KATHLEEN TESSARO

THE FLIRT

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are

the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to

actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is

entirely coincidental.

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

1

Copyright © Kathleen Tessaro 2008

The author asserts the moral right to

be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book

is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Ebook Edition © 2008 ISBN: 9780007330676

Version: 2017-12-08

Praise for Kathleen Tessaro’s previous bestsellers:

‘More heart than you’ll ever find on a catwalk … written with élan and panache.’

Daily Mail

‘It’s friendship, not elegance, that proves Louise’s real saviour, and the friendships that develop through the book are drawn carefully and with insight.’

Independent

‘A perfect pick-me-up.’

Cosmopolitan

‘It’s surprising that this is Kathleen Tessaro’s first novel as her style shows the confidence and ease of a more seasoned writer. A charming, entertaining novel.’

Punch

Table of Contents

Copyright

Praise

Chapter 1 - La Vie Bohème

Chapter 2 - A Self-Made Woman

Chapter 3 - Tea for Table Five

Chapter 4 - 45 Chester Square

Chapter 5 - Free Lunch or a Shag

Chapter 6 - Armenian Plumbers

Chapter 7 - The King of the Tennis Ball

Chapter 8 - A Stranger at the Garrick Club

Chapter 9 - 111 Half Moon Street

Chapter 10 - A Subtle Twist of Fate

Chapter 11 - The Interview

Chapter 12 - The Rules

Chapter 13 - Professional Massagers of the Female Ego

Chapter 14 - La Dame aux Camélias

Chapter 15 - High Tea at Claridge’s

Chapter 16 - A Brief History of the Professional Flirt (A Small Digression)

Chapter 17 - The World’s Most Exclusive Hairdresser

Chapter 18 - Another Moriarty Original

Chapter 19 - A Man’s World

Chapter 20 - Nick the Nose

Chapter 21 - Make Me a Willow Cabin at Your Gate

Chapter 22 - The Cardinal Rule (A Moment of Silence, Please, for Freddie)

Chapter 23 - A Clean Break

Chapter 24 - The Ghost Chair

Chapter 25 - The C Word

Chapter 26 - Breakfast at Graff

Chapter 27 - Professional Massagers of the Female Ego at Large (Part One)

Chapter 28 - Professional Massagers of the Female Ego at Large (Part Two)

Chapter 29 - No Ordinary Mark

Chapter 30 - Drip, Drip, Drip

Chapter 31 - Professional Massagers of the Female Ego at Large (Part Three)

Chapter 32 - To the Lighthouse

Chapter 33 - The Savoy

Chapter 34 - All Hail Athena

Chapter 35 - Love According to Flick

Chapter 36 - The History of the Cyrano (Another Digression)

Chapter 37 - The Perfect Plan

Chapter 38 - The Perfect Plan (Hughie’s Version)

Chapter 39 - Venus Blinks

Chapter 40 - The Invitation

Chapter 41 - On the House

Chapter 42 - It’s Me … Emily

Chapter 43 - Walk with Me

Chapter 44 - Into the Care of Mr Lewis

Chapter 45 - International Polo Player

Chapter 46 - Leticia Eats

Chapter 47 - The Last Resort

Chapter 48 - The Next Generation

Chapter 49 - Waiting

Chapter 50 - Meant for Better Things

Chapter 51 - A Suitable Client

Chapter 52 - Unusual

Chapter 53 - The Opera

Chapter 54 - Liberty

Chapter 55 - Professional

Chapter 56 - Perspective

Chapter 57 - Two for the Price of One

Chapter 58 - Domestic Harmony

Chapter 59 - Faux Pas

Chapter 60 - Speed

Chapter 61 - A Deadly Virus

Chapter 62 - The Good Wife

Chapter 63 - A Cold November Evening

Chapter 64 - Life Jogs On

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Kathleen Tessaro

About the Publisher

La Vie Bohème

The ad appeared in the Stage in the second week of September, when the Edinburgh Festival was officially over and real life made its unpleasant appearance again in the collective consciousness of the large number of unemployed young actors who populate the London area.

It read:

Unique situation available for an attractive, well-mannered, morally flexible young man. Hours irregular. Pay generous. Discretion a must.

Please send photo and brief romantic history to:

Valentine Charles

111 Half Moon Street

Mayfair, London

Hughie Armstrong Venables-Smythe was sitting at his usual table, next to the window in Jack’s Café, armed with a pen he’d nicked from the waitress, a strong cup of builder’s tea and his mobile phone, which was running out of credit. Outside, the sun was radiant, the air sharp with a brisk autumn breeze. Elderly shoppers, dragging battered tartan trolleys, paused to examine the merits of the half-price bleach in pink plastic baskets outside the Everything For a Pound shop on Kilburn High Road. Others hurled themselves into bargaining sessions with the red-faced Irish butcher, his bacon suspiciously reasonable.

Here, Hughie was among his people; living the front-line, hand-to-mouth existence of a jobbing actor in NW6, still quite a rough neighbourhood according to his mother, despite the recent boom in house prices.

Spotting the ad, he circled it and leant back, satisfied. In his trade, buying the Stage and circling ads was considered an entire day’s work. He lit a fresh cigarette to celebrate.

He’d only just started smoking; Marlboro Lights. It was a disgusting habit. He’d picked it up from his girlfriend Leticia, who was full of the most delightfully disgusting habits known to man, of which smoking was easily the most socially acceptable. At twenty-three, it made him feel sophisticated. But then Hughie needed all the help he could get, especially as Leticia was a great deal older than him and more sophisticated than he was ever likely to be. Although they’d only been (he was thinking of calling it ‘going out’. But was it really going out if in fact you never went anywhere or did anything but just met several times a week in strange, dark places to have wild, wordless, pornographic sex? Probably not. The proper social heading was more likely to be ‘seeing one another’, which they’d only been doing for about two weeks), Hughie was already violently in love.

Ah, Leticia!

What was not to love?

Everything about her was perfect—from her glossy, black bob, doe-like brown eyes and soft, pink Cupid’s bow lips, to the way she screamed, ‘Spank harder, you horny little bastard!’ in the alleyway behind the bespoke lingerie shop she ran in Belgravia.

Closing his eyes, he silently thanked the Lord above, as he did many times a day now, for the particular good fortune that forced him to sit down next to her on that crowded number 12 bus. From the first moment he felt her delicate hand creeping up his inner thigh as they passed Marble Arch to the hasty exit they both made at Piccadilly Circus, he’d known that the course of his life was changed for ever. Until that day, God had been little more than a vague concept but afterwards, Hughie concluded that no other force in the universe could’ve so perfectly answered all of his prayers.

Then, taking another drag, he frowned.

Leticia was a real woman, not some fluffy student. Deliciously perverse, she was also popular, ruthless and easily bored. How was he going to keep her? Love alone was not enough. A diet of non-stop delights and amusements was needed to sweep her off her feet.

Having no money was neither delightful nor amusing.

This was the torment he’d been warned about in drama school: the very crux of La Vie Bohème. Here he was, a struggling young actor caught in the maelstrom of artistic integrity versus commercial demands. He imagined an audience observing his silent heroism and, with a gallant gesture, swept his mop of ash-blond hair back from his handsome face.

In fact, everyone he met expected him to be employed. How few people understood the fragile relationship between working in the acting profession and actually being paid!

Hughie took another drag.

Whatever happened to art for art’s sake?

Hughie’s mother and sister, Clara, went on endlessly about how was he going to live, to eat, to be a useful member of society, blah, blah, blah. But they were missing the point. And not for the first time, Hughie felt the familiar, frustrating weight of being a Venables-Smythe.

There was a time when being a Venables-Smythe was a destiny; a passport into the world of the English upper classes. However, by the time Hughie was born into the once-illustrious clan, all that was left to inherit was the name, posh accent and a mildly traumatizing public-school education. His grandfather had sold the family pile, priceless antiques and family portraits included, to an American hotel chain in 1977 for what had seemed an enormous amount of money at the time but in retrospect had been a bargain. Instead, he’d bought a badly converted flat in Chelsea, invested heavily in Betamax, and funded Hughie’s father, Robert Armstrong Venables-Smythe, in his playboy lifestyle. His father, as attractive as Hughie was now, had a taste for Ralph Lauren shirts, Gucci loafers, Italian cars and bubbly, big-breasted blondes. He met Hughie’s mother, Rowena Compton Jakes, a nineteen-year-old, flat-chested brunette, shy to the point of being socially disabled, when she was working in the wedding-list department of Tiffany’s. They were married two years later and Robert set up business as a Fulham estate agent. He knew nothing about the property market. He did, however, have a great deal of charm which he expended on long lunches at San Lorenzo with a series of young secretaries who called him Bobby.

When Hughie was five, his father disappeared in a mysterious deep-sea-fishing accident off the coast of Malta. His mother still claimed it was all a hoax but he never returned and his business went quietly bankrupt. This devastating blow signalled the beginning of Hard Times.

However, Hard Times give rise to great acts of heroism. And so it came to pass that Hughie’s mother showed her true mettle. She painted the living room red, bought a few scatter cushions from Peter Jones and announced that she was now an interior designer of the Jocasta Innes variety. One stiff early-morning drink took the edge off her shyness. She maintained a veneer of social respectability by shopping at designer second-hand shops and, at tremendous personal sacrifice, sending her children to the best schools. Her single obsession was that they should gain not only the kind of financial security that had eluded both their father and their grandfather, but also launch themselves back into the bosom of their class.

And so, Hughie’s older sister Clara diligently won a scholarship to study classics at Cambridge while Hughie, rejected from almost every institution of any note, enrolled in a third-rate drama school in King’s Cross, where he set about studying his craft.

Every once in a while, Hughie tried to imagine his father’s face. (His mother had systematically eliminated all his photographs.) What might he look like now?

Tucking the cigarette into the side of his mouth, Hughie took out the one remaining photo from his wallet. The faded Polaroid showed Hughie at three, holding his father’s hand on a beach in Spain. Robert was bending towards him, his hand pressed into the small of Hughie’s back. He was laughing, tanned, happy.

Hughie had studied the photograph for so many hours, over so many years, that it formed a memory where none existed. Sometimes he imagined he could still feel his father’s reassuring touch, a firm hand guiding him through the unknown, towards a version of himself he would be proud of.

Hughie slipped the photo back into his empty wallet.

The Unknown: here it was again, looming before him.

He was just back from a three-week stint in Edinburgh performing in an improvised musical about homelessness called Waste! He couldn’t sing much beyond ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ but he’d listened to enough Benjamin Britten during his Harrow education to pretend he was obsessed with atonal harmonies. Whenever he hit a sour note, he looked very serious and sang louder. Over time, the rest of the cast came to admire his musical daring. (After the late-night drinking sessions, he’d done a lot more atonal singing than even he’d intended.)

But now he was back in London, living on the sofa in Clara’s front room, and money was officially a problem. Actually, Clara was a problem too.

Clara had taken her mother’s advice: she worked in a large business PR firm in the City. She walked like a man in heels and wore navy-blue suits, hair in a limp, mousy bob—a look that might have been sexy in a Miss Moneypenny kind of way on anyone else but Clara. Her hours and ambition were such that Hughie hardly ever saw her but she left little yellow Post-it notes telling him what to do (or not, as the case might be). Sometimes, Hughie felt sure that she’d come home in the middle of the day to plaster a fresh supply on everything he’d ever touched. ‘This is NOT an ashtray!’ on the eighteenth-century porcelain china planter given to her by her fiancé Malcolm (a china specialist at Sotheby’s who was so obviously gay to everyone else in the world but Clara). ‘Put the seat DOWN!’ on the loo lid, ‘Buy your OWN MILK!’ on the refrigerator and ‘Don’t forget your fucking KEYS again!’ on the back of the door, just as he was about to go out (without his fucking keys). True, he’d only meant to stay a few days but she was being a cow about the whole thing. Nothing had changed between them since he was six and she ten, bossing him around all day like a shorter, fiercer mother, only she was considerably more sober than their mother and therefore more relentlessly eagle-eyed.

Stubbing out his cigarette, he hailed the waitress.

A tiny, auburn-haired girl came over and handed him the bill.

‘You don’t, by any chance, take Amex, do you?’ Hughie smiled. (The Venables-Smythe smile was something to behold—two dazzling rows of even white teeth, punctuated by dimples and a pair of intensely blue eyes.)

‘I, ah…’

‘Look,’ he peered at her name tag, ‘the thing is, Rose, I’m a bit short of change. But I’m a regular—you’ve seen me. I’m here almost every day’

‘Yes, yes…that’s true,’ she admitted. ‘But this is the third time in a week you’ve been short.’

‘Listen.’ He stood up. ‘I’ll tell you what, why don’t you spot me for one more day and I promise, on my mother’s grave, that tomorrow I’ll come in and make it up to you.’ He smiled wider. She blushed bright scarlet. ‘So do we have a deal?’

‘OK.’

Hughie landed a quick kiss on her cheek. ‘You’re a star, Rose! An absolute star!’ He swung open the door.

‘Wait a minute! What’s your name?’

‘Forgive me! Hughie.’ He offered his hand. ‘Hughie Armstrong Venables-Smythe. Now, don’t give up on me, Rose, will you? I’ll be in first thing in the morning, you have my word.’ And tucking his copy of the Stage under his arm, he left.

Once outside, he picked up a rogue apple rolling just out of sight of the fruit seller on the corner, rubbed it clean on his jeans, took a bite and considered the ad as he strolled home.

Hours irregular. Pay generous. Both sounded just the ticket. But the moral flexibility excited him most. He was uncertain as to the existence of any moral substance in his nature to begin with. How did one know nowadays? What were the criteria? Apart from the most obvious guidelines (would you kill anyone? How do you feel about stealing from old people?), he felt curiously uninformed in this area. It was clear, though, that morally flexible was by far the sexier of the two options.

And Leticia would love him for it.

