Iggy’s show was the lead on Suzy Menkes’s page the next day in the International Herald Tribune and was splashed on the front of World Fashion Daily. The papers had been pushed under my door while I slept and I sprang out of bed to grab them. Suzy raved about Iggy, describing how he had introduced a new level of creativity and intellectual interest into the Milan calendar and Louise – the ice queen of fashion journalism – was equally effusive in WFD:
This was the kind of bravura creativity you expect to see in Paris – not in oh-so-commercial Milan. Yet despite the breathtaking drama of the show with its, at times disturbing, bellicose themes and references, there were clothes here – and even more crucially for Rucca, accessories – that women of all ages will long to own. Veselinovic’s armoured tote is destined to be the next cult bag.
They both also reported that top LA celebrity stylists were already fighting over Rucca dresses for their clients to wear to the forthcoming Academy Awards – which was the fashion equivalent of winning an Oscar. And Nelly got a namecheck from them both too, as his ‘new muse’.
I was mentally air punching on Iggy and Nelly’s behalf when my mobile rang.
‘Have you seen Suzy and Louise?’ shouted Nelly.
‘Is that the new muse?’ I shouted back. ‘I was just reading them. It’s wicked. I’m thrilled for you both, Nelly, stoked, it’s brilliant. How’s Iggy.’
‘He’s pretty happy, as you can imagine. Want to come and have breakfast with us? We’re already on the Dom.’
‘Oh, Nellster,’ I said. ‘I’d love to, but I’m racing to catch the plane as it is. I haven’t even packed yet. We’re all going back this morning.’
I paused. Normally we all went on the same flight – the entire London fashion pack crammed into the first possible plane out of town, because everyone wanted to maximize their time at home before heading off again for Paris. Plus I had a pedi booked at Bliss Spa at 4 p.m. I couldn’t miss that.
‘Aren’t you on the ten o’clock flight, Nelly?’ I asked her.
‘Fuck that,’ she said. ‘I’m stayin’ here. With my Ig.’
‘Are you doing Paris?’
‘Not sure yet. If Iggy comes with me, I will. Otherwise, fuck it.’
‘It’s that tight already, is it Nelly?’ I said quietly, quite concerned about my impulsive friend. ‘After – what is it? – five nights? So tight you’re prepared to risk your job?’
‘Are you kidding?’ Nelly laughed her throatiest laugh. ‘Beaver’s just promoted me. I’m “fashion-director-at-large” now. How funny is that? Anyway babes, love ya lots. I’ll call you. Stravo lepina.’
‘What?’
‘That’s: “Bye beautiful,” in Serbian.’
And cackling with laughter she hung up.
As I whirled around the hotel room, stuffing my things into my suitcase – I had only half an hour until we had to leave for the airport – I came across Miles’s business card, which was still on the bedside table where he’d left it. I sat down on the bed and turned it over in my fingers a few times, wondering whether I shouldn’t just throw it on to the pile of carrier bags, old invitations and press releases already overflowing from the waste-paper bin.
It was another of those moments I’d been having ever since I had met him, when I felt very clearly that I was at a junction in my life. I could throw away the card, making a statement to myself that the whole thing had been a crazy aberration – or I could keep it and leave open the possibility of seeing him again.
For a moment, as I sat there thinking how nicely done his card was, in dark brown raised ink on vivid yellow card, I envied Nelly and her absolute certainly that staying in Milan with Iggy was the right thing to do. But then, as always seemed to happen in regard to Miles, my body was already acting, while my brain was still mulling it over. I fished my Palm Pilot out of my bag and entered Miles’s details in the photographer category. Then I threw the card into the bin.
I always felt strangely sad to leave Milan – it was the thought of all those gorgeous shops I hadn’t had time to get into – but as soon as we landed at Heathrow I felt the energy of my home city pick me up like a leaf in a fast stream.
I left Bee and the others at the airport to take the chauffeured car into town and hopped on to the Heathrow Express. It was so much quicker and dropped me off just minutes from home. And I’d had quite enough of riding around in cars with those three for a while. Even Frannie. I was sick of being some kind of Siamese quad and was all too aware that I only had a few days of freedom before it all began again in Paris.
By the time the train pulled into Paddington I was so happy to be home I decided to walk back to the flat. It was an amazingly nice day for early-October; blades of sunshine were piercing the station’s glass roof and there was no telling how many more days like that we would have before the tight lid of London’s winter sky settled over the city until spring.
I had my luggage in a wheelie bag and although it was on the huge side, I could just about drag it along. I even had sensible shoes on for a change – a pair of Gucci trainers in their logo jacquard – but every step I took closer to Ledbury Road, with my bag rattling along the pavement behind me like an old train, my guilt and confusion about what I had done with Miles got more intense.
Back in Milan I had felt so cut off from my real life, that despite my daily phone calls with Ollie I had somehow been able to keep him – and what I had got up to over there with Miles – separate in my head. Now I was back in pure Ollie territory, it all became one big mess.
Taking in the great-looking people strolling along Westbourne Grove, all of them somehow simultaneously individual and totally in fashion, one of a kind and one of my pack, I realized just how much living in that neighbourhood meant to me. I also remembered all over again that I was only there because Ollie had invited me into his life – and into his lifestyle. I could never have afforded a flat in W11 on my salary, even without my shopping habit.
That thought then prompted a moment of pure panic about how much I had racked up on my credit cards in Milan. The four pairs of Prada boots. The Gucci trainers. Another pair of Sergio Rossi killer heels. A Marni coat. A Dolce & Gabbana pantsuit. A Tod’s bag. A handful of T-shirts from Helmut Lang. I mean, it was all essential stuff for the new season, but even with discount, what did that come to? £ 5,000? £ 6,000?
