29

      Cate balanced on the toilet seat in Sand’s tiny office bathroom, attempting to pull on a black Pierre Hardy heel, apply her lip-gloss, and rub some bronzing cream into her legs all at the same time.

      ‘Cate? Are you still in there?’ said an impatient voice, followed by a bang on the door. ‘Come on, the taxi’s here!’

      ‘Give me two minutes, Nick,’ she muttered, swearing to herself as she dropped a huge dollop of bronzer onto the floor. She took a deep breath. ‘Ready?’ she sighed as she looked in the mirror, but was surprised to find that she was pleased with what she saw. She had poured herself into a cream Donna Karan cocktail dress. She knew it wasn’t the most forgiving colour, but if you forgot about the slight wobble around her thighs, she really looked quite pretty. Her hair fell loose and glossy between her shoulder blades and her eyes, lined with lashings of kohl and mascara, looked wide, sparkling and alert. She pulled a blue velvet box from her bag and opened it. Sitting on a little satin cushion was a pair of large diamond drop studs. Her mother’s. She hadn’t worn them for years, always waiting for a special occasion. No night had ever felt special enough. Well, if there was ever an occasion to wear them, it was tonight, for Sand magazine’s launch party. She threaded them through her lobes and smiled. ‘Ready.’

      As she stepped out of the bathroom into the office, Nick was waiting for her, dressed in a one-button charcoal suit with a crisp pale-blue shirt, his sandy-brown hair swept back from his face. She caught her breath, wishing Nick wasn’t looking quite so handsome, and slid her clutch bag under her arm. She felt his eyes brush over her, but he said nothing about her appearance; the compliments had stopped long ago, but the smile on his face revealed his approval.

      Quickly flicking his eyes away, Nick nodded to a pile of boxes by the door. ‘How many magazines should we take down then?’ he said.

      ‘I don’t know,’ said Cate. ‘About fifty?’

      ‘Cheapskate,’ teased Nick, ‘I thought I was the one with the tight fist!’

      ‘I’m just worried that this launch party is getting expensive,’ replied Cate.

      ‘Well, that may be so, but until we’re selling one hundred and fifty thousand copies a month, we’ve got to become experts in the art of illusion,’ smiled Nick.

      ‘How do you mean?’

      ‘I know I’ve been a bit tight on budgets, but we have to know when to save and when to spend. And tonight, the last thing we want to do is look cheap, especially with all the top-notch advertisers there. We might be a little magazine operating out of a room next door to a Moroccan takeaway, but we don’t want to look it,’ he grinned.

      Despite herself, Cate was impressed. Because they’d both been on the same journey in launching Sand, climbing the same learning curve, making the same mistakes, she’d always seen Nick as someone who was making it up as he went along, someone who was playing the same game as she was. But right now, here in front of her, she saw him for what he was – a talented businessman with drive and vision, a sharp entrepreneur whom she could trust to make her magazine a success.

      ‘Hmm, “Image is everything”?’ she said with a wry smile. ‘You must have got that from me.’

      He bent down to open a carton and took out a box-fresh copy of the first issue of Sand magazine, holding it out in front of him with both arms extended.

      It was hard for them not to feel a rush of pride as they looked at it, touched it. On its cover, a sumptuous, sexy image of Rachel Barnaby in a gold swimsuit, smiling seductively in front of a Cote d’Azur palm tree. Inside, pages of glossy images of gorgeous people and glamorous places which made you want to jump into the rich, expensive wonderland they had created for the reader.

      ‘Who’d have thought it?’ she grinned. ‘Brought to you straight out of Borough Market rather than some trillionaire’s yacht?’

      ‘Pretty good,’ said Nick.

      ‘Pretty good,’ admitted Cate with a shy smile. ‘Although ask me again in three months’ time when we’ve got a run of sales figures.’

      ‘You are so miserable sometimes,’ smiled Nick, shaking his head. ‘Now let’s get these magazines to this party and show everyone just how good you are!’

      ‘How good we are,’ said Cate.

      Nothing had quite prepared Venetia for how guilty and exhausted having an affair would make her feel. She had read all the features on infidelity that the women’s magazines could provide; she had devoured virtually every bodice-ripping glamour novel in the airport bookshop. She had even listened wide-eyed to the stories from her most indiscreet and philandering friends over the years. But she had never, for a moment, ever considered that those experiences would relate to her life.

      Taking a shower in the top-floor suite of One Aldwych Hotel, letting the warm jets of water flood over her skin, she felt the full weight of it, the full burden of the guilt and the exhaustion of living the lie. After Seville, she had resisted Jack’s calls for a full week. Every instinct in her body had urged her to stop the one-night stand in its tracks. But that perfect moment under the stars in Spain had reawakened some life-force inside her and she had found it impossible to stay away from Jack Kidman.

      When he had daringly called her at home, she had finally agreed to meet him, telling herself it was only to persuade him to stop calling. They had ended up having sensational sex at the Mandarin Oriental, two bodies entwined perfectly on a tapestry rug. It was the beginning of a series of snatched, sexually charged moments in hotel rooms, at his Westbourne Grove apartment or, on one particularly risqué occasion, in the fabric store-cupboard at the Venetia Balcon shop. Over the past three weeks, they had met up at least a dozen times: before work, after work, between appointments – and as the lies to Jonathon increased and her workload doubled, she wondered daily whether it was worth it. But it was worth it, despite everything. For the first time in years, she felt alive.

      Jack was lounging on the bed, wrapped in a tumble of white sheets and finishing off a room-service club sandwich as she walked back into