Gold Diggers by Tasmina Perry Read Free Book Online Page A

millionaire several times over, but he had moved amongenough lords and earls to know that it would take more than a pile in the bank to remove the stain of his lowly background. So, from the age of three, Karin was packed off to ballet class, French tuition and the Pony Club – anything that might help her fit into the world of the upper classes. At thirteen, she was dispatched to Briarton, a liberal, cosmopolitan institution with a student register made up of rock-star offspring and pretty daughters of super-rich Greeks.
    ‘But I want to go to Downe House, Daddy,’ the young Karin had complained as she packed her shiny new monogrammed trunk ready for school. ‘That’s where Abby and Emma from Pony Club are going.’
    But Terence didn’t want Karin mixing with daughters of stockbrokers and solicitors; he wanted her to befriend Euro-royalty and billionheirs. ‘You go to Briarton, my darling,’ he had said, ‘and you make friends with the richest, most connected girls that you can, and you keep them for life.’
    ‘How do I do that?’ Karin had asked, never wanting to disappoint her father.
    ‘Don’t you worry, baby, you are beautiful like your mother and strong like your father,’ Terence had told her, stroking her hair. ‘You will be popular. Trust me.’
    It was Karin’s five-year stay at Briarton, tucked away in the Berkshire countryside, which was to shape her desires and ambitions for life. Karin was a bright girl and, by thirteen, already a beauty, with long chestnut hair, greeny-grey eyes and, thanks to her parents, a highly sophisticated dress-sense that got her noticed. While some of her classmates had closets full of couture, Karin experimented with cast-offs from her mother – Halston, Bob Mackie and Ossie Clark, mixed together with bargain finds from Chelsea Girl. A strikingly beautiful and offbeat character around the corridors of Briarton, her father was correct; she became popular withthe richest girls in a very rich school. Rarely did a half-term break pass without a trip to one of her friend’s homes overseas. By the age of sixteen she had skied in Gstaad, sunbathed in Palm Beach and shopped in Hong Kong. She became an expert in excuses as to why her roster of glamorous friends should not be invited to her parents’ large home in Surrey which, in contrast to Fernanda Moritez’s cattle ranch in Brazil, Juliette Dupois’s chalet in St Moritz, and Athena Niarchios’s villa in Greece, seemed rather small and unremarkable indeed.
    When she left Briarton at eighteen, Karin had a handful of GCSEs, a couple of middle-grade A levels and the steely glint of ambition in her eyes. Her school friends had given her a taste of a rich, jet-set lifestyle that she was unwilling to give up, so she sold her eighteenth birthday present, a cherry-red Alpha Romeo Spider, to fund a gap year of travel, during which she mined her school contacts ruthlessly. She spent winter in the attic of a beautiful townhouse on Paris’s Ile St-Louis, which belonged to the aunt of a French friend, Natalie. Aunt Cecile had divorced well and had impeccable manners, wore couture and had impressed upon Karin the importance of grooming and social ammunition.
    ‘ Cherie , you are so beautiful,’ Aunt Cecile had told her, ‘but you must take care of yourself.’ She had then shown Karin her exquisite collection of jewellery, spread out on her Louis XV bed. ‘Remember this: men like to fix things. So when a man sees a pretty thing, they want to make it even prettier. You be as pretty as these jewels, cherie , and men will never stop giving them to you.’
    So Karin was initiated into the habit of weekly facials at Carita, polished nails, waxing, and daily exercises to keep the neck firm and youthful. At chic Left Bank cocktail parties, she acquired the art of polite conversation and etiquette that would stay with her for life. She learnt to play bridge and baccarat and appreciate classical music and jazz.
    The following summer,