Cents and Sensibility

I got out of the cab at an off licence nearby and bought her a large bottle of brandy, a bottle of Moët, and a carton of cigarettes. I always struggled with my conscience about doing that, but she would just buy them herself anyway and the look of delight when you turned up with those kinds of presents, was the closest to happiness I think she ever got any more.

I also bought her a pile of glossy magazines, which she still enjoyed looking at. She liked the ‘gowns’, she used to tell me.

‘Daaaaaaarling,’ she said, when I walked in, clapping her manicured hands with delight. ‘What an unexpected joy. Come and tell me everything – in filthy detail.’

She was much more lucid than I had been expecting. It must have been a good day and it clearly got better for her, when she saw what I’d brought with me.

‘Oooh, you marvellously clever girl,’ she said in her throatiest tones. ‘I did train you well. Just open that cupboard by my bed, would you, sweetheart?’

She directed me to the middle shelf and behind a frilly make-up bag, was a box of sugar cubes and a bottle of angostura bitters.

‘Did you mean these?’ I asked her, holding them up, her plan becoming clear to me.

She giggled girlishly and nodded. ‘Champagne cocktails all round, don’t you think?’

So I made us the drinks just as I had learned to, from her book of cocktail recipes – she even had a couple of champagne flutes stashed in her underwear drawer, along with some emergency gin – and between us, we quickly polished off the whole bottle of Moët.

After the third champagne cocktail, I was already so pissed I was slurring my words – and I was smoking, which was something I never did.

And in my drunken state, I told her the entire story of me and Jay, and Ham’s interference, plus the problems I was having at work, all leading up to what I had seen in Monmouth Street that afternoon.

I had no idea how much of it she took in and I didn’t really care. I just needed to tell someone the whole unexpurgated history and, as long as I kept mixing the drinks, Margot was all ears.

When we finished the champagne we moved on to neat cognac and after a couple of those I was beginning to feel like maybe I really had drunk enough.

I was starting to nod off a bit in my chair, when suddenly, through the pall of smoke between us, her Rank starlet tones rang out. It was as though someone had suddenly turned the radio on. To the Home Service.

‘So what you are telling me, darling girl,’ she said, ashing her cigarette on to the floor, with great aplomb. ‘Is that for the first time in your life you are really in love with this young man – who is very handsome and frightfully rich. You are also having a tiresome time at work. Well, I really don’t see what your dilemma is. You must go to him immediately. Stuff the job. Let him spoil you. Enjoy yourself. And as for your wretched father? Stuff him too. It’s time a woman stood up to him – and who better than you?’

And then she fell asleep – or unconscious, there wasn’t much in between with Margot – in her chair. I kissed her on her powdery cheek and left.

‘I’m drunk,’ was the first thing I said to him. ‘I’m really really falling-down drunk, so don’t hold any of this against me, but I had to call you.’

Jay laughed.

‘You do sound loaded. What’s going on?’

‘I’ve had the shittiest of shit days and I just got completely hammered with my dad’s second wife. She’s a total alky, but I love her.’

‘What was so shit?’ he said, sounding genuinely concerned.

‘Oh, just all kinds of crap at work and then – then…’ I started crying, I couldn’t help myself. ‘I saw my dad with another woman…’

Now I was wailing. The taxi driver was glancing at me in his rear-view mirror, with some concern. Probably worried I might be about to vomit all over his cab. He might be right, I thought, starting to hiccup between wails.

‘Oh, you poor baby,’ said Jay.

‘I mean, I know my dad is a total womanizer,’ I was gabbling. ‘He always has been and he used to make me answer the phone and lie to women, when I was just a little girl, but I thought he might have finally grown up and he hasn’t. He’s just a total bastard and I love Chloe and she’s pregnant. How could he, Jay? I mean, he drones on and on about the sanctity of “family” until it makes you want to spew, and then as soon as his pregnant wife grows a belly, he’s off schtupping the first skinny blonde who hoves into view. He’s such a hypocrite and a liar.’

‘Oh, baby,’ Jay kept saying. ‘That is hard, that is real hard. I wish I was there for you.’

I wailed and hiccupped a bit more.

‘Look,’ he said, suddenly sounding businesslike. ‘We can’t go on like this. I’ve got a big meeting with my dad this afternoon – at the bank, nightmare – and I’ve got to go up to Rhode Island with him this weekend, I can’t get out of it, big family powwow, but as soon as that’s done, I’m coming over there. I’m going to be there for you. I’ll leave Monday night, OK?’

