Kiss Heaven Goodbye Part 43

46

March 2002

The weeks after Robert's death pa.s.sed by in a daze. The ferocity of her emotions had taken Sasha by surprise, her grief made worse by the fact that she had to face it alone. She could count on one hand the number of people who knew about her relationship with Robert, so most people a.s.sumed that her complete withdrawal from the business and the social circuit were due to the injuries she had sustained from the accident. There were whispers, of course. The death of one of England's most prominent businessmen had been a big story, but the Ashford PR machine had done a good job in containing the story. Only gossip linked her to Robert now, a thought that gave Sasha no comfort whatsoever.

'You have a visitor,' said Sally, her housekeeper, coming into the room and plumping the cushions. 'Lucian Grey.'

Sasha looked up from the copy of the Financial Times Financial Times she had been reading on her table by the window. she had been reading on her table by the window.

'Thank you,' she said, fastening her silk robe tighter and limping through her apartment into the living room. She still had to use a stick to walk even short distances, but she could feel she was getting stronger every day. Somehow, that just added to her anger; it seemed like a betrayal of Robert that she could recover when he never would.

'Sasha, how are you feeling?' Lucian rose from the red velvet sofa to gently embrace her. An elegant sixty-year-old with four decades of experience in the fashion industry, he was fair and wise, with an instinctive fashion sense which was rare in a money man. Sasha had recommended him to the private equity house as a replacement for Philip when they had bought the company. He was one of the few people she trusted entirely.

'I'm getting there,' she said. 'You know I'm coming back in to work on Monday?'

'Are you sure?' he said with concern. 'I thought you'd been signed off for six weeks.'

'It's my company, Lucian,' she said firmly.

He didn't press the point and Sasha was grateful. It wasn't her body that needed to recover, but her heart, her mind. Sitting around in her apartment with only Sally and occasional visits from the physiotherapist, she had nothing to do but dwell on might-have-beens and she feared that if it went on any longer, she might not crawl out from under her black cloud. The truth was the company was the one thing in her life she could control. Yes, there were other forces at work compet.i.tors, the economy but it stood or fell by her own efforts, her own decisions. That was what she loved about it.

Sally brought in a tray of coffee and Lucian helped Sasha to the Venetian gla.s.s table, sitting opposite her.

'You know the press office have been swamped with interview requests for you,' he said. 'No one's saying it out loud, of course, but they all want the story on the crash. Everyone has heard the rumours.'

She groaned. 'That's the last thing I need.'

'You should do it,' said Lucian, reaching for the silver pot. 'A bit of notoriety never hurt anyone.'

'I don't want this to be painted as some of sort of Ted Kennedy at Chappaquidd.i.c.k.'

'Don't underestimate the power of your lifestyle, Sasha,' said Lucian. 'I might be old, but I haven't lost my nose for this. I can't remember when there has been so much excitement for a growing business. You are our greatest a.s.set; people look up to you. Handled in the right way, this can help us. This is tragedy, not notoriety.'

'I don't want to make money from Robert's death,' said Sasha bitterly.

Lucian shook his head.

'You're not; you're making money from your life, Sasha.' He took a sip of coffee and gave a small smile. 'And I think making money is something Robert would have approved of.'

She stared out of the window. 'You should know that Robert left me his shareholding in the US business in his will,' she said quietly.

'When will probate clear?'

'I don't know yet,' she said. 'As you can imagine, I haven't exactly got a hotline to the Ashford family any more.'

Lucian didn't smile. 'Well we need to get that moving as soon as we can,' he said urgently. 'Because Absolute Capital are looking to sell.'

Sasha looked up with alarm. 'Because of the accident?'

'No, because they've had their investment with us for four years and because they think it's the right time to exit.'

'Do you?'

She respected Lucian's opinion. He was tougher than Philip, although she missed the sense of a shared journey she'd had with Phil, that they'd built it up together. But Lucian knew business better and he didn't spare her feelings.

'Yes. It's absolutely the right time to sell. Share prices of luxury companies are rocketing. Plus celebrity is the new currency and you have it by the bucketload.'

Sasha thought of Robert and that evening in Canary Wharf when he'd first suggested getting private equity investment, how he'd told her he loved the way she took risks. It had been a risk ditching Ben, it had been a risk expanding into America. And it had been a risk loving Robert. But she had done it all and she was glad she had, even with all the pain it had caused.

'Let's do it,' she said, feeling some of her fire return. 'As soon as the shareholding comes through, let's sell.'

Lucian smiled. 'That's my girl,' he said.Nine months later Rivera Holdings were taken over by another private equity company. The big fashion conglomerates of LVMH, Richemont and PPR had again refused to bite, but the one hundred and ten million sale price paid by Duo Capital more than made up for it. The agreement banked Sasha more than thirty million pounds, while also allowing her to keep hold of a small stake in the company and retain her position as president and creative director.

