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Three thousand miles away, a 747 touched down on the Heathrow tarmac, wobbling from side to side, its wheels screeching to the ground and forcing business-class passenger and nervous flyer Cate Balcon to reach out and squeeze the hand of her grateful neighbour.

‘Sorry,’ she smiled at the old man in a Harris tweed jacket, aware that it was the first contact she’d had with him during the entire trip. The man, who had recognized her from Richard Kay’s page in the Daily Mail as soon as he’d boarded, gave her fingers a little squeeze back. ‘Crosswinds,’ he smiled kindly, ‘nothing to worry about.’

Mildly embarrassed, Cate was on her feet as soon as the engines wound down. That’s the beauty of business class, she thought, slipping her Jimmy Choos back on: the quick getaway. She grabbed her leather holdall from the overhead compartment, peered through the window at the grey, drizzling London day and politely pushed her way to the front of the queue, looking at her watch anxiously. She hated the overnight red-eye flights from New York in the working week; they brought her back into London just too late to slip home for a quick sleep, yet too early to blow out the day’s work altogether. Still, she thought as she darted for the arrivals hall, if her PA had booked a car and it was waiting for her, she might just get back for the twelve noon production meeting.

‘Cate Balcon?’ asked a young, tanned driver as Cate charged through the automatic doors.

‘Yes. Let’s be quick,’ replied Cate officiously, handing him her black wheelie case and tying back her long, thick hair with a tortoiseshell clip as she went. ‘Alliance Magazines, just off Aldwych.’

As Cate settled back into the leather seats of the black Mercedes, the scenery slipping from airport to suburbs to city, she tried to make some use of the time. The New York shows had been particularly good this season, she thought, opening her notebook to look at her scribblings from the front row. The fashion crowd might coo over the Paris leg of the collections for the spectacular fashion theatrics of Dior and McQueen, but Cate loved New York for its elegant, wearable clothes, and for the ideas it gave her for the magazine. They could do an Edith Wharton-flavoured story spinning off the tweed at Ralph Lauren, a safari shoot based on the linen and leather she had seen at Michael Kors and a Great Gatsby-style feature based on the jewelled coloured tea-dresses at Zac Posen.

She pulled out her Mont Blanc pen and started jotting down more ideas, completely unaware that her handsome driver kept glancing in his rear-view mirror at the striking woman with the red-gold hair on his back seat. Cate was oblivious, immersed as always in her work. She told herself that she worked twice as hard as everybody else because everybody expected Cate Balcon ‘the baron’s daughter’ to be twice as idle.

Although it was true that Alliance Magazines recruited its staff from a shallow gene pool – it was an industry joke that you had to be posh and pretty to get past their human resources department – Cate’s appointment to editor of Class, the company’s upmarket fashion and lifestyle flagship publication, had still fired a vicious whispering campaign in the media industry. The tattlers were outraged. Sure, they argued, there was the odd minor aristocrat at Alliance: the social editor on Verve was a countess and there was a viscount’s daughter in Rive’s fashion cupboard, but no one seriously expected them to become editors. The rumour mill had gone into overdrive. How had Cate become editor at the tender age of thirty-one? Whom had she slept with? What strings had Daddy pulled? It added insult to injury that the photogenic Cate Balcon was famous. British editors weren’t supposed to become celebrities – only Anna Wintour had the right to that crown. Cate Balcon simply didn’t deserve it, said the gossipmongers. But then anyone who had ever worked with her knew differently.

‘Morning Sadie,’ she smiled at her curly-haired PA who was sorting through a big lever-arch file outside her office. She glanced around the room at the young attractive women on the phone, rummaging through rails of fabulous clothes or typing away at computers; all noticeably more absorbed in their work the moment Cate arrived.

‘Afternoon, Cate,’ smiled Sadie, looking up at the clock. ‘I think Nicole’s taken the liberty of taking the twelve o’clock meeting on your behalf.’

The two women rolled their eyes at each other. ‘Typical,’ said Cate quietly. ‘Better do me a big favour and make me a strong cup of coffee.’

‘Cate! You’re back,’ called Lucy Cavendish from the other end of the office. Lucy was Class’s senior fashion editor and the nearest thing Cate had to a friend in the office. The six-foot black girl strode over wearing a thigh-skimming miniskirt and over-the-knee Versace boots, looking every inch one of the supermodels she styled.

‘You’ll never guess,’ gushed Lucy. ‘François Nars has said yes to us doing a shoot at his house on Bora-Bora. If you tell me I can’t go, I will die.’