A Self-Made Woman

Leticia Vane jangled the set of keys in her hand and sauntered down Elizabeth Street. She was the kind of girl (and even nearing her mid-thirties, she still thought of herself as a girl) who was aware of how her body looked and the shapes it made when she moved. Even though there was no one about much before noon in this part of the world, she liked to think she was being watched and that people noticed in her a certain dangerous pleasure.

And indeed, Leticia Vane was in many ways her own finest creation. She’d taken what little rough material nature had allotted her and moulded, shaped, hacked away at it as a sculptor chips away at a hunk of marble.

Nothing remained from her previous life as Emily Ann Fink of Hampstead Garden Suburb. The uni-brow that God had seen fit to adorn her with was gone, plucked into two slim, expressive arches; the overbite long replaced; the dull, brown hair dyed a gleaming black that brought out the colour of her eyes. Her face was pleasing but, understanding that she was no beauty, she’d taken a great deal of time over her figure. She ate once a day and smoked the rest of the time. Dying young was far preferable to dying fat. It had taken a lot of hard work to make Leticia Vane, the kind of work not a lot of people appreciated.

And of course there was the back story, too. One of two children of a chartered accountant and a depressed schoolteacher wouldn’t do. Leticia wanted something more fascinating. So she transformed her parents into diplomats, serving in faraway countries. She’d been raised in a series of exotic locations; learnt languages (she was far too polite to show them off in public); had affairs at a preternatural age; been doted upon but still suffered from a past too secret and too painful to reveal to anyone.

She’d always longed to be exclusive. Rare. And now she figured she probably had another ten years to really enjoy the fruits of her labours. However, the fragile nature of her accomplishments made them all the more dear.

And so she sauntered, just in case someone was looking out of the window, wondering what that fetching young woman was doing up at this time of day. And with a swagger, she twisted the keys in the lock of the tiny shop.

Bordello was a lingerie shop but it had no shelves, no long lines of silk nothings swinging on rails, no emaciated mannequins with stiff nipples adorned in lace thongs. In fact it looked more like a small, turn-of-the-century Parisian drawing room than a shop. The walls were papered with fine black-and-white stripes, the Louis Quatorze fauteuils were covered in ivory raw silk; a rare, cobalt-blue chandelier sent beams of azure light darting around the room. Leticia offered a bespoke service. There were no samples. There were, however, yards and yards of the most exquisite aged silk and satin in the palest colours: champagne, dove grey, pearl and thumb-nail pink. Bolts of filmy organdies were piled into corners and there were baskets with drifts of lace—antique, handmade, tiny works of art she’d collected from all over the globe. On a round mahogany table in the centre of the room, her sketchbooks were piled high, full of her latest creations. There were no changing rooms, only a luxuriously appointed bathroom to the rear, complete with an antique slipper bath, next to a narrow workroom.

Leticia was selling a sexual dream in which each of her clients starred. So she created a stage setting of subtle erotic chic; just glamorous and sensual enough to stir the imaginations of the women she catered to.

And Leticia Vane didn’t cater to just anyone. Clients had to be referred. Exclusivity wasn’t a matter of money nowadays; everyone and anyone had money. In order to be desirable, you had to be unavailable. Celebrities were the kiss of death to any business; as they went out of fashion, so would you. And she didn’t make anything for women who’d had breast implants. Leticia’s objections were purely aesthetic. They simply ruined the balance of her creations. She prided herself on being able to lend a hand where nature had been careless or abrupt. Her nightdresses all had inbuilt bras which she fashioned from plaster moulds of her clients’ breasts. Discrepancies in size and shape were all catered to and gently adjusted. By raking the insides of each cup, she made the breasts fall forward, spilling recklessly, yet never fully escaping, bound by tissue-thin layers of sheerest net.

She didn’t make anything as vulgar as crotchless panties or cut-out bras, but she knew how to heighten the colouring, hand tinting the fabric of each design so that the nipples appeared pink and slightly swollen. And her famous French knickers were so silky and loose that they could easily be pushed to one side without ever completely removing them.

Leticia’s greatest asset was that she understood men and sympathized with women. The difficulty with most lingerie was that it repelled the very thing it claimed to enhance. Not every man was thrilled to arrive home after a long day to find his wife trussed up in three hundred pounds’ worth of bizarre, lurid corsetry—trying to act sexy in a get-up that had taken her a full half-hour to wriggle into. Both of them would be embarrassed by the effort of such a blatant overture; unsure of how to work various snaps and ties. Then there would be added pressure of having an unprecedented sexual experience that would warrant the expense. Leticia understood that when a woman went to such trouble, it was usually because her sex life had reached a crisis. But the very unfamiliarity of such a costume could make her feel ridiculous and, even worse, desperate. A deliberate performance always increases the possibility of sexual rejection.

Leticia firmly believed that quality was the result of quantity.

Good sex was simply a by-product of having a great deal of all sorts of sex; rough, slow, quick and to the point or dreamy and drawn out, random gropes, teasing touches, full-on oral feasts—all these things qualified as sex to her. And so, to facilitate an unconscious air of sexual susceptibility, she created heightened versions of everyday pieces; deceptively simple white nightdresses, only fashioned from such sheer material and cut so cleverly that they draped the body in a provocative, filmy gauze, accentuating the peek of nipples, hugging the curve of hips, lengthening legs; billowing beguilingly with each movement. Because they appeared so innocent and unassuming, they were undeniably erotic. Instead of shouting, ‘Fuck me!’ they whispered, ‘Take me…see…I’m not even looking!’ The cleverest bit was that, while a man couldn’t help but be hypnotized by the erotic undertones, the idea of sex would be his. The pieces compelled a man to act, and made the woman feel languid. She could lie back and lure her husband into action. And a man who initiates sex always feels more virile than one who has it thrust upon him.

Leticia had been taught this invaluable insight along with the rest of her trade by her godfather, Leo. He’d been a West End theatrical costume designer. And like Leticia, he was entirely self-created. He smoked thin, black Russian cigarettes, probably had his nose done back in the sixties and wore his beautiful silver hair loose around his shoulders. His uniform was what he called ‘an Audrey’—a black cashmere polo neck, black tailored trousers and soft, leather slippers he had specially made.

He laughed often and firmly refused to countenance any form of self-pity or pessimism.

He came from a different world—not just a theatrical one but from another age entirely—an age that had no qualms about artifice; that had no desire to appear natural, and understood that a little sleight of hand was nothing to be ashamed of. He’d been a dresser to Marlene Dietrich when she used to pin her scalp back under her wig; had sewn sweat guards into Julie Andrews’s gowns in My Fair Lady and even adjusted the sleeves on Vivian Leigh’s costumes so that no one could see her hands shaking after a bad night.

Leticia slipped off her jacket, hung it up on a hook behind the door and looked round with satisfaction. Leo was retired now but he adored the shop. The slipper bath had been his idea. (It shuddered violently if you turned on the taps but it looked exquisite.) He was the only other person who really appreciated her collection of lace or the rare quality of the bolts of beautiful fabric.

If it hadn’t been for him, she might still be languishing in Hampstead Garden Suburb. He gave her a subscription to Vogue when she was eight. When she was ten, he presented Leticia with a little work table all her own in his studio. There she sat, making sketches, watching carefully as the greatest stage divas of the day were transformed from frightened, self-obsessed neurotics into creatures worthy of universal adoration. In her teens, he took her to the theatre, bought her her first cocktail in Kettner’s, showed her how to pluck her eyebrows and move in a way that commanded attention. He taught her the difference between presence, which includes everyone in its warm glow, and attitude, which keeps the whole world at bay.

There was nothing Leo couldn’t render magical. Nothing he couldn’t fix.

She opened her appointment book and examined the names. A romance novelist, a duchess and a rich American woman from Savannah. She didn’t like more than three appointments a day and nothing before 11 a.m. Early morning wasn’t sexy; once you were out of bed and dressed, the weight of the day pressed too hard on everyone’s conscience.

Her phone buzzed. She flicked it open. It was Leo.

‘Angel, how are we this morning?’ he purred, his voice tempered by thousands of cigarettes.

‘Brilliant. Are you coming in today? Please say you’re coming! I’ve got an order for a silk kimono I can’t make drape properly for love nor money. The woman has a bust like a mountain range. I promise to buy you a long, boozy lunch if you can fix it.’

‘Would love to but I can’t. Feeling a bit rough this morning. Truth is I was up late last night playing strip poker with Juan. You remember Juan, don’t you?’

‘That male nurse from Brazil?’ She riffled through the morning post. Another postcard from her parents in Israel. More brown envelopes. How boring. She tossed them unopened into the bin. ‘Didn’t you decide he was too young for you? Does he even speak English?’

‘Don’t be catty, darling. His English has come on a treat. Besides,’ she could hear him lighting a fresh cigarette, ‘we don’t waste our time on conversation.’

‘Please! I don’t want to know all your secrets!’

‘You know them all anyway’

She smiled. ‘I have one.’

‘Really? What or rather who is it?’

‘Now who’s being catty? His name’s Hughie and he’s delicious!’

‘How old?’

‘Oh, I don’t know…early twenties?’

She heard him exhale. ‘You need a real man, Leticia. Not some boy’

‘This from you!’ She closed the appointment book firmly. ‘Real men don’t exist. Or haven’t you noticed? Besides, he’s only a fling.’

‘They have feelings, you know’

‘I doubt it. All men want is sex. Especially young men.’

‘And what about you? What do you want?’

Her fingers ran over a particularly exquisite and costly bolt of French blue silk organdie. ‘Who cares what I want? It’s what I can have that matters.’

‘Emily Ann…’

She winced. ‘You know I hate that name; it’s so impossibly ugly!’

‘Emily’ he repeated firmly, ‘I’m concerned. These flings are getting to be a habit with you.’

‘And why not? We live in a disposable world. There’s no point in investing yourself too heavily.’

‘You’re too young to be so cynical.’

‘Oh, please!’ She sighed. ‘Let’s not do serious today! I can’t; I’m not in the mood. I just want to have some fun. And Hughie’s fun.’

‘He’s also real.’

‘What am I now, some corrupting influence? No lectures—not today.’

‘I’m only saying that you’ve got to be careful.’

‘Stop, Leo,’ she warned.

He ignored her. ‘You pretend to be tough but we both know you’re not.’

‘I have to go.’

‘Darling, I love you and I don’t want to see you hurt.’

‘What? By Hughie?’ she laughed. ‘See, that’s the whole point! He can’t hurt me! And I can’t hurt him. We have rules, Leo. It’s strictly sex…nothing more.’

‘I’ve got news for you, sunshine. Rules or no rules, you’re not in control of your heart. No one is.’

‘Listen, I’ll call you later. I have heaps to do and if you’re not coming round I’ll have to try to sort out this kimono monstrosity by myself. Speak later? And no more hot Brazilians, understand?’

She clicked the phone shut, pressed her hand over her eyes.

He was being so difficult.

And suddenly, it was back again; the dull ache, pressing hard.

It was an ache now, but for at least a year it had been a searing, slicing pain across her whole chest, like someone performing open-heart surgery without an anaesthetic. She couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep…

Damn him! Why did he have to be so…so judgemental?

She took a deep breath.

It didn’t matter. It was all over now. She was on her feet again, better than ever.

In her workshop, Leticia put the kettle on and lit a cigarette. There was time between the duchess and the novelist to have Hughie come round. And leaning her back against the counter, she inhaled deeply and closed her eyes.

Hughie was so tall, so young, so classically handsome. And so easy to control! There were no power struggles, no coy dating rituals or manipulations. She rang, he came, they fucked. And then they fucked some more.

It was a simple relationship and, in a way, beautiful. There was something different about Hughie: a freshness. No deep thoughts or dark moods interfered with his performance. Of course, he had a lot to learn; a diamond in the rough. But that was exciting. And the best part was, he was insane about her. It was only a fling, but in every relationship there was the one who adored and the one who was adored. She’d done the adoring and preferred by far when it was the other way round.

The kettle boiled. Spooning the loose leaves of Earl Grey tea carefully into a Tiffany blue pot, she poured in the hot water. The aroma of bergamot filled the room.

She stared out of the window into the small garden at the back.

Leo was wrong. No one could hurt her again; she wouldn’t let them.

Giving the tea a quick stir, she poured herself a cup. These were the hours she liked best; the day glimmered before her like a golden promise, untouched by disappointment or frustration. And sitting down at the table, she placed her teacup on a small bench well away from her work, unfolded a tissue-paper parcel full of silk and deftly threaded her needle.

The morning sun warmed her back, outside birds sang. Leticia sipped her tea.

Few things were more fragile than antique lace or the human heart.

Then she heard something.

Persistent, irritating.

Coming from the bathroom.

A dripping sound.

The kind of sound, in fact, that signalled the urgent need for a plumber.

Tea for Table Five

The waitress at Jack’s Café, Rose, paused by the window, watching as Hughie Armstrong Venables-Smythe sauntered away down the street through the crowds of people.

‘Order up!’ shouted Bert from the kitchen behind her.

‘I said, order up!’ he called again.

Rose turned and delivered the two fried eggs, sausage, beans and tomato to the man at table seven before clearing away Hughie’s breakfast remains. Then she took £4.95 from her own pocket of tips and put it into the till.

‘Rose! Tea for table five!’ Bert shouted. ‘What the hell’s got into you today?’

‘Nothing,’ she said, pouring out the tea. ‘Nothing at all.’

She took it over to Sam the plumber, a regular at table five. In his late thirties, Sam had a mop of dark unruly hair, now flecked with grey, wild pale green eyes and a sardonic smile. He’d inherited his father’s floundering plumbing and heating business earlier that year; along with the same ready laugh and long, loping gait. He was poring over a catalogue of plastic U-bend pipes.

‘Thanks.’ He took a sip, frowning with concentration.

‘God, Sam, don’t you ever take a break?’

‘What for?’ he shrugged. ‘It’s my business now; no one’s going to make it a success but me.’

