1. Natalie

1

NATALIE

I play with buttons like children play with toy cars or tiny, doll-house-sized dolls: driving them over the hills and valleys of textured brocade; spinning them on shiny silk to make them sparkle; lining them up on double-faced cashmere.

There are things we don’t permit ourselves to do in adulthood, I think. Things we pretty much forget how to do. Most of us wouldn’t remember how to indulge in childlike play even if we wanted to, and if we did remember, we’d probably feel too stupid to give it a go.

Of all the things I love about my chosen career as a fashion designer, it’s the playing. Pairing and swapping buttons and fabrics and trims; wrapping lengths of weighty duchesse satin around my body in a poor approximation of draping; piling swatches and samples of utter gorgeousness on top of each other with no rhyme or reason until suddenly, a purely accidental combination will have me gasping and clutching my heart because it’s all too perfect. It’s all too right.

The members at Alchemy would think I was a few sandwiches short of a picnic if they heard me talk like that about something that should be grown-up and serious—because it doesn’t get much more grown-up and serious than running a couture brand, even if it’s technically demi-couture, and even if my position as Creative Director sounds far grander than the back-breaking reality of it.

Even then.

Because the people who frequent this club are sophisticated and successful and so world-weary that they’ve sought this place out to provide the particular—extreme—kind of dopamine hit that their seemingly fabulous careers and lifestyles just can’t manage to provide.

It’s a little weird, if you think about it. By day, I play with jewelled buttons and fabric swatches and, by night, I work as the host at a fabulous, swanky sex club whose fancy Playroom provides the backdrop for the kind of playing my brain couldn’t compute, even if it tried.

Because when the rich, gorgeous people who frequent Alchemy play? Believe me, they play .

Alchemy has hosts in The Playroom—sexy, experienced, uninhibited people who are there to ensure the members have a great time. The female hosts wear white dresses, the guys form-fitting black.

I’m not that type of host.

Not on your life.

Instead, I stick firmly to the reception desk. When a member walks up those smart sandstone steps and passes through the glossy black door, I’m the first employee they see. It’s my job to be glamorous and classy and respectful and professional, and I do it with pride.

I only have to meet someone once to remember their face. I greet our guests by name, I make small talk, and, most importantly, I set the tone. I’m as key to one’s first impression of the Alchemy brand as are the dimly lit crystal chandeliers that line the lobby or the sensual, heady scent of the numerous Diptyque Baies candles burning on every surface.

I’m not here to sell sex, exactly. I’m here to kick off their experience of exclusivity. Luxury. Desire. I’m here to reassure every member that we’ve got them—that only the very best that money can buy lies beyond the double doors behind me.

It’s something I revel in. When you’ve had some—albeit fleeting—knowledge of how lavish, how privileged life can be, and then it’s been ripped from you, you never, ever stop trying to get it back. It’s a drug injected early on, an addiction you can never un-feel. Most of life feels like a cruel joke: the life my family leads now; the unstoppable leeching of disappointment; the sense of loss.

So when it’s near, I open myself to it like a sunflower to the sun, and I bask in it. In other words, it’s never a hardship to hang out at Alchemy, to soak up that wealth and entitlement and luxury.

You’d think it would hurt, but it doesn’t. On the contrary, it’s wonderful. It’s the comfort of a log fire when you’re chilled to the literal bone. It’s sustenance when your soul is starved.

Or so I find, anyway. As long as I don’t dwell too much on what the beautiful people I greet do when they pass through those double doors and shed their finery and transform into the animals they actually are.

The reality of running a fashion brand is far from glamorous, especially when your brand is housed in an attic in Soho. It’s a little too real. Gritty. Alchemy, on the other hand, is the very opposite. It’s escape. It’s an alternate reality. And when I’m here, I play my part .

If I run my brand in high street yoga pants most days, I host Alchemy’s guests in outfits that are as close to couture as I can make them. Gen, Alchemy’s COO and the person who hired me, gives me a clothing allowance that I suspect is way more generous than it should be. I’ve bought a couple of things from nice stores, but I spend most of the budget on raw materials—fabrics and rhinestones and the highest quality zips—and make my own outfits.

