*
The next day she went to see Jamie in Crouch End, where he shared a house with six other students. He paid almost £200 a week, for which he was given sole occupancy of a tiny bedroom on the second floor. All the rooms in the house — including what used to be the sitting and dining rooms — had been turned into bedrooms and rented out, so Jamie rarely ventured out of his own bedroom unless it was to go down to the kitchen and make some instant coffee or microwave himself a meal. His bedroom was just about big enough to hold his single bed and the child’s dressing table which served as his desk.
‘I can only stay a couple of hours,’ Rachel said, explaining that she had to be back in Chelsea to pick the girls up from school. It was annoying, then, that Jamie proposed watching a film, and would not be talked out of it: all the more so because the film was Ghosts, Nick Broomfield’s dramatization of the Morecambe Bay cocklepickers’ tragedy of 2004, which he needed to watch for the latest chapter of his thesis.
‘Why are you always thinking about work?’ said Rachel, who after the stresses of the last week had come with an entirely different purpose in mind.
‘It’s only ninety-six minutes,’ said Jamie, checking the back of the DVD box. ‘We can do something else afterwards.’
Despite herself, Rachel could not help finding it an absorbing and upsetting film. It followed the misfortunes of a young Chinese illegal immigrant forced into ever more insecure jobs within the food industry, in order to pay back money to the ‘Snakeheads’ who had smuggled her into the UK. Rachel found that the story had a strong resonance with her memories of Lu, the Chinese worker Phoebe had looked after for a few days back in 2003. It was an odd coincidence to be watching a film that so clearly reminded her of this episode now, just when she had spent the last few days attempting to set it all down on paper. When the film was over, Jamie sat at his desk and started making notes.
‘Do you have to do that now?’ she said. ‘I’ve got to go in like … half an hour. Forty minutes tops.’
‘Just a minute,’ said Jamie. ‘There are so many things I’ll need to say about that film. Really I could start a whole new chapter about it.’
He scribbled rapidly in his notebook for another two or three minutes, his brow so furrowed with concentration that he did not even notice what Rachel was doing behind his back. When he turned to speak to her again, he found that she had stripped off her clothes and was stretched out beneath his duvet.
He put his pencil down.
‘Wow,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know … I mean …’
‘Come on, then,’ she said. ‘Are we going to do it or not?’
He pulled off his shirt and slid in beside her. Rachel put her arms around him and planted a long, moist kiss on his mouth.
‘I was attacked last week,’ she murmured, as Jamie’s hands began to glide over her body. Immediately he stopped and pulled back.
‘What?’
‘This guy came round to the house and … tried it on with me.’
‘Guy? What guy? Who was it?’
‘Someone I know. A friend of Gilbert’s.’
‘Did you report it to the police? Did he hurt you?’
‘He probably would have done. But he didn’t get very far.’
Jamie pulled away even further, sitting upright and staring down at her angrily.
‘Tell me his name.’
‘No. Why?’
‘Tell me the bastard’s name.’
‘Then what are you going to do?’
‘I’ll go and smash his face in.’
Rachel tried hard, but couldn’t refrain from giggling.
‘Come off it. You?’
‘Yes, me.’
She reached up, put her arms around Jamie’s shoulders, and pulled him back towards her.
‘That’s very touching, sweetheart, but it’s the last thing I want.’
She kissed him again.
‘What do you want instead?’ he asked.
‘A bit of tender loving care would be nice,’ said Rachel, taking his hand and placing it carefully between her legs.
They made love twice: the first time being slow, and gentle, and deeply satisfying, the second being much more fierce and urgent. Then, just as Rachel was about to reach her second climax, Jamie’s mobile phone rang. To her amazement, he leaned over to answer it.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ she said.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘it might be important.’
‘Fuck that,’ she said, biting him frantically on the neck. ‘This is important.’
But still, Jamie craned over and glanced even more closely at the name on the screen.
‘I’ll have to get this,’ he said. ‘It’s Laura.’
He picked up the phone and answered the call. Furious, Rachel flopped back on to the bed, panting heavily, more with frustration than anything else. She had been on the very brink of orgasm. She couldn’t believe that he’d abandoned her at that precise moment.
She ran her hands through her hair and then down the side of her neck, feeling the sweat that had gathered there. For a while she was too agitated to take any notice of what he was saying. Then she became aware that Jamie and Laura were making some kind of arrangement to meet tomorrow evening: there was mention of a train journey. Then Jamie was asking her about someone who should, it seemed, have been joining them, but had gone missing. ‘Well, when did anyone last see him …?’ he was saying. Rachel could hear Laura’s voice at the other end of the line and could tell that the conversation was going to continue for some time. That was as much as she could tolerate. She got out of bed, clutching the duvet to hide her nudity, and pulled on her clothes as quickly as possible. By the time Jamie had finished his call, she was fully dressed and standing at the bedroom door.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked, looking genuinely surprised.
‘Back to work,’ she said. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Me? I’m not going anywhere.’
‘Tomorrow, I mean.’
‘Oh, that … Laura’s asked me to go up to Scotland with her. Didn’t I mention that?’
‘No, you didn’t.’
‘It’s this committee she’s on. They’re going on a jolly to Inverness.’
‘Inverness?’
‘The Scottish Tourist Board have asked them to come up and put a price on the Loch Ness Monster.’
‘How completely ridiculous. And you’re going because …?’
‘She thinks it’ll be good experience for me. You don’t mind, do you?’
Rachel said nothing. Jamie frowned.
‘A strange thing, though,’ he said. ‘Lord Lucrum, the head of the committee … Nobody can find him. He seems to have gone missing.’
At any other time, Rachel might have found this interesting. At the moment, though, she was far too discomposed, both physically and emotionally, to give the subject even cursory thought.