And I just wept into the phone with relief.

‘Stella,’ he said. ‘This is a surprise. We didn’t expect to see you here today.’

I just looked back at him, not getting his point.

‘This is the section editors’ meeting, Stella,’ he said slowly, as though he was talking to a halfwit, his cold eyes disappearing behind the flash of the lenses. ‘And as you don’t have a section any more, you don’t need to be here, do you? So you can go back to your desk.’

For a moment, I just looked at him, unable to believe what I was hearing and then I had no choice. I picked up my notebook and pen and left the meeting room, feeling like a schoolgirl who had been sent out of class.

By the time I got back to my desk, I was trembling with fury, but I was thinking very clearly. I got a form out of my filing cabinet and filled it in. Then I went straight up to Doughnut’s office and gave it to his PA.

‘This is a holiday form, Sheila,’ I said. ‘Starting today. I’ve got six weeks due to me and I’m taking it all. Will you please tell Mr McDonagh that as my section has been postponed, I might as well take some time off now, so I’ll be raring to go when it starts up. And if he needs me to come back early, you just have to ring me. I’ll be on my mobile.’

Sheila nodded.

‘I’m sure that will be fine,’ she said.

But I didn’t really care whether it was or not, I was out of there. I stopped off in my office briefly to collect my stuff and to send explanatory emails to Ned, Tim and Peter, then I left.

I called Jay as soon as I was out of the building.

‘Don’t get on that flight tonight,’ I told him. ‘I’m coming over there to see you.’

‘You are?’ he said, sounding delighted. ‘Wow, that is the best news, I can’t tell you. I’m having a truly heinous time with my dad, right now, and I can think of nothing better than having you come visit.’

‘So, what’s your address?’ I said, feeling dizzily carefree and excited.

‘Don’t worry about that,’ he said. ‘I’ll meet you at the airport. And don’t worry about your flight either. Just go to the ΒΑ desk at Heathrow and it will all be fixed for you. Which flight do you want to get?’

Unlike Jay, I didn’t have the New York–London flight schedule off by heart, so he told me to get the next plane, which left in three hours.

‘Have you got your passport with you?’ he asked.

I did. I was a newspaper journalist, I always carried my passport.

‘Great,’ he said. ‘Then just go straight to the airport from the office. We’ll get you everything you need when you’re here.’

I was stumped for a moment. It was such an alien concept to go somewhere without packing, but when I thought about it, if I had him to look after me, what did I really need?

For once, perhaps, I could leave my baggage behind.

‘Welcome to New York,’ he said, smiling as he unbuttoned my shirt.

By the time we pulled up outside his building in SoHo, he’d made love to me twice. Then we went up to his apartment and did it some more.

I woke up jet-lag early the next day and leaving him sleeping, went to look at his place, which I’d hardly taken in the night before. A whole floor of a classic SoHo loft conversion, it was huge, incredibly light, and the walls were covered in books and fantastic paintings. It was exactly the kind of apartment I had expected Jay to live in.

I made myself some tea – I was pleased to see he had my favourite English Breakfast tea bags in for me, he knew what I liked – and I sat down on one of his several sofas, to take it all in.

In pride of place on a blank wall between the floor-to-ceiling bookcases was a classic Warhol portrait of a woman. I got up off the sofa and perched on the window seat so I could look at it properly. There was something familiar about her face, but I couldn’t place it.

I was still gazing at it, when Jay appeared, naked, rubbing his tummy, in that sweet, boyish way he had.

‘Saying hi to Mom, are you?’ he said, smiling at me through blinky eyes.

‘Is that your mother?’ I said.

He nodded.

‘She looks like you,’ I said, realizing why the face had looked familiar. ‘Same eyes.’

‘Yeah, people say that,’ said Jay, sitting down next to me and putting his arm around my waist. He kissed the top of my head. ‘Hey, baby,’ he said. ‘It’s so good you’re here.’

I just sighed and rested my head against his shoulder. I felt completely relaxed with him. There was no awkwardness between us at all and sitting there with him, the various big messes I had left behind in London seemed irrelevant and unimportant.

‘I suppose that’s a real Warhol, right?’

‘Yeah,’ said Jay, casually. ‘Mom was good friends with him. She was one of the first people he did in that style.’

