Читать онлайн книгу «The Silver Chain» автора Primula Bond

The Silver Chain
Primula Bond
Bound by passion, she was powerless to resist.The Silver Chain is the first in the sexy, passionate and addictive Unbreakable Trilogy by Primula Bond.One dark evening in London, photographer Serena Folkes is indulging her impulsive side with a night-time shoot. But someone is watching her – mysterious entrepreneur Gustav Levi. Serena doesn’t know it yet, but this handsome stranger will change her life forever…Serena is fascinated by Gustav, the enigmatic owner of the Levi Gallery, and she soon feels an irresistible pull of attraction. The interest is mutual, and Gustav promises to launch Serena’s photographic career at his gallery, but only if Serena agrees to become his exclusive companion.To mark their agreement, Gustav gives Serena a bracelet to wear at all times. Attached to it is a silver chain of which he is the keeper. With the chain Gustav controls Serena physically and symbolically – a sign that she is under his power.As their passionate relationship intensifies, Gustav’s hold on the silver chain grows stronger. But will Gustav’s dark past tear them apart?A seductive and beautifully written novel perfect for fans of erotic romance.



PRIMULA BOND
The Silver Chain


To R who is my rock
Table of Contents
Title Page (#ub66c8491-2502-5590-b6a2-30ac67b5ca3b)
Dedication (#ub19072bd-4793-550a-8ff5-0059d0d2eda5)
Chapter One (#uea709fb7-1166-52c7-ad68-7026b0741de4)
Chapter Two (#u28c9c042-7725-57a6-a6a9-505fcfe22d12)
Chapter Three (#u7616bae1-c77a-5c8d-b448-8edb219bed80)
Chapter Four (#u821b35e9-cd85-578e-a6ec-39a2db5b1ec8)
Chapter Five (#u713d915f-1d22-5c14-b050-699e13b1f7c6)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Read an extract from The Golden Locket (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

ONE
At last. At last. We jolt once, twice, then start to move. The rumbling from the diesel grows louder and more determined as the engine settles into gear. The vibrations under my seat are calmer, but they are doing nothing to quell the churning in my stomach.
The grey paved platform, slippery from the rain driving in from the south west, rolls smoothly alongside as we pull away, but it’s still too slow, too slow. I feel like I’m on the run. My hands are shoved under my legs to keep them prisoner. My heart is juddering as if there’s still time for someone to slam on the brakes and arrest me. Why do I feel like that? This is as final as it gets. Everything alongside me, soon to be left behind, is finished.
I’m free to go where I like, so why does this feel like the great escape?
I wish I was sitting up front with the driver. Not to talk to him. I only want to perch quietly on a ledge or a stool up front, and stare out at the world.
What a day job a train driver has. He’s probably sick to death of it, but what a view he has, all to himself. He clambers up to the cab at the start of every shift, yawning and cursing, carrying his flask of muddy tea, then all day and sometimes all night he’s king of the road. The big curving window, smeared with grease and smuts, spattered with rain, sometimes even with blood or guts or bits of animals, is a cinema screen showing the English countryside unfurling between the carved leafy embankments. The gleaming metal tracks converge in the distance just like the parallel lines you draw in art classes to learn perspective.
Why doesn’t he step on it? We are still crawling, we still haven’t emerged from the canopy roof and ornate bottle- green girders of the station.
The train is wrestling with the wind that blows viciously off the moors no matter what season it is, batting at the station signs as we gather speed. Let other people get off here and feel jolly. Let them think of that breeze as bracing sea air.
Me? I’m turning my back. I can’t wait to get out.
The train pulls away fast now, too fast to keep up if you were trying to chase after it, trying to grab the door handles to jump on. Jake isn’t trying to stop me. He’s not moving at all, in fact. Not that I can see him any more. I’m facing forwards, way past all the drooping heads and shoulders of the other bored passengers.
Usually I like to weave a story around fellow travellers, maybe even catch the eye of an interesting-looking man or woman. I’m not as shy as you’d think, at least not with strangers. I always have something to talk about or show them, my pictures, my work. But this lot are faceless, all anoraks and shopping bags and mobile phones. They don’t even glance out of the window at the place they’ve passed through.
Who can say what they’re thinking about behind their laptops and magazines? Work. Warring families. Hospital appointments. Running away. Tonight’s supper. Elopement. The car’s MOT. Adulterous assignations.
As the distance between us stretches to breaking point the muscles in my shoulders, my eyebrows, teeth, my jaw, even my hair, all start to let go, relax. The headache hasn’t quite gone, but I drank too much last night so I’ve only myself to blame. I unbutton my new caramel tweed jacket checked with threads of faint blue. It’s a little tight because at the last minute I decided to shove my thick white sweater on as well. I smile as my ribcage expands and my breasts rise gently with relief.
I unwrap my oversized royal-blue scarf and run my hand up my warm, slightly sticky neck to release my tangled hair. Horrible how hangovers make you feel. I didn’t realise I was still so strung up. Like banging your head on a brick wall. You only know how bad it is when you stop.
I know it isn’t fair, but you only get one life. Not fair on Jake, I mean. He looked petrified just now, in the fossilised sense. I’ve never seen him so angry, or so still. All that fidgeting, the phantom drumming thing he does with imaginary sticks on every available hard surface, the constant foot tapping and knuckle cracking. All stopped.
I didn’t want him to come here and see me off. Surely after everything we’ve said and done he doesn’t believe for a second that I’ll stay? I have no more energy for any of it. For him. Everything is focused on the future, on selfish little me. Those gleaming metal tracks are carrying me out of here, the big smoke is blooming with promise on the horizon.
How many times can you say goodbye?
Last night, holed up with him in his caravan on the cliff, was dreadful. What was I thinking? Everything had gone so well up until then. All my decisions, plans, all the arguments were over. I was so cool, sorted, strong. And then like an idiot I agreed to meet him for one last drink in his brother’s pub. He knew I’d say yes because I wouldn’t be able to stand one more night alone in the house. Even though they are finally gone, even though the coldness and the silence, the sneaky feet and surreptitious fists that never left a mark, even though the dead eyes and the lovelessness are all gone, it’s still horribly creepy. And now it’s deserted as well.
The Black Hat looked jolly and warm enough. Even though it’s not Halloween till tomorrow, they’d lit candles and lanterns and draped the beams and light fittings with lacy cobwebs, propped-up broomsticks, carved out grinning pumpkins. One of Jake’s many gripes is that I’m buggering off just when the party season is starting. He still doesn’t get that I’m done with partying. I’m done with him, with everyone, and certainly with spending any more of my precious time and money in a medieval pub in a dead-end village at the far end of the country.
I have a life to start living.
But I went along for that one last drink, didn’t I, persuaded our rag-tag bunch of mates to come along. Hence this hangover. Jake was behind the bar all evening, serving a bubbling punch from a cauldron which was deceptively orange-flavoured and totally lethal. He was ladling out brimming pint glasses for free, and by the time our mates had drifted away, slightly too obviously I thought, I was pissed and careless, and what happened next is that all that coolness, sortedness, strength, it all evaporated. At least physically. Nothing in my mind had changed. My bags were still packed.
I was still the heroine of all those country and western blues you’ve ever sung along to, about lovers leaving on jet planes.
So there we were, Jake and I, somehow back inside the little tin can that he lives in, and it was midnight. I can only conclude, if there is a jury out there, that it was laziness and familiarity and the remnants of randiness that bore us from the village up the road, along the pitted track, into the muddy field to where the caravan sits, protected from the sheer drop to the fierce sea by massive boulders that look like nightclub bouncers, and purple moss and hard sheep droppings and a broken fence.
That caravan with its moth-eaten pull-down bed and garish seventies orange-flowered curtains, its kettle and booze and stash of chocolate and overflowing ashtrays, it used to be my haven. Once we’d pulled the rickety door closed and bolted it with elastic bands and other flimsy barriers against the world, Jake and I were like babes in the wood in there. We used to cling and whisper together, getting stoned, learning everything together. And I mean everything.
Childhood sweethearts sounds so innocent, doesn’t it? But we weren’t children. And we were on a mission to shed our innocence.
We both tried to deny we were virgins when we finally found ourselves under that faded duvet. But who else could possibly have got there first? When he passed his driving test and bought the caravan we christened Jake’s new toy by deflowering each other.
It’s meant to be awful, and painful, the first time, isn’t it, but when the fumbling, the probing and the giggling stopped and we became deadly silent and serious, only the sea foam trying to reach up the cliff, only Adele crooning in the background, when we realised that our mouths were made for this different, deep, penetrating kissing, that our bodies were built to fold round and in and out, to become hot and yielding under each other’s hands, when I held him balanced in my fingers, long and hard and ready, and he touched me, so soft and wet, and waiting, it was amazing.
Sorry, but it was brilliant. Two fit teenagers hiding away from home, exploring each other in the dark. How could we fail?
I didn’t come that first time, or even the second, but boy did he, and my triumph was as explosive as his orgasm. By the third attempt we still weren’t always doing it right, or very imaginatively, or with any kind of adult finesse. But we were hooked.
My stomach lurches as the train shoots through a tunnel. Is that a kind of useless death throe of desire kicking me deep inside, or is it excitement about what’s ahead? Desire used to be a sharp tugging between my legs or a coiling in my stomach whenever I thought of Jake’s angry blue eyes, his hungry mouth, his eager hands, his quiet, rocking caravan. But when the longing slides northwards to the heart, then the brain, by then it’s diluted completely and that’s when it’s platonic. I’m not sure it’s even that, now. It can’t be. It’s over. I keep telling him. I’m gone.
Did I owe it to him, to give him one last night? Payment for keeping me safe when I had nowhere else to go? Did he hope that bringing out all his tricks, all the old words and moves, the guitar strumming that secretly shreds my nerves, did he think that getting me drunkenly naked by the light of his old hurricane lamp would make me chuck all my dreams out of the window and make me stay?
He knows me so well, so how could he not guess last night, once he was on top of me, the usual position, how could he not tell through the limpness of my limbs around him, the tightness of my body resisting him, the difficulty he had pushing in, the way I turned my head away from his desperate kisses so that they missed and slithered instead across my cheek, my half-hearted moaning, how could he not know that I was faking it?
The easiest way for me to explain why I let it happen is that it was sympathy sex. Cruel, I know. But that’s how removed I felt from it. From him. I am a bitch, no question, just as he said. How else to excuse the way our fledgling love burned brightly for a while and then just died? Why have I changed so drastically in the space of a couple of years? Almost as if my teens were shackles I was waiting to throw off as soon as I hit twenty. I can’t explain it myself. Suggesting that I grew out of my adolescence somehow doesn’t cut it.
Just now he slouched out of the shadows as I was heaving my cases and photographic gear into the carriage. And there’s the rub. He slouches. I march.
Thank God the train was already there, striking its metal hooves to be off. The guard was waddling along the platform, probably wishing he could slam the doors and wave a flag like in the old days but having to content himself with jabbing at the hissing buttons.
The guard’s whistle blew, and there was nothing more to do. I don’t even know if Jake saw me. Anyone noticing him standing there, mean and moody and uncomprehending, would think he was a hunk alright. What idiot would kick that out of bed? Some lucky girl, one of the girls in the pub, in the newspaper office, one of the walkers along the cliff, will have him, if they haven’t already.
Jake walked to the far end of the platform as the doors folded shut, the end where it slopes down into the nothingness of grass and weeds and rubbish, so that it wouldn’t look as if he was going to miss me. His iPod was plugged into his ears, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his leather jacket. His fingers would have been fiddling and twisting all the items I know he keeps in there. Phone, keys, wine gums, pens, cash, miniature tape recorder. Ripping up the snapshot of me to show that he’s over it.
Well, that goes for the two of us. I’m off men now. For good.
The train gathers speed, breathes its huge rumbling sigh of relief as it accelerates out of the station. It rushes with glee through the scruffy outskirts of town, then turns away from the sea, ploughs through the bare, wintry countryside overhung with a heavy blanket of sky, and hurtles towards London.

TWO
I have them in my sights. A ragged crocodile of little witches, snaking their way across the quiet garden square. They seem to know exactly where they are and where they’re going, but I am several tube stops away from my flat south of the river and I’m not quite sure where I am. I tell myself that’s all part of the fun of being in this city. A mist has descended over London like a ragged curtain and temporarily cowed the commuters who would normally be scurrying home by now.
The leading witch holds a lantern aloft, presumably to guide her gang to some Halloween party round the corner, and it emits a weak glow of eerie orange.
In the middle of the square there’s a statue of a man who looks like Robin Hood or someone, maybe Dick Turpin, or Cupid with clothes on. Someone important and athletic, anyway, and yet there is something melancholy in the statue’s posture. It even seems, in this dim light, to be turning its head to watch the mini witches pass by beneath it. I count seven in all, maybe six witches and a wizard. I rip my gloves off with my teeth, let them fall onto the spikes of frozen grass, and as the witches pass beneath the statue, its bare toes gripping the edge of its stone plinth, I start to shoot.
‘Keep going, my little beauties,’ I breathe, stepping silently along the parallel path to keep track of them. ‘I’ve got you exactly where I want you.’
Thank God I’ve found a focus. One of the many things I didn’t anticipate about arriving as a newcomer in London is how quickly, if you have nothing concrete to do, no concrete living to earn, no smart business clothes to wear, you become invisible. Redundant. How busy everyone else is, mouthing into mobile phones, checking watches, filing into tubes and buses, hailing cabs, knocking back coffees. Staying close to people they know. Caring so little about the strangers passing them by.
My mind is teeming with ideas and projects. I’m trained and qualified, ready to sell my soul. I’ve been prowling the streets all day yesterday and today with my CV, but although I enjoy making contact with each new human being none of them is sealing a deal with me yet, shaking my hand and saying, ‘Your work is marvellous, Miss Folkes, and you are going to make millions. I can’t believe how lucky we are to have discovered you!’
How quickly the fire and enthusiasm fizzing inside me yesterday, on that train, has faded. Not extinguished. It can’t be. I’ve burned all my bridges coming here. All those bridges the train hurried over and under in its haste to get away from my home town. All burned. I won’t go back there in a million years, at least not to stay.
It’s not Jake I couldn’t face. No-one will believe that, but I can deal with him if I have to. It’s the rest of it, the memories, the house on the cliffs, those trapped years stretching on and on with no parole. The person I was, I am, when I’m there. I can never forgive the people who should have guaranteed my happiness, taken notice of my talent. Loved me, just a little.
Even so. I’m in London at last. The end of the rainbow for now. Over painstaking weeks and months I have prepared a sharp, slick portfolio. I have my CV, testimonials, references from my Saturday job bosses and my art tutor Allan Mackenzie. I’ve even included the catalogue from the exhibition I showed at the local library. Big provincial deal, but still. I’m aiming to kick down the door. No time to fight any encroaching despondency.
The little witches and wizards in their costumes seem to float a few inches above the frosty grass now, some looking down as if contemplating their sins, others gazing up at the night sky like miscast angels. I shoot again, picture after picture. Swap the digital for my old Canon, swap them back again. I’m engrossed, and I’m sure of myself. This is it. This is great. Magical little photogenic beings hovering across my path just when I most needed them.
Suddenly the smallest witch at the back stumbles over her too-long black cloak and lets out a howl. They all, with one fluid movement, swivel round to see what is happening. Another great shot of their sharp white profiles all in a row. They don’t help her. They just maintain their positions, wagging black-gloved fingers like disapproving duchesses, shake their heads impatiently, or lift flapping sleeves to adjust their masks until she is upright again and they can continue on their march.
They reach the wrought-iron gate at the northern edge of the square and as they pause to discuss their next move their pointed hats cast triangular shadows over their faces. The leader with her orange lamp gesticulates up the deserted street, away from me, away from the square.
