Power Play

“I have an appointment with John Fletcher at twelve, Miranda. I should be back around two, if anyone wants me.”

John Fletcher was an up-and-coming designer. Pepper had seen some of his clothes in a Vogue feature on new designers, and she had commissioned him to make two outfits for her. As yet he was not very well known, but Pepper planned to change all that. She had on her books a young model who was being tipped to go far, and it was in her mind to link model and designer in a way that could promote and draw attention to them both.

Louise Faber had introduced herself to Pepper at a cocktail party. She was eighteen years old, and knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life. Her mother had been a model, and so through her Louise already had the looks and the contacts to get into the business. Several of her mother’s contemporaries had grown from modelling into other more powerful areas of fashion, and Rena Faber had been able to call on old loyalties to give her daughter a good start. But Louise was no ordinary dewy-eyed eighteen-year-old whose ambition was to get her face on the front cover of American Vogue.

Louise had her own ambitions. She wanted to own and run a Michelin-star restaurant, but for that she needed money, and training. Without money and influence she would have very little chance of being taken on at the kind of restaurant where she could get the training to fulfil her ambitions. Women were not chefs, they were cooks, but Louise aimed to prove that that was wrong.

Her parents had divorced while she was quite young, and from what she had told Pepper there was not enough money in the family anyway to finance either the training or the sort of restaurant she would eventually want to own. A chance remark by one of her mother’s friends, that she would make a good model, had led to her deciding that modelling would be an excellent way of earning the money she needed. Once having made that decision she was determined that if she was to model, then she wanted to be the best.

She needed an image, she had confided to Pepper, something that made her stand out from the other pretty, ambitious girls, and remembering John Fletcher, it had occurred to Pepper that designer and model could well have something to offer one another. If in her off-duty hours Louise wore only John Fletcher models, both of them would benefit from the publicity. Pepper had the contacts to make sure the press picked up on the story. She had already discussed it with John, and today he was going to give her his decision.

Initially she would make very little from the deal; but this was her forte, to spot original and new talent, whether in sport or any other field, and to nurture it towards success, and then to reap financial benefit.

No sponsor would ever risk his money on an un-proven outsider, but only let one of her outsiders start winning and Pepper was then in a position to make her own terms. That was how she had started off—spotting a potential winner before anyone else.

John Fletcher had premises just off Beauchamp Place, an enclave of designer and upmarket shops off the Brompton Road. Because of the lunch-time traffic, Pepper hadn’t used the Aston Martin, and her taxi dropped her off several doors away from her destination. Two model-thin girls emerging from Bruce Old-field’s premises turned to look at her. Neither of them was a day over nineteen.

“Wow!” one exclaimed to the other. “Now that was real class!”

There was no one in the foyer as Pepper walked up the stairs to John Fletcher’s showrooms. She knocked briefly before walking in.

Two men were standing by the window, studying a bolt of scarlet fabric.

“Pepper!” John Fletcher handed the silk to his assistant and came to greet her. “I see you’re wearing the black.”

Pepper smiled at him. She had chosen to wear the black suit he had designed for her quite deliberately. Wasn’t it a black skull cap that judges used to wear when pronouncing the death sentence? Miles French should appreciate the finesse of her gesture, even if the others didn’t, but somehow she was sure that they would.

The skirt of her suit had been cut in the new short, curvy shape that clung to her hips and waist. She allowed John’s assistant to help her off with the jacket. He was one of the most beautiful young men she had ever seen, sleekly-muscled, golden-skinned and golden-haired. A covert look passed between the boy and John which the latter acknowledged with a brief shake of his head.

Pepper intercepted it, but waited until she and the designer were alone before saying lightly,

“Very wise, John. I’d be extremely mortified if you were to offer me the services of your tame stud.”

“He hasn’t been with me very long, and I’m afraid he’s still a bit gauche,” John apologised.

“Do you get many clients asking for that sort of service?” Her voice was slightly muffled as she stepped into a cubicle and stripped down to her underwear.

“Enough. But how did you know? Most people walking in here take one look at him and assume…”

“That you’re gay?” Pepper stepped out of the cubicle and flashed him a mocking smile. “I know when a man likes women and when he doesn’t, John, but I should have thought you were making enough profit from your clients without that sort of sideline.”

“Oh, I don’t provide it. Any arrangement my clients come to with Lloyd is their affair entirely.”

Pepper’s mouth twitched. “But word gets round, doesn’t it, and there are plenty of bored rich women who’ll patronise a designer who can do more for their bodies than simply clothe them.”

John shrugged. “I have to make a living.”

“Mmm. Speaking of which…”

As he worked, Pepper discussed with him her plans that Louise Faber should exclusively model his clothes.

“I like it.” He stood up and studied the dress he was pinning on her.

“Do you think you’ll be able to get the tie-in with Vogue?” she asked.