Immediately, the Grand Canyon yawned between us again. He wasn’t acting cool, it just wasn’t a big deal to him.

‘Oh,’ I said.

From that first day – when he sent me off to Barneys in a chauffeured car, with his charge card, to buy everything I needed for my stay – there were numerous more occasions when I was reminded of that chasm, but in the end I made a conscious decision to stop letting it freak me out.

Instead, I just relaxed and let myself enjoy it. Of course, I had my own money for bits and pieces, I wasn’t entirely a kept woman, but once I surrendered to it, it was actually rather nice to let him spoil me for a while. Margot had been right about that.

And as I met more of his friends – mostly other money bunnies, like George and Zaria, some hideous like her, but mostly OK in a rich-kid way – I realized that it was the differences between us, combined with all the things we shared, that made the relationship so compelling for us both.

Although we socialized a bit, most of the time it was just the two of us, doing all the things we both loved to do. Going to galleries and museums in the morning and movies in the afternoon. Browsing in bookshops. Lying on our backs in Central Park, watching the clouds go by. Whiling away afternoons just talking in all the great little bars and cafés he knew. And dancing into the small hours, sometimes in seriously cool clubs, sometimes just the two of us in his apartment.

He took me to my first baseball game and I took him to his first Iyengar yoga class and the rest of the time we made love like the pair of rampant loved-up crazies we were. It was one long magic-carpet ride.

The only irritation was Ham calling and texting me furiously for the first few days, until eventually I relented and called him back.

‘Where are you?’ he practically screamed down the phone at me. ‘You’re not in the mews and I’ve called your office and they’ve told me you’ve gone on holiday and I’ve been going out of my mind with worry. We all have.’

‘I’m in New York staying with a friend,’ I said. ‘After what happened, I just couldn’t stand to be anywhere near you and your fake family values, so I’m staying here for a few weeks.’

‘Who are you staying with in New York?’ he asked me, suspiciously. I just ignored him.

‘Is everyone OK?’ I asked him. ‘How’s Chloe? How’s Daisy?’

‘They’re all fine. They all send love.’

There was a long silence and I did nothing to fill it. I wasn’t going to make it easy for him. Eventually he spoke again.

‘I’m sorry, Stella,’ he said, and he did sound it. ‘I’ve been really stupid and what you said that day has really made me think. I’m really sorry I have behaved so badly with women all your life. It’s hardly surprising you find it hard to trust men. And you’re right, Chloe is the best woman in the world and I won’t do anything to jeopardize that. Please forgive me, Stella, if you can?’

I thought for a moment. He did sound sorry, but it wasn’t enough. And how dare he make sweeping statements about me not trusting men? I trusted Jay implicitly. I just didn’t trust him.

‘No,’ I said, eventually. ‘I won’t.’

And I hung up.

We strolled around SoHo holding hands and Jay was completely uninhibited about public displays of affection. He’d stand on a street corner snogging me, while we waited for the lights to change, if that’s what he felt like doing.

I asked him about it one day, when we were sitting in our regular daytime haunt, Café Gitane, which was just round the corner from the apartment.

Aren’t you worried about the paparazzi here?’ I asked him.

‘Not much,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen them around a bit. I didn’t tell you at the time, but one took some pictures of us coming back from that goddam yoga class of yours the other day – I still have sore hamstrings from that, by the way. But I don’t think it’s a problem because, with all due respect, no one knows who you are here. They’ll just think you are one of my many girlfriends.’

He tickled me in the ribs as he said it.

‘Am I?’ I couldn’t help asking, although it was a subject we never went near – exes, long-losts, other love interests, it never came up, it was one of the things I really liked about Jay. We lived in the moment.

‘No,’ he said, firmly. ‘You’re my only girlfriend and well you know it, so shut up, or I’ll start thinking you’re obsessing on the towel monogram.’

I stuck my tongue out at him. He so knew I wasn’t.

Spending so much time together, Jay and I really opened up to each other about our respective families and I was so glad I hadn’t read that book about the Fishers, as it meant I was able to react with proper sincerity to everything he told me about his brother’s untimely death and his appalling relationship with his father.

The problem between them was quite simple, as far as I could tell. First and foremost, they just didn’t get on and then, since the death of his brother, Jay was expected to take over running the whole empire when his father retired, and he had absolutely no interest in doing so.

The current sticking point was that his father wanted him to go and work at Fishercorp on a daily basis to get him ready for his inheritance and he just wouldn’t do it.

