Eighty Days Amber (23 page)

I was ready to make a beeline for home the moment Viggo finished his last encore to ensure that I would miss the storm of fanatical fans and journalists ready and waiting to snap our picture together or ask for autographs.

By the time I made it back to the Green Room, he had already been swallowed up by the crowd, so instead I pleaded with the long-haired roadie with the keys to the sedan to drive me home. I decided then and there that one day soon I would finally learn to drive, and no longer prove such an easy hostage to fortune.

I didn’t notice Viggo’s missed call and voicemail until I arrived back at the mansion in Belsize Park.

‘Hey, babe,’ he crooned. ‘I’m having a few people back. Will you dance for us?’

I froze for a moment, considering the idea. I had not danced for a proper audience since the night in Amsterdam. A spark had lit in my belly and was slowly unfurling into a burning flame. The prospect excited me, and the twinge of fear beneath it all that something might go wrong spurred me to action. I was not afraid, I told myself. I would wrestle out any hint of trepidation and trample it into nothing with my dancing feet.

By the time they arrived I was in position and beginning to get cramp. I had chosen to perform in the vast harem-like room on the second floor of the mansion. It was like another world compared to the bare and stark entrance floor. This room was decorated with thick carpets, chandeliers and gothic furniture and of course the fountain in the middle that I had chosen as my platform. I felt so peaceful in the presence of water. The fountain didn’t give me a lot of room to move, but it would be a short set, and rather than demonstrate my athleticism I planned a piece where I would seem like a statue slowing coming to life in the water. It would be set to Debussy’s ‘La Mer’, my usual introduction piece.

The opening notes, which had always soothed me, now made my heart pump a little faster. Images flashed into my head. The crack of the ringmaster’s whip. The inhuman expressions on the procession of animals. The heady smell of tropical flowers. The brush of ferns against my skin. The grip of a stranger’s fingers on my arm. Hot breath on my face.

It was too late to back out now. I could hear voices moving up the stairs. A blend of accents: Antipodean, American, English, the Scandinavian lilt of Dagur the Icelandic drummer and of course Viggo’s blend of transatlantic worldliness. My unknown audience had arrived and Viggo had been true to his word. It would be a small one.

I closed my eyes and stood perfectly still, settling my mind with sheer force of will, ignoring the horrors that threatened to creep up like poisonous vines and strangle all of the life out of me. I focused on my first memories of the melody. When I had been on the beach with Chey and he had played his iPod and I had danced for him and only for
him, letting the impressionistic, almost crystal-like shards of sound sweep through my body like a tide, my movements following the rhythm as naturally as one wave follows another.

That night I danced softly. I moved as gently as shallow water in the most protected bay. I was dancing for me, dancing for Chey.

When I opened my eyes, I saw her: the redhead who had been backstage watching Viggo’s show. And I remembered where I had seen her before. I had watched her dance on New Year’s Day at The Place in New Orleans and, likewise, the night before she had watched me perform.

She was staring at my pussy. Then her gaze focused on my tattoo and her pupils widened in recognition.

I met her eyes and smiled.

Viggo was an efficient stage master and without my having to tell him he flipped the lights when the music came to an end, theatrically plunging the room into darkness and allowing me a few moments to escape through the back door without having to ruin my act by clambering down ungracefully from my platform and finding the exit in front of the audience.

I changed quickly into a long black chiffon dress, not bothering with either knickers or a bra. I was eager to return to the party and learn more about the red-haired girl and the man that she had been with that night, and besides which they had all just seen me naked anyway. Though my show was over, I also felt that I had a certain appearance to maintain for my audience. Presenting myself to them in a T-shirt and jeans would have taken some of the magic away from the image of
Luba
that they had now formed.

The girl was speaking to one of the musicians from
Viggo’s intro act that I hadn’t met yet. Her expression was forlorn, and I hung back by the doorframe to eavesdrop before entering to introduce myself.

It seemed that she had lost her violin.