‘But U-bends at breakfast?’ She shook her head. ‘Your dad was always more relaxed.’

‘Yeah, well, if my old man had put as much time into the business as he did into going to the pub, he might still be with us.’ His voice was sharp.

Old Roy, Sam’s dad, had lived in the same block of council flats as Rose; she’d known both of them for years. He’d been a larger-than-life character, equally popular with men and women; a man whose cheeky good humour seemed to exempt him from the normal rules of life. Over the years he and Sam, both stubborn characters, had spent a lot of time at loggerheads. Sam was ambitious and Old Roy was usually hungover. But now that he was gone, Rose detected an edginess to Sam; a cloud of uncharacteristic seriousness coloured his personality. Lately he only had time for one thing: his career.

‘Sorry, Sam, I’m not thinking today’. She pushed a cloth absent-mindedly around the tabletop, knocking the sugar over. ‘Oh, damn!’

He glanced up; clear eyes surrounded by a thick fringe of lashes. ‘Off in your dream world again?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Well,’ he put his mug down, ‘he kissed you, didn’t he, Red?’

Sam was nothing if not observant.

‘So what if he did?’ She was blushing again. Turning, she pretended to be deeply engrossed in removing a coffee stain from another table. ‘And don’t call me Red. I’m too old for nicknames. I’m nearly twenty-two, not some child.’

‘Yeah. Sure.’

Without looking round, she knew he was laughing.

‘You like him,’ Sam teased.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Rose tried to sound blasé and sophisticated. Unfortunately, she was too excited to keep up the pretence for long. ‘But I think he likes me. He’s coming back tomorrow!’

‘Did he pay his bill?’

‘Well, he would’ve, only we don’t take Amex.’

Sam rolled his eyes. ‘Every time he comes in, you end up out of pocket.’

‘He’s just short of cash, that’s all. A lot of people don’t get paid till the end of the month.’ She knotted her hair back in a ponytail at the nape of her neck. (Now that he was gone, she could put it up again.) ‘I think he looks like Prince William.’

‘Why don’t you meet a nice normal guy?’

‘And where would I find the time for that?’ she asked, irritated. ‘Remember, I have a child to feed. Who wants to go out with a single mother?’

‘Oh, bollocks, Rose! You’re only young! There will be plenty of guys. You know, real guys—with cash instead of promises.’

Rose made a face at him.

‘Speaking of kids, how is Rory?’ he asked.

She sighed. ‘He bit another kid in nursery yesterday’.

‘Well, all of them go through tricky patches when they start school.’

‘You don’t understand.’ She gathered up all the ketchup dispensers and began refilling them. ‘He bit the little boy who’s allergic to nuts, wheat and milk; this kid hardly has anything to live for! And the day before that he headbutted the teacher. She had a lump on her forehead the size of an egg!’

‘Well…’ She’d obviously stretched his bachelor experience to the limit. ‘I wouldn’t worry about him. Now,’ he shifted the subject back to more familiar ground, ‘what are we going to do with you?’

‘Me?’ Rose wiped the shiny lids clean.

‘Yes, you. You’re a smart girl. Don’t you think it’s time you did something more than waitressing?’

She smiled wryly. ‘Not all of us are business tycoons, Sam.’

He arched an eyebrow. ‘What does that mean? Listen, I’ll make a going concern of this business if it kills me. If you think I’m going to live and die like my dad in a council flat in Kilburn, you’re wrong.’

‘Hey!’ She swatted him with her tea towel. ‘What’s wrong with that, I’d like to know?’

‘What’s wrong with what?’

They turned.

It was Ricki, Rose’s cousin. Ricki worked as a landscape gardener for a company in Islington. With her cropped hair, tanned muscular frame and uniform of heavy work boots, a fitted T-shirt and jeans slung low across her hipbones, showing off her firm, flat belly, she looked handsome rather than pretty. Every day she stopped in on her way to work for a takeaway coffee and toast. Hands thrust deep into her pockets she strolled over, grinning slyly at Sam.

‘He’s not banging on about conquering the world with his plunger again, is he?’ She gave his shoulder a squeeze. ‘How many times do we have to tell you? It’s OK that you’re insane and power crazy. We support you.’

‘Thanks. I feel a lot better.’

‘How’s it going anyway?’ She slid in across from him, picked up the catalogue. ‘Wow Fascinating. You know, you ought to get out more.’

‘I know, I know,’ he admitted, running his long fingers through his shaggy curls. ‘But if I can get the business to turn a profit this year, then pretty soon I’ll be able to expand, take on a few more guys. I mean, my old man left it in a real state. Everything was about flying by the seat of your pants with him. You want to know what his filing system was? A cardboard box shoved under the kitchen sink.’

Ricki stole a slice of toast from his plate. ‘You could do with a bit more flying by the seat of your pants.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It means,’ she tore off a bite, ‘that you’re too bloody serious. When was the last time you went out?’

‘You don’t get it.’

Ricki looked at him. ‘I do get it. You miss him.’

Sam shifted, stared out the window. ‘Yeah. Well…actually,’ he changed the subject, ‘I was picking on Rose for a change.’

‘Oh, yeah?’ Ricki grabbed Rose’s hand, pulled her down onto her knee. ‘I’ll take some of that action. So what are we picking on her for today?’

‘Piss off!’ Rose squirmed but Ricki was strong and held her fast.

‘I’m thinking she can do better than Jack’s Café, what do you think?’

‘I agree. Two thousand per cent.’

‘And that blond guy she likes gave her a kiss today!’ Sam added.

‘No way? Posh Pants?’

‘Enough!’ Rose managed to wriggle free. ‘I don’t need career or love advice from you two losers! Besides,’ she straightened her apron imperiously, ‘I’ve got plans.’

Sam and Ricki looked at each other. ‘Ooooooooo-ooowwwww!’

‘Like what?’ Sam wanted to know.

‘They’re private,’ Rose sniffed, heading back to the kitchen to get Ricki’s coffee. ‘But rest assured, it doesn’t involve pouring you idiots cups of tea all day long!’

‘Good. Glad to hear it,’ Ricki called after her. She looked at Sam, shook her head. ‘Fuck.’

‘Yeah, that about sums it up,’ he agreed. ‘You OK?’

‘Just tired,’ Ricki yawned. ‘And lonely. And tired of being lonely’.

Sam finished off his tea. ‘So get a girlfriend.’

‘Yeah, right. If it were that easy, even you would have one by now.’

‘Hey I’m not lonely!’ he objected. ‘I’m just too fascinating and busy and…’

‘Old?’

‘Yeah, old. You could always lower your standards.’

Ricki snorted. ‘I will if you will.’

‘Actually,’ he considered, ‘I’d rather be alone.’

‘Me too.’

Rose came back with her order and, handing her a fiver, Ricki stood up. ‘Well, I’d better get my skates on; I’ve got a new client today.’ She kissed Rose on the cheek. ‘Give me a ring if you need a hand with Rory this week, OK?’

‘OK. Thanks.’

‘And you,’ Ricki turned to Sam, ‘take care of yourself. Don’t get too obsessed about work. Take it easy.’

‘I’ll take it easy when I’ve retired early to my holiday home in Tuscany.’

‘Yeah, well, ciao, baby!’

Sam picked up the catalogue again.

Rose replaced the ketchup dispensers.

The breakfast rush was over.

Straightening a few chairs, Rose propped open the door. Fresh air rushed in. She closed her eyes; it felt cool and refreshing on her face.

Her luck was turning; she could feel it. Not only had the man she’d had a crush on for two weeks finally noticed her but she also had a job interview; the first real interview of her life. And wasn’t just any job; it was prestigious—for the position of junior assistant to the acting assistant household manager of a grand house in Belgravia.

Number 45 Chester Square.

Belgravia.

Even the name had poetry!

Last Saturday afternoon, she’d taken Rory there on the bus, just to make certain she knew where she was going. They’d stopped in front of number 45, with its tiers of neat window boxes and round bay trees bordering the front door. The brass knocker in the shape of a lion’s head gleamed against the lustrous black paint. The windows sparkled in the sun. Everything was even, balanced; pleasing to the eye.

Nothing bad could ever happen in a house as beautiful as this. A longing filled Rose’s chest. She wanted to have her own front-door key. She’d step inside and find a world marked by ease and elegance, a world completely removed from the one she inhabited now.

Perched behind the till, Rose took out a copy of Hello! magazine, losing herself in the glossy pages of celebrity photos.

The café was peaceful; quiet.

Then Sam’s phone rang.

‘Yes? Yes, that’s right. A drip? What kind of drip? Oh. A gush, eh? Yeah, well,’ he checked his watch, ‘I could come by now but I may not be able to fix the whole thing today.’ He collected his things. ‘What’s the address?’

A pack of off-duty dustmen piled through the door. Sam pushed past them, waving to Rose as he went.

Rose nodded back.

In a few short days, life was bound to become very interesting indeed. But until then, there were tables to serve.

45 Chester Square

Olivia Elizabeth Annabelle Bourgalt du Coudray sat in the gold-and-blue breakfast room of number 45 Chester Square, twisting the enormous diamond eternity ring round on her finger, waiting for her husband’s wrath to begin.

She’d made the mistake of getting up in the night, waking her husband. So he’d spent the entire night tossing round as violently as he could, whipping the sheets on and then kicking them off again, pulling at the pillow and sighing in frustration. And now, sick with nerves, Olivia sat holding her cup of coffee, knowing that as soon as he came down he’d lecture her and accuse her of keeping him up.

Her husband, Arnaud, liked to get angry. Along with Cuban cigars, and being recognized in public, it was one of his favourite things. There was nothing like a good rant to start the day off; his eyes lit up and his skin glowed. It didn’t matter that he owned half of the world’s tennis-ball factories or that his family wealth was such that he was regarded as a political figure in France (his views were petitioned on everything from the future of the European Union to cheese production). Even billionaires could have their peace destroyed by an insomniac wife.

As one of six daughters of the famous Boston Van der Lydens, Olivia had spent her youth gliding between New York, the Hamptons and the French Riviera, lingering in Boston only so long as it took to scrape together a degree in Art History. She’d been privileged, emulated; photographed regularly for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. When Arnaud began his rigorous courtship of her, the American press greeted it as a union between two shining stars in the international social firmament. But here in England she was virtually invisible. And in Paris with Arnaud’s family, she felt positively gauche. It didn’t help that Arnaud’s mother, the fearsome Comtesse Honorée Bourgalt du Coudray, followed her around her own wedding reception at the Paris Opéra correcting her French and apologizing for the state of her new daughter-in-law’s hair.

Olivia glanced up, catching sight of her reflection in the oval mirror that hung across the room. She possessed the wholesome American glamour that inspires Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein; athletic good cheer coupled with classical features. Her blonde hair was thick and even, her blue eyes large, her cheekbones high, but, as she’d heard her mother-in-law declare loudly one evening to Arnaud, ‘She’s unremarkable, bland, no cachet.’ Then she’d uttered the damning verdict that had obsessed Olivia ever since. ‘Why choose fromage frais when you could easily afford camembert?’

Even now, the spectre of her mother-in-law haunted her; a constant front-row critic in her head.

Bland. Unremarkable. The Comtesse had only articulated what she had suspected all along: she was a fraud; a pale imitation of a person with no real talents or original thoughts, no tangible purpose in life. Her beauty and breeding had been sufficient for so many years. And now that she was forty, even those were fading.

Olivia was Arnaud’s second wife. By the time she married him, he already had two grown-up children, a huge social network spanning several continents, a daunting diary of engagements, houses all over the world, a variety of businesses, and armies of staff. He also had a reputation as an incurable playboy. At the time, she’d been foolish enough to think she could influence him. But after ten years of marriage, the opposite had happened.

And she’d failed in the one role nature might have provided.

No wonder Arnaud had grown so indifferent.

She sipped her coffee.

It was cold.

He had always been difficult, dictatorial. But before, she’d occupied a privileged position in his psyche; she was the prized object, perfect, unassailable.

Last year changed all that.

She’d wanted children so badly, for so long. Then she finally discovered she was pregnant. No longer clinging, limpet-like to Arnaud’s life, she developed poise and sureness. Best of all it endowed her husband with the one thing money couldn’t buy. He was young again, about to be a father; bursting with unassailable masculinity. Hand over her growing bump, he ferried her around London with pride. Never before had they been so close. Together they’d chosen nursery furniture, selected schools, debated names.

Then at eighteen weeks, she woke in the middle of the night. There was blood, sticky and warm, between her legs and pain, like a tightening fist, gripping her torso.

Arnaud was out of the country. She’d gone alone to the hospital. The delivery was long, painful.

She never saw her child; never held it.

Arnaud refused to mention the miscarriage. Instead, he bought her the eternity ring: flawless; gleaming; hideously expensive.

Night-time haunted her ever since.

So Olivia sat, holding the cold coffee in the beautifully decorated Regency-inspired gold-and-blue breakfast room of Chester Square. Behind her, on the mantelpiece, the ghastly ormolu clock the Comtesse had given them as a wedding present ticked loudly.

Fifteen minutes later Arnaud descended. At sixty-two, he was still tanned and trim; he was an avid tennis player and kept up to three yachts moored in Monte Carlo, depending on his mood. His black hair was thinning. He had it trimmed each morning by his valet so that it fell over any balding patches. He shook his head now, it tumbled into place.

Olivia ran her fingers over her hair; there was the familiar fear of being less than satisfactorily groomed in his presence.

Gaunt, the butler, stalked in, delivering fresh coffee and toast with grim formality.

‘Good morning, sir.’

Arnaud grunted.

Gaunt slunk away.

For a while Arnaud said nothing; tossed his toast aside, folded open the paper loudly…

Then, of course, she had to ask. ‘How did you sleep?’

His black eyes narrowed. He put the paper down. ‘How did I sleep? Let me ask you, how do you think I slept?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Badly! That’s the answer: badly!’

‘I’m sorry,’ she faltered.