By the time I had my key in the lock I felt physically sick about it all – especially when I saw the huge vase of flowers on the dining table with a big heart-shaped note.
Welcome home, darling Ems. See you tonight. I’ve booked E&O. See you there at 9 p.m. – have PO meetings before. Ollie xxxxxx
‘PO’ was our shorthand for ‘phone off’, meaning he wouldn’t be able to take any calls, so I sent him a quick text – ‘Hme sfly, c u EnO 9. Lv u. Em xxx’ – then I set to unpacking.
It was always crucial to me to get my things unpacked, washed and put away as soon as possible when I got home from any trip and especially with the shows, as it was part of the discipline of being ready to do it all again in three days’ time. I couldn’t possibly pack again for the next trip unless I was completely unpacked from the last one. Plus it was a great way to keep busy when I didn’t want to think about something.
I took off everything I was wearing – including my earrings and wedding ring – pulled my hair back into a tight pony-tail and upended my suitcase on the bedroom floor. Then I stuffed everything washable – even things I hadn’t worn – into the washing machine. Anything that had been in a suitcase was tainted to me. I hate that suitcase smell.
I handwashed my Chloé tops, TSE cashmere cardigans and Prada underwear, squeezed the excess moisture out by rolling them in thick towels and laid them out on my special drying-flat contraptions in the autumn sunshine pouring through the French windows.
I was starting to feel much better as I set to brushing and polishing all my shoes, putting aside a pair of boots which needed re-heeling, and then setting them out on the shelves in my side of our walk-in closet, in neat rows. Sandals and strappy evening shoes at the top, coming down through mules, to closed shoes and trainers, with boots along the bottom two shelves, all with the appropriate shoe trees.
I stowed two of the new pairs of Prada boots in a rarely used suitcase, locked it and put it back in our luggage cupboard. I was just about to put the suitcase I’d taken to Milan back in there too, when I noticed the two books Ursula had sent over with Paul were still in the bottom of it. I threw them under the bed, without giving them another look. For a moment Paul’s strange comment about there being more to life than shopping came back into my mind. He loved shopping as much as I did, I thought. I couldn’t imagine what he’d been on about, so I just pushed it out of my mind again, and went back to my sorting.
I rolled my belts into neat coils and put them in their drawer, ran a soft cloth over the handbags I’d taken with me (five), put them back in their dustbags and stowed them away on their shelves. I folded my scarves and pashminas and laid them carefully in their clear plastic storage boxes, arranged by colour. I smoothed my gloves and put them back into their box and sorted my costume jewellery into separate cases for necklaces, earrings and bangles.
Next I tipped out and sorted my travel tote and my handbag, putting the stack of Italian magazines I always got for Ollie on his bedside table and my book on mine, chucking the half-empty bottles of mineral water, chewing-gum wrappers and bits of crumpled newspaper into the bin – except for Suzy’s page featuring Iggy, which I also put on Ollie’s bedside pile.
I transferred my everyday essentials – Louis Vuitton wallet, keys on a Tiffany keyring, Anya Hindmarch mini make-up bag, Palm Pilot in its new Prada cover, tiny Nokia phone, Smythson notebook, Lamy pen, tissues in their quilted Chanel pouch – from the acid yellow Birkin bag I had travelled with into a more casual dark tan Luella Bartley safari bag.
Next I moved into the bathroom, emptying my washbags into the sink and putting all the products away in the cupboards hidden behind mirror doors. I wiped out the washbags and put them on their shelf in the luggage cupboard. Then I sorted my make-up bag, putting my brushes and other tools back into their crystal beakers, and separating eye shadows, lipsticks, foundations and blushers each into their designated Lucite storage caddies inside the mirrored cupboards.
Once all that was finished I had a very hot shower, washing my hair till my scalp tingled, blasted it with my hairdryer so I wouldn’t get pneumonia and then got dressed again, entirely in pristine clothes I hadn’t taken away with me: chocolate brown Juicy Couture trackpants with a tiny Bond’s T-shirt, and a huge navy six-ply cashmere jumper over the top, a trusty old pair of Pumas on my feet. No socks of course.
With everything done, I threw my pedicure flip-flops into my bag and raced out of the flat, to drop all the non-washable clothes off at the dry-cleaner’s on the corner. The man behind the counter greeted me like family – Ollie and I were probably his best customers. On top of my dry-cleaning needs, which were pretty massive, Ollie had all his shirts laundered there – which was at least ten a week, as he always changed his shirt before going out at night – plus all his suits.
Then I picked up a cab to take me down to Bliss Spa, in Sloane Avenue. I especially asked the driver to go through Hyde Park and as I looked out at its elegant landscape, the last of the afternoon sunshine falling in shafts between the trees, any residual feelings of panic completely ebbed away. I felt like I had sorted my brain along with my luggage.
Safely cocooned at Bliss, I lay back in my white leather chair and surrendered myself to ‘Sex and the City’, which was playing on a TV over the pedicurist’s head. With my headphones on I was able to tune out from the whole world, even though Carrie was regretting cheating on her dopey boyfriend with Mr Big. Oh well.
Forty minutes later, with my toenails a glorious rich dark red, I left feeling completely renewed. Dusk had fallen and the autumn chill nipped my soft bare feet in their black flip-flops, but I didn’t care. I was still on an ‘I love London’ high.
