Even when she lived in London, she rarely came to Oxford Street. It scares her. Whenever she’s in these huge, distracted crowds, all she can think of is suicide bombers. It’s like that every time. Her mind fills with images of the men in front of them throwing their coats open with a bellowed allahu akbar, of light and smoke and body parts. Whenever she’s here, she wants to wrap her arms around her head and protect her face from flying glass. They weave their way into the funnels behind the crowd barriers and march smartly down Regent Street.
Again, he takes her hand, and pulls her along like a child. Here, the pavements are wide and the crowds are thinner, but their progress is still painfully slow. Where do we go now? Into Soho? Those mazes of streets where a single turn can leave you suddenly marooned, alone, unseen? The self-regarding streets of Mayfair, where every frontage is a gallery with a ring-and-wait sign on its locked front door? She glances behind her as they pass the old Dickens and Jones building, sees Malik reach the corner of Little Argyle Street. He must know we know, she thinks. Why doesn’t he give up? He can’t think he’s going to do anything here, and we’re hardly going to lead him home.
They reach Great Marlborough Street and wheel in, past the florid Tudorbethan frontage of Liberty on the other side of the road. No, this is nuts, she thinks. The road is the one the Londoners take to avoid the tourists on Oxford Street. It’s almost empty: a traffic warden and a wino, a skinny lad smoking outside an office three hundred yards away. Crazy. We should stay where the crowds are. She starts to tug him back but Hossein pulls her on. ‘It’s okay,’ he says. ‘I know.’
‘But -’ She’s out of breath from hurrying. She’s got unfit, living this underground life, hiding indoors.
‘It’s okay, Collette,’ he says, and pulls her across the road, guides her past the great shop’s doors. Malik must be nearly at the corner now, she thinks. We’re sitting ducks. They turn right into the pub-café-tourist trap of Carnaby Street. Five paces down, and he wheels swiftly and shoves them through a well-hidden door, plain and black and unassuming; one she’s never noticed whenever she’s been up here.
They’re in a bazaar. It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust to the drop in light, as he pulls them on. Carpet and gilt and mirrors. Patterns and peacock feathers. They’re in Liberty. Come in through a back door she never knew existed. Pretty things. All the pretty, shiny things, assistants eying them as they rush through. They don’t look like they belong here. Once, she thinks, they’d have been sidling over with dollar signs for eyes when they saw me coming, but now they’re poised to press the silent alarm if my hands leave my sides for a second.
And then they’re back out in the sun, and running back to Regent Street. She has no idea where Malik is: whether he’s casting round Carnaby or has spotted their U-turn and followed them. They pound up to the main sweep and Hossein sticks a hand in the air for a taxi. Always cabs on Regent Street. But if you’re being followed you don’t want someone to just jump into the one behind. She throws herself on to the back seat and looks wildly around. No sign. No Malik, no other hard-faced men flagging down black cars. She breathes; lets her head drop back against the headrest.
They pant as the cab swings round and turns up Maddox Street. He’s resting his head too, his face drawn, the lines around his beautiful mouth etched deep.
‘Well,’ she sputters, between breaths, ‘for a man who longs for peace and quiet, you certainly like a challenge, don’t you?’
He turns, leans across the space between them, and kisses her.
Chapter Forty-Three
And now she’s lost, as she knew she would be.
She wakes to the sound of the front door slamming, finds herself in a tumble of limbs and smells his beautiful skin, and wants to cry. I can’t. Oh, no, this can’t have happened. Not now. Before, or never – but not now.
His arms are wrapped round her, one knee between her thighs. Even in the night, in their sleep, they have gravitated towards each other when the heat should have driven them apart. And she feels the bliss of his arm around her shoulder and feels his breath against her hot cheek, and she wants to howl at the moon, to rail at the fates. She’s stiff and pleasurably sore from the zeal of their fucking, the hands, tongues, lips, and skin, the words whispered, the laughing, the fingers intertwined, his beautiful, miraculous cock so hard and ardent, and she wants to weep.
I can’t be with you, Hossein. I can’t.
She picks up his hand and kisses the palm, and he opens his eyes. Smiles sleepily at her, his eyes creasing, and presses his lips against her cheek. Rolls over on to her, and her body gives and opens up to him, because she never, she never knew it could be like this. She’s not lived in a world where sex and love went hand in hand. And now he’s here and he’s beautiful and he’s perfect, her reward and her salvation – and she can’t be with him.
He strokes her hair back from her face and lets out a long, contented sigh. Pressed up against him, she can feel his cock begin to stir, and her body heating up in response. ‘What time is it?’ he asks.
‘I don’t know.’ She turns her head to look for her phone, and he stops her, holds her wrist against the pillow and melts her with his kisses. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he says. ‘I don’t really care.’
Just once more, she thinks. Just once more before I tell him: something to remember, something to carry into my solitary old age. Can you live a lifetime on a single memory? I’ve never fucked someone before where I felt he even noticed, once he got going, that it was me, not someone else, in the room.
She frees her wrist and buries her fingers in his hair, and he butts against her palm like an attention-seeking cat. Kisses her wrist, enters her and laughs at the pleasure rush. ‘Oh, God, that’s the best feeling,’ he says.
‘I know,’ she gasps, and her head fills with liquid gold.
Their other basic needs drive them from the bed eventually. They both want to wash, and she’s pleased and relieved that he doesn’t suggest that they share a bathroom. She’s always been funny about that. Men who wanted to come in when she was naked and vulnerable in the tub: it always seemed like some deliberate gesture of disrespect, some statement of ownership. Instead, Hossein walks up the corridor with her, kisses her a dozen times at the foot of the stairs, strokes her face and promises to return. She goes into the scruffy bathroom, luxuriates in the hot water from the shower hose and thinks about the night before.
She feels strangely detached from the rest of the world, aware of her skin and her pulse and the heat between her thighs in a way she has no recollection of experiencing before. So this is what the fuss is about, she thinks. I thought I was experienced, but all I was was only someone who’d fucked a lot. She wants to run a long, warm bath and reflect on what’s passed between them, but she doesn’t want to miss it when he comes back, doesn’t want to miss a moment. She runs a hand over her throat where he kissed her, and closes her eyes. Oh, God, Hossein. Why did it have to happen now?
Beyond the door, she hears footsteps approach. Someone tries the bathroom door, and she tenses. She’s seeing a lurker round every corner, now. Knows she won’t feel safe in London again. The footsteps turn and go away, and a door closes. Just Gerard Bright, wanting a leak. Not everyone who tries a door handle wants to do you harm. She heaves herself from the water and wraps herself in Nikki’s old pink towel.
Back in her room, she pulls the rumpled bed back together, puts on eggs to hard boil. She doesn’t have much food – just the eggs and some bread and cheese, a few ripe plums. For the first time, she digs through the sorry collection of previous tenants’ leavings and tries to put together some poor show of hospitality. She has three plates, a couple of bowls, not much else. But she lays her wares out in what she can find and, after thinking for a moment, lays out the bedspread on the floor and puts them there, like a picnic.