‘Up and down! Up and down! What do you do all night?’

‘I don’t know. I’m sorry, Arnaud.’

‘You need a pill! You need to go to the doctor and get a pill.’

‘Yes.’ She stared hard at her plate, at the black interlocking chain design that bordered its silvery white edges.

‘I’ll have my things moved into another room if this goes on.’ He pushed away from the table. ‘I have important things to attend to. Gaunt! Gaunt!’

‘Yes, sir?’ Gaunt appeared out of thin air.

‘Get Mortimer on the phone for me! I promised Pollard supper at the Garrick tonight. We have to discuss marketing strategies.’ He tossed his napkin down.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I want the car out front in forty minutes.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘Will you…’ Olivia hesitated.

He stared at her. ‘Yes? Will I what?’

She hated asking the question; her voice sounded small, plaintive. ‘Will you be home tonight?’

‘Sweetheart, what have I just said? I’m meeting Pollard at the Garrick tonight. Perhaps if you slept at night instead of wandering around like a cat I wouldn’t have to repeat myself.’

He stalked away, taking the paper and his coffee with him. Halfway up the stairs, she could hear him ranting at Kipps, the valet, who’d placed his slippers on the wrong side of the bed. Eventually a door slammed.

In the silence that followed, Olivia was aware of countless pairs of unseen eyes upon her; witnesses to their growing domestic disharmony. The months that Arnaud had spent wooing her belonged to another lifetime.

His personality was so strong, so forceful; he always knew exactly what he wanted and what to do. Then he turned the full glare of his powerful attention on her. Her initial indifference spurred him into unprecedented romantic gestures. Fresh boxes of flowers were delivered to her each morning; gifts of diamond earrings, a sapphire ring, even a rare black pearl necklace, were sent from the finest jewellers. Once he bought her a Degas sketch she’d casually admired in a Bonham’s catalogue. They’d travelled in his private jet to exotic locations all over the world where her every need was quickly catered for. She receded into the shadow of his larger-than-life persona. It was a relief to slot into a readymade life; where every decision was made for you.

But all that was gone now.

Slowly, she pushed her chair back.

Suddenly Gaunt was there again, picking up the napkin from the floor, folding it, holding the door open.

‘May I get you anything, ma’am?’

His attentiveness almost felt like kindness. The prick of tears threatened. ‘No,’ she forced a smile. ‘Breakfast was lovely. Just perfect. Thank you.’

She wandered out into the hallway. Hours stretched out before her, empty and unbearable.

‘Begging your pardon…’ Gaunt hovered like a dark shadow in the doorway.

‘Yes?’

‘The gardener would like a word about the new water feature.’

‘Oh. Of course.’

Olivia followed him outside.

It was a London garden: a small courtyard leading to a narrow patch of grass, augmented by neat rows of flower beds. A tiny fountain trickled away in one corner and there were three long, slender eucalyptus trees near the back wall for privacy.

A dark-haired young man was waiting with his back to her.

He turned as Olivia stepped forward into the sunlight; for a moment its rays blinded her. But as her eyes adjusted, she realized that he was in fact a she; a tall, tanned young woman with dark, cropped hair. She was wearing a white T-shirt, her thumbs hooked into her pockets. Her dark eyes met Olivia’s, lips parting into a slow smile.

‘This is Ricki, the gardener,’ Gaunt introduced them.

‘Hi.’ She offered a firm handshake. ‘So, you want to get rid of this fountain, is that right?’

‘Yes, it makes the most irritating dribbling sound.’

‘Humm. It’s easily done. Have you thought about what sound you want it to make?’

‘You mean I can choose?’

‘Yeah, water makes different sounds depending on the material the feature’s made of, how high the drop is, the depth of pool underneath…it’s up to you. Personally, I’d move it out of the corner, get something a bit more dramatic going, right here,’ she indicated the centre of the lawn, ‘right down the middle. Do you have any kids?’

‘No,’ Olivia replied sharply. ‘Why?’

‘Nothing. Only kids and water don’t mix; it’s dangerous.’

‘Oh. Yes. Of course.’

‘But since that’s not a problem,’ Ricki continued, ‘we could do something fantastic. An aluminium gulley maybe, running the full length of the lawn.’ She strode into the centre. ‘Water can be fed in from a tall black slate waterfall here at the back, against this wall. See, the aluminium catches the light, contrasts with the density of the slate. Really stunning! And in the summer when the grass is bright green, it’s like a silver blade, cutting the lawn in two. Placed high enough it makes the most wonderful, rolling sound, you know, no burbling or babbling brook bullshit, but something strong, soothing…What do you think?’

The vision of a blade of water slicing across the lawn intrigued Olivia. And Ricki’s enthusiasm was compelling. ‘Oh, yes! That sounds beautiful! There’s only one thing: my husband will hate it.’

Ricki laughed, shrugged her shoulders. ‘So what?’

‘You don’t know my husband,’ Olivia smiled wryly. ‘It’s safer if we go for something a little more traditional.’

‘Let me guess, a seashell bird bath with a peeing cherub on top?’

‘Yes, that sounds more like what he was expecting,’ she admitted.

Ricki shook her head, looking at her hard with those large black eyes. ‘Sometimes the most dangerous thing you can do is play it safe. We could do something really interesting here—something bold.’

To her surprise Olivia blushed. ‘Well, yes, but…’

‘Pardon me, madam.’

It was Gaunt again.

‘Simon Grey from the Mount Street Gallery is waiting in the drawing room. He doesn’t have an appointment but he says it’s a matter of some urgency.’

‘Of course.’ She turned back to Ricki. ‘I’m sorry, I must go.’

‘So, it’s peeing cherubs all round?’

‘Yes. Yes, I’m afraid so. Lovely to meet you.’

Ricki tilted her head. ‘And lovely to meet you.’

Heading back into the house, Olivia felt perplexed. Simon, here, at this hour? How strange.

Simon Grey was the curator of the Mount Street Gallery, which she generously helped fund for the promotion of young artists. At his urging, she’d recently become chairman. They were opening their biggest show ever in two weeks’ time: The Next Generation, featuring the work of a controversial new performance artist named Roddy Prowl.

Art was one thing that ignited Olivia’s whole being. She often regretted she had no ability herself. Not that she’d ever dared to take a drawing course. But when she first expressed a desire to paint at the age of nine, her parents steered her firmly towards the old masters.

‘This is painting,’ her mother explained, removing a bit of lint gingerly from her daughter’s otherwise immaculate school uniform. ‘So don’t even try.’

‘When a Van der Lyden attempts, a Van der Lyden succeeds!’ her father boomed in his gin-soaked voice.

They suggested art history instead. ‘So much more useful and infinitely less messy than dabbling with paint.’

Perhaps this is what inspired Olivia’s appetite for the postmodern.

She pushed open the drawing-door door. ‘Simon. Oh, dear! Simon?’

Normally fastidious and fearsomely arranged in the manner of only the truly visually gifted, Simon’s state of disarray was shocking. His sleek dark hair was all on end, his trademark Paul Smith scarf askew; he paced the floor like a caged animal. In an instant, she knew something was terribly wrong.

‘What’s happened?’

‘Olivia, it’s nothing short of a disaster! Roddy Prowls checked himself into rehab! He refuses to come back!’ Tears filled his prodigiously lashed brown eyes; his long aquiline nose flared red at the end. ‘We have no enfant terrible, Olivia! The entire show is ruined!’

Free Lunch or a Shag

Come and have your evil way with me.

When Hughie got the text message from Leticia, he was busy rifling through his sister Clara’s things, looking for a stamp and already bordering on late for meeting his mother for lunch. He wanted to post his response to the ad in the Stage that morning, and luncheon was a standing date he and his mother had for the first Wednesday of every month at a small hotel in Victoria called the Goring. There the staff remembered Rowena Venables-Smythe and treated her like a society widow. Together they would feast on the enormous roasts, argue and gossip; his mother would try to force him into some sort of employment; Hughie would charm her and leave with whatever spare cash she had in her wallet. The meal itself was one of the highlights of Hughie’s month; he rarely slept the night before for excitement—Scottish roast beef, fluffy Yorkshire pudding, piles of crispy potatoes drenched in gravy, all washed down with something Mum had chosen to impress the wine waiter. (Lunch with Mum was early enough in the day to be manageable. By supper, she was often a bit liquid for Hughie’s taste.)

But now there was a rival invitation from Leticia. Visions of her long naked limbs, creamy white against the black velvet chaise longue, stretched out for his personal use made him swoon with lust.

Hughie found himself facing one of the most difficult dilemmas of a young man’s life: free lunch or a shag?

He tipped out one of Clara’s handbags, found a book of stamps at the bottom and took one. Then he pulled a jumper over his head and bounded out the door—ignoring Clara’s Post-it about not forgetting his keys.

Of course, it might just be possible to have the best of both these offers. Leticia’s shop was only a few blocks from the Goring. An enterprising young man like Hughie might find himself fucked, fed and funded by tea time.

All it would take was a bit of finessing.

Hughie shoved his letter into a postbox and flagged down a passing cab. ‘Hey I say, you don’t take Amex, do you?’

‘Fuck off,’ suggested the cabby, driving away.

Hughie ran to catch the bus, dodging traffic to cross the road in time.

‘Single to Victoria,’ he panted to the driver.

‘Two pounds.’

‘Oh.’ Hughie pulled out a few loose coins from his pockets. ‘As much as that?’

An old man pushed past him and a woman with a pram.

‘What’s that? Seventy? Seventy-three, seventy-four…’

The driver glared at him. ‘Have you got it or haven’t you?’

‘I’ll spot you.’

Hughie turned. It was Malcolm, Clara’s fiancé.

‘That’s very good of you, Malc.’

‘Think nothing of it! Glad to help!’

Hughie climbed to the top deck and Malcolm struggled up the steps after him.

Malcolm was pretty much the same height and build as Hughie only his centre of gravity resided in his bottom, pulling at him like an undertow. (In prep school he was known as ‘Girlie-Arse Gritton’.) As for his features, everything was just a bit too much; his lips were too thick and red, his nose too long, his eyes bugged out and were framed by strawberry-blond lashes, matching the pinky blond mane on his head. Then, too, he smelt disturbingly of violets.

He threw himself down next to Hughie, or rather almost on top of him, the seat being too snug for grown men.

‘Thanks for paying my fare.’

‘Think nothing of it! What are friends for, right? We are friends, you and I?’ Malcolm looked at him eagerly, blinking his bug eyes.

Hughie hesitated. This wasn’t entirely accurate. If he hadn’t been engaged to his sister, Hughie would’ve preferred to avoid Malcolm. But a man down on his luck couldn’t afford to be pedantic.

‘Sure,’ Hughie smiled.

‘Good stuff! Very good stuff. Oh, God, Hughie! I can’t tell you how difficult things are for me at the moment!’

‘Really?’ Hughie forced a window open. (The violet water was particularly strong today.)

‘Yes! I need a break. Maybe a drink with some friends.’ He stared at Hughie, who was busy eyeing up an Aston Martin that growled into view.

‘Good plan,’ Hughie agreed, wondering if the driver of the Aston was under or over thirty (these questions being of significance to young men who hadn’t yet made their first million).

‘I was hoping you’d say that!’

‘I can always be counted on to endorse a drink.’

‘So, what time would you like to meet?’

‘For what?’

Malcolm peered at him with an anxious smile. ‘Drinks, silly! You said you were my friend.’

‘Yes, yes. But that’s different from…I mean, it’s not the same as having one’s own friends.’

Malcolm straightened. ‘For God’s sake, Hughie, I’m engaged to your sister!’

‘Yes, I know. She’s a lovely girl, don’t you think?’

Malcolm winced, as if retreating from an unseen belt across the jaw. ‘Yes, a lovely girl.’

Hughie had an idea. ‘Maybe she’d like to come along?’

‘Perhaps…’ Malcolm agreed, slowly. ‘Then again, there’s also nothing to prevent us from having a quiet drink on our own.’

‘I just don’t think I’ve got the time, Male’ Hughie’s phone rang. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, grateful for the interruption.

It was his mother.

‘Hello, Mum.’

‘Yes, a large gin and tonic, please,’ she was saying to the waiter. ‘Oh. Hello, darling, I’m here a little early. How long will you be?’

‘I’m on my way. What time is it, anyway?’

‘Quarter to. How close are you? Shall I order you something to drink?’

‘I’m, uh, somewhere on the Edgware Road.’

‘That’s miles away, Hughie! We’re meant to be meeting at one!’

‘Like I said, Mum, I’m on my way. Traffic’s bad.’

‘This is London, Hughie. Traffic is always bad. A little forward planning wouldn’t go amiss! Really!’

She rang off before he could reply.

(It was going to be a real trick getting any cash out of her today.)

‘You’re in a bit of a pickle,’ Malcolm observed.

‘Oh, you know what they’re like.’

His phone rang again.

‘Where are you?’ Leticia purred.

‘Almost there, darling. Just coming up to Marble Arch.’

‘Marble Arch! Are you in a cab?’

‘No, I’m on the bus, angel.’

‘How quaint!’ she laughed. ‘Is this your way of telling me you don’t fancy me any more? Taking public transport?’

‘No, no! I fancy you like mad!’

‘Then show me. By the way, I’m wearing nothing but double cream.’

She made a low, thoroughly filthy growl before hanging up.

‘Now, there’s a place I know of in Soho where we could meet.’ Malcolm was jotting down the address. ‘Most amusing. Members only…’

‘To be honest, I don’t think I can, Male’

‘Oh. Really’

‘I’ve got a hell of a lot on…’

‘I see.’

‘Tickets, please!’

Swaying in front of them was a ticket inspector, pad at the ready.

Hughie prodded Malcolm. ‘You’ve got my ticket.’

‘Have I?’ Malcolm raised an eyebrow. ‘You know, I’ve got a hell of a lot on, Hughie. I’m not sure I can remember where I put it. Perhaps if I had something to look forward to,’ he sighed, ‘…a drinks engagement perhaps, I might be able to recall what I did with it.’