I had a little stroll along Walton Street looking in the windows at the gorgeous jewellery in Van Peterson, all the fragrant goodies in Santa Maria Novella and the engraved stationery in the Walton Street Stationery Shop. I even enjoyed looking at the painted nursery furniture in Dragons, even though Ollie and I had no intention of ever having children.
Strolling back to find a cab at Brompton Cross I popped into Joseph and dropped £ 130 on a pair of their stretch drainpipe pants in deepest burgundy. I already had several pairs of black, but thought the burgundy would be useful in Paris. A key new variation for my winter look. By the time I got home and dumped the trousers in the closet, still in the Joseph carrier bag, I felt fine again. Miles was safely stored in a box in my head. Tied up tightly with a large red bow. I’d worry about the credit cards another day.
With my brain back in order, it was great to see Ollie when I met him later at E&O. He was a bit late, but I didn’t mind, I sat in the restaurant’s bar – a home from home for us – showing off my genius new Marni coat and chatting to various people I knew in there.
One I was not so pleased to see was Alice’s assistant from the magazine, Natalie, who immediately started probing me for all the details of Nelly’s affair with Iggy and info about Nelly herself. I didn’t trust Natalie any more than I did Alice, in fact I thought she was a right little conniver, so I was circumspect in my replies.
Once I shrugged her off I was buttonholed by Nivek Thims – the photographer who had been sitting with Iggy in the Four Seasons the night of the Ferrucci party. Like everyone else in the bar, it seemed, he was raving about Iggy’s show, but he was also finding ways of implying – due to how closely they had worked together discussing the possible ad campaign – that he, Nivek, had quietly played a large part in Iggy’s success.
‘That’s the great thing about Iggy,’ Nivek was saying. ‘He likes to work closely with a small creative elite of brilliant people that he naturally gathers around him – like Nelly. How is darling Nelly? Have you seen her since the show?’
I knew for a fact that Nelly had never met Nivek until the night of the Ferrucci party, so I was a little surprised when he went on to suggest that we send her a text – on his phone – ‘just for fun’, because it was such a coincidence that we had bumped into each other. That was when it hit me just how major Nelly’s new role in life was. Overnight she had become someone that anyone who wanted to get ahead in fashion really needed to know. Nivek just wanted to text her – on his phone – so he could get her mobile number. I pretended I’d forgotten it.
Under this pressure, I was relieved when Ollie walked in, looking pink and flushed and handsome, that lock of dark hair falling over his eyes, his suit, shirt and tie combo as immaculate as ever. Unfortunately Nivek was delighted to see Ollie too – he would have liked a Slap advertising campaign almost as much as he wanted the Rucca one.
After giving me a big hug and kiss, Ollie greeted Nivek warmly, pumping his hand and slapping his shoulder in the public school way he had never quite lost. For a moment I watched him with a strange sense of remove. He and Nivek circled round each other like two wolves not sure which of them was more senior in the pack. Both were friendly, showing lots of gum and presenting their metaphorical butts for sniffing, as they tried to compute which of them had more to get from associating with the other.
So far, it was a tie – Nivek had serious groove credentials for the work he had done with various new independent style magazines with names like Thrust and Wonderdog, while Ollie had the rare appeal of controlling a cool brand and the big budget to promote it. Nivek had close ties with the agents of super-hot young models and Ollie had access to the world’s most cutting-edge make-up artists. And now they both had connections to the new fashion supernova that was Iggy.
In the end, by employing a brilliantly slipped-in mention of ‘our’ very close friendship with Nelly, accompanied by a dazzling ‘fuck-you sucker’ smile, Ollie triumphed. It was he who ended the conversation, catching the maître d’s eye over Nivek’s shoulder, like the old smoothie he was, and steering me off my bar stool and into the restaurant.
When we were seated he took both my hands over the table and smiled at me.
‘Hello, beautiful,’ he said. ‘How the hell are you? You look wonderful, as always. Is that a Marni coat you’re wearing?’
‘Bingo,’ I said. ‘I had to wear it straight away – it’s new. And you don’t look so shabby yourself. Have you been working out? Or drinking?’
Ollie laughed heartily as the waiter brought over fresh sea breezes, still our favourite cocktail.
‘I have been doing a few of those Astanga yoga moves you showed me,’ he said. ‘Opening up my chakras. It’s good stuff, gets the brain working. So what else did you buy in Milan?’
I gave him the edited highlights. Ollie was one of those rare men who actually loved shopping and really enjoyed seeing what his wife had bought, but generous though he was – he paid off one of my cards for me each month – I never told him the full story. Indulgent though he was, I knew that even he might think I’d gone a bit far with the four pairs of boots. When I eventually got out the two pairs I’d stashed away, I’d tell him I’d picked them up in the Selfridge’s sale. Easy.
After that, our conversation fell into its usual pattern: Ollie telling me about his latest triumphs at work and his plans for even greater market domination and coolness for his beloved ‘brand’; me telling him all the gossip from the fashion scene. Of course, the thing he wanted to know about most was Nelly and Iggy – their new association had even made it into the British papers that morning.
‘So how did it come about?’ he asked. ‘How did Nelly crack on to this Iggy bloke?’ He snorted contemptuously. ‘She’s no prize, let’s face it, so how on earth did she swing it? And is he really as great as everyone’s saying?’
Ignoring his unkind remarks about my dear friend, I felt a momentary hot flush of panic engulf me as a sudden total flashback of the night Nelly ‘cracked on’ to Iggy swept over me.