I watch them process towards a tall, grand house on the corner. They slow down. I wonder if they are bravely going to raise their plastic tridents to knock on its double-height black door, maybe wave their baskets about and offer a trick or a treat, risk the wrath of the eccentric rich owner who will open up and yell at them to beat it, leave him alone to his reclusive life. But they obviously think better of it.
All at once, on a silent signal, they break formation like synchronised swimmers, scattering like ducks startled by gunshot, then equally neatly they join forces again and zig-zag briskly onwards. There’s the faint scattering of small, impatient feet on the gritty pavement, the tip of the crocodile’s tail whisks around the corner. And then they are gone.
‘Perfect,’ I murmur, following them through the gate. ‘My Halloween collection. That’ll make a brilliant next series.’
I still have no idea where I am, and they certainly can’t help me. But the rumble of traffic is never far away and I’m in no hurry. I could be lost all night and it wouldn’t matter. No-one would miss me. I could be lost forever. I lean against the streetlamp to scroll through the latest images.
‘Bloody lucky you didn’t scare them, creeping about in the dark like that.’
The deep, gravelly voice comes out of nowhere. It gives me such a fright that I bite down on my tongue and taste the iron tang of blood. It’s as visceral as if a wild animal has just pounced.
The world has gone very quiet. This great roaring capital is like a graveyard. Where the hell is everybody?
A figure in a long coat, a blood-red scarf wound several times round its neck, steps out of the shadowy square where I have just been. He grasps the gate and it makes a rusty screech as he slams it shut. I don’t know whether to cackle or scream. I push my collar and scarf up protectively. I could swear this place was deserted two minutes ago.
‘I wasn’t creeping about, as you put it.’ I line my spine up with the lamp post, straining to make out his features as he approaches. I clear the squeak from my throat. ‘Actually I’m working.’
‘A voyeur, then. Peeping Tom.’
The overhead lamp seems to glow brighter as he comes nearer, a dimmer switch operating somewhere off stage. All I can see of him so far is that he’s tall. He opens his arms in a wide gesture that looks like a greeting, or a silverback display of ownership. Or maybe he reckons he’s right. Then he claps the gloves together for warmth.
The lamp light strikes off the glossy black hair swinging over his forehead as he glances sideways for imaginary interlopers. The shadows stalking him, and the mist separating us, exaggerate his wolfish air, and though it’s difficult to gauge his build under the long coat I sense this is a man who could break my neck with one twist of his hands if I was stupid enough to cross him.
As if reading my mind he shoves those same hands in his pockets and moves more thoughtfully, head down, shoulders and body angled slightly sideways as if he’s sketching his half of a tango.
He only stops when the toes of his shoes touch mine. Strangers don’t usually invade space like this. He’s so close I can see the pulse pushing at the pale, oddly vulnerable sliver of skin just visible above his red scarf. But I don’t recoil. I can’t. I’m blocked in by the lamp post and by the hypnotic way he’s looking at me.
My breath is annoyingly damp against my upturned collar but I’m not ready to reveal myself. Happy just to stare him out. His stance, the angle of his gaze, is straight out of a filmnoir publicity still. An assassin lurking in a deserted Montmartre alleyway for his victim. A rejected lover outside his mistress’s opulent villa nestled in the hills above Florence, plotting revenge. Both staring down the barrel of a gun. And like the armed assassin, or the vengeful lover serving his dish cold, this guy’s in no rush.
I shift my numb feet while I work out how best to extricate myself. As long as he’s studying me I’ll study him back. First the vital sign beating silently beneath his ear, then the taut jaw line pricked with dark frustrated stubble. Under the smooth plane of cheek I can just see a muscle flickering as if he’s grinding his teeth. I can’t see his mouth. He could equally be suppressing a smile.
But it’s his eyes, black as liquid tar, that keep me pinned down. They have that kind of direct focus which you sometimes see in portraits and makes you wonder what high-octane relationship joined the subject with the artist. Right now it’s convincing me that he and I are the only two people in the world. Well, the only two people in London.
Perhaps he’s one of those mime artists, the ones who remain immobile for hours. But his eyes are alive, probing mine for the answer to a question he asked long ago.
I fidget with my collar. Hell, I’m not a mind-reader. I’m a photographer, even if the world is apparently indifferent to that fact. My occupation is observing people to the point of rudeness. That’s why I’m brazenly returning his gaze out here in the dark, with nobody else about. What’s his excuse?
‘So what are you doing out here?’
He’s toned it down but his voice still reverberates deeply, kind of nudges my ear drums. There’s a very slight accent. I want him to take off that scarf. It’s like the surgical mask of a TV surgeon forced to emote with just his eyes. But what I can see so far is beautiful. I can say that because it’s my job. If it wasn’t for the pulse going in his neck he could be carved from marble like the statue locked in the square. Steady. Calm. Cold.
The pretentious text beside my portrait of him, hanging in a gallery, would read: THE STRANGER IN THE SQUARE. HERE THE ARTIST HAS SNATCHED AND TRANSLATED FROM LIFE A REMOTE YET IDEALISED MASCULINE AESTHETIC.
Except now that the stranger has taken his hands out of his pockets to tug aside the blood-red scarf he’s becoming alarmingly human. His mouth parts at the shock of cold air barging in. His lower lip is surprisingly full, blooming with faint colour, and its generous curve is pinched down by the firm line of the upper lip. I was right. He’s stifling a smile.
‘I told you. I’m working,’ I repeat, my voice husky with nerves. My head knocks the lamp post. ‘And I must get on.’
His eyes are sucking me in. Get it together, Serena. He’s skin, blood and bone, that’s all. My fingers grip the edges of my camera. Will he object if I just lift it, like this, take a shot? If I can get the exposure right the shot will be highlighted by the solo, white light above our heads, a shafting beam like the searchlight from a spaceship. The moon dangling down on a string.
Like my little witches he is perfect for Halloween. I wonder if it’s deliberate? He’s in costume for a party. That explains the looming, vampirical vibe. Even the oversized oval buttons on his coat gleam like beetles’ shells. Any minute they’re going to scuttle up and down, and rattle.
The straight lines of his thick eyebrows could be inked in. His silky hair is no costume wig, though. It whips across his face in the wind and there’s a slight wave where it kinks off the scarf, and in the ocean depths of his eyes I can see myself reflected in miniature, staring and trapped like an effigy inside his pupils. Those snow-piste cheekbones are high, Slavic, and his skin is whiter even than the face paint of those little witches. So white it seems to glow from within.
Yes. A modern-day Dracula. A swarthy Edward Cullen, the Hollywood vampire’s less melancholy, more muscular older brother. But if I come out with that he’ll either assume the character and ruin the moment, or smirk sarcastically and walk away.
Let’s just get the shot, sublime in its anonymity, then beat a retreat.
I twist my zoom and click softly. My Dracula doesn’t budge. I swing away, pretending to focus instead on the picturesque bare branches of the garden trees grasping for the sky, the blocks of dense shadow cast by the tall house up the slope. My pretence places him off centre in the picture, as if he’s stumbled into the frame by accident, or he’s a demon darting away. That’s fine. Anarchic in its imperfection. My Halloween series is taking shape.
‘Spying on a group of little girls, all alone, rushing through the dark in their party clothes?’
My camera action has snapped him out of his reverie. He claps his hands together again, then nods up the street in the direction that the crocodile has gone. I’m offered his profile for a moment. A strong straight nose, haughty but not hawk-like. Eyelashes spiking his cheek.
‘I’m still not sure about you,’ he mutters, looking up the street. ‘It’s obvious you’re–’
‘Taking photographs. The clue’s in the camera? I’m collecting street scenes. Human life. Halloween scenes.’
I’m relieved yet disorientated that he’s taken his eyes off me at last. The moon and the streetlights and now the occasional flash of fireworks scatter diamond chips of light over the deserted square. ‘And frankly it’s not my fault if kids that age are unaccompanied.’
‘I stand corrected. Should we, I wonder, investigate? Make sure they’re OK?’ He strokes his chin thoughtfully. His eyes flash back at me.
‘They’re long gone now. I thought they might go trick-or-treating in that haunted-looking mansion up the slope there, but they thought better of it and scurried past. They’re probably at some rowdy children’s party round the corner.’
As I jerk my head towards the grim town house my Breton beret slips backwards and falls right off. My hair untwists from the loose knot and slowly cascades down over my shoulders, catching in my eyelashes, snagging in my collar.
The man gives an almost theatrical start. To my astonishment he snorts with laughter, tapping his head. His amusement rumbles deep down in his chest. It sounds like pebbles being stirred at the bottom of a pond.
‘Well, I’ll be damned! Round one to you, mademoiselle. I had you down as a scrawny bloke. And I’m rarely wrong about anything.’
His eyes elongate with amusement and lift at the corners. They seem to work harder than other people’s. Emote, like those TV surgeons. The rest of his face takes its cue from his eyes as his mood changes. Even his eyebrows relax, become less black. The lines of his face seem to settle, become more human, less of a mask. He rubs at his lower lip with his leather-gloved finger with appealing uncertainty.
‘Yeah. Well. Not a peeping Tom after all, see? Just going about my own business.’ I bend quickly to pick up my hat. I can’t see my own gloves. ‘I find these bulky winter clothes are a great disguise. Handy for keeping strangers from pestering me, especially at night.’
‘Are you saying I’m pestering you? Because you don’t look remotely bothered to me.’
‘Should I be?’ I put my beret back on, fiddling unnecessarily to set it more rakishly on my head. I like the heaviness of my hair on my shoulders and back. It’s comforting and also warm. I glance about for my gloves. My fingers are beginning to stiffen up in the biting cold. ‘That didn’t come out the way I meant it to. You made me jump, that’s all.’
He lifts his shoulders, opening his arms in the multi-layered gesture which now includes frivolous apology. His arms are so big in the coat, the width of his embrace so inviting. What would it feel like if he wrapped those warm sleeves tight around me, carried me off somewhere? He’s easily strong enough. Embraced me and held me, kept me safe. Or ravished me?
‘I didn’t mean to scare you.’ He leans one elbow casually on the railings and crosses one foot in front of the other. The wind flips his black hair across his face. ‘I should have known you were female. You weren’t loping like a man at all then but moving gracefully. Your hips. Women sway their hips when they don’t even realise it. Especially when they are at their most fertile, apparently.’
Now I’m certain he’s making fun of me. I hope to God that prevents him from reading what’s really going on in my mind, because my thoughts are skittering off the scale. I must be more frustrated than I realised. Either way I can’t help staring at the way his teeth grate across his lower lip, biting but not piercing the tender skin. The upper lip is harder, less forgiving. Still determined to give nothing away. It’s such a dynamic smile. Look how it brings his face to life, smoothes out the tension. Those strong white teeth could really hurt, I’m certain of it, but oh, if you let them graze across your mouth, your neck, your breasts, they could so easily please as well.
‘Hmm. Too much information.’ Thank God it’s dark out here. My whole body is burning hot. I blow on my bare fingers. ‘You sound like a wildlife documentary.’
‘Too observant for my own good, especially when there are interesting specimens to track.’ His hair flips off his brow, making his eyes startling like searchlights. ‘I only meant to say that you have much lovelier, longer legs than any male and I should have clocked those. I’m guessing you’re an athlete, or used to running over rough terrain.’
‘Athlete? No, Mr Attenborough. But rough terrain, yes. I used to live by the sea.’ My stiff fingers fiddle with my camera. I’m desperate to study the new images.
‘Right. And people who live by the sea don’t like being complimented on their legs or any other part of their anatomy?’ The stranger tilts his head like an artist at his easel and with his hands starts to sketch the outline of my legs from my feet upwards. He glances mischievously at me as he reaches my waist and makes an exaggerated hourglass. We both know that’s daft because tonight I’m shapeless in my jacket. ‘Or are you really a mermaid?’
‘Nothing mythical ever materialises in my neck of the woods. Not that it’s my neck of the woods any more.’ I have to smile, partly because that is such a good thought. ‘You’re obviously used to charming the birds off the trees, mister, but my being female still doesn’t give you carte blanche to comment on my hips or legs or fertility, or speculate about my natural habitat.’
He shrugs cheerfully. ‘I’m no Neanderthal, mademoiselle. Just as keen an observer as you are.’
I’ve only ever seen strong white teeth like that in America, or on television. Over here such fine teeth belong only to the very famous or very rich. In the lamplight, which has continued to brighten and is now as strong as a floodlight, his lips and those teeth are glinting as if he’s hungry. Or thirsty. His firm lips curl back slightly, and there’s that wolfish air again.
You hungry for some comfort, stranger? Because I sure as hell am.
‘You are absolutely right, of course,’ he concedes. His face straightens as he looks away from me again, up towards the town house. ‘And yet again I apologise. I just didn’t expect to bump into someone like you tonight, that’s all. Ever, in fact.’
‘Someone real, you mean? Rather than a ghoulie, or a ghostie, or someone dressed up as a sacrificial virgin?’
He claps his gloved hands. ‘Well, I guess you could pass as a woodland nymph, with a better body, more hair, and a louder voice. But actually I just meant someone who doesn’t have a clue how stunning she is.’
This doesn’t feel wrong. This encounter. This conversation. How could anyone call this pestering? It feels totally right. I keep the camera in front of my face, framing him in my viewfinder. I have no desire to run away. He could be menacing, if I really wanted to dissect it, but so what? Any sensible girl would be beating a retreat by now with some kind of polite excuse, but I’m done with being sensible. Maybe that’s why I’m drawn towards him like money to a magnet. So who cares? And where are my bloody gloves?
My cousin Polly, whose chic little riverside flat I’m borrowing while she smashes the glass ceiling in New York, would be that sensible girl. She’d take one look at this tall dark man looming over me, with the black eyes glittering and lively now from the lamplight, and she’d call him a Lothario. Such a great word. So good you can melt it on your tongue. She wouldn’t get that I’m a goner now I’ve seen him smiling. He looks like he would remove every lacy scrap of your underwear with those perfect teeth. She’d declare that proved her point, made him some kind of creep who got his kicks chatting up country bumpkins or scaring the living daylights out of them.
Well, she’d be wrong. Whether he’s a Lothario or a Lancelot, I want to find out more. I want to go on standing here with my camera, propped up by this Narnian lamp post, staring at this possibly dangerous, probably harmless, smiling stranger.
‘Sorry,’ I say, looking down, my boot stirring some little stones sparkling with frost. ‘That did sound surly. What I meant was, do you often play spot the difference between men and women?’
‘Any entrepreneur worth his gold-plated pension watches people for a living so he can separate the wheat from the chaff.’ Those eyes again. Nonchalant stance, maybe, all casual against the railings, but those eyes are boring into me so sharply I’m feeling punctured. ‘You know. The sheep from the goats.’
‘Same for photographers,’ I mumble. ‘Those biblical sayings have a point.’
He grins. ‘And in the business world, what that means is, anyone with any nous can spot a success story from fifty paces. Likewise we can sniff out the losers.’
‘All sounds a bit Lord Sugar!’
‘You better believe it. We’re cut from the same cloth. I happen to be an admirer of his, and yes, I do make it my business to hire and fire apprentices.’ He rubs his nose scornfully. ‘If politicians had half the common sense of people like me and him, we’d all be out of this mess by now.’
‘What about personally?’ I’m feeling bold now. Brassy. ‘Do you observe, do you watch people closely who might come into your private life?’
‘Do you mean women?’ he asks quietly. ‘Am I discerning about the women I want? I could answer that if I wasn’t so out of practice. But yes. Perhaps I should identify and stalk my prey like I do in business.’
I realise we’ve moved closer together again, both leaning on the sharp railings. I’m not interested in coming over all Germaine Greer, though. This man can say whatever he likes, and if it wasn’t so cold I’d just stand here all night lapping it up. It’s that damn mouth of his, that soft lower lip, that hard upper clamping down. His mouth has a story to tell, I’m certain of it. How can it be amused and sardonic, hard and inviting, all at the same time? It’s daring me, or asking me something. It’s wide, and confident, but it also desperately needs to know a lot more. About me. About his prey.