Steven Ellis, the new CEO installed by the owner of Duo Capital, was a sombre fifty-something Scot with sharp suits and even sharper business instincts, who had turned around a failing Swiss watch company and made it the horological must-buy for the new Russian money. He had a degree from Yale and an MBA from Insead, the French business school, and Sasha could tell from the minute she met him that he could do great things with her company. Six months later, after a few well-placed interviews and dozens of sessions of therapy, it was business as usual, the hole in her heart mended, a pile of party invitations on her desk. Sasha Sinclair was ready to face the world again. And this time, she thought, the world could take her as she was.

47

September 2003

Miles was enjoying being back in London. He walked to the window and peered out into the garden of his Notting Hill townhouse. The long sloping lawn was slightly unkempt and the rose beds were scattered with unraked leaves, but the very thought of having a garden made him smile. In New York you were lucky if you had a window box, but here you could smell flowers, hear birds, watch the changing seasons; he had forgotten how much he missed it. Since the growth of the Globe empire in the States, he had spent less and less time in England. He had a management team to deal with the Covent Garden club and gym while the concierge service was raking in hundreds of thousands with virtually no investment, but the real money had been in the States, where the Globe Country Club franchise was going stratospheric, with seven locations along with golf courses and spas. But that was nothing compared to the global reach of Ash Corp.

Sitting down at his heavy wooden desk an antique the dealer had a.s.sured him had come from one of the Duke of Wellington's residences Miles flipped through a file showing all the businesses Robert Ashford had owned or had a significant interest in. There were literally hundreds, based in hundreds of cities around the world. Miles shook his head with dismay as he ran his eyes down the list. Alongside the manufacturing and commercial property wings, Ash Corp. owned a dry-cleaning chain, a business card supplier and a haulage firm which specialised in frozen goods. Frankly, it was a sprawling mess. Robert Ashford had been a shrewd investor, no question of that and individually, Miles felt sure that most of these businesses would turn a good profit but such a wide spread of interests had made Ash Corp. flabby and unfocused. Somewhere along the line, Robert Ashford had taken his eye off the ball.

Possibly around the time he started s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g my ex-girlfriend, Miles thought bitterly. But then again, the evidence in front of him suggested the old man's brains had been going soft long before that affair began.

The problem was that Ash Corp. hadn't moved with the times. In the sixties and seventies, Robert Ashford had built an empire by taking a series of calculated risks coupled with some audacious yet well-timed takeovers. He quickly gained a reputation as someone who could sniff out trends and capitalise on them. In the early eighties he had seen the need for out-of-town supermarkets; the experts had derided it as foolhardy, but he had been right.

So what went wrong? wondered Miles, reaching over for a decanter of Scotch and pouring himself a generous measure. Clearly his father had been resting on his laurels for the best part of a decade. Yes, Ash Corp. had a number of other profitable divisions, but they were stodgy, meat and potatoes operations; nothing creative, nothing exciting. Miles turned to the section dealing with the hotel division. Ash Corp. owned a number of hotel chains and resorts in all the best locations the Bahamas, Hawaii, the French Alps but they were old-fashioned and fusty, appealing to an ageing clientele, while the young money was going to the new rash of funky boutique hotels. People wanted stylish, they wanted modern, they wanted to feel that they were part of a select elite. They didn't want a snooty manager in pin-stripe trousers looking down his nose at them because they didn't have a t.i.tle. The Ash Corp. hotels and indeed the rest of the company desperately needed to be stripped right back and rebuilt from the ground up. And that was why Miles felt that London was the perfect place to begin restructuring. Since he had opened the first Globe Club ten years ago, London had transformed from a moderately important if bustling city into the most exciting city in the world. You could feel the energy in the boardrooms, the nightclubs, even the arrivals lounge at Heathrow. Cool Britannia was over, but it had left behind a vapour trail of talent and wealth. Rag-trade billionaires, restaurateurs, a melting pot of Italians, South Africans, Swiss, Indians and Americans. It was the most exciting time to be in London in decades, and Miles was right at the centre of it all, in charge of one of the biggest international corporations in the capital. wondered Miles, reaching over for a decanter of Scotch and pouring himself a generous measure. Clearly his father had been resting on his laurels for the best part of a decade. Yes, Ash Corp. had a number of other profitable divisions, but they were stodgy, meat and potatoes operations; nothing creative, nothing exciting. Miles turned to the section dealing with the hotel division. Ash Corp. owned a number of hotel chains and resorts in all the best locations the Bahamas, Hawaii, the French Alps but they were old-fashioned and fusty, appealing to an ageing clientele, while the young money was going to the new rash of funky boutique hotels. People wanted stylish, they wanted modern, they wanted to feel that they were part of a select elite. They didn't want a snooty manager in pin-stripe trousers looking down his nose at them because they didn't have a t.i.tle. The Ash Corp. hotels and indeed the rest of the company desperately needed to be stripped right back and rebuilt from the ground up. And that was why Miles felt that London was the perfect place to begin restructuring. Since he had opened the first Globe Club ten years ago, London had transformed from a moderately important if bustling city into the most exciting city in the world. You could feel the energy in the boardrooms, the nightclubs, even the arrivals lounge at Heathrow. Cool Britannia was over, but it had left behind a vapour trail of talent and wealth. Rag-trade billionaires, restaurateurs, a melting pot of Italians, South Africans, Swiss, Indians and Americans. It was the most exciting time to be in London in decades, and Miles was right at the centre of it all, in charge of one of the biggest international corporations in the capital.