I didn’t think my face had betrayed me, as I had got it under control immediately with one of those split-second crisis responses the human brain is capable of. In that instant I knew for certain that I was going to be able to separate what Nelly had done that night with Iggy from what I had done with Miles. I was actually quite impressed with myself and wondered if this was how international espionage agents had to think. It was like having a split computer screen in your head.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘Everyone was at the Ferrucci party that night. Iggy was there with a load of people, we were all there too and the two of them just got together, the way people do.’ A vision of Miles’s face came fastbowling into my forebrain from nowhere and I knocked it out again, for six.
Ollie was frowning slightly, as he flicked his signature forelock out of his eyes. He had his mouth open and was investigating his back teeth with his tongue. He looked momentarily rather less than attractive.
‘But what could he possibly see in her?’ he said. ‘It said in the paper that he’s got one hand missing, he’s got a hook. Sounds grotesque. Is he fat and ugly too?’
‘Ollie!’ I said, pissed off. ‘Don’t be so horrible. Nelly may not be your cup of tequila, but a lot of men find her really attractive, you know. Not all men like skinny girls. She’s what they call a “real woman” and I’ve seen men follow her down the street.’
‘Maybe she’d dropped something,’ he said. He wasn’t smiling.
‘Look, Ollie,’ I said, leaning in to the table and spitting the words at him. ‘I know you don’t like Nelly – in fact, she doesn’t like you either, so you’ve got that in common. But I really like both of you and let me tell you something. Igor Veselinovic is about to become one of the hottest names in world fashion. He’ll be up there with Alexander McQueen and John Galliano very shortly and you and I are both really lucky to have a close connection to him right from the start.’
That shut him up. I leaned back in my seat and continued.
‘So, you have a choice – you can carry on with this stupid snobbery about Nelly, just because her parents have a chip shop, or you can cash in on her new status. And I don’t know about you, but I really enjoyed sitting front row at the Rucca show and I love Nelly dearly and I’m going to make the most of it. So there.’
Ollie was now carefully picking spinach out of his teeth with his little fingernail.
‘And will you stop that goddam picking!’ I said.
It was a habit of his that drove me nuts. Even though I knew it was inspired by his fear of contaminating his dazzling porcelain-veneered smile with green foliage, which was a valid concern, I found the public picking completely repulsive. He was still at it.
‘If you want to pick your teeth,’ I continued, slightly surprised by how cross I felt. ‘Go to the bloody toilet and do it, and keep your gob shut till you get there.’
I said ‘toilet’ deliberately, as it was one of Ollie’s most hated ‘suburban’ words. ‘Lounge’ was another that was good for getting at him, and ‘settee’. They made his skin crawl. He wasn’t keen on glass clinking either, or a myriad other little signals that someone was not quite his tribe. He stopped mid-pick and looked at me in amazement – then, to my great relief, he threw back his head and roared with laughter.
‘I’m sorry, Em,’ he said, taking my hand again. ‘It’s my terrible prep-school table manners. We were like little savages at my school and I do sometimes forget myself.’
He motioned at a hovering waiter to refill my glass.
‘Oh, you do make me laugh sometimes,’ he said, wiping tears from his bright blue eyes. ‘OK, you’re quite right, I must put my silly dislike of Nelly behind me. It’s just that I didn’t think she was a suitable friend for you and I didn’t want you to be tainted by association. And toilet to you too,’ he added, raising his glass and not clinking it.
‘Well, look how wrong you were there Mr Snob Guts,’ I said. I paused and looked at him sitting there with all the gloss and confidence his expensive education had endowed him with.
‘You know,’ I continued, not particularly liking him in that moment. ‘It’s not necessary to have gone to a major public school to get ahead in the fashion business, Ollie. I think you need to let go of that idea. It’s not like merchant banking.’
I could see he wasn’t listening, though. He had a look in his eye that I associated with serious brand strategy.
‘I could do with a trip to Milan,’ he said eventually. ‘Bit of a cool hunt through the city, see how the brand sits there. It’s hard to find the right retail outlets in Italy, because apart from a few unexciting department stores the cosmetics marketplace there is limited to independent perfumeries, so it’s very hard to control your brand’s environments. I think it might be time to move into stand-alone Slap boutiques there. So shall we go for a long weekend soon? Catch up with our dear friend Nelly and her new beau Iggy? You can take me to all those marvellous restaurants you’re always telling me about. On expenses, of course.’
I shook my head at him, but I couldn’t help smiling.
‘You are such an operator, Ollie Fairbrother,’ I said. ‘Teeth picking, or no teeth picking. I’d love to go to Milan with you – once Paris is over, of course – and only if we can stay at the Four Seasons.’
‘Deal,’ said Ollie.
‘But hang on a minute,’ I said. ‘I thought we were going cool hunting in New York, so you can try and pressure Paul into signing his life away to Slap?’
‘We’ll do both,’ he said, raising his glass again.
‘Cheers,’ I said, raising mine and clinking it loudly with his. ‘Toilet.’
Although I only had three more days at home before going to Paris early on Tuesday morning, Ollie insisted on going ahead with our Sunday salon as normal. I was quite disappointed, as I thought we could have spent the day together, maybe checking out the new exhibition at the Whitechapel and exploring Brick Lane and Hoxton and having lunch at one of the new restaurants there, so he could show me what he was so excited about.
I did go to that part of town quite a lot to various photographic studios in old warehouses and to see young designers, most of whom seemed to be based in E1 these days, but if Ollie was seriously considering uprooting us from our W11 haven I wanted to have a closer look. It was going to have to be pretty special to get me out of Ledbury Road.