“I should think so. I’ve got several contacts there. There should be a number of their fashion editors at the charity do you and I are going to tonight. We could talk with them and if it looks good, then Louise and I can get together to thrash out the details.”

Pepper left half an hour afterwards, picking up a cruising taxi that deposited her outside her favourite restaurant. The head waiter recognised her instantly, and escorted her to a table that made her the focal point of all other diners.

The restaurant had originally been a decaying three-storey building in a row just off Sloane Square. Pepper had bought it when she first suspected that the rich were transferring their loyalty along with their cheque books and credit cards, from Bond Street to Knightsbridge. All three floors were let out at extremely good but not extortionate rents. She had provided the finance for the restaurant, and she had also been the one who had tipped off the chef manager that Nouvelle Cuisine was on the way out and something a little more substantial on the way in.

There wasn’t a day of the week when every table in the place wasn’t taken. A subtle PR campaign had made it the “in” place to go. Coveys of elegant well bred women sat round the tables, nibbling at food they had no intention of eating—their size ten figures were far too important. Anyway, they hadn’t come here to eat; they’d come to see and be seen.

An artist who was another of Pepper’s clients had transformed the drab interior of the building with outrageously erotic trompe l’oeil, and if one was sufficiently in the know it was possible to discern in the features of the frolicking nymphs and satyrs the facial characteristics of many prominent personalities. When a person faded from the limelight, their faces were painted out and someone else’s, someone who was new and newsworthy, painted in. It wasn’t entirely unknown for actresses and even politicians to discreetly suggest to Antoine that their faces would look good on his walls.

Pepper’s involvement in the restaurant was a well kept secret; her face did not appear on any of the gambolling nymphs, but as she followed the head waiter across the smooth dark grey carpet, every pair of eyes in the place marked her indolent walk.

She sat down and gave her order, without reference to the menu, her forehead creased in a slight frown. Most of the women lunching together were in their early twenties or late forties, young wives or bored divorcees. The other women, those with careers, those with money, spent their lunch hour dining clients or extending their range of contacts; the sort of business that their male equivalents carried out in their clubs.

Soon these women would need the cachet of the same exclusivity. As yet there were very few clubs catering for the new breed of career women; somewhere they could entertain their clients, have lunch and even stay overnight if necessary.

If Pepper’s clients had provided the bulk of her cash flow, then it was her own careful investment of those funds that had given her the very secure capital base underpinning her business. Pepper was always in the market for a good investment. She smiled to herself, her mind sliding easily into overdrive, exhilarated by the challenge of her thoughts.

Although she knew people were watching her, she ignored their covert looks, mentally weaving the threads which could form the pattern of a new business venture, at the same time thoroughly enjoying her fresh salmon and its accompanying vegetables. Pepper had gone short of food too often as a child not to appreciate it now. She was fully aware of how many of the women toying with their plates of salad were secretly gnashing their teeth over both her appetite and her apparent disregard for the effects of what she was eating on her figure.

What they didn’t know was that tonight she would eat a very meagre meal indeed, and then before she got ready to go out she would also have half an hour of tennis coaching on the indoor courts belonging to the private sports complex attached to her home. Dieting in public drew attention to a possible weakness, and Pepper had learned long ago never to let anyone see that she could be vulnerable.

She arrived back at the office at five minutes past two. Miranda followed her in to tell her that she had received phone calls from all four of the gentlemen on the list. Three of the four had asked to speak to Pepper personally, but on being told that she wasn’t available had settled for confirming their appointments.

“And the fourth?”

Miranda consulted her list.

“Miles French? Oh, he simply confirmed that he would be here.”

She thought as she left Pepper standing beside her desk that her boss was looking rather abstracted, but she knew better than to ask questions.

At two-thirty, Miranda prepared a trolley ready for the tea she would be asked to serve later in the afternoon. The fine china was Royal Doulton and like the coffee cups had been specially designed to Pepper’s specification.

All four of the men arrived within ten minutes of one another. The receptionist showed them into the waiting room, then rang through to Miranda to tell her that they had arrived. She glanced at her watch. Five to three.

Inside her office Pepper refused to give in to the temptation to glance through her files one final time. She had already checked her make-up and clothes, and she fought against a nervous impulse to check once more. At five to three her internal telephone rang, and her stomach lurched. She picked up the receiver and acknowledged Miranda’s advice that the four men had arrived.

Taking a deep breath, she said calmly, “Please show them in Miranda, then bring us some tea.”

Across the hallway in the comfortably furnished waiting room the four men waited. They had recognised one another, of course, each a little surprised to see the others, but acknowledging the acquaintanceship. Their lives touched only rarely these days. Only Miles French seemed totally relaxed. What was he doing here? Simon Herries wondered, frowning slightly as he studied him. Was he somehow connected with Minesse? Retained by them to handle their legal affairs, perhaps?

The door opened and an attractive brunette stepped inside. “Ms Minesse will see you now, if you would just come this way, please.”