Well, I like what I see, too. This man. That mouth. And God help me, if he wasn’t so goddamn superior the devil in me would just go ahead, decide to really shock him, and kiss it.
‘Well, you got it spectacularly wrong in my case, didn’t you?’
‘You got me.’ He holds his gloves up in surrender. ‘Not a peeping Tom at all. A Thomasina.’
‘Not peeping at anything. I told you, I’m working.’ I shake my head. ‘And it’s Serena. That’s my name.’
There’s another pause. My heart thumps in my ears. Why did I tell him that, for God’s sake?
The city surrounding us, this garden square, this lamp post, this man, and me, it all shrinks, closing in on us, pushing us together. The steam of our breath curls delicately in the freezing air between us. His deep black eyes pull me in. I can see the tiny flare of his nostrils as he breathes, the twitch of his kissable mouth as he ponders.
He takes my hand, the one not holding the camera, pulls it away from where I’m still instinctively, defensively, using it to shield my body, enfolds it in the creaking leather of his glove, holds it tight for a moment, then gives it a formal shake.
‘And my name’s Gustav. Gustav Levi.’
My hand rests so easily in his, like a small pet. ‘That would explain the cheekbones. Are you from Transylvania?’
‘Smart, as well as stunning,’ he chuckles. He must know how cold my fingers are, because he squeezes them. I curl my fingers round his palm, and he puts the other hand on top of it. ‘Sort of, as it happens. My family originally came from that area. But they’re all gone now. Except me. I’m here, as you can see.’
‘My turn to be ridiculously observant.’ I give a triumphant punch. ‘Because I already have you labelled for my collection as Count Dracula.’
‘We can be a little brooding at times, granted.’ He laughs again. A little lighter, but still that deep, pebbly chest-stirring sound. ‘But if you knew Transylvania, the landscape, the music, you’d know it can be magical. But then the name comes from the Latin word sylva,meaning forest.’
‘Ah, yes. Forests, mountains, and castles. Like a fairy tale. Not a horror movie at all.’
‘That depends on who is in the movie. Who is the wicked witch in the fairy tale.’ His fingers are like a vice now. I don’t think he realises how tightly he’s holding me because he’s not looking at me but over my shoulder, his eyes as black as the dark shadows behind me in the square. ‘But I’m still drawn to forests and mountains. I don’t have a castle, but I do have a chalet in Switzerland. Right on Lake Lugano.’
‘Lugano also comes from the word “forest”. Did you know? You must have been a wolf in another life, Gustav.’
He closes his eyes for a moment. The lines down his cheeks are etching out some awful thought. I reach up and stroke his cheek, try to iron them out. I expect him to leap away from me but he squeezes my hand more gently now and a rush of heat powers up my arm, fanning under my ribs. I try to breathe. I look up at him again, my eyes resting on his mouth.
‘You said my name,’ he murmurs, opening his eyes.
‘It’s a cool name. But you’re hurting me.’
He releases my hand and it’s my turn. Very slowly I start to pull off his glove. It’s a kind of leather ski glove, tighter fitting than I thought, with a small annoying zip, and it takes a couple of seconds, but the rip of the zip, that sound effect of getting naked, sounds so sexy-good it sullies the silence. I peel the glove down from under his sleeve, reveal first his lean forearm streaked with hair, the slim ropes of muscle under the skin, then the flash of pale wrist. His long, strong fingers slide out one by one and while I now own his glove, he claims my bare hand.
The muscle is playing in his jaw again but I’m pretty sure it’s not suppressed laughter this time. Is it quicksilver that changes like this, or mercury? If I ever see him again, I’ll have to learn to keep up.
I already know these eyes, how black they are, how deep, I’ve noticed the crackle of yellow streaking round one iris like sunrise edging a cloud. Does he know mine? Some people call them green. Others emerald. After what feels like hours of talking, he’s travelling right inside me now.
I imagined his hand would be cold, like the statue, but his skin on mine is dry and warm.There’s his pulse again, this time beating in his wrist, beating into my hand. I can feel the heat crackling through the network of veins and arteries like a tidal wave.
‘I’d like to see your lake, and your castle. Sorry. Chalet.’ My voice is a frog’s croak. What am I saying? ‘I’d like to go there one day.’
‘Who knows? One day perhaps we will.’
He lifts my hand, so small in his, and turns it over. He has one glove on, one glove off. He separates my fingers. I hold my breath.
Did he just say ‘we’?
He kisses each finger on the tip, watching me all the while. It’s all I can do not to collapse against him. My legs feel weak. My head is heavy and lazy on my neck. The gorgeous, scary mouth I will try to kiss in a minute if I’m not careful is blowing over the palm of my hand now, and just as I lean towards him he presses my hand against his mouth, kisses it with a delicious dampness, then releases it.
‘Wow. Is this how the locals introduce themselves in Lake Lugano?’
Gustav Levi just chuckles and sheaths his fingers one by one. Then he claps his sturdy gloves together in what I take to be his hearty, scene-changing gesture. He glances around the square, towards the bright lights. His black hair blows back off his face like a stallion ready to hit the horizon.
‘Only the charming locals, and only when they meet beautiful ladies. It’s the Italian influence. So. Can I walk you somewhere, Serena? It might be best to come away from this area. Shepherd’s Market is just down there. Not dodgy like it used to be, but still, you hear things about the new clubs that have opened up.’
‘Shepherd’s Market?’
He laughs, re-organising his scarf. To my dismay covers his mouth. ‘You really are from out of town. It used to be a red light district. Or at least, very boisterous and of ill repute. That’s why they banned the sheep market in the end.’
I don’t reply. I’m nearly losing my grip on my camera because my gloveless fingers are so cold. He hooks it safely onto the strap and loops it round my neck. I wait to see what he’ll do next and yes, he does it. His gloves brush against my neck as he lifts my hair out of the snagging strap, holds it for a moment, then lets it fall. He’s watching me, all the time.
‘A party, perhaps? It’s Halloween, after all. A gorgeous young woman like you must be in demand?’ He steps back suddenly. ‘A boyfriend waiting for you. Damn. Of course there is!’
I shake my head as carelessly as I can.
‘No. No boyfriend. I’m not going anywhere. I’m too busy. I have to get these pictures edited and use my cousin’s printer. I’ve only just arrived in London, you see. I’m touting my portfolio round the galleries.’
‘So you’ve only just left that desolate seaside you were telling me about?’
‘It’s all behind me now. I’m in London, now, and that’s all that matters.’
‘Yes indeed. And lucky London.’
He starts to walk away from me, up the hill where the little witches went. OK. So that was goodbye then. Fine. Goodbye, mister. It’s a relief, actually. He’s had me dancing on tacks the last few minutes, and I haven’t time for this kind of distraction.
I need to find my gloves, because if I don’t my fingers will seize up and I won’t be able to feed the tube ticket through the machine or unlock my front door, or work Polly’s printer, let alone press the shutter on my camera. I hunt around on the ground. Nothing. Try the gate to the square, rattle it, but it appears to be locked. My fingers stick to the iron. I wrench them off before they freeze there permanently. You hear of that happening, don’t you? In the Himalayas, or the Arctic. People’s tongues stuck to, what, pickaxes? Cups? Spoons? What else in the Arctic would you be licking?
I can feel ridiculous tears crowding into my throat.
‘Where am I going to get some new gloves at this time of night, for God’s sake?’
My gloves float out of the darkness, right under my nose where I’m hunched over the gate, biting back sobs. The bloody things are waggling and waving at me in thin air. They look solid, filled, as if they have fingers inside them.
‘I took them hostage, Serena. I’m so sorry. I was teasing you. I picked them up earlier in the garden.’
Gustav Levi is indeed wearing them, and they look ridiculous, like a child’s mittens hanging off his long fingers. My eyes are still heavy and wet with unshed tears, and though I blink furiously to try to hide it, he bends and peers into my face. The new expression there, the softness in his eyes, the self-mocking bat of his thick eyelashes, the teasing lift of his mouth, are all so unexpected that I nearly burst into tears in earnest.
‘I’m OK, it’s fine, really,’ I gulp, blinking back at him like an owl. ‘Thank you for my gloves.’
He wipes one leather finger gently along the lower lid of each eye and then hands both gloves back to me.
‘Now. Tell me I can’t escort you somewhere, Serena. You look a bit, well, undone. Dishevelled? No, that’s not the right word. At sixes and sevens. Knackered. Who wouldn’t be? This can be an exhausting old town. How about allowing me to buy you a drink if you think you can trust me?’

THREE
It takes me all of three seconds to make up my mind. There’s no-one waiting for me. No-one expecting me to check in. No-one who gives a toss.
‘Mr Levi? Thank you. I could murder a glass of dry white wine.’
‘Gustav. You were OK with it before. It’s a formal enough name without your making me feel like a sergeant major.’
‘OK, Gustav. And if you’re not to be trusted, well, I’m a big girl now. I can look after myself.’
He presses his hand into the small of my back. A signal of agreement, or the commencement of a new journey? Either way it gets me going, like the crank handle on a vintage car. I’m happy for him to keep his hand there, actually. Against all my resolutions, despite my upbeat retorts, I feel right now as if I have no spine, no backbone, that I’ll crumple in a heap and give up with no visible means of support.
But to my disappointment he removes it, puts his hands thoughtfully into his pockets, and instead of walking up the hill, as he started to do just now, he leads me away from the dark square, towards the bright lights of what must be Piccadilly where red buses and black taxis and normal people are going about their business.
Behind me I imagine the shadows in the square staring after us, reluctant to let us go.
We cross the street and like everyone else we walk briskly towards the Ritz Hotel. The famous lights illuminating its name above the colonnade are so inviting. Gustav glances down at me. The amusement I’m becoming familiar with starts in the crinkling of his eyes, the softening of his cheeks, lifts the curve of his argumentative mouth.
‘They have a dress code in there, I’m afraid, to go with all that glitzy gilt. They wouldn’t let us set foot in this revolving door, let alone contaminate one of their precious seats in the Rivoli Bar.’
I am an urchin, standing in the cold, elbowed aside by the glossy rich visitors in their fur coats and ostentatious jewellery, being fussed into the hotel by pompous-looking doormen.
‘No problem. I’d better get home, actually Mr – Gustav. A drink is very tempting, but maybe not such a good idea after all.’ I pat my pockets. ‘And I’m skint.’
‘Pavements not paved with gold yet, eh?’ He moves on along the facade of the grand hotel to the corner, and waits. He’s staring not back at me but down St James’s Street. I wage a little war with myself. He’s a stranger, remember.
The newspaper headlines, exaggerated by the time they reach the office of Jake’s local rag: Country girl from the sticks raped and murdered in London by suave conman.
Even Polly would be wagging her metaphorical finger at me by now. Blaming herself for not being there, looking out for me. But we’re out in public here. Lots of people around us. He’s charming. He’s incredibly attractive. He’s got a lovely deep, well spoken voice. And he’s an entrepreneur who must be bloody rich if he owns more than one house. What the hell else am I going to do with myself when everyone else is out having fun?
One thing I won’t tell him is that my pockets might be empty, but my bank account is full.
‘One drink. Then I must get back.’
He doesn’t answer or protest, but with a courtly bow he crooks his elbow and escorts me down St James’s. We turn right and into the far more subtle splendour of Dukes Hotel.
‘Dress code?’ I ask nervously, wiping my feet obediently on the huge but welcoming doormat and drifting ahead of him into the smart interior where domed and glassed corridors lead here and there. The foyer smells of mulled wine and candles and entices you to succumb to its perfumed embrace.
‘Not as such. It’s not whether you’re wearing the latest Victoria Beckham or carrying a Hermès that counts in a place like this.’ His voice has become more mocking since we stepped out of the cold. He snaps his gloves off.
‘As if. I’ve never even been into the kind of shop that would sell those.’
‘Well, don’t ever go there. It’s a total waste of money. Vanity and greed. And the women who claim their lives aren’t worth living if they don’t have the latest designer crap are a waste of space too.’
Waves of hostility are coming off him now that we’re within spitting distance of others. ‘So what does count here?’
‘Standing. Class. Breeding. Beauty helps, no matter what people say.’ He unwinds his scarf as if it has offended him, then turns at last towards me. The sudden annoyance melts away as quickly as it arrives. He flicks imaginary dust off my shoulder. ‘And of course, whether or not you can pay your bar bill.’
‘Oh Gustav, I told you I’ve no money on me.’
‘And I told you, not a problem. Your beauty and my wallet will see us through this evening.’ He laughs softly. ‘So how about we rearrange you, Serena, undress you a little? How would that be?’
I open my mouth and shut it like a fish. Open it again. ‘Undress me?’
‘I meant – what did I mean?’
For the first time he stutters. There are streaks of colour in his pale cheeks from our chat in the cold and our brisk walk down here. He brings his big hands up to frame my face. They push against my tender skin and the bones beneath as if he’s a blind man moulding clay. It makes me feel small, and young, and clueless. The last time anyone touched me was Jake, but I was always in charge then. The leader.
There’s a twist of lust lighting up Gustav’s black eyes. He said ‘this evening’ as if we have all the time in the world. Maybe we’ll get a room. The pulse is banging fast in his neck. I’m learning that’s his gauge. His meter. Does he want me? Oh God, can I ask him?
‘Christ, Serena,’ he mutters thickly as the hotel buzzes around us. His licks his mouth as he tries to speak. He must be reading my mind again. ‘If things were different. In a heartbeat.’
‘What things? How different?’
Silky strands of hair are sticking to his forehead as the overblown heating of the hotel attacks us in our outdoor clothes. He looks as if he’s been running or hurdling. I stroke the hair away. He’s so close, one little move from me and we will be kissing. But abruptly he presses one finger so hard against my mouth that it folds inwards and catches on my teeth.
‘I meant, we should get these things off.’
I got it wrong. Fine. I’m rusty. Clueless. He closes his eyes for a moment, then whips off my beret. The roots of my hair prickle.
Gustav moves slowly behind me and unwinds my blue scarf. So far, so harmless. So brotherly. But then he combs his fingers through my hair, starting at the base of my neck, and I shiver with uncontrollable, unexpected pleasure. He misreads my shivering for cold, or rejection, pauses as if waiting for me to stop him.
‘Please, don’t stop, Gustav,’ I moan quietly.
He has no idea how this has calmed me, like a wild horse. I had no idea how someone stroking my hair would affect me. He stands very close. His tall body lines itself up behind mine, firm and unbending like the lamp post in the square. I push myself back against him. Oh, we fit so well. My bottom is just a little lower than his hips. His fingers go back to work. His hands are circling my throat loosely like a noose. I brush against the hardness in his trousers and it gives him away. My stomach curls over, my body tightening in dark agreement.
Does he know I know? I tilt my head sideways. If I’m too shy to speak, how can I show him what I want, how I want the tips of his fingers to go on combing and stroking me, how I want him to stand nice and tight behind me, set my cold body on fire.
He knows. He strokes my skin. He lifts my hair, unwinding it out of my collar as if it’s a magician’s endless rope or a charmer’s snake.
‘You have no idea,’ I breathe, my eyes fluttering closed as my hair lifts and curls round his fingers, strokes against my cheek and neck, sends its own minute promises of pleasure down my body, ‘how good that feels.’
‘My ragged Rapunzel,’ he breathes, so hot on the back of my neck. A squeal of excitement bunches in my throat. I bring my hands up to his, try to keep him there, get his warm mouth to press down onto me.
But he steps away, leaving a cool space between us. My hair drops like a curtain.
‘Why have you stopped?’