But he seemed strangely unenthusiastic when I suggested it, saying he’d gone off the idea of moving – the property market was still too uncertain, it could go up or down, or so he’d read. So instead we spent Saturday shopping for food and flowers and cooking for the next day’s lunch. I was always glad to get back into my kitchen, as I found cooking truly relaxing. I could get completely absorbed in chopping and stirring, with my brain in a pleasant state of neutral. I was really glad that Ollie had no aspirations to be a Jamie Oliver himself, as it was my thing and I liked to shine in it.
For that Sunday, I’d pulled a recipe for a Tunisian chicken dish out of an old copy of French ELLE and, with the help of a French/English dictionary, I’d worked out what was involved. We went up to the Moroccan spice shop on Golborne Road to buy the more obscure north African ingredients, which was just the sort of expedition Ollie adored, and as well as the spices we had actually gone for, we came out laden with gold and white filigree tea glasses, a brass teapot with an outrageous spout and two couscous steamers. He was such a consumer, my husband. Suited me.
In between the shopping, and stopping to chat to people we bumped into, Ollie worked his mobile, drumming up suitable types to come to our salon. He had a few people in place already, he said, but he liked the serendipitous effect of leaving it to the last minute, surrendering the final guest list to fate. This calculated risk mostly paid off, and we’d end up with a mix of people you never would have put together on purpose, yet who would strangely seem to click; the whole being greater than the sum of the human parts and all that. Only once had it led to a very intimate meal for six people – two of whom were rival model agents who loathed each other. That had been rather too interesting.
For this one, Ollie said he had already ‘locked down’ five guests, but he wanted about four more for ‘the mix’. I had to find two and he had to find two – but he wouldn’t tell me who he had already. Ollie loved to turn everything into a game – a competitive game. I sometimes wondered if he had actually left school, but it was harmless and made him happy, so I went along with him.
Although I knew creating an unpredictable mix was all part of the game for Ollie, I was still quite surprised to hear him call Nivek Thims – a name I couldn’t miss – who seemed to accept delightedly, judging by the high-pitched squeaks coming out of Ollie’s mobile.
‘What on earth did you invite him for?’ I asked, as we headed into Tom’s Deli for a coffee fuel-up, our shopping complete. ‘He’s such a shameless user.’
‘Partly because I want to torture him with how close you are to Nelly,’ said Ollie, grinning. ‘But mainly because I have a gut feeling about him. I’ve heard his work is really good and I think he will become a big-name photographer, so we might as well get him on side.’
For my two guests, my first choice was Paul, who was spending a couple of days in London before heading over to Paris, but after dialling his mobile and getting his voicemail message, I decided against pursuing it. I knew I would have enjoyed the event a lot more with Paul there, but I had my reasons not to ask him this time. For one, I didn’t want to jeopardize my trip to New York by giving Ollie a chance to talk to him about signing up with Slap. Secondly, he’d been there the night I’d met Miles and just for the time being it all felt a little too close.
Instead, I invited an up-and-coming fashion PR I rather liked, who was getting a reputation for representing interesting young London designers and who went by the single name of Isolde. Then, after about three knock-backs and five message banks – one of Ollie’s rules was that we weren’t allowed to leave messages, we had to get a live acceptance – I got quite desperate and roped in Peter Potter, the poison-penned fashion editor for The Daily Reporter, a mid-market tabloid.
A little too far to the bitchy side of bitchy queen for my taste, Peter would never have been a first choice, but he always had brilliant goss, which would delight the other guests, whether it had any foundation in truth or not. Plus he was quite well known through his TV appearances, just the sort of media fame which Ollie found so impressive.
It wasn’t until I put the phone down on that call – he was clearly delighted to be asked and already knew all about our last-minute guest lists – that I remembered he’d been at the Ferrucci party that night with us all too. I went cold all over and desperately hoped I wasn’t part of his current Milan ‘hot scoop’ repertoire.
*
As a result of Ollie’s unconventional way of assembling the guest list, part of the fun of the Sunday salons for the two of us was seeing who turned up.
First to arrive on this occasion was Felicity Aldous, the editor-in-chief of Chic Interiors, the sister magazine of Chic. I was quite amazed to see her walk in – a full ten minutes before the invited time – because I really couldn’t stand her and Ollie knew it.
It was typical of her to arrive early like that. God, that annoyed me. Why couldn’t she just have walked around the block a few times like any normal person? You had to arrive at least five minutes after the appointed hour, preferably fifteen, everyone knew that. I wasn’t even properly dressed when she marched in, I was still hopping around on one shoe, and it just added to my already less than warm feelings towards her.
Whenever I saw Felicity I was overwhelmed simultaneously by her pretension and her flying saliva. The spit spray you could dodge, but the carrying on about bollocks could kill you, to quote Frannie. A couple of times a year at work we would have what Felicity called ‘essential cross-cultural briefings’ – and Bee called after-work piss-ups – when the staff of the two magazines got together with a few bottles of wine and some chips ’n’ dips, so we could tell them what was going on in fashion and they could fill us in on the latest developments in scatter cushions.
I just couldn’t take it that seriously. Don’t get me wrong, I love homewares as much as the next compulsive shopper and no one as over-concerned with their wardrobe as me could help but be equally obsessed with poncing up their living space, but those Chic Interiors girls went way overboard. I mean, I can be really silly about a handbag, but I do have a sense of humour about it at heart. You have to, or fashion will eat you alive.
But not Felicity. She really believed it all. She could come over all spitty and excited about a washing-up-liquid bottle, reducing me and Frannie to hopeless church giggles at those briefings, until we succumbed to lobotomized boredom.