‘Tickets please, gentlemen!’

Malcolm produced his bus pass with a flourish. ‘Here’s mine!’ He smiled sweetly at Hughie. ‘And you?’

Hughie wished, not for the first time, that his sister would find herself a different beau.

‘You do have a ticket, young man? There’s a fine if you haven’t.’ The inspector tapped his pad. ‘Quite a considerable fine.’

Malcolm shrugged. ‘Oh, dear!’

Hughie was just about to give up when there was a gentle tap on his shoulder.

‘Excuse me.’

He twisted round to find a dashing man in his fifties behind him. He wasn’t the sort of man you’d expect to find on the top deck of a bus. Exquisitely dressed in a tailored grey wool suit and gold silk tie, he radiated authority, ease and polish. His hair was impeccable, nails trimmed, his skin had the soft golden glow of tan. But it was his eyes that were so arresting. They were a rare intensity of blue, not unlike Hughie’s own.

‘I believe you dropped this,’ he smiled, holding out a ticket.

Hughie hesitated, then took it. ‘Thank you.’

The man stood up. ‘My pleasure.’

Then he clasped the hand of the ticket inspector and shook it warmly. ‘I just want to say I think you’re doing an excellent job. I work at Head Office and rarely have I seen a servant of the people as devoted and diligent as yourself. It makes me proud, my good man! Proud to be part of this great public transport system, and I must say, proud to be British!’ He looked to Hughie. ‘Don’t you agree?’

‘Absolutely!’

The ticket inspector blushed. ‘I don’t know what to say! It’s so nice to be appreciated for a change. The number of people who abuse you, just for doing your job!’

The man nodded and patted him on the shoulder. ‘You’re a brave soldier.’

‘You have to be!’

‘I’ll tell you what,’ said the man, taking out his mobile. ‘I’m putting in a call to Head Office right now and I’d like to mention you by name.’

‘Really? Do you mean it? It’s Paul, sir. Paul Pullerton.’

‘Mr Pullerton, you’re a credit to your profession! I’m dialling right now. Keep up the good work!’ he called as he headed down the steps and off the bus.

‘Now there’s a gentleman!’ the inspector declared to anyone who would listen. ‘Last of a dying breed!’

‘He didn’t have to show his ticket!’ Malcolm pointed out.

But the inspector ignored him. ‘A dying breed,’ he repeated and moved down the aisle.

Hughie looked out of the window. The man had disappeared.

Surely he’d given him his ticket. But why had he bothered to save a complete stranger?

Halfway down Park Lane, the bus shuddered violently. Clouds of black smoke billowed from its engine. The driver pulled over and rang the bell. ‘Everyone off! Everyone off the bus!’

Hughie climbed off and managed to lose Malcolm in the outraged throng of pensioners and pushchairs. Traffic had ground to a halt.

There was nothing for it. So he ran down Park Lane.

At Hyde Park Corner, his phone rang again.

‘I’m ordering without you,’ his mother said. ‘You forget that not everyone is unemployed and can laze about all day like you.’

‘Mum…I can explain…’

‘You have so little respect for other people. Time is more than money, Hughie, it’s the stuff of life. You are wasting my life! Why are you panting? Is something wrong with you? Are you ill? How is it that any child of mine could be so badly brought up as to think…’

Another call was coming through. It was Leticia.

‘After all the money I’ve spent trying to give you the best possible start—yes, I’ll have the lamb please and a bottle of Chateau Margaux…’

‘Sorry, Mum…’

‘Hughie, don’t interrupt! What have I just been telling you about respect?’

‘Mum, if you could just hold a minute…’

‘Hold! I will certainly not hold!’

Leticia rang off.

‘My God, Hughie, you really take the biscuit!’

‘Mum! This is a very important call!’

He put his mother on hold and rang Leticia.

‘The Vane home for very, very wayward women,’ she answered.

Then Hughie’s credit ran out and the line went dead.

By the time he arrived at Leticia’s shop, her next client was already there. He rang the bell anyway.

‘Can’t you read the sign?’ she said, opening the door. ‘No soliciting.’

He pushed his hair, damp from all the running, back from his face. ‘I’m here to pick up the samples, Miss Vane. I’m so sorry I’m late.’

‘And what samples might those be?’

‘The ones for Mr…Mr…Mr Licktitslowly.’

‘Mr Licktitslowly,’ she repeated.

‘That’s right, Mr Licktitslowly and the Reverend Hardascanbee.’

She sighed. ‘Those samples have been put away. I don’t have time to get them out now’

Hughie leant in. ‘I’m afraid the Reverend in particular is most insistent.’

She smiled, brushing her fingers softly against his thigh. He stiffened. ‘Tell the good Reverend Hardascanbee that another time, I’ll personally ensure he samples everything.’

She shut the door.

Hughie waited a moment for his erection to go down, then bolted across to the Goring. He was just in time to see his mother climbing unsteadily into a cab and it pulling away.

‘Bugger!’

By now, breakfast had worn off. He went into the Goring anyway, lifting a copy of The Times from the front desk as he passed. There was no point attempting the dining room. And the bar was heaving. Instead, he squeezed into the lounge which was full of people lunching on sandwiches. He scanned the busy room until he found a table where a middle-aged couple were just paying the bill.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you.’ He flashed his most charming grin. ‘It’s so crowded, is this seat taken?’

Hughie’s Harrow education was useful for the accent alone.

‘Oh! No, please!’ the man gestured to the spare chair. ‘We were about to leave anyway’

‘That’s very good of you. Here.’ Hughie held out the woman’s coat for her.

‘Thank you,’ she smiled.

‘No, thank you!’ Hughie waved as they made their way towards the door.

Then he settled down, folded out his paper and disappeared into the general throng. The woman had left half her crab-and-avocado sandwich and most of her crisps. There was a small bowl of olives and even a bit of wine left in the bottle. He’d chosen well.

Wiping the lipstick off the woman’s glass, he poured out the rest of the wine. Not a bad year, he thought, settling back.

At least the letter was off, winging its way across London. He was in with a chance. Today, he was scrambling for spare change but tomorrow? Who knows? He popped a crisp into his mouth. After all, it was difficult to keep a Venables-Smythe down.

He made a note of the time on the clock by the front door, then turned to the sports page and checked the cricket score.

Sooner or later, Leticia’s client would leave.

And sooner or later, the Reverend Hardascanbee would have his evil way.

Armenian Plumbers

Leticia closed the door.

Nothing was going to plan today. Hughie was late, the romance novelist turned out to be four foot seven, a size twenty, and obsessed with the colour pink and now she’d have to measure her in the workroom because the plumber was poking about in the bathroom, trying to locate the mysterious leak. He was hammering on something, making the most God-awful noise.

She checked the tea things she’d laid out earlier, running her fingers over the exquisite china cups and saucers. Thin, tangy lemon biscuits, smoky Assam tea, fine white sugar, milk, all neatly arranged on the large silver tray. Turning on a CD of Handel arias, she tried to look serene and composed, taking it back into the main room. ‘Please forgive me!’

The novelist beamed up at her, dressed in a pair of too-tight jeans and a waxed Barbour jacket, smelling of wet dogs and hand lotion. ‘No problem at all!’

‘So,’ Leticia poured a little tea in a cup, checking the colour, ‘you want something with puffball sleeves, is that right? And a train? Are you sure?’

She nodded eagerly. ‘Do you think you can do it?’

‘Well.’ How to break the news to her? ‘It’s not what I would recommend. Why don’t we go for something more…streamlined…more sophisticated?’

The woman’s face fell. Leticia was clearly demolishing a childhood dream.

‘Milk and sugar? That’s not to say it won’t be gorgeous,’ she added temptingly.

‘Excuse me.’

It was the plumber, standing in the doorway, wiping his hands on an old rag. These people had no sense of timing.

‘May I have a word?’

‘Pardon me.’ She eased the novelist into a chair, piling a stack of sketchbooks onto her lap and popping a biscuit in her hand. ‘Have a look through some of these. It will give you some fresh ideas. I won’t be a minute.’

She followed him into the bathroom. ‘Yes? So what exactly is wrong?’

‘How long ago did you have this put in?’

‘Three years ago. Why?’

‘And who did it?’

‘Freelance guys. Armenians. Friends of my godfather’s.’ (‘Friends’ was a euphemism.)

‘So not a proper outfit, is that right?’

She didn’t like all these questions. ‘Well, no. Not as such.

Why?’ She folded her arms across her chest. ‘What has that got to do with anything?’

Sam sighed. ‘I didn’t think it could be done by a legitimate company. Not by the quality of the work. But I wondered for your sake. Then you might have some legal recourse.’

The word ‘legal’ sounded ominous.

‘See this,’ he continued, pointing to the pipes that fed into the freestanding bath. ‘Underneath the floorboards there are places where they’ve been held together with chewing gum and electrical tape. These pipes aren’t even the same width. You’ve got a well of water underneath there that’s rotting the wood. I’m surprised you couldn’t smell it.’

The Armenians had done it at the most amazing price. And so quickly too.

She ran her hand over her eyes. ‘Can you fix it?’

He shook his head. ‘I can fix it but it means tearing up these floorboards, maybe even starting from scratch.’

‘And how expensive will that be?’

‘Hard to say. Twelve hundred?’

‘No!’

‘You can get a second opinion. I mean, another quote. But don’t use it for a couple days. It needs to dry out.’ He began packing up his bag. ‘If you want me to do the work, I can fit you in, but you need to let me know quickly. Here,’ he took a card out of his back pocket. ‘Let me know what you decide.’

‘Thanks,’ she said grimly, leading him through the workshop and opening the back door.

‘By the way’ he stopped on the threshold, looking around, ‘what is it you actually do here?’

‘I design bespoke lingerie.’

‘You’re kidding!’ he laughed.

Leticia straightened. ‘What’s so funny about that?’

‘Nothing. Hey, any chance of coming to a fashion show?’

‘Thank you for coming by’ she said briskly, shutting the door.

Twelve hundred for pipes! Of all the things to have to spend money on! Then she thought of her ever-climbing overdraft. It was all so depressing.

She tossed the card down on the counter, adjusted the music and went back to her client.

This really wasn’t her sphere; she was an artist, after all.

The King of the Tennis Ball

Arnaud Bourgalt du Coudray was the king of the tennis ball. Anyone who ever thought about tennis balls (and there were those who did), couldn’t help but consider the du Coudray Imperial, with its bold mandarin-yellow felt and exceptionally springy rubber core, as everything a tennis ball should and could be.

But the du Coudray Imperial had been Arnaud’s father’s accomplishment. (Actually, it had taken two generations to perfect—one for the felt and another for the springy core.) By the time Arnaud was born, the Imperial was the established tennis ball of champions. And so throughout Arnaud’s privileged life, his mother had followed him around, first when he was too small to get away from her and later, when he was too guilty to try, drilling into him that he would never match his father’s success as a son, a human being or a producer of world-class tennis balls. He might as well give up right now. Which would, of course, be disgustingly lazy.

But Arnaud did not give up. It is a credit to his sheer stubbornness that every year he embarked upon a new scheme to make his mark on du Coudray Industries and increase the already ludicrously large family fortunes.

And year after year, under the cynical eye of Arnaud’s mother, his schemes failed.

There was the rubber tennis dress that never needed to be washed. The coaching racquet that hurled abuse every time a player missed a shot. And the legendary Tennis Caddy, a remote-controlled tennis bag on wheels which premiered at Wimbledon, famously reaching speeds of up to sixty miles an hour. Unfortunately, these were recorded during the men’s finals when one rogue version terrorized a slow-moving ball boy on national television.

But now at long last, Arnaud’s hour had come. The Nemesis All-Pro Sport 2000 tennis shoe was a marvel of engineering, a triumph of fashion design, and a veritable orgasm of shiny lurex, flashing lights and gravity-defying rubber springs. And with Men’s Top Seed Ivaldos Ivaldovaldovich flying in from Croatia to launch it in a special ceremony in Hyde Park, it was certain to fly off the shelves despite its £299 price tag.

Standing in the middle of the vast sporting goods department of Harrods, Arnaud eyed up the competition. This time he had cracked it. None of them—Nike, Reebok, Puma—were a patch on his creation, he noted, smiling with satisfaction. Amateurs, all.

Behind him Jack Pollard, his marketing director, was negotiating an exclusive display with the buyer; gesturing wildly, virtually battering the poor woman into submission with his enthusiasm. But Arnaud, restless, excused himself, wandering alone through the maze of exercise bikes, yoga mats, rowing machines—an endless parade of products aimed at the preservation of youth. How depressing. There was some woman in her fifties trying to balance on a ski machine. ‘It’s too late!’ he wanted to shout at her. ‘Give up!’

Rounding a corner, he came face to face with an older man. The man barred his way, glaring at him. What an old shit, Arnaud thought. He was about to say something when he realized with horror that it was a mirror.

Those were his lined features, his thinning hair, his sagging shoulders. For a moment, he thought he might be sick. Then he turned anxiously to see if anyone else had witnessed his discovery.

He was alone.

Backing away from the mirror, he averted his eyes, moving quickly into another section. Rage, unholy and mountainous, boiled up inside him. The events of the past year had clearly ruined him, draining away his mental, emotional and physical well-being. And he thought of Olivia, of how she had failed him. If only she were a proper, functioning woman, things would be different!

For it is true to say that, while Arnaud hated himself, he despised Olivia even more.

He kept walking, barely noticing where he was going.

Of course he could have plastic surgery but then everyone would know; his insecurity would be revealed for the entire world to see. Besides, it was pathetic; one of his oldest friends, Fabrice, had succumbed and now he looked positively bizarre—tight bits here, saggy bits there—his facial expression was one of permanent surprise. It was impossible to hold a conversation with him without being offended.

