Audacity: Prologue

Moments of note don’t always feel noteworthy.

So when a woman whose poise, whose elegance, would be noteworthy if we were in any city other than Paris presses upon me a fresh flute of champagne, this moment of my fingers closing around its weighty crystal as my eyes meet hers offers little more than a mild flicker of curiosity.

My first guess—or assumption, more accurately—is that she wants me. This I’m used to, from both men and women. Apparently, I give off carnal vibes, even when I’m at my most sedate and polished.

Especially when I’m at my most sedate and polished.

She’s eyeing me with a combination of approval and pleasure. It’s a she’ll do nicely look.

‘Vous-êtes anglaise?’ she asks me. Her accent is decent, but there’s an unmistakable British roundness to the vowels of her vous that gives her away. I get it. It’s hard for us Brits to relearn the actual linguistics that will allow us to form authentic French vowels. I suppose she, like most people, prioritises the ability to speak fluently and accurately over the sheer joy of one’s mouth speaking the words as they are meant to be spoken.

‘I am.’

I leave it there.

She’ll tell me what she wants from me soon enough.

‘I thought so,’ she says. ‘You’re a perfect English rose.’

She has a cut-glass accent, but it’s a trite phrase, and one I’ve heard a thousand times before. To her credit, she doesn’t try to dress it up as anything more impressive than a mere matter of fact. I am, apparently, an English rose. People have catalogued me as such all my life, although if I pressed them on the datapoints that make up that category, I’m sure they’d fumble.

One man even told me I looked like a Rossetti painting, which I frankly found offensive. His muses had decidedly horsey jaws. Not attractive. No, I’d rather bask in the heady warmth of being compared to one of Sargent’s ethereal subjects in all their doe-eyed, pale-skinned, rosy-lipped glory.

Some of them, like the beautiful Duchess of Portland, even have a beguiling pink flush on their cheeks, almost as if the painter burrowed under all that lustrous oyster-coloured satin to seek out their most intimate parts and made them climax on his fingers for the sole purpose of capturing that shameful, intimate bloom on their skin.

I’ve got myself off to that fantasy before.

This is also one of my working theories on why people have carnal reactions to me: I look like someone, or something, pristine that they want to violate. To overpower. To smash.

I shrug at this immaculate woman’s underwhelming descriptor. There isn’t much to say when someone simply states facts at you.

She holds out her hand, her pose at the correct end of the jutting-slash-languid spectrum. Nobody likes a languidly extended hand.

‘I’m Camille St John.’

Camille. Maybe she has a French mother. She really should work harder on those vowels. There’s no excuse for sloppiness.

‘Athena.’ I shake. I don’t see a reason why I should offer her my surname at this point. That she gave hers freely is not my problem.

She smiles then, and it’s a fierce, unguarded smile. It makes her far more likeable. ‘God, I love that.’

‘Thank you,’ I say, quietly amused.

Her eyes dart over my face. I suspect the meekness of my countenance and the unavoidable connotations of my name strike her as incongruous.

‘Goddess of handicrafts. Do you crochet?’

Athena. Goddess of war. Of wisdom. Lauded for her resourcefulness. For her lack of promiscuity.

If ever a female-presenting Greek deity was not to be trifled with, it was Athena.

And this woman chose fucking handicrafts.

‘Interesting that you went there. Do I look like I crochet?’

‘You do not. It felt less invasive than asking you outright if you were a virgin goddess. Although the goddess part is indisputable.’

I was right.

She wants me.

I don’t usually do women, but she’s undeniably magnetic, her dark-hair sleekly centre-parted in a way that would look overly severe on someone who didn’t have her bone structure or her skin or her ability to perfect a velvety scarlet lip.

‘Again. Do I look like a virgin to you?’

She doesn’t answer immediately, instead taking a sip of her champagne as she allows herself to study me. I know what she’ll see. My Miu Miu dress is sleek and black and tasteful, hinting at my assets rather than serving them up on a silver platter. My stockings are black and sheer. My Valentino heels are elegant, my Van Cleef bracelet and earrings set—a gift from my parents—an understated addition.

I look like I could fit in anywhere and conduct myself with exquisite social propriety and never, ever disgrace myself unless, or until, the right person dragged me into a store cupboard or a disabled loo and put his hand around my throat and forced me to my knees.

Then I could disgrace myself with aplomb.

‘You look,’ she says, lowering her glass as she continues to survey me, ‘like you are not a virgin, countless times over, and like every single man whose path you cross wishes you were with a fervency that takes his breath away.’

That earns her a smile.

Tonight’s pleasant soirée in the spectacular surroundings of the Musée Rodin comes courtesy of Swiss bank Loeb, who’s hired the place out at no small cost to woo the crème de la crème of The Sorbonne’s current MBA class. Alas, it’s too cold to avail of the pristinely manicured gardens, but I’ve enjoyed them plenty of times before. The museum is a favourite of consultancy firms and investment banks looking to put on an uncompromising display of the wealth, the luxury, that awaits us if only we choose to sign our lives away to them.

