‘Good morning, Mrs Cranley. Would you like breakfast on the upper deck this morning, or down here?’
Hannah Lowell, the Lady A’s frighteningly efficient chief stewardess, handed Angela Cranley her morning newspaper as she emerged onto the yacht’s lower deck. In flip-flops and a simple blue shirt-waister sundress, with her hair tied back and a pair of toirteshell Ray-Bans covering her eyes, Angela looked relaxed as she stepped out into the C?te d’Azur sunshine. (Unlike Brett, who’d been awake since dawn, pacing the boards and yelling into his mobile phone at some hapless private banker who’d evidently made a mistake on a deal.)
‘Who’s upstairs?’ she asked Hannah. ‘Is everybody up already?’
‘Most of them, yes. Jeremy Curzon and his … friend … are still in their cabin. But the O’Mahoneys, the Gassinghams and Mr Morgan are all at breakfast. Monsieur Lemprière, the lawyer, left last night after dinner.’
As usual, the relaxing family holiday that Brett had promised her had been hijacked by a slew of rich and famous guests and their hangers-on. Brett loved entertaining on the yacht. What was the point of spending forty million on a boat you used twice a year at most if you didn’t at least get to show it off to your mates?
‘Is Mr Cranley with them?’
‘He is.’
‘And Logan?’
‘Danny took her out on the jet-ski an hour ago. Don’t worry,’ Hannah Lowell added, seeing her mistress’s face cloud over with anxiety. ‘She had her headgear on. Danny’s super, super safety-conscious. He’s one of the best deck hands we’ve ever had.’
‘All right. I think I’ll stay down here,’ said Angela. The thought of making small talk with Brett’s chest-beating playboy friends and their vacuous young wives did not appeal. ‘Don’t tell Mr Cranley I’m up. And I don’t want breakfast yet, just a large mug of coffee. Thanks.’
Hannah left, and Angela sat down on one of the outdoor sofas, carefully choosing a section that was shaded by a large, blue canvas awning. To Brett’s irritation, and Angela’s huge relief, they were moored offshore and not in St Tropez harbour itself. The harbour was the place to see and be seen, which was of course why Brett liked it. But Angela always felt like a monkey in the zoo there, being gawped at by all the tourists strolling around the port.
At this time in the morning, and seen from a little distance, St Tropez looked idyllic, with its sloping cobbled streets and red tiled roofs tumbling down the hills, one on top of one another, punctuated only by the occasional medieval church spire. The Mediterranean sparkled bright blue in the sunshine, like liquid lapis, and seagulls swooped and cawed overhead, excited by the nets of wriggling fish being hauled up onto the quayside for today’s market.
Take away all the yachts and Ferraris and arseholes, all the Club 55 poseurs and diamond-encrusted Russian whores at Nikki Beach, and this would be a charming village, Angela thought wistfully. Still, it was hard to feel too depressed, sipping fresh coffee on the deck of the beautiful yacht that her husband had named in her honour, reading yesterday’s edition of the Daily Mail while the sun warmed her back. We have an amazing life, she told herself sternly. I must try to appreciate it more.
Her attention was caught by an item in Baz Bamigboye’s gossip column about Tatiana Flint-Hamilton and her latest squeeze, described as ‘City whizz-kid, Marco Gianotti’. Whizz-kid or not, judging by the picture of the two of them leaving Annabel’s arm in arm, he was certainly very good looking. How odd it must be for Tatiana, flitting between her two lives as village primary schoolteacher and ‘It girl’ about town. The former took up considerably more of her time than the latter, but clearly someone at the Daily Mail believed that Tati’s photograph could still sell newspapers.
‘What are you doing down here on your own?’
Brett appeared out of nowhere. Angela hastily folded the paper and put it aside. Tatiana Flint-Hamilton was not a subject likely to be conducive to marital harmony. In white linen shorts and an open-necked, cornflower-blue polo shirt, Brett looked fit and tanned, far younger than his forty-five years. Angela had never stopped wanting him, even after all the storms and heartaches of their marriage.
‘You startled me.’
He kissed her on the cheek. ‘Come up and join the party. Jeremy and Miriam just sat down to breakfast.’
Angela folded her newspaper disapprovingly. ‘All the more reason for me to stay down here. Poor Rachel. She’d be horrified if she knew.’