He comes round in front of me and puts his finger on my mouth. ‘It’s a crime to hide this amazing hair. And the colour, in this candlelight! Rossetti and those pre-Raphaelites would have had a name for it. A glorious Italian-sounding tint. Titian. Tintoretto. Not red. Auburn. Claret. Cinnamon.’
‘Five spice?’
‘And what about introducing this tangle to a pair of scissors, Calamity Jane?’
I can’t help smiling. How has he managed to get under my skin so quickly? Is it because he’s taller and older, impossibly attractive with his own unruly hair and steady black eyes? He’s unlike anyone I’ve ever met down there in my dreary old life by the sea. Is it the chameleon way he’s simultaneously courteous and mocking? Is it his deep voice or the way his face goes from cold to hot like running water, from dark to light like the changing hours?
‘Oh, I know all about scissors, believe me,’ I retort.
A single hair he’s missed is caught in my eye and when he sees me blinking at it he hooks it away absently, familiarly, before he steps towards the reception desk.
I’ve been growing it for years, but until I was big enough to fight them off my hair was an unkempt bird’s nest because they never understood how to treat it. They didn’t understand how to treat me. The night before each new school term they would shove me down on a hard chair as if I was Anne Boleyn being prepared for the block. He would hold me down while she would start chopping at it with a pair of kitchen scissors.
No point wasting money on a hairdresser, it’s just ugly, dead material.
I learned to control the impotent tears as she hacked and he shoved and I watched the russet curls, the emerging tendrils struggling to prove themselves, kinking up even when they were only a few inches long. Shorn, limp, kicked about on the dirty floor like withering autumn leaves. Where did I come from? Who in my biological past had, or has, this hair?
‘I’ve stepped over a line. Taken liberties.’ These aren’t questions. They’re statements. Gustav Levi is watching me again, trying to read me. He’s not succeeding.
But even through the sudden wretchedness I can still see the way my blue pashmina dangles over his arm like a waiter’s napkin as comical.
I shake my head. ‘I’m just reminded of things, people, I’d rather forget.’
‘You don’t like your hair being touched?’
‘Au contraire,’ I sigh. ‘I have just discovered that I love it being touched. No-one’s ever – it took me by surprise, that’s all.’
‘I’m continental. Too tactile. And you Anglo-Saxons?’ He flips his hands dismissively. ‘Ice in your veins.’
‘I always think of myself as Celtic. Fire, not ice. But no, Gustav. I’m trying to tell you it felt nice. Lovely. It was just more intimate than I’m used to.’
He raises his eyebrows questioningly.
‘I would defy any man not to want to either stroke it or paint pictures of it all day long. Christ, even mammals groom each other, don’t they?’ He pushes the hair off his face and unbuttons his coat. ‘You telling me your mother never brushed it? All that sunset splendour?’
‘Brushed it?’ I repeat harshly. ‘God no. She pulled it when I was naughty, the little baby hairs just in front of my ears, oh, and she chopped it off, as soon as it grew more than a few inches, because she hated it. It wasn’t sunset splendour to her. It was ugly and ginger.’
A shadow passes over Gustav’s face. A brief cloud, followed by watery sunlight. I wonder if he realises how easy he is to read. The black gleam in his eyes steadies to understanding, as if he’s listening to a piece of music he used to play.
‘I’ve never told anyone that before. No-one has ever stood still long enough to listen.’
‘My God, Serena,’ he says, very softly, his eyes softening. ‘You really are a lost soul under all that chutzpah, aren’t you?’
‘Not lost. Fighting to be heard. I’m fine. You learn to be the cat who walks alone when you’re kicked about often enough.’
A small, dark man in an impeccable suit appears soundlessly from behind a huge vase of winter flowers. ‘Mr Levi. How very good to see you. Your usual tipple this evening?’
Gustav nods. ‘Thank you, Jerome. If you have my favourite seat, too?’
The tinkle of glasses and low murmur of voices start to trickle out of the bar as if we’ve disturbed birds sleeping on a wire.
‘And very sexy they are too.’ Gustav takes a step towards the bar.
‘What are?’
‘Cats. Cold, distant. And you have the eyes, too. Green, slightly slanted. Perfect for Halloween.’ Gustav crooks his arm again. ‘They sometimes pounce on mice for fun, when no-one’s looking, don’t they? Don’t make that face. I mean it in a good way.’
I toss my jacket and gloves at him, as if he’s a servant. His hand shoots out overarm as if he’s catching a cricket ball.
‘Are we going to have that drink or what?’
He laughs and slaps his leg. Those expressive hands. ‘Of course. What would you like?’
‘Surprise me. And could you look after my camera, while I freshen up? Guard it with your life.’
‘Oh, I will, Serena. Don’t you worry about that.’
I know he’s watching me, my butt, my supposedly fertile woman’s hips, my legs, sketching me all over again in his head as I make my way self-consciously down the airy corridor to the ladies’ room. The knowledge that he’s watching makes hot sweat spring through my cold skin. I pray I don’t trip. I push open the big white door, slip inside. Alone at last.
False pretences. I don’t really need the bathroom. I just need a moment. Work out what’s going on. Get a grip. I need to, what do those counsellors say? Regroup.
Polly, the only person who looks out for me, would still be nagging me.
You have no idea who this guy is. He could be an axe murderer. He could be twice your age. Get the hell out of there, before something happens.
But I want something to happen! That’s precisely why I came to London, isn’t it? And it’s not as if I’ve gone down a dark alley with him, is it, tempted as I was, or allowed him to drag me back to his lair.
I start to tremble. I close my eyes and let it take me over. I know what that means. It’s my body’s reaction to the possibility of danger. Gustav Levi’s lair. What would that be like? What would happen there? What would he do to me if I went there with him?
I open my eyes and stare at the girl reflected in the huge mirror. I barely recognise her. In the house on the cliff they used to nail up one or two dusty panes of mirrored glass in the only places where it was absolutely necessary. The bathroom, beside the front door, so the handful of visitors, the priest, the doctor, the undertaker, could check that they looked sane before taking great lungfuls of fresh air on departure.
Only two days ago this girl was still in that house, reflected in those paltry mirrors. Pale, transparent, only catching sight of herself out of the corner of her eye. She was a ghost, not just because the house was deserted, no furniture now, never any ornaments or pictures, no cushions or rugs. Not just because everyone else was dead and gone, burned to a crisp like the tables and chairs and beds. But because in that house she had never had a life.
Even the girl at the railway station yesterday, shoving the beret down on her hair, applying lip gloss to stop her biting her lips, looked drained and anxious as if any minute someone would burst in like it was a Wild West saloon and tell her she would never leave this one-horse town.
This girl, the one who got to London in the end, is loitering in an expensive hotel, about to have a drink with a very attractive vampire, possibly a dangerous stranger, and she’s up for it. There. I’ve said it. I’m going to do whatever the hell I like, wherever the hell it leads me.
This huge mirror is a mirror that invites, that celebrates reflections. Not makes them out to be something vain and sinful. It’s almost too brightly lit, as if put there to help Hollywood starlets apply their stage make-up. Pampering and vanity is encouraged in this boudoir with its piles of soft white face towels, its elegant curved taps, its primrose-flavoured, oily, perfumed handwash in crystal bottles attached to the basins so that urchins like me won’t nick them.
But the girl in the mirror has altered. It’s like the portrait of a different girl. Her face is pale, cheeks flushed with red. Her eyes, her Halloween cat’s eyes, are sparking with anticipation. The mouth with its pillowy lips is open, as if I’m out of breath. Those lips earned the nickname Fishy, taken up by every bully at school.
Here’s my tongue, running along the lower lip, catching on the curve because the surface is so dry.
I giggle into the silence and bite my finger. There’s a drip, drip of water from one of the cubicles. I press my hands on my head to try to calm myself down. It doesn’t work. I press my palms against my hollowed cheeks like Edvard Munch’s The Scream. Do I want to kiss Gustav? Is that it? Do I want him to kiss me? I don’t know. Not yet. I’m off men, remember? Too much going on in my head for that. So, no. I just want to get near him. He’s deadly, the way he pins you like a butterfly. I’ve followed him here without question, but what’s going to happen next?
You’re just lonely. You don’t know anyone in town. Sad sack. Any old company will do.
But Gustav Levi is not just any old company. I have the weirdest feeling that he’s picked me.
The crazy reflection in the mirror shakes its head, and I bend to wash my hands.
I step smartly into the small bar with its glittering wall of bottles, all brimming with the fuel of adventure. He is sitting on a tall stool, elbow propped on the bar, coat off, jumper slung round his shoulders, his long fingers turning a glass swizzle stick. In the soft lighting his face is sculpted with the rough promise of a piratical beard, so how does he still manage to look like James Bond under cover as an unshaven bandit?
I pull my stomach in. This guy is waiting for me. This cool, sexy, scary guy.
His long legs in dark blue jeans are crossed comfortably, one Italian loafer tapping out a tune on the rung of the bar stool. Those lovely legs. Just now they were standing behind me, pressed against my back as he tried and failed to groom me. My stomach kicks rebelliously at the memory. The hard evidence I felt of his maleness. The proof that being close to me aroused him. He’s not made of stone at all, even if it takes hieroglyphics to understand him. I may just be one girl amongst many, but I’m the one who’s right here, right now, and it’s me he’s waiting for.
Look at him. That languid body the dark blue cashmere fits so well, skimming the muscular torso beneath, the run of muscle under his ribs, the subtle flex in his forearm as he twirls his swizzle up and down his fingers like a cheerleader’s baton.
I stand at the door. I observe his air of elegant alienation. No Brit by definition can combine the two. Yet he’s so restless when he thinks no-one’s looking. His tapping foot, his long fingers twisting and clapping and explaining. The muscle in his jaw is going again. His eyes are lowered over his cocktail as if he’s a soothsayer examining the entrails of a goat. All I can see from his profile is the fierce jut of his eyelashes.
He turns his head as if he senses a siren call and sees me leaning against the door frame. He nods as if I’ve just asked him something. His eyes lock onto mine for a moment, dark and persuasive, before moving easily over my mouth, my throat, the barely visible curves deliberately hidden under my sweater. My body tightens and resists my clothing. Something uneasy stirs. There’s something final in his study of me, as if this is the last time.
I walk towards him and he pushes himself away from the bar to stand chivalrously as I approach him. I wrap my fingers round the cold glass.
How many mobile phones have broken how many perfect moments? Mine buzzes impatiently into life just then, dancing about on the chrome bar. We both glare at it as if it’s a scorpion just scuttled out of a salad.
‘This is so rude, Gustav.’ I glance down anxiously to see who it is. ‘But it’s a text from my cousin.’
Surprise! In town 1 nite only. Don’t worry, won’t invade space, staying with boyf, v late notice but party tonite, come quick here’s the address! Costume provided x
A fancy dress party is the last thing I feel like tonight. I glance at Gustav, who is staring at the steamed window. Polly will be gutted if I say no.
‘I’m so sorry, Gustav, this has been great, but I have to go.’
I waggle my mobile phone in explanation. I sound far too flippant.
He hands me a cocktail glass with a clear liquid as if he hasn’t heard me. Now that his gloves and coat are off, I notice the chunky Rolex slipping on his wrist.
‘James Bond drinks in here,’ he remarks. His eyes, his face, are very calm.
‘You took the words out of my mouth.’ I take the glass from him a shade too quickly so the liquid tips in a mini tidal wave. ‘That sounds like the kind of code spooks would use at a meet.’
He laughs. The laugh is reined in now, and I suspect that’s my fault for wrecking the mood.
I stand beside the bar stool where he’s neatly folded my jacket, scarf and beret. I don’t sit down on the proffered bar stool. We chink our glasses very carefully. They look so fragile they could shatter with a sneeze. I can’t look at him. I’m afraid that if I stare into those pensive eyes I’ll never stop. So I stare down into the liquid, and the conversation dries up.
The martini is exquisite. It flurries over my tongue and warms its way down my throat, prising the top off my head, lifting me instantly. I don’t want to leave. But I’m equally sure that I must.
‘And his tipple of choice is exquisite. I love this place. I feel as if I was born to sit here sipping cocktails. But it turns out a Halloween party does await me, after all.’
‘Of course it does. Go trip the light fantastic, Serena.’ He turns the stem of his glass and smiles, not at me but at the olive bobbing on the surface of his martini. ‘But don’t get abducted by the undead, will you?’
I put my glass down and start to struggle with my jacket. My arm gets stuck in the sleeve as I’m halfway in.
‘Oh, blow it!’ I mutter crossly, my fist punching at the lining.
‘Stop struggling. You’ll rip it.’ When he stands to help me he seems taller than ever. He chuckles, hands me my blue scarf and catches it before I fling it messily round my neck and wraps it slowly round. We’re rewinding the earlier scene in the lobby, when he was close up behind me and I felt the swell of his excitement.
‘I can do it, thank you Gustav.’
He shakes his head, his black hair falling over his eyes. ‘I beg to differ, signorina.’
He bends to pick up my gloves from the pile. I stand there like a child, or like the child I would have been if anyone had ever bothered to dress me like this. I stick my fingers out stiffly. He smiles at my hopelessness and edges on the gloves.
‘Anything else I can do for you?’ he mocks, tugging at his forelock like a servant.
Our laughter dies almost as soon as it starts. I wonder if he, like me, is remembering the quiet shiver of recognition when I pulled his glove off earlier, in the square, to take his bare hand. When he then took mine, and kissed my soft palm.
Now he’s holding out my beret. How does this ritual look to the barman, the onlooker?
Well dressed, handsome man settling in for a solitary brooding drink, disturbed by hectic, flushed girl. Rising courteously, dressing her up before bidding farewell. Is it obvious we’ve just met, or does it come over as the in-joke of a relationship? Any age difference only occurs to me now I can see him in the light. Ten years, maybe fifteen, but no older than an uncle or godfather, though my scruffiness makes me look like a teenager. We’re not joshing or familiar enough to be siblings or cousins, but none of the above would put gloves on for you, and all have the whiff of the verboten.
What I want to know is, do Gustav Levi and Serena Folkes look like lovers, engaged as we are in this private, apparently perfected little sequence?
‘What about your costume?’ he asks suddenly, turning my beret over in his hand as if trying to decode a message. ‘Can’t go to a party without a costume.’
I try to take the beret off him, but he tugs it back and starts to put it on, resting his hands on the top of my head.
‘My cousin has something for me to change into when I get there.’
By now one or two people in the bar, as well as the barman, are watching us. Gustav doesn’t care, or notice. He tucks my hair behind the exposed ear, his fingers cool on the tender skin behind. My eyes close involuntarily to relish the tremor running through me. Lovers, surely, is how it looks. Ex-lovers? No. I would never let Jake get as close as this.
‘Good to go.’
He pulls my hair long on the other side, smoothes the riot of ringlets as best he can, and stands back. I feel like a prize exhibit.
‘It’s been fun, Serena. Who knows what’s in store for you tonight, and beyond? Some incredible times, I’m sure.’
I take another long sip, his eyes on my mouth as it drinks, my throat as it swallows. Then I put the glass down. My hand is shaking.
‘Thanks, Gustav. For the drink. For everything. It’s been fun meeting you, too.’
Amazing how convincingly detached I sound. I start to back away and suddenly he’s in front of me. He’s looking down. All I can see is his black hair, the slope of his nose as he takes my hand and pushes a business card into it. Closes my fingers round it. Holding his own warm hand round mine like a cage as he pats it down into my pocket.
‘You never know.’ His voice is sombre and sad.
I hesitate. I haven’t told him the party isn’t that far away. I could stay for at least a couple more drinks. Everything in me is straining to stay, but I won’t. I might never know if there’s something between us. If that spark I felt when his fingers were on my neck, his mouth on my fingers, was real.
