The Club(30)
‘What do you reckon to my island?’ he kept asking people, as he and Adam circulated. ‘Not bad, eh?’
His boat. His island. His party. Slapping backs, cracking jokes, exchanging nods of recognition across the room, scoffing canapés by the handful, the centre of attention – this was Ned Groom in his element, at his happiest. Triumphant, that was probably the best word to describe his brother at that moment.
Then Ned checked his email.
Annie
It seemed to be going well, so far.
After they had all been ferried over on speedboats from The Causeway Inn, and been checked in at The Boathouse, Annie had welcomed the weekend’s new arrivals up the gangplank and onto Island Home’s very own yacht. As for the guests already on the island – Jackson and Georgia, Freddie and Keith, Kurt, Kyra and her daughter Lyra – Ned had insisted on riding along personally in the golf buggy that had collected them from their cabins, just in case they tried to wriggle out of this cruise.
It had taken them about forty-five minutes to circle the island the first time. They were due to do so twice more before they all disembarked for lunch.
As guests mingled, chatted, tried to work out who was here and who was not, Annie had been circling the wraparound terrace making introductions, dropping in, as she always did, the flattering snippets of information she’d spent weeks researching and memorizing about every single guest (‘You must meet Alicia – did you know this angelic human has just got back from a humanitarian mission in Syria?’ or ‘Johnny, I hear you are 95 per cent plant based now – and positively glowing, if you don’t mind me saying!’).
They took themselves, their own celebrity, very seriously, Home’s members, and they expected everyone around them to do the same. That was something you needed to remember in this job. After all, these were people who, straight-faced, spent whole months in front of a green screen pretending to fight aliens. Thirty-year-old multi-millionaires who sang to crowds of thousands the love songs they’d written in their teenage bedrooms. And maybe you did need to believe in yourself, for all of this to happen, for other people to buy into you too.
From where she was now standing, leaning against the railing of the yacht’s top deck, Annie – champagne coupe in hand, dressed in a diaphanous leopard-print kaftan with a gem-encrusted neckline (thermal vest and leggings underneath, of course) – could look down and, in a single glance, take in pretty much the entire party.
Jake Price, an extravagantly eyebrowed, absurdly muscled actor with thick dark hair scraped back into a long plait – no doubt grown for his role as a bloodthirsty Viking in the HBO series he’d just started shooting – had already made the entire party audibly gasp by disrobing to reveal a tiny pair of pale pink Speedos, then executing a perfect twisting dive into the sea. There were barely concealed sniggers when, after floundering in the waves for a few minutes, he started shouting for assistance and was hauled back onto the boat, goose-pimpled and visibly shrivelled, and handed a Home-branded bathrobe. Annie could hear the captain, standing a few feet away from her, muttering under his breath. ‘Action hero idiot – that undertow will drag you down in a second!’
The waiters ignored the drama as Annie had trained them to do, circulating with their trays, ever discreet, ever watchful for anyone trying to attract their attention. Casting her eyes around, all she could see were familiar faces, some catching sight of her and smiling, waving. Any direction you looked, members, probably fifty in total now, were checking – while trying not to look as if they were checking – who else had been invited, who that was over there.
‘Champagne?’ Annie gave a start as a waitress appeared behind her holding a bottle, its neck tightly wrapped in a crisp linen napkin.
‘Thank you darling girl, good work noticing me up here. Gold star for you,’ she smiled, proffering her glass. The girl tipped the bottle forwards, her face falling as she and Annie watched the liquid dribble into the glass, refilling it by barely half an inch. Annie raised an eyebrow.
‘Well that’s not very good now, is it, sweetheart?’ she said spikily. ‘Have we taught you nothing? Never, ever pour from a practically empty bottle. Do these look like the sort of people who like to drink dregs?’ She gestured down to the party. ‘Get someone who actually knows what they’re doing to bring up another bottle please. I think you should stay below deck and polish the glasses now, don’t you?’
Harsh? Maybe a little. But Annie’s entire job was making sure every member interaction was faultless, and it was something Ned trusted her implicitly with. Members had to feel as though their monthly fees bought them something special or else Home was just a fancy pub you paid to get into. In other words: she was a dick so members didn’t have to be.
With a deliberately audible sigh, Annie turned back to the balcony.
A neat visual illustration of Home’s hierarchy, that’s what she got from this vantage point. Observing who made a beeline for whom, noting who stood still and expected others to orbit around them. Watching who held forth, loudly and at length, about their latest philanthropic project without noticing eyes slowly glaze around them – it had been half an hour now, and Georgia Crane, waving her slender, manicured hands for emphasis, had barely drawn breath.
Seeing the members that hovered on the periphery of a group, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot and laughing a little too loudly (Freddie Hunter a major offender in this regard). Knowing that they all consumed the same media as the rest of the world and understanding the awkwardness around that – congratulate Jennifer on the engagement reported by BuzzFeed or Monica on her pregnancy leaked to The Times, or piously pretend not to read the papers? That was a dance Annie had to do herself. She could feel their excitement, understand their anxiety; she realized, from years of observation, that being famous yourself did not inoculate you against others’ celebrity.