It wasn’t a dignified solution. Was there a dignified solution?

More and more, Arnaud began to think not.

He turned a corner into the ski department.

He hated life; hated everything about ageing and being old.

If only he could begin again.

That’s when he saw her.

She was trying on a fur-lined Prada ski jacket, pouting and posing in front of the mirror. Almost six foot tall, with long black hair, a round face and enormous brown eyes, she radiated a languid, almost bored sexuality. Her jeans were skintight, emphasizing to great effect her model’s figure. She couldn’t be more than twenty-four.

Arnaud was mesmerized.

‘I don’t know,’ she sighed, speaking in a thick Russian accent. ‘Is so expensive!’

‘And yet,’ pointed out the sales assistant eagerly, ‘it will never go out of fashion. It’s an investment piece.’

‘Everything goes out of fashion!’ she snorted, turning again to examine her lovely profile with the hood on. ‘Nothing lasts in this world! Nothing.’

Then she caught Arnaud’s eye. In an instant, she recognized him and determined to seize her chance.

‘Isn’t that right?’ she challenged, fixing him with a sultry stare, full of pornographic promise. Then, just as quickly, she removed it.

(Hot, cold, scalding, freezing; here was a girl who knew how to hook a man.)

Arnaud couldn’t believe his luck. This sexy young woman wanted him! In a few seconds she’d managed to obliterate months of self-doubt.

He’d obviously been oversensitive about the business with the mirror.

Leaning back casually against the counter, he dug his hands deep in his pockets, grinning. When he was younger, he’d possessed a pair of captivating dimples; he did his best to flash them now. ‘I think you’re too cynical.’

‘No. I’m a realist. So. What do you think?’ She licked her lips, slowly zipping up the front. ‘I want a man’s opinion.’

He held her gaze. ‘I think that you are too beautiful not to have exactly what you want.’

She laughed, tossing her mane of black hair over her shoulder. (Here’s what I look like in the throes of passion, she signalled.) ‘Easy to say, but hard to do!’

He had a vision of her, writhing above him, dark hair across her bare chest.

Out came his wallet. ‘Allow me.’

Her eyes widened.

‘On one condition, of course,’ he handed his credit card to the stunned assistant, ‘you must allow me to drive you home.’

A Stranger at the Garrick Club

Jonathan Mortimer Esq. of the solicitors Hawes and Dawson, paused at the bottom of the stairs and rubbed his eyes.

It was late.

He’d struggled through another supper with his most important client, Arnaud Bourgalt du Coudray and one of his yes men, Jack Pollard, securing a private dining room at the Garrick Club at short notice. Arnaud had insisted on bringing some Russian escort along. What should’ve been an hour or two at most discussing yet another merger, dragged into three while they groped and pawed one another. It was so tedious; rich people were like toddlers with their constant demands for attention.

Now all he wanted to do was go home. But the thought of climbing the stairs, his wife Amy’s back turned pointedly towards him as he got into bed, made him hesitate.

Why was being married so bloody difficult?

They’d had yet another argument this morning. He couldn’t even remember what set it off—only that it had escalated into dangerous territory too quickly. There was only one scene they played out nowadays. He was unsure exactly what it was about, only that it was bitter and full of tension.

So instead he wandered back into the bar of the Garrick Club and, slumped into one of the decrepit leather armchairs, began working away on his fourth Scotch.

All around him the comforting noises of men acting like men lulled him, tugging away at the frazzled threadbare edges of his soul. That was what gentlemen’s clubs were for; a last refuge from any form of female-ridden reality.

Swallowing a thick, amber shot in one, he reflected on the state of his life. If he’d bought it in a shop, he’d demand a refund immediately; it was clearly not as advertised.

And it was all Amy’s fault.

He remembered the plans they’d made, when there were only two of them, tucked into bed in his Chelsea bachelor pad; the picture Amy painted of a large, comfortable family house filled with song and laughter, like The Sound of Music; the discreet, grateful army of cheerful nannies, demure cleaners, and cheeky au pairs serving delicious meals round the dining table where adults and children would share a quiet hour of civilized conversation…

Then he thought of the mouldly Marmite sandwich and Stickle Bricks he’d discovered wedged into his briefcase this morning by one of the boys. Of the pokey, overpriced house they were all crammed into in the less fashionable environs of South London. Of the sullen Spanish au pair who regularly ate all the ice cream.

This was not that vision.

You only had to look at Amy and she conceived again. Three children under nine and now another one on the way! Of course he loved the children. That wasn’t the issue. The real crime was Amy’s. She’d abandoned him; the delicate, devoted woman he’d married had evaporated early on in the first pregnancy. Overnight she’d been replaced by a wisecracking, middle-aged Shakespearean wet nurse, complete with the matching body of cartoon proportions.

He’d been left to fend for himself; relegated to a marginalized authority figure, endured for his only useful quality—his ability to fund this extravaganza.

It was unfair.

And he was lonely.

He tried to focus on his watch.

Just time for one more drink.

The bar was still quite full, despite the late hour. Jonathan was having trouble attracting the waiter’s attention. He stood up, legs unsteady. Lurching forward, he tumbled straight into a fellow member reading a copy of the Financial Times.

‘Terribly sorry!’ he gushed, trying to rebalance himself, smooth his tie down and uncrumple the man’s paper all at once, all unsuccessfully.

The gentleman smiled, brushing off his exquisitely cut Savile Row suit with quick strokes. He led Jonathan back to his own chair, where he collapsed gratefully.

‘Really I can’t apologize enough.’ Jonathan’s cheeks were flushed from embarrassment and effort. ‘Stupid of me. Clumsy. I’m really terribly, terribly sorry…’ His voice faded. It was all turning into a nightmare. The porter would end up calling him a cab and Amy would have a field day. Consequences stretched out before him, predictable and unavoidable.

He sighed.

The man tilted his silver head to one side, then sat down next to Jonathan and crossed his legs. ‘I hope you’ll forgive me, but it seems to me as if you have a great deal on your mind.’

Jonathan looked up into his still, grey eyes. They were so calm, so friendly, so non-judgemental.

‘Yes,’ he nodded. ‘Yes. You see, I do. I really do.’

The man smiled. ‘It’s very difficult sometimes. No one really understands.’

Jonathan leant forward eagerly, clutching his empty glass. ‘Yes, that’s true!’ he agreed.

‘Just because we’re…’ the stranger paused, ‘men of the world, shall we say? Everyone assumes we can handle things on our own.’ He raised his arm and almost instantly a waiter appeared. ‘May I buy you a drink?’

And in that moment, there seemed to be more kindness than Jonathan had felt in a long time. ‘Thank you,’ he said gratefully. ‘Thank you very much!’

The waiter took their order, moving soundlessly away, and Jonathan settled back into his chair. Almost unconsciously, he checked his watch and frowned.

‘Late?’ the stranger ventured.

Jonathan laughed stiffly. ‘Not yet. No, no. Not yet.’ He was aware of how henpecked he sounded. ‘You see, my wife’s pregnant. Again. Doesn’t like to be alone in the house at night,’ he lied.

‘Ah! Married life!’ The man smiled knowingly.

Jonathan felt the stiffness in his shoulders relax; he smiled too. ‘It should come with a warning, shouldn’t it? Like they put on packets of cigarettes: marriage kills!’ He felt instantly guilty. ‘Or at least, all the best bits die…the sex for starters!’ This time his laugh sounded hollow and forced.

The waiter returned and, armed with a fresh glass of Scotch, Jonathan rallied. ‘I mean, everyone has bad patches, right?’

The man was still.

‘It’s just, my wife has been pregnant for so long! One kid after another…It changes a girl. She’s not the same,’ he added, staring into his glass.

‘Yes, everything changes,’ the man agreed, gently.

It was a simple enough comment, but the man’s voice had a wistful quality. In his drunkenness, Jonathan imagined this stranger understood, with greater subtlety, a whole range of experience none of his other married friends would admit.

‘Thing is,’ Jonathan leant in closer, lowering his voice, ‘I don’t actually fancy her any more!’

There. At last, he’d said it out loud. To a complete stranger, but perhaps that was for the best. He felt a mixture of relief and panic. ‘I mean, I love her. Of course I love her…’

Did he?

Was it love or just habit that kept them together now? A sharp burning sensation filled his chest; the question was too painful even to contemplate.

‘Yes,’ the stranger tilted his head thoughtfully to one side. ‘You see, my view of marriage is that it’s an extremely delicate thing. Resilient, yes. But more like a finely made Swiss watch than, say, a huge, muddy piece of farm equipment. Sometimes, when it’s all come to a grinding halt, what’s really required is a little fine tuning rather than a large, clumsy repair job.’ As he spoke, the man re-crossed his legs. Jonathan was aware of the glossy black sheen of his handmade shoes and the way his dark navy silk socks matched the shade of his pinstripe suit perfectly. Elegant silver cufflinks flashed as he drew his elbows up, pressing the tips of his long fingers against one another. ‘From what you’ve said, it’s possible that both sides are feeling neglected, perhaps a little unappreciated. Does that sound like an accurate appraisal to you?’

He made it sound so light, so normal.

Jonathan nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

‘These situations can so easily get out of hand. Snowball, so to speak. But,’ he held his finger up promisingly, ‘if one of you were to make an effort, the whole thing could easily be reversed, don’t you think?’

Jonathan imagined a large snowball barrelling towards him, then suddenly swerving, heading in the opposite direction, growing smaller and smaller until it disappeared.

‘Perhaps…’

The man sensed his hesitation. ‘But when a dynamic has been allowed to grow unchecked for so long, one doesn’t always have the emotional resources to make the effort required,’ he concluded.

‘That’s right!’ Jonathan had never heard anyone describe his particular malaise so succinctly or accurately.

‘Yes, yes, of course!’ the man nodded. ‘I’ve seen it a thousand times!’

‘Have you?’ Jonathan leant forward.

‘Absolutely! Don’t despair. This whole difficult chapter of your marriage can be behind you in a week,’ the man assured him breezily. ‘In place of a distant, sullen wife who’s given up on herself, you can have a delightful, confident creature—without the time, expense or distress of resorting to long-drawn-out discussions where intimate details are dragged out in front of third parties.’

‘Really? But what’s to be done?’

The man took something out of his breast pocket; a thin silver card holder. And moving with no particular speed or urgency, he removed a card and handed it to Jonathan. ‘I might be able to help you.’

The card read:

Valentine Charles.

Procurer of Rare Domestic Services.

Satisfaction Absolutely Guaranteed.

111 Half Moon Street

Two days after the advertisement appeared in the Stage, 111 Half Moon Street was inundated with responses and the postman had to ring the bell because all the thick envelopes wouldn’t fit through the letter box.

Valentine Charles couldn’t quite decide if he enjoyed this bit of the proceedings; it was time consuming and exhausting sifting through all the letters, but also thrilling when one happened upon that rare gem. This morning, the deluge had been particularly heavy and as he sat there, in his cashmere dressing gown, with his morning coffee, he looked upon the pile with satisfaction. In there, somewhere, was a budding new apprentice and an answer to the staff difficulties that had plagued him for the past months.

He considered diving straight in but then dismissed the idea. He was a creature of habit and married to the inflexible, set routine of his daily life. One of the pleasures of living by yourself is the privilege of being able to practise, day after day, in whatever order you wish, the rituals that define your tastes and aspirations without any threat of disruption. And at fifty-eight, Valentine was deeply grateful for his solitude.

He had loved, a few times briefly but only once seriously. The love wasn’t returned and so he made peace with all the aspects of single life that many people find so abhorrent. Now he valued them above all else. Over time he’d mutated from a lonely, watchful person into a completely self-sufficient one, treating himself with the same affection a lover would. The older he was the more he realized that few people were given the time and means to be as completely indulged as he was. He hadn’t had to accommodate another human being on any matter of significance for years. He was entirely, unapologetically selfish and grateful for the opportunity to be so. Now, when he thought of the woman who broke his heart (which was rare), he viewed it as a narrow escape.

No, he’d finish his coffee, glance at the crossword, then have his bath. And while he was dressing, his assistant, Flick, would arrive.

Flick had been sent from an agency twelve years ago. She’d turned up, a rather dour middle-aged Irish woman in a beige Marks and Spencer twinset, shortly after her husband died. Her full name was Mary Margaret Flickering, but Valentine had christened her Flick early on. At first she was horrified. But gradually, Mary Margaret Flickering began to fade and Flick took hold. The beige twinset disappeared; her actions became sharper, her tone confident and Valentine learnt the power of re-framing someone. Flick was more daring and resilient than Mary Margaret Flickering had ever been. And she was funnier too. Now she was invaluable to him.

Half Moon Street wasn’t a traditional office. It was an old-fashioned bachelor pad. It had last been refurbished in the late fifties and still had some of the plumbing features from the thirties that are so popular now. There was a large reception room, a tiny office, a single bedroom and the kind of kitchen only a man would find adequate. It was furnished like a set from Brideshead Revisited; a look of luxurious, old moneyed antiques shoved into students’ quarters.

There had been a time when Valentine had toyed with the idea of having a separate office but in truth he enjoyed having Flick about. She provided just the right touch of domesticity to his life. He liked the fact that he could emerge from his bedroom to find her rifling through the post; more often than not she’d make some small adjustment to his tie in the same casual way a wife would. It was all the intimacy he required without any of the emotional turmoil.

After she arrived, he took a brisk morning walk around St James’s Park, then popped into Fortnum’s to pick up something for lunch (at the moment, they were both fond of campagne bread, foie gras and fresh figs). Then he returned, settling down to review all the applications that she’d opened and sorted, removing the most blatantly hideous.

There were only two that were of interest. One was a darkly sensual young man from Wales and the other, a blond public-school boy from North-West London. The Welshman’s romantic réesumé was quite shockingly graphic; he obviously thought the position was for some sort of gigolo and wanted to show that he’d received adequate technical training. But the school boy’s was endearingly brief; he’d lost his virginity to a friend of his sister’s, dated a few girls, fell in love with the student in drama school who played Juliet to his Romeo only to discover that when the production was over, the feeling faded. And now he was involved with an older woman.

