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conscience, already an irritating thorn in the side of the diamond cartels and multinational retail chains, was part nature, part nurture. Always a sensitive and loving little girl, she grew up in a uniquely sheltered and privileged world in her family’s ancestral, stately home in Scotland, Drumfernly Castle. Had it not been for the many long childhood summers spent in South Africa, at her Aunt Agnes’s game reserve near Franchoek, she might never have seen a black face until the day she left St. Clement’s Girls’ Boarding School in Inverness to make her own way in London. As it was, by the time she began modeling she had long since developed a passionate interest in African affairs and the injustices of globalization. Never, ever would she forget her first trip to Cape Town, driving past the corrugated iron shacks of the shanty towns, where thousands of AIDS-stricken people sweltered in the hundred-degree heat, while less than two miles away their white neighbors lounged by swimming pools, plainly visible from the shacks, congratulating themselves on how cheaply they’d bought their property and wondering aloud where else in the world could you enjoy a full lobster supper with a decent bottle of Pinot Grigio for the equivalent of five US dollars.
    Loading the last of the jewelry trays into the safe, she closed and locked it with a satisfying
cl-clunk
and reached up to the hook by the door for Boxford’s leash.
    “Come on, you big lug,” she said, ruffling his tangled fur and clipping the lead onto his collar while simultaneously removing her tattered left Ugg boot from his slobbery jaw and slipping it onto her foot. “We’d better get a move on if you want to eat.”
    Outside, the rain was even colder than it looked. Stepping into it from the warm cocoon of the shop felt like getting out of a sauna into one of the showers at St. Clement’s, so freezing it made you gasp for breath. Dressed for the cold but not the wet—thesky had been as crisp and blue as a butterfly’s wing when she’d set out for work this morning—it wasn’t long before Scarlett was soaked to the bone. Her Ugg boots squelched audibly with each step, and icy water ran off the sleeves and back of her sodden suede coat like hundreds of miniature mountain streams, joining forces with the torrents running in the gutters as she crossed Portobello Road.
    “You need an umbrella, love!” shouted the fish ’n’ chips man from across the road. “Wanna borrow mine?”
    “Thanks,” Scarlett yelled back. There was very little traffic, but the noise of the rain was deafening. “But I think it’s a bit late for that now. We’re almost home anyway.”
    Cheered by this exchange, she stepped up her pace, dragging poor Boxford from puddle to puddle on their way to the local organic supermarket. Even on a horrid, gray day like today, Scarlett adored Notting Hill. The friendliness, the sense of community, the quirky, boutiquey shops of Portobello competing for space and custom with super chichi stores like Matches and Anya Hindmarch. In the eight years since she’d moved here, she’d seen the area go from genuinely bohemian, a home to artists and artisans from all walks of life, to its current status of “Belgravia of the North,” a stomping ground for hedge-fund millionaires and their tacky Russian wives, with their furs and Bentleys and round-the-clock nannies for their baby-Dior-clad offspring.
    But she could never bring herself to join the new breed of Notting Hill–haters. Yes, there was a lot of new money coming in, an inevitable result of the crazy property hike. But there was still a mix of rich and poor, alternative and mainstream, arty and financial, that couldn’t be found anywhere else in London. Ten-million-dollar mansions still stood cheek to cheek with public housing, and the Woolworths on Kensington Park Road did every bit as brisk a business as the Paul Smith on the corner. People
talked
to each other here, on the street, in