Silk

Table of Contents

Title Page

Acknowledgments

Getting Ready

Part One - Autumn/Winter

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Part Two - Spring/Summer

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Part Three - London, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Milan

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Epilogue

Copyright Page

Rupert James is a celebrity and fashion journalist. He lives in
London and is married to a barrister.

He can be contacted via his website at:
www.rupert-james.com

Acknowledgements

Several people, all of them experts in their field, helped me with this book. I’m particularly grateful to Marcus Soanes, Ren Pearce of Pearce Fionda, Helen Moorhouse and Stefano Beretta. I would also like to thank my agent, Sheila Crowley of Curtis Brown, and my editor, Gillian Green, for their encouragement and advice.

Getting Ready

Christine stood in front of the mirror, composing her face into a suitably serious expression, what her ex-husband called her ‘legal look’. She wasn’t too displeased with what she saw. Her hair was still almost entirely brown, apart from the odd grey strand, dead straight, well conditioned and cut in a long bob; so many of her fellow female barristers were strangers to the salon, and looked as if they’d been dragged through a hedge backwards. Her skin no longer had the elasticity of youth – she was forty-seven, after all, and the only way to have tight skin at her age was the have the slack chopped off. But she didn’t sag or pouch, there were no double chins, no scrawny chicken neck either, just a softness and slight crinkliness that could be controlled and concealed with lotions, potions and powders. She took care with her make-up, as with every other aspect of her life. She wanted to appear subtle, high class, worth-the-money – not like some of the painted skulls that she saw rattling around the robing rooms.

Satisfied that she still looked the business, Christine put on her black legal gown – grasping it by the yoke, swinging it behind her shoulders and letting it settle – a move she’d perfected over twenty-plus years at the bar. She stepped back and surveyed the effect. It hung perfectly, accentuating her slim waist, her full bust, drawing the eye down to her legs, still her best feature, long legs encased in dark tights, disappearing up into the skirt of her well-tailored suit. It was always to her legs that men looked first – from clients to solicitors to counsel to judges. It didn’t do any harm for a woman in this profession to look sexy – discreetly sexy, of course, one didn’t want the clerks to gossip. But if there was one thing Christine had learnt since she graduated from law school and was called to the bar, it was that looks count. Many the promising career that had stalled, unaccountably, ten years after the call. It was easy to blame the men at the top, keeping the women in their place – but, Christine thought, bad grooming was just as much at fault.

Her career had certainly not stalled. After the children were born, she’d returned to work with one goal in mind – to ascend through the ranks of the legal profession, case by case, step by step, from knock-about work in the magistrate’s court to being briefed in her own right in the county court, then up to the high court, building on her reputation to attract the lucrative private cases that now made up the bulk of her practice. And then, the final step, the ultimate goal: to become a Queen’s Counsel – to ‘take silk’ – by the time she was fifty.

That was young for anyone, particularly a woman, but Christine was confident it was within her reach. One more big juicy divorce case, one more victory, another round of press cuttings, more credit reflected on her chambers, and she would make her application. They couldn’t, in all conscience, turn her down. Her name had been associated with some of the most high-profile divorces of the last ten years. She’d freed celebrity husbands from gold-digging wives, sending the ex away with a modest settlement and a flea in her ear. She’d championed the downtrodden spouses of playboy company directors, taking those love rats so comprehensively to the cleaners that they’d be lucky if they could afford to keep the Docklands pied-à-terre. Crushed husbands licked their wounds with disappointed mistresses, who suddenly found that lover boy was less of a catch without endless credit. Ousted wives made a last few thousand spilling their guts to the celebrity press before returning to the hunt, a little less ambitious, a little more desperate this time. It could be an ugly business, divorce. It brought out the very worst in people: greed, spite, anger, malice.

Christine caught herself smiling in the mirror. It was true: the messier the case, the more she liked it. Crime may be more glamorous, with its robberies and shoot-outs, its murders and abductions, but family law showed human nature in all its disgusting glory. It was like having the best gossip in the world laid out in forensic detail for your own private delectation. What other people guessed between the lines of newspaper reports, she knew for a fact, had evidence, sworn testimony, photographs of the soiled sheets, the guilty holiday hideaway, the indiscreet gifts. She knew of the cabinet ministers with the second families concealed in the country, visited at weekends, the children employed as ‘researchers’. She knew of the Premier League footballers who visited male escorts for a bit of discreet – in their dreams! – slap and tickle. Secrets attracted secrets. She’d heard stories in conference with her clients that would keep the libel lawyers busy for the rest of the century. It was one of the perks of the job, stories to be savoured privately, hinted at over dinner, noted and filed away for future reference. After twenty years at the family bar, Christine Fairbrother knew more secrets than anyone else in London. She could no longer look at a man in a well-cut suit, a woman in an expensive car, without guessing the worst. She was seldom wrong.