What made Jay really furious about the whole thing, was that although neither of his uncles had children, his aunt had three sons and a daughter, all of them already working in banking, but his father wouldn’t even consider any of them for the big gig.

We were lying in bed one afternoon, ‘resting’, as Jay liked to call it, when a call from his father’s PA prompted a major outburst from him and I finally got the whole picture.

‘He has this antiquated fixation that it has to pass from the oldest son to his oldest son,’ he was saying, pacing around the bedroom, naked, as usual. ‘Just because that is how it has always been. It’s like something out of an Icelandic chronicle. Jay, son of Robert, son of Robert, son of Robert…

‘He wouldn’t even hand it on to my Uncle Ed, who has been gagging for it all his life, let alone any of my cousins. I mean even my girl cousin, Lauren, is more interested than me. She has an MBA from Harvard and she’s worked at Morgan Stanley since she left college, but no, she won’t do and my banker-wanker – as you call them – boy cousins won’t do either. It has to be me and I say, no. I know nothing about that world and I couldn’t care less. Stalemate.’

‘So why do you keep talking to him about it?’ I asked, still fairly mystified. ‘Can’t you just tell him no, you don’t want to run a bank, or whatever it is, and that’s the end of it?’

‘Well, I could do that – if I want to be completely disinherited,’ he said, sounding irritated.

‘Would that really be so bad?’ I said quietly.

He looked at me like I had suddenly started speaking Swahili. I felt the great divide yawn between us again. But it was obvious to me: it was the great monolith of the family money that was making him so unhappy, but it seemed he couldn’t let it go any more than his father could.

Unfortunately, I didn’t leave it there.

‘Would you really be completely disinherited?’ I asked.

‘No, of course not, he can’t touch my trusts, they became mine the day I turned twenty-one, but I wouldn’t get anything else. The Hippo would get it all.’

I knew that was a very sore point. The Hippo was his half-brother, Todd, by his father’s second wife, Jaclyn, a razor-thin, multi-facelifted, couture-clad, major feature of the social pages, with an apparently insatiable appetite for money and prestige. And having clawed her way up to Sutton Place from humble origins in Queens, she was brutally ambitious for her son.

Jay openly loathed him and called him the Hippo, because he was somewhat on the chunky side. He’d shown me a very cruel story New York magazine had done earlier that year, featuring a long-lens paparazzi shot of the two of them side by side at the family’s Palm Beach house, in swimming trunks. ‘The Hunk and the Hulk’, it had been called.

From what Jay had told me, every pound Todd gained made Jaclyn more determined that in the long term he would triumph as the Fisher heir. And her ambition for her son was equalled only by her jealous hatred of the trim and handsome true heir. As far as I could tell, she was a major cause of the friction between Jay and his father, which she did everything possible to inflame.

‘Forgetting the Hippo for a moment,’ I persisted, ‘aren’t your trusts enough to live on?’

He started to get that small crease between his eyebrows. I should have taken it as a warning.

‘You tell me,’ he said, raising his arms. ‘You’re living on it.’

‘Well, it seems like enough to me,’ I said, stung, but determined to keep my cool.

‘I guess it is,’ said Jay, shrugging. ‘But it’s not as simple as that, it’s not just about the money, it’s the principle. You see, since my brother died, I’m the heir. It’s my birthright. And like I said, if I bailed, my dear little half-brother would get it all.

‘The funny thing is, though, I don’t even think my father would want that. He might think I’m a useless piece of shit, but he’s a very old-fashioned guy at heart, and when Bob died, I was next in line and that is how it has to be, in his book. Anyway, that’s why he keeps trying to force me to become what he wants me to be, not who I am. He’s determined to have me on his terms and I’m determined not to let him.’

As he spoke, Jay’s face had taken on a set look I had never seen before; his jaw was quite clenched. He was incredibly stubborn, I realized – and maybe not as different from his father as he thought he was. But I could see that would not be a politic thing to say.

‘And even aside from that and how much I hate the Hippo’s spoilt, ignorant, bigoted butt,’ he continued, ‘I can’t let him inherit – for the memory of my brother, I can’t let that happen. Bob loathed the Hippo even more than I do. I mean, Bob was a chip off the old block. He started reading the financial pages when he was at school, and he loved going into Fishercorp – as a kid, that was a treat for him – but he was a good guy too.’

