"Dear Julia seems to have regressed to her school uniform today," Jakki said. "Now I remember why I was so eager to get out of mine after finishing lessons every afternoon."
"To get on your back and earn some money?" Julia asked the image sweetly. She flicked the AV player deck off, and studied the results of JakkiDeath as they floated through her mind. She hadn't been able to identify all the makes, of course, but approximately one-third of all the clothes Jakki wore on her show were by Esquiline. A lot of them even had the trim little gold intersecting ellipses emblem showing, a lapel pin, or the buttons.
Product placement. Jakki's agent had done a deal with Esquiline.
She pulled a summary of the company from Event Horizon's commercial intelligence division's memory core. Esquiline was a relatively new style house, aiming to follow in the footsteps of Gucci, Armani, and Chanel; with shops in every major English city—two in Peterborough—and just starting to expand on to the Continent.
Julia got Caroline to place a call to Lavinia Mayer, Esquiline's managing director, for her. My office calling your office was snooty enough to grab attention, and then there was the added weight of her name as well.
Lavinia Mayer was in her forties, wearing a lime-green jacket over a ruff-collar snow-white blouse. Her blonde hair was cut stylishly short. The office behind her was vaguely reminiscent of art deco, white and blue marble walls, building-block furniture. Impersonal, Julia thought.
"Miss Evans, I'm very honoured to have you call us."
Julia decided on the idiot rich girl routine, wishing she had some bubble gum to chew just to complete the picture. "Yah, well, I hope this isn't an inconvenient time."
"No, not at all."
"Oh, good, you see one of my friends was wearing this truly super dress the other day, and they said it was one of yours. So I was thinking, you're a style house, do you by any chance supply whole wardrobes?"
Lavinia Mayer wasn't the complete airhead her image suggested, there was no overt eagerness; oversell was always a tactical error. She did become very still, though. "We can certainly co-ordinate a client's appearance for them, yes."
"Ah, great. Well I'll tell you what I want. You'll probably think it's really silly, someone in my position, but I've been so busy this winter I really haven't had much chance to plan ahead for spring."
"That's perfectly understandable. I watched the roll out of your spaceplane myself. It's an inspirational machine. The amount of effort you must have put in is awesome."
"Yah, it is, not that I ever get any thanks. Everyone thinks it's the designers and engineers who do all the work."
"How preposterous."
"Yah, well anyway, the thing is, I've got about eighty or ninety engagements coming up in the next four months or so, and I need something to wear for all of them. It would be such a relief to dump the load off on to someone else, preferably a professional. I have so little free time, you see, this way I might just scrabble a little more. It would mean a lot to me."
The corners of Lavinia Mayer's mouth elevated a fraction, the smile a talented undertaker would give a corpse. "Eighty or ninety?"
"Yah. Problem?"
"No." Her voice was very faint.
"Oh, I'm so glad." She pushed a twang of excitement into her voice. "Would Esquiline take me on as a client, then?"
"I will attend to you personally, Miss Evans."
"Oh, please, Julia to my friends."
She listened to Lavinia Mayer babble on about organizing a select Esquiline team to cater for her, when would it be convenient for them to call, what sort of engagements, did she have a particular look in mind? After a couple of minutes she palmed her off on to Caroline to finalize details and sat back in the chair, rolling one of the meinox AVs in her hands.
It would be interesting to see just how smart Lavinia Mayer was. The woman would never have clawed her way up to managing director without having some intelligence. An exclusive, contract to clothe Julia Evans ought to be a prize worth killing for; the channel exposure time alone would cost millions if it had to be bought, then there were the socialite wannabes who would slavishly follow her.
If Jakki Coleman hadn't been dumped or brought to heel inside of two days, Lavinia Mayer was going to have her dream of world domination torn to shreds right under her pointy over-powdered nose. To be rejected publicly—and it would be very public indeed—by Julia Evans would kill their fledgeling reputation stone dead.
Jakki would probably try and go somewhere else; after all, she couldn't afford to buy the haute couture her assumed lifestyle required. Julia would follow her, setting up checkmate after checkmate right across the board.
There was a subdued knock on the study door. Lucas came in. "Your guest has arrived, ma'am."
A warm buzz invaded her belly. "I'll be right down." Yes, this was one day where things were truly going right.
Robin Harvey's hands traced an intrigued line down the side of her ribcage before coming to rest lightly on her hips. "Try and hold your back straighter as your fingers touch the water," he instructed. "And stand so that you're balancing more off your heels."
"Like this?" Julia leant back into him. Right out on the threshold of sensitivity she could detect a minute tremor in his fingertips.
"Not quite that much." He let go abruptly.
Julia dived into the water, breaking the surface cleanly.
Her pool was a large oval affair at the rear of the house, equipped with high boards and a convoluted slide. There was a plentiful supply of colourful beach balls and lios, a wave machine. The surrounding patio had a bar and barbecue area. It was all designed with fun in mind.
She surfaced and pushed her hair back. Robin Harvey smiled down at her.
She had noticed him on Wednesday in the England swimrning squad line-up, a strong broad face, wiry blond hair, on edge at the prospect of meeting her. His powerful build, youthfulness—he was eighteen, a year younger than her—and that touch of awkward modesty made for an engaging combination. He was so much more natural than Patrick.
She had made a point of chatting to him during the training session. His stroke was the butterfly, and he enjoyed diving, though he claimed he wasn't up to a professional standard.
"Oh, gosh, I've always wanted to do that," she said guilelessly. "It looks so thrilling on the sportscasts, like ballet in the air. I don't suppose you could teach me some of the easier ones, could you?" She let a tone of hopefulness creep into her voice at the end. The lonely precious princess not allowed a moment's enjoyment.
Turning down such a plaintive request from the team's sponsor wasn't a serious option.
"That was very good," Robin said as she climbed up the stairs. "You're a fast learner."
I was the Berne under-fifteen schools amateur diving champion. "That's because I have such a good teacher."
His grin was a genuine one. Julia liked it. She was going to enjoy Robin, she decided. At least with swimmers she had the perfect excuse to get ninety per cent of their clothes off right away. That remaining ten per cent ought to provide her with a great deal of fun.
She skipped off the top step and breathed in deeply. Robin's gaze slithered helplessly down to the swell of her breasts under the slippery-wet scarlet fabric of her backless one-piece costume. Bikinis always gave too much away, she thought; the male imagination was such a powerful weapon, you just had to know how to turn it against its owner.
"I'd like to try a back flip," she said.
"Uh, sure."
After they finished swimming, she showed him round the big conservatory that jutted out from the end of Wilholm's east wing. The glass annexe had undergone a complete role reversal from its original function. Tinted glass now turned away a lot of the harsh sun's power, conditioner units whirred constantly, maintaining the air at a cool two degrees celsius. The team contracted to renovate the manor had sunk thermal shields into the earth around the outside, preventing any inward heat seepage. It was a segment cut out of time, immune to the warm years flowing past on the other side of the condensation-lined glass, home to a few rare examples of England's aboriginal foliage.