yes.’

  She paused, letting his frustration mount.

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Well . . .’ She took a deep breath. ‘I can agree not to tell the world about Brendan Hillier.’

  Chapter Two

  Dinn
er was supposed to be at nine sharp, but it was already half an hour past that and Kate was still waiting on one couple. Monty had gone back out with the last-but-one bottle of fizz, but they hadn’t catered for the pre-dinner drinks lasting two hours and he’d soon have to start on the Pouilly Fumé. Bloody hell. He hated the food and booze being out of synch.

  Kate stirred the sauce in silent fury. They’d been tense with each other all week and she knew he was deliberately avoiding ringing her at work. If she confronted him, he’d hold out his palms and blame back-to-back meetings, but they both knew they were in retreat from each other, from the red stain they’d woken to on the bedsheets, and what it meant. Again.

  She didn’t ask why any more. There were no answers, no more tests, no more doctors. Everyone said they should just hang in there – count themselves lucky that there wasn’t an actual reason for failing to conceive. It meant it could still happen. They just had to have Hope.

  What those people didn’t realize was that Hope was the worst part. Counting the year, not in weeks or months, but in private twenty-eight-day cycles, thinking maybe this month would be the month – constantly on the watch for water retention, talking herself into nausea, deluding herself she had a heightened sense of smell, praying that her tightening waistband signified the beginnings of a new life, not a new diet – only to have it dashed month after month after month.

  No, Hope was not her friend. And when those oh-so-well-meaning people squeezed her hand comfortingly, support and sympathy written all over their faces, her smile was frigid with resentment.

  Kate took another sip from her glass and looked at the clock. At this rate they wouldn’t get to bed before 1 a.m. Not that it mattered so much – after all, the one upside of not having children meant late nights could easily be supported by lazy mornings. But as a top libel lawyer in London’s most prestigious and profitable reputation management firm, Saturdays were often her busiest days. She had to have a clear head for threatening the editors who were getting ready to bump up their Sunday circulations with juicy scandals featuring her celebrity clients. She was on first-name terms with all the newspaper editors, London agents and LA publicists, and she had the home and mobile numbers of most of the football premiership and several Russian billionaires.

  Tor walked in with an empty glass, looking stunning in a cream silk backless Temperley dress. ‘I’ve come to join you,’ she said, going straight to the vast American fridge and pulling out the last remaining bottle of Moët. ‘I’m fed up with being ignored by my husband.’

  Hugh had come to Kate and Monty’s straight from the office, and Tor was sulking that he hadn’t bothered to come home first to get changed – his suit was rumpled and he needed a shave. She hated arriving at parties on her own – even when they were being hosted by their best friends.

  Apart from briefly asking her if the children had finished their supper and whether she had money for the babysitter, Hugh had gone on to spend most of the evening engrossed in conversation with a rather voluptuous – well, plump actually, Tor thought – freckly woman with a fabulous mane of treacle-coloured hair that she kept tossing about like an excited pony. Hugh liked women with some meat on their bones. He probably thought she looked as though she would be good in bed.

  ‘Any reason why you’re starving us all?’ Tor asked.

  ‘Well, clearly because you’ve just let yourself go and really need to lose the baby weight,’ Kate drawled.

  Tor smoothed her dress over her tummy and smiled back, self-consciously.

  ‘Joke!’ Kate cried, tossing her auburn hair off her shoulders. Her friend’s insecurity was maddening. A neat size ten, Tor had never really shrugged off the body fascism that came from an adolescence spent staring at herself in a mirror all day, practising kicks and pliés next to five-foot featherweights who could tuck their ankles behind their ears. But quite what she had to be insecure about was beyond Kate. Keeping herself to a size twelve was a constant battle. She knew that inside her gym-honed curves was a size fourteen waiting to burst free. Not that being curvy was all bad. She was tall enough to carry it off – five foot nine in stockings – and Monty said her magnificent cleavage was his pride and joy, his own set of twins to play with.

  ‘Good tan too,’ she reassured.

  ‘Thanks – this one didn’t leave me smelling like roast beef. Here, sniff.’ Tor held out her arm and Kate sniffed appreciatively.

  ‘Well, hello, ladies,’ said a smooth voice. ‘Do you need any help with that?’ They looked up. Guy Latham, an old uni friend of Monty’s, had sauntered in. He did something ‘technical’ in the City. Looking taller than his six foot in an exquisitely cut bespoke grey suit, lime silk lining flashing, he was clearly doing well.

  His wife, Laetitia, confirmed his successes with some ambitious networking of her own and was completely terrifying. She was one of those slick charity hostesses you always saw in the society pages at the back of Tatler and Country Life, and was best friends with Daphne Guinness and Tamara Mellon. Brought up in Martha’s Vineyard on America’s East Coast, she had been bred to the power charity circuit, and her life revolved around lunches, shopping events and ‘intimate soirées’ with the great, the good and the generous. Tor, Cress and Kate thought she was a social climber with ropes on her back, but Tor couldn’t deny her presence here tonight added a frisson of exclusivity to the gathering.