What is real is the way he nods at me to go then leans back against the bar, arms crossed over his wide chest, the sleeves rolled up over his wrists. I must depart, otherwise I never will. So with his eyes watching my every move, every bounce of my hair on my back, burning hot under my stranger’s gaze as I try to move gracefully, I push out into the foggy cold.

FOUR
My feet are curiously sluggish as I walk down St James’s Street, as if there are weights in my boots or a magnet is drawing me backwards. The truth is I don’t want to go anywhere. I don’t want to leave that warm bar, that half-sipped cocktail. That intriguing tall stranger with the split-screen eyes and a way with his fingers.
But as he lifted his hand in casual farewell just now it was as if he’d already forgotten me.
There’s a chain spanning the space between us, a rope between ship and shore; no, more like a jailor’s thick chain jangling with keys and handcuffs. Except this is woven thin like a spider’s web, so delicate, so invisible it only occasionally catches the light. I don’t know which one of us holds it. Which one is caught.
I might not see him again. So what? It was only an hour or so. A chat. He bought me a drink. Dry martini. Period. Why would I even consider missing a party to spend the evening with an older guy who, come to think of it, idiot that I am, oh my God how stupid am I, probably has a beautiful wife waiting for him in his beautiful home, stirring a stunning soup in a designer kitchen.
My phone buzzes again, as if to knock some sense into me. I study the map that Pol has texted, so my eyes are down as I cross Trafalgar Square. The map shows a warren of streets on the other side of Covent Garden, and the venue is in the narrowest street of all.
It feels very quiet out here. I thought there would be more of a party atmosphere, but I guess it’s still quite early. A few people are wandering about under Nelson’s haughty column, emerging from the tube at Charing Cross Station. They’re mostly in costume. The stab of scarlet skirts and fiery masks, the sharp black outlines of stalking skeletons, of horns and tails, pierce the thickening fog, which has simply dropped like a shroud. It dims the circling traffic, the glowing streetlamps, muffles the foot shuffle, like old photographs of the smog in post-war London.
They seem to be gathering by one of the lions. I reach under my scarf to lift the camera from its strap. And I realise it’s not there. Icy panic grips me as I scrabble in my bag, my pockets, under my jacket even. As I stand there, going round in circles like a cat with a firework on its tail, I’m vaguely aware of people whispering and jostling around me, a shout, a cackle, but I can’t focus on them.
A voice seems to whisper in my ear, the exposed ear, the ear he tucked my hair behind. It’s here, it says. Your camera. Both cameras. You left them in the cocktail bar in Dukes Hotel.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Without my cameras I might as well have had my eyes put out.
I have to get back there, sharpish, this is too good a photo op to miss. What makes it all the worse is that out of nowhere I think of how Jake would be nagging me to get the picture, how this unfolding scenario would sell brilliantly to a newspaper or YouTube. But I’m crippled without my equipment, and now I can’t even move because both my arms are grabbed and pulled out sideways as if I’m in a line dance. It hurts. I’m sure my left shoulder is wrenched out of its socket, but that’s exactly what it is, a dance, I’m part of some kind of formation, all the people in their costumes have suddenly organised themselves into a pattern, and then suddenly the intro to ‘Thriller’screams out from hidden amplifiers; the crowd starts to dance perfectly in time, jerky and robotic, all crawling and grimacing like the zombies in the video.
I’ve been caught up in a flash mob in eccentric, crazy Trafalgar Square, on Halloween night. Getting on that train yesterday and coming up to London, and finding myself part of this kind of mass madness was the best thing I could have done.
I’m part of the picture tonight, the subject in front of the lens for a change, not behind. And I know who has my cameras. A sudden calm floods me, like a warm shower. The same sensation as when Gustav Levi put my beret on me just now, hooked my hair behind my ear.
Gustav has everything safe. He’ll look after everything. So for tonight, I’ll be observed instead of always the observer.
Passersby are laughing and clapping and filming, the front of the National Gallery morphs into a giant cinema screen showing images of Michael Jackson, magical and tragical. The throb of the music makes everyone dance, makes me dance despite myself, and we’re all zombies now, stamping and waving and crouching and yelling, intoxicated with madness and music.
Eventually I reach the cobbled alleyway that Polly has directed me to. A trio of grisly vampires with rubber fangs, red paint dripping down their chins, troops past me drinking tiredly from Coke cans. I stop in front of what looks like an antique shop. The whole structure is bowed as if it has the weight of the world on its roof. The window bulges outwards and the doorstep is worn almost through from being crossed by centuries of shoes and boots.
Decapitated mannequins scratch at the greenish glass as if to escape. They have been dressed in strapless ballgowns and pose with diamante tiaras circling their wooden necks, as if the heads where the tiaras once perched have been guillotined. Further inside there are figures, just like my zombie friends, dancing and whooping.
I push open the door and weird, hypnotic, twangy music assaults me. The kind that twines in and out of your psyche. Whales, or dolphins, calling to each other in the deep.
People in period costume are drinking and singing and smoking, but it’s difficult to tell the revellers from the displays. The shop is like the Tardis, much bigger inside than its tiny bent facade. Various fringed shades, candles and lamps throw a low, red-tinged light as if we’re all in an Edwardian bordello. The air is a mist of sandalwood, patchouli, and sweet dope. Hammered to the walls are enormous glass cases full of skewered black butterflies, beetles and scorpions. Cherrywood cabinets burst with everything under the sun. Watches, jewellery, weapons. Cross-bows, arrows, curved scimitar daggers. Even a row of vicious-looking whips hanging from butcher’s hooks.
I push my way through the crowd to find my cousin, and a flock of boas tries to strangle me as I pause before a rail of antique lace dresses.
‘One of those will look great on you, petal! I’m so glad you came!’
Polly winds her arms round my neck and nearly squeezes the breath out of me.
‘Oh, Pol, it’s so good to see you!’ I disentangle myself after I’ve buried my nose in her neck to take in the familiar, over-scented smell of her. ‘Oh my God, you look like Snow White! I presume that black hair dye is temporary?’
‘It’s a syrup, actually!’ She tweaks it off her narrow head to show the ice-blonde crop beneath.
‘And you’ve lost another stone! Don’t they have food over there? Don’t people eat in Manhattan?’
‘Only on Fridays!’ she laughs, and starts to drag me to the back of the shop. She swishes and sways in a scarlet Vivienne Westwood-style ballgown. ‘Those gorgeous curves of yours would be totally frowned on, but we’re forgetting all that tonight. What do you think of this place?’
‘It’s incredible! What are we doing here?’
‘It’s Pierre’s. My new boyfriend’s. It’s his first costumier outlet in London. We’re only here for tonight, for this launch party. Not many people will know about this place because mostly he’ll be supplying wardrobe departments for theatres and movies and so on. He’s here somewhere. Let’s get you dressed up first!’
She high-fives and kisses various people on her procession through the guests, but it’s impossible to tell what any of them really look like. Even the men are painted with white theatrical make-up, red slashes for mouths. If they’re not painted they’re wearing masks. Polly looks like a Disney princess. If she’s Snow White, I’m Rose Red.
The back wall of the shop consists of a huge glass awning leading out to an enclosed yard, twined with ivy and brambles, and round a bubbling cauldron witches are spiking lumps of bleeding red meat into their mouths with pitchforks, a barbeque of the damned, and fake bats swing on invisible strings from the trees. Even the moon is streaked with red as if bleeding, glowing through shredded clouds streaking the London sky like claw marks.
My long-lost cousin pulls a curtain across the changing cubicle at the back of the shop and hands me a long, fluted glass of champagne. We stand together in front of the full- size, gilt-framed mirror as she chatters on about New York. Then from a rail she unhooks an ivory lace dress so flimsy it could be made from gossamer feathers.
‘You look amazing, Rena. You seem to be on fire, or is that just the cold? What’s been going on with you?’ she says, holding my hair clear as I struggle out of my clothes.
I get a flash of Gustav Levi’s serious face in my mind, uncoiling my hair from my blue scarf in the garden square. Calling me Rapunzel.
‘I’ve just had an extraordinary twenty-four hours, that’s all. First proper day in London. I think I’ve already got enough Halloween shots for an entire exhibition if only I can get someone to show my work.’
‘Someone will snap you up. And if they don’t, I’ll get Pierre on the case. He has contacts all over the planet.’ She catches my hand as it goes up in protest. ‘I know. You’re always so stubborn! Don’t need anyone’s help. Cat that walks alone. But bear it in mind, cuz. You’ve struggled enough.’
I fling my arms around her again. ‘I never felt alone when you were there. The best bits of that miserable life were when you came to stay.’
‘Careful with the taffeta, hon. This dress is the real deal. Anyhow do you really want to go over all that old ground? Those bastards should never have been allowed to keep you, just because they were the ones who found you by that church.’
‘Whoever thought foundlings came from fairy tales?’
She balls her hand into a fist and bashes at her chest. ‘I wish I’d told my family how foul and neglectful your lot were. Persuaded them to take you in. I’ll never forgive myself for failing you like that. But ain’t it all dead and buried now?’
She holds out the dress for me to step into. I know her mind is like a firefly. You can never pin her down for long.
‘Dead and buried, Pol.’
‘Beautiful underwear, by the way, Rena! You always did have a thing about matching knickers. You saved up every penny from your Saturday jobs to buy it, even when on the outside you were all rags and tatters!’
We giggle feebly, just like we used to when she came down to Devon, trailing glamour and fun and naughtiness from the big bad city. We would run down to the beach and rip open the crisps and fags and bottles of vodka she’d brought with her, and try to put out of our minds the disapproving looks on their faces, watching us from the house on the cliffs. They could never believe, since we weren’t related by blood, how Polly Folkes could love me. How we could be so close.
‘Yeah. You’re right. The new chapter has started.’
I let her do up the tiny buttons at the back of the dress, twist my hair into a loose knot on top of my head. Push sparkling diamante earrings into my lobes to dangle right down to my shoulders. Then she gets to work on the make-up.
‘Was it awful, though, leaving? Did Jake give you hell?’
She helps me take everything off and as she brushes thick mascara on my eyelashes I battle with what to say.
‘He was upset, of course he was, but I’m not a heartbreaker, Pol. You know that. I tried to make him understand, but I don’t think he does. It wasn’t just that I had to leave that place. When I got back from Europe I just didn’t want him any more. I don’t think I want anyone.’
‘Well, you cut your teeth on each other. Got to lose your cherry with someone. But you were kids. Maybe he was even more of a kid than you.’
‘Too right,’ I snort. ‘He thought foreplay was the name of an indie band.’
She chuckles. ‘You need someone older, wiser now, girl. I reckon you’re ripe for a new man. One who’s going to teach you stuff you’ve never dreamed of. Someone who won’t be able to believe his luck.’
‘You got a crystal ball here somewhere, Pol? Because it needs a good polish. I’m off men at the moment. I don’t want the hassle. The mess.’
In the mirror we are so different. White faces, red lips, but her eyes are the pale blue of a Malibu swimming pool. Mine are green, like the sea before it reaches the rocks.
Gustav Levi said my eyes belonged to a Halloween cat. Where is he right now? Is he still in the cocktail bar, or has he picked up a beautiful stranger, vanished into the night with her? Or gone home to the mythical wife who must surely be waiting for him? I have this overpowering sensation, a pulling, tugging desire to find him.
Even with my cousin here, my only family, even in this hot, crowded party full of people, there is a new person missing. There’s no point denying it. I wish Gustav Levi was here.
‘Well, just for tonight you can be the vestal virgin! Pure as the driven snow. Freeze them all out if you want to, but I’m willing to bet that one of these horny guys will fancy the arse off you before the night is out and carry you off on their charger!’
Someone calls out to Polly and she leaves me alone for a moment. The mirror is tarnished, as if smoke from a steam bath obscures it. I stare at myself. My skin feels tight, like someone has stretched it over my bones. Every little hair stands on end. Maybe it’s all the dope in the air, but I feel as if I’m poised on a high ledge, just waiting to open my arms and fly down. My face hangs there, the moon behind the clouds.
Flying? Ledges? The moon? I’m not normally given to flights of fancy. Usually the only place I find poetry is through my viewfinder.
I run my finger down the side of my neck, where the pulse is going. My neck rises like a swan’s, extending from the fronds of lace clinging to me like a second skin yet cut into fragments as if someone has tried to rip it off me. Over my clavicle towards my breasts, exposed almost to the nipple in the tight bodice of the dress. And on cue my nipples start to harden, sending a buzz of wicked euphoria through me.
I need to get back to him. Someone older, wiser, who’s going to teach you stuff you’ve never dreamed of.I bend to collect everything, my jacket, beret, scarf, but someone slaps my slender lace rump and grabs hold of me.
‘Come on, girl. I want to introduce my vestal virgin! My cousin Serena, everyone!’ Polly pulls me into the crowd of Sherlock Holmeses and Jack the Rippers, Miss Havishams and Carmens. She ties a sparkling white mask onto me, fastening it tight with white ribbons. ‘Now, you look hot, girl. You get out here and charm the pants off my friends! I already love you, but Pierre will love you forever, too!’
All sound and movement shrinks to the narrowness of the mask’s slit, like the helmet of a suit of armour. Everything has a dreamy, surreal air.
‘You will remain virginal and masked, until I set you free.’ Polly cackles like a pantomime villain, reminding me of her filthy side, and as she moves back into the party she’s like a dancing flame around which huge menacing moths flutter in their swirling cloaks and feathered, furry, Venetian, Phantom, lace masks. Polly has put on a mask in the style of Catwoman and her eyes seem to sink back into her head, narrowing into red-glowing slits.
I love my beautiful, borrowed cousin to death. But mixed with the love there’s always been jealousy. That she had a family who gave her that confidence, that generosity and style, of the cocksure way she can look down her nose at an admirer so he has no idea if she’s going to lick him or lump him one. Someone offers me a tray of devils on horseback, fiery fruit wrapped in salty bacon, and as I stuff in a handful I realise I’m ravenous. I can’t remember when I last ate.
Someone changes the music. It grows louder, and wilder, looping endlessly round the same gypsy spirals. Everyone is dancing like there’s no tomorrow in this confined space, knocking over stands, mannequin arms and legs flailing like marionettes, and some, oh my God, are getting frisky now, grabbing at each other’s clothes, ripping at dresses and trousers, showing knickerbockers and camisoles, but it all looks directed, like a show, everything looks so choreographed, like a ballet, composed like a mural.
Everyone is so white, some almost transparent so that you can see the blood blue in their veins, painted red on their throats, white arms, white faces bending into each other, kissing, licking, pretending to bite, pretending to be vampires with their false fangs.
Now I do wish I had my camera. It’s my disguise. My shield. Normally I’d be prowling the place taking photographs, offering to display them later, sell them for a fee. Or keep them for my own archives.
I am limbless and naked without it.
A violin tests its strings in a kind of screech and the music lurches into another gypsy dance, the kind that makes you want to leap over a camp fire, and suddenly I’m lifted off my feet, tossed across the sea of bodies, hands and faces everywhere, stamping, clapping, whooping.
A man coated in green feathers with a hooked mask bows courteously, but as we start to waltz his hands wander over my dress, lightly resting on my hips or bottom, threatening to move further up, further in, but luckily another figure dressed as a court jester spins me round so he can rock me from behind, but then he pushes himself into my back, getting off on the feel of my buttocks pressed against his groin, ripping my dress a little more. I squeal and wriggle away from him. My breasts are in danger of falling out for all the world to see.
‘Hey, babe, you having fun? You’re the belle of the ball tonight!’
Polly sweeps past me in the arms of a very tall man in top hat and tails. They look exactly like Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. I try to screech at her that actually I want to go, but the music is too loud. I try to veer away from the friendly fingers and hands on me, but there’s no point. There are too many of them, big men, slender women, heads bobbing and pecking like birds in their elaborate costumes and sinister masks, all with red-painted mouths, those clever white fangs which look totally real, stabbing at their lips.
