Divas Read online

  The nail salon was half a block down New Bond Street, one floor up. Lola managed to wiggle up the stairs – God, these jeans had no give in them at all – and entered to cries of her name. Her four friends were draped over white leather sofas in the antechamber, looking, inevitably, like one of those photoshoots for the glossies that brings together a group of young socialities and accompanies it with breathless captions about each girl. All of them were heiresses with fat trust funds, girls who were photogenic and loved by the gossip magazines because they dressed to the nines and partied hard. India was aristocratic, Devon had married a marquis, Lola and Madison were American, so it didn’t matter that their money was new, while Georgia had already divorced a rackety Russian count and was on the prowl for husband no. 2. They all looked as if they had been styled by Italian Vogue: bright colours, sparkling jewellery, artfully mussed hair. There was only one brunette, and no one was wearing even a touch of black. You didn’t starve yourself and spray on fake tan and work out to the point of collapse just to hide your trophy body.

  ‘I love it! You managed to be late for your own hen night!’ Georgia purred.

  ‘I’m so sorry—’ Lola clipped over to Georgia and gave her two enthusiastic air kisses. ‘Dr Block was running late and the bloody receptionist buggered up my card or something—’

  ‘Ooh!’ Devon’s eyes widened. ‘You were having the vitamin C shots! Do they work?’

  ‘You tell me, ’ Lola said, sitting down between Devon and Georgia on one of the sofas and presenting her face under the white-bright lights of the nail salon for detailed observation. The girls craned in, eyes narrowing as they squinted at her.

  ‘I think you look a bit shinier, ’ Devon pronounced. ‘In a good way, ’ she added swiftly.

  ‘Yeah, ’ Madison agreed. ‘Kinda glowier.’

  ‘Needles in your face, ’ India whispered in horror. ‘I don’t know how you can do it.’

  ‘India! Your eyebrows are going to drop right on top of your eyes when you’re forty if you don’t have Botox now!’ Madison said passionately. As the only American in the group, she was naturally the most evangelical about plastic surgery.

  ‘Crow’s feet, India. Think about it. You blink too much as it is, ’ Devon added.

  India’s round moon-face pulled the kind of expression that every other girl present was incapable of making, the crucial facial muscles being temporarily paralysed by Dr Block’s cunning needles.

  ‘I just can’t, ’ she said hopelessly. India was the poshest by birth, the sweetest by nature and the only one of the group who was plastic-surgery free. Everyone else thought she was a little slow, frankly.

  There was a mass shrug from the rest of them. They had done what they could. Now India was alone with her incipient wrinkles.

  ‘So!’ Georgia announced. ‘Pedi time! Shoes off, ladies!’

  Naturally, Georgia had reserved the whole salon for them, so five minutes later, the anteroom resembled the most exclusive shoe shop in London. Pairs of Jimmys, Manolos and Ginas – all sandals, of course, chosen to show off the imminent pedicure to best advantage – nestled into each other, glittering and glistening, reflected in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors, catching extra light from the ironic mirrorball twirling slowly in the centre of the room. While each of their owners was ensconced in a state-of-the-art padded white leather chair with full massage system, their feet soaking in whirlpool baths of water filled with rose petals and gold leaf, about to have pedicures with real diamonds applied to their toes, drinking rose-petal martinis.

  ‘Oh, Georgia. Best hen night ever, ’ Lola sighed happily.

  ‘First of many!’ Madison said, hoisting her glass aloft. ‘And may you come out richer every time!’

  ‘Mad, ’ India said a little reproachfully. ‘You’re so American sometimes. You said that at Dev’s hen, too, and Dev actually loves Piers, you know.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t mind, ’ pretty blonde Devon said easily. ‘Besides, I’m obviously never going to divorce Piers, because of the title.’

  ‘I still can’t believe you’re going to be a duchess, ’ India sighed.

  ‘Yeah, in twenty years’ time, ’ Devon snapped. ‘When I’m too old to look really fabulous in the coronet.’

  Everyone tutted in sympathy. Devon was very unlucky that her father-in-law, the current duke, was a spry sixty-year-old with no degenerative diseases.

  ‘Maybe he’ll have a shooting accident, ’ suggested Madison hopefully.

  ‘I love you, Mad, ’ Devon commented, ‘you’re always so optimistic . . .’