  Guy took the bottle from Tor, who was going faintly purple.

  ‘Allow me,’ he said, taking the bottle from her. Without taking his gaze off the two women, he expertly opened the champagne. It popped elegantly and he poured them two fresh glasses.

  ‘Now. As you were,’ he said with a wicked smile.

  ‘Huh?’ Tor was lost.

  ‘Sniffing each other. It looked surprisingly erotic.’

  They both frowned at him, Tor in confusion, Kate with thinly veiled disgust, her green eyes flashing.

  ‘Oh well, it was worth a shot,’ he smiled. He picked up the magnum and headed out of the kitchen. ‘‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, ladies,’ he called over his shoulder.

  ‘God, he’s patronizing,’ Kate muttered under her breath. ‘I eat his clients for breakfast and he treats me like the little woman.’

  Tor took a sip and enjoyed the feel of the bubbles fizzing on her tongue. ‘Forget him. He’s a prat.’ She walked over to the door. ‘Tell me this: who’s the fat bird who’s been chatting up Hugh all night?’ Tor watched them, feeling suspiciously like she was spying on them. They seemed so – intimate.

  Kate tutted disapprovingly. ‘You cannot, in this day and age, call someone “a fat bird”, Tor Summershill. That’s the kind of slur that brings me lots of money.’

  ‘I guess,’ Tor conceded. ‘But she is chatting up my husband.’

  ‘Yes, I noticed that.’ They stood at the doorway together, glasses in hand and eyes narrowed. ‘Her name’s Julia McIntyre. Guy suggested we invited her. I can’t stand her but she’s just destroyed her husband in the divorce court, so Monty’s angling to invest some of her millions.’

  ‘Aaah.’ She turned back, bored by her husband’s flirting. ‘Anyway, back to my original question. When are we eating? I’m going to pass out with hunger in a minute.’

  ‘I’m just waiting for one more couple.’

  ‘I take it there’s a life or death situation which is making them so bloody late?’

  Kate chuckled. ‘There is, actually. He’s an obstetrician, stuck at a birth.’

  Tor rolled her eyes and pulled a goofy face.

  ‘Oh, hang on. You know him, don’t you? James White – wasn’t he yours?’

  ‘Oooh,’ Tor smiled, bending at the knees. He’d delivered all her and Cress’s babies, and they both had a long-standing crush on him. ‘God, is he really coming for dinner? How fantastic. Who’ve you put him next to?’

  ‘You, of course.’

  Tor’s stomach rumbled loudly and she clapped a hand over it. ‘Well, look, I really don’t think you can hold up di
nner any longer, even for the deeply charismatic Mr White . . .’

  ‘Uh, Lord White,’ Kate corrected, smiling.

  ‘Is he a Lord?’ Tor whispered, intimidated.

  ‘Well, when you deliver the royal babies, you’re going to be top of the list, let’s face it.’

  ‘Wow,’ Tor muttered. Did Cress know a Lord had delivered her babies, she wondered? Surely not. Else she’d never have heard the end of it.

  Her tummy rumbled again.

  ‘Well, Lord White could be hours, yet. And if you don’t get some food down everyone’s throats, I swear they’re going to be so lashed they’ll start playing spin the bottle. And I, for one, do not want to have to kiss my husband.’

  Kate chuckled.

  ‘I’ll send Monty through, shall I?’

  With the zeal of the half starved and completely pissed, Tor manoeuvred everyone towards the round pedestal table while Kate started ladling out the portions of monkfish, which by now were looking tougher than a Thai kickboxer.

  Kate had laid the table beautifully. Her parties were always themed. Tonight’s was Oriental Pearl. The black linen tablecloth was set off by a trail of white orchids that fragrantly wove around dainty tealights, and tiny ecru blind-embossed place-names perched on antique ivory chopsticks – a nightmare to read but they looked great.

  Tor stood behind her chair – she saw she had Guy Latham to her left and James White to her right. Hugh was opposite her but might as well have been in another room for all the attention he was paying her. She tried joining Guy’s conversation with Monty, but it was something about the pensions crisis and she stood awkwardly mute as she ransacked her brain for a single opinion to offer up on the topic.

  Thankfully, she was saved by Kate triumphantly setting down the meal, and all conversation ceased as everyone inhaled the aroma.

  ‘Apologies, all,’ smiled Kate. ‘We shall have to start without the last guests. Please tuck in.’

  Nobody needed to be told twice, and over the clatter of forks, Guy and Monty picked up their conversation where they’d left it. For a few moments, Tor didn’t care. She was just grateful to be able to eat at last – she’d skipped lunch so that her tummy was flat for this evening and felt exceptionally light-headed. If she could get some food into her system, she might sober up a little.