Guilty Pleasures

Wintour made a note in a leather-bound book and Stella resisted the urge to wipe the palms of her hands on her dress. Emma looked over at Stella and smiled, but she felt exhausted and her hands were trembling. She carefully folded them into her lap.

‘You’ll be aware that we always do our homework at the bank before we lend large sums of money,’ said Wintour. ‘And I was most interested to read that you’d worked at Price Donahue. They have quite a reputation in the States.’

Emma felt a tightness in her throat. Who had he been speaking to? Daniel Davies? Mark?

‘Turns out you actually met my brother Kevin a few weeks ago,’ said Wintour, the hint of a smile on his lips. ‘He’s the CFO for Frost Industries. I hear PJ threw one of his legendary business brunches?’

Emma’s heart flipped over, suddenly remembering Mark’s story about her bursting into song. He was joking – wasn’t he?

‘Kevin said you impressed those old buzzards in Vermont, said you had one hell of a business brain. And d’you know? He actually bet me ten dollars that you’d have paid off the loan in full in three years.’

Wintour chuckled and spread his hands.

‘Who am I to turn down a wager with my brother?’

For a moment Emma couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

‘So you’ll lend us the money?’

Wintour nodded.

‘I need to look through the facts and figures, see how it all stacks up. But I dare say we might be in business.’

To everyone’s surprise, Stella jumped out of her chair, whooping. ‘You rock, Mr Wintour,’ she cried and before anyone could stop her, she leant over the desk and kissed him on the lips.

‘Well, thank you very much,’ said Wintour looking pleasantly flustered. ‘Whoever said you English girls were reserved, obviously never met one.’

16

Unlike some companies, where the employees dreaded work-bonding and brainstorming sessions, the Rive international conference was always something the editors looked forward to. Held every year in April, the event saw the editors of all twelve editions of the magazine from around the globe, along with selected publishing directors, jetting off first class to a luxury resort, usually in the Caribbean. Once settled in their five-star accommodation and given free run of the spa facilities, they were then expected to exchange ideas and share problems, subsequently returning home brimming with ideas and fired with new-found enthusiasm. In reality, the Rive conference was three days of tanning, bitching and gossip, with each editor jostling to score points from each other and undermine their rivals in front of the directors. As a bonding session, it was a hopeless cause as each editor was in constant competition: for the same cover stars, the same advertisers and even in some cases, the same readers. So while on the surface the event appeared to be a dozen impossibly glamorous women air-kissing and exchanging endless compliments about each other’s hair and swimsuits, beneath the surface it was a frenzy of political manoeuvring and back-stabbing. Cassandra always loved every minute of it.

This year’s conference was being held at the Paradise Sands resort in the Bahamas’ stunning Harbour Island, two hundred miles east of Miami. The hotel building itself was like a grand ivory plantation house from colonial times, while dotted around the lush grounds between the palm trees and frangipani bushes were twenty cottages painted in ice-cream colours, all commandeered by Alliance for the duration. The beach, metres away from each front door, was a perfect stretch of pale pink sand the colour of a ballet slipper, the clear, warm, Gulf stream waters lapping against it in a hypnotic rhythm.

From her lounger by the infinity pool, Cassandra could see Silvia Totti, Rive’s Italian editor, in a black maillot, getting an early start to her tan, the French editor Françoise Caron was scrolling through her Blackberry and sipping a chai latte, while the Russian and Brazilian editors were still picking at breakfast on the terrace. Cassandra, meanwhile, was hard at work. She had spent the last hour reading the first twenty thousand words of Cassandra Grand: On Style which Giles had delivered to her before she left for the airport. It wasn’t bad at all. Considering he’d had only a week to do it, Giles had managed to convert all her ideas into a smart, stylish read, peppered with just the right amount of autobiographical detail. I must get him a little something when I get back, she thought smiling. Cartier, perhaps. Noting that it was 9.40 – the first session was due to start at 10.00 – Cassandra put down the manuscript and finished off her freshly pressed watermelon juice.

