Vintage (43 page)

He came as he always did. Silently. In an eerily controlled fashion. He pulled out at once and fell back onto the bed, breathing heavily. As he stared up at the ceiling, waiting for his breath to calm down, Viviane slithered across the mattress to be closer to him. She rolled into his side. She slung an arm across his chest. She rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes.

“The guest bedroom is on the other side of the apartment,” he said.

B
ack in Champagne after her night with Piers Mackesy, Madeleine found herself feeling pretty down. She knew that what they had done was wrong, but at the same time, she found herself wishing she could see him again. She knew that Mackesy would be in Champagne again that afternoon, visiting some houses near Ay. Perhaps, she allowed herself to dream, he would drop by. At least they could try to repair their friendship.

And so Madeleine jumped to attention when she heard a car crunch on the gravel in front of the house. She abandoned her laptop and looked out of her office window hopefully. But it wasn’t the DB4. It wasn’t a car she recognized at all.

Madeleine was alone in the house that day. Henri, who could normally be relied upon to drift in and out several times, had taken the day off to visit his daughter in Normandy. Still Madeleine felt fairly safe as she opened the door to the stranger.

“Madeleine Arsenault,” said the man, as he grabbed for Madeleine’s hand and kissed it roughly. “What a pleasure.”

“Who are you?” asked Madeleine, suddenly wishing she had been a little less trusting and not opened the door so wide. Though she battled against the part of her that made such primeval judgments, wanting so much to believe that you couldn’t judge anyone by the way they looked, her every instinct was to get rid of the man now
stepping inside. Everything about his face spoke of violence, from his twisted little mouth to the scar that closed his eye.

“You don’t mind if I come in,” he said. Madeleine did mind but it was a statement, not a question.

She looked out into the street in desperation, hoping that someone would be passing by. But there was no one else to be seen except her visitor’s driver, who looked no less menacing.

“My vineyard manager will be back in ten minutes,” said Madeleine, hoping that would be enough to scare the men off.

“Ten minutes is all we need,” said the man. “My name is Michel Tremblant, but you can call me Mick. I was a friend of your father’s.”

“He never mentioned you.”

“I dare say he didn’t. We didn’t see much of each other in his last couple of years. I was inside, you see.”

Madeleine felt her insides begin to liquefy. This was getting worse.

“But we were great friends once, your father and I. He liked to play cards.”

“I didn’t know that,” Madeleine lied.

“But he wasn’t very good at it. And when I went inside, he still owed me two hundred thousand Euros.”

“What?”

“A lot of money, isn’t it? I expect he thought I’d write it off when I went into prison. Or that I might forget about it while I was doing time. But I got out earlier than I expected to, thanks to a very generous friend of mine. And now I need the money back. You’ve inherited Champagne Arsenault. You’ve inherited the debt.”

“Why should I even believe there is a debt?” asked Madeleine.

“Just because you don’t believe there’s a debt doesn’t mean I won’t get upset if you can’t pay it,” said Mick.

“I can’t pay it.”

“I’m a reasonable man,” said Mick. “I didn’t expect you to have the cash to hand. But I do need it soon. Christmas, shall we say? I need to buy presents for my kids.
Au revoir,
sweet Madeleine.” He kissed her hand again and was gone.

Closing the door firmly behind him, Madeleine sank onto the bottom stair. Two hundred thousand Euros was a ridiculous amount of money to lose in a bet and yet … she remembered the day that Philip Mackesy sent a truck to pick up her father’s Facel Vega and take it back to England after their last card game. Constant Arsenault had never been a cautious man. Which had made it all the harder after Georges’s death.

“You must have encouraged him to climb too high,” Constant berated Madeleine after Georges fell from the apple tree in the Clos and broke his neck. That Georges might just take after his father and live for the thrill of the high climb or the big bet didn’t seem to occur to him.

“Oh, Papa,” Madeleine cried into her hands. “What am I supposed to do now?”

C
hristina Morgan felt a small twinge of something approaching annoyance when she saw Viviane Caine in the new Randon Éclat advertising campaign. But it was just a
small twinge. Really, there was no reason for Christina to envy Viviane anymore. She didn’t need the Éclat campaign or the Guilty Secrets advertising deal. Christina had something far better.

Like the first, the second season of
The Villa
was a huge success. It was no surprise whatsoever when Greg announced that the channel was going to commission a third. Getting high-profile guests was no problem at all. Top chefs flew in from all over the world to take part and winemakers clamored for the exposure
The Villa
could bring them. Having Ronald Ginsburg as the show’s resident critic definitely gave
The Villa
kudos among the wine fraternity. Meanwhile, the show had been extended to include a “dinner party” segment, wherein assorted celebrities who had no direct link to the world of food and drink would sit around a table and discuss their latest projects.

As the show never failed to mention, the Villa Bacchante was a proper, working vineyard, but Christina no longer had to worry about how she would distribute her wine and persuade people to buy it. In fact, she had the opposite problem. The wholesalers couldn’t get enough of her. It was difficult to meet the demand. It meant that Christina faced an interesting dilemma.