Only once had her radar let her badly down – and that was in the case of Cissé v Cissé. Her own divorce. Her own husband, not only having an affair under her very nose, but playing away throughout their marriage, even when the children were small, even when Christine, who always used her maiden name for practice, returned to full-time work in order to support Andy in his fledgling architectural practice. Yes, even then, when she came home exhausted from the magistrates and the county courts in far-flung corners of England to face grizzly babies, dirty nappies and sulky nannies, when Andy was allegedly burning the midnight oil over some new project that was bound to make his name, he was entertaining his girlfriends in restaurants and clubs and half-built flats all over town. Christine had been the last to know – in the time-honoured fashion. It was the gossip of the robing rooms that Christine Fairbrother could handle the hottest divorces in the world but couldn’t manage her own marriage.

Well, that was all behind her now. They’d settled out of court – ‘amicably’ – as the euphemism has it, for Andy was far too smart to risk it all in a messy trial. They’d divided the assets, she’d held on to the family home in Highgate, and Andy moved in with his mistress. Oh, it was all such a cliché, so vulgar, so predictable. Christine would grow old alone, abandoned, wondering where it all went wrong. He’d get through one mistress after another, until his capital and his business were run into the ground and he ended up lonely and bitter in rented accommodation, scratching around for work, calling in favours, an embarrassment to his friends. She’d seen it a thousand times before. If this wasn’t her and Andy, the love of her life, the father of her two children, she’d laugh.

What had gone wrong? It was easy enough, in retrospect, to blame her career. Maybe she hadn’t been around enough, never had the time to be a good wife to Andy, pushed him into the arms of other women – but there was always a good reason. Mortgages had to be paid, children fed, clothed, cared for and schooled, holidays booked, bigger houses bought, cars upgraded and multiplied. She, Christine, had provided it all – at least in the early years. And when Andy’s architectural practice took off, they’d been able to give the kids the best of everything. Isabelle had clothes, riding lessons, ballet lessons, skiing holidays with her friends, the best education, from nursery school right through to a fashion degree at Central St Martins. Benedict, music mad from the moment he could clap his hands and sing, had every instrument, gadget and gizmo that money could buy. He had a home studio in his bedroom. When he went to university in September, he’d be taking a small orchestra with him.

And with Ben gone, and Isabelle visiting only to ask for money and to blame her mother for the divorce, what was left for Christine? What had it all been for, this life of hard work and sacrifice? A husband who had never been faithful, children who no longer needed her, and in her daughter’s case actively resented her? Well, thought Christine, standing in front of mirror, lowering the heavy horse-hair wig on to her head, there is always work. And in a couple of years’ time, I’ll be a QC – able to pick and choose my briefs, raking in the cash, at the top of my profession, envied, admired and feared. Loved? Well, perhaps not, but we can’t have everything, can we? Work has never let me down. And if I concentrate, if I focus all my energies on this one goal, then the gown I wear will no longer be wool, but silk – the silk that’s reserved for QCs, the ultimate symbol of success.

Christine adjusted her wig, shook out the folds of her gown, and turned away from the mirror, ready to deliver the coup de grâce to another dying marriage.

Victoria stepped out of the shower and reached for a towel. She loved this time of day – late afternoon, early evening, her skin still warm and tingling from the sun, a gentle buzz from a good lunch and a couple of cocktails, the promise of a party to come. She dabbed the water from her face, patted her hair and wrapped it up in a towel turban, then set about the long, sensuous process of ‘getting ready’. Ever since she was a teenager, Victoria had loved getting ready – the anticipation, the self-indulgence, the pampering, awakening her body and mind to the possibilities of the evening. So many evenings, so many possibilities, so much pleasure to be enjoyed and given . . . And tonight, here at Le Mûrier, Massimo’s ‘hideaway’ villa in Sainte-Maxime, she would step into her rightful place by his side, playing hostess to his friends and colleagues, more than just the mistress. Here, in France, she could be what she really wanted to be, at least for a few days: his wife.