Then I recalled the unusual piece of music that she had elected to dance to. Vivaldi’s
Four Seasons
. The image on the old record that sat gathering dust in the rehearsal room in St Petersburg sprang into my mind.

‘You should play with us more often, Sum,’ said the curly-haired young man who she sat next to and who was barely looking at her at all, so focused was he on a short-haired blonde girl who sat across the room making eyes at Dagur.

Slowly but surely, the cogs slipped into place in my mind. Sum . . . Summer. The amateur dancer was Summer Zahova, the sexy violinist who I vaguely recalled had made a splash in the US after posing nude for a concert flier. One of the rich men at a gig I had danced had invited me to one of her concerts after he had watched my Debussy set and expressed his surprise that a woman would strip to classical music instead of some predictable pop song. I reminded him of Summer Zahova, he had said.

Then she said
Luba
, rolling the sound in her mouth as men tended to do when they wanted to sleep with me. Clearly my dance had stuck in her mind all this time, as hers had in mine.

‘There’s always
Luba
.’

Curly-head looked up at her in surprise.

‘How did you know her name?’ he asked.

Her face was flushed and she was stuttering a feeble attempt to cover up the real nature of our previous meeting.

I stepped into the room and to her aid.

‘We met briefly in New York,’ I said. ‘I attended one of her concerts.’

Along with relief, another expression flooded across Summer’s face. It was not just her voice that betrayed her. I watched with amusement as she tried to avert her eyes from my nipples, which were no doubt visible through the thin fabric of my dress and she squirmed into the sofa as my skin brushed against hers.

She was clearly not much accustomed to hiding her emotions, though everyone else in the room seemed entirely oblivious to both her discomfort and her arousal.

This game would be much easier to play than I had expected.

I lifted a lock of her red hair and whispered directly into her ear, brushing my lips ever so slightly against her lobe as I did so.

‘I want to hear the story, about how you ended up in a place like that. And the man you were with.’

‘Dominik?’ she replied.

Yes. That was his name, I recalled, as another stream of memories from that night at The Place came back to my mind.

It wasn’t until later, when I left all of the love birds to it and returned to my room to crawl into bed, that I realised why the name Dominik made me feel as though a word was stuck on the tip of my tongue. Another memory was brewing inside somewhere, just waiting to bob to the surface.

Dominik was the name of the British author who had written
Yellow
, the book about the red-haired Paris traveller that I had so enjoyed. I smiled inside. Surely it must be too much of a coincidence? But there it was on the cover.
Dominik Conrad. I flicked through the pages again and then put the book down and fell straight to sleep. If I knew Viggo, Summer would still be here in the morning, and probably the morning after that.

There would be plenty of time for investigation later.

The following day I slept in for hours, revelling in having a bed to myself to stretch out in. Then I slipped on my bathing suit and padded down the long, winding wooden staircase and into the basement where I planned to spend the afternoon floating in the cool water.

It would only be a matter of time before the violinist came looking for me, as I knew that she was still in search of her violin. Eric, the road manager who had been in charge of the equipment, had seen neither hide nor hair of it. I’d called him under Viggo’s instruction and he had been impatient and bordering on rude.

I was drip-drying on the rocks when she appeared. It took her a few moments to notice me as her eyes darted all over the room, blinking to adjust to the low light and the strange decor. Our eyes locked briefly but she didn’t say anything, just headed straight for the cabinet where Viggo stored an array of old instruments pegged to the wall like insects trapped under glass.

She stretched out her arm and stroked her fingers across the case. She was mesmerised by his collection of violins but the disappointment that hers was not among them was obvious in the hunch of her shoulders, as if she’d had all the breath knocked out of her.

‘He won’t mind, you know, if you want to borrow something. Will you play for me?’

As soon as I asked her to play, all of her hesitation seemed
to dissolve and she reached eagerly into the cabinet, caressing the instruments until she found one that suited her. It was out of tune and badly in need of repair, but the look that filled her face as she played was hypnotic. It was no wonder that Viggo had wanted to add her to his collection.

She was a striking woman anyway, but as soon as she picked up a violin she fairly radiated. She closed her eyes and her lips parted ever so slightly, highlighting the sensuous curve of her mouth.