He tossed the file on to the desk and walked towards the marble staircase. He and Chrissy had moved into the five-storey white stucco townhouse just off Portobello Road in May. It had an outside hot tub, bas.e.m.e.nt gym and six bedrooms; to be honest, it felt too large for them except when they entertained. He climbed up to the master bedroom on the third floor, looking at his watch. He and Chrissy were due to catch the Eurostar to Paris that night for a meeting with a hotelier interested in running the Globe concierge service as a franchise.

'Chris?' he called. 'You up here?'

The bedroom had deep cream carpets and a huge oval bed covered in olive-green silk, but the room was dominated by a Marlene Dumas painting of a naked woman on all fours. He walked past it and through to the en suite bathroom, a white-tiled wet room with twin showers and a huge white marble bath. Chrissy was lying in it, swathed in bubbles, her face almost obscured by the rising steam.

'Hi, lover,' she smiled, lifting a hand and blowing a cloud of froth towards Miles.

'We need to talk,' he said, sitting on the edge of the bath and trailing a hand in the water.

'Too right we do,' said Chrissy. 'We have a problem with Martin.'

Miles smiled to himself. While he got to grips with the spidery Ash Corp. structure, he had handed the running of the Globe business over to Chrissy and she was ruthlessly pruning the dead wood from the London club.

'What's he done?'

'It's what he's not done,' said Chrissy before rattling off a long list of complaints.

'So fire him.'

'I already did. I poached the deputy manager from the Lanesborough young, ambitious, efficient, plus he's taking a pay cut to come across to the Globe. It's a win-win.'

Miles nodded grudgingly. Lately his relationship with Chrissy had been going downhill fast. Everything she did seemed to annoy him the way she said 'sat' instead of 'sitting', her fixation with soap operas in fact, some days he could barely stand to be in the same room as her. But when it came to the business, she was indispensable. She was tough, clever and one of the few people Miles could trust to give it to him straight.

'I've been going through the Ash Corp. structure,' said Miles.'Can you believe my dad bought a dry-cleaning chain?'

'Well, I do need someone to do my cashmere,' she smiled.

Chrissy had come a long way since her skin-tight minidresses and stilettos when they were first married. She now had accounts at most of the shops between Sloane Square and Knightsbridge and an entire bedroom off the main suite as a giant walk-in wardrobe.

'The whole thing needs slashing back,' said Miles. 'It's like the old man wasn't living in the modern world.'

'Well let's start with what you can fix: off-load the best stuff, shut down the rest. Then you need to look at the worst areas and fire everyone not pulling their weight.'

'You can't fire everyone,' he said, rolling his eyes.

'Well where are the weak spots?' asked Chrissy, reaching out a suds-covered arm for a sponge.

'The hotels division is a mess.' Miles sighed.

Chrissy snorted. 'The problem is no one wants to go there,' she said. 'Remember Cannon Bay?'

'How could I forget?'

Cannon Bay was a five-star hotel resort on the French side of St Martin in the Caribbean. They had gone to St Martin to inspect a golf course complex when they were planning to extend the Globe Country Club franchise earlier that year. As Cannon Bay was the most exclusive resort on the island and an Ash Corp. hotel, they had booked a suite from curiosity. It had been awful. The staff were unfriendly, the food was bland and the paint was peeling. When Chrissy politely complained to the manager, he told her she was 'lucky to stay here'. Chrissy had replied, in her sweetest, poshest voice, that he was lucky to keep his teeth. He was the first Ash Corp. employee they had fired.

'Our spies are telling us that it's the same in all the hotels. Old-fashioned, stuck-up and wasteful.'

'Made in the image of their owner, darling,' said Chrissy.

He frowned. Chrissy had good reason to hate his father, that was true, but he felt uncomfortable when she criticised Robert.

'The good thing is that the hotels are all in great locations,' said Chrissy, oblivious to Miles' annoyance. 'It's much easier to revamp an interior than to build from scratch.'