This woman, Camille, is, I assume, part of the Loeb delegation. She’s probably flown in from London or Zurich or Geneva to have a crack at us. She looks just as much at home here as I feel. When you’ve grown up in the embassies of Europe, polished floors and gleaming crystal and sparkling conversation that goes precisely nowhere are second nature to you.

I’m less interested in working for Loeb, or any other bank for that matter, than willing to consider it. Really, I want to end up in industry. I want to call the shots, not advise people on what shots to call or help them to fund those shots. I put in a management consultant stint at Bain after finishing my degree a year early, and now that I have some consulting experience under my belt, it’s time to pivot.

That’s what an MBA represents to most of my peers: the vehicle through which they can pivot to a new and equally gruelling sub-sector of the finance industry.

Investment banking is dull and rigidly, endlessly hierarchical, but there’s no denying it gives you a solid grounding in the nuts and bolts of how companies work and how their financial systems run. I can put my head down for a year or two if it means arming myself with the tools for a quick ascension elsewhere.

As we size each other up, I take a moment to appreciate how sophisticated Camille looks, how poised against the backdrop of the museum foyer’s iconic wrought-iron staircase and monochrome floor. I nod at her shift dress—black and simple, just like mine.

‘Celine? That’s a Phoebe Philo, surely?’

She may not have a bona fide Parisian accent, but she certainly has the discernment of a local. Many a chic Parisienne will refuse to touch anything designed by the house’s subsequent creative director, Hedi Slimane, staying loyal instead to its Philo-era vintage.

She smiles, approving. ‘You know your Celine. I’m impressed.’

I shrug self-deprecatingly. ‘You can’t see a Phoebe Philo piece and not recognise it. It’s beautiful.’

‘And yet you want to bag a job at Loeb and bury yourself in a grey cubicle twenty hours a day?’

‘You’re a better ambassador for Celine than you are for Loeb,’ I observe, taking a ladylike sip of my champagne. It’s non-vintage, but decent. Probably from one of the smaller grower vineyards.

Her laugh is a tinkle. ‘Oh, darling, I don’t work for Loeb.’

This is surprising. ‘Don’t you?’ I leave the less polite question hanging. What the hell are you doing here, then?

‘They’re…’ She glances around the throng of people before lowering her voice. ‘They’re a client of mine, but that’s not why I’m here.’

Again, I stay silent. If she has an agenda, she’ll push it.

‘I work for an agency. We place people in very senior positions at firms like Loeb.’

Ugh. She’s a recruitment consultant. A necessary evil in this world, but horrific all the same. I smile politely. ‘C-suite executives, you mean?’ CEOs, CFOs, COOs—all roles far too senior to be appropriate for MBA students.

‘Executive assistants.’ She watches me as she says it.

It takes all my experience of working diplomatic circles not to sneer. If she’s sniffing around the soon-to-be graduates of one of Europe’s finest business schools, she’s wasting her time. ‘This crowd may be a little…’

Overeducated. I swallow the word before I can say it, because it smacks of intellectual snobbery.

She raises a shapely eyebrow. ‘Overqualified?’

I smile, shrug again. ‘Or expensive. Or greedy.’

‘Hmm.’ She casts her eye around the room again. ‘I wonder what they’d say if they knew that almost all of our candidates place with a seven-figure annual package.’

Now she really has my attention, because that is ridiculous. I ask the only question I can.

‘How?’ Who the hell pays that to someone who books their travel and compiles meeting notes?

She takes an almost indiscernible step towards me. ‘I could tell you so much more over a cocktail if you signed some paperwork first. We take our clients’ and candidates’ confidentiality incredibly seriously. But I will divulge this much.

‘The agency I run is called Seraph, and the women—and currently it is only women—whom we place have access to the most powerful men in industry. These women are full service executive assistants.’

My lips part involuntarily, her meaning landing with me even before she articulates it further.

‘Our EAs are all MBA-level qualified, from top schools only, and they bring a whole host of value to their employers in the C-suite… and also in the bedroom.’

There’s a pull deep in my core. It’s instantaneous. This vision she’s conjured up in a single sentence—it’s intoxicating. A whole host of value… in the bedroom.

‘These are busy men, Athena,’ she continues. ‘They need a… turnkey solution, if you like. They have profound appetites and refined tastes and exacting standards. They need an assistant who is the absolute best of the best at everything she does. Someone whose intellect matches theirs, who can anticipate and meet every need they have.’ She pauses, nodding at me meaningfully. Someone like you. ‘And they are happy to reward that very, very fully, financially, of course. And… with an extraordinary level of access.’

‘You’re a madam,’ I say under my breath. Somehow, it’s not a shock.

‘I’m a feminist, and the man who owns this company, an extremely influential power player, is a feminist too. Women are still locked out of so many positions of power. There’s so much back-channelling, so many old-boys’ networks that play out on golf courses from Augusta to St Andrew’s. But we have advantages that they don’t have, and it’s my mission both to facilitate the maximising of those advantages and to ensure that my candidates are exquisitely remunerated in return.’

With a tilt of her head, she delivers the closing shot of her pitch. ‘Imagine the access that a certain level of intimacy delivers. Imagine having the ear of the most powerful decision maker at any company, because what you give him in your uniquely positioned capacity goes far, far beyond what anyone else, even his closest management team members, can dream of.’