Whatever was in those canapés suddenly kicks in and instead of panicky and desperate I now get high. Euphoria must be close to mania, because now I’m laughing as two men wearing cat masks advance on me and throw me back and forth between them.
I know I’m hallucinating mad because as Polly twirls in her partner’s arms and Fred Astaire’s face appears above her head, I’m convinced that she’s dancing with Gustav Levi. Through the mask those eyes are unmistakable, glittering black and boring into my very soul.
I clap my hand to my mouth, my whole body trembling with excitement.
‘Gustav!’ I shout and wave, trying to push towards him. But he doesn’t hear or recognise me, because like an artist’s anatomical doll he turns Polly stiffly in his arms and spins away into the shadows.
That jealousy, twisting like a small knife again. If I’m the belle of the ball, Polly is undoubtedly the queen. She always is. She’s sorted. She has a job, a flat, a man. There he is, parading her in his arms. And me? Apart from a large inheritance which has come by default from people who would rather have pulled their own eyes out than give me anything, what have I got?
I stagger backwards through the crowd, aiming for the cubicle where my clothes are strewn about on the floor, but the push of the throng sends me crashing out into the back yard instead, and when the doors shut behind me it’s blissfully quiet out here. The embers which were heating the cauldron earlier are still glowing, heating up the patio.
I stumble towards a kind of bower in the corner and without checking what or who might be there as well I collapse onto a day bed under a curtain of ivy, spread-eagled across the white calico cushions. All I can see through the curtain of ivy is the orange fuzz of the city sky. No moon. No stars. No clouds.
‘Are you OK?’ Someone else has got here first.
I heave myself up onto my elbows, irritation prickling through me. ‘I thought I was alone out here,’ I mutter crossly. ‘Who’s that?’
I find myself staring into the blank gaze of mirrored Elvis shades. As my eyes move over the interloper I see how totally incongruous those glasses are with the short white toga and laurel wreath he’s wearing, shoved on top of impossibly golden curls.
‘Friend of Pierre’s. Who are you?’
‘Cousin of Polly.’
He doesn’t move from his Caesar-like pose. I fiddle with my tattered dress, realising that even if I wanted to leave I’d have to take it with me, because I can’t get out of it without help.
‘Wrong party, huh?’ he murmurs in an American accent. ‘You look far too pure and innocent to be mingling with these ghoulies and ghosties. Some very decadent people here, you know.’
‘Polly dressed me up like this. It’s not really me. Her idea of a joke.’
‘May be a joke to you, but however dirty you really are you sure look the part in that scrap of a dress. Bit rough with you, were they?’ He speaks with a subdued gruffness that makes me glance at him more closely. ‘A bit of rape and pillage back there?’
I toss my head in just the way a vestal virgin would. ‘All a bit of fun. Actually I’ve got to go. I’ve got things to do in the morning.’
‘Hey, you don’t want to go now. This is where it starts to get interesting. Why should our host and hostess have all the fun?’ His hands gesticulate as if they might slice right through me like butter, then he aims them like a couple of pistols to point out my cousin. ‘You can tell they’ve only been dating for a short time. They can’t keep their hands off each other!’
It’s true. Polly and Pierre are in the doorway. The moon is their spotlight as they sway together, totally oblivious to everyone else.
‘She deserves it. New York has always been her goal. She’s worked for it.’
He picks up a bottle of wine and hands it to me. ‘And you haven’t?’
‘I’m just starting out. My first day in London.’
I regret it as soon as it’s out, like I did earlier when I told Gustav Levi my name, and sure enough those disconcertingly blind shades are still fixed on me, the American mouth grinning as I take a big swig of wine and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand like a navvy.
‘How about that! Mine too. Fancy showing me the sights while I’m here? Starting now? Show Princess Polly she’s not the only one who can take a city by storm?’
I glance instinctively back towards the party, as if I need to ask permission.
But there’s no-one to ask. Certainly not our Polly. She has always encouraged me to go for it. Rebel. Do what the hell I like. In any case, she’s not available for comment. Her eyes are closed behind her mask, her arms around Pierre’s neck and his mouth is locked down on hers, and they are kissing, hard, I can see their tongues, and their hands are roving, hers going under his tail coat and squeezing his buttocks, his wandering shamelessly between her legs, wrinkling up her red skirt, pushing it up her thighs, his hand and wrist diving in.
Polly’s knee lifts and hooks around her boyfriend’s leg to steady herself as his hand disappears, touching her where no-one else is allowed, assuming that no-one else can see.
But I can see, and so can my companion. I tear my eyes away from my cousin, because the sight of that naked love, or at least lust, is embarrassing to watch. She’s got what you haven’t got. But the jealousy is all grown up now. Emphasising what I’m missing. Who I’m missing.
I squeeze my bare legs together, trying to quell the hint of heat between them, and then I see all too obviously what the sight of my kissing cousin has done to the American. There is a big bulge under his toga. The white cotton is rising in a comical tent over his crotch.
‘How about it, Polly’s cousin? They’re all at it in there, or they will be.’
I blush hotter as he shifts closer along the seat. I move slightly away, but he’s reasonably gentlemanly, at least at first. He takes my hands and pulls me closer.
‘There’s a light in your eyes,’ he says quietly, his mouth close to mine now. ‘And I can see you’re distracted. Who are you thinking about?’
I don’t move or say anything. He’s right, I am distracted. I can’t help thinking about Gustav. I wish he was here, looking at me like a glittering treasure he found in the snow. I’m dying to show Polly, her friends, that I can click my fingers and get anyone. But this all feels like a silly game. My heart isn’t in it. I want to get out of here, back to him. Look into his eyes which will tell me clearly that they like what they see.
‘Well, if you’re not distracted, I sure as hell am. Look how I’m fixed now.’
The guy takes my silence for consent, and takes my hands. He places them over the rigid shape under the cotton and it jumps in response. He leaves my hands there and strokes my legs, fingers wandering, under my dress. They pause, politely, then move on up my thighs.
My hands are still resting on him. I’m letting him touch me. I should play along. I will myself to want it, enjoy it, but I can’t. I shake my head and close my legs against his exploring fingers, and thankfully he pulls away.
In the doorway I can see Pierre’s hand working under Polly’s skirts. She is half opening her legs to him, wanting us all to see, to know what he’s doing to her, but half trying to keep herself hidden for the sake of decency. Her dress has ridden right up and every time he pushes at her, the curve of her butt presses white and flat against the glass door.
What’s wrong with me? If I’m aching for something, attention, caresses, then let this guy have his way. No point pining after someone else. Gustav won’t be giving me another thought, while this guy is here, he’s hard, he’s willing and able. So get over it. Show Polly I’m sexy, too, and desired. This guy is up for it, but he’s not doing it for me. Just as Jake didn’t do it for me, in the end. Maybe if I wait, sit here very still, the ache will subside, or wake up into something more useful.
Or maybe there’s nothing in me to wake up. Maybe I’m sitting here on this seat with a good-looking, aroused bloke unable to react because I’m terminally frigid, as Jake shouted yesterday morning (was it as recent as that?); he shouted it after me, standing on the metal step, shivering in the damp dawn as I stumbled across the field, away from his caravan.
Frigid cow, he’d yelled, the new, insulting violence weighting his words to make him feel better. And to punish me for faking it, and then leaving him.
The American starts to sing under his breath. Hello? Is it me you’re looking for?
He strokes my face. No. It’s not him I’m looking for. But there’s no harm in letting him touch me like this, is there? It’s a party. He’s cute enough. Why not test myself? See if I am really frigid?
Are you somewhere feeling lonely? Or is lonely feeling you?
Still looking at Polly, certain that she can see me, I turn my mouth into his stroking hand, flip out my tongue and hook the guy’s finger into my mouth. Even though he’s still wearing those stupid glasses I can tell from the excited biting down of his teeth that I’ve suitably surprised him. I nibble further down the finger and start to suck.
His tongue flicks across his slightly open mouth. It’s such a quick flick that I can tell what he’s thinking. He reckons he’s reading my signals loud and clear.
And Polly has noticed, just as I wanted her to. She can see me up close to one of her cute friends. She nudges Pierre to show him, too, but he’s talking to someone else and he doesn’t turn to look. She puts her thumb up to me, shakes her dress down to cover her legs again, then Pierre’s arm comes round her waist and they merge into the crowd.
The music has faded to one plaintive violin, the lowest possible notes probing the emotions. The dancing has slowed.
The American sees that no-one is watching. He’s strong, and he pulls me over onto him, to sit right down on his lap. My lace dress floats up round my hips. The hardness grows and jumps under the toga and pokes at my inner thigh, jabbing on the bone, at the tendons up high, trying to impress me, weaken me so that it can get in.
‘I need help with this,’ he groans, lying back, complacent in the assumption that he’s got me where he wants me. ‘I’m sorry, honey, but you caused this boner.’
I look down at him. ‘No I didn’t. My cousin getting it on with Pierre did that to you.’
‘Well, you’ve kept it going. I’m in trouble if I don’t have a woman at least once a day. Polly promised that this would be the place and she’s right. Look at you. Sex on a stick, like all the horny English girls. You gotta help me out here. Just with your hand. Your mouth?’
I sit there for another moment, straddling his bare thighs, feeling the hardness pulsing against me under the stupid toga. What a drag that must be for a guy, being attached to that hardness all your life, no control over it, what or who is going to trigger it, or when. Pretty girl wandering round a party on her own in flimsy dress. Get hard. Picture in a magazine. Get hard. Sit on a beach. Listen to sexy music, that disco thump that matches your heart beat. Matches the bump and grind of lovemaking.
But what about me? I may as well be made of stone. My body isn’t reacting to him at all. I’m straddling a handsome guy with a thumping erection who will do anything to relieve himself and nothing’s happening in here. I’m closed up. Dry as dust.
I come to my senses. ‘No. No. I’m sorry. I’m not like that. I’ve got to go.’
I lift my leg and climb off him, tug my dress down, hear the rip of vintage lace, feel the dress slipping.
Frigid. You frigid cow.
‘Look, fair enough if you don’t want to go with someone you’ve just met. Choosy’s fine. But what about me? Help me out here. Girls like you shouldn’t be allowed out looking so goddamn hot!’
He sits up, slams a cushion down on his disobedient groin. I wince.
‘I don’t blame you for being pissed with me. But I’m not putting out. No.’
He sighs. ‘I can tell your head is somewhere else. Who’s the lucky guy?’
I fiddle with a loose thread on my dress. ‘Don’t be nice to me. I just acted like a tease.’
‘And I acted like a schmuck. But I still say you owe some responsibility for this situation.’ His smile spreads wider. Those amazing straight American teeth. He’s obviously relieved that we can talk. And talking like civilised people might just make his hardness subside. ‘Cousin Polly’s never mentioned you’d be here. She’s a great stylist, isn’t she? You know some of the studios are looking at her fashion work? She’s made you look like something Dracula would happily snack on. I’m not sure you realise.’
‘Well, I’m flattered, Elvis. Really.’ Emboldened by distance I point playfully at his crotch. ‘And flattered that I still have that effect on people. But I’m not the girl for you. Find one who’ll want to make use of all that.’
He lifts the pillow off it. The toga is flat, no life under there now. ‘Begone, wench. See if I care.’
I lean over him and kiss him on the mouth. There’s a shy stirring in me as our lips meet. A shy tugging in the places where he touched me. But it’s not him.
Look at me, Gustav.
I put my hands on the boy’s shoulders. Make nice with him. Love the one you’re with. His tongue flips out hopefully. I hesitate, and pull away. Relief that I’m not frigid, that I can react to a cute guy? Or relief that I’ve said no?
‘So long, toga boy.’
He lifts the wine bottle in weary farewell. I still haven’t seen his eyes, and now I never will. The clouds of the night sky drift across the twin mirrors of his glasses.
Polly is waiting for me just inside. She’s been watching me.
‘You turned Toga Tomas down? Unbelievable. He’s got the hots for you. What’s up, hon?’
I shrug. ‘I’m bushed, that’s all.’
‘We’ve got lots of other cute guys around if Tomas doesn’t do it for you.’
She winds one arm round my neck and holds me for a long moment. The crowd has dissipated. Pierre is nowhere to be seen. The music has stopped. Empty bottles and glasses and trays have been virtually kicked into a pile in the corner. One or two overhead lights have been switched on in place of the old lamps. Scraps of lace and feather and ribbon are shed on the parquet floor, shining dully like fish scales. Masks have been ripped off and draped jokingly on the mannequins in the shop.
In short, the spell has been broken.
‘We’re all going up into the piazza for a meal. You coming, hon?’
I shake my head. ‘Can we catch up tomorrow?’
‘We’re leaving first thing. Might not even get any sleep. Might get on the plane dressed like this! Oh, please come with us, Rena? You look a sensation like that. Even more dishevelled than you were before, if that’s possible, like Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Like someone’s just ravished you, although I know damn well they haven’t, you saucy minx!’
‘I told you, Polly, and tonight’s just proved it. I’m genuinely off men.’
‘OK, forget men. Forget sex. I just want to show you off to my friends! Who knows, someone might offer you a photographic commission. Tomas is big in the film industry.’
I hold her tight. Kiss her cheek. I smell Eternity, by Calvin Klein. Just like mine. ‘Baby steps, Pol. I’m not a player like you. Not yet, anyway. I want to see if I can make it here in London, first. Come back and check me out in a year’s time. Who knows? I might be ready to fly by then!’
‘I’ll be back sooner than that. OK. Piss off into the night like a little bat, then! Take Pierre’s car. It’s the incredibly expensive and luxurious red Bentley parked outside. His driver will make sure you get back to the flat safely. And keep the dress. My gift to you. You look magical this evening.’
‘That’s down to you, Pol. Tomas just mentioned what a great stylist you are.’
‘Tonight London, tomorrow the world!’ She gives me a little shake, then another huge hug. ‘But you know, you’re looking so good tonight. Kind of ragged, and feverish. If you really are off men, then celibacy suits you!’
I have left the blinds open in Polly’s flat and through the huge plate-glass window the River Thames glints like steel under the night as it slides under Tower Bridge. Fireworks are spattering somewhere over to the east where the Docklands railway will be trundling lethargically around the glittering skyscrapers.
I ease the dress off my shoulders, managing to get enough buttons undone until it sheds like a second skin. My reflection is overlaid by the river, but I can see my body unpeeled in the moonlight, the body hidden in its laddish layers from Gustav Levi. The body that Polly dressed up like her dolly, that Tomas tried half-heartedly to ravish. But neither of them got down to the skin, did they? They didn’t see the whole of me.
My breasts, released from the dress and the bra, are high and full. I cup them gently, so heavy and warm, hold them forwards, watch as soon as they make contact with the cold glass how the nipples pinch into dark red points, an answering tightness behind my navel, the bounce of my breasts as my heart expresses its interest.
Jake didn’t like my breasts. It was as if he was scared of them. He’d ogle other people’s tits, as he called them, or comment on pictures in magazines, but he never touched mine except to give them a brief squeeze and a token rub before we scrabbled out of our clothes and lay down on that narrow bed. I’d push them into his hands. I’d try to kneel up over him and push them at his mouth, but he’d give them a cursory fondle before pushing me onto my back and getting down to what he really wanted.
These buried untried responses are like roses that will shrivel if they are not pruned. A vine that will wither if it’s not plucked. Any poetic image you choose. I’m alone tonight, I can set it to music if I want.
When the nipples go hard like this they burn and prick, little beacons, bright cheerleaders waving their pom poms, no, that’s a daft simile, they are just a pair of super sensitive buds that set off the train of wanting, the heavy ache pulling down to my centre, travelling towards a really deep, dark desire which I know has never been truly awoken.