‘Before we arrange the funeral, let’s check the budget with Ciara and we’ll take it from there,’ said Cate, smiling, as she walked into her office.

Lucy followed her in to catch up on the Fashion Week gossip. ‘Did you go to the Zac Posen party? Sorry I missed it but I had to make yesterday’s flight.’

‘Yes, I went and yes, it was fun,’ Cate replied, smiling at the memory.

Lucy gave Cate a mischievous grin. ‘I detect gossip, chief … So who did you meet? What was he like?’

She motioned Lucy into her office, a corner space on the eighth floor, just high enough to have views over the London Eye and the river. Lucy sat down and Cate flopped into her toffee-coloured leather chair behind her desk, quickly beginning to open the huge pile of mail that had accumulated in her absence. She casually tossed each item in front of Lucy as they spoke. Acres of press releases, stiff white party invitations and parcels of gifts from grateful advertisers and retailers. A Jimmy Choo bag and a white designer scarf, a stiff cardboard bag full of beauty products that Cate doubted would even fit through the bathroom door in her tiny Notting Hill mews house. She pushed the bag towards Lucy. ‘Need any of these?’

‘I don’t need products, I want gossip,’ said Lucy. ‘Come on, spill.’

Knowing she was not going to get away with distracting her friend, Cate relented with a smile.

‘The party was excellent. In this huge, amazing loft in the Meatpacking district. And they gave a great goody-bag, you’ll be delighted to hear. A hundred-dollar voucher for some underwear and a bottle of perfume. I’ve got it in my bag somewhere if you want it.’

Lucy flew a dismissive hand across her face. ‘Goody-bags, schmoody-bags! Catherine Balcon, you met a guy, didn’t you? Praise Jesus, tell me you’ve found someone, even if he does live in Manhattan.’

Only Lucy could get away with being so brazen and cheeky. A wide smile spread across Cate’s face, her ripe cheeks rounding out like two Cox’s apples as she conceded defeat. It was so long since she had met anybody decent. Serena’s perma-tanned playboy friends held no interest for her, while straight, single men in London’s media world were as rare as hen’s teeth. She’d had sex with two men in the last two years and not had a proper relationship in – well, too long. She didn’t need a shrink to tell her she had intimacy problems, and the longer it went on, the harder it became. Serena was forever telling Cate that she made herself seem as available as Fort Knox. She was certainly right, except New York had been a bit more productive.

‘He was a photographer called Tim. He was nice. He won’t ring.’ Cate shook her head. ‘Satisfied?’

‘No. Not satisfied. Getting any personal detail out of you is like drilling for deep-sea oil! If I had met a gorgeous New York hunk, I’d …’

Lucy’s fantasies ground to a halt as a willowy, size zero blonde in a cream Chloé trouser suit waltzed into the office and sat proprietorially on the arm of the sofa, crossing her legs and dangling a Manolo off her foot. ‘So how was New York?’ asked Nicole Valentine, her voice hard and nasal.

Cate looked up at her deputy editor, annoyed that she had interrupted a rare moment of confession.

‘Hi Nicole, it was fine,’ she said. ‘Look, Nicole, we’re talking …’

Nicole ignored Cate and turned her attention to Lucy. ‘The fashion cupboard is a tip,’ she barked. ‘And why have we got racks of clothes in the meeting room? I need it cleaned, Lucy. Like, yesterday.’

Lucy flashed a look at Cate and left. Cate turned to her deputy. ‘Nicole. There is no need to talk to a senior member – any member – of staff like that.’

Nicole raised a perfectly threaded eyebrow at her boss. ‘As you wish,’ she replied defiantly. ‘However, we have more important things to worry about.’

‘Is that why you started the meeting without me?’

Nicole paused dramatically, playing smugly with the five-carat Asscher-cut engagement ring on her finger. ‘I started the meeting because we need to start getting things done. I spoke to Jennifer’s publicist last night and it looks like the April cover isn’t going to happen.’

Cate felt panic starting to flutter around her body. ‘What do you mean, isn’t going to happen? We’ve done the shoot. We’ve designed the cover. It looks great,’ she started, then rubbed her forehead. ‘Bloody hell. We go to press in a week. What went wrong?’

‘We said we’d give picture approval and when we sent the images over to her publicist – well, they don’t like the shoot.’ Nicole pursed her lips into a self-satisfied smile that said, ‘So, what are you going to do about that?’