She was a quite a snappy dresser, though. I was prepared to give Felicity that – if you like those over-intellectual kind of designers – and she was really thin, so she wore her clothes well, which was a good thing, seeing how plain her face was. With her big eyes, prominent teeth and bony features, Frannie had once said she looked like a constipated chihuahua in novelty specs. They really were the most stupid glasses – I think she wore them to put architects at ease – and combined with that ultra-severe Joan of Arc hairdo, it was quite a striking look. She clearly styled herself a jolie laide. Jolly well never gets laid, Paul had said when he’d met her, but he was wrong about that.
The amazing thing was, Felicity never seemed to be without a boyfriend. Good-looking ones too, with jobs and everything. Mainly architects, it has to be said, but in London’s desperate dating meat market, they were prime cuts, no doubt about it. She had the kind of look I totally didn’t get – I could never understand girls who didn’t simply want to look as glamorous as possible – but there seemed to be a lot of men who liked women who looked about as warm and feminine as a John Pawson kitchen.
But Ollie seemed pleased to see her and I was even more pleased to notice on the placement – he always did one on the sly, filling in the guests as they arrived – that he had cleverly put her next to him, with me at the other end of the table. Well out of range of the oral fountain. Hurrah.
Isolde arrived next and she and Felicity seemed happy to have the chance to get to know each other. Mind you, it would be a rare PR who didn’t seize the chance to cosy up to a magazine editor, although I did notice Isolde take a few steps back as Felicity talked at her in increasingly excited tones about a new tap designer she had discovered.
While they were happily schmoozing each other, I cornered Ollie in the bathroom, where he was giving his perfect hair just one more little touch up. He was quite vain about his hair, was Ollie.
‘What the hell did you invite the human lawn-sprinkler for?’ I whispered at him.
‘What are you talking about?’ he said.
‘Spitty Felicity – why did you ask her? You know I can’t stand her.’
‘Felicity?’ said Ollie, frowning. ‘I think she’s really interesting – and we’ve decided to advertise in her mag. I think homewares is a very important growth area and those magazines are about to become as crucial for niche cosmetics marketing as fashion mags, if not more so. It’s the ideal way to reach the more sophisticated end of the lifestyle consumer, so I wanted to cement our relationship with her, OK?’
‘Whatever,’ I said, sighing. I should have known there was an angle on it. ‘But you may want to wear breathing apparatus while you do the cementing.’
‘The spitting, Ollie. It could drown you.’
He just looked at me blankly.
‘I honestly don’t know what you are going on about,’ he said shrugging, and turned back to admiring himself in the mirror, from several angles. ‘And please be nice to her, Em. I want her to put this place in the magazine.’
He chucked me on the cheek and left the bathroom, grinning to himself.
The next bunch of people arrived in a clump, starting with Ollie’s old school friend, Jeremy Trouton and his wife, Sarah.
Jeremy was your classic public-school banker wanker, and I actually rather adored him. He was so straightforwardly straight he was almost eccentric and after the twisted creative weirdos we hung out with most of the time, he was a relief. He was funny too, in a totally unreconstructed sexist, classist, Tory-voter, Spectator-reader way. He reminded me of my uncle, but with a sense of humour.
Sarah I found slightly harder work, sweet though she was, as it was hard to get her to talk about anything apart from ‘our two boys’. In all fairness, they were really nice kids and in school hols, if they weren’t all ‘in the country’, they came along to our Sunday salons too.
Aged eight and ten, I always had a lot of fun with them, so that was a good basis for Sarah and I to get on, even though her house was decorated entirely from the OKA catalogue and she dressed in head-to-toe Boden. She was always telling me how ‘clever’ I was with clothes before telling me how very little she had paid for what she was wearing.
‘It’s marvellous, you know, Emily,’ she was saying to me on this occasion, after I had duly admired her purple needlecord skirt. ‘If you order within two weeks of receiving your catalogue you get a further ten per cent off. I buy all the boys’ weekend clothes from them. Amazing value.’
Arriving at the same time was another couple, rather different in their interests. Polly and Ossian were ‘artists’, classic Notting Hill trustafarians, complete with whiteman dreadlocks and quite the filthiest house I had ever been in, although full of the most gorgeous bits of ethnic tat and beaten-up pieces of priceless furniture from their various family piles. They never seemed to do much ‘arting’, did Poll and Oss, in fact their artistic lives consisted mainly of going to the openings of their myriad artist friends’ exhibitions. But they had an insatiable appetite for social events, were good fun and I was always pleased to see them.
I loved their upbeat manner – everything was ‘amazing’ or ‘marvellous’ – and I always particularly enjoyed watching them interact with Sarah and Jeremy, because they were really just different sides of the same Sloaney coin. In fact, the four of them knew loads of people in common and got on really well. I used to have this fantasy about dressing them in each other’s clothes and seeing if I could tell the difference.
Arriving just after them came Ollie’s bore of the week. He always had to have one – someone who was directly useful for his work and who also made the whole event fully claimable on expenses. They were a varied bunch. It might be a rally-driving enthusiast from the media-buying agency he used, whom he was grooming to screw even lower advertising page rates out of magazine advertising sales people – Ollie could never have done something so uncouth himself, as it might have damaged his precious relationship with ‘editorial’.
Or, even more eye-crossingly dull, would be someone involved with ‘distribution’ and his hideous wife, although generally they were more likely to be invited to some kind of frou-frou corporate tent at Henley, or a Genesis concert. I always had to go along and do my corporate wife bit at those events, but I didn’t mind because I generally got a new outfit and a John Frieda blow-dry out of it. Fine by me.