What are they all doing now? Polly and her friends, dancing in a hoola round Covent Garden or crossing the Strand and demanding breakfast in the River Room of the Savoy where she is staying with her rich boyfriend. Jake, strumming discordantly on his guitar, cigarette dangling out of his mouth like James Dean, glowering at the sea beneath his caravan.
Gustav – I can’t picture him. Maybe he’s still sitting up on that high stool, turning the stem of his refilled cocktail in his long fingers while the barman polishes the glasses and tries not to glance pointedly at the clock ticking away at his overtime.
I lie down on Polly’s queen-sized bed, just in my knickers, my hands resting on my breasts. In my cousin’s walk-in closet is a wardrobe full of cellophane-wrapped dresses and suits and blouses, all for me to borrow, she said. All swaying as if in a breeze, or as if someone has just brushed their hands along them.
One hand trails down my flat stomach and onwards, into my knickers. The images of the last two days stalk across my mind like the credits of a movie. Now there’s just me, naked and alone on this low white bed, resisting the warm tugging between my legs, teased into being by all that’s happened. Not by Tomas and his tumescent toga. Not by the desire biting in his mouth, the hardness lifting the white cotton.
I’m turned on by the thought of Gustav’s wrist when I pulled off his glove in the square. Gustav’s finger, hooking my hair behind my ear.
So my fingers trail down, and into my knickers, pull them aside and then right off, stroking and parting myself. I’m too lazy to find anything else to use on myself. I push in a little more, the warmth and wetness, withdrawing, pushing in harder, and what makes me flower brightly under my own probing fingers is no amount of music or poetry or lovely photographs.
I’m not frigid.
As dawn blossoms over my drowsy face, what makes the wetness spring and spark is the wondering of how Gustav Levi’s mouth would feel, kissing me right there.

FIVE
I have actually run some of the way to get here. I tell myself it’s only because I’m desperate to get my cameras back.
He’s told me which way to come and now I’m in a street on the other side of the river, practically next door to the Savoy Hotel in fact. But Polly is long gone.
I didn’t wake up until midday. The first thing I did was look for Gustav Levi’s business card. And I couldn’t find it. I tipped my jacket upside down, inside out, shook it. It was plain white, thick, his name in a thick black Modoni font. I tried to envisage the number across the bottom. I couldn’t. I hadn’t even read the card. I must have dropped it in the street. At the party. In Pierre’s red car.
I slammed my hands down on the bed. Then I forced myself to count to ten and walk to the window and back ten times. My camera. My cameras. Think. My life’s work is stored in there.
My mobile phone buzzed on the table beside the bed. I can’t think who that is. Please not Jake. And I’ll kill Polly if she gave Tomas my number. I don’t want to have to find the words to put him off. No. Stay calm. It could be one of those galleries. Number unknown.
‘Yes. Serena Folkes here. Hello?’
There was a pause. Then, ‘Ah. Serena.’
His voice was even deeper than I remembered, pouring treacle. My knees went from under me and I fell onto the bed.
‘Gustav! Mr Levi. Oh my God. You don’t know how happy I am to hear from you!’
He chuckled. I could hear low voices and brisk footsteps in the background. He sounded as if he was an echoing room.
‘Maybe you could come and show me how happy?’
‘How did you find me?’
‘The wonders of technology, Serena. I just made a note of your mobile number when you left your phone with me in the bar last evening. If you go to your contacts you’ll see I’ve added myself in there, too. So now we’re both armed with vital information. I told you I wanted to see you again, and I meant it.’
I just stared stupidly at the phone.
‘You do want your cameras back, don’t you?’
Yes I did. I do. And so it was arranged.
This must be it. There’s a flight of steps and big glass doors up ahead of me, but before I reach them and check the address I stop to look at the publicity poster attached to the approaching railings.
There’s no obvious gallery anywhere nearby, but the poster shows a sepia photograph of a group of comely women reclining on a sofa, with tumbling black hair, plump bodies, and can-can corsets and stockings. They are incredibly dated, girlishly coy, mostly, their backs turned to the camera to show mooning white buttocks and big bovine hips and shoulders, but the eyes gleaming under curled fringes are vacant and old as the hills.
I guess they are from a collection of dirty postcards of fin-de-siècle Parisian prostitutes, or a clever reproduction. They are certainly faded. Patches of the background are missing or cracked where the old processing ink has peeled away from the paper, but the women are intact.
I run my hands over my own rounded hips. I’ve made a real effort today. After we’d arranged to meet I told myself as I showered and dressed in Polly’s glittering white bathroom that today is the day to make some changes.
So I’ve shed Rena the scruff in her jeans and biker boots, and I’m wearing a dress. Well, he told me that this was business and that I was to come to his office, so businesslike is how I want to be. It won’t go amiss for my other appointments, either. So it’s not only a dress, but a black jersey dress, flaring on the hips, wrapped tight across the bust, severe yet softened by these shiny black boots. Flat, not heeled. I can’t masquerade to that extent, let alone pound the streets of London in heels. And a cropped black Cossack jacket with velvet collar and cuffs and military silver buttons.
At the last minute I pull on the beret for comfort, but this time I wear it low over my forehead Garbo-style.
I continue on up the polished white steps and read the name above the door. It says The Levi Building. It’s not as phallic as some City buildings. None of the structures along the Embankment reach any higher than Big Ben. But it’s no less hulking and impressive for that. The words swim into focus. The Levi Building. So he owns the whole shebang?
The lobby is vast and echoing. There is a chrome shelf, not even a desk, in the middle of the place, and a lady sitting bolt upright behind a switchboard of buttons. She looks like a spooky Mary Poppins. Black hair pulled back into a bun so tight that her face is dragged back with it. A black broderie anglaise blouse pinned with a cameo brooch. She glances up and without speaking pokes out a long plum-painted fingernail to press a button marked Levi.
‘Is everything around here named after him?’ I ask. My voice hisses across the black marble interior as if I’m in church.
‘Penthouse office. Top floor.’ Her voice is high, as if holding a top note.
The lift spits me out at the top, and I am dazzled by the blaze of light. It’s hard to know where the light comes from, whether I’m facing north or south, even.
‘Ah, Serena. How lovely to see you again.’
A pin man appears in the distance, etiolated and thin like an alien just about to step out of the blinding interior of the mother ship. I rub my eyes and step towards him. He seems to be wearing a suit and a white shirt today, but before I can focus properly he takes my hand and shakes it formally. He holds it for an extra moment.
‘I’m so glad you took my phone number,’ I gibber, as we start to move back towards the light, one of my hands still in his. ‘I would be absolutely lost without my cameras!’
‘Your head is like a sieve, so it’s lucky I’m a magpie. Gloves, cameras–’
How familiar his deep, calm voice is. I only met him yesterday.
There is a cool, tomb-like atmosphere in this place. I still can’t see clearly, but I think we are in a corridor. He turns right and leads me into another big space but this is insulated. Not warm, but not cold, either.
He drops my hand and leaves me standing in this vast, warehouse-like space. He walks towards another window but the light in here is less glaring, and finally I can focus. I turn in a full circle. There are more of the French photographs, blown up, on one wall, and others, sepia, black and white, none coloured, but I’m assailed, as any visitor would be, by rolling flesh, and plump women, and vivid nakedness.
‘You’ve brought me to a gallery? This is awesome. A real inspiration. Exactly the kind of venue I’ve dreamt about.’
‘Not just any gallery, Serena.’ There’s a click. On goes an oversized chrome Anglepoise lamp by his desk and there he is, springing back into my life. Someone who looks just like him, anyway, but this guy is scrubbed and brushed today, those eyes blacker, deeper, more glittering in contrast to the cleanly shaved cheeks. The formal tailoring makes him seem taller and broader, but the fine fabric also restrains him, restrains all that restless energy.
He stands and moves differently, slowly, considerately, the jacket creasing slightly as he bends his arms, the trousers revealing nothing of the long legs I saw in their jeans last night. The body that pressed against me. No hint of the manhood, what lies beneath. He moves almost in slow motion, but not his hands. They are restless as ever. They pluck the middle buttons, doing and undoing. The man I know as Gustav Levi is someone who stalks misty London squares at night, wrapped up warm but unshaven, wild eyes watching.
Apart from a giant vase of lilies in the corner tall enough to bathe in, there is nothing else visible in this space.
As the light snaps on the lively photographs leap away into the shadows cast by the winter afternoon light.
‘This is my gallery.’
I walk towards the window. Behind him the river flows dark and fast past the London Eye and the South Bank opposite, multi-coloured lights winking off the various bridges spanning the Thames.
‘What can I say, Mr Levi? You said you were an entrepreneur, but this? You own this place? This whole building?’
‘That’s my name on the door. And more besides, Serena. You could say I’m multi-national. London. Paris. New York is currently being conquered.’ He takes a pen out of his breast pocket and taps it against his chin. His mouth is hard today. Both lips equally unforgiving. ‘I’m a walking, talking, living corporation. Mostly I own and lease galleries. I prefer to try to keep art in my life, but I do own other kinds of industrial space, too.’
‘A real tycoon. I should have been nicer to you.’
We stare at each other for a moment. He does indeed look every inch the tycoon. The knot of his dark red tie with a pattern I can’t decipher from here is tight up against his Adam’s apple. He’s so cool, and handsome, all that contained power, but his fine face is etched with a tiredness I didn’t see yesterday.
And I was right. He’s closer to forty than thirty. As if he knows what I’m thinking he fiddles under the knot of his tie, undoing the top button.
‘Meeting you made my day, Serena.’
Oh, the eyes. How they glitter with life.
Look at me again, then, Gustav.
His thumb is poised to punch at the top of his pen as if it’s misbehaved. ‘But you’ve changed.’
‘So have you.’
‘I look like this every working day. But you’re all – neat and tidy! What’s happened to Calamity Jane?’
‘She’s still here, but I thought I’d make an effort.’ I run my hands over my new, svelte outline. ‘My cousin left loads of clothes in the flat and told me to help myself. And I’ve got a lot to do today. Places to go, people to see.’
‘Appointments made?’
‘Not new ones, no.’ I grip the handle of my portfolio. ‘I needed to get my cameras back first.’
He sits on the edge of the desk, swinging one long leg. Shut away from the world this is how a master of the universe looks in the flesh. His eyes are chips of black ice. This intense attention, scrutiny almost, must be part of his business technique. Because it’s certainly working.
‘The beret. They way you’re wearing it today. It’s less the impoverished artist, more the student from the Left Bank. Très chic. Who knew you were two different women, rolled into one?’
If it wasn’t for the very slight swinging of his foot in its polished black brogue, he could be a waxwork. One of his own exhibits. But the whole room, the whole building vibrates with his aura. And best of all, he is totally zoned in on me. Again I am the only person in his world.
‘Who’s to say you get either? Look, I shouldn’t keep you, Mr Levi. You must have so much to do. So many deals to cut. So many fortunes to make. But thank you for looking after my camera.’
‘You told me to guard it with my life, and that’s exactly what I did.’ He folds his hands on his leg in an effort to keep it still. ‘I told you I had a proposition for you, so I’ll get straight to the point. I want you to hold all your other appointments. I don’t want you to rush off anywhere, Serena, because I’ve had a look at your work and I like it. I think I can help you. I want to help you.’
‘My work? How did you take a look?’
‘Simple.’ He picks up my camera bag, takes out the Lumix. ‘You just switch on this little device, press the screen button and presto. Scroll through all the images.’
I laugh at the faux advertising speak. ‘I should be very cross with you for invading my privacy, Mr Levi. For all I know you could have copied the lot onto your computer by now, even though they’re my intellectual property!’
‘Industrial espionage. I like it. But not nearly as much fun as just coming to a good, old-fashioned, quid pro quo arrangement, eh?’
There’s a brief, easy silence between us. I glance at him, his eyes holding mine, then walk past him towards the light, suddenly exquisitely self-conscious in my dress, aware of my legs, exposed as they swish in their stockings. I’m trying to walk elegantly in the shiny boots. If I feel a fraud dressed like this, I’m a fraud who is about to make something happen.
I sit down on the broad window sill. The light is behind me so he’s at a disadvantage now. He’s forced to swivel sideways.
‘So what did you see on my camera?’
He holds his fingers up and counts them off. ‘The little witch at the back of the line falling over. The others all standing there, huffing and puffing till she got up again. The streetlight casting those triangular shadows from their hats. But much more besides. I seem to have got a kind of potted history of your life. Well, your travels anyway. Egypt. Morocco. France.’
‘And there’s more. Venice, that was my favourite. Here, in my portfolio.’
‘Which I will look at, too, if you’ll let me. There’s so much talent here.’ He walks over to the other end of the window sill and wags his finger at me. ‘I’m not just saying it. I know how tough it is when you’re starting out. And what I can see in front of me is a girl who could use a break.’
‘Yes, I could. Of course I could.’ I grip the edge of the window sill. ‘But I’ve only just got to London. I’ve got to give it my best shot. There’s lots of places to try before I start taking charity.’
‘Who said anything about charity?’ He slams his hands down on his knees. What did I say yesterday about crossing him? About those hands being able to twist necks? ‘Don’t be so stubborn, Serena. Everyone needs a leg-up in life, especially in the arts world. And I’m just the guy you need. I’m not kidding you.’ His black eyes are deadly serious now. They are boring into mine, boring into all that misplaced pride, clumsy resistance. They’re sucking me in again. ‘I’m the answer to your prayers.’
I feel unbalanced, dizzy. Rest my back against the cold glass as I wait for the prickling goosebumps on my skin to subside.
‘You know nothing about me,’ I say softly. If we keep talking at least I can stay here a little longer. I wish I could press myself against him again, touch him, have his arms pinning me there, stopping me from leaving.
‘That’s not strictly true. I learned a lot about you last night. And now I also know you have talent.’
He stands. God he’s tall. I get a crick in my neck just staring at him. He comes towards me, fans his fingers under my jaw, pauses, strokes a little further down my neck. ‘Last night’s chance meeting will prove to be a stroke of luck for both of us.’
‘How?’
His black eyes are devouring me again. Glittering, and deep, drawing me further in. Less demonic today. More mesmeric. Something is being drawn out of me. Not my energy. Quite the opposite. It’s resistance and anxiety he’s taking away. I feel as if I’m being charged up, like I’ve been plugged into the mains.
His hand rests on my cheek a little longer, then he stands abruptly and goes back to sit behind his desk. Steeples his fingers.
‘I’m in danger of losing my concentration,’ he says, clearing his throat. His hair finally gives up and falls away from where he’s combed it back. ‘I’m going to have to come clean and admit that you have an extraordinary effect on me, Serena. I thought you’d walked out of my life yesterday, off to your party.’
‘I didn’t want to go.’
‘Your cousin must have been chuffed you made it. Your friends.’ He cuts through me, pushing his hair back. ‘But I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since yesterday. So let’s start again. Let’s turn this into an interview. Please take a seat.’
‘All a bit formal?’ I laugh, but he waves towards the white leather chair in front of his desk. Obediently I change seats.
‘Too right. Now. I have mounted photographic exhibitions many times, as well as fine arts, installations. Even concerts. I’ve sponsored some very famous names while they were struggling to get a foot on the ladder. So not only can I afford to take a risk with an emerging talent like yours, Serena. I am positively seeking out fresh blood.’
‘You make me sound like a rare steak.’
‘The rarer and bloodier, the better.’ He grins. His face goes light. It’s totally unexpected, like a flash of lightning on a sunny day. I’m liking his interview technique. ‘Come on. We all have to take leaps into the dark. How else are people going to notice you or your work? I can offer you the venue, the publicity machine, the marketing. The media exposure.’
I sit very still, very quiet. I’m still digesting what he said about being unable to stop thinking about me.
‘What’s in it for you?’
