Sitting in the back of a midnight-blue Bentley, Karin tried not to smile as she felt the driver’s eyes on her in the rear-view mirror. She didn’t need the admiring glances of a chauffeur to know that she was looking sensational. Her glossy raven hair fell loosely onto her bronzed shoulders and her strapless jade organza gown floated around her body like a cloud. She had sourced the outfit at the LA vintage couture store, Lily et Cie; having tried on the best that Bond Street had to offer, she decided that she could simply not take the chance of another guest turning up in the same dress. Including flights, a three-day stay at the Beverly Hills hotel and the actual cost of the dress … well, it had cost her a fortune but, as her father had always told her, you have to speculate to accumulate. Daddy was always right, thought Karin.
‘We’re here, miss,’ said the driver, taking the opportunity to give Karin another long look. ‘Do you want to go to the front or in the back way?’
‘The front, of course,’ she replied aloofly.
She was not going to miss this for the world. The driveway of Strawberry Hill House was lit by a string of torches in a glorious ribbon of fire, while its spotlit Gothic frontage was pure Brothers Grimm fairy tale. She picked up the well-thumbed guest list and the paper crackled like crisp pound notes. There were well over 800 on the list, with 2000 more begging for tickets. Not even the £1000-a-plate price tag seemed to have presented any sort of obstacle. There was so much money in London right now, thought Karin, a thin smile growing on her highly glossed lips – bankers, Russians, footballers, actors, and powerful old-money families – and they were all on the list. The car crunched up to the house, the light from the windows illuminating Karin’s guest list just as her manicured fingertip rested on one final name – Adam Gold. Smiling, she pulled a fox fur around her tanned shoulders and stepped out of the car to the pop of paparazzi flashbulbs. It was going to be a good night, she could feel it. Her father would have been proud.
Karin’s father, Terence, was a good-looking East End boy with the gift of the gab who, during the jazz boom that hit Soho in the 1950s, had discovered a love of fashion. As the big bands and zoot suits gave way to bebop and modernists in the early 1960s, Karin’s father had spotted a trend and had made a killing supplying the young designers of Carnaby Street with fabric imported from Morocco and the Far East. His enemies called him ruthless and whispered of cut-throat business methods. His friends, who numbered many, called him a charming success story; the embodiment of Harold Wilson’s new Britain: dynamic, classless and very well dressed. When the heat of Swinging London finally cooled and SW3 was no longer the epicentre of the western world, Terence married Stephanie Garnett, a stunning Pan Am air hostess as socially ambitious as he was and moved to a mock-Tudor mansion in the Surrey countryside. By the time their first and only child Karin was born, Terence was a millionaire several times over, but he had moved among enough lords and earls to know that it would take more than a pile in the bank to remove the stain of his lowly background. So, from the age of three, Karin was packed off to ballet class, French tuition and the Pony Club – anything that might help her fit into the world of the upper classes. At thirteen, she was dispatched to Briarton, a liberal, cosmopolitan institution with a student register made up of rock-star offspring and pretty daughters of super-rich Greeks.
‘But I want to go to Downe House, Daddy,’ the young Karin had complained as she packed her shiny new monogrammed trunk ready for school. ‘That’s where Abby and Emma from Pony Club are going.’
But Terence didn’t want Karin mixing with daughters of stockbrokers and solicitors; he wanted her to befriend Euro-royalty and billionheirs. ‘You go to Briarton, my darling,’ he had said, ‘and you make friends with the richest, most connected girls that you can, and you keep them for life.’
‘How do I do that?’ Karin had asked, never wanting to disappoint her father.
‘Don’t you worry, baby, you are beautiful like your mother and strong like your father,’ Terence had told her, stroking her hair. ‘You will be popular. Trust me.’
It was Karin’s five-year stay at Briarton, tucked away in the Berkshire countryside, which was to shape her desires and ambitions for life. Karin was a bright girl and, by thirteen, already a beauty, with long chestnut hair, greeny-grey eyes and, thanks to her parents, a highly sophisticated dress-sense that got her noticed. While some of her classmates had closets full of couture, Karin experimented with cast-offs from her mother – Halston, Bob Mackie and Ossie Clark, mixed together with bargain finds from Chelsea Girl. A strikingly beautiful and offbeat character around the corridors of Briarton, her father was correct; she became popular with the richest girls in a very rich school. Rarely did a half-term break pass without a trip to one of her friend’s homes overseas. By the age of sixteen she had skied in Gstaad, sunbathed in Palm Beach and shopped in Hong Kong. She became an expert in excuses as to why her roster of glamorous friends should not be invited to her parents’ large home in Surrey which, in contrast to Fernanda Moritez’s cattle ranch in Brazil, Juliette Dupois’s chalet in St Moritz, and Athena Niarchios’s villa in Greece, seemed rather small and unremarkable indeed.