Other crucial contacts in Ollie’s business world included his retail clients, and this week we were welcoming a high-level executive from a chain of provincial department stores which desperately wanted to stock Slap. Her name was Carol. Although he hadn’t told her yet, I knew Ollie had already decided to go with them, but by dazzling her with his glamorous friends and lifestyle, he was clearly intending to impress her into giving him a ridiculously large acreage of floorspace at lower rent than any of his competitors, in the prime position opposite the main door, with free advertising space in the store’s cardholder magazine thrown in.
There were a lot of plates to spin in Ollie’s job – far more than most people realized – and he never dropped one of them. I really was proud of him.
Carol arrived at the same time as Peter Potter, which already had her seriously impressed, as he was a big name in Middle England. Not only did he have his byline picture smiling out of his page in The Daily Reporter every week, he was actually better known for his regular appearances on ‘Wakey Wakey’, a hugely popular sofa-based women’s morning ‘magazine’ show. It was seriously mainstream stuff, but – much as it killed us magazine chicks to admit it – it was probably the single most influential platform for flogging fashion and beauty products in the entire country.
From the moment he arrived that day Peter was even more brightly ‘on’ than usual, with his excitement at having been ‘ringside’ when Nelly and Iggy had got together, as he put it. And if he had noticed what I had been up to the same night, it clearly paled next to the big story. Everyone at that table knew all about Iggy and Nelly – apart from Jeremy, of course, who thought all fashion designers, except possibly Johnnie Boden, were ghastly poofs. Even Sarah had read about it in the Daily Mail, an innocent reference that caused a momentary scowl to cross Peter’s face.
‘Yes,’ he’d snapped at her. ‘They picked up the story from my page and just managed to squeeze it into their last edition, with all the other boring shit their boring readers enjoy.’
But apart from that momentary irritation he was positively pregnant with the scoop of it all and clearly longing to regale the company with the details.
Peter Potter was a small man – in every regard, according to Paul, who’d been there once, as he had to so many other places he later regretted – and he was puffed up with glory at having first-hand intelligence about such a big story. He was generally quite happy to run with sixth-, seventh-, or even no-hand information in his fashion gossip column, so this was a big thing for him.
And it was great for me too, as I could sit back, happily out of the spotlight, as he regaled the table with his memories of the night that Iggy and Nelly got it on.
‘Well,’ he was saying, as we sat down to eat – he had the natural sense of timing to keep his big story until he had everyone’s attention. ‘I had always assumed Iggy was a big woofter, like every other fashion designer in the world.’
Jeremy nodded in sage agreement.
‘And, of course, there are all those well-known people who went to Saint Martins with him…’
Peter lowered his voice to a more conspiratorial level. The entire table leant in to hear him. Gotcha! he would have been thinking.
‘There are several people – household names– who claim to have had more intimate contact with Mr Veselinovic than those three Serbian kisses, which are becoming such a signature of his. Nevertheless, it was quite obvious to me from the start that he was seriously turned on by my Miss Nelly…’
‘Oh, I never thought Ig was gay,’ Nivek interrupted, with the self-importance of someone who was very close to the person being discussed. ‘I was at the Four Seasons with him that night it all happened – before any of you came in.’
Pause for sickly smile at Peter. Registered. Continue.
‘You can see by the way he reacts to models,’ continued Nivek. ‘At castings for major international ad campaigns…’ – pause for effect – ‘… his interest is definitely more than just academic. His reactions are more, well, genital than cerebral.’
Nice work, Nivek, I thought. Good interrupting and I liked the use of ‘campaigns’ in the plural. ‘Major’ and ‘international’ were nice touches too. Especially for someone who hadn’t actually been booked for the job yet. It quite cancelled out Peter’s use of ‘my Miss Nelly’.
I glanced over at Ollie, who was watching the exchange with the concentration of a spectator at Wimbledon Centre Court. Nivek was in the Tim Henman role. He might win, but he probably wouldn’t.
‘Anyway,’ said Peter, brushing invisible crumbs off the table in a gesture that suggested that it was what he would like to have done with Nivek’s contribution. If not his actual head. ‘As I was saying, despite all the well-founded…’ – killer look at Nivek – ‘… rumours, it was obvious to me that Iggy fancied the pants off my little Nelly from the moment I saw them together.
‘It’s funny,’ he continued, looking smugger with every word. ‘Because I know they had met before – Nelly had told me all about discovering this incredibly talented young Serbian designer months ago – but it just hadn’t clicked between them until that night. I think it must have been meeting away from a work context for the first time that made the difference. And, of course, having been so close to Nell, for so very long, I could tell immediately she had the hots for him too. And when my Nelly wants a man, Nelly gets him.’
‘Nelly’s gonads never wrong,’ I heard myself saying. It was quite unconscious. The words just popped out. Every head at the table swivelled round to me, gripped. ‘Gonads’ had even attracted Jeremy’s interest. Carol’s mouth was hanging open.
‘What?’ said Peter, Nivek and Ollie in unison.
‘Er, nothing,’ I said, thinking fuck, fuck, fuck. ‘I was just mumbling.’
‘Nelly’s gonads never wrong?’ said Peter, who was highly skilled at hearing and remembering things people didn’t want him to hear or remember. ‘Is that what she said to you?’
I just laughed. ‘Oh no, I’m just being silly, just a joke. Silly girl stuff, take no notice. Now, who would like some more couscous?’
I got up quickly and went over to the kitchen area. Peter Potter was next to me in a moment.
