He did what any loving and dutiful father would do, he insists. Looking back on ‘that’ day – which he does frequently – Sky Roberts still doesn’t think he missed any signs. He still doesn’t know how he could have done things differently.
It was a typically warm and sunny day in Palm Beach,
Florida, when Sky (his real name, a legacy of his
Second World War father) decided to take the short trip during his lunch break from his job as a maintenance man at
Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, to a multi-million-dollar, waterfront mansion nearby.
His mission? To check out the mysterious ‘billionaire financier’ and his girlfriend who’d recently offered his teenage daughter,
Virginia, a job.
Virginia, known to the family as ‘Jenna’, was 16 and working alongside her father as an attendant at the club’s spa.
A few days earlier she’d excitedly reported an encounter with a female guest at the club’s pool, as she sat reading a book about massage therapy – a possible career avenue she was exploring.
The nicely spoken English woman had approached her and said her wealthy boss was looking for a full-time travelling masseuse, and would she be interested? The right candidate, she said, would receive training in massage therapy and would accompany her employer all over the world.
Naturally, his pretty, blonde daughter was extremely enthusiastic and Sky agreed it sounded like a fantastic opportunity for the youngster. But first, he said, he wanted to meet this curious benefactor. So, that day in 2000, he and Virginia climbed into his battered old pick-up and drove over to meet them.
