Heartbreaker (48 page)

I always carry condoms. That way I never have to pass up an opportunity to graze.

“Okay,” says Susanne when I give a dazed nod. “Here’s the deal: I don’t want any kind of ‘performance’—what Elizabeth calls ‘choreography.’ I don’t want anything fancy—no bloody frills. I want minimal foreplay, in for ten minutes max, then out with no fuss. Whether you climax is your business and whether I climax is mine. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“And no bloody drivel about how marvellous it all is, because I can spot your lies a mile off. In fact don’t talk at all.”

“Can I grunt occasionally?”

“Only if you have to. No fake ecstasy.”

“But supposing I genuinely—”

“Look, do you want to shag me or don’t you?”

“I do.”

“Then for God’s sake get a move on!”

“Right . . . Do you have a timer I could set for ten minutes? I’m afraid I might overrun.”

“Oh no you’re not! All prostitutes have a timer built into their brains when it comes to doing sex!”

“But we’re not being prostitutes now, are we?” I say. “This is you and me being friends.”

Susanne slumps down on the sofa and quietly sheds a tear.

It’s her legacy from the Life. I understand that straight away and straight away I say urgently: “You don’t have to do this. It’s okay. We’ll still be friends.”

She wipes her eyes. “I haven’t done it since my last punter.”

My mouth drops open. “You mean you’ve been all this time—”

“I vowed I’d never do it again unless I really wanted to.”

“That’s wonderful! I wish I had that much control over my life!”

“It’s been lonely,” she says, wiping her eyes again, “but there are worse things than being alone.”

“You bet. Pervs. Uglies. Punters with bad breath—”

“Anyway I’m not alone because I’ve got my cat. I don’t mind if I never do it again with anyone, and I’d rather top myself than go back to the Life.”

“I think you’re brilliant, getting free of it all—”

“I wouldn’t dream of doing it with you if it wasn’t for that dance. But don’t expect anything much because I’ll be useless.”

Firmly I say: “Even if you just act like a sack of potatoes I’ll still think you’re the best dancing partner in the world and we’ll still be friends.”

“Screw-up!” she says, smiling at me through her tears, and that turns out to be the last word spoken in that flat for some time.

After the allotted ten minutes I ask: “Okay if I go on a bit?” and she says: “I don’t mind.” After a further five I ask: “Okay if I come now?” and she says: “Might as well.”

Later when I return from the bathroom she says: “I feel bloody sore, worse than a virgin of sixty who’s done it for the first time. Did I feel like a load of old leather?” But I don’t answer her with words. I just slide back into bed and hold her in my arms and kiss her as I’d kiss the best girl in the world, and she kisses me back and snuggles closer to me than ever and I know we’re both happy.

Well, in one way it was just a run-of-the-mill shag, which is why I’m not wasting time going into porno-detail, but in another way, the way that mattered, it was a very special shag because we were being ourselves, both accepting each other as we were. Also—and I know this sounds pathetic but it’s true—I was proud she’d decided I was good enough to do it with, even though she was so choosy. I felt afterwards too that I could look after her in bed even though she might have to look after me out of it. The real me needs a bit of looking after, I can see that now. Deep down I’m all dreams and unpractical ideas, which is why I’m comfiest with a tough, streetwise woman who can keep me organised.

After the shag Susanne keeps me organised by telling me I’ve got to eat some more, and she fixes what she calls a “fry-tartar,” a jumbo omelette stuffed with onions, peppers, tomatoes and potatoes. We have to have eggs again because she’s run out of everything else, but the frittata’s so good I don’t care. We drink Italian wine with it and the cat goes in and out through the cat-flap, just as it would in a normal home. I feel so happy being normal, but of course the rest of my life’s not normal yet, not by a long chalk, and eventually I have to go.

We snog for a long time in the hall because we don’t want the evening to end. Neither of us tries to put our feelings into words. No point. Over dinner we’ve worked out our plan of action in detail, so there’s no need to say more about that either, and finally after one last kiss I leave.

I arrive home to find Elizabeth waiting for me, and at once I see she’s in the foulest of tempers.

“You’re going from strength to strength!” she says angrily, coming out of the living-room as I step into the hall. “You stand me up, stand Norah up, stand Serena up—and all to go and moon over a grave! I don’t know how you have the nerve to make such a feeble excuse! What have you really been up to?”

