Cents and Sensibility Read online

  On top of that, Venezia, one of my half-sisters – the daughter of wife four – was born while my father was still married to wife three. Sometimes, I think even he loses track.

  Henry Alexander Montecourt-Fain – I call him Ham – is an architect. He just likes to build things, whether it’s a palace for a president, a major museum, affordable housing for the masses, a tree house for his children, or a dynasty. He’s a true creative, physically incapable of not producing things.

  I remember watching him once when he was talking on the phone in his London house. As he droned on – the sound of his own voice is the only thing Henry likes more than the glug of a newly opened bottle of claret – leaning against the stainless-steel countertop, his big strong hands were constantly fiddling with something.

  When he eventually hung up the phone, having told the person on the other end that they were a wicked little flirt who needed a good spanking in the very near future, I saw what he had been fiddling with.

  Propped against the digital scales was a tiny little man made out of about two inches of electrical cord and a matchstick. He’d pared back the cable so that the earth and live cables were the limbs, with the revealed copper wire bent to make hands and feet. The pink top of the match was the head.

  I stood and gazed at it for a while, then I put it in my pocket.

  I am the oldest of Henry’s children, from his first marriage, although my mother was definitely more the Anne Boleyn type than a loyal Catherine of Aragon. She was a wild thing, by all accounts, but she died before I was two, so I really don’t remember her.

  I know what she looked like – rather beautiful, in a centre-parted kind of way, with long dark wavy hair and high cheekbones, which I am told I have inherited – but that’s just from photographs and a few reels of cine film which Ham has occasionally shown me, but only when he’s been between wives. And on the wrong side of a few bottles of claret.

  If I sound casual about it, it’s just because my mother never featured in my conscious life. She’d bolted away from us before my first birthday, to live in Marrakech with some painter she’d taken up with, where she’d caught the flu and died. Just like that.

  ‘A very mundane death, she would have thought,’ Ham had said about it once. ‘She would have preferred to go like Isadora Duncan, or to have had a wasting disease that made her even more elegantly beautiful, ending in a heartrending deathbed scene, where I would have come and begged her forgiveness. Which I would have done, of course. Even though she left me, the cow.’

  Then he’d look at me sadly. He never quite said it, but whenever he spoke about my mother – which was very infrequently – I had the strong impression that he still missed her.

  Maybe I was kidding myself, because I wanted to feel special, rather than just abandoned, but I did wonder on those occasions whether she really had been the true love of his life and whether the procession of women since had just been a futile search to replicate what they’d had together.

  But while that carousel of stepmothers and assorted siblings had made for a fairly unusual childhood, I’d always had my Ham, like a great immovable mountain at the heart of it all. He may have been flighty and fickle with his lovers, but he was solid as a rock for me. He was my dad and my buddy and my very best friend – and the most marvellous tutor in the ways of men.

  ‘Men are appalling,’ he’d told me from early childhood. ‘We never really mature, not on the inside. It’s all just an act. Don’t ever trust men, Stella, my darling. We’re dreadful. Enjoy us, use us, abuse us, but never ever trust us.’

  ‘But you’re not dreadful, Daddy,’ I’d say, gazing up at my hero, all craggy six foot three of him.

  ‘Not to you, my little duckling,’ he’d reply. ‘Not to you.’

  Just before I’d left my hotel room that night at the Cap Mimosa, to meet the others downstairs, I had taken Ham’s little electrical cable man out of my sponge bag – I never travelled without it – and given him a kiss. He was my get-lucky charm and after having a glimpse of Jay’s chestnut-brown chest earlier on, I was definitely in the mood for it.

  And right from the start of that night, the charm had seemed to be working its magic. As Jay kissed me on both cheeks in greeting, holding me with very attractive confidence by my bare upper arms, I was enveloped in a wonderful cloud of Acqua di Parma, my favourite male smell.

  Then he had quite naturally taken my hand and led me out to a ridiculously long, white stretch limo that was idling by the entrance. Amy and a large red-haired person I assumed was Spotter, were already in it.