‘Is that what Nelly said to you?’ he said, his hand on my arm, quite tightly. ‘Nelly’s gonads never wrong?’
‘What?’ I said, trying to play the dumb blonde. ‘Do you want some couscous, Peter?’
I smiled brightly at him, trying to channel Margot from ‘The Good Life’, who I always found such a comfort in tricky social situations, but he just narrowed his eyes back at me.
‘OK, princess,’ he said, nodding his small shaved head. ‘I hear you. And I also hear that your gonads were working hard that night too. It was quite hot and heavy on that dance floor, wasn’t it, Emily? Nearly as hot as the photographers’ pit.’
He spat the words out. I could feel the blood draining from my intestines, when he spoke again.
‘Very charming that Seamus. Irish eyes and all that…’
He looked so pleased with himself and I just felt like shouting with laughter. He’d seen me dancing with Seamus. I did dance with Seamus that night. Closely. Provocatively. It meant nothing.
‘Oh yes,’ I said enthusiastically. ‘That Seamus is such a sexy little guy. I love those Irish boys. I’m always teasing Ollie about it. Aren’t I, darling?’ I said, walking back to the table, leaning round my husband and kissing his cheek, as I put the couscous steamer down on the table.
‘I was just telling Peter, how sexy I find Irishmen. You know all about my secret love for Terry Wogan, don’t you, Ollie?’
I flashed Peter my brightest Margot smile and he looked furious as Ollie laughed along.
‘Yeah,’ he said, patting my bottom. ‘Can you believe it? Emily is addicted to Radio 2. She listens to Wogan every morning. She loves the old fart.’
‘Wogan,’ said Jeremy with great enthusiasm. ‘Top man, Wogan. Bloody funny. Eurovision. Hilarious. Very dry, old Wogan. Good man.’
Up you, Peter Rotter, I thought, you smarmy little creep.
After that I was relieved to find that the conversation had moved on quite naturally from Nelly and Iggy, as the rest of the table didn’t have quite the insatiable appetite for the fashion gossip that was Peter’s lifeblood. He wasn’t too upset, though, because he managed to regain the spotlight fairly quickly with supposedly ‘gospel’ bits of filthy information about Hollywood stars and their alleged sexual perversions.
I found all that stuff about as interesting as rally-driving stories, it was so clearly rubbish, but if it kept Rotter – as I had now decided to call him – off my back, I was happy to look fascinated and tell him how amazingly clever and in the loop he was.
If the mixture of people was right, sometimes those Sunday lunches took off in a way that was quite magical, with really dazzlingly witty exchanges and stimulating arguments, sometimes turning into a full-on party. This was not one of those weeks.
I was sitting next to Sarah, which rather limited my conversational prospects and it didn’t take her long to get round to her favourite topic – after her own children – which was asking when Ollie and I were going to ‘start a family’.
‘Are you trying yet, Emily?’ she always asked me with great delicacy, which made me want to bark with laughter.
It didn’t matter how many times I had explained to her that we had made a completely conscious decision not to have children, as neither of us wanted them, she was still convinced we were just putting it off.
‘There really isn’t a “right” time, you know, Emily,’ she was saying, with her customary originality. ‘But then that means there isn’t a “wrong” time either. Really, they will change your life so much, you will just wonder why you ever waited. And, you do know that it gets much harder to conceive after thirty, don’t you? I really can’t remember life before we had the boys now…’ she continued and then she was off, droning on about schools and common entrance and all the other subjects that helped to convince me that I really didn’t ever want to be a parent.
I tried to divert her by coaxing Polly and Ossie into the conversation, but they were uncharacteristically subdued, after what they admitted had been a big weekend, even by their standards. So I wasn’t particularly surprised when the conversation turned to that most excruciating of all subjects – property prices. Needless to say it was one of Felicity’s areas of special interest and I nearly lost it when she came out with her first gambit.
‘Of course I’ve been in the Spitalfields market since the early Eighties,’ she sang out, spraying all around her.
Oh, how I longed for Frannie to share the joke with. Where else would Spitty Felicity live but Spitalfields?
‘Of course, from my vast Huguenot house on Fournier Street, I have watched the gentrification of Clerkenwell with horror, Hoxton with amusement and Brick Lane with a certain trepidation,’ continued Spitty, smiling at us smugly over her novelty specs, which looked like missing parts from a passing Sputnik.
‘But my house – for which I paid a little over sixty thousand in eighty-four, is now worth well over a million – and I have used the equity to buy several other properties in the quartier. It’s such a fascinating part of town and the young creatives who are now moving in are nothing more than the latest wave of refugees to populate it. I see myself as their patron.’
And that was it, they were all off with their property stories. It was as bad as drug stories, or drinking stories, or even hearing about someone else’s trip to the dentist, because no one was really listening to anyone else, they just wanted to broadcast their own smug good fortune. I could have machine gunned them all to death.
I’d heard Sarah on the subject of the Fulham property boom about a million times before – ‘I knew when Blooming Marvellous opened up we’d made it as a neighbourhood…’ – so I knew I’d have to sit through a percentage-on-percentage analysis of that, but I was surprised when Jeremy chipped in. I’d thought he was too much of a gentleman to talk about money.
Even dreamy Polly and Ossie got in on it. It was like a brain-wasting disease that had infected the entire British middle class. A form of BSE caught from drooling over estate agents’ windows and the property sections of local papers. The only ones who didn’t join in were me and Ollie. He might have been a hard-nosed business man at work and a bit of a poseur in every other respect, but he thought it was the absolute end to talk about money in a social context. And at that moment, I really loved my husband.