'Hmm ...' said Miles. 'But how to revamp them? We don't want to lose the old clientele.'

'b.o.l.l.o.c.ks to the old clientele,' snapped Chrissy. 'What have you always told me? You have to be bold. We should be offering luxury right across the whole division for every different taste.'

She was exactly right, of course. There was no reason why they couldn't vary what was offered: some small and exclusive, some catering for the business travel and conference market, but all adhering to one trusted brand manifesto: 'spend your money here and you'll get the very best'.

Chrissy pulled the plug with her toes and stood up, pulling a towel from a heated rail behind her. Miles felt his heart give a little thump as he watched her dry herself. She still had the power to arouse him, not that he had acted upon it for a long time. Too much energy required elsewhere.

'I've actually been thinking about this,' said Chrissy, wrapping herself in a robe. 'Ashford Hotels needs a flagship, the one place that embodies everything we stand for unattainable luxury you can attain.'

Miles chuckled. 'Snappy tag-line. Do you mean like a super-hotel? '

'Not a hotel, a resort,' she said, her excitement visible on her face. 'What says total luxury better than your own private island, like Branson does with Necker or David Copperfield has with Musha. White sands, palm trees, blissful isolation.'

The smile on Miles' face faded. He knew her well enough to realise where she was going with this.

'Angel Cay still belongs to my mother, Chris.'

'But can't we buy it from her? We could create the world's most luxurious island resort.'

'Let's just leave Angel Cay out of this, shall we?'

'What's the matter, Miles?' she said, allowing her irritation to show. 'Why do you hate talking about the island? Why do you change the subject whenever I mention we go?'

He looked at her sharply. 'Because I don't want to go and waste two weeks on a b.l.o.o.d.y desert island. That's not how empires are built, Chrissy, and you know it.'

She shook her head. 'I think we need to go, Miles.'

'Why?'

'Because all we seem to do these days is row. I for one wouldn't mind two weeks on a desert island. Just me and you. It could be our second honeymoon.'

He glanced at his watch. 'I've got to go. I've got a conference call in ten minutes. Sorry, Chrissy. We'll take this up another time.'Miles stared out of the taxi window as the cab drove through the Paris streets towards the Seine. It was almost 6 p.m., but he and Chrissy had only just left their lunch meeting at Chez le Anges. It had gone well; Francois Bernard, the French billionaire who owned some of the finest hotels in Europe and spoke his own version of Franglais, had loudly proclaimed Miles a 'f.u.c.k genius', causing every head to turn their way. In fact, the Globe pitch had been Chrissy's idea, not that he was going to tell Francois that. She had suggested that the Globe concierge service could be used as a sort of super-butler for Francois' high-rolling clients, being put at their disposal before and after their visit to arrange transport, prepare the room, ensure the best seats at the opera and the best tables in restaurants, then make sure their onward journey went just as smoothly, checking that their luggage, shopping and business doc.u.ments were waiting for them when they arrived at their next destination. It would be like having your own Jeeves-style manservant albeit for a limited period. It was exactly the sort of thing they planned for the Ashford hotels, only this deal was infinitely more profitable, as Miles had negotiated that Francois would sub-contract the service, allowing them to take a percentage of every outlandish request, plus he would pay a licensing fee to use the Globe name, giving the brand increased visibility and cachet.

Miles looked across at his wife, looking chic and relaxed in Chanel. He had been nervous about handing the Globe over to her, but he had to admit he had underestimated her once again. Not even Miles could run both Ash Corp. and Globe simultaneously, so it made sense to delegate the smaller operation, but he had an emotional attachment to his 'baby'. Even babies have to go out into the world sometime Even babies have to go out into the world sometime, he thought.

'Are you pleased with me?' Chrissy asked.

'Yes, I'm pleased with you,' he said, kissing her.

'Good, because you're going to love how I plan to celebrate.'

'Where are you taking me, exactly?' he asked, peering out of the window as they pa.s.sed Le Garnier Opera.

Chrissy smiled and tapped the side of her nose. 'You'll see. And stop looking at your watch. We need a night off, Miles; since you took over Ash Corp., you've been working practically non-stop.'

'I said I'd call Bill Loxley,' said Miles impatiently, name checking the general manager of the London Globe. 'And we need to discuss your plans for expanding the clubs into Europe.'

'See?' said Chrissy. 'You can't stop for a minute, can you? And I'm sure Bill would rather go home and watch Eldorado Eldorado than speak to you.' than speak to you.'

Finally the taxi stopped outside a hotel in the Fifth. Miles peered out of the window, frowning. It was a pretty but slightly run-down area with narrow streets and old-fashioned streetlamps. There were a few bars and bra.s.series with awnings and neon signs which reflected down into the streets, shiny and treacle black from the earlier rain.