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They ate wild roast duck and poached white peach, mangetouts, wild rice, and drank a red burgundy that dreams are made of. Charles watched Amy eating her food with appetite and pleasure, and remarked, ‘No, it’s not the Soutine, not the excitement of placing it with the right museum, nor the deal. I’ve seen you through dozens of exciting art projects, and this is different. It has nothing to do with your work and everything to do with you. It’s a fundamental change in you.’

They were dining not in Claridge’s dining-room but in front of the fire in Charles’s suite. Amy tried to make light of his comment, and managed to change the subject; they talked about Geneva and her day there. Raskin, the butler, cleared the plates and produced the pudding: caramelised orange set in its own gloriously delicious
juices and encircled by a shallow ring of chocolate mousse.

Amy gazed across the table at Charles. When she had called him from the plane it had been instinctive: wanting to see him, wanting to have sex with him again after so many years. Accepting that Jarret had been the great love affair of her life that had cheated her from going for another, Amy now wanted Charles and she to have another, fairer chance at love. Charles deserved at least that after so many years of loving her, and so many years of her rejecting him. Though she no longer wanted to sell herself short in the love stakes, being with Charles now, and ready as she was to give love with him another chance, the magic quite simply was not there. Not even a hint of that inexplicable force that had bonded her and the man on the plane, a stranger, was happening here. Love, affection, an erotic urge to be with Charles, yes, all that was there, but Amy could not stretch that into the magic, the grand passion of a lifetime. And a taste of that once more … oh, to have that with a good man!

Lunch over, Raskin had cleared away the table and been given the afternoon off. Amy and Charles were taking their coffee, sitting together in front of the fire. They were quiet, content with the soft sound of a Mozart violin concerto, and clearly happy to be together. Amy was seeing Charles somewhat differently now, more as she had seen him when she had first met him and they had fallen in love. She thought of the many women he must have had in the eight years of her celibacy, how
his having those women had never bothered her. Now she was thinking how lucky those women had been to have had such an accomplished lover. She marvelled that he had found no one to replace her. Amy told herself that had to count for something. Enough at least for them to try for another chance together.

She slipped the leather jacket off his shoulders, raised his cashmere jumper over his head and unbuckled his alligator belt as she kissed his nipples. She slipped her hand beneath his jeans. How warm was his flesh, how smooth and sexy his skin. He was trembling with excitement. Tenderly he eased her on to his lap and into his arms, then he rose with her from the settee and carried her to the bedroom.

Charles had a penchant for going down between a lady’s legs. He was accomplished at oral sex on a woman, a cunt lover in every sense of the word, and Amy came quickly and often before he replaced his tongue with his penis. He was a man who fucked sometimes with a grace and gentleness as delicate as a butterfly’s wings; at other times he was near violent in his fucking, in his desire to hit the highs of sex.

For Amy, having sex again, it was as if she had never stopped. She was able to submit herself utterly to the erotic. Here was sex on the scale she had once known it with Jarret. To feel as she did now with Charles was to be born again, to be young again and in love. There was but one problem in this sublime erotic tryst: it was the stranger on the plane she really wanted; the stranger who thought he might like to spend the rest of his life
making her happy to whom she was submitting. It was a surprise, a disappointment, to open her eyes and drift back from a state of sexual bliss to see Charles’s face and not that of the stranger whose name she didn’t even know.

It was nearly seven o’clock in the evening when Charles turned on the lights in the bedroom and, kissing Amy lightly on the lips, went to shower. He returned looking incredibly young – he was terribly young, Amy reminded herself – wrapped in his navy blue terrycloth robe. He slipped into bed next to her and placing an arm round her, said, ‘Can we talk about this?’

There was a strange sadness in his voice that could not be missed. Amy had no need to ask about what, she instinctively knew. ‘Would you mind if I bathed and dressed first?’

‘No. I’ll order a bottle of champagne. I’m famished again, and so must you be. What would you like with it?’

‘Smoked salmon sandwiches?’

‘Perfect.’

He drew the covers off Amy, smiling at her, caressed her breasts and kissed the nipples. Then he scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the marble bath already half full of steaming water. Gently he placed her in it and handed her a bottle of almond-scented bath flakes.

Charles had always liked to stay with her when she bathed. She missed him now, but could understand why he wasn’t there. The water felt soothing and though she would have liked to linger in her bath, she didn’t. In the dressing-room, she sat at the dressing table and very
carefully made up her face. There was a bloom in it she had not seen in too many years. Amy was feeling young and full of adventure, just a little bit more in love with life. Could it be true, what she saw reflected in the mirror? The years rolled back to reveal a beautiful woman, ready and now able for love as she had not been most of her adult life.

She found Charles on the settee in front of the fire and sat down next to him. He handed her a glass of champagne and a bite-sized smoked salmon sandwich. She smiled at him before she popped it in her mouth and sipped her wine. Placing her glass on the table in front of them, she took his hand and kissed it.