Valentine examined the photo carefully. For all his Merchant Ivory good looks, the boy had the feel of a blank sheet of paper; a kind of wide-eyed optimism emanated from him that was the hallmark of either an idiot or a saint. Next to him, the young Welshman seemed positively louche.

Valentine held the picture up triumphantly. ‘Flick, can you see it? Isn’t it amazing? I haven’t seen a specimen like it in years!’

She leant back in her chair and narrowed her eyes. After a moment, she nodded. ‘Yes, I do! It’s remarkable! Like looking into a void!’

‘A completely unformed character!’ he agreed. ‘Perfect! Would you be so kind, Flick, as to give Mr Hughie Armstrong Venables-Smythe a call? If he’s half as malleable in real life as he is on paper, then I do believe our search is over’

A Subtle Twist of Fate

Rose stood awkwardly in front of a table massed with silverware. Her interview wasn’t going well. It began over an hour ago when Mr Gaunt, the butler, interrogated her about her slender CV. Then he moved on to what he referred to as ‘the practical exercises’. They’d just established that she knew nothing about the proper care of silver and now were involved in a guessing game with various bits of cutlery. The suit she’d borrowed from her friend Sheri was too big in most places and too tight in others. And it itched. But she didn’t dare scratch in front of Mr Gaunt.

Gaunt, in turn, had never recovered from the considerable impression that the television series Upstairs, Downstairs had made on him in the seventies. It was an era when he’d struggled with his identity and the result was a curious devotion to archaic class distinctions along with a violent obsession with Jean Marsh. Power plays that might have resolved themselves quite harmlessly in the more traditional sado-masochistic club circuit thus oozed out into his professional life with alarming regularity.

Poor Rose watched in dread as his gloved hand moved towards another exotic utensil.

‘And this, Miss Moriarty?’ He held up a narrow, curved piece with three long prongs.

It was agony.

She hesitated. ‘Another fork?’

He sighed, making a mark in his notebook next to all the other marks, before replacing it with the rest. ‘It is a lobster trident, Miss Moriarty. Extremely rare. At a push it may also be used to serve crab. But only at a push.’

‘Oh.’

She’d tried being funny about her mistakes in the beginning but that was a long while ago now and there weren’t that many amusing things to say about cutlery.

‘This is the last one,’ he informed her, making his final selection.

She nearly laughed with relief. ‘A dessert spoon!’ she cried triumphantly.

Gaunt’s silence was withering.

‘It is a serving spoon,’ he said at last. ‘And a particularly large one at that.’

Rose watched as he made a final, devastating mark, then closed the notebook.

‘I’m afraid, Miss Moriarty, that your dinner-service knowledge leaves something to be desired.’

Her golden life-changing opportunity was slipping through her fingers.

‘Yes, but I could learn about that. You know, get a book from the library or something.’

‘The position of junior assistant to the acting assistant household manager is one of extreme delicacy and discretion. The circles in which the Bourgalt du Coudrays move are filled with aristocracy, politicians, famous actors and actresses, well-known figures from the art world, musicians…’

‘Yes,’ Rose cut in eagerly, ‘I know all about them! Ask me some questions!’ An avid reader of Hello! magazine, here was one test she was bound to pass with flying colours.

‘My point,’ Gaunt went on, glaring at her, ‘is that these are people who are used to a certain level of service and with whom mistakes must simply not be made. Under any circumstance. In addition, Mr Bourgalt du Coudray is a gentleman of very little patience. If he asks for a lobster trident, my girl, and you send him a dessert spoon, you’ll be in no small amount of trouble.’

‘Oh,’ said Rose again.

It was all proving a great deal more difficult than she had imagined.

He walked out into the front hallway and she followed him, giving her left thigh a quick scratch while she had the chance.

‘Language is of the utmost importance.’

‘I hardly ever swear!’

‘I’m not referring merely to foul language, Miss Moriarty.’ He flung open the double doors of one of the largest, most ornately furnished and beautiful rooms she’d ever seen in her life. ‘What would you call this room?’

It was the room closest to the door, she calculated. ‘The front room?’

‘The drawing room,’ he corrected her. ‘This is my point exactly. You need to use the proper language, not only because directions become confused but because language sets the tone, to guests as well as one’s employers. No one wants to work in a house where the tone is lax. “Madame, Mr So and So is waiting in the drawing room.” It reminds them of who they are and what they are about. When you’re gone they may roll around and grunt like pigs, for all you care. But it’s the tone of the household and the quality of the staff that make a situation civilized. To lower the tone is to degrade yourself, Miss Moriarty.’

He handed her a small stack of note cards and a pencil. ‘For your last exercise I would like you to write down the proper name of everything you see in this room. I will be back in fifteen minutes to check your progress. And remember, good penmanship is also a consideration.’

He closed the doors.

Rose looked round.

There was an awful lot of stuff.

She started with basics.

‘Settee,’ she wrote and placed the card carefully in the middle of the velvet Knowle sofa. ‘Pouff,’ she labelled the matching ottoman. On either side stood a pair of large salon chairs with elaborate claw arms, painted with gold leaf. They reminded her of the ones Posh and Becks used at their wedding. ‘His and Hers Thrones,’ she wrote neatly.

Now, there must be a television somewhere. No one had a settee without a television. She scanned the room. Wait a minute…it must be behind one of the wall panels! She smiled. Very clever! A lot of people were probably fooled by that one. ‘Television,’ she wrote, being careful to use the full and correct name rather than just TV. Licking the back of the card, she stuck it to the wall.

The marble-topped Empire commode had bottles of liquor and glasses on it: ‘Home bar,’ she inscribed. And these bookshelves were filled with fake books; she tried to pull one out but they were all glued together. Why would anyone bother to do that? They must have something to hide. It was probably a secret panel, the kind which when you pressed, led to another room. ‘Secret Panel!’ she wrote boldly, adding an exclamation point to show that she too had been amused.

Six Holbein self-portraits fell under the heading of ‘A Few of the Apostles’ (she wondered that they hadn’t bothered to buy the rest) and the unfinished Degas sketch was labelled ‘Picture of a girl with no legs’. The chaise longue was cast as a ‘Broken Settee’, the Ming Dynasty vases as ‘Sweet Jars’ and the elephant foot’s table as ‘a badly burnt stump’. (There was no accounting for taste.)

Next she turned her attention to the priceless collection of Dresden china figurines massed on the mantelpiece. There were a couple of words one was meant to use for things like this. Rose had heard her father, who ran a junk shop, use them. And she dearly wanted to impress Mr Gaunt with her expertise.

It wasn’t ‘bits and bobs’, but it was something like that…ah!

‘Nick Naxs,’ she wrote quickly.

And to the assortment of tiny seventeenth-century cloisonné snuffboxes, she gave the other specialist heading of ‘Brick a Brack’.

But then Rose wavered.

This was the trouble with getting clever, there was always something to catch you out.

Surely the chief differentiating feature between a knick-knack and bric-a-brac was the size of the object.

But which was larger?

Her confidence faltered. There were only a few minutes left and still so many things to label.

Rose’s concentration began to fray.

‘Faded old rug,’ she jotted, dropping the card on the Aubusson. ‘Half a table’ landed on the demi-lune console, and ‘Fun House Mirrer’ on the large Georgian convex looking glass above the mantel.

But still the larger question wrangled: which was bigger? A knick-knack or bric-a-brac?

Two minutes left. Rose began to panic. ‘Picture Book Bible’ on the large edition of Les Très Riches Heures de Jean Due de Berry. She frowned. ‘Dirty Pictures,’ she scribbled disdainfully on the signed Helmut Newton photography book. (You’d think he’d have the decency to at least hide them!)

Only one more minute!

Should she switch them?

Her throat constricted, heart raced. All her past failures and missed opportunities distilled into this single task. What was the use anyway? She’d failed the cutlery test. And the one about the silver. Her entire life was one big stupid mistake after another!

And, in the shadow of this sudden, crushing depression, Rose’s standards began to slip.

‘Another fucking chair’ on the Victorian reading chair, ‘Two ugly pillow biters’ on the portraits of Arnaud’s great-great-grandfather and uncle, ‘A bunch of total strangers’ on the cluster of silver-framed family photographs on the piano. And on top of the Steinway, in capital letters, ‘I’LL BET NO ONE EVEN PLAYS!’

And so on it went.

Until Mrs Bourgalt du Coudray herself walked in, followed by Simon Grey.

Now, as is often the way in large households, a great many things were all going on at the same time. So, while Gaunt was busy vetting young hopefuls for the position of junior assistant to the acting assistant household manager, somewhere on a floor above him Simon Grey and Olivia were conducting their own fevered interviews for a replacement for Roddy Prowl. They had scoured the art schools of London for someone daring, original and preferably offensive to take Roddy’s place and were promised that several candidates would appear at 45 Chester Square before the day was out. Indeed, in bedsitting rooms all across London, young artists were gathering together portfolios, throwing on clothes, and gulping down vast amounts of coffee in an attempt to sober up in time to make an impression on this powerful duo.

But they needn’t have bothered.

Because fate had another thing in mind.

Olivia flung open the drawing-room doors.

Her head throbbed from worry and nerves. Never had she imagined that agreeing to become chairman of the gallery would involve so much hands-on interaction. Now all of a sudden they were in crisis and Simon was looking to her, of all people, for help. Already they’d seen dozens of portfolios, none suitable. Hope waned. They would never be able to find a worthy replacement in time.

It was time to face facts.

‘The thing is, Simon,’ she explained, ‘we need an original statement, not just a worthy candidate but an exceptional one, with something daring to say. But the chances of us finding an artist of that calibre at such short notice…’

She stopped. Something above the mantelpiece caught her eye.

‘Fun House Mirrer,’ a small note card read, written in careful, childish writing. Lower down, by the china figurines, was another.

‘Nick Naxs.’

And on top of the collection of snuffboxes, ‘Brick a Brack.’

She turned round.

Little cards were everywhere!

‘Sette.’

‘Pouff.’

‘Half a table.’

‘My God!’ Simon gasped. ‘Your home has been vandalized! Shall I call the police?’

Olivia didn’t answer.

She was staring at the photographs in the silver frames.

‘A bunch of total strangers,’ it said.

A bunch of total strangers!

Who could’ve done such a thing?

What did it mean?

Still, she couldn’t escape the bizarre feeling that she was seeing her relations clearly for the first time.

‘Another fucking chair…’ she murmured, reading the cards out loud. ‘Secret Panel?’ The breath caught in her chest. ‘His and Hers Thrones!’

How ghastly!

How intrusive!

How accurate!

Simon was right: it was vandalism. But it was also something more.

Here was the room, just as she’d left it except for the mysterious cards. Nothing had really changed. And yet suddenly her perspective was irrevocably altered. It was offensive, shocking; subtle.

Simon tried unsuccessfully to suppress a laugh. ‘Look at this one!’ He pointed to the Helmut Newton. ‘That’s hysterical!’

‘I’ve always hated that book.’

‘Really?’ He leafed through it surreptitiously. ‘I think it’s kind of sexy.’

Olivia gripped his arm. ‘This is extraordinary!’

‘Yes. The spelling is atrocious and the handwriting!’

‘You said Mona was sending someone?’

‘Yes…’

‘Do you think?’

His eyes widened. ‘No!’

‘What else could it be?’

‘An installation! My God! How remarkable! The absurdity—like Dadaism!’

‘I’ve never encountered anything like it,’ she agreed.

A small figure was slumped in a corner.

‘My God, the artist,’ Olivia pointed. ‘She’s so young!’

They approached.

‘Hello!’ Olivia smiled brightly.

The girl nodded.

‘What do you call this piece?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘The name of this piece,’ Simon spoke slowly, clearly. ‘Does it have a name?’

A large tear rolled down the girl’s cheek. ‘I just don’t see…I mean, what’s the point in carrying on?’

Her words cut through Olivia like a blade.

‘“What’s the Point in Carrying On”,’ she repeated.

Only a few times in her life had anything struck her so forcibly. A terrible feeling of transparency flooded her.

Here it all was; the world she struggled to create, her public face in all its desperate grandeur and ostentatiousness. How could this stranger, little more than a teenager, really, have guessed so accurately at the emptiness beneath the surface?

What was the point indeed?

Olivia crouched down next to the girl. ‘I can’t tell you how much I admire what you’ve done.’

The girl blinked.

‘Look, Simon, at the detail! I mean, even the suit she’s wearing!’

‘Yes, dreadful! What’s your name?’

‘Rose.’ She struggled to her feet. ‘Rose Moriarty’

‘Oh, dear. Do you have another one? Names in this business are important, you see.’

‘Sometimes people call me Red.’

‘That’s good!’

‘But I don’t like it,’ she added.

‘Never mind. Red Moriarty!’ He turned to Olivia. ‘How’s this? “Subversion has a new name: Red Moriarty”!’

‘Brilliant!’

‘Does this mean I’m hired?’ the girl asked.

But Olivia didn’t hear. This remarkable young woman had taken the very lack of substance in her life and elevated it to the status of art.

For the first time in a long time, she felt energized.

‘No one is to touch this room! Simon, get Mona Freestyle on the phone! I want this whole piece transferred to the gallery immediately. You’re a very clever girl.’

‘Really?’

‘Incredibly talented!’

‘At what?’

Olivia and Simon exchanged a look.

‘And witty!’ Simon laughed. ‘Where did you train?’

‘Train? I left school when I was fifteen. You see, I have a little boy’

‘A child? But you can’t be more than twelve yourself!’

‘I’m twenty-two. Well, almost. Next month.’

‘And your background?’ Simon demanded. ‘Where were you born? Where do you live? What are your family like?’

‘I’m from Kilburn. My dad owns a junk shop. My mother left when I was ten. I live in a council flat on an estate near Queens Park.’

