Behind the Mask: Enter a World Where Women Make - and Break - the Rules. Emma Sayle
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my appearance the next morning, trying to get back into the good books by bringing my mum and dad (otherwise known as Mothership and Colonel) tea in bed, along with two baseball caps embroidered with slogans. One read ‘Poshest Swinger’s Dad’, the other ‘Poshest Swinger’s Mum’. To their credit, they laughed. As they sipped at their tea, a little less stony-faced than when I’d come in, I offered them my overdue apology for the shock and embarrassment I’d caused, and tried to explain exactly why I’d taken this particular path in life. They made an effort to understand, but I don’t think they did.
‘I’m sorry for not telling you first,’ I said. ‘I should have. But it’s only been a short time and I’m still finding my feet.’
‘But honestly, Emma – sex parties?’ My mother still looked scandalized. ‘Why? What makes you want to do it? Look what they’re saying about you.’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t care what the newspapers write about me. Remember what you said to me once? “A tiger doesn’t lose sleep over the opinion of sheep.” I live by that motto. Besides, this is what I want to do. It’s an excellent business opportunity, I’m providing a service people want and I intend to make the most of it. I’m not going to be derailed by the groaning hypocrisy of people who’d like nothing better than to come and see what’s going on for themselves.’
Colonel burst out laughing. ‘Emma, you’re a stubborn creature, aren’t you? You’re probably right. And your mother and I would be lying if we said we were truly shocked. You’ve never failed to surprise us.’
I could see that they both understood that I had made up my mind and that there was no point in trying to convince me to follow a different path. I smiled at my parents. ‘You always said to me you wanted me to be the best at what I do. This is what I’m going to do. Now watch me.’
Looking back, I can see now that I was never going to do things conventionally. I’ve always had a desire to take risks, do things out of the ordinary and forge my own path. From the moment I could walk, I wanted to run away from home. Every opportunity that presented itself, I’d have my little wheelie case ready so I could flee the nest. It wasn’t that I didn’t like home, I loved my family deeply. I was very fortunate: I had a privileged upbringing with nice homes and private schooling, but I always knew no matter how comfortable my life was, I was never going to take the usual route and do things the easy, mapped-out way. I never liked taking orders and I was keen to win my independence and get on with life’s adventures. Childhood was an irritating inconvenience and I couldn’t wait to grow up.
My sense of adventure began early. I was born in Guildford, Surrey, but when I was one, Colonel’s army duties took us to Belfast. My father was brilliant and academically gifted; he had read Classics at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and was fluent in German, French, Italian and Latin. After becoming a Fellow of his college, he’d left for a career in the Army and then the Diplomatic Corps, which meant his family was destined for a life on the move. He was talented and successful, but nonetheless he always looked a little ordinary next to my beautiful mother. She was glamorous, leggy and olive-skinned, with ash-blonde hair, blue eyes and a smile that could calm a raging ocean. She was a devoted wife and a great asset to my father, as she charmed everyone she came into contact with at the same time as raising her little family all over the world.
My sister Georgie was born during our two-year stay in Belfast. By the time I was three, home was the Rheindahlen Military Base in Germany, where my brother Johnny was born. I was seven when we moved back to England, where we set up home in Somerset. When I wasn’t at school, I spent my young days hanging upside down out of oak trees or lining up my toys in height order with OCD military precision (I still have a mania for order). At eight, I was sent to Hanford Prep boarding school for girls in Dorset. I spent most of my free time reading, devouring the books of Enid Blyton, Arthur Ransome and Willard Price. Adventure appealed to me, and my literary heroes and heroines gave me the sense that anything was possible. When I outgrew these books I moved on to the spy novels and books about war and religion that my father read.
I was a real Daddy’s girl; I worshipped my father and always longed for his attention and approval. Attention I got by causing mischief, and approval I tried to win by impressing him with my school reports and athletic prowess. I was impish and prone to getting into scrapes, but I also did well at school. I didn’t mind lessons and I was good at games; at 10 I was tall for my age with long legs that made me a natural runner and captain of the netball team.
Although I was away from my father in term time, I was desperate to be with him in the holidays. Wherever Colonel went, I followed, which meant flying out to join the family wherever he had been posted. He’d become a leading liaison officer and was sent to Berlin in 1989, so I was there when the Wall came down. I was only 11, but I remember that night vividly. People everywhere were jumping up and down, crying and laughing with joy. My parents and I joined the crowds by the Brandenburg Gate and cheered on every East German Trabbi that drove through to the West. I also took a hammer to the Wall like everyone else, knocking off chunks of history and stuffing them in my bag. With everyone rolling into the West, we went to East Berlin’s flea markets and I stocked up on Russian dolls and fur hats, which I bought for next to nothing. I was nicknamed Del Boy Trotter back at school, as I sold my bits of Berlin Wall, fur hats and dolls and made a fortune.
With the Cold War coming to an end, my mother started organizing food and medicine convoys to Russia, and when I was home for the holidays I helped her. Once we were filmed by ITN as we sat in one of 10 trucks on the 1,454-kilometre trip from Berlin to Smolensk. I felt humbled by meeting orphans, some of whom were the same age as me. To be able to hand out the clothes and sweets that I took for granted made me determined that when I was older I would set up my own charity and carry on doing what I could to help others and relieve a bit of the misery in the world.
For the next two years, I hammered away at the Berlin Wall in the holidays and continued to sell the chunks to my school friends in term time. I gave half of the proceeds to charity. At 13, I left Hanford Prep and went to Downe House, a girls’ boarding school in Berkshire. Any girl who makes it into Downe has fought to be there and, as result, the school is full of strong, competing personalities and a lot is demanded of the students (including the future Duchess of Cambridge and her sister, who were there at the same time as me). I loved it – I was born a fighter.
I made strong friendships at school and took an enthusiastic part in the healthy tradition of practical jokes (in fact, I’m told that some of my most notorious pranks are still recounted to this day). I also fell in love for the first time. The object of my passion was one of the school gardeners, a lad of about 17 who looked deliciously tanned and muscular as he trimmed the bushes. I was completely infatuated with his impressive masculinity, and he always stopped work and stared when he saw me too. Our romance was fuelled by love letters, passed between us by his boss (who perhaps ought to have known better), but when we actually managed to meet, it was a disaster. Close up, my gorgeous gardener was far less impressive than I’d thought, as he stared cow-eyed at me and fumbled for my hand. His love letters had seemed sophisticated, but in person he was sickly sweet with a squeaky voice. Everything I felt for him withered and died in an instant.
Although I enjoyed myself at school, there were times when I felt isolated. I was not one of the ‘London Trendies’, as we called them – the girls from rich families with opulent pads in the most expensive parts of London. They were real-life Barbie dolls, with a skinny look and the right designer clothes; some of them not only wore Versace or Alexander McQueen, but also had photographs in the dorms of themselves clutching their favourite fashion designer’s arm. While I was on Russia-bound medicine-and-food convoys, their school holidays consisted of private jets, Bentleys and exotic locations. By the time I was 16, I began to feel the difference so keenly that I developed eating issues and secretly started taking laxatives. I wanted to be as thin and glamorous as those girls, with their effortless confidence, fantastic clothes and gorgeous boyfriends from Eton and Radley. Despite all the privileges I had and all of my outward confidence, I still felt inferior and thought I could control it with food, as though that would somehow be a route to social success. The eating issues that started then would take a long time to conquer.
When I was 14, my father was made the