Cate looked at Nicole and thought – not for the first time – how much the New Yorker unsettled her. Everything about her deputy, from the platinum-blonde highlights to her Manolo Blahnik heels was hard. Cate was a tough but fair boss: she gave respect and courtesy and received it in the same way from a grateful staff that, she was sure, had been enjoying life on the magazine since Cate became editor a year ago. But her relationship with Nicole was awkward and competitive and she regretted the day she’d hired her from W magazine in New York. Nicole was cold, efficient and ambitious, and it was that ambition that scared her, knowing how often it went hand in hand with deceit and disloyalty.

Sadie popped her curls round the door. She was holding a steaming china mug. ‘For my jet-lagged editor,’ she said, placing it on a flower-shaped coaster on the desk. ‘And William Walton has called three times this morning. He said could you pop up to see him as soon as you’ve settled in?’

In the six months since Walton’s appointment to the board of Alliance Magazines from a large advertising and marketing agency in Chicago, Cate had had very little to do with him. As his background wasn’t editorial, he showed no interest in Class, apart from the sales figures at the end of every month and any free tickets for the opera, Formula One or art-gallery openings that the features department could throw his way.

‘Really?’ said Cate, feeling a flutter of alarm. ‘What does he want?’

She caught the look on Nicole’s face, which was one of someone who’d just been given an early birthday present.

‘I don’t know,’ said Sadie with a sympathetic look, ‘but his secretary is starting to call every five minutes.’

All alone in the lift, Cate stared at the buttons and wondered what to say to Walton. Despite the sinking feeling in her stomach, she knew she should feel confident: if the reaction she’d got in New York was anything to go by, both the readers and advertisers were finally getting it. She’d spent twelve months redesigning the magazine, and had by sheer strength of will changed Class from a dated, pompous society magazine to a glossy fashionable read for smart, successful women. The catwalk shows had been a wonderful vindication; a raft of prestige advertisers who so far had only ever appeared in Vogue in the UK had suggested that Class would be added to their advertising schedule in the fall. That should please Mr William Walton, thought Cate, as the bell pinged for the top floor.

She walked through the double doors and down the cream corridors lined with giant-sized magazine covers, until she reached an unsmiling redhead behind a computer.

‘Is he busy?’

‘Go straight in,’ replied the woman, not looking up from her computer screen.

William Walton’s office was unlike anything else Cate had seen in the Alliance building. Interior-designed at great expense, it was decked out in walnut wood and shades of taupe instead of the usual Formica and magnolia walls that everybody else had to put up with. The man himself was sitting behind a wraparound leather-top desk. His self-possessed presence filled the room. Powerfully built, with wiry black hair, Walton’s expensive bespoke clothes masked the fact that he had got to the top the hard way. The very hard way. When, twenty years ago, the young William had beaten thousands to win a scholarship to Yale, he had assumed it would pave the way to privilege. He was mistaken. The doors to American society’s elite were still very much closed to a boy from the southside of Chicago and, instead of spending his summers making contacts in Connecticut country clubs, he was forced to fight his way through the mailrooms of Grey’s and Ogilvy & Mather to achieve the status he craved. But he had made it. Power and privilege, he’d learned, were things to be won by hard work and cunning, not born or bought into. All of which explained precisely why William Walton was looking at Cate Balcon with such distaste.

‘I wanted to see you as soon as you got in,’ began Walton. ‘I hear we have a few problems.’ Walton paused, his dark, feral eyes sizing her up. He’d seen her before, of course, and read about her in the society pages she seemed to monopolize along with her sisters. But alone and face to face for the first time, Walton was impressed despite himself. She might not be a patch on that actress sister of hers, but Cate Balcon was still a knockout. The firm, slightly sulky rosebud mouth, the wavy, dark-golden hair flowing over that elegant neck. And then there was the curvy body, no doubt considered plump by the stick-thin Zone-dieted women he’d dated in Chicago, but when he imagined it naked and wet under his shower, her plump lips round his cock, swallowing him whole … He stopped himself and shifted in his seat, motioning her to sit in one of the hard black leather chairs in front of him.

‘As you know, Cate, magazines are a business,’ he began.

She nodded hesitantly. ‘Of course. I had lots of compliments in New York about how we’ve really improved the magazine. The advertising is looking very promising.’

William didn’t seem to notice what she was saying as he flicked through an issue of Class with what looked suspiciously like disdain.

‘Magazines are a business,’ he repeated. ‘And I was brought into Alliance to improve that business. They are not simply entertainment, they are a commodity, and to be honest with you, Cate, I don’t think the numbers Class is selling at the moment really warrants the investment.’

