‘Oh, I don’t know how you do it,’ said Missy. ‘You career women. I can’t imagine what I’d do if I had to have a career. Charlie says I’d make a good interior designer, though. I have thought of it, you know.’
Rich women always wanted to be designers. Making a house look pretty was easy when you had a million-dollar budget to play with.
Suki smiled and prepared to move on. ‘Lovely to see you, Missy,’ she said truthfully.
‘Do you know, I clean forgot to invite you to Charlie’s birthday party,’ Missy said. ‘He’s fifty-nine, can you believe it? He’s planning something wild for his sixtieth, but you know men, they like a party, anyway. What’s your address now?’
Suki dutifully gave it, thinking that it was a nice gesture on Missy’s part but not expecting it to come to anything. Charlie, a money-mad alpha male, would nix her from the guest list if he saw her name on it. Charlie only wanted players at his parties.
To Suki’s amazement, true to her word, Missy sent an invitation: Charlie’s fifty-ninth, the run-up to the Big One. Come dressed up or come as you are.
Suki didn’t know what made her do it, but she accepted. However, she didn’t tell Mick. He wouldn’t like that sort of party, she reasoned: Chopin playing on the Bang & Olufsen, or maybe an actual string quartet. No, he wouldn’t like it.
It wasn’t that he wouldn’t fit in, she told herself. It wasn’t that at all.
She went to the salon and had her hair done; something she rarely did these days.
‘A file and paint,’ she told the manicurist. She couldn’t afford the extra ten dollars for proper cuticle work.
Money – why did it always come back to money?
There was plenty of money in the Petersens’ house, a timber-framed mansion on the Hyannis side of the Cape with more rooms than the Louvre.
Because this wasn’t a ‘big’ party, Missy explained as she greeted Suki, they didn’t have a marquee or anything. ‘It’s only us at home.’
‘Home’ was filled with modern art and enough odd sculptures to convince people that Charlie and Suki had artistic sense. In reality, Suki knew they’d have an art expert on the payroll, looking out for nice ‘pieces’ that would ensure they kept their place in the art fashion loop.
That was the trick when you had new money. Old money people could have paintings of the family home and deranged great-grand-uncles who’d had four wives and twenty-six children and had owned half of East Manhattan when horse-drawn carriages drove the streets.
New money people had up-and-coming artists and a selection of hideously expensive pieces to show how rich they were.
The Petersens at home turned out to consist of a collection of rich men scattered around the place, comparing their assets – or wives.
I should never have come, Suki thought again, accepting a glass from a waiter.
Sitting in her armchair, champagne glass in hand, she surveyed the room. It was a world she thought she’d left behind. Everyone here was rich or married to someone rich. The result was a roomful of people all hell-bent on outdoing each other while trying not to be too obvious about it.
During her years on the ultra-rich social circuit, Suki had noticed that the women generally fell into one of two tribes: the more ordinary women, who got by with a little regular maintenance, and the trophy second wives, for whom maintenance was a way of life. First wives tended to avoid standing beside second ones. The sole exception was one exquisite first wife, Delilah Verne, who managed to look younger than her forty-eight years, having been rejuvenated so many times that a second wife could no doubt have been assembled from the bits she’d had surgically sucked out of her.
It was Delilah who descended upon her quiet corner now, teetering on her platforms. Not quite Prada witch but not far off it, she was dressed in something designer-ish (Balmain?) that Suki knew had commanded a sum that would have paid her own household bills for three months.
‘Suki! Hello!’ trilled Delilah.
Class A or anti-depressant drugs, Suki wondered. Or merely the permanent ultra-happiness required if one wanted to stay married to a grumpy billionaire? Clark Verne, in common with most billionaires, was always grumpy. The amassing of money seemed to do that to people, a fact which mystified Suki. If she was rich, she’d be so happy she’d never stop smiling.
‘Hello, Delilah,’ said Suki, tilting her cheek to be air-kissed. Once, she’d thought it made sense to stay friends with people like Clark via their wives. Now, she couldn’t really see the point of fake friendships.
‘You look super, darling!’ Delilah went on enthusiastically.
Suki flashed the regulation thank-you smile, and followed it up with, ‘And so do you!’
They were not pals and never would be. For a start, Delilah didn’t do women friends. Secondly, Suki didn’t fit comfortably into any niche. She wasn’t rich, but she wasn’t one of the eager women hanging round the fringes of power, either. She’d had a very public career and wouldn’t hesitate to remind men of that if they fell into a discussion of money and politics, ignoring all female interjections. That gave her a certain power, as did her former marriage. To these billionaires, Kyle Senior still represented the seat of power, and Suki had evolved various strategies to make sure they knew that separation from her husband had not meant separation from the Richardson clan: ‘I dropped by the compound in Hyannis over the summer,’ she’d say idly, and suddenly they’d all be hanging on her every word.
Suki knew she was pretty glamorous in her own right. The liaison with Jethro hadn’t hurt in that regard. And her heavy lidded eyes with the death line of block kohl and the rippling hair told the world that she was a somebody. But the Richardsons bestowed extra glamour, no doubt about it.
Tonight, however, Suki was fed up with all the fakery. Truth was, she wasn’t part of the Richardson clan any more. She was only invited to the compound on the rarest of occasions, and only then because Kyle Senior was a great believer in the old adage: ‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.’
‘I got a phone call from a friend recently,’ Delilah said idly.
Suki waited.
‘Well, not a friend, exactly. More of an acquaintance.’
Suki tried to maintain an expression of polite interest. As if she cared about Delilah’s friends. A chat with her dermatologist about the latest laser treatment was probably Delilah’s notion of female bonding.
‘She’s had a couple of phone calls from someone who’s a researcher for Redmond Suarez. It seems the latest book he’s working on is about the Richardsons …’
Suki could barely hear the rest of the conversation. She didn’t want to hear it.
‘… I said we were friends and, of course, you know them – after all, you married one of them! But I’d have to check with you first.’
Somehow, Suki’s expression remained neutral.
‘Yes, Delilah, he’s writing a book about the Richardsons,’ she confirmed, her heart fluttering with panic. Always better to sound as if you knew everything up front. Knowledge was power.
‘I don’t know much about it, but if someone wants to write a book about a great American dynasty, I’d hate it to be tawdry,’ Suki managed to go on. ‘You know how Kyle Senior and Antoinette value their privacy. The Family –’ she deliberately emphasized the word in the way people said things like the President – ‘want us to meet to discuss it.’
In reality, Antoinette had left a crisp message on Suki’s answering machine that sounded more like a command than an invitation: ‘Come to the compound on Tuesday afternoon. You can stay overnight. We need to talk about Mr Suarez and