“Nothing! I just felt I needed to go for a drive to get my head together, that’s all. I’ve been upset over the Colin disaster, and—”

“So how’s your head now? You want Asherton to glue it together again?”

I start sweating but say levelly: “I’m okay. Promise. All set for the punters tomorrow.”

“Come here.”

I force myself to step right up to her.

“Kiss me.”

I kiss her. I know what all this is about but I’ve anticipated it. I showered long and hard after the shag.

Drawing back, Elizabeth looks me straight in the eyes and says: “You’ve been with someone,” but I know she has to be bluffing.

I look straight back and say: “No I bloody haven’t!”

“I warn you, Gavin, if you’re lying to me in any way whatsoever—”

“No lies. Honestly. And I’m sorry about today, I really am, but I did write the note explaining and apologising—it wasn’t as if I disappeared without a word—”

I’m cut off. She’s gone back into the living-room and shut the door in my face.

Backing off I run upstairs. Nigel’s home but he’s on his way to his room so we just say hi. Then immediately he’s out of sight the penny drops. I told him earlier that I didn’t want to shag Serena because I had someone else in my sights. No wonder Elizabeth was so sure I’d been with someone! She wasn’t being psychic, just well-informed.

I want to rush up to the attic and bang Nigel’s head against the wall till he confesses, but I manage to calm myself down. I see the best way forward is to say nothing and let Elizabeth think her mole is still unsuspected. I never normally confide in Nigel anyway. I don’t have to change my behaviour towards him.

I get to my room and wonder if it’s been searched but nothing strikes me as suspicious. I pause, thinking. Since I started playing my double-game I’ve never regarded my bedroom as a safe place, so a search would be no big disaster. My safe place is in the attic junk-room where Elizabeth hoards various stuff and I keep the suitcases which I need for our holidays together. Underneath the spot where the suitcases are stacked I’ve taken up a floorboard and hidden the St. Benet’s brochures which I snitched from the church at the start of my fundraising career. I nearly hid them at Austin Friars, but both Tommy and Nigel have the run of that place and they’d have noticed a suspicious floorboard in a flat with no carpets. The attic junk-room at Lambeth seemed the ideal solution, but now I’m not so happy with it. If Elizabeth stays as suspicious as she was tonight she might decide to search my suitcases. I doubt if she’d shift them far enough to see that one of the short boards running into the eaves has less ingrained dirt around it than its neighbour, but the risk is still unacceptable, and since I’m doing no more fundraising I don’t need those brochures anyway. I must get rid of them, and the sooner the better.

But right now I’ve got to wait. I don’t want Nigel to hear me rooting around, and the best thing to do is return home tomorrow after the wake-up session. On Monday morning Nigel goes food-shopping at Sainsbury’s and Elizabeth will either be out or she’ll be busy in the office with Susanne. I can say I’ve forgotten something—the American condoms Iowa Jerry has to have, the leather pouch the Greek geek fancies, another sex-pillow to replace the one that got dumped on by mistake— yeah, I’ll think of something, anything, and then I can nip up to the attic to grab the brochures.

I go to bed and dream of Thursday, which is when the new life will begin—after Susanne’s spent three days channelling the money, and I’ve nicked the Tucker tapes on Wednesday night. But then I wake up and know I’m in trouble. It’s Monday morning and I have to go to work. It’s Monday morning and I have to face the drop-dead frightfulness of my daily life. It’s Monday morning and after hours spent dreaming of heaven I’m right back descending into hell.

Can’t eat breakfast. At least I do, to stop Nigel telling Elizabeth about my poor appetite, but I throw the meal up, deliberately, five minutes later. Off I go to Austin Friars but by the time I reach the flat I’m good for nothing. I can’t meditate, can’t focus, can’t get my act together. All the stress has done my head in. I sit on a stool, elbows on the kitchen counter, and shudder. Huge tears splash down my cheeks. I start to sob. Can’t stop, not for a full thirty seconds. Then because I’m scared shitless and don’t know what else to do I call Susanne.

“Right,” she says at once when I blurt out I can’t go on—and all my life I’ll remember how she was there for me when the crunch finally came. “It’s okay, I’ve been where you are now and I understand. Now listen. Don’t answer the doorbell. You’re stuck in traffic and you’re not there.”

