The Club(33)
‘And what do you think, Freddie?’ Ned asked.
Freddie, who had been halfway through demonstrating to Lyra Highway some kind of magic trick involving a glass and a napkin, jumped a little in his seat.
‘It sure is a pretty amazing view from up here, Ned.’
Jackson muttered something to which no one at that end of the table responded.
The view was wonderful, from fifty feet up in the air, looking out from one of the highest points on the island, nothing to impede it in any direction. You really did get a sense of its size and shape – an elongated diamond with the still part-submerged causeway snaking from its tip – how much wilder and more closely wooded it got at one end, where Ned’s cottage was, how much flatter and lower and more sheltered the other side was, the network of cycle tracks and running paths that criss-crossed the island, the relative locations of the spa and the log cabin screening rooms and various restaurants, how exactly The Manor with its formal lawns and rose garden sat proudly at the centre of things. The Mediterranean? Maybe not. But it was certainly some kind of achievement.
Perhaps most impressive of all was that almost everything on Island Home – apart from the slightly absurd neo-Palladian splendour of The Manor itself, its soaring portico and campy columns – had either been built from scratch or repurposed from corrugated sheds and tumbledown barns. This particular, inexplicably Grade-II-listed, carbuncle of a water tower had been the design team’s biggest headache, plans for what it would house shifting right up until the eleventh hour. First, it had been earmarked as a SoulCycle, then a climbing wall, then a spa suite complete with high-rise hot tub. They eventually settled on an industrial-chic terrace restaurant, with a wood-fired oven, accessed by a lift that ran through the tower’s core.
And then Ned had announced he wanted the whole thing to rotate, which was the absolute final straw for the fourth of the seven architects to have been involved in the project. It was ridiculous, he had told them. Impossible. Somehow, though, with a lot of head-scratching and even more money (not to mention a new architect), Ned got his way.
As the restaurant started to slowly turn, there was a soft coo from the diners around the room, little Lyra jumping up and down, some measured clapping, one whoop. The sea breeze was scented with the oak burning in the oven and the garlic from platters piled high with lobsters and langoustines. Jackson Crane, ignoring the food and already one more glass of wine down, for a moment seemed so disconcerted by the room having started to gently spin that he reached out to steady himself with both hands on the reclaimed driftwood table in front of him.
Annie knew that feeling. She was quite tempted to get a few stiff drinks inside her too. She fiddled with the fluorescent gems on her kaftan’s neckline, wishing that these launch events had not become her own personal Met Gala, everyone asking for months in advance what she would be wearing, reminiscing about outfits past. If only she could get away with the chic navy roll-neck dress Nikki, as usual, was looking elfin and effortless in.
Apart from anything else – despite the thermals – Annie was fucking freezing. She ran a manicured hand over the soft ridges of the cable knit blanket on her lap, identical to the monogrammed ones she’d placed on each member’s chair, a place setting you could cuddle up in. It might look pretty at this time of year, the island, and it might still be just warm enough to get away without a coat in the sun, but once you were in the shade . . .
Which was pretty much a metaphor for how it was going for her, this weekend.
It was not just what Ned had said, on the boat, it was the way he’d said it. Spat it. Hissed it. Meant it. Annie Spark is fucking history at this company. For what? For an interview in which she had dared to suggest there might be more to Home than one fifty-nine-year-old man and his singular vision?
Throughout the rest of the yacht tour and on the trip up here to the restaurant, Ned had been ignoring her, apart from the eye-roll he had aimed at her dress as she was climbing out of the golf cart, and the snort he gave when she was having trouble with her heels on the gravel as they were waiting for the lift.
‘Annie, Ned’s trying to catch your attention.’ Nikki nudged her, gesturing towards him. ‘I think Jackson might need some . . . assistance over there.’
For Nikki’s benefit, Annie flashed a forced smile at Ned.
‘I’ll see what I can do to get Jackson out of here once everyone’s eaten. He’ll just make a scene if I try now, the state he’s in.’ Annie beckoned the waiter over. ‘Pour slowly, okay?’ she whispered to him, with a subtle nod in the extravagantly inebriated actor’s direction.
Then she turned to face Nikki fully.
‘You sent it to him, didn’t you? That article. Flagged it up for his attention.’
‘I had to, Annie. It’s literally my job to keep him in the loop. You must have known he’d see it this weekend. I mean, talk about a guaranteed way to wind Ned up . . . taking credit for his entire island on the cover of a magazine? Your launch party? Your members? “Honey I’m Home?” What on earth were you thinking?’
What had she been thinking? Probably, in retrospect, that it was nice to be asked her opinion for once. On what she thought made Home so special. About how it was to work there and what she actually did all day. The delicate diplomacy of it all, the power dynamics, the practicalities. The things she had thoughtfully, painstakingly planned for this weekend. She had not set out to boast. Annie had worked at Home long enough to understand that getting too big for your size sixes was a sackable offence. She felt stupid and ashamed for slipping up so badly, especially as someone who started her career posing the leading questions for exactly the same magazines. But it was the first time in a long time – ever, perhaps – that someone had asked a question and listened to her answer.