Cate immediately realized that this was not going to be a friendly, ‘How were the New York shows?’ catch-up. She needed to do some firefighting.

‘With respect, we’re showing a definite turnaround in circulation,’ she said as calmly as she could. ‘If anything, William, since I arrived at Alliance, we’ve improved the Class business by at least fifteen per cent. We’ve stopped the circulation rot and improved advertising volume and yield.’

‘I wouldn’t call a hundred thousand sales a month show-stopping business,’ interrupted Walton tartly, throwing the magazine down on the desk.

‘Well, it’s not the News of the World, no. But it’s better than both Tatler and Harper’s,’ said Cate.

Walton steepled his fingers in front of his mouth and regarded her coolly. Cate Balcon was clearly no pushover. But then neither was he.

‘I suspect, however, that the magazines you mention all have a cover for their April issue.’

The hairs on Cate’s neck began to tingle. She could practically see Nicole Valentine’s smile as she whispered into Walton’s ear. She squeezed her nails into her palm and decided that she’d fire Nicole this afternoon and hang the consequences.

Cate took a deep breath. ‘So someone’s told you about Jennifer. I just heard about that this morning, too. It’s not ideal, but it happens. I’ve actually got something in reserve,’ she said, her cheeks flushing lightly at the deliberate lie. But Walton wasn’t watching. He’d got up from his seat and had turned his back on her to stare at the London skyline, absently rolling a golf ball around in his palm.

‘I am not interested in the micromanagement of your magazine, Cate,’ he replied flatly. ‘A picture of my grandmother could go on the cover if you could guarantee me sales. What I am interested in is revenue. I think Class should be a more mass-market, more profitable magazine. I don’t want to be outselling Tatler, I want to be outselling Glamour.’ He turned back towards Cate and banged the golf ball onto the desk. ‘I want to be outselling everyone.’

Cate was used to being bullied by her father – she’d put up with bullying then and would put up with it now.

‘A fine ambition, of course,’ she said evenly, carefully smoothing down her skirt. God, she was shaking, she thought, looking at her hands. She hated confrontation and tried to imagine what her sister Camilla would do in her shoes.

‘But you’ll be aware that Class magazine is not published on a mass-market model. We are advertising rather than circulation driven, and I think you’ll need a massive repositioning of the product to change that.’

He looked at her, smiling cruelly. ‘Exactly, Cate, exactly. So you’ll understand completely what I’m about to say.’

The bile was beginning to rise in Cate’s throat and she was finding it impossible to open her mouth to speak. ‘Which is what?’ she finally croaked.

Walton wasn’t to be hurried. He’d pictured scenes like this every time he’d been humiliated by a toffee-nosed Ivy-Leaguer in college, and he always enjoyed every second of revenge when it came. He walked around his huge desk, perched on the corner and looked down at Cate.

‘The Honourable Catherine Balcon,’ he said with a superior smirk, and Cate shivered, sensing that the fatal blow was about to be delivered. ‘While it’s obviously wonderful to have someone of your high profile editing one of our titles, I have to wonder what it really brings to the party. If Class is going to be more populist, more popular, I need someone at the helm more in touch with the Great British Public. Not someone whose daddy owns a castle.’

‘What a ridiculous thing to say,’ retorted Cate angrily. ‘My background has nothing to do with whether I can be a good, commercial editor or not. And anyway, if you got to know your employees better, you’d find out that I’m not the out-of-touch aristocrat you clearly think I am!’

Walton took in the long curvy legs hiding under the navy wool pencil skirt and actually began to regret the missed opportunity of getting to know Cate Balcon better. ‘You’re just not my person for the job, Cate,’ he said coldly. He stood up and briskly walked back to his seat. ‘I have immediate plans for Class magazine,’ he continued, already starting to flick through his mobile-phone menu for the number of his lunch date. ‘And I’m afraid that you’re not going to be part of them.’

Cate stared at him, her head starting to feel dizzy. It had all happened so fast. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘In plain Queen’s English, Miss Balcon, you’re fired. With immediate effect.’

Cate felt paralysed. She was unable to move from her chair.

‘On what grounds? That my DNA is wrong?’

Walton didn’t seem to hear. His attention had already wandered to something on his computer screen.

‘Fine,’ said Cate in a quiet, controlled voice, rising unsteadily and moving towards the door with dignity. ‘You will, of course, be hearing from my solicitors.’

William Walton glanced up and took one last look at the long legs exiting his office. ‘Get them to call my secretary.’