  ‘I’m sorry it’s so crass,’ said Jay, as we got in. ‘They couldn’t get me a black one at short notice. But Amy doesn’t care for my driving and it would have been too cramped in a town car.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ boomed Spotter, who was clearly an Englishman of a central casting kind I had thought were dying out. ‘Might have been fun.’

  He leaned across and slapped me heartily on the leg, then shamelessly squeezed my thigh. Under my dress.

  I forced myself to smile at him, and moved discreetly away as soon as I could.

  ‘Settle down, Spotter,’ said Jay, firmly.

  I found his casually proprietary air thrilling and the evening went on in the same vein, as we seemed to go on a bar crawl of the Côte d’Azur’s chicest private-member establishments, with me making every entrance on Jay’s arm.

  As we moved from venue to venue – he seemed to be a member of all of them, the way they let him in with no hassle – I gathered that we were somehow looking for the action, although the walking into each place always seemed to be the best part, as heads swivelled to check out the latest arrivals.

  Jay seemed to know people wherever we went, as did Amy, and my head whirled with introductions, but we never stayed long enough anywhere to get attached to any other group. It suited me, as all the – universally ravishing – women who greeted Jay seemed to come particularly brightly alive when they saw him. I was not welcomed so warmly.

  After we’d been to four different places I realized I was actually enjoying the rides between them more than the clubs themselves, particularly the corners, which threw me and Jay against each other, because none of us were wearing seat belts.

  I had been about to put mine on when we got into the limo, but when the others didn’t, I remembered that seasoned limo passengers were above such banalities. This was not real life and, for the elite few who inhabited that elevated realm, the normal rules did not apply. Or so they thought. I just wanted to fit in.

  When we got back in for what turned out to be the last leg of our tour, I was particularly glad I wasn’t wearing any kind of restraint, as the corners seemed to get so extreme I was practically sitting on Jay’s knee half the time. I even wondered whether he had secretly told the driver to lurch around as much as possible.

  It was just the kind of caper Ham would have come up with in his endlessly inventive seductions, and it worked, because after I had shot along the cream leather upholstery a few times like a speeding pinball, it seemed quite natural for Jay to put his arm around me and pull me close. I really didn’t mind.

  Amy thwacked Spotter with her handbag when he tried to pull the same stunt with her, and braced herself by clinging on to the ceiling strap.

  But all too soon, as far as I was concerned, we arrived at our destination, an imposing white edifice with a large crowd of people standing outside it, waiting on the wrong side of a barrier patrolled by two enormous bouncers. They all turned to gawp when we pulled up in what Jay had christened the Pimpmobile.

  ‘Oooh,’ said Amy, like an excited small child, looking up at the huge neon sign on top of the building. ‘Wonderland. I’ve heard so much about this place. There was a big piece in the mag about it when it opened. Is it as good as they say, Jay?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ he replied. ‘I’ve never been here before either. It’s not really my kind of a place, but I thought we should check it out, as there’s so much hype abo
ut it.’

  He wasn’t kidding. It was supposed to be ‘the hottest club in Europe’, with so much publicity about its ridiculously fearsome entrance vetting nonsense, I actually felt quite nervous as we approached.

  The initial two Incredible Hulks had taken one look at the car and let us straight through their velvet rope to the next checkpoint, which was policed by two more tuxedoed Gigantors and a simply terrifying drag queen, who was surveying the crowd through opera glasses from the top of a small flight of steps.

  She was wearing a one-shoulder dress made from what appeared to be an entire crocodile skin, dyed emerald green and complete with head. Combined with towering platform shoes and vertical hair (well, wig), she must have been eight feet tall. Her lips were like a couple of red patent-leather bananas.

  ‘Scary Mary,’ said Jay, taking my hand again. ‘I thought King Kong killed Godzilla.’

  She turned to look down at us imperiously through the opera glasses and then nodded at her guards. We were in. The crowd roared with approval.