He could hardly contain himself. ‘How perfectly Tracey!’

Olivia gestured for her to sit. ‘And your love of conceptual art…where does it come from?’

‘Art?’ The girl tugged at the ugly suit. ‘I can’t even draw’

‘Nobody draws any more!’ Simon assured her. ‘I couldn’t sell a drawing if my life depended on it!’

‘An utterly raw talent,’ Olivia shook her head in amazement.

‘You’re right,’ Simon nodded. ‘God has answered all our prayers! Here is the enfant terrible we’ve been looking for! Even more enfant than Roddy and infinitely more terrible!’

Meanwhile, downstairs, one of the artists that Mona Freestyle of the Slade had recommended, a lanky young man with a large nose and beady eyes who specialized in preserving human remains in aspic, was being interviewed by Gaunt. He’d done quite well on the silver-polishing exercise and acquitted himself admirably during the cutlery identification. (The lobster trident was no stranger to him.)

Unfortunately, he didn’t have the opportunity to attempt the final exercise, as Simon Grey had the drawing room cordoned off and everything removed to the gallery later that afternoon. But Gaunt decided to hire him regardless. The quality of his sneer was first rate; he possessed a natural sense of superiority which couldn’t be taught. And if truth be told, there was something of Jean Marsh in the way he moved.

So perhaps England lost yet another great artist in the making to the service industry.

Then again, perhaps not.

The Interview

Hughie was sitting in a warm patch of sunlight on a bench in Green Park, with ten minutes to go before his appointment. He felt stiff and uncomfortable wearing the dark wool suit he’d borrowed from Malcolm. But at least it didn’t smell like violet water.

Perhaps it had been a mistake allowing Clara to dress him. But when she heard he finally had a job interview, she wouldn’t leave him alone. Her trademark yellow Post-its began to appear offering advice instead of warnings: ‘Make eye contact and smile! But not like an IDIOT!’ ‘Don’t eat anything smelly the day before.’ ‘Remember to shave!’ As the week wore on they grew increasingly more like American life-coaching slogans: ‘You can do this!’ ‘This job already belongs to YOU! All you have to do is reach out and GRAB IT!’ ‘Failure is for LOSERS!’ Hughie had begun to miss the Post-its that only required him not to forget his fucking keys.

He looked around at the people strolling past and the ones lolling, reading papers or dozing on the grass. And he wondered if any of them might be the person he was waiting for.

It was unusual to hold a job interview on a park bench. It was one of the things he’d kept secret from Clara and her endless grilling. But then, he was an actor and used to strange impromptu arrangements. Besides, any job that required discretion coupled with a romantic history was bound to be a bit unorthodox.

He checked the time again on his mobile phone. Any minute now, the man he spoke to would be here.

Then a red-headed woman sat down next to him, unfolded a newspaper and began to read. Hughie felt a bit anxious. This was the difficulty of using public spaces; namely the public. Should he ask her to sit somewhere else? Or perhaps he should just wait until the man arrived and take it from there?

Suddenly his phone buzzed. A text appeared.

The message read, Flirt with the woman next to you. Your interview has begun.

Hughie blinked.

Flirt?

He read the message again.

Then he peered across at the woman reading her paper. She was about fifty-five, sensibly dressed; she looked like one of his mother’s friends. Definitely not the sort of woman he’d ever flirt with. Not that he was much of a flirt in the first place. His normal opening gambit was something along the lines of, ‘Hey’ And occasionally, he’d add, ‘Nice shoes.’

Just on the off chance, he glanced down. She was wearing a pair of fiat, black loafers, what his mother called a ‘driving shoe’. He knew that because they were her favourite footwear. The originals were from Todd’s but his mother bought them in bulk from Marks and Spencer’s in a variety of garish colours. An involuntary shiver shot up his spine. How could he flirt with a woman who dressed like his mother?

His phone buzzed again.

A second message popped up.

There’s a time limit.

Hughie slipped his phone into his pocket. Was he being filmed? Was this some sort of reality television show? Whatever it was, there were clearly two choices: to play along or to stand up and walk away.

Well, he was here now, up and dressed. And anyway, he’d get an earful from Clara if he just wandered off. He stole another glance. She wasn’t such a bad old bird. Her eyes were quite friendly and at least she didn’t have any disfiguring facial features—moles, moustache, or the like.

Still, he didn’t know quite how to get going. Lust or alcohol had always fuelled his previous conquests. He tried smiling at her, but she wasn’t paying attention. An opening was required. Something sexy.

The woman was checking her watch, folding up her paper, pushing it back into her bag…

Then something caught Hughie’s eye.

‘God! Excuse me…is that the cricket score?’

The woman looked up at him. ‘Pardon me?’

‘I’m sorry.’ He grinned. ‘I’m rude, I know. It’s just,’ he gestured to her paper, ‘that can’t be the cricket score! I mean, this is still England, isn’t it? I am awake, aren’t I? When was the last time you saw a score like that?’

The woman unfolded the paper again from her bag and laughed. ‘I don’t know. It’s not a sport I follow’

‘May I? Nice shoes, by the way’

‘Oh! Thank you. Of course you may’ She offered him the paper and he took it, his fingers brushing lightly against hers.

‘Shane Warne! God, those figures are insane! I reckon he’s made a pact with the devil. So you don’t do cricket? What do you follow? Wait,’ he held up his hand, ‘let me guess! Football! Beckham’s latest haircut, tattoo, fashion statement!’

‘God, no!’ she laughed again. ‘No, not my cup of tea, at all.’

‘Rugby then. Large men in tight shorts.’

‘Not rough enough.’

‘Tennis.’

She wrinkled her nose.

‘Golf!’

She pretended to yawn.

‘Championship Tibetan goat hurling!’

‘Only the Tibetans know how to really hurl a goat,’ she sighed wistfully.

‘You’ve obviously never seen the Spanish have a go.’

She laughed.

He felt his nerves steadying.

Actually, she was easy to talk to; much easier than many girls he really fancied. And she had lovely eyes; a mixture of green and grey. When he concentrated on them, she could’ve been any age at all. Then it occurred to him that all he was doing was acting—just playing a part.

And he started to really enjoy himself.

‘OK, OK.’ He frowned in mock concentration. ‘Horse racing!’

Her eyes flickered.

‘You cheeky devil! You play the horses! I know I’m right!’

Suddenly she was giggling. It was a delightful noise; unrestrained and girlish. ‘Only occasionally,’ she admitted. ‘I’m Irish,’ she added. ‘I was raised with it!’

‘Raised with it, my arse!’ He tapped her knee with the rolled-up paper. ‘You’re a thrill junkie! Don’t deny it! Look at how your eyes light up!’

And they had. Years seemed to have dropped from her; her face was glowing as she laughed again. ‘Everyone has a vice or two,’ she said, looking away coyly.

‘Thank God!’ He leant in. ‘I have a confession.’

‘What?’ She tilted towards him.

‘The truth is, I’m not really into cricket either.’

Her eyes widened. ‘You’re not one of those dreadful cricket frauds I’ve been reading about, are you? Pretending to know how the game’s played, babbling on about wickets and overs, parading around with picnic hampers filled with nothing but bunched-up old newspaper’

‘Named and shamed!’ Hughie hung his head. ‘Don’t hate me! It’s just, how else was I going to get the chance?’

‘The chance at what?’

He had intended to lock her with an intense, sexy stare but then something happened that surprised Hughie; something that had only happened a few times in his acting career, when he was completely lost in the role. A strange rush of feeling flooded through him. His cheeks burned. ‘The chance to talk to you.’

For a moment, she said nothing. A delicate thread of intimacy wrapped itself around them.

‘Why would you want to do that?’ she asked quietly.

His blue eyes caught hers and he blushed even harder. ‘It’s just, well…’ he fumbled, ‘it doesn’t happen very often. I mean…It’s not every day someone like you just…appears…out of nowhere…’

‘Someone like me?’

‘Yes, someone so…lovely. You have a certain way about you. I really like talking to you.’ He was aware, even as he spoke, that it was true.

For a moment, it looked as though she might say something. But then an odd expression clouded her face.

It wasn’t quite the effect he was going for.

‘I didn’t mean to offend you,’ he apologized.

She shook her head. ‘No.’ Then she was silent.

Fuck, he thought. I’ve buggered it up.

Shrugging his shoulders, he pushed his hand through his mop of blond hair and gave her one last smile. ‘Can’t blame a guy for trying, can you?’

But she just blinked.

He stood, handed her back the paper.

Oh, well, he thought, as he ambled up towards the tube entrance. That’s fucked.

Maybe there’s a job going at HMV or something.

Flick sat very still, for a long time, on the bench in Green Park. It had been a beautiful early-autumn day, and now it was just beginning to fade, mellowing into that time of evening when the light drains from the sky. The people around her were moving slowly, enjoying the last of the hazy warmth.

But Flick sat frozen.

She felt unusual, disorientated, flustered even. And she wasn’t the kind of woman who was accustomed to feeling flustered. After all, she’d been through this process a hundred times over the past twelve years. Normally these auditions were either excruciating or comical. But today was different. This young man had stirred something inside her; something she’d almost forgotten existed. He’d managed to disturb her entire equilibrium in a way that left her feeling exposed, vulnerable but at the same time exhilarated.

Valentine walked down from Piccadilly and sat next to her. He handed her a takeaway coffee. ‘Well…?’

This is where the two of them would usually dissect the whole adventure and more likely than not, have a good laugh. Instead, she frowned.

Hughie had reminded her of someone.

‘Flick…’

A memory floated to the surface, of another young man, different in physical type from Hughie but similar in his eagerness and enthusiasm.

It had been years since she’d thought about the way he’d looked at her, the way he’d struggled to make conversation the first time they’d met. His desire to be with her had been palpable; a solid, physical force she’d found irresistible. And she’d yielded, almost immediately. Her face flushed from the recollection.

‘Flick!’ Patience was not one of Valentine’s virtues. ‘What’s come over you?’

She forced her eyes to focus on Valentine’s face and suddenly it dawned on her, what had happened.

‘I’ve been seduced!’ she said. ‘That little shit has just charmed the pants off me!’

Valentine’s mouth curled up at the corners as he slowly stirred his tea. ‘You don’t say’

Shaking her head, she sipped her coffee. But it was too hot; too sweet and strong. She put it down again. ‘He’s really very handsome,’ she added, ‘much handsomer in real life. I didn’t expect him to be so tall. And then there’s the smell of him…none of that dreadful thick cologne but a kind of clean, soapy freshness.’

Valentine laughed. ‘Mary Margaret Flickering, I do believe you’re smitten!’

She tossed him a look. ‘You wouldn’t understand. There was nothing at all forced about it, or smarmy. My God, he even blushed! So sweet! So terribly, terribly sweet…’

‘Ah,’ Valentine arched an eyebrow, ‘but do we need sweet?’

She thought a moment.

‘Yes,’ she decided firmly. ‘We need something unrehearsed, raw, a bit awkward. Not prepackaged or particularly sophisticated…’ Standing up, she pulled her mackintosh around her. ‘We need something fresh, Valentine.’

‘Where are you going?’ He rose too, affronted. He wasn’t used to being taken for granted; normally just the fact that he was present was reason enough to warrant her undivided attention.

But instead, she handed him back the takeaway coffee, as if he were a bus boy.

‘I’m going for a walk.’ Her voice was dreamy, faraway. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to be alone for a little while.’

He’d never seen her so distracted. He watched as she made her way down the hill, through the avenue of plane trees towards St James’s, until he felt a bit poignant and ridiculous and decided enough was enough, this wasn’t an old film and he could really do with a drink.

As Flick strolled along, dry leaves, bereft of colour, crunched underneath her feet. Her thoughts were drawn again to the past and her gauche young lover—of the way he used to look at her. He was the first person who’d made her feel intoxicated; completely alive and powerful. At the time, she imagined that feeling would be hers for ever.

What a shock it had been when she began to grow invisible to men and they no longer registered her. How humiliating to discover time had abducted her favourite version of herself and replaced it with a saggy middle-aged woman instead.

Then she thought of Hughie Venables-Smythe’s amazing, clear blue eyes. Even now, she could still feel them gazing into hers, taking her in; seeing her.

And she smiled.

It was autumn. The leaves had begun to fall.

And she was still lovely, after all.

The Rules

Hughie rang the bell of Leticia’s shop later that evening.

‘I’ve never seen you in a suit,’ she said, as she unlocked the door and let him in.

He smiled.

They hadn’t seen one another in days. And now a delightful frisson sparked between them, a certain shyness that made him feel as if they were starting all over again. She looked perfect tonight; all soft and so young in a simple pink silk dress. And he was struck again by how much he’d missed her. The room was dimly, sensuously lit and a breeze lightly ruffled the sheer curtains of the open window.

‘I had an interview,’ he explained, catching her about the waist and pulling her to him. ‘But seeing as we’re all dressed up, why don’t I take you to dinner?’

Her body yielded against his. And, nuzzling into his neck, she traced her fingers lightly over his torso. ‘Fuck me first, darling. You know I hate sex on a full stomach.’

He sighed.

It had been a long, weird day. Sometimes he wished he could just take her out on a date like any normal girl.

But, as her hand slipped down the front of his trousers, he reconsidered. ‘Oh, all right then.’

‘Your suit makes you look so distinguished.’ There was a gleam in her eye. ‘Like a big, powerful businessman.’

Forcing him backwards, she toppled him into one of the chairs. She shimmied a little and the silk dress shifted, slowly working its way down her naked shoulders. Brushing her mouth against his, she climbed on top of him and the dress fell to her waist. ‘I’m so sorry, sir,’ she whispered, her lips caressing his neck. ‘It seems I’ve forgotten to type those letters you wanted.’ He tried to pull her closer but she continued to work her way down. ‘I’m a very bad secretary.’ She deftly unzipped his fly. ‘But perhaps I can make it up to you.’

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