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  ‘And yet …’ Tara frowned and tapped a pen on her notebook. ‘Yet there was always enough money for shareholders? Enough money for us? Our mother never hinted in the slightest that our financial interest in Trevellyan might be under threat.’

  ‘Your mother made sure that your allowances, bonuses and dividends were always paid,’ Duncan said gravely. ‘Even when the company could ill afford it. I believe she also disposed of substantial private assets – some investments, and property here and abroad. Some jewellery and furniture.’

  Tara looked shocked but she said nothing.

  Jemima had turned white-faced and her hands were shaking. ‘Exactly when were you planning to tell us all this, if Ali and Tara hadn’t wormed it out of you? What’s your role in this decline?’ Her voice began to rise. ‘I want some fucking answers!’

  ‘Mimi, stay calm, please. It won’t help. Can’t you see what Mother’s done? We’ll talk about it later. There’s plenty of time for that. But first I want to hear as much about our current position as I can.’ Tara pointed her Montblanc fountain pen at Simon Vestey. ‘You can go first. I want a full briefing on current staffing, product costs, sales, marketing spend and a market analysis. And if you haven’t got this to hand, I’ll want a comprehensive overview of the entire company sent to me by tomorrow lunchtime at the latest. Understand?’

  The men nodded. They seemed subdued by Tara’s businesslike tone.

  ‘Good. Then let’s get started.’

  8

  ‘WHERE ARE WE going to go?’ Poppy pulled her cardigan about her more tightly against the cool spring wind gusting down the Mayfair street. The three sisters stood on the pavement outside Trevellyan House.

  ‘Back to my place,’ Jemima said. ‘It’s closest. We can hail a cab.’

  ‘Oh, blast.’ Tara was examining her BlackBerry. ‘I’ve been emailed and called about a million times by Roz. I need to get back to the office.’

  Jemima said crossly, ‘No, Tara. You can’t just leave us. We have to deal with this, and we have to deal with it now. Didn’t you hear what they said to us in there? This is serious!’

  Tara stared at her sister, frustrated. ‘I know the most pressing thing in your life is whether or not you’ve made it to the top of the waiting list for another Birkin bag, but some of us actually work for a living and I have responsibilities elsewhere. I have to go. Anyway, I don’t know what the hell we have to talk about until they get me that company information. Without that, we’ll just be flailing about in the dark.’

  ‘I can think of a few choice things we could mull over,’ replied Jemima tartly. She shot Tara a look as if to warn her not to start pulling rank. Tara might be the oldest but Jemima had always been the natural leader. Biting remarks and sarcasm came naturally to her, and she readily used her wit and sharp tongue to put her sisters in their place. If Tara had academic brilliance and Poppy had artistic skill, then Jemima had decided she would turn herself into a beauty. But she was no airhead. She wanted to be the only kind of beauty who counted: a gorgeous girl with a bright mind. She might not be the most educated of the sisters, but there was no way she lagged behind them in intelligence.

  Tara sighed and buttoned her Miu Miu coat, slipping her BlackBerry into her handbag. ‘I don’t want to fight. One thing’s for certain, we have to be united over this. We’ve got enough people against us without adding each other to the list.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Poppy asked fearfully. Her large green eyes widened. ‘Who’s against us?’

  ‘No one, no one. Come on, Pops. You come home with me. We’ll have some tea and try to start making sense of this mess.’ Jemima grabbed her sister’s hand.

  ‘All right. We’ll talk later. There’s a chance I’ll be home in time to see the children. Then I’ll have to catch up with what I’ve missed today. Then I’ll call you.’ Tara saw a taxi trundling towards them, its light glowing. Without a moment’s hesitation, she’d hailed the black cab and called out ‘Bye!’ over a tense shoulder as she retreated into the taxi.

  Jemima’s flat in Eaton Square was her favourite place in the whole world. It was where she felt entirely at home and entirely relaxed.