‘Well, firstly it has all the promise of a very lucrative, no, rewarding partnership. I’ll have priceless modern art on my walls. It’s essential to keep one’s finger on the pulse, especially with fledgling talent. Maybe I’ll even buy some for my private collection at home. And if we work towards a sell-out between now and Christmas, from there on in you’ll be able to charge whatever you like for your work.’
‘That really is a leap of faith. It all sounds too good to be true, Mr Levi.’
‘Gustav.’
‘So what’s the catch?’
He taps his fingers against his lips. So suave. So scary. His eyes sparking with a kind of mischief now.
‘I don’t see it as a catch. I see it as something beneficial for both of us. Like I said, a quid pro quo. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Because I have seen something daring and brave in you, Serena. I’ve seen … well, I think we get on. Yes?’
The way he’s staring at me now. Even behind his desk. Behind his hands. He’s doing something to me. I cross my legs, aware of how bare they feel under this dress. Also aware, with an inward gasp, of a softening dampness.
‘What’s daring and brave got to do with your showcasing my work?’
‘Because of how I want this to go. How I propose you repay me.’
This is where Polly would be jumping up and down saying I’m right, I’m right, watch him, he’s after something.
Yes, yes! I hope he is! I wanthim to be after something, however reckless that sounds. Because I am after something too.
But what I actually say is, ‘Money. We haven’t talked about money.’
No, not wet, I’m imagining things. I shift about on the chair. Just warm from the white leather that’s sticking to me. I lace my fingers in front of my knee, let it swing. The leg looks quite elegant in the opaque stockings, just like the stockings worn by these filles de joie in the Parisian pictures on the walls.
‘I’m trying to find the best way to say this.’ He folds his arms, looks genuinely awkward for a moment, and with the awkwardness comes an instant lifting of the years, as if dropping the facade of hard businessman is a relief. ‘I have in mind something mutual, something which pleases both of us, benefits you, makes me happy, and involves no hard cash whatsoever.’
‘I’m not understanding.’ I fold my arms, too. ‘You want me to give my photos away?’
He shakes his head, presses his hands together like a priest.
‘I’m assuming you’re living on private means at the moment, Serena? If that’s not too intrusive a question?’
I nod as if it’s the most normal thing in the world for a girl of twenty to have no visible means of support. ‘I’ve recently inherited a substantial sum of money. And I’ll get more when I sell the house.’
He stares at me a moment. I’m aware how cold that sounds. But I’m not an actress. I can’t affect sorrow or grief, or even gratitude, where there is none.
‘You’re alone in the world?’
‘I have my cousin, Polly – she’s the one who had the party last night, but she’s working as a stylist in New York at the moment. I told you I’m living in her flat. But Gustav, my money won’t last forever, not once I’ve bought property and so on. What do they say about paying monkeys with peanuts? I intend to earn a living. If we’re going to do this, if I’m ever going to be taken seriously, I need to do it properly. I need to sell these pictures!’
‘And you will, my – Serena. You will. Money will exchange hands in the usual way between the gallery and any buyers, commissioners or collectors. And the gallery will then split the sales fifty–fifty with the artist – you – which in itself is unusual. I usually sting my clients for at least eighty–twenty.’
I laugh, but he’s looking at me so seriously, as if he’s afraid I’ll disappear.
‘So why give me the preferential treatment?’
‘Because I like you, Serena. I don’t think you realise what a find you are.’ He holds up his hand and starts ticking off points on his fingers. ‘Basics. You’re beautiful to look at, invigorating to be with, and what makes it even better is that you don’t know it. I have a painting in my house by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and you’re in it. No-one’s ever told you you’re gorgeous, have they?’
I shake my head. He had me at beautiful.
‘Not even the boyfriend you’ve left behind you. Because there’s always a boyfriend left behind. First love. But too callow, I’m guessing. Too young, once you’d seen a bit of the world. Too set in his ways and his horizons so much narrower than yours?’
Tears are fighting flattery here. How does he suss all that?
‘You’re young, and fresh, and undemanding. And like me you’re pretty much alone in the world, which gives you that hungry edge. Oh, there’s room for refinement. We’ll do a little work on you, me and my assistant. Continue what your cousin has started. Wardrobe, hair, make-up. Don’t frown at me. I love the waif-and-stray look. But this is a competitive business. You need to present a flawless face to your public, yes?’ He spreads out his hands, presenting his findings. ‘What do you think?’
‘Of your resume? More complimentary than my own profile.’
He taps the portfolio with his long fingers. ‘You want professional exposure and although I’ve never stopped working my personal life has taken a dive. I’ve been hibernating like a monk for too long.’
‘I’ve never met anyone who looks less like a monk!’
He grimaces. ‘I need re-tuning. The personal angle I’m after is pure pleasure. If pleasure can ever be wholly pure.’
I sit bolt upright in my chair, my knuckles white on my knees. He’s still a stranger, however mesmeric his eyes. Remember that. ‘And this personal pleasure will come from me?’
‘I want to be able to call you my own, Serena. For a measurable period. Enough to restore my faith in womankind. Sound odd to you? Well, I’ve been licking my wounds for too long. I took one look at you stalking those poor little witches yesterday, and I thought, that’s the girl to wake me up. I want that one.’
‘You thought I was a bloke when you first saw me!’
‘Only for a moment, till I got closer.’ His narrowed eyes gleam at the reminder. ‘And for once I was delighted to be proved wrong!’
I nod distractedly. ‘A measurable period, you said? You mean this doesn’t have to go on forever?’
He shakes his head and looks out of the window. I follow his gaze over the rooftops.
‘This is a deal. Not a life sentence. I’m suggesting until the very last photograph is sold. Between now and Christmas. I have been dragged down some very crooked, dark paths in the past. I need your company to shine a light. Just by being by my side, especially when the day’s graft is at an end. I want to wine and dine you. I want to see you blossom. It won’t be particularly chaste. I may as well warn you of that now. But I’m going to enjoy your gratitude.’
‘Doesn’t that work two ways?’
He laughs. ‘Of course. I will be grateful too. Believe me.’
‘Still makes me sound like more of an escort.’
He looks back at me and nods slowly. I watch his mouth for signs of a smile. ‘I realise how that sounds. And yes. It’s come out all wrong, but that is kind of what I mean.’
‘With the sex thrown in?’
‘I was getting to that. Please, don’t look so shocked. I didn’t have you down as a prude. Hear me out. There’s so much pleasure to be had out there, Serena, if you just know where to look. Do I look satisfied to you?’
‘Honestly? No. You look famished. Hungry like the wolf.’ I uncross my legs and stamp both feet on the ground. ‘But why me? I’m not pure as the driven snow, but I’m not exactly a woman of the world either. I’ve only had one. One boyfriend I mean. There must be heiresses and models and powerful women up and down the land with all kind of skills who would be delighted to oblige you!’
‘Gold diggers, sure.’ He gets up and walks away from me, to the corner of the building where it looks out over Westminster Bridge. Leans his forehead against the glass. ‘Cynical, bitter women who pounced as soon as I was single again and thought I’d wave a magic wand to make them comfortable with no effort on their part. I was taken in by my ex-wife. I was stupid. She was the woman with two faces. The face of an angel, the body and soul of the devil.’
I shift uncomfortably at the sudden bitterness in his voice. ‘Why didn’t you leave her, then?’
He doesn’t turn round. Talks to the window. ‘Besotted. Blinded. Belittled, in that order. And blamed. But the blame is all on me, because I should have known better.’
‘Sounds like a classic case of mental cruelty to me.’
‘You have a wise head on those slender shoulders, Serena. But I still need to be absolutely sure that you are the girl I think you are. Because if so, the rewards will be endless.’
‘And if not?’
He comes back towards me, stretches out his two hands and separates them as if swimming, or parting the Red Sea.
‘Where is she now?’
He sighs. That muscle is going in his jaw again. Either he’s the actor I’ll never be, or there is a real weight of sadness tugging at him, chaining him under those chalk stripes.
‘She’s gone. That’s all you need to know.’
‘So this isn’t a Rebecca scenario. The ghostly paragon hovering over our shoulders. The paragon I could never match.’
‘There are no paragons in my story. One younger brother. I took care of him all his life. We were thick as thieves until we were estranged. He witnessed things in our house he shouldn’t have, but when I tried to fix it, promised to change, she not only seduced him under my nose but succeeded in poisoning his mind.’ He laughs caustically. ‘Voilà. The concept of family is irrelevant to me now, just as it is to you.’
‘We have that heart of darkness in common, definitely. But do you not see how perverted your suggestion sounds?’
He seems to be growing in stature again. Taller, broader, darker. The exhaustion is scrubbed off his pale face. He flicks his jacket back, shoves his hands in his trouser pockets. I study the tautness of his stomach under the pressed shirt. The way his trousers are tailored beneath his belt. Professionalism personified. Not a hint of what lies beneath.
‘And do you realise how prim you sound?’
‘Touché.’ I laugh a little shakily and stand up to hold the back of my chair. ‘I am listening, Gustav. I’m not – I’m not saying no. I’m just trying to understand, that’s all.’
Polly is screeching no, no, no, Lothario like some kind of Greek chorus in my head, but my own voice is saying yes, yes. Who is left to stop me?
We move at the same time, right up to each other. Behind us, the darkening gallery with the naughty pictures capering across the walls. In front, the great river and the westering sun casting orange ripples under the boats ploughing home over the river. The London Eye rotating.
‘This is my office. My rules. I can lay down whatever warped plan I like. What I want is to be woken up again, but on my own terms. You don’t have to accept any of it. You can walk out that door any time you like.’
He laughs softly, and there it is. The soft lower lip, pushing slightly away from the upper. The run of his tongue across it, the glint of those biting, hurting teeth.
‘Why don’t I just cut the sob story and show you just how carnal I want to be?’
‘Should we not discuss terms?’ My voice warbles up the scale. ‘Sign something?’
‘In blood, do you think?’ he chuckles, leaning down towards me. I can see that yellow crinkle on the edge of his eye. The calmness of his brow. I can smell a faint, lemony tang of scent. ‘Later, perhaps. Let’s see how we get on. Poco a poco.’
‘Baby steps.’
We stare at each other. The mini version of me reflected in his black eyes shimmers against the afternoon light. The bug-eyed girl I can see there is perfectly calm, too. His face relaxes into a smile, the creases at the corners of his eyes showing me it’s heartfelt.
I lift my hands up like praying paws but instead of taking them like he did before, kissing them like a courtier, he pulls me roughly and imprisons both wrists behind my back with one hand. Right. So he’s not being gentle today. I put up a token fight, try to wrench my hands back, but his tall, firm body is pressed hard against mine and my resistance is shrivelling.
‘Trust me, Serena. I’m not going to do anything you won’t like. You responded to me yesterday. I love that you’re so transparent. You’re a frustrated, lovely temptress. You make the blood pump through these weary veins again.’ He tightens his grip on my wrists, nearly stopping the pumping of my own blood, but I welcome the pain because it’s brought him up close. ‘Remember, you’re free to leave whenever you wish. But I guarantee by the end of our time together you’ll wonder how you ever lived without the attention I’m going to lavish on you.’
The window sill digs into the backs of my legs. His smile fades into seriousness as he examines my face silently, sliding his free hand under my hair. Watching the way my hair curls round his fingers, his eyes sliding back to mine to see how I’m reacting. He already knows how that weakens me. He’ll remember, because every time he strokes or tugs or tangles my hair, my eyes will close, my head fall back with surrender. After that I’m a sure thing.
His hand moves down, framing my face, then as it continues on, down my throat, his face is brought so close it’s almost blurred. I focus on his mouth. What will it give away about him today? Those teeth are a tiger’s barrier to his emotions. They come down hard when he’s hesitant or thoughtful, then when some kind of release is allowed the tiny dents in his lip fill out again. It’s happening now. How warm his breath is on my cheek as he brushes his lips against my skin. I tilt my face up, move my mouth towards his, but he turns his face sideways, his black hair falling like water against my mouth instead.
The idea that whores don’t kiss shoots through me and hits its target. Dark determination twists inside me. We’ll see about that.
His hand is over the swell of my breasts now. He closes his eyes. The V of the neckline is very flattering, framing and hoisting them invitingly. The perfect choice for today’s encounter. The perfect garment to launch my new, brazenly ambitious self. Keep the red blood boiling in his veins no matter how controlled he thinks he is.
It’s as if he’s measuring me for something. His hand barely touches, merely brushes. I arch my spine to push my breasts closer to him. If he just moves a little to the left he could untie the wrap fastening with one move and undress me, reveal the black lace I’m wearing underneath.
But his hand travels on, smoothes over my stomach. His grip tightens on my wrists. He half opens his eyes again, watches the exploring progress of his own hand skimming down my body, over the soft rising mound. It doesn’t stop. It doesn’t stop, and then he’s there, down there, between my legs. If his hand goes in through the skirt of my dress he’ll know the dampness springing there, oh God, that is what he’s doing, he’s found where the dress wraps over and he’s inside, touching the bare skin of my thigh above the stocking.
Instinctively I try to sidle away, close my legs against his hand. Behave like a lady before it’s too late.
His fingers rest easily on my thigh. His black eyes are on mine. ‘Stay still when I ask. Move when I ask.’
‘My mind is whirling, Gustav. This feels good, but it also feels very, very bad.’
My body belies everything I’m saying and thinking. It feels absolutely right that he’s touching me and lording it over me. All my life I’ve struggled to appear strong, never show the damage. Even with Jake I led the way sexually, I always gave the go-ahead, but after a while I wanted more than he could give me.
‘Whirling is fine.’ Gustav’s chuckle is low, almost a growl. ‘You telling me there’s something wrong about a man who just wants to touch you? Who’s wanted you since he set eyes on your scruffy little butt?’
‘You didn’t give much away yesterday.’
‘Well, I’m telling you now. I was being old-fashioned. Respectful.’
‘Or slow off the mark?’
He laughs quietly and as always when he laughs his hair falls forward as if it wants to join in. His eyes half-close but they can’t hide the want gleaming there, the lust shining through. ‘Time to make up for that, then. I want to know if you feel as good as you look today.’
Who am I kidding? I’ll never be a lady. Would a lady deliberately put on a low cut, seductive, breast-boosting dress to visit a gentleman? I’ll enjoy the ride, and see how far he goes, how far I’ll let him go, what this demented arrangement will actually turn out to be, what it will actually feel like.
‘Stay still, Serena.’ His mouth is hot against my hair now. ‘Let me enjoy this.’
My body has made up its own mind already. It’s given in, willingly. I’m so tired of arguments or arrangements or agreements. I’m weak with the waiting. His breath heats my hair as he mutters something in a foreign language which sounds dirty and which I know he won’t translate for me, but his fingers do the talking instead, stroking in between my thighs and opening me up, as if about to play the harp. My thighs part obediently, and oh God there he is, touching me, treading over the softness.
The scent from the lilies clogs into my nostrils, so heady and thick that it has actual substance, like stuffing my skull with cotton wool. Some kind of barge or boat outside judders into the river bank. I can hear the pilot telling his mate to cast the rope round the bollard on the pier.
One more feeble attempt at decency and decorum. My thighs press together, meaning to stop his hand but instead trapping it there, the tips of his fingers already inside.
He pauses, his mouth pressed against my hair. He remembers what I said last night, knowing that the little hairs which that woman used to yank when she thought I was naughty are rising sensuously like baby feathers under his breath.
‘Still time to back out, Serena. You have no idea what you’ve done to me. So warm. So sweet and fresh. I could play with you all day. But it’s not too late. If you don’t like it, you’re free to leave and we’ll say no more about any of this.’
Those words decency, decorum, dignity are like shreds caught on barbed wire. Distant voices tell me he should shove his gallery, along with his twisted suggestions.
But I like the feel of his hand there. My body wants it, him, inside me.
‘Not that sweet. Go on, if you dare. Put your fingers in me,’ I whisper. ‘But look at me while you’re doing it.’

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