‘The pleasure’s all mine,’ I say, allowing her to kiss my cheeks.
‘Now, Gregory, you must see David; he’s around here somewhere and he’ll be keen to see you.’
‘I’ll make sure I do.’
The next person we see is Camilla, from lunch. Surprisingly, I’m happy to see her familiar face.
‘Oh. My. Good Lord! This is A-mazing!’ Amanda screams, running up the steps towards us.
I throw my arms around her. ‘This looks even better than it did in Harrods,’ I say, gesturing to her from head to toe, her gold, satin gown showing off her figure perfectly.
‘You too!’ she shouts needlessly loudly.
‘Hi, Amanda,’ Gregory says, kissing her on the cheek. ‘You look great.’
‘Well, if you do favours for bazillionaires, good things come of it,’ she says, winking at Gregory.
He’s amused but typically, not quite enough to laugh. ‘I’m going to catch up with Jackson. Will you be okay?’
‘Of course she will; she’s with me,’ Amanda says, snatching my hand and pulling me down the steps. ‘I swear I just saw Jude Law.’
I look back over my shoulder and smile at Gregory but he’s tense. A look I saw on him at every juncture of the Sea People deal.
My name is being shouted from somewhere on the lawn. Eventually, I match the voice to Lara and she looks astounding. Her deep-purple, crushed-satin dress is fitted to her waist with a subtle fishtail bottom and high, structured collar. Her blue-black, sapphire and diamond, teardrop earrings match a much larger version of the same around her neck.
‘Scarlett!’ She waves me towards where she stands with two couples.
‘Lara, you look fantastic.’
She hugs me and kisses me on both cheeks then turns me to the couples who she introduces as Gordon and Vivienne and Stella and Jean-Pierre. We exchange pleasantries and I introduce Amanda.
Lara rests a hand on my shoulder and tells the group, ‘This is the woman who has tamed the lion’s heart.’
My cheeks burn under the four pairs of dissecting eyes. A thousand responses dance around my synapses: gracious, polite, ridiculous.
‘I’m not sure he’ll ever be tamed,’ I say.
‘That sounds like the Gregory we know.’ Jean Pierre’s French accent is smooth. He raises his champagne flute.
‘What is it you do, Scarlett?’ Gordon asks.
‘I’m a lawyer. And you?’
‘I design furniture. You might have seen my store in Knightsbridge: Belle Maison.’
‘I have, actually. Your furniture is amazing: very chic.’
‘That’s what we try to achieve.’
‘I’m curious,’ Stella says with an underlying sharpness to her voice, her lean frame looking down on me by an inch or two. ‘How did you meet Gregory?’
Her abruptness catches me off guard. Her plump, red lips pull to a pout and her eyes bore into mine, her fierceness augmented by her severe updo, scraping her bottle-blonde back from her face into a chignon.
‘I did some work for him.’
‘Uh huh, and what kind of work was that?’
I pause for a second, wondering what’s passed between her and Gregory to make her take a tone that I really don’t care for.
