was a good idea to pay a visit to the London-based CEO Sidney Parker personally, reasoning she should tell her side of events face to face and charm him into another lucrative deal.
‘Well, you look good,’ said Venetia, reaching out to give Serena a hug. Serena had just fast-tracked through customs after Elmore’s jet had landed her on a small strip of runway at Luton Airport. Her older sister had insisted on picking her up and Serena was quite happy to let herself continue to be mothered.
‘I can assure you I don’t feel it,’ said Serena, embracing Venetia and giving a dramatic shudder to emphasize the point.
‘I knew there was something about that man I didn’t like in Mustique,’ said Venetia, linking her arm through Serena’s and leading her towards the BMW four-by-four that was parked just outside the small terminal building.
Serena arched one eyebrow. ‘You could have fooled me,’ she said. Venetia let the comment go as they settled into the cream leather seats.
‘Men with too much money, Sin, you have to wonder if they are worth the bother,’ she said in a quiet voice.
Serena gave her sister a sidelong glance. She rarely let the mundane nuances of other people’s relationships affect her, but it had been plain even to Serena that all had not been well between Venetia and her husband for some time. Her sister’s vibrancy had visibly diminished since her wedding nearly two years ago. Venetia had never been very confident, but it was clear that life with Jonathon, no matter how rich and connected he might be, had not had a positive effect on her sister’s self-esteem. But now there was something different here. She stole a glance at Venetia’s profile and noticed that her skin was slightly more flushed and sun-kissed than usual and her eyes had a sparkle she had not seen in a long time.
‘I have to say that you look rather well too,’ said Serena, probing for information. ‘You’ve been in Spain, haven’t you?’ Venetia had turned the keys in the ignition and her eyes were focused forward through the windscreen, but Serena saw the pink flush rising up her sister’s cheeks. She simply nodded.
Serena could see that this wasn’t something Venetia wanted to talk about; while she was a gossip junkie, she wasn’t in the mood to work too hard for it. Instead she began to rummage around in her Chloé bag, hunting for her Blackberry. She had a barrage of messages and emails. She switched it off as quickly as she turned it on. It was enough of a distraction to switch Serena’s attention back to herself.
‘So I assume I’m staying at yours, then?’ said Serena, playing with the air-conditioning buttons on the walnut dashboard like a distracted child.
‘As long as that’s OK,’ smiled Venetia.
‘I don’t want any crappy rooms, darling. I like the one with the walk-in wardrobe. Now come on, step on it, let’s get back to London.’
Despite being a native of Chicago, Sidney Parker, CEO of Jolie Cosmetics, lived for nine months of the year in a vast, six-floor stucco-fronted Eaton Square house, on account of his much younger English wife Lysette. Mrs Parker was a bottle-blonde former cocktail waitress from southeast London, who had chased the better life with single-minded determination from a very young age.
In another life, Lysette would have been a politician or a gangster. Her finely balanced mixture of ruthless ambition and her chameleon-like ability to charm important people had landed her the prize of Sidney Parker, but Lysette hadn’t stopped there, quickly establishing herself as a feared and fêted society player whose opinion and patronage was highly valued. If Lysette Parker didn’t come to your charity fundraiser or RSVP your party invite, then you were dead in London society.
Happily for Serena, Lysette had always admired the beautiful Balcon sisters. Throughout her campaign to ensnare a rich husband, Lysette had devoured Tatler magazine, becoming intimate with the society movers and shakers and grand aristo families contained within its pages. Serena was everything Lysette had wanted to be when she was growing up in Lewisham two decades earlier, and it had been Lysette who had persuaded her husband to make Serena the European face of Jolie Cosmetics. Polished, privileged and ridiculously beautiful, she knew that Serena embodied that English rose fantasy so many British girls secretly harboured.
Sidney would have much preferred to go with a supermodel as the Jolie Cosmetics girl three years earlier, but he respected his wife’s streetwise outlook on the business and, as it had turned out, Lysette’s hunch had proved correct. Within six months of Serena becoming the face of Jolie, profits across the board were up sixty-three per cent and the perception of the brand was transformed from a fusty traditional European cosmetics house into something much more fresh, modern and glamorous. In a bid to get a sultry Serena pout, women from fifteen to fifty were clamouring for Jolie’s plum and peach lip-glosses, while sales of their line of skincare products tripled as customers sought to replicate Serena’s flawless complexion. She didn’t know it, but Serena owed more to the Parker family than she realized.
With a wave, Venetia dropped Serena at the small flight of steps that led up to the enormous midnight-blue door of Sidney and Lysette Parker’s home. Rarely nervous, Serena still felt a little bout of butterflies in her stomach as she rang the bell. She usually relished meetings like this, but it had only been six days since the scandal had broken in the newspapers about her pregnancy and Michael Sarkis, and it was impossible to tell how Sidney would take it. Mindful of this, she had dressed to impress. Virgin glamour, she smiled: cream billowy Chloé dress, gold ballet flats, a smudge of Jolie blush swept across her cheek.
She knew it was the right decision to come and see Sidney so quickly. She would rather he heard things from the horse’s mouth than from the tabloids. And anyway, the contract had to get resolved as soon as possible: with her Cheyne Walk home sold and her going back to New York temporarily out of the question, Serena had to find somewhere new to live quickly, and she needed to assess the size of the contract before she made any decisions on that.
A Filipino maid in a grey dress opened the door and beckoned Serena in. A tall, sturdy man of about sixty, dressed in a razor-sharp navy suit, came to greet her in the hallway. Clearly once a very handsome man, Sidney had lined skin that somehow looked more brushed and polished because of its light mahogany colour. Grey hair swept back off his forehead and a pair of thin, gold-framed glasses perched on a long firm nose completed the cosmopolitan look.
‘Sidney, how are you?’ said Serena, grabbing his hand and kissing him on both cheeks.
‘Fine. And you look wonderful,’ he replied, smiling benevolently. ‘Let’s go through to the study. Oh Joyce?’ he said, addressing the maid, ‘Could you get us some tea?’
They walked in silence through to an ornate library. It was a formal room, decked out in rich flock wallpaper, walnut panelling and shelves of colour-coordinated books. The room reminded Serena a little of her father’s study at Huntsford, except this place was more airbrushed, like a Ralph Lauren fantasy of an English gentleman’s library. The old-money feel was further undermined by huge framed photographs of beautiful women on the walls: portraits of all the Jolie spokeswomen. Serena was next to Kelly Sanders, a stunning, red-haired Texan model-turned-TV-presenter, who was the North American Jolie spokeswoman, and next to them was Bay Ling, the up-and-coming Chinese model who was the face of the burgeoning Far Eastern cosmetics market.
Sidney sat down behind his huge desk and sank back into his chair, playing with a gold Mont Blanc pen as Joyce silently entered and placed a silver tea tray on the desk. Serena took a moment to glance around the room. She had never been in the study before; usually when she met Sydney they would take drinks in the drawing room. Perhaps Lysette was entertaining elsewhere in the house.
‘I’m glad you came to see me so quickly,’ said Sidney, handing Serena a bone-china cup. He still had a slight American twang, although he had purposely tried to rub it away in favour of clipped English tones.
‘Well, I know we have plenty to talk about,’ smiled Serena, folding one long tanned leg over the other. ‘As you know, I’ve hardly been in London lately, living in New York and all that,’ she gushed, making her voice as pretty and singsong as possible.
‘What