Guilty Pleasures. Tasmina Perry

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ why. It was a Saturday afternoon and the shop was deserted. Emma wandered over to the nearest shelf and picked up a leather bag. She pulled a face. You didn’t need to be a fashion expert to know that it was ugly. It was dark brown but it wasn’t the warm, rich brown of milk chocolate; it was sludgy like mud. She ran her fingers over the bumpy leather – ostrich she wondered – it was obviously expensive but it wasn’t an item she’d want in her wardrobe in a month of Sundays.

      ‘Can I help you?’ asked a stern-looking shop assistant with blonde hair the texture of candy-floss and a brass name-badge announcing her name as ‘Barbara’. She looked at Emma’s fleece and jeans with undisguised distaste.

      ‘I’m just looking,’ said Emma as brightly as she could.

      ‘For anything in particular?’ asked Barbara snootily.

      ‘Actually, can you tell me which is your most popular bag?’

      The woman looked stricken that anyone should base a choice on anything as vulgar as popularity.

      ‘It’s this one,’ she said, indicating a brown leather tote. ‘It’s called the “Rebecca”.’ I wonder where that came from, thought Emma. She picked it up. The leather was certainly beautiful but the materials could not disguise the frumpy shape and the overcomplicated knotted tassels.

      ‘It’s rather expensive,’ said Barbara.

      Emma picked up the price tag. £3,000! For that? she thought to herself.

      As if reading her thoughts, Barbara added: ‘The craftsmanship on all the Milford range is superb.’

      ‘Hand-stitched?’ asked Emma remembering the summer after school she had spent working at Milford. In actual fact, the time she had spent with the workmen in the factory had been the part she had enjoyed the most. It had been a fascinating place. She remembered the wonderful smell of the warehouse where thousands of rolls of leather were kept; there were crocodile skins from Australia, python skins from India, calf skins from Brittany and goatskin from Scotland which was used to line all the handbags. She remembered watching Jeff Conway, Milford’s head cuireur, stretch and beat leathers until they were butter soft and the white-coated artisans hunched over their work-stations, crafting the bags from start to finish, using needles, awls and pinces de cuir. Creating a bag had seemed like creating a work of art, not something that rolled off an assembly line.

      ‘There is some hand-crafting involved,’ said Barbara cautiously.

      ‘But not hand-stitching?’ repeated Emma, making a mental note.

      Barbara was getting visibly irritated.

      ‘If madam requires hand-stitching then perhaps you’d like to consider our bespoke service. But the price is considerably higher.’

      ‘I didn’t really want to pay too much,’ said Emma.

      ‘Then perhaps madam would be better off in another store. Oxford Street has an excellent selection of mid-market accessories.’

      What a cow thought Emma. No wonder the shop was empty. Luxury retail wasn’t just about the product, it was about the experience. If you were spending that much on something, you wanted to feel pampered and flattered, as if the luxury reflected back on you and your incredible good taste.

      Emma handed the Rebecca back to Barbara and left the shop. As the door closed behind her, Emma inhaled a deep draught of fresh air.

      ‘Thank you, Barbara,’ she whispered to herself as she walked off towards the brighter, glossier shops of London’s most fashionable street. The snooty assistant didn’t know it, but she had done Emma a huge favour, because now she knew exactly what she needed to do.

      Julia Grand sat in her daughter’s spacious Knightsbridge apartment, drinking a chilled glass of Pouilly Fumé, thinking there could be few more pleasant places to spend a Sunday afternoon. A sprawling lateral Regency conversion, the flat had been decorated in Cassandra’s favoured dove grey, chocolate and cream and was being flooded with lazy winter light from Hyde Park which lay beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows. The long walnut dining table had been set with Meissen porcelain – Julia noted that it was a different set from the one she had seen on her last visit – while Lucia, Cassandra’s housekeeper, was preparing a light lunch of poached salmon and asparagus. Julia considered for a moment how much Cassandra must be earning to afford this luxury and felt a burst of pride at her daughter’s accomplishments. Of course, Julia liked to think she’d had a considerable hand in Cassandra’s success; raising her as a single mother, the years of looking after Ruby, but she was sure her daughter wouldn’t think of it that way.

      She looked over at Cassandra, wearing what she called her ‘après yoga’ look of cashmere jogging pants and a skinny white vest. Cassandra was leaving for Milan that afternoon and so she was taking armfuls of clothes from her cedar-lined wardrobes and folding them between tissue paper before putting them into two Louis Vuitton trunks. Julia had kept a fascinated inventory as she watched Cassandra pack: ten pairs of red-soled shoes, most of which looked unworn. Twelve skirts, twice as many dresses, cashmere sweaters in a rainbow of complementary colours and finally, almost a dozen coats, one each from the main designers showing at the Milan collections, which she would wear to the corresponding show. There must have been hundreds of thousands of pounds of clothes in those trunks which, according to Cassandra, would be completely redundant by the time the shows were over. Julia considered it an abject waste of money; think of what all that money could really buy! A Picasso sketch, perhaps, or a Corot landscape. Now that would be something worth having.

      ‘So. Tell me again what Roger told you?’ asked Cassandra, finally fastening the latches on the trunks and taking a seat at the dining table. Julia tried not to smile; Cassandra had a habit of making every conversation feel like a business meeting.

      ‘He said that Emma has come back from Boston in time for the shareholders, meeting tomorrow.’

      ‘And do you think it’s significant?’

      Julia shrugged.

      ‘She’s already told Roger she doesn’t want to be CEO. I suspect she’s just there to show willing and formalize Roger’s appointment so we can all move forward.’

      Cassandra frowned slightly.

      ‘So everyone is happy with Emma’s share in the company?’ she asked.

      ‘I never said that,’ replied Julia diplomatically, knowing that her daughter had not been pleased with Saul’s bequests. ‘But what can we do? Roger has already engaged a lawyer; apparently we can’t contest the will simply because we don’t like what it says.’

      Cassandra was silent for a moment and Julia reached across the table to take one of her hands.

      ‘I was desperately disappointed at the reading of the will. It should have been you, darling. We know that. But there seems to be very little we can do.’

      ‘Is this the sort of fight you put up when Dad left you?’ snapped Cassandra, pulling her hand away. Cassandra was angry. She was already well aware of the legal situation with Saul’s will; her own lawyers had taken the full force of her fury when they had explained it was watertight. So Cassandra had contacted her financial advisers to explore the possibility of buying Emma’s shareholding should she decide to sell, but even with a conservative valuation on Milford, they were talking very big numbers indeed. Cassandra might be the highest-paid editor in London, but СКАЧАТЬ