“Okay, but—”

“I’ll be with you as soon as I can but I’m not dressed yet so you’ll have to hang on for at least another three quarters of an hour. Can you do that?”

I say I can.

“When I arrive I’ll give three short buzzes and three long ones so you’ll know it’s me. Okay? We’ll work our way round this, Gavin, try not to worry, all it needs is extra planning.” She hangs up.

The doorbell rings seconds later but I don’t answer it. Covering my face with my hands I feel as if the sharks have scented blood in the water and are closing in to tear me apart.

By the time she arrives I’m red-eyed but tearless. I’ve drunk a couple of glasses of wine to calm me down. Three or four glasses, in fact. I feel muzzy but not wuzzy. I could be worse.

She’s got to be smelling the alcohol on my breath but all she says is: “Somebody ought to abolish the Tube. It’s not even fit for animals.”

The buzzer blares again as she speaks. It’s been blaring and blaring. Clients are always instructed that if there’s no response when they first ring they’re to wait five minutes before ringing again. That covers a situation where the schedule backs up, but normally this never happens because I never overrun. Clients come up by the lift, go down by the stairs and never meet, least of all on the landing outside my front door. I mean, I’m a top-class professional, right? I never mess my clients around or put them in awkward social situations or—

“Gavin!”

“Sorry, yes, I’m listening . . .” I tune back into the scene to find Susanne’s put some coffee on and we’re sitting side by side at the kitchen counter. “Okay, this is what happens,” she’s saying briskly. “We have to accelerate the plan we made—do it all today. It’ll be riskier but there are advantages—less time for anything to go wrong, for instance, less time having to play-act for Elizabeth.”

I nod. She puts her hand over mine and lets it rest there as she adds: “The first thing we’ve got to do is stop Elizabeth finding out you can’t work, but I can fix that. The early-shift clients will be leaving messages on the answerphone, but Elizabeth never goes into the office before I arrive and today she won’t even be there at eleven because she’s arranged to meet someone in Battersea at ten-thirty. So I can call all the clients scheduled for today and arrange refunds to keep them quiet.”

I manage to whisper: “What about my money?”

“The Caymans are several hours behind us so I can’t do anything till the afternoon, but that’s okay, Elizabeth’s got a two o’clock meeting with the escort agency accountant, so the coast’ll be clear. I’ll set up a joint account in your name and Elizabeth’s, just as I planned, and transfer the money to it. Then I’ll wait a couple of hours and transfer the lot to your account in London—and you’d better not go back on your promise to give me ten per cent! But if we’re going for speed it’s best to keep the deal simple. One new account to bring you onto the scene. One transfer to the UK—and on second thoughts, maybe I should leave a bit of money in the new Cayman account to avoid suspicion. Maybe I should leave some money in the old account too.”

“Just do whatever you think’s best. If only it wasn’t all so risky—”

“Maybe it’s not so risky as it seems—I bet those Cayman banks are used to pushing money around all over the place with the minimum of questions asked! But I’ll try and work late tonight in case the bank does a check-up.”

“God! Supposing Elizabeth’s in the room when they phone?”

“Look, that’s
my
problem and if it happens I’ll deal with it somehow. What you’ve got to do is forget all that and concentrate on holing up here for the rest of the day without freaking out—by which I mean that if you get drunk tossing off all the clients’ booze I’ll bloody kill you.”

“What happens after I’ve holed up here all day?”

“Go home and pretend everything’s normal. You wouldn’t normally spend time with Elizabeth on a Monday evening, would you? Okay, so just say hi to her and then go upstairs, have dinner, chat to Nigel—only for God’s sake watch what you say. I know you and Nigel are good mates but he’s dependent on Elizabeth for a job and you can bet Asherton’s got him on film doing something horrible. He’s not to be trusted.”

I tell her my own suspicions about Nigel, and she’s alarmed. “Shit, the last thing we need is him playing supergrass!”

I remember Nigel saying he loves me but I don’t repeat this to Susanne. She’d just laugh. Instead I say: “He wouldn’t want to harm me. But he’s just no good at standing up to Elizabeth.”

“Little rat! Make sure he’s in his room before you start packing!”