It’s raining outside. The wind of the autumn equinox gale throws the droplets at my windows, clawing at the glass like the letters I get daily from the debt collectors that claw at my soul. The truth is, I’m just not living the life I was born to live. I have a failed business behind me,and now I’m working as an independent financial advisor, for a crook who never pays me the commission I’m due for the life insurance policies I sell, the dubious tax schemes I hook people into and the useless pensions I dupe my clients into buying.
And all my sour little wife, Alison, does is max out our credit cards a little more every day, buying stupid face creams, ridiculous dresses and paying for lunches we cannot afford. Who was it who said so many of us spend all our lives doing jobs we hate, in order to earn money we don’t need, so that we can buy things we don’t want in order to impress people we don’t like? Well, I do the earning and Alison does the rest.
For the next couple of days, I find it hard to concentrate on my work. I use the last of my credit cards which still has some life in it to buy a cool suit, shirt, and a new tie for good measure, from Richard James of Savile Row, and a pair of black suede Crockett & Jones loafers from Burlington Arcade. Alison tells me I seem distant and asks me what’s wrong. I lie, something that comes easy after twenty years of marriage to a woman whose only asset for me today is the meagre income she brings in as a legal secretary. Nothing’s wrong, I tell her, and to prove it, driven by the excitement of what awaits me tomorrow, I make love to her with a passion I did not know I still had in me — and which I’m sure the beautiful Maria Andropoulos is going to appreciate in the weeks and months to come.
And now, finally, in the vast, ornate black-and-white galleried room of the Wolseley, filled with the beautiful people of London, a greeter, all in black and perfectly formed, is guiding me through the packed tables alive with the buzz of rich, successful people’s conversation, to an apparition that is way, way, way beyond her photograph on the Internet.
Her blonde hair looks wild, untamed, in the way that only a top salon charging at least £300 for a blow-dry could achieve. She is dressed in a high-collared dress with a leopard-skin pattern that clings to her slender contours, and that quietly states, ‘I am rich and beautiful and I know it.’ Her teeth, the colour of snow, melt me. She is dripping with serious bling. And she has great tits — but let’s not get crude.’
I can immediately sense from her body language that I am making an impression on her, too. I sit down, our eyes locked, inane grins on our faces. She holds up in greeting a glass filled with champagne, and moments later, at the hand of an unseen waiter, the rarefied froth of 199 °Cristal is rising over the rim of my own goblet.
‘You look so much better than your photograph, Sebastian,’ she says.
‘You, too,’ I tell her, trying to stop my greedy eyes from looking at those rings on her fingers, the bracelets, the necklace, the earrings, and the Vertu phone on the white table cloth.
And I am so captivated by her charm that, as we get stuck into the second bottle of champagne before the starter (she has ordered oysters, followed by Beluga) even arrives, I need to keep reminding myself I am here not to enjoy myself, but on business.
We glide easily across topics. Trite at first — stuff about what a great place London is for the arts. She has a slightly husky, mid- European accent which I find very attractive. And all the while her ‘fuck-me’ eyes seldom let go of mine.
We both share the massive dish of oysters and somehow, by the time we’ve finished, the second bottle of champagne is empty. And a third is on its way. She keeps looking at her watch. I don’t know what the make is, but it is encrusted with diamonds the size of barnacles. And suddenly there is something I notice about her. It is the way she keeps twisting the biggest bit of bling of alclass="underline" a diamond engagement — or maybe eternity — ring. She turns it round, and round, and round.
It is hypnotic.
I’ve never seen diamonds so big.
Gradually, subtly, our conversation deepens as she tells me about her brute of a husband. I notice she keeps looking at her watch and I wonder, anxiously, if perhaps I am boring her. She apologizes, suddenly, explaining that her driver is arriving at 3 p.m. to collect her — she has to make an important speech this afternoon at the Savoy hotel for the charity Women Against Poverty, of which she is chair.
‘I like a Rolex on a man,’ she says, with a very sexy smile. ‘A naked man wearing a Rolex is a very big turn-on for me.’
And now I am glad there is a table between us, so she cannot see just how turned on her remark makes me.
‘It could be arranged,’ I say.
‘I’d like that very much,’ she replies, then twists that ring again. ‘I apologize, my finger hurts — I have arthritis in the knuckle. I hurt my hand from fending off my husband’s blows. Sometimes I have to move the ring to ease the pain.’
I try to imagine her husband. I think of the pictures of Russian tycoons I have seen in the papers, and I find myself hating this man with all my heart and soul. I want to take her away with me now, to protect her — and make love to her and...
I am forgetting myself. Forgetting why I am here. The champagne and her intoxicating company are making me behave this way.
Her phone rings. She answers it with a curt, ‘Yes. You are outside now? OK.’
And suddenly, before I realize it, she is standing up. ‘I really want to see you again,’ she says.
‘Me too.’
She gives me her elegant card and enters my mobile number into her Vertu. Then she kisses me lightly on the cheek. Her tender touch and her intoxicating perfume send my pulse into orbit. But as she turns away to walk towards the door, she collides with a shaven-headed ape in a grey suit and white polo neck, who has appeared from nowhere, totally not concentrating on where he is going, talking on his mobile phone. She ricochets off him, straight into a waitress carrying a tray of beautifully prepared food. And in the next instant, to my dismay, my beautiful date and the waitress crash into a table, knocking everything on it flying, and fall to the floor, entangled like a pair of mud-wrestling bitches.
I can scarcely believe my eyes as I jump up to rescue my distressed damsel and help her back to her feet. Elegant waiters swarm around. Maria smiles at me; she is fine. Like a James Bond martini, she is shaken but not stirred. Through the mêlée of people assisting her, she blows me a goodbye kiss.
And through the haze of champagne, in the moments after she has gone, I realize that we didn’t get the bill. Not a problem; I assume she has an account here. So I enjoy the remaining half-bottle of champagne and order a large espresso — and, what the hell, a decent Armagnac to go with it. Then my phone rings.
It is Maria. For an instant my heart leaps, then her voice tells me something is wrong. She sounds in a terrible state. ‘Sebastian, please can you help me? I’ve lost my ring!’
‘Ring?’
‘My engagement ring from Aleksei. It’s worth about three hundred thousand pounds, but that’s not the important thing — he will go nuts if he sees me without it!’
‘Where have you lost it?’ I ask dumbly.
‘It must have come off my finger when I fell over with that stupid waitress! It has to be on the floor somewhere. Look, I haven’t got time to deal with this; I have to start speaking in a few minutes. Would you be a darling and look for me?’