‘I feel aggrieved. Something I wanted and was promised to me has been stolen by another. I was given a taste of something which I very much liked. You resist beautifully, Lana. Perhaps, you will do both of us. I will pay you too.’
Lana blinks. She can’t believe what she is hearing. If it wasn’t so humiliating, it would be surreal. The surroundings she is in, the obviously powerful men who are suddenly apparently willing to pay huge sums to have sex with her.
‘I wouldn’t do that to Blake.’
‘He’ll never know and even if he does, he won’t care. It’s not like he wants to marry you. You’re just a fuck, Lana,’ he pronounces dismissively.
The door opens and Blake stands at the threshold with her orange coat folded over his arm. His face is like a closed steel door. He comes into the room and Rupert lets go of her arm. She moves away from him and rubs it. Already there are red marks on it. Blake eyes them silently, then helps her into her coat.
‘Ready?’ he asks.
She nods.
He turns towards Rupert and socks him hard on the chin. So hard the ex-rugby player falls to the floor with a grunt.
‘She may be a cheap slut, but I’m paying what you baulked at, so she is my cheap slut now. You’d do well to remember that,’ Blake throws casually over his shoulder.
Rupert clutches his busted, bleeding lip and shows his fury to the only person he dares to. ‘You’re fired, Bloom,’ he shouts impotently.
Blake takes her arm and leads her out of that place. There is not a single person at that party that does not turn to watch them leave.
Five
Blake’s monster of a car, a gleaming sable-gray Aston Martin is parked beside a lamppost. It is one of those old-fashioned wrought-iron ones with a fluted surface. She stands on the curb and loops her hand around its rough, cold metal.
‘Get in,’ he says.
‘What if I’m sick in your car?’
‘My secretary will have it valeted.’
She nods and unhooks herself from the metal post. Is life really this easy? With those shoes and the drink in her it is impossible to get into the low-swung seat elegantly. Blake’s eyes are on her legs. She swings the last one in and shuts the door.
The interior of his car is plush and luxurious. It even smells expensive. She has never been in such a car. He has been listening to classical music. The sound system is excellent and superb music fills the car.
‘What is this music called?’
‘Handel’s Messiah,’ he says, and switches it off. He turns to her. In the light of the streetlamp he looked harsh and distant. In the softly lit darkness of his car there is still no softening to his face. Again the thought, a cold, cold man.
‘I have to be in New York tomorrow, but my secretary will call you and make all the necessary arrangements.’
She nods gratefully and looks away. It is as if she is in a dream.
‘Where do you live?’
‘Kilburn.’
‘Got a postcode?’ He sounds very American then.
She gives it to him and he sets his GPS system.
They drive in silence, until she can bear it no more. ‘Don’t you want to know how much?’
‘Yeah, tell me.’
She tells him and his eyes leave the road briefly to look at her. ‘What made you think Rupert was the man for the part?’
She shrugs in the dark. ‘I don’t know. I heard a rumor that his secretary was sometimes tasked with stuffing envelopes with ten thousand pounds in cash and booking expensive hotel rooms for him.’
‘I see,’ he says quietly.
‘Why me?’
They have come to a red light. His fingers tap at the steering wheel. Long, strong fingers. She stares at them. And thinks of the way they moved on her body. He turns to her. His eyes are edgy and dangerous, full of promise. ‘Do you want it flowery or straight.’
She bites her lip. ‘Straight.’
‘I wanted to fuck you senseless from the moment our eyes met.’
‘And the flowery version?’
‘Now I think about it, there is no flowery version. It is what it is.’
She turns to look at his profile. It is very stern and still. Has she jumped from the frying pan into the fire? Are all rich people secretly deviant in their sexual desires? ‘Does fucking me senseless involve any weird or kinky stuff?’
He glances at her. Again that expression that is beyond her comprehension. ‘No, but I want to be able to use you as often as I please in whatever manner I please for as long as I please.’
‘Oh!’ How strange, but his insulting words unleashes a lightning thrill of sexual excitement in her body. ‘I… How long were you thinking?’
‘I’ll decide tomorrow. But I imagine one month should do it.’
‘Do what?’
‘Get me bored.’
‘And you are willing to pay a hundred thousand pounds for that?’
His lips twist into a wry smile. ‘When I made my offer I didn’t realize you had valued yourself that highly, but I’m not displeased that you did. Despite all protestations to the contrary, nobody really wants a bargain. They settle for it because they can’t afford better.’ He glances at her. ‘Cheap usually means get your guard up, you are being offered something undesirable.’
Lana thinks of her mother trawling the supermarket aisles looking for stuff that has been discounted because it is reaching the end of its sell by date. ‘I will require the money up front. So, how will we do this?’
‘My lawyer will draw up the appropriate contract for you to sign. Once you have done so the money will be in your account within minutes.’
‘What sort of a contract?’
‘A non-disclosure agreement.’
She nods. ‘I suppose rich people have to protect themselves.’
‘Yes,’ he replies shortly. An awkward silence follows. He seems preoccupied with his own thoughts. Lana turns her head—it has begun to throb—and looks out of the window. He is a fast driver and they are already on Edgware Road.
‘I’ll send someone around tomorrow at noon to take you to your workplace so you can collect your personal belongings.
‘It’s OK, I can go on my own.’
‘I’d feel happier if you were accompanied. Indulge me.’
She thinks for a moment. She doesn’t exactly relish the prospect of accidentally bumping into Rupert either. ‘Well, I only have an old pair of trainers there. I won’t bother to pick them up.’
‘As you wish.’
They arrive at the block of council flats where she lives. He looks around him in surprise. It is a horrible housing estate, what he considers the underbelly of the city. He has never been to such a poor area before.
‘You live here?’ He cannot hide his distaste.
‘Yes,’ she says simply.
He stops the car outside a two-story block of flats. ‘Which one is yours?’
She points to the last flat on the first floor, and says, ‘That’s me.’
He doesn’t switch off the engine but turns to her. ‘Give me your phone.’
She hands it to him.
He punches in some numbers and waits. When his phone rings, he ends the call. ‘I’ve got your number and you’ve got mine,’ he says and hands her phone back to her.
‘Thank you.’
‘Take a couple of aspirins and go to bed. Keep yourself free tomorrow. The entire day.’
‘OK.’
‘I’ll be in touch tomorrow evening.’
He watches her totter and wobble in her ridiculous shoes over to the cemented verge, gain the cracked concrete concourse, and go up an outer staircase while holding onto the metal railings. At the entrance to her home she turns back and flicks her wrist to indicate that she is safely home and that he need wait no more. He doesn’t respond. Simply sits there. Watching her. She shrugs and, sitting on the front step, takes off her shoes. With them in her hand she puts her key in the door.
It is only when Lana closes her front door and hears the powerful engine take off that she realizes neither man has wanted to know why she needs the money. The flat is lit only by the lights from the streetlamps. She walks barefoot into the kitchen and fumbles around in the darkness. She finds a tab of paracetamols, punches two out and sits at the kitchen table with a glass of water in a stunned daze. What a night it has been. She set out with an absurd idea and…