Bitch. My abs are fine, thought Ben, stroking his washboard stomach. But he definitely wanted to see her again.

‘I thank you.’

Natalia smiled graciously as she accepted her champagne and caviar from the BA stewardess. She was flying from Heathrow to Kiev on her annual June trip to check up on the two charities to which she had been contributing generously for years. After her mamushka had died, there had been no real reason to go back home, but she had to make sure her money was being put to good use.

At least she had the luxury of being able to choose which time of year to return, she thought, pulling her cashmere blanket a little more tightly around her shoulders to keep out the chill of the air conditioning. Despite its soft warmth, she shivered as the memories of Ukraine in the depths of winter came flooding back …

‘Madam? Can I get you something else?’ asked the stewardess, looking at Natalia oddly.

‘Excuse me?’ Natalia was snapped back into the present, into the softness of her White Company cashmere blanket, so different to the itchy wool she had wrapped herself up in all those years ago. ‘No, no, I thank you, I am fine.’

Once the stewardess had left her alone once more, she stared out of the window for some time, unwelcome tears blurring her view of the pillowy white clouds below.

Chapter 4

Poppy Wallace’s bite of the Big Apple is somewhat larger than she’d initially anticipated.

Bella looked at Poppy’s Facebook update with love and irritation. It wasn’t Poppy per se who bugged the shit out of her, but all her old London media friends who fell on her every word and tried to outdo themselves with how well they knew her and how cool they could prove themselves to everyone else online. Some of the fawning acolytes responded to Poppy’s Facebook update with such stomach-churning stuff as miss u loads, baby girl (from a female journalist – there was loads of faux-dykey bollocks) and hoxton’s not the same without you, sweet poppy lops. remember OBESE-gate?

Bella was tempted to add, remember OVERDOSE-gate? She wasn’t able to be cool on Facebook, as some of her old friends and family members actually used exclamation marks and plenty of xxxxs at the end of their messages. It seemed rude not to respond in kind. Also, as Andy worked late so many evenings, she found herself drinking wine on her own and writing things she thought hilarious at the time, then waking in a cold sweaty panic, wondering what the fuck she had thought essential to share with absolutely everyone who knew her. The computer needed a Breathalyser.

She clicked onto Poppy’s latest photos: rollerblading in Central Park, gorgeous in old-skool grey marl shorts and Yankees T-shirt; drinking at the round table at the Algonquin Hotel in a flapper dress (cue comment from fawning female journo: you are Dorothy Parker, but a million times prettier – nineteen other equally sycophantic comments followed); sunbathing by the pool on Soho House NY’s roof terrace in a green bikini that matched her eyes and showed off her exquisitely lithe body (wowser! looking hot babe, hubba hubba, etc., etc., ad nauseam); sitting on the stoop of some lovely old brownstone house in rolled-up jeans and sneakers, her hair in an insouciant ponytail, reading the Herald Tribune (her comment on her own photo was clever, cool and abstruse).