  ‘Ahem!’ Lola, justifiably feeling that the focus had wandered away from her own nuptials, coughed loudly and wobbled her glass to call the attention back to herself.

  ‘Oh God, Lo, I’m sorry!’ Devon said. ‘To Lola and Jean-Marc! First of many and richer every time!’

  Everyone giggled, even Lola.

  ‘I do love Jean-Marc, ’ she protested.

  ‘Of course you do!’ cooed India. ‘We all love Jean-Marc!’

  ‘Jean-Marc is the most lovable man in the whole of Europe, ’ Devon pronounced. ‘He just has to say “Enchanté!”, and smile at you, and you fall in love with him on the spot.’

  ‘He is so lovely, ’ Lola agreed complacently. ‘I do adore him.’

  Plus, Jean-Marc was the man that every girl in Europe and New York had wanted to marry, but she, Lola Fitzgerald, had walked off with him without even flexing her perfectly manicured fingers to beckon him towards her. Jean-Marc had proposed within weeks of their first meeting. He was adorable. She loved him to bits. They were going to have the most wonderful life together. Already they were a staple of the upmarket glossy magazines . . . They had already received tons of requests to style and photograph the two of them smiling in pre-marital bliss . . .

  ‘He knows all the best clubs, ’ Madison said.

  ‘And all the best drugs, ’ Georgia chimed in.

  ‘And all the best places to buy jewellery, ’ Devon added. ‘Those earrings are unbelievable.’

  ‘Yellow diamonds, ’ Lola said smugly, tilting her head so the girls could ooh and aah at the sparkle. ‘He wanted them to match my ring exactly. He says they’re the same colour as my hair.’

  ‘Divine, ’ Madison breathed.

  ‘You two are going to be so happy!’ India exclaimed. ‘I’m so jealous!’

  ‘Jean-Marc could have had anyone, ’ Georgia commented.‘I went after him hard myself. He doesn’t like redheads.’ She sighed, flicking back her auburn locks.

  ‘You are a specialised taste, ’ Madison said seriously. ‘This complete whoremonger friend of my dad’s – after his third divorce he only dates Russian prostitutes—’

  ‘Bloody Natashas!’ Devon exclaimed. ‘They’re everywhere! And they’ll do anything for money!’

  ‘Sluts, ’ Georgia agreed.

  ‘Anyway, ’ Madison went on, ‘he says that the madams don’t keep more than one or two redheads on their books, ever. Because a lot of men just don’t like them. But if they do, they go crazy for them.’

  ‘I’m a niche market, ’ Georgia said. ‘Matching collar and cuffs.’

  ‘Right, ’ Madison said witheringly. ‘Like any of us have any pubic hair left.’

  That was so true that the conversation fell off for a moment, a natural pause as they all nodded in agreement and sipped their cocktails.

  Lola adjusted her shoulders so that the knobs of the massage chair were kneading her just where she wanted them, and settled back, already blissed out. She gazed round the room. Here they were, five of the most beautiful, most socially successful, wealthiest girls in London, each with her own pedicurist in a white uniform kneeling before her, coaxing one pampered foot after the other out of the whirlpool baths for a long luscious massage. Five gorgeous examples of what happened when very rich men bred with very beautiful women and used their enormous fortunes to ensure that their daughters had the best of everything from the cradle onwards, from nutritionists to personal trainers
to plastic surgery as soon as the doctors would agree to perform it. They were the girls everyone wanted to be friends with, the thoroughbreds who shook their manes and cantered through the best parties everywhere, jingling with the sound of tiny bells, shining like stars.

  This was where she was born to be.

  Georgia had organised the pedicure party – to perfection, everyone agreed – and Madison, who knew every fashionable restaurateur on three continents, had taken charge of dinner. Naturally, they had a private room in the Japanese restaurant, with a long table made from a single sheet of black granite with a black glass strip set into its centre, lustrous and smooth, the perfect surface for what Georgia was pouring out of a plastic bag, carefully, making one straight line all the way down the glass, from one end to the other.

  ‘You look like you’re icing a cake!’ giggled India, who had had refills on the rose-petal martinis and was already, as Madison would say, lightly toasted.