‘Didn’t you know this is an unofficial editor’s holiday?’ said a voice. Cassandra looked up and saw Rive’s US editor Glenda McMahon. She was dressed in her Manhattan uniform of a charcoal shift dress and leopard print neckscarf, the only concession to the fact that she was on Harbour Island and not Manhattan Island was that she had swapped her Manolo heels for white leather thong sandals.

‘I never like to bring too much work on these things,’ said Cassandra, quickly zipping up her tote. ‘But I wanted to read a hard copy of all the editorial for the July issue.’

Glenda raised an eyebrow to denote her disdain for any kind of work in such surroundings, but secretly, she was impressed.

‘So, how’s everything in New York?’ Cassandra asked her former boss.

‘Absolutely wonderful,’ purred Glenda. ‘We’re doing so well this year, I can’t tell you.’

Cassandra smiled to herself. She’d been taught a few lessons in self-promotion from Glenda over the years simply by observing her. She was always positive and bullish to her public; her house could burn down and she would spin it as a ‘decoration opportunity’ and feature firemen’s helmets as next month’s ‘must have’. And you had to hand it to her, the strategy had worked. Glenda McMahon was not the most beautiful or intelligent woman in New York, but through sheer force of will, she had risen to the very top of Manhattan’s society tree. Married to one of the top investment bankers in America, together they were one of New York’s glossiest power couples and divided their time between a townhouse on the Upper East Side and an estate in Bedford, New York.

However, as Glenda’s former number two at US Rive, Cassandra had been privy to all her editor-in-chief’s secrets; the speech coach employed to eliminate her Brooklyn accent, the image consultants hired to transform her into a fashion power-player. There were the expensive Japanese hair treatments which transformed her from mousey fuzz to sleek blonde bob and the coloured contact lenses which made her eyes feline and piercing. And then there were the skin laser sessions and vitamin shots, face-lifts, liposuction, tennis lessons, ski lessons, tutoring in French and Italian. Whatever Glenda had, thought Cassandra admiringly, no one could deny she had worked damn hard for it.

The two women walked from the pool through the shade of the palm trees around to Paradise Sands’ conference room on the far side of the house. A long room with white clapboard walls and pale wooden floorboards, the whole eastern side of the room had concertina shutters which could be pushed back to reveal th

e glinting turquoise waters and allow the smell of the frangipani to waft in on the breeze. Glenda and Cassandra took their seats around a long table with the ten other editors and assorted directors, and at ten o’clock sharp a small man entered and sat at the head of the table. With his five-foot-six frame and clipped white hair, Isaac Grey looked rather timid, but in his case first impressions were far from the truth. As Chief Executive of Alliance Publications and majority shareholder of the NYSE-listed company, Isaac was a media powerhouse with a fearsome reputation. Having inherited the Alliance business from his father at the age of 27, he had spent the last forty years strengthening, launching and acquiring titles, until his company now rivalled Condé Nast as the most prestigious publishing house in the world. The floatation of Alliance five years ago had made him a billionaire and he still owned 51 per cent of the business.

‘Some of you might think this is an unofficial holiday. It is not,’ he began, pouring himself a glass of iced tea and looking around the table. Cassandra and Glenda exchanged a small smile.

‘Yes, the annual Rive conference is meant to be fun, but it’s also a valuable chance to exercise our considerable collective brainpower and confront the challenges of the year ahead. This year, as I’m sure you all know, we have a specific challenge coming our way and that’s going to be the focus of today’s forum. I want to hear brilliant ideas from everybody here,’ he said with meaning.

Isaac then formally introduced the conference attendees for the benefit of international colleagues who had not attended the previous year. There were welcomes to the recently appointed South African Editor Charlize Marten, the editor and publishing director of the soon-to-be launched Indian edition and finally Jason Tostvig.