He looked at me sadly.

‘I wish you could have met him, Stella, you would have loved him. He was the best of any of us. So, no, the Hippo does not inherit.’

‘I think I can understand that, Jay,’ I said, still not ready to give up. ‘But nevertheless, how can you expect to get the whole thing, if you’re not prepared to do something for it?’

The little crease was now a full-on frown. But still I didn’t stop.

‘I mean, you may not share his values, but it sounds like your dad works really hard to keep it all going, so why should you get it all for nothing? Surely privilege always comes with responsibilities, as well as all the good bits? Nothing’s for nothing, Jay.’

I paused for a moment, before ramming my point home.

‘Wouldn’t Bob have told you that?’

I watched his face turn to stone before me. His eyes, which were normally so full of gentle smiles for me, were hard and cold.

‘You know what, Stella,’ he said, the sides of his beautiful mouth curling downwards. ‘I thought you were on my side. But it turns out, you’re just as uptight as the rest of them. And you know what else? You don’t have a fucking clue what you’re fucking talking about, so why don’t you just shut the fuck up?’

And with that, he grabbed his clothes from the bedroom chair and left the room and shortly afterwards, judging by the slammed door, the apartment.

I just lay there in a state of shock. We’d never had a proper row before and this had been a really nasty one. Why hadn’t I shut up? I knew even as I was saying it, that I was going way too far, but I couldn’t help it, because that was what I really thought. I had to say it. I couldn’t live a lie with him, it would just have festered inside me.

And, really, I didn’t understand his attitude. How could he expect to inherit all that money without lifting a finger to be involved with any of the administration it entailed? It was the only thing about him that I didn’t understand.

That and the way he seemed to be happy to spend his whole life merrily doing nothing. He wasn’t stupid, far from it, and I couldn’t compute how he could just while his life away as he did, however pleasantly.

And deep down inside there was a little part of me that couldn’t respect that. I might not have shared my father’s phobia about inherited wealth, but I did – I now realized – have his work ethic. Big time.

I lay there for a bit longer and when Jay didn’t come back I started to wonder what to do. Was I supposed to pack and leave before he returned? I got up and dressed, just in case he’d gone out to buy me an air ticket, and then I waited around for half an hour, and when he still didn’t come back, or call me, I decided to go out myself.

I didn’t have a particular destination in mind, I just wandered around SoHo, looking at the shops and the galleries and the people, which normally entranced me, but none of it held any charm. Eventually I decided to head over to Café Gitane. I thought its familiarity might comfort me.

Jay was already there, sitting at our usual table with his head in his hands. I went over and sat down opposite him. He looked up, with tears in his eyes.

‘Oh, honey,’ he said, reaching for my hand. ‘What took you so long getting here?’ And his mouth curved up into its more familiar smile.

I started to speak, but he got in first.

‘I’m truly sorry for swearing at you, like that,’ he said. ‘But I just can’t deal with all that stuff, it sends me crazy. And the way you put it, you’re probably right about what Bob would have said – and, if I’m honest, my mom has said something similar. So you just hit a sore spot.’

He leaned back with his hands behind his head and sighed loudly.

‘It’s just that when my dad gets on my back about it – and Jaclyn weighs in – I just flip in my head and it makes me even more determined not to do what he wants. I’m sorry I took that out on you. Real sorry.’

‘No,’ I said, reaching over to pull down his hands, so I could hold them. ‘I’m sorry. I should have shut up. I know how much all that upsets you and you’re right, I really don’t understand it.’

‘Well, go on then, let’s try and talk about it.’ He sighed deeply again and squeezed my hands back. ‘That’s what my mom always tells me I have to do – talk about it – so go on, ask me something. Anything.’

‘OK,’ I said, tentatively. ‘If you want to have it both ways, couldn’t you make a show of getting involved a bit now, just to mollify your dad and get him off your back, and then, after you inherit, hand it all over to your better-qualified cousins to look after, and just be the titular head?’

I could see he was making heroic efforts to try to stay calm.

‘But I don’t know where to start with any of it, Stella. I mean, I just have to open The Wall Street Journal, and I get a migraine. It’s not just that I’m not interested, I simply have no aptitude for it. It makes me feel dumb and I’m not dumb.’

‘But surely you did business at college, or something?’ I asked.

