she thought she might die from lust, she eventually managed,
‘You are, Marky!’
He kissed her, using his tongue.
‘That’s better. Remember who’s boss around here, gorgeous.’ He took another draw on the spliff. ‘But you gotta admit Bella’s fucking lucky – finding someone as cunting loaded as Natalia, who’s fucking obsessed with mad colours, to buy them all at her first exhibition? That’s what I call bollock-busting luck.’
‘Are you talking about my daughter?’ asked an amused and very posh voice.
Mark looked over lazily in the direction of a beautiful older woman whose kaftan suited the surroundings so much he thought she’d be just perfect for a Stadium shoot, if they ever had a granny-fanciers’ edition.
‘Oh, hi, Olivia. Yeah, just saying how great for Belles that old Nat bought all her paintings.’
‘Yes, that was certainly a lucky break. Well, I just came in to see how they looked in here, and I must say I think Natalia’s done her proud.’
‘Hi,’ said Sam. ‘I’m Sam.’
‘Oh, how lovely, Bella’s told me all about you. I’m Olivia,’ said Olivia, extending an elegant hand. ‘Do you mind if I join you?’
Sam got up and fussed around with some cushions, trying to make it comfortable for her, but Olivia brushed her off.
‘Thank you, darling, but don’t be silly. It’s absolutely fine as it is.’ And she sat down, cross-legged in her kaftan, opposite them. Catching sight of the spliff burning itself out in the ashtray, she added, ‘You young things nowadays seem to have no idea how to roll joints. Give that to me, please – I can hardly bear to look at it.’
Momentarily terrified with dope fear, Mark passed Olivia the ashtray.
‘D’you have any more skins?’ she asked, and he reached into his pocket for a packet of Rizlas. Deftly, she tapped off the burning end and tore the silly thing open.
‘That’s better, isn’t it?’ She beamed around at them, having re-rolled a perfect, tight little spliff with her right hand. Her left was holding a large glass of white wine. ‘I do hate waste.’
‘Bugger me, where’d you learn to do that?’ Mark laughed.
‘I was a teenager in the sixties, darling, was married to Justin Brown, and spent an awful lot of the seventies in Morocco. May I?’
Mark nodded and she lit it and toked, inhaling deeply.
‘Gosh, that really makes Bella’s colours look cool,’ she said, gazing at her daughter’s paintings on the wall, and Mark and Sam both laughed.
‘Sam, darling, you’re awfully pretty. Oh, of course, you’re the one who dabbles in modelling. I did that donkey’s years ago, though I was slimmer then …’
‘You’re still beautiful,’ said Mark and Sam simultaneously, and Olivia laughed.
‘Past my prime, I’m afraid.’ She turned her hypnotic gaze on Sam again. ‘I imagine modelling’s very different these days. We used to make up our own faces, and sometimes we even wore our own clothes, you know.’
‘Yes, I’ve heard about that,’ said Sam, wondering exactly how much Bella had told her mum about the nature of her modelling, and trying to ignore the smirk on Marky’s face.
‘I don’t have any of that old shit,’ said Big Sean, the obnoxious DJ that Poppy had poached from Pacha for a small fortune, rolling his eyes. As he was about five foot seven, the name was presumably meant to be ironic – unless his Napoleon complex was seriously out of control.
‘Find it then. It’s my wedding and I’m paying you enough,’ Poppy said steelily. ‘And I’d like you to dedicate it to Natalia. If that’s not too much trouble.’ The little cunt looked as if he wanted to throw himself off the cliff, then looked once more at the opulence of the villa and Poppy’s intransigence and took out his BlackBerry.
‘José, mate, I’m dealin’ with people who want old shit.’
He rolled his eyes again and Poppy whispered to Bella,
‘Once he’s played the music for Natalia, we can all chuck him in, fucking CrackBerry and all.’
Bella giggled and jumped back into the pool, feeling as wonderfully mad as good mad can feel. Poppy joined her and they swam over to the island for another line. The entire party was rocking now, the best (or worst) of London’s media twats splashing about in the water, smoking dope in hammocks or just ecstatic at the sounds of their own voices as they pontificated. Poppy worked in TV production, Damian in the men’s magazine world; it was hardly surprising that a large proportion of the guest list was very pleased with itself indeed. Most of them had started believing their own publicity years ago.
‘Oh, Pops, I love you.’ The girls exchanged soggy and effusive hugs on the island. ‘HAPPY WEDDING!’
‘Yay! Happy my wedding too!’ Poppy lay back on the deck in her virginal white bikini and said, with all the seriousness that a drunk and coked-up bride could muster, ‘But also, babes, I’m so happy you’re so happy with Andy. He’s a wonderful man.’
‘Yes, he is,’ said Bella dreamily. Then she laughed. ‘Just listen to us. It’s your wedding. Damian’s a wonderful man too, and I’ve never seen you look so beautiful.’
Poppy shrugged it off, as only somebody who’s been told she’s beautiful every day of her life can.
‘No, Andy’s better.’
‘No, Damian’s better.’
‘Andy’s better.’
‘Damian’s better.’
‘Andy!’
‘Damian!’
And on and on they went until Poppy pushed Bella into the water. Bella pulled Poppy in after her by a slender ankle and they laughed and laughed, looking up at the Balearic stars as they floated on extraordinary buoyant fake water lilies that glittered in the myriad lights of the pool.
After a bit, Poppy said, ‘Let’s go and find our wonderful men and see if Pig Sean has managed to find the Beatles track for Natalia yet.’
‘Pig Sean!’ Bella spluttered, nearly falling off her fake lily. ‘That’s brilliant, Pops!’
‘I know. Just call me Oscar Wilde,’ retorted Poppy solemnly. And arm-in-arm, they walked up the pool’s wide, mosaic-tiled steps, happy as pigs in shit.
Natalia wasn’t used to letting her defences drop. In fact she couldn’t remember the last time she had danced with such abandon, but Poppy and Bella had told Pig Sean to play ‘Back in the USSR’ for her, and insisted that everybody – even the guests enjoying themselves on other terraces – danced around her main pool to it. She loved the song, of course she did, especially the bit about the Ukraine girls knocking the Beatles out. She could remember her mamushka playing black-market Beatles LPs when she was a little girl back in Kiev. But for all her apparently insouciant glamour, she would never have insisted on it herself; she wanted everything cool by DJ standards. They were so lucky, these English kids, with their automatic assumption that people wouldn’t call them tacky. They could be ‘retro’ or ‘ironic’ and still considered cool. For Natalia (aged 39 forever) the line was too narrow.
Bella’s ridiculous father was shouting along to the chorus, thrusting his skinny hips at her.
Ha! You would be so lucky, Natalia thought. Men like you used to pay me five grand a night.
Something snapped inside her, and for the first time in years she allowed herself to let her hair down in public. Literally. She unleashed the painfully tight ponytail and shook her platinum-blonde hair around her face as she gyrated round the fabulous property that she had worked