Seven Sisters by Katherine Kovacic

Author:Katherine Kovacic [Kovacic, Katherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2022-11-28T00:00:00+00:00

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Olivia almost didn’t go to the Goldberg Foundation Gala Spring Ball. Each year her agency, Miller-Simons, supported the cancer charity by buying two tables of ten at five hundred dollars a plate, filling them with upper management, up-and-comers, and maybe an A-lister or two with new projects to push. Occasionally they’d also contribute to the fundraising auction by donating a celebrity experience: a dinner, if the celebrity was particularly erudite, venerable and charming, or signed memorabilia if the star was a top talent but considerably less personable.

This year, the celeb in question was not one in Olivia’s stable, and given she’d been flying the flag at any and every opportunity over the past few months, she’d begged off. But at the last minute a colleague pulled out due to a family emergency, and Olivia’s boss asked her to complete the table. She was tired, her face literally ached from all the talking and smiling, and she really wanted a night on the couch with some sushi and a glass of chablis. Instead, she acquiesced and went home early to arrange a babysitter, feed Billy – now an integral part of the family – and change into her trusty sheath dress, steeling herself for a four-course meal and what was promised to be a night of shimmering entertainment. She felt tired just thinking about it.

Nonetheless, two hours later she extended one elegant leg from the back of a Silver Service taxi and eased herself gracefully onto the red carpet. A few photographers from assorted society pages were there, and Olivia smiled dutifully and gave her name when asked, knowing her picture wouldn’t make it to the Saturday edition. Inside, bathed in soft artificial light, she immediately felt better. Keeping the lights low was one way organisers tried to make a dinner for six hundred people feel like a more intimate experience, and it made her caramel-brown dress look like a column of burnished gold. After consulting the seating plan, she wove her way through the room to the Miller-Simons tables, close to the front and off to the left of the stage. Finding a place, she switched herself to autopilot.

The first three courses went by in a blur of half-eaten dishes interspersed with air kisses, polite greetings, ‘call me’ hand signals to people on remote tables, a couple of business card exchanges, and the obligatory cabaret numbers and light banter from the emcee. Olivia had glanced through the list of auction offerings, more as a way of disengaging from others than because she actually expected to buy anything, so when Sydney’s great and good began raising their bejewelled hands for a series of holidays, spa experiences, a Maserati for a day, and, yes, dinner with a celebrity, Olivia’s attention was all for the waitstaff and the dessert. She was just pushing a forkful of mud cake through the berry coulis when something the auctioneer said caught at the edge of her thoughts.

On the stage, a painting sat in an easel and was magnified on the screen behind.

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