That was what George and all his money-bunny pals had done. It seemed to be automatic setting for all of them, whatever they finally ended up doing – and most of his cashed-up pals had some kind of hilarious pretend job – so it seemed obvious that Jay would have done that too.

He shook his head and laughed, ruefully.

‘Oh, Bob did all that, which meant I didn’t have to. So do you really want to know what I did at college, Stella? That is, until my poor brother fell off that balcony and Daddy dearest forced me to drop out…’

I nodded, encouragingly, and he leaned towards me.

‘I did architecture, at UCLA, that’s what I did. Special area of study, domestic architecture – funny, huh?’

And as I took it in, I did have to laugh. It was all such a stupid mess.

‘So that time at Willow Barn wasn’t the first time I’d seen your dad,’ he continued. ‘I went to a lecture he gave at my college. It was so great. I wrote an extended essay on your family home actually, Stella. Got an A, too. How funny is that?’

‘Why didn’t you tell me all that before?’ I asked, incredulous.

He shrugged.

‘I was embarrassed. I felt like some kind of groupie. Then, when it turned out he hated me it was too late and just seemed to make it all more complicated, so I kept quiet.’

The craziness of the situation gave me the courage to ask my other big question.

‘So if you had to stop your studies, but you won’t go and work at the bank, isn’t there something else you could do? I mean, we’ve had a great time these few weeks, but don’t you get bored just hanging out, Jay? Don’t you want to do something with your brain?’

He looked at me, smiling sadly.

‘I do,’ he said. ‘I just don’t talk about it.’

I looked at him expectantly.

‘I have a foundation,’ he said. A charitable foundation that I set up in my brother’s memory.’

‘What kind of foundation?’ I asked, determined to make him open up about this side of his life. ‘What’s it called?’

He looked a bit uncomfortable, glanced away for a moment, and then leaned towards me.

‘It’s called “B & Me” and it helps young drug addicts with artistic inclinations through rehab and then mentors them into careers.’

I nodded encouragingly, trying to look more impressed than I really was. Most of his rich-kid pals had toy charities like that. Zaria had set up a rest home for retired beauty-counter sales girls – her mother’s one-time profession – who had fallen on hard times.

We’d gone to a gala benefit for it a couple of weeks before, which had rather sickened me. OK, so it had raised money for the home, but as far as I could tell, it was really just about having fun and dressing up for Zaria and her spoilt friends, and for getting your face in the society pages with your halo glowing.

If each of the female guests there had donated just one piece of the jewellery they were wearing, I’d thought at the time, the home would have been secure in perpetuity.

But despite my misgivings about guilt-assuaging, money-bunny charity work, I kept a positive look on my face for Jay – I was just so pleased to hear that he did something apart from enjoy himself.

‘Well, you are the original secret squirrel, aren’t you?’ I said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about it before?’

‘I don’t talk about it to anyone, except my mum, who’s involved too; it’s too personal. I keep my involvement as low-key as I can – pretty much anonymous, actually – but seeing as how you clearly think I am a total lamebrain, I’ve told you. That was what I was doing out in LA. Stuff to do with that, OK?’

I decided it was time for us both to lighten up.

‘Anything else you want to tell me?’ I said. ‘Got a wife and family I should know about? A secret identity as a superhero?’ I leaned across the table to pinch him in the ribs.

He giggled like a little boy – Jay was really, adorably ticklish.

After that, everything was fine between us again, and what had started out as a hideous row actually made us closer. But a few days later another problem reared its head – when it turned out our attitude to the paparazzi had been a little overcasual.

I was down in Café Gitane on my own one morning, while Jay was off playing tennis, and I opened ‘Page Six’ of the New York Post, to see a picture of the two of us, looking truly appalling in our yoga gear. Well, I did anyway. ‘Fisher in the Shallows’ was the heading.

‘Don’t get all excited about La Serenissima,’ he said. ‘Lovely though it is. We’re just going to change planes there.’

I was so caught up in the fun and intrigue of it all that when my mobile rang, I answered it without checking the incoming number first. Mistake. It was my father and he was shouting at me.

‘I know who you’re staying with in New York, Stella Montecourt,’ he was shouting, ‘because it’s splashed all over the Daily Mail today. So I don’t care if you’re not talking to me, because I’m not talking to you either. You have completely broken your promise to me and I’m wounded. Wounded, do you hear me?’

And we raced to be the first to hang up. The only boring thing about mobile phones, I realized, is that you can’t slam them down on people.

19