Rebecca Campbell - The Favours and Fortunes of Katie Castle

But this had all led to a power shift in the relationship. And Penny was never one to miss an opportunity. As Hugh retreated, so she advanced. She’d been attractive (I’d seen – who hadn’t? – the photographs) as a young woman, but as a woman of a certain age, she was a stunner. She went every year to Cannes during the festival, and there were rumours of affairs with the most surprising people. Could Peter Sellers really have proposed, one moonlit night on a yacht chartered by the French Minister of Culture? She claimed she kept the ring as a memento, when he refused to take it back. Did Luchino Visconti really suggest a spot of troilism with a Scandawegian starlet? Penny used to talk about these things in a wistful sort of way, as though it were something she’d desired rather than achieved, but Ludo’s grumpy silence on the subject offered some kind of authentication. I got the feeling that he’d been teased about her at school. I found it hard not to laugh, whether or not the stories were true.

But that’s all ancient history. I’ll cut to the chase. Ludo was mine, whatever Penny thought about it. We lived together in the Primrose Hill flat, and we were engaged, although Ludo could never quite remember when or how he had asked me to marry him. When it became clear that she could not manoeuvre me out of Ludo’s life (she’d tried both blackmail and bribery), Penny had the good sense to draw me up to the office, to avoid the shame of her sweet boy consorting with a shop girl. I was made an assistant to Carol, the previous production manager. But Carol must have known the writing was on the wall and after a week, to everyone’s relief, she left to do VSO in Egypt, and was never heard of again. I used to like to think that she’d been eaten by a crocodile. I know that might suggest that I’m a bit lacking in the generosity of spirit department, but I used to be much preoccupied by the question of whether it would be better to be eaten by a crocodile or a shark. Crocodile always seemed more likely, because of Tarzan. You see I could always imagine myself as Jane, whereas sharks mainly seem to eat Australians, and imagining oneself as an Australian is out of the question.

With my new job I soon found that I had new friends. The London fashion world is a small one. There are six people that you have to know. Enter that blessed circle and you will never miss a party, and never brunch alone. If I hadn’t quite made it into that circle, I was at least a satellite of a moon orbiting a planet that was part of the circle, and for now, that would do.

And then – could it really be just nine months ago? – came that phone call from Penny, and my usual smart reply. But it was not to end there.

‘Katie, darling.’ A bad sign, that ‘darling’.

‘Yes, Penny?’

There’s some trouble at the depot. Cavafy says he can’t find the right interlining. I know it’s there, somewhere. You couldn’t go out there tomorrow morning and check for me could you? There’s really no one else I can ask. You can do it on your way into work.’

I pulled my Jean Muir face, and hissed out three shits and a fuck. The depot was the worst thing about my job. A hideous warehouse in outer Mile End, full of toiling women whose lives were simply too awful to contemplate. Cavafy was the old Greek who ran the place, with his idiot son, Angel. And the ‘on your way into work’ was typical Penny. Mile End was no more on my way into work than my arse is on the way to my elbow.

‘Don’t look like that, Katie,’ said Penny, which was clever of her given the miles of phone line between her and my grimace. ‘You’ve got Paris the day after tomorrow to look forward to, and Mile End won’t kill you.’

Paris meant Premiére Vision – the world’s biggest fabric fair. For the past two years I’d gone along with Penny, as her Girl Friday/translator/minder. It was the polar opposite of Mile End, the good to its bad.

‘Anyway,’ she added with her characteristic contempt for logic, ‘aren’t you going to a party tonight? I haven’t been to a party for months and I don’t complain.’

‘What about cocktails at the Peruvian Embassy last Thursday to push vicuna yarn?’

‘Darling, that was business and not pleasure. And I still don’t know what a vicuna is, which was the main reason I went.’

‘But didn’t you get legless and have to be escorted out for biting a general’s gold braid to see if it was real?’

‘I was only being playful. And he wasn’t a proper general. But he did have such a virile … moustache.’ The line paused as Penny drifted off into a romantic Latin American reverie involving, or so I imagined, an abduction by the besotted colonel, adventures with wild gauchos, a palace coup, a forced wedding, the adoring crowds, the assassin’s bullet, a coronation … ‘Anyway,’ continued the Queen Presumptive of Peru, ‘that wasn’t a real party. What I want is a party with paparazzi and people I’ve heard of. It’s not for me, you understand: it’s for the good of the company. We need a … one of those things, you know, a higher profile. ’

‘Well, why not come tonight then?’ I only said it because I knew she wouldn’t.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Katie. I wouldn’t dream of gate-crashing. And I don’t even know where it is.’ I was a little concerned about the relish with which she pronounced ‘ gatecrashing ’, which suggested that the idea had a wicked appeal.

‘Look, Penny,’ I said, ‘come or don’t come, it’s entirely up to you. But now I have to get home: I haven’t a clue yet what I’m going to wear.’

‘Oh. Okay. And Mile End – you will remember to kiss Cavafy for me, won’t you?’ she said.

‘Of course, Penny,’ I said, suppressing, with an effort that made my eyes water, a jostling crowd of curses and expletives.

chapter two

in matching knickerbockers

The party to which Penny had alluded to was a launch at Momo’s. I can’t remember what was being launched – chocolate flavoured vodka or something – it never really matters. Milo, naturally, was doing the PR, and the place was packed with B- and C-list celebs. Not all fashion of course but, given that it was one of Milo’s, there was bound to be a fashiony feel. There were models, a smattering of out-of-favour designers, and a few vaguely familiar telly people from daytime soaps, or early evening quizzes. Milo had clearly been coasting: this really wasn’t his best work. The one real catch was Jude Law, who’d promised to make an appearance in return for the indefinite loan of a Gucci lizardskin jacket.

I was in my element. I have, you see, the sort of face that people think they know: people are always convinced that they’ve seen me on something. And best of all, I knew people in several of the discrete clusters that had formed. That meant I could island hop, moving from one to another as soon as the conversation dulled, which, in the PR-fashion cosmos took on average four and a half minutes.

First, there was Milo’s lot by the bar: that’s Milo himself, PR Queen of London, sleek and wondrously handsome in a black neoprene suit and a pair of piebald ponyskin shoes. Next to him, close as a gun in a holster, there pressed Xerxes, Milo’s Persian Boy. Xerxes was an exquisite miniature, eyes dark and lustrous. Milo said he was a Zoroastrian, a fire worshipper, and that he’d never let him blow out a match, but would make him wait until the flame had eaten all the wood, and licked at his fingers. No one had ever heard him speak. Some said he was dumb. Others disputed his origins. I’d heard, of course, the story about Xerxes being a Bangladeshi waiter, but who knew the truth in this world of rumour, fantasy and Fendi handbags?