So I’d let the dust settle after Andrew. And I’d felt little joy when I looked back on it, unlike the euphoria I’d had when Kathleen and Jeremy rolled off that cliff, so I’d been happy to step back for a bit. I knew Andrew’s funeral had been well attended, by earnest people in cagoules and red-faced private school chums alike. I had read that his mother Lara had been utterly devastated by her only son’s death, making no public comment but pulling back from her work as Artemis Holdings Vice President and establishing a charity for wildlife preservation in Andrew’s name. I wondered whether the incident had caused her to break from the family as well as the brand. The society pages still constantly featured Lee, but Lara seemed to have retreated from London entirely, staying mostly at their farmhouse in Oxfordshire. I’ve seen the property on Rightmove. The main house is entirely painted in shades of muted grey, and there are a wide variety of tasteful Persian rugs throughout, but then there’s also a driving range in the grounds and it has the biggest hot tub I’ve ever seen overlooking the herb garden. It’s not hard to see who chose what there. If it helps you guess, Lee wears cowboy boots and calls them ‘his signature’。
From what I had read, Lara seemed totally unsuited to Artemis life. Perhaps that’s why I initially assumed Lee couldn’t be as nightmarish as he came across, despite all the signs pointing to him being exactly that. She was smart, a first from Cambridge and an MBA from an Ivy League college. He was a chancer, steeped in privilege and greed. The Artemis family might be canny, but I was confident that Lara was rarely stimulated by intelligent conversation at the family dinner table. According to Tina, who continued to gossip her head off to me long after I’d left the office, there was still much bafflement about Lara’s choice of partner. ‘He was handsome, everyone thought so. Don’t roll your eyes! That’s not nothing when you’re young. And he was good at adapting his behaviour to mirror those he was around. He’d get these big inspired eyes when she talked, and tell everyone how clever she was. She was shy, but you could tell she was flattered by the attention. This lovely looking young girl, awkward as hell but just so smart. She wasn’t prepared for a man like Lee and by the time she understood who he was, it was too late. Of course, his parents didn’t like that she was mixed race. They didn’t say it explicitly, but it was obvious. And he shut them down completely. He did love her, I think. In his own way.’ It was a weak explanation and it didn’t seem enough for Lara. Aged 18 you might get fooled by a man like that, but you learn. You learn fast or you end up trapped.
By the time I met Lara’s husband, Tina’s rationale seemed even more flimsy. Lee was Simon’s younger brother by three years. If old copies of Hello! were anything to go by （and I had bought six years’ worth of them on eBay to search for mentions of the Artemis name, which also gave me a good education in the various scandals of minor European royals）， then Simon might have been the ultimate playboy back in his Nineties heyday, but Lee was his enthusiastic shadow. He was similarly good looking for the time （in a way that conveyed heartless sociopath – why was that considered attractive back then?）， with a permanently bronzed face, and jet-black hair, slicked down. It sort of worked for him, when he was slim and unlined. Photos show him surrounded by women, often with a magnum of champagne in hand. But twenty years later and the same aesthetic was somewhat marred by the tiny white circles around his eyes showing you that the tan was now from a sunbed shop in the suburbs, and the slightly smudgy ring around his collars which appeared when he got sweaty, revealing that he probably didn’t tip his colourist enough.
Lee was never a complete black sheep. No serious addiction problems, though he definitely dabbled. No bankruptcies, though he’d been listed as CEO of no less than twenty-seven different companies at Companies House, all of which were closed within months. One venture, GoGoGirl Pictures, was shut down in sixty-three days. The name didn’t exactly suggest he’d hoped to make Art House movies. Perhaps his pearl-clutching mother got wind and put her foot down on that one.
Kathleen and Jeremy had Simon to hold up the family name. He was a success story, the guy who bought his way into royal dinners and pressed the flesh with the Mayor, the Prime Minister, and anyone else who was easily swayed by his money, which was most people. Even decent people go mad when faced with the uber-wealthy. They might have strong views on the wealth imbalance, and think that the rich unfairly run a system in which they accrue even more to the detriment of all others in society, but give them a glass of champagne and ask them to pose with a millionaire who might give them a job or write their organisation a cheque and they simper like the best of them.