Karin shrugged, not wanting to tell Christina about their fight. She had enough problems, without alerting the most predatory woman in gold-digging history to a possible target.
‘I suppose if he’s losing money, he’ll be there until he wins it back,’ she said vaguely.
‘Well, I hope Ari does well at the tables,’ said Christina.
Karin looked at her friend quizzically. ‘After what happened tonight?’
The two women had walked to the edge of the gardens, where the scent of honeysuckle was even stronger, and beyond them lay the crescent of Monte Carlo, twinkling like a Utopian playground.
‘Do you remember when I had to break into the house and bruised my arm?’ asked Christina, running her finger around the rim of her champagne glass. ‘Well, the diamonds weren’t all I took from the safe. Ari keeps copies of all his offshore accounts in the house. I have details of every numbered account he possesses in Switzerland, Bermuda, the Isle of Man and Jersey.’
/> Karin whistled. ‘You wouldn’t use them though, would you?’
‘I could have the Inland Revenue go crawling so far up his ass they could see his dental work,’ said Christina with a thin smile.
‘But Tina, you can’t mean to send him to jail for tax evasion?’ asked Karin.
Christina shrugged and took a sip of Krug. ‘Well, I guess he could go to jail. But I think he’s smarter than that. This is a business, pure and simple, and Ari will understand that all information has a price.’ Christina looked at her friend with steely eyes. ‘I would have preferred not to use the information. I would have preferred that he gave me a decent settlement without the need for a courtroom. But no, Ari decided he would have his PR company spin lies about me all over the newspapers, making me out to be a whore, when all the time he was screwing Emily Kent.’
Karin could sense her friend’s deep-seated anger as Christina continued. ‘Ari could have settled it like a gentleman, but he tried to play dirty. Well, now the rules have changed and now it doesn’t matter if we have a pre-nup or if I fucked the gardener or if he fucked the man in the moon. I think he’ll roll over and beg for me. And now my price has just doubled.’
‘So what do you want?’
‘I want to see what price he puts on his own freedom. I think we’ll start at one hundred million.’
The women smiled at each other and Karin clinked her glass against her friend’s. ‘I’ll drink to that.’
Just then Karin’s mobile rang. It was Erin. ‘Hi Karin. So sorry for not getting back sooner. My phone was out of juice.’
Karin tutted. ‘Well, Christina and I have been stuck at the Hansons’ party for the last hour with no sign of Adam or anybody. Can you tell me exactly what he said again?’
Erin sounded awkward. ‘I think there’s been a bit of a mix-up.’ She stuttered, ‘I didn’t actually speak to Adam; it was Molly who told me he would be at Villa La Vigie. She said it was on the schedule.’
Like hell it was, thought Karin as she snapped her phone shut.
Molly! That bitch was pulling every trick in the book to get her out of the way. Karin looked at Christina and remembered what she had said about playing dirty. Two can play at that game, she thought, and smiled as a plan began to form in her head.
‘These women look good,’ said Simon, pointing at three tall blondes who had just got out of a cab outside Jimmy’z. ‘Summer – go grab them!’
Talk about a baptism of fire, thought Summer, picking up her microphone and pulling down her dress. Silverland Media hadn’t been allowed to film inside the exclusive nightclub and instead were trying to catch people on their way in and out.
She trotted up to the entrance where Ferraris were being valet-parked. A cameraman was following close behind Summer until she suddenly stopped walking. ‘Shit, it’s my mother,’ she whispered.
Somewhere between the drinks on the yacht and here, Molly had changed into a black micro-mini dress that showed off her long legs to perfection. She was wearing a pair of very high, very strappy sandals and Summer had to admit she looked incredible; you’d never guess she was forty-three.
Molly spotted her daughter and strode over. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ she began then, spotting the microphone, gave Summer a sideways look. ‘And what on earth are you doing?’
Summer flushed and shrugged, feeling like a little girl caught playing dress-up with her mother’s best clothes. ‘I’m … ah … it’s a long story.’
‘Try,’ said Molly sternly, turning to wave her two friends inside.
‘Well, Sarah had to go home ill,’ said Summer, twisting the microphone lead in her fingers. ‘I went to tell her producer. And they asked me to fill in.’
She smiled hopefully, for one moment thinking that perhaps her mother might congratulate her. Instead a black cloud swept across Molly’s face.
‘Television?’ she hissed, grabbing Summer’s arm and pulling her to one side. ‘What have I told you all these years? Modelling, then movies. Not TV. TV’s cheap, it’s small-time. You will never meet a decent man in the ITV canteen.’
‘But it’s a good opportunity, mum,’ said Summer, cursing herself for sounding like a teenager.