It’s chilly out tonight, but the lobby is lovely and warm, and the deceptively scary doormen are really good about closing the front door quickly each time they let someone in. They’re teddybears, really.

I’m in a black velvet catsuit tonight. The velvet is synthetic, but it has a decent stretch and fits me like a second skin. It’s high-necked and sleeveless, cut away at the shoulders. The matching gloves come all the way to my armpits, leaving only my shoulders exposed.

Best of all, I’ve embellished the gloves, neckline, waist, and matching velvet headband with an intricate garland of silver thread and leaf-shaped crystals that catch the lights of the chandeliers whenever I move and bedazzle the walls of the lobby with dancing light.

I feel good. More critically, I don’t feel out of place, and that matters to me. I want to do a good job for Gen, as well as for the guys—her lovely co-founders, Rafe, Zach, and Cal. I want to represent this amazing business they’ve built to the best of my ability, and I want to be able to hold my own with their members, no matter how different our realities are.

Most of all, I want to show my gratitude to Gen, who met me when I served her at a nearby restaurant, took a hell of a chance on me, and jacked my pay up to over double what I was making waiting tables .

So when she arrives at the club, her husband Anton and another guy trailing in behind her, I give her a smile that’s bright and sincere in equal measure, because I adore this woman. The society pages say she landed the most eligible bachelor in London when she married the billionaire Anton Wolff, but for what it’s worth, I think he got the best deal. She’s simply amazing: warm, and gorgeous, and driven, and badass.

Tonight, she looks like a Hitchcock heroine, her platinum hair swept back and her makeup dewy and immaculate. At a time of year when the rest of us look like corpses, she’s glowing, thanks to a recent trip to the Caribbean with Anton. She’s in her favourite huge black faux-fur coat from Max Mara, and I instantly recognise the pattern of the gold sequins visible at her neck as belonging to Zuhair Murad’s current Autumn/Winter collection.

I could live vicariously through this woman’s wardrobe all day long.

The guys are laughing and joking behind her as they wait. Anton, too, looks tanned and well—he’s older but ridiculously dashing—and the other guy has his back to me. He’s seriously tall, taller even than Anton, with a head of dark curls.

‘Evening, Nat,’ Gen says, laying her evening bag on the lectern as I check her and Anton in on the iPad. ‘How’s tricks?’

‘Good,’ I tell her. ‘It’s busy in there.’

‘Always happy to hear that,’ she says, peering over the lectern to get a better look at my outfit. ‘Is that a catsuit? Holy shit, it’s incredible.’

‘It is. Thanks.’ I smile happily, because a sartorial seal of approval from Gen always makes me feel better. I take a step back and hold my arms out so she can see better. She sweeps her gaze over me approvingly.

‘Stunning. Did you make it?’

‘You know it.’

She shakes her head. ‘Bloody amazing. You clever, clever girl. Don’t be a stranger when you’re running Dior, will you?’

I smile ruefully at her ridiculous suggestion as I look down at the iPad again. ‘I wish. Just one guest tonight, is it?’

Members can sign in up to three guests each month. Their guests aren’t party to the same rigorous background checks and interviews that the members undergo, but they have to electronically sign an NDA, an acknowledgment of the code of conduct here at Alchemy, and an understanding that failure to comply with said rules can jeopardise the membership of whoever is signing them in.

In other words, if you invite someone along, you’d better be damn sure they’ll behave themselves (even if good behaviour at Alchemy means something quite different from its meaning at most other elegant London establishments).

‘Yep, just one,’ Gen says as I hand her the stylus and the iPad with the necessary paperwork loaded up. ‘You should meet Adam, actually. He runs a few fashion brands.’ She cranes her neck. ‘Adam, darling? Come here. We need you to sign your life away before we unleash you on all those unsuspecting women.’

He turns, and steps in beside Gen at the lectern, and oh my God.

Oh my fucking God.

It’s him.