High Time by Hannah Rothschild

Author:Hannah Rothschild
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781526656810
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2023-04-04T00:00:00+00:00

11

October 2016

In the last month, scrimping, saving and adding commissions to bills, Ayesha added to her nest egg, which now stood at £490,000. It was a lot of money but far short of the £145 million she needed to buy Trelawney from Medieval Illusions. Taking Yasmin’s advice to heart, there was no time for self-pity or reflection. She had to make the most of every occasion and every hour.

The day the new winter collections dropped, she went to every designer store in London and, using her husband’s credit card, spent over £100,000 on new clothes. The following day she took everything back in exchange for cash. Going through her capacious wardrobes, she picked out her favourite pieces and consigned all the rest to an upmarket vintage store in Chelsea. The astonished shop owner made a down payment of £75,000 and promised that Ayesha would see three times that amount even after the 50 per cent commission. Then she took her large collection of handbags to a leading auction house where she was given a reserve of £80,000 for just one Kelly bag; the Birkins, Gucci and Pradas combined were guaranteed to net over £150,000. She stared at the auctioneer in amazement. Sleet had bought them to boost his wife’s social standing; she’d never imagined these objects (which she’d never particularly liked) would become crucial building blocks in her future. Next she put the allowance of £1,000 a week that Sleet gave her for beauty treatments (her hair and other fripperies) into ‘the future’ account. Within a couple of weeks, her fighting fund rose to nearly £925,000.

As a non-regulated private investor unable to place large or complicated bets on the market, she opened a Swiss bank account and employed a broker called Herr Brunner who could help her copy Sleet’s moves by buying or shorting the same stocks. Not everything went up but, following his lead, she increased her portfolio by 25 per cent in one month, taking it to more than a £1 million. Rather than feel pleased with her progress, Ayesha was increasingly despondent: Medieval Illusions were due to take possession of Trelawney in ten months’ time.

Potentially, the most lucrative activity was buying art. Dealers made at least 40 per cent from selling works to her husband; from now on, she’d take a cut. Walking around their homes, she chided herself for not thinking of this earlier. At their London residence, Ayesha had, over the last five years, replaced her husband’s collection of dull minor impressionists with more exciting Modern British Masters. Had she added a percentage to these, she’d have made several million pounds. Sleet hadn’t even noticed when one cloudy haystack was replaced with a bold abstract – for him, art was just wall covering. Once she’d loved looking at the works she’d bought; now she saw them as squandered opportunities. She combed the catalogues, auction rooms and galleries for new works for her husband to buy and for her to mark up. Sleet, thinking only of Zamora, dismissed her suggestions.

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