‘Why don’t we head over to The Orangery?’ Nikki had suggested, gently shooing the shell-shocked waitress away from the mess before Ned could stand up and start the inevitable dressing-down. ‘You have a meeting with the head chef over there in fifteen minutes – he makes the best poached eggs anyway . . .’
As personal assistant to the CEO of the Home Group for nearly a quarter of a century, Nikki Hayes could always tell when her boss was taking a leisurely run-up at a screaming rage. The jerks in his neck muscles, the involuntarily jaw twitches, the way he fiddled with the bezel of his platinum Rolex. When it was finally unleashed, that temper of his, he could change the air pressure in a room so quickly it would give you the bends.
In the end it was the design team who really got it.
Their 9 a.m. meeting was meant to be Ned’s final tweaks to the island’s refurbished neo-Palladian manor: this lampshade is wonky, that bolster would look better over there, swap those Damien Hirst spots for this Tracey Emin squiggle, that sort of thing. Instead, it had turned into a ceremonial defenestration of underwhelming antiques. Nikki winced when – as his opening gambit – Ned lobbed an art deco vase out of the open first-floor window, then watched aghast as he jumped up and swung on the crystal chandelier to demonstrate that it was hung two inches too low.
‘Where did you get all this stuff?’ Ned demanded to know. ‘Are you all just lazy and stupid, or are you taking the piss? Contemporary vintage, that was the brief. What have you come up with? Third-tier National Trust property. Suburban hoarder’s front room. Your dead nan’s house. How much did all this crap cost me and what fucking idiot signed off the spend on it?’
Nikki took a deep breath. He wasn’t expecting an answer, of course, but all seventeen pairs of eyes were silently pleading with her to say something, anything. ‘Well, actually Ned,’ she replied, scrolling through emails on her iPad, ‘It says here it was you . . . About a week ago, I’m sure you said this was your favourite room on the island . . . Perhaps the light in here looks different today? I think that armchair might have been over there . . .’
She trailed off. Ned, as usual, continued as if no one had said anything at all.
‘I asked for statement pieces. STATEMENT PIE-CES. What statement is this fucking thing making, exactly?’ Ned yelled at the top of his voice, wrestling an oval gilt-framed oil portrait from the wall, holding it at arm’s length for inspection, pulling a reasonable facsimile of the expression worn by the scowling dowager it depicted, and sending it sailing out of the window with a flourish and a shrug.
How many of these scenes had she witnessed? Nikki wondered. How many of these little performances?
All of this gone, that was what he wanted. These knick-knacks. That rubbish. Move this Louis Vuitton trunk-cum-coffee table over there. Get rid of all the art, put a Keith Little nude over the fireplace. Think about the overall effect you’re trying to achieve here, for God’s sake. It’s not rocket science. Do I have to do everything myself?
The director of design, a slight man with a silver-white ponytail and cricket jumper knotted around his shoulders, was discreetly rubbing his jaw where he had, some moments earlier, taken a leather-bound volume of botanical prints to the chin. Nikki had watched as he silently picked it up and gently placed it back on the coffee table while Ned continued his rant.
She felt for all of them, gathered in The Manor’s drawing room, then kept waiting for an hour and a half, excited and nervous to show him their handiwork, this being their job, their career, something they had spent years working towards and dreaming about, only for Ned to storm in and immediately start screaming – literally screaming, little flecks of spittle arcing through the air, face puce. Screaming at people who had worked with him for a decade. Designers whose first project at Home this was. Underpaid assistants who had been working evenings, weekends, developing ulcers trying to keep up with Ned’s demands, his brainwaves, his abrupt reversals of opinion. Seventeen professional people who seemed unsure whether it would be better to jump forward and assist with the casual vandalism, or remain where they were and avoid making eye contact.