When she left Briarton at eighteen, Karin had a handful of GCSEs, a couple of middle-grade A levels and the steely glint of ambition in her eyes. Her school friends had given her a taste of a rich, jet-set lifestyle that she was unwilling to give up, so she sold her eighteenth birthday present, a cherry-red Alpha Romeo Spider, to fund a gap year of travel, during which she mined her school contacts ruthlessly. She spent winter in the attic of a beautiful townhouse on Paris’s Ile St-Louis, which belonged to the aunt of a French friend, Natalie. Aunt Cecile had divorced well and had impeccable manners, wore couture and had impressed upon Karin the importance of grooming and social ammunition.
‘Cherie, you are so beautiful,’ Aunt Cecile had told her, ‘but you must take care of yourself.’ She had then shown Karin her exquisite collection of jewellery, spread out on her Louis XV bed. ‘Remember this: men like to fix things. So when a man sees a pretty thing, they want to make it even prettier. You be as pretty as these jewels, cherie, and men will never stop giving them to you.’
So Karin was initiated into the habit of weekly facials at Carita, polished nails, waxing, and daily exercises to keep the neck firm and youthful. At chic Left Bank cocktail parties, she acquired the art of polite conversation and etiquette that would stay with her f
or life. She learnt to play bridge and baccarat and appreciate classical music and jazz.
The following summer, Karin moved to New York after her father, pulling strings in the industry, landed her an internship at Donna Karan. Her weekends were spent in The Hamptons, where she was surprised to find that friends’ ‘cottages’, in English-sounding places like Southampton, were actually vast coastal mansions straight out of The Great Gatsby, with shingle drives and white verandas that looked straight out onto the ocean.
She rarely saw her parents but they didn’t mind. They fully approved of Karin’s ‘grand tour’ and were glad their daughter was capitalizing on Terry’s success. In Karin’s absence, however, Terry’s fortunes were fading. He had sunk his money into a new venture manufacturing cheap jeans for the high street just as the designer denim market was exploding. Terry’s instincts had been correct, but the punters wanted branded jeans, not cheap imitations, and he had been forced to close his factories. Karin was oblivious to this until the day her mother called her in Palm Beach to say that her father had wrapped his Rolls Royce around a lamppost.
She had returned to Surrey immediately, but was an hour too late. She attended the funeral wearing Dior, sandwiched between her aunties and uncles in their East End market suits, and vowed that her destiny would be much bigger and better than this.
‘Darling! This place is just A-mazing,’ said Christina, kissing Karin on the cheek. ‘Ariel wants to know if it’s for sale.’
‘Actually, my wife is the one with the English country house obsession,’ corrected the chubby middle-aged man at Christina’s side.
‘Ariel, sweetie,’ said Karin, air-kissing him. ‘You already have an amazing English country house.’ The Levys had recently purchased a vast shooting estate in Yorkshire.
‘It’s too far and too draughty,’ said Christina, prompting her husband to turn purple. ‘But this is perfect. I could be in Harvey Nicks in thirty minutes and it’s got one of those Rapunzel towers. I wonder if there are bears in the grounds?’
‘Karin, can’t you do something about this bloody table plan?’ interrupted Martin Birtwell, Diana’s husband. Karin forced a smile. Of all her friends’ husbands, Martin was Karin’s least favourite. He was a loud, pompous, new-money bully: the complete opposite of elegant, refined Diana. When they had first married, their circle had considered it to be a good match. Diana was from a upper-crust family that had buckets of class but no money, while Martin had hustled his way onto the Rich List from an inner-city start. But Martin’s increasingly obvious drinking and Diana’s growing timidity made Karin suspect that, if not violent, Martin was certainly difficult to live with behind closed doors.
He sidled up to Karin and slid his hand around her waist. ‘Sort it out, sweetheart,’ he said, patting her on her bottom. ‘Pop us on the top table with you, eh? Our table is full of Diana’s New Age freaks from her colonics clinic. What if they want to examine our shit after the meal?’
‘I asked Martin to invite some of his friends, but I don’t think he was listening to me, as usual,’ said Diana.
Martin flashed her a threatening look and Karin was disturbed to see Diana flinch. It was such a shame she had picked so badly, she thought, because she looked so gorgeous in that white Grecian gown with an ivory mink stole across her shoulders.
‘But good luck with your table,’ whispered Diana with a knowing smile. ‘I’ve seen him, and he’s a dish.’
Karin smiled. ‘Talking of which, I really must fly.’
As the guests began to settle down into their seats, Karin moved regally through the sea of bodies, greeting as many people as she could, finally sitting down at a table at the end of the catwalk. She picked up a place setting between her manicured fingertip and turned to the gentleman on her left.
‘I believe I am next to you,’ she smiled.
Adam Gold turned and took Karin’s hand.