She had hoped to age her wine in the bottle for at least two years before it was degorged and the fermentation process stopped. But her management team tried to persuade her to bottle far earlier than she wanted to in order to get it into the shops.

“Strike while the iron is hot,” said Karl, who worked with Marisa on maximizing Christina’s exposure. “In two years’ time, the public will be going crazy over some boyband star’s cider instead. Then you can keep your wine in barrels for ten years. Twenty. You’ll have made your fortune.”

Christina was almost ready to agree. But Ronald Ginsburg stopped her.

“There’s no way you’re going to rush out your first vintage,” he said firmly. “I’ve got money riding on you, remember.”

“That’s not a persuasive argument,” said Christina.

“OK. Forget me. Forget the money.
You
have a reputation riding on it. I believe that if we do this right, we can win that wager at the
Vinifera
awards and the Villa Bacchante will be established as a winery to be reckoned with. A good reputation will long outlast the show.”

Christina wavered. She had definitely enjoyed the serious attention the villa had been getting in the pages of
Vinifera
as pundits discussed the progress of her wine in anticipation of Ronald’s silly competition.

“You want to be taken seriously, I hope,” said Ronald.

Christina did. “OK,” she said. “We’ll stick to the plan.”

“Good girl.”

It wasn’t as though Christina needed the money. Her bank account was looking very healthy indeed. Especially since the launch of the magazine to accompany the show. Within two months of hitting the newsstand,
Villa Living
was rivaling Oprah’s
O.
Like Oprah, Christina appeared on every cover of her magazine. She had just shot the Thanksgiving cover, for which she dressed in suitably autumnal shades of orange and brown.

She was doing far better than she ever imagined possible. Suddenly, the question of what she would do when the modeling came to an end was no longer an issue. She barely had time to breathe. She did however find time for her continuing involvement with ISACL. Following the success of the “I Don’t Buy It” campaign, ISACL had become the Hollywood charity of choice, inundated with requests
from all the big agents, keen that their clients should be associated with such a popular cause. Christina went from being a minor player in the charity to being the star around which it revolved. She was fronting the latest campaign, standing right in the middle for the group photograph that would appear in
Vanity Fair.
Rocky stood to the side of her: Midge Ure to her Bob Geldof. People soon forgot that ISACL was Rocky’s baby.

Christina was interviewed in the
New York Times
Sunday magazine.

“The ‘I Don’t Buy It’ campaign is still an important initiative for ISACL,” she told the interviewer. “Consumer pressure works. Many of the brands we named and shamed in that first infomercial investigated the working practices of their suppliers as a result.” She discussed a high-profile case in which an American designer had moved her production back to the United States after discovering that child labor had been used to produce some of her designs. The designer had raised her prices to cover the increased costs but had found, to everyone’s surprise, that the public were only too happy to pay extra for a clean conscience.

“Her business is booming,” Christina confirmed. “And as a gesture of gratefulness, I wore one of her dresses to the
Vanity Fair
Oscars party.”

The journalist continued, “You famously lost the Maison Randon advertising campaign as a result of your involvement with ISACL and it’s been rumored that was part of the reason for your divorce from Bill Tarrant, who was dropped from the campaign at the same time. Do you ever think that the personal cost of your principles might have been too high?”

“Not at all,” said Christina in a heartfelt way. “In fact, I can look back on the Maison Randon episode and say that
it freed me from a lot of things that were wrong in my life.” She talked about the series of events that had led her to the place in which she found herself now. She brimmed with happiness as she talked about how Greg had come back into her life and the domesticity they now shared between Los Angeles and the Napa Valley.

“No,” she concluded. “I have no regrets at all. I can’t imagine any sum of money that would be worth more than my spiritual enlightenment, the freedom I gained from it and the way my life has turned out as a result.”

“Spiritual enlightenment,” Randon spat when he read the piece. That stupid American woman was still spouting her yoga speak. And libel! Following the “I Don’t Buy It” campaign, Christina had entered into an agreement that she would never mention the name of Champagne Randon in an interview ever again. She had just fucked up in a big way. Randon picked up his mobile and flicked through the contacts until he found the number for his lawyer. They had every reason to slap a writ on her that afternoon.

But then Randon thought better of it.

He closed his phone. Perhaps the best course of action was to appear to ignore this latest indiscretion. To go after her with writs might have the opposite effect to that which Randon wanted. His beloved brand name had appeared just once in an interview that would be old news by Monday morning. Taking Christina to court would put Maison Randon on the front pages again in a bad way. Who goes to such lengths to protect their innocence unless they’re guilty, was what Randon thought every time he saw that someone had initiated a libel action. And yet, Christina could not be allowed to get away with it. Something had to be done to bring that stupid woman back down to earth. It was time to get creative.

Randon spent a few moments sitting at his desk, just
looking into space as he ran a few pleasant scenarios—pleasant for him, that is—through his head. Then, with his humor partially restored, he picked his phone up again and scrolled through the numbers therein until he found Odile Levert’s.

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