  As we approached her final silk rope, she smiled broadly.

  ‘Hey, Jay, honey,’ she said, in a voice as Southern as the Mississippi, and kissed him warmly on both cheeks. ‘Good to see y’all. I’ll radio ahead so you can go straight up to the private rooms.’

  I was impressed – very impressed – but I still didn’t twig that there might be rather more to Jay Fisher than just the charming, good-looking playboy I had taken him for.

  2

  From the moment we walked through the – huge, gold-leafed – door, I could see that Wonderland was more than appropriately named. In size, decor and sheer volume of music, it was the most over-the-top club I had ever been in – and I’d been to Moscow a few weeks before.

  We had a quick look round, but the pounding beat from the main dance floor was so overwhelmingly loud, even by normal club standards, I was more than a little relieved when a man in a silver boiler suit and a headset approached Jay and asked if we would like to go straight to the VIP area.

  He took us up there in a lift and we got out into what looked like the interior of a spaceship, with lines of giant rivets across the metallic walls and ceiling, the area around the dance floor interspersed with little white pods, like futuristic yurts with large porthole windows.

  ‘This is all a bit weird,’ said Spotter, looking around suspiciously as we settled into a pod. ‘Makes me fancy a pint of bitter in a good old British pub, all this Dr Who nonsense. It’s only an upmarket boozer, isn’t it, this place, really?’

  ‘Oh, Spotter,’ said Amy, giving him a hard nudge. ‘Just because it’s not The Admiral Cod. This is cutting-edge stuff – Philippe Starck designed this bit of the club. You just concentrate on the pretty ladies and you’ll have a lovely time.’

  He already was. All the waitresses were wearing skintight silver catsuits, with large panels cut out in crucial places. Spotter went all pink, as one went sashaying by, a large expanse of bare buttock visible at his face level.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘I’ve always had a thing for Barbarella.’

  Jay rolled his eyes.

  ‘Not very subtle, the French, are they?’ he said.

  ‘Well, they did invent the cancan,’ I said. ‘That should have been a warning to us.’

  ‘Let’s have a drink,’ said Amy, with customary pragmatism. ‘That will make it all seem a bit more normal.’

  She was right. After a couple of champagne cocktails, it seemed practically normal to have a waitress in a bare-bottom catsuit bending over next to me.

  We’d been there for a while before it struck us what else was surreal about the place, apart from the decor and the staff uniforms: Jay and Spotter were by far the youngest men there.

  It was Jay who pointed it out.

  ‘Check him,’ he said. ‘The guy in the white jacket and the white shoes, dancing the frug with his great-granddaughter’s best friend. If she shakes her booty much more, he’ll have a cardiac arrest. He looks like the grandpa from The Simpsons.’

  Once you’d noticed, it was hilarious. The women were all young and beautiful, the men were all old and shrivelled. With their dark orange tans, they looked as though they’d been pickled.

  ‘I can’t stand this any more,’ said Jay, after we’d laughed ourselves nearly sick at it all. ‘Let’s go and even things up, huh?’

  He took my hand, Amy jumped up and grabbed Spotter’s, and we hit the dance floor at a run.

  From the first step I could tell that Jay was one of those men I could really dance with. We hardly broke eye contact as we shook and shimmied and did impersonations of the various ageing fruggers and babes on the dance floor. We were fooling around, but we both knew the real score. Sexual tension was hanging in the air between us so palpably we didn’t need to overdo it.

  I turned and danced with Spotter from time to time and we even swapped partners with some of the other couples. I liked dancing with old chaps, because it reminded me of happy times with Ham, and the girls were very happy to take a turn with Jay and Spotter. Happy to the point where Amy and I had to go and entertain ourselves back at the pod, before they could escape back to us.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Spotter, when they eventually returned, redder in the face than ever, flapping his collar and blowing down the front of his shirt. ‘Thought we were going to be eaten alive out there. Men devoured on dance floor. Terrifying.’

