The Club(25)
She slipped through to the changing room and undressed, placing her trainers exactly parallel at the bottom of the locker, folding her damp gym kit into a neat pile on the shelf. After a steaming hot shower, she slipped into a grey cashmere sweater, ballet pumps and skinny black jeans. Her close bleach-blonde crop – cut short to kill her mousy curls – took approximately six minutes to blow-dry and her face, as always, got just a veil of moisturiser and a slick of mascara. She surveyed her reflection in the mirror, tugging at her jawline and the corners of her eyes, inspecting her skin for signs of her forty-one years and any traces of the girl that had started on the Home coat check all those years ago. She could find neither.
By 6.30 a.m. Nikki was sunk in an overstuffed armchair in the spa reception and, just like every morning for as long as she could remember, was scanning on autopilot through Home’s new press cuttings, an eye out for anything that should be brought to Ned’s attention. A lot of what dropped into her inbox each day was just fluff – a fifty-word gossip piece in People about who had been seen canoodling with who by the rooftop pool at Malibu Home. An article in the Sunday Times’s Style magazine about how the Home design team had lent a touch of casual chic to the knocked-through conglomeration of listed farm buildings that some rock star and his wife were in the process of turning into their dream home in the Cotswolds. It was amazing how gentle the coverage of the Home Group mostly was – or perhaps not amazing at all, if you considered how many editors were members.
This morning, naturally, there was rather more coverage than usual to sift through, the press salivating over every leaked detail of the opening party – who their sources said was coming (Jackson and Georgia, naturally – they had never skipped a single launch – as well as some people she knew would definitely not be on the island; Nikki wondered how many fed their own names to the press, invading their own privacy for a single paragraph in Heat). There was also a scattering of details about the island itself, gushing descriptions of the cabins with their enamel Agas, wood-burners, sheepskin rugs, roll-top baths and rainforest showers accompanied by some grainy photos, presumably leaked by a contractor. This would infuriate Ned since the whole point of Home was that it stayed firmly out of the press – its suites and bars and spas were for members’ eyes only – but it wasn’t the photos that stopped her in her tracks.
It was the interview Annie Spark had given to the Evening Standard’s ES Magazine.
‘Oh, Annie. Annie, Annie, Annie,’ Nikki muttered aloud, shaking her head.
If Ned read this, yesterday’s explosion was going to look like a polite fart – in fact, Annie would be lucky if he didn’t try to throw her out of a window. When she had reached the end of the article, Nikki scrolled back to the start and began to read again. Frowning. Wincing. Letting an uurgh escape loudly enough to give the white-coated receptionist a start.
‘Is everything okay? Can I get you another ginger tea?’ she asked.
‘I’m fine but actually, yes, that would be lovely, thank you.’ Nikki smiled.
A simple puff piece, that was all that Ned had signed off on – she’d read the email chain. He was too busy, so could Annie just give them a couple of quotes to tie in with the thirtieth anniversary of his inheriting the Covent Garden club, something to mark the opening of Island Home? Instead here was Annie talking about what she thought made an ideal member, about her vision for the future of Home. Here was Annie talking about what she had planned for the launch weekend, the many surprises she had lined up for their guests. Here was Annie completely and utterly overestimating her spot in Home’s hierarchy (which was actually very easy to understand: Ned at the top, everyone else underneath), dressed like a Fraggle on a Friday night out, in a series of sequined evening gowns and extravagant fake-fur coats.
Nikki had seen this play out with so many Home employees so many times. People she had liked, who Ned had loved at first – head barmen, architects, finance directors – who got comfortable, thought their positions were so secure, their opinions respected enough, to step out of line, say what they really thought even though it clashed directly with Ned’s own opinion, or – worse – claim credit for something Ned thought was his own idea. And Ned thought every good idea was his own idea.
It never ended well.
She used to try to warn people she could see getting too big for their boots, but it was remarkable how little some people thought of a PA, that it didn’t always occur to them she might have insight to offer. The inner circle – her, Annie, Adam – were the only ones that remained after a quarter of a century of this endless conveyor belt.
What was completely baffling about this interview was that Annie had watched the same thing play out on repeat too.
But the article itself wasn’t the worst of it.
On the cover of the magazine – the actual cover – there was Annie, standing outside the famous black front door of the original Covent Garden club, popping paparazzi flashbulbs reflected in the glossy paint, her head thrown back in laughter.
Their big cover line? ‘Honey, I’m Home!’
She considered deleting it, but Ned would inevitably find out and it would become her problem. She started typing an email to prime him before his eyes alighted on the piece, stopped, started again. But there was nothing to say that would save the situation. Nikki took a deep breath and hit forward, then set her laptop down on the coffee table in front of her, picking up her mug and cradling it in both hands, looking out of the window at the tranquil landscape.