  ‘Right, ’ Lola drawled, ‘as if any one of us would get near enough a cake to ice it—’

  ‘Or even know how!’ Madison exclaimed, horrified that anyone would think she would know one end of a piping bag from the other.

  ‘Mmm, cake, ’ India said wistfully.

  ‘Oh darling—’ Georgia threw one slender, tanned arm round India’s shoulders. ‘You can have cake, just as long as you—’

  ‘Bring it straight back up again afterwards!’ Devon along with Georgia chorused.

  Georgia set out five narrow, short-cut straws.

  ‘Ooh!’ Lola said, reaching for a straw. ‘Exactly what the doctor ordered when you’re trying to get into a size zero bias-cut satin Vera Wang wedding dress.’

  With a practised gesture, she held one nostril closed with the thumb of the hand holding the straw while inhaling three inches of Georgia’s long line of cocaine up the other nostril, her other hand sliding back to her nape to hold her hair out of the way.

  ‘Whoo!’ she said, straightening up and shaking back her mane of hair. ‘Good stuff, Georgie!’

  ‘Fresh off the plane, ’ Georgia said smugly. ‘Only the best for us.’

  ‘Darling! You look so pretty!’ came a man’s voice from behind them, and all the girls turned round, flicking their hair and flashing their best smiles.

  ‘Jean-Marc! You shouldn’t be here!’ Lola said, shocked. ‘It’s my hen night – isn’t that bad luck or something?’

  ‘I’m sorry, darling!’ Jean-Marc’s smile was just as wide as the girls’, his blond hair just as shiny. In a dark blue velvet jacket, white silk shirt, perfectly faded jeans and custom-made loafers, he looked like Lola’s exact male counterpart, glossy and groomed, impossibly handsome, his teeth and the whites of his eyes almost blindingly bright. ‘I just wanted to drop in for two seconds – Madison told me where you’d be.’

  He was holding out a jewellery box to Lola, who cooed: ‘Oh, you shouldn’t have . . .’ even as she took it and snapped the lid open.

  ‘Oh my God!’ exclaimed Georgia, who was standing close enough to Lola to see the contents.

  ‘Just a little something to make you sparkle even brighter.’ Jean-Marc smiled.

  Lola slipped the yellow diamond bracelet out of the box and onto her wrist, where it rippled elegantly, catching the light. Jean-Marc fixed the clasp for her, and they admired the effect together.

  ‘It’s your stone!’ he said. ‘Gold diamonds for my golden girl!’

  ‘I’m so fucking jealous right now, ’ India muttered, tipsy and honest enough to say out loud what every other girl was thinking.

  ‘Thank you so much, darling!’ Lola purred, leaning forward just enough to brush Jean-Marc’s lips with hers. ‘You’re so sweet.’

  ‘Anything for you!’ he said. ‘And now’ – he looked round the room and mimed shock on seeing the cocaine-covered table – ‘I see you have your appetiser all set out, so I mustn’t keep you from dinner!’

  A chorus of laughs greeted this, as Jean-Marc produced his own straw and took an extremely long pull of ‘appetiser’.

  ‘One for the road, ’ he said, wiping his nose as elegantly as he did everything. ‘And now I love you and leave you.’

  ‘You are so fucking lucky!’ Georgia complained as the door closed behind him.

  ‘I know, ’ Lola admitted smugly.

  ‘Right then, time for dinner!’ Madison announced. Over six feet tall in heels, her pale green silk jersey dress – the precise colour of her contact lenses – clinging to her Amazonian frame as if it were in love with her, she moved to the sliding doors at the back of the room and stood there, commanding everyone’s attention. Her pale blonde hair glowed against the black walls. ‘Everybody ready?’ Her grin was wicked. ‘It is a hen night, after all . . .’

  She held up her free hand and tapped once on the sliding doors, still facing the girls, making the scene as theatrical as possible. The doors slid back, guided by unseen hands, and the four girls facing her gasped in unison, and then burst into titters of laughter.

  ‘Oh, Mad, you are amazing!’ Lola cried, teetering across the room to embrace her friend. ‘Thank you so much! Best hen night ever!’