  But then something really scary happened. The lift where we had come in opened and standing there, fully striking a pose, in a sparkling sequinned minidress, with a full Barbarella hairdo, was Jericho.

  Even though we were only there for her launch the next day, it was still a shock to see such a famous face when you weren’t expecting it. Jericho was somehow more of a concept to me than a real person, but there she was, in all her glory.

  She really did look amazing and even as I recovered from the surprise, I was registering that she must have researched the venue before she got her look together for the evening, to make maximum impact. What an operator.

  She stayed still for a few beats, her white fox-fur coat slipping down her shoulders, surrounded by four enormous men in the immaculate white suits her bodyguards always wore. She made sure everyone had noticed her entrance, and then she headed straight for our pod.

  ‘Jay, darling!’ she was yelling, before she even got to us.

  I turned to Amy in dismay. I knew they were friends, but I hadn’t realized we were going out on a double date. With me as the spare.

  ‘Here comes Jerry,’ Amy whispered to me. ‘You can get a scoop for the paper.’

  Jay stood up to greet Jericho and almost disappeared into those famous curves. I began to feel distinctly uncomfortable as he emerged.

  ‘Jerry,’ he was saying. ‘Great to see you. I’d like you to meet my friends, Stella, Amy, Spotter…’

  She couldn’t have been less interested in meeting us. The crocodile on the door-bitch’s dress had given us a more sincere smile, and then, just as suddenly as she had arrived, she had stolen Jay away.

  Amy, Spotter and I were left just sitting there, while Jericho engaged him in what appeared, from what I could see through the portholes, to be a very intense conversation in a neighbouring pod, with her bodyguards stationed firmly between us.

  So much for my get-lucky charm, I thought. But then, I told myself, Jay clearly was too good to be true, I should have known better. He’d just been toying with me to pass the time until his real date arrived.

  I tried not to show how disappointed I was, but I felt really stupid for ever thinking that a smoothie like him could have been seriously interested in me – after all, he’d pretty much told us he was with Jericho when we’d first seen him at the pool bar.

  ‘So is Jay schtupping Jericho?’ Amy asked Spotter, with customary frankness.

  ‘I didn’t think so,’ he replied, frowning like a puzzled gun dog. ‘I thought he was just coming on this trip for laughs. I think he would have told me if he�
��d ridden that pony, don’t you? Not a thoroughbred, but definitely a champion.’

  I followed Spotter’s gaze to see Jericho, now minus the fur, shimmying on to the dance floor, leading Jay by the hand.

  ‘This will be worth seeing,’ said Amy and she was right. It was quite a spectacle, to see the world’s biggest pop diva strutting her stuff, just yards away from us. And she was a great dancer, damn it. Even with her security guards circling round her – like Stonehenge with rhythm, one of them holding her fur – she was a great dancer.

  So, I thought miserably, slumping down on the white leather banquette, she was a brilliant dancer, she had the most famous figure in the world – her breasts were reputedly insured for $5 million each – she was wearing next-season Dolce & Gabbana (I recognized it, because I’d just interviewed them in Milan) and she was dancing with the gorgeous man I had foolishly thought might be interested in me. Great.

  They stayed on the dance floor for what seemed like six hours, but was probably only about three tracks, when the white suits abruptly walked off, with just a flash of silver sequins visible in front of them.

  As I took that in, Jay reappeared and flopped down in the pod next to me. Amy and Spotter had gone off on missions of their own, so it was just the two of us and he was sitting very close to me.

  ‘Oh, my,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve made a big mistake.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I practically squeaked.

  ‘When she said “come and hang out” down here, I didn’t realize quite how serious she was about the coming part.’

  ‘She’s cracking on to you?’

  ‘Fully cracked,’ he said.

  ‘Isn’t that good?’ I said, because I thought I ought to. ‘Isn’t that what ninety-nine per cent of the world’s heterosexual male population would dream of? And gay for that matter.’

  ‘No,’ he said, simply. ‘Not me. Of course, she’s got a great body, but so has that waitress over there. It’s not enough.’