It was a gracious smile that he gave her before he spoke. ‘What happened to us back there was fantastic. You and I have always had great sex together, but this was something else, something different. We’ve never been anything remotely like that before. I sensed something changed about you today, the very minute I set eyes on you. It took the sex for me to figure out what it was. Amy, you were in bed with me but you were having sex with another man.’

Amy didn’t know what to say. What was there to say? She said nothing.

He continued, ‘It was the love, the adoration I sensed coming off you. It had never been there for me before. The giving up of yourself to sex, as if you were ready to expire in your lust for sublime bliss with your partner, gave you away. It told me you weren’t with me but someone else.’

Amy took a long sip of champagne. ‘I think I have drunk more of this in the last few hours than I have in years.’

‘Isn’t there anything you want to tell me?’

‘That I love you, Charles. A phantom of a past love appeared like a genie from a bottle and set me free as you have never known me. It made me want to give us another chance to be the grand passion of our respective lives. Then fate delivered me a stranger whose name I don’t even know.’

‘Well, I guess that says it all.’

‘Yes, I guess it does.’

‘You do know that leaves us with little choice?’

‘Loving and close friends, casual sex when we feel inspired towards that, nothing more? I would never want you to feel cheated by me.’

‘I have two tickets for the ballet this evening,
The Sleeping Beauty
. If we hurry we can just make the curtain.’

‘Yes, I would like that very much.’

He touched the rim of his glass to hers, and smiled. ‘Would that I had been the prince to have placed that kiss upon your lips, my beautiful friend.’

How kind, how civilised. They smiled at each other with love and respect for themselves and their situation.
The Sleeping Beauty
. How perfect, how poignant, to end what could have been an awkward and even heartbreaking evening for them both with that particular ballet. How very apropos.

Charles asked Amy to stay the night but she declined,
telling him she was anxious to get home. She had left her car in the hotel garage the morning she left for Geneva. It was brought round and Charles saw her into it and watched her tie her scarf round her hair. They kissed and she was gone. She saw him smiling in the rearview mirror. He always smiled when she drove away; somehow it amused him, Amy having that car and the way she drove it. It had become a part of her personality, one of the many things he loved about her.

Amy was on the other side of Hyde Park waiting for the traffic lights to change when she thought of her handsome stranger. She wondered where he and his lady had been that evening, where he now was. Surely not in a room at the Connaught booked under her name? He didn’t know her name. They had been too lost in the growing attraction between them even to remember to exchange names. It made her laugh. It made her wonder.

And what if he had found a way to reserve a room for her without giving her name? Impossible. Not at the Connaught. She sped away from Mayfair to the next set of traffic lights just at the edge of the park. Exhibition Row was straight ahead. The lights changed and she raced a few hundred yards down the street. On impulse Amy flicked the direction signal and took a sharp left into Ennismore Gardens and pulled into the first vacant space she could find. The motor still running, she opened her briefcase and removed the mobile telephone. Directory Enquiries seemed to ring forever, then she asked for the telephone number of the Connaught in Carlos Place, Mayfair.

‘Good evening, my name is Miss Amy Ross, I believe you are holding a room for me?’

‘One moment, please.’ But barely a moment passed before the smooth and welcoming voice said, ‘Ah, yes, Miss Ross. We’ve been expecting you.’

Amy tried to dispel the surprise in her voice. ‘Yes, well, it’s quite late, I thought it best to make certain you were still holding the room, I’ll be there in a very few minutes.’

She put her telephone away, knowing that she would sleep in the Connaught that night. She was not so much surprised that the stranger had done what he had said he would do as excited about an adventure that might or might not be unfolding. He did say he only
might
be able to get away to meet her there.

When Amy drew up to the entrance of the hotel the doorman rushed forward to greet her. Once she had handed her car over to his care and had been greeted by the night concierge and signed the register, Amy realised that she was at a distinct disadvantage. She could not possibly make any enquiries about the man who had made the reservation or whether he was there or not. She could say or do nothing that would cause any speculation about what she was doing here.

In this elegant and sedate hotel a few affluent, well-dressed people were around the hall and the sitting-room, the last diners drifting out from the famous dining-room. In ordinary circumstances she might have been one of them. But these were extraordinary circumstances.
She felt like a romantic but wondered if she should be feeling like an expensive tart.

The porter unlocked the door for her and switched on the lights. There were fresh flowers, white arum lilies, two dozen of them, looking spectacular in a vase set in the centre of a round table in front of the windows overlooking Carlos Place. She could hardly keep her eyes from the small white envelope lying on the black marble table top next to the vase. There was too a very decorative box of white chocolates, her favourite Belgian whites filled with fresh cream. She knew that because the silver-papered lid and gold bow had been opened and laid at an angle across the box. Several of the chocolates were missing. He had been there and was gone, and he had a sweet tooth. She knew at least that much about him.

The porter opened the door to the bedroom and switched on the lamps then returned to the sitting-room. Amy thanked him and handed him a five-pound note. He was about to leave when there was a knock at the door. She hadn’t realised how nervous she was until her heart gave a little skip and a beat. He was