  In the room beyond Madison was another long granite table with glass running down its centre, just like theirs. But this one, instead of being decorated with a long fat line of coke, was sporting an extremely buff, nude young man, lying on his back, with exquisitely prepared bite-sized portions of sushi and sashimi garnishing his long, smooth, heavily muscled limbs. Against his skin, which was almost as dark as the table, the raw fish glowed like jewels: coral salmon, cerise tuna, white mackerel translucent as moonstone against its jet background. The girls clustered round their dinner, their giggles deeper, dirtier, acknowledging the sexually charged treat that Madison had provided, the erotic charge of slowly, ritually stripping a gorgeously built hunk of manhood of the scraps of food that were partially concealing his nakedness.

  ‘I’m not even hungry, ’ India announced, ‘because of all that lovely lovely coke, but I’m going to have a bite anyway!’

  And, with glee, she picked up a pair of ivory chopsticks and selected a glistening piece of yellowtail, framed by a couple of bright green leaves, nestling right on the centre of his stomach. As she lifted up the sashimi, she squealed in excitement, having revealed his belly button, a dark hollow swirl, mysterious and inviting, the start of a very faint line of black hair leading down to even more inviting places. There was a real gasp in the room, the first piece of real nakedness, of something that had been hidden that was now revealed, and the awareness, too, that it was in their power to strip this gorgeous young man of everything. Eyes widened, tongues flicked out to lick lips, and the girls closed in on the table. No one, after the coke, was hungry: but nobody cared.

  ‘Is he completely starkers, Mad?’ Georgia exaggerated her drawl to sound as if she didn’t care one way or the other, but her eyes were gleaming with excitement.

  ‘I think Lola should find that out, don’t you?’ Madison said, smiling wickedly. ‘She is the bride-to-be, after all.’

  ‘What will he do after we’ve eaten everything?’ Georgia breathed.

  ‘Oh, honey, ’ Madison said, ‘it’s a hen night! He’ll do absolutely anything we want!’

  And she reached out and flicked a piece of tuna off the swell of a pectoral muscle, revealing a plump little nipple so pink and pert that everyone sighed in unison, snatched at the chopsticks and dove into their dinner.

  ‘Ugh, my head’s killing me, ’ Lola mumbled, paying off the cab driver, and looking so pretty, even after a long night and morning spent partying, that he smiled at her sympathetically and waved her away when she started fumbling in her change purse for a tip.

  Dying to climb into her cosy bed, don her cashmere eye mask, and take a super-strength sleeping pill to knock her out during the hangover and coke comedown that were well on their way, Lola teetered down the Mayfair mews street. She was pretty good at walking on cobbles in four-inch heels by now, but that didn’t m
ake the process any less painful. Just a few more steps – ow, she felt like the Little Mermaid when she got her feet, every step was walking on nails – yes, she was at her cute little white house, sliding the key out of her bag, in seconds she’d be inside and kicking off these instruments of torture she had strapped to her feet—

  That was weird. Her key wasn’t working.

  She pulled it out, looked at it, tipping up her sunglasses to check it was the right one. Even the pale London sunlight hurt her eyes. But yes, it was the right key. Despite the pain to her retinas, she kept the sunglasses propped on top of her head as she re-inserted the key.

  And then twisted her wrist uselessly, trying to force it to turn.

  Oh! Was she so drunk and coked up still that she was at the wrong front door? How embarrassing that would be! She took a few steps back to make sure, raising a hand to shade her eyes from the almost non-existent sun.

  No, she hadn’t made a mistake: this was definitely her house. Her silver-beige silk curtains at the downstairs window, her pretty little topiary pots on the first-floor wrought-iron balcony. God, she was going to miss this place when she moved into Jean-Marc’s Chelsea penthouse.

  One more try with the key. It definitely wasn’t working. And now that she looked closer – which of course aggravated her headache even more – she could see that the lock was really shiny. New-shiny. As if it had just been installed. Which wasn’t possible, because she had never had the lock changed, and she’d been living here for three years now . . .

  Through the drug-addled, martini-and-champagne-fuddled haze in her brain, Lola slowly began to connect the strange new lock on her front door to the fact that none of her credit cards had been working since yesterday afternoon at the dermatologist. With the first faint stirrings of disquiet, she fished out her phone and scrolled to her father’s mobile number. It would be seven a.m. in New York – Daddy would be up by now. But frankly, even if he wasn’t, she’d be ringing. This was an emergency.