I moved closer, entranced by her melody and the way that she had responded so readily to my request. Had a virtual stranger asked me to dance for them, I would have bridled at the idea, but she was as eager to please as a puppy and I could not help but imagine the possibilities that her innate pliability brought to mind.

When she finished her tune and removed the violin from her chin, I kissed her.

Her response was so eager that I nearly laughed.

I took her by the hand and led her up the stairs to Viggo’s bedroom. He probably wouldn’t have minded if I had taken his new pet away for an hour or two to my own bed but seeing as they had only had one night together, it seemed churlish of me to steal her so soon.

The sound of water running and Viggo singing softly reached my ears. He was in the shower but had left the bathroom door open.

‘Come on,’ I said, approaching the door to the en suite. ‘Let’s wish him good morning.’

Introducing Summer to our sex life proved to be no chore. If anything, life as part of a threesome suited me to a tee. I had begun to find Viggo’s lovemaking less adventurous, and
Summer added a little extra spice. She had the highest libido of any woman that I had ever known, but with it an eagerness to please that was almost intoxicating.

When we were together, I amused myself by holding her head onto Viggo’s cock and watching the strange way that her wetness increased the more I ordered her around, and I could not help thinking of Dominik, the man who had made her dance.

Summer seemed happy enough, but I felt instinctively that Viggo and I were both too mild for her. I was content enough to pull her hair or rake my fingernails down her back, but that was all the violence that I was comfortable dishing out and Viggo was a softie through and through beneath his outward bravado. Sometimes after our lovemaking bouts I caught her looking pensive and melancholic, as if she was missing something. Perhaps she was missing him, her man, as I still missed Chey.

The sex we had was actually pretty torrid, but somehow I always felt as if I was a spectator and taking my cues from unknown observers as we thrashed together wildly in Viggo’s vast bed (and a variety of other places as all three of us were partial to sudden improvisation . . .), limbs akimbo like a three-headed spider caught in a net, never quite a single beast but an amalgam of lusts, desires and athleticism. Summer revelled in being at the centre of our scene, a die-hard exhibitionist who relished the gaze we cast on her, both as Viggo fucked her or as she went down on me and abandoned herself to pleasure. And the twinkle in her eye as we both serviced his beautiful cock was a joy to behold, her tongue brushing against mine, our lips melding as we took him in turns. But it always felt like something of a game, an
entertainment that was heartless and lacking in tenderness. But so much fun . . .

Still, our three-way relationship also gave me more time to myself. More time to read, more time to swim, more time to explore the long, green stretches of Hampstead Heath. And Summer’s presence gave the press something new to latch onto, so I worried less about my picture appearing in the paper. That was her problem now, not mine.

Summer never spoke about Dominik. Nor did she ask me exactly how I had ended up travelling from a stage in New Orleans to Viggo’s bedroom in Belsize Park. It was as if there was some unspoken agreement between us to ignore the past. Perhaps she thought I might be ashamed of my history as a stripper. Viggo was by far the chattiest of the three of us.

She was soon roped into touring with Groucho Nights, the band who had opened for Viggo and the Holy Criminals at the Academy, and then I barely saw her at all, as all of her days and nights were crammed with rehearsals.

So when I saw that dark head of hair and recognised the profile of his face lit up by the stage light just a row in front of me at their opening show at the Cigale concert hall in Paris, I was unsure whether Summer even knew that he was in the audience.

I was still not even certain that Dominik the dance master was also Dominik the author, but my suspicions were confirmed when he was accosted in the dressing room by a couple of young local journalists who wanted to know what a serious writer was doing backstage with Viggo Franck. Research for his next novel?

Dominik was clearly embarrassed by the attention and brushed them off. He hid himself in the corner, looking
distinctly uncomfortable and nursing a bottle of mineral water. I approached him later and handed him my phone number with a seductive smile. He didn’t call, but then having seen the way he watched his flame-haired violinist as she dominated the stage, I never really expected him to.