  She had bought it not long after returning from her finishing school in Gstaad, an idea of her mother’s that she had gone along with under threat of losing her allowance if she didn’t. Although she had moaned horribly at the whole idea of leaving England, she had at first enjoyed her time in Switzerland, skiing and learning various ladylike arts alongside the daughters of various other European, American and Middle Eastern wealthy and titled families. By the time her first year was up, however, she was already bored. Most of the girls there were prim and proper, only concerned with the correct way of getting in and out of a sports cars and plotting who they should marry with the help of the Forbes rich list and the Almanac de Gotha, the index of the titled families of Europe. Jemima didn’t care about that. By the end of her two years she was longing to cut loose and desperate to get back to London, where everything seemed to be happening. For the Gstaad girls, the height of naughtiness was sneaking out at night to the local nightclub where they drank white wine and were chatted up by the ski bums and ski instructors. It was all too tame for Jemima. She knew instinctively that London had much more adventure and excitement to offer her.

  Coming back at the ripe old age of twenty, she had at first shared a flat with some of her finishing-school friends but it became increasingly tedious. Her friendship with them quickly ebbed as they busied themselves with trying to fill in time before they met the billionaires they were going to marry. Most of them signed up to art or design courses and took them terribly seriously, staying in and going to bed early during the week so they wouldn’t be too tired to study and attend lectures the following day. Jemima couldn’t understand it. They had more money than they could ever spend, along with youth and good looks. Why weren’t they having more fun?

  She decided she needed her independence. When she found a flat for sale in Eaton Square, she made up her mind to have it the moment the estate agent mentioned the exclusive address and the walk-in wardrobe. It was far more money than she had available so she’d had to go to her father for funds. With a winning mixture of cajoling, pleading and explaining what an excellent long-term investment it was, she had got her way, as she usually did. The day she collected the keys, she had spun happily about the empty flat, squealing with excitement, unable to believe it was really hers to do whatever she wanted with.

  The flat had seen some wild nights since that day. Through her roaring early twenties there had been no shortage of extraordinary parties, some lasting three or four days. Famous actors and actresses, musicians, models, playboys, princes and lords had all enjoyed the hospitality of the Eaton Square flat at some point. The young rich had flocked there, along with the newly famous or the just extraordinary: a grungy band from some Camden pub where Jemima and her friends had spent a drunken afternoon; artists; waiters and chefs from their favourite restaurants, pressed into coming back ‘to carry on the party’; even the odd waif and stray from the street. Anyone was welcome. Huge quantities of drugs and alcohol were consumed, a great deal of sex was had, hearts were broken, friendships were made and dissolved and tragedies were narrowly averted, like the time when one of Jemima’s friends, drunk almost to the point of blindness, simply climbed over the third-floor balcony and plummeted to the ground below. He had been so drunk that he’d fallen without tension, and had been lucky enough to land on a pile of bin bags left out for the rubbish men the following day. He’d broken both legs but lived to tell the tale.

  It was not long after she moved into Eaton Square that she first caught the attention of the press, who had discovered a new appetite for beautiful young heiresses who seemed to live a gilded life. The media was hungry for details about Jemima and her friends, but fortunately no one ever gave away what really went on behind the doors of Eaton Square. The worst the paparazzi ever managed to snap were photos of the weary-eyed party-goe
rs finally stumbling out of Jemima’s building.

  Of course, once she became a respectable married woman, the wild parties stopped almost completely.

  Jemima and Poppy rose sedately to the third floor in the antique cast-iron lift, then Jemima opened the glossy red front door and led Poppy in.

  ‘Sri? Are you here?’ Jemima dropped her coat over the hall chair.

  ‘Yes, Miss Jemima?’ Sri appeared from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron.

  ‘Could we have some tea, please? Thanks so much.’ She went before Poppy into a grand, high-ceilinged sitting room. Three sets of French windows opened out on to a white balcony that gave a magnificent view of the garden at the centre of the square, which was in the heart of Belgravia, London’s most exclusive postcode. Opposite Jemima’s building was a mirror image of vast, white stuccoed mansions, most divided up into elegant flats; a few, owned by those whose wealth began in the hundreds of millions, were still houses.

