From the comfort of her business-class seat on a BA flight from Salzburg to London, Sasha read the news item in that morning’s paper with wide eyes. She couldn’t believe Connie Ashford was dead. The brief story on page nine reported that the sixty-five-year-old wife of the late billionaire businessman Robert Ashford had been killed in a tragic fall at the eighteenth birthday party of her grandchildren Olivia and Joseph Hernandez. For years Sasha had resented her former lover’s wife, but reading about Connie’s demise was sad and uncomfortable, bringing to the surface all the guilt she had long tried to ignore.
Don’t dwell on it, she told herself. There were more important things to think about. The launch of Rivera Chinawear range at Selfridges on Tuesday. An interview with the Evening Standard, then three days in New York to meet executives at Saks, Henri Bendels and Bloomingdales about expanding their floor space in the city’s most prestigious department stores. Oh, and there was a board meeting at eleven o?
??clock this morning and it was already gone ten thirty. Sasha felt a vague sense of guilt, as Steven Ellis, the Rivera CEO, had been making a big fuss about her being there. It wasn’t as if they could start without her, she smiled to herself. She was the president of Rivera, in charge, in control. Everyone made time for Sasha Sinclair.
Take the past weekend, for example. She had been staying at a fabulous schloss just outside the Austrian capital to attend the wedding of Princess Marie Louise of Hamburg. Marie Louise had not married in Rivera – not through lack of trying on Sasha’s part – but Sasha had still accepted the bride’s invitation to the nuptials, knowing the event would be bristling with the high-profile Euro-rich.And everyone had wanted to talk to her: oligarchs, billionaires, princes, wives of princes. Most exciting of all had been George Liu, the Hong Kong retail magnate, who had sounded her out about a consultant’s position with his company. She had stayed up late into the night discussing the proposition with him, missing her lift back to London on a friend’s private jet. Which was why – she glanced at her watch – she was going to be a few hours late for that bloody board meeting. They would wait for her. They always did.
‘Where is everyone?’ snapped Sasha, running into Rivera’s Chelsea headquarters.
Harriet, Steven’s PA, looked apologetic. ‘In the board meeting.’
‘They’ve started without me?’ she said incredulously. ‘Why did no one contact me?’
‘We knew you were flying. Steven said not to bother you.’
‘Did he now?’ she said, striding up the stairs to the second-floor boardroom. If Steven thought he could do anything without consulting her first, he had another think coming, she fumed as her heels click-clacked up the steps. She stopped suddenly at the top. The boardroom door was open and they were all filing out. Sasha walked straight up to Steven.
‘You’ve finished?’ she said, fist on hip.
‘We waited until eleven thirty, Sasha,’ said Steven, glancing about nervously. ‘Randall couldn’t wait. He has to be in Geneva this afternoon. ’
‘Randall was here? Why didn’t you tell me?’
Sasha was even more furious she had missed Randall Kane, chairman of Duo Capital, who owned the majority shareholding of the company. And she was sure Steven would have given her absence his own particular twist.
‘Can we just have a quick chat back in the boardroom, Sasha?’ he said, pointing behind him.
She smarted at the tone of his voice. How dare he make her feel as if she was a teenager caught smoking behind the bike sheds? His beady eyes and weak chin added to the image of an ineffectual head teacher. She followed him in, crossing her arms.
‘What?’ she said.
‘AF Holdings have gone into administration,’ he said simply.
AF Holdings were an Italian licensing and production company that manufactured the Rivera diffusion line.
Sasha shrugged. ‘Well, we find someone else.’
‘This is serious, Sasha,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to cancel the show.’ The Rivera Sport fashion show was due to be staged in Paris in ten days’ time.
‘How ridiculous. We show the collection and then get someone else to manufacture the line. It’s inconvenient, yes, but hardly a disaster. To be frank, Steven, this is exactly the problem with the Rivera management at the moment: too much flapping, not enough doing.’
Sasha watched with satisfaction as Steven jerked back in his chair. That one had hit home, she thought.
‘Well if that’s how you feel, perhaps you could have made your feelings known at the meeting instead of gallivanting around Europe.’
‘Gallivanting? I was up until four o’clock this morning being the face of this company at one of the most high-profile society events of the year. As I do almost every night of the week. My networking is worth millions of pounds of marketing to this company.’
‘So you keep telling me,’ said Steven, a sour look on his face. ‘But forgive me for questioning what this company has to sacrifice in order for you to do it. You’re barely in the office these days. There’s always a lunch or interview or party. Perhaps you’d like to come in and tell us how to magically sort out the company’s problems.’
‘I am the president of this company, Steven!’ she said. ‘I should not have to be sorting out problems for you. The Rivera staff are handsomely paid to handle any blip like this.’
Steven stared at her. She could tell he was just as angry as she was, but his bland expression gave nothing away. They had rarely seen eye to eye over the running of the company, but Sasha could do little about it. Steven had been appointed by Duo Capital, the private equity house that currently owned the majority share in Rivera, so she would be unable to manoeuvre him out.
‘I’m glad you brought up the subject of money,’ he said. ‘Your so-called marketing initiative of going to parties does have a monetary cost. Last year, five hundred thousand pounds went on your clothing allowance and fifty thousand on your driver alone. That’s without adding in the cost of international travel and hotels, et cetera.’
‘Do you expect me to catch the bus to go and meet the editor of Vogue? Besides, those were the terms of my contract at the last buy-out. ’
Sasha closed her eyes tight. She refused to let Steven’s jealousy get to her. She had worked ferociously for Rivera for well over a decade, built it up into a prestigious luxury brand, extending their range from clothing to accessories to scent and homeware, with thirty stores worldwide and a flourishing wholesale business, supplying to all the major stores in the world. She wasn’t going to let some stick-in-the-mud jobsworth dictate to her.