Extracts
She shuffled her bare legs, aware how close they were under the table to his trousers. Frederique chided herself for buying the dress a size too small, and wearing it without tights. The other women in the pub were dressed in jeans, or smart, drab business suits.
He refilled her wine glass, only half empty. She looked up at the black-and-white photographs on the wall she examined earlier to pass the time.
“Which is your favourite?” he asked. “Don’t think about your answer. Choose one straight away.” Like a hypnotist, or a magician fanning out cards.
“The clown,” she said. “In the corner.” As a matter of fact, Frederique’s first inclination had been to mention the man dressed as the devil, with a three-pronged staff. Anyway, the hypnotist/magician turned round to look at the pictures, which gave Frederique a chance to study his profile – a square, obstinate jaw, a Roman nose too large for his face.
“So what is it you like about clowns?” he asked.
“I did not say I liked clowns.”
The man raised one eyebrow, as he had before.
“But one can never know what is going on behind their masks. Perhaps this clown in the photo is happy or sad or bored. Or,” she added for emphasis, “thinking about killing his wife.”
The man said something Frederique didn’t catch.
No matter. English was now flowing from her mouth in more or less correct grammatical order. “Do you think, behind masks, we all inhabit a private space?” she asked.
There was a sudden blast of jukebox music.
“With or without a mask,” the tall man shouted, “you look like fun.”
“Thank you.” Frederique would have preferred it if he had said she was very intelligent.
*****
“This will be my paintbrush.” Oh. He placed the lipstick on the bedside table. But paint on what? The bedroom walls?
“How much?” Grant asked.
“You can use as much as you like. But it will break it if you press too hard.”
“Don’t be facetious.” He took his hand away from the inside pocket of his suit.
“Sometimes,” Frederique said, “I really do not understand what you are on about.” Wasn’t there an old film, where Jeremy Irons plays twins, both mainlining on morphine? She took deep breaths and reminded herself how fearless she had felt following him out of the café. She put her hand in her bag to check her phone, and the packet of condoms Isobel had provided.
Grant removed his jacket. Red braces held up his pinstriped trousers too high. She found his braces reassuring. “I want you to let me take your clothes off. That’s easy to understand, isn’t it?”
Her heart paused before delivering its next, loud, beat. On the one hand, Frederique had been expecting Grant to ask something like that, although with a little more charm. On the other hand, she was completely unprepared.
“Don’t!” she wanted to yell, but the word stuck soundless in her throat. With slow, deliberate dignity, Frederique walked straight out of the room – in her imagination.
“What about you showing me your striptease routine?”
Already she was guilty, by default. Frederique’s face burnt with shame – or she would have liked it to. Somehow, she had become a whore, merely by failing to yell or blush.
“Striptease?” Grant gestured, sitting down, eyes locked on her favourite white blouse and the breasts beneath them.
If Frederique told him now, he would be furious she hadn’t told him earlier.
Suddenly she hated him without inhibition. Grant did not deserve the truth, even a little bit of it. Frederique had tried to tell but he had refused to hear her out. It was his fault, no doubt about that. She would have to get her revenge some other way.
By leaving now, immediately, for example – with no explanation. A safe and sensible course of action, like most of her Swiss life.
The tip of Grant’s tongue moistened his lips. He waved a banknote. Frederique’s heart began to drum so hard she feared he could hear it.
I don’t want your money, you idiot.
But, shockingly, she did. Not to spend, of course.
If, the first time, Grant hadn’t left a wad of money by the bedside table, it was unlikely Frederique would have bothered to see him again. The banknotes had made him fascinating as well as despicable. This evening she’d here come along to protest – and she had failed. Even forgotten to bring him the cash back. Accident? Karma? Freudian slip? No time to work that out.
Besides, the man had made an unforgivable assumption about her. He deserved to pay.
The money would be symbolic of their relationship – although “relationship” was far too grand and settled. Casual, detached lusting, cynical, indulgent under false pretences. She knew the truth; Grant didn’t. That – Frederique decided on the spur of the moment – was as sexy as anything in her previous life.
“You are incredibly beautiful,” he murmured. “I’m sure everybody tells you.”
An incredibly beautiful whore, constantly flattered. Frederique decided most of her other clients paid her compliments as well. In London, she could choose to leave everything in her old life behind, even reality.
*****
Why hadn’t she mentioned the four letter words he had written all over her body last time? Perhaps she was used to this kind of insult. Perhaps, despite all Gordon’s ingenuity, he could do nothing to her that hadn’t already been done.
Damn. He had begun to fondle her left breast without meaning to. He had to hold back – such a fine line, to seduce the girl, but stay in control. Gordon sat down beside her so his excitement wouldn’t be so obvious. Instinctively, thoughtlessly, he brushed her cheek with his own.
“I do – like you very much,” she murmured, her French accent more seductive than ever, her mouth two inches away. “It doesn’t have to matter, the way we met, does it?”
God, she was good. And part of him wanted to believe her.
Luckily, Gordon had written the script before she arrived.
He stood up, pulled out the chord from the waist of his dressing gown and pushed Frederique down on to her back. Immediately, he tied her wrists tight together, then round the headboard. She flinched but offered hardly any resistance Then he produced the scarlet silk handkerchief from his pocket and blindfolded her startled eyes. Frederique’s mouth fell half open. He hadn’t anticipated how inviting her lips would look.
“Your breath is making my face tingle,” she said. Underneath the blindfold, her grey eyes would be dancing. Or that’s what he imagined. Maybe all women’s excitement was a tissue of lies. “Are you going to disrobe?”
Although she couldn’t see him, without its chord the dressing gown had fallen open, enveloping her, offering Gordon no protection, getting in the way. He stood up straight to remove it, aggrieved that she’d won a victory, however trivial.
“Are you naked now?” Frederique asked, groping with her legs to find his body. He jumped aside a little too late. Her toes caught the fabric of Gordon’s boxer shorts, just short of his erection.
*****
“I’m not even a sex object as far as you are concerned. You regard me as an experiment.”
“I regard you as a lovely young woman who is prostituting herself for no good reason.”
“You need me to be a prostitute.” Blindness was making her bold. “You despise me. That’s what you want. To buy me and despise me.” For weeks she hadn’t thought about telling him the truth. Anyway it would only worth it if she could see the shock in his face.
****