She unscrewed the lid from a jar of subtly fragranced white cream, scooped out a good handful, rubbed it between her palms and made a start. Arms first, feeling the firmness in the muscle that she’d maintained from all those Pilates classes. Then the shoulders, still as smooth and rounded as a marble statue, up around the neck, where a few damp tresses of dark blonde hair escaped from the towel and clung to her nape, then swooping down to her breasts. Ah, her breasts, her best friends, her weapons, her nest-eggs – they deserved extra special care. She dabbed a little blob of cream on to each nipple, shuddering slightly as she worked it outwards, finally taking a breast in each hand and working the moisturiser in until they shone. Then down the gentle curve of her stomach, her thighs, calves and feet, good enough to eat.

Still naked, Victoria stepped into her slippers – all of her shoes had a heel, even these – and trotted into the bedroom. The windows were wide open, letting in a soft, pine-scented breeze, the buzz of insects, the occasional whirr of a passing bird. She could see right across the bay to Saint-Tropez – ‘that vulgar resort’, as Massimo called it, where they sometimes went at night to laugh at the excesses of the nouveaux riches. She stepped out on to the balcony and felt the heat from the last rays of the evening sun before it dipped down behind the hills. There was perhaps half an hour to go before sunset and that sudden drop still surprised and delighted her.

Massimo was down by the pool, stretched out on a lounger, naked but for a towel wrapped round his waist. The garden was shielded from the road by a thick stand of conifers, and was cleverly oriented to avoid being overlooked by the other villas that studded the hillside – and so, when there was no company, they could swim and sunbathe naked, even make love by the pool, in the pool, the sun beating down on their tanned skin, the smell of chlorine and pine resin and rosemary mingling with the animal scents of sex. Massimo loved that pool. Whenever they arrived at Le Mûrier, the first thing he did was strip off his clothes and dive straight in. It was more to him than just a swimming pool – it was a symbol of his success, the first real luxury he indulged himself in when he hit the big time. ‘When I built that pool,’ he told Victoria, ‘I knew that nothing could stand in my way.’

It was hard to tell if he was awake or asleep. One arm was crooked behind his head, the other hanging limp over the edge of the lounger, a book barely held in his fingers. His eyes were concealed by sunglasses. His chest and stomach – firm and solid and hairy, not bad for a man in his fifties – not bad for a man of any age – rose and fell gently. A few drops of water clung to his tanned, oiled skin; Massimo laughed at Victoria’s arsenal of high-factor sunblock, and used only olive oil, tanning to a shockingly deep brown, shrugging off any concerns about skin cancer with his usual bravado. ‘If that bullet’s got my name on it, then no overpriced crap in a bottle is going to make a difference,’ he’d say, before handing Victoria the olive oil to ‘do my back’, which usually ended up with her straddling him and slipping and sliding her way to glory.

‘Yoo-hoo!’ she trilled from the balcony. Massimo stirred, scratched his stomach, looked up. She leaned forward, letting her breasts swing like bells over the railing. ‘Ciao, bello,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it time you started getting ready?’

‘Maybe I cancel everyone,’ he said, his hand going down to his groin, where something was stirring under the towel.

‘But darling, all the catering! All the booze!’

‘We can have a party, just the two of us.’ He parted the towel, giving her a bird’s-eye view of his rapidly lengthening cock. She loved it like that, when it was stirring, not yet fully hard. Anticipation, for Christine, was often nine tenths of the pleasure – of a party, of a lover. ‘Look,’ he said, making it jump. ‘There’s plenty to eat. Come and get it.’

‘Oh, Massimo, I just had a shower. I don’t want to get all sweaty and oily again.’ She knew this would drive him wild; he liked it when she played the proper English Miss. In truth, she could feel herself getting wet between the legs, and was tempted to take a flying jump from the balcony and land straight on his now-upstanding prick – if she didn’t break her neck instead.

She turned around, making sure he got a good view of her white, creamy arse, and went back into the bedroom, threw the towel into a damp pile in the corner of the room – the maid would pick it up later – and started drying her hair.

‘Ten.’

She knew in her head exactly how long it would take Massimo to get from the side of the pool up the stairs and into the bedroom. He was a fast mover, especially when his dick was leading the way.

‘Nine.’

He was still eager, even after banging her for all these years. She was little more than a girl when he first met her – fresh out of university, struggling to make her mark as a journalist, full of ambition and dreams, with a taste for the high life that her meagre earnings could never satisfy. And then along came Massimo Rivelli, the up-and-coming name in the Italian garment industry, now the head of one of the most prestigious manufacturing companies in Milan, powerful, rich, respected – and married. That sad fact had not changed, despite her promptings. But Victoria was still there, still desired as much in her mid thirties as she was in her twenties, still – she hoped – loved.