  Jemima had not long ago redecorated the flat and had spared no expense. She had had enough of Victorian Gothic at Loxton, and found her mother’s penchant for silks, satins and ribbons sickly. She equally disliked Herne Castle which was a bona fide country house: shabby, dark, full of fabrics, textures, paintings and patterns, no wall left uncovered, no window unswagged, no table without a clutter of photographs, vases, bibelots and lamps. Jemima just couldn’t bear that typically English old-fashioned décor any longer – it was too unchanging, too stuck in the past. She yearned for space, light and simplicity. When the flat, battered by all the high living and wild parties, had started to look worn out, she’d taken the opportunity to embrace the beauty of contemporary style and living.

  The sitting room was her favourite room: welcoming, restful and calm. The pale walls had only one or two carefully chosen paintings. Some beautiful black and white photographs in stark black frames ran along the far wall opposite the windows. One long grey velvet sofa faced a plain white one across an enormous glass coffee table on a white Mongolian sheepskin rug. The basic monochrome colours were lifted by small splashes of colour: a row of lily-green cushions, a red cashmere throw, a giant dark jade glass vase spilling pale hydrangea heads.

  ‘Sit down, darling.’ Jemima kicked off her shoes and relaxed on to the grey velvet sofa, tucking her feet up under her. ‘Sri’s bringing us tea, although I don’t know about you but I could do with something a bit stronger. I’m feeling distinctly shaken up.’

  ‘I’m afraid most of it went over my head.’ Poppy sat down at the other end of the sofa, easing her patent boots off and rubbing her toes which were now throbbing from all the walking she’d done that day.

  ‘We’ll have to wait for Tara to give us her expert opinion, I’ve got no more of a business brain than you have. But even I can see that it’s all looking pretty terrible.’ Jemima looked sombre for once. ‘I’ve teased you for years for trying to live without the family money – but now it seems as if you might have been the clever one all along. If what that Ingliss man said is true, we might have to get used to surviving without.’ She frowned and shook her head. ‘You know, I really can’t believe it. We’ve been living in a dream world. Our parents have conned us – they’ve conned the whole world. Everyone thinks we are vastly rich heiresses – that’s what we thought we were – when the truth is, they’ve been selling every asset the company owns just to keep the façade going.’

  ‘But can Trevellyan really be in so much trouble?’ Poppy said wonderingly. ‘I still see our perfumes everywhere, in all the best shops.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean people are buying them. Tell me the truth –’ Jemima leaned forward and stared her sister in the eye. ‘Would you buy Trevellyan’s Tea Rose? Or Vintage Lavender? Or Antique Lily? If you had one, would you buy your boyfriend Leather & Willow?’

  There was a long pause. Poppy looked down at her hands.

  ‘No. I thought not. I wouldn’t buy it either. It’s grandma stuff, isn’t it? It’s what you picture soft-cheeked old ladies dabbing behind their ears and on their wrists before they go out to their bridge club. That’s who I imagined was still buying it. But maybe all the old ladies and gentlemen who used to buy that stuff are dying out – and no one is taking their place.’

  ‘But the US … Japan … Europe …’ Poppy stammered.

  ‘Yes, yes, it’s been drummed into us how much everyone abroad loves our stuff. But do they really? Of course, there’ll always be people who buy something because it’s got the Royal Warrant on it – and thank God the Prince of Wales still likes Chatsworth or whatever it is he orders by the bucket load. But will that keep us going? Just look at what we’re up against!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The major luxury brands, of course. And think about it – every actress and Z-list celebrity is launching their own scent nowadays. Britney Spears or whoever is just the start of it – there’s competition like never before. No wonder Trevellyan is going down the pan. You know, now I think about it, I can’t believe how I ever believed it would go on being the golden goose it has been for so long.’ Jemima sat back, her eyes glittering. Then she jumped up. ‘Come on. Come with me.’ She pulled Poppy to her feet.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘You’ll see.’ She led the way out of the sitting room, down the corridor and into her bedroom. From there, she went to her bathroom and opened the door. ‘Look in there. What can you see?’

  Poppy stepped into the room tentatively, almost as though she expected someone nasty to jump out at her. She looked about at the mermaid-blue mosaic tiles, the power shower, and the curved freestanding copper bath. ‘Your bathroom?’ she hazarded.

  ‘No shit. But what do you see?’

  ‘The bath … the lights …’

  Jemima huffed impatiently. ‘For goodness’ sake, Poppy, I know you’re an artist and therefore lost in a fog of creativity, but is there any need to be so dense? What have I got on my shelf and in my cupboard? Look, I’ll give you a clue …’ She marched over to her bath and pointed to the inset shelf. ‘Origins, Liz Earle, Clarins, Clinique, Benefit, Dr Sebagh, Aveda. Now, in my cupboard …’ She went to the twin copper sinks and pressed a hidden spring in the surround of the mirror above them. It obediently sprang open and revealed a cornucopia of the most expensive cosmetics in the world: Crème de la mer, Dr Hauschka, Bliss, La Prairie, SK-II and other high-end brands. ‘Let me know when you spot anything with Trevellyan on it.’

  Poppy turned to look at her anxiously. ‘You’re right. But you’re different, you can afford anything you like.’

  Jemima shook her head. ‘Everyone is aspirational these days. No woman thinks “Oh, I’m only good enough for a supermarket own-brand, I’ll leave all the good stuff to the rich.” She thinks “I’m worth it” – it’s been drummed into her enough times. She wants to be Keira Knightley wearing Chanel NO 5 or Eva Green wearing Midnight Poison or Kate Winslet wearing Trésor. She doesn’t have any reason to want to wear Trevellyan, particularly not Trevellyan’s Tea Rose which she probably sees in her granny’s cabinet. And as for being rich – well, you may not be able to afford a Mercedes or an Yves Saint Laurent crocodile handbag, or a house in Kensington – but you can sure as hell afford a bottle of perfume.’

  ‘When you put it like that …’ Poppy leaned back against the wall. ‘Oh, God, what are we going to do?’

  ‘We’re going to have a struggle on our hands, that much is for sure.’ Jemima looked thoughtful. ‘But there’s no reason why we can’t give it our best shot. Come on, let’s go and have our tea. You never know when inspiration will strike. Anyway, I can’t believe it’s really as awful as Tara and those old boardroom codgers seem to think it is. Everything will be fine, I’m sure.’

  9

  TARA SHUT HER office door with a sigh. It was going on eight o’clock – not a late night by City standards but she usually tried to get away by six-thirty at the latest. The meeting at Trevellyan had completely screwed her day up and her usual clockwork arrangements had go
ne out the window.

  Roz’s chair was empty and her desk deserted. Tara depended utterly on her assistant, and luckily Roz was a gem. She was reliable and loyal. What would I do without her? she wondered. A black mood of depression had settled on her.

  I’m not going to see the children, she thought wistfully. One thing that kept her going through every day was the thought of getting home in the evening to see her babies. Edward was almost five now, and Imogen was just three. Although Robina, the nanny, was a stickler for routine and for children being in bed by seven o’clock, Tara had managed to persuade her to keep the children up and let them start their bath at seven. It meant that she would have to speed down to the car at six-thirty, hoping that her driver could make it back across London, through the rush-hour traffic, to her Holland Park house in time for Edward and Imogen’s bath. Her driver was superb and knew exactly how to guide the long sleek Mercedes through the traffic, overtaking, undertaking and using bus lanes (goodness knew how many fines they’d had for that) in order to get Tara home.

  Then she’d run up to the nursery bathroom where the children would be splashing together, putting bubbles on each other’s heads and squealing with pleasure. She’d get down on the floor and no matter what designer dress or shirt she was wearing, she’d roll up her sleeves and start playing with them.

  All too soon, Robina would appear with the towels strictly commanding, ‘It’s time for bed, children.’

  But Tara would always take over for the bedtime routine. Drying them, dressing them in their pyjamas, scrubbing their teeth, reading them a story and tucking them into bed. Often, she would linger in their bedroom, sitting in the armchair watching the children until sleep finally overcame them, unable to tear herself away from the peaceful comfort these moments allowed her. She only ever saw them fleetingly in the mornings, when Robina brought them down to breakfast just before she dashed out for an early boardroom meeting, so these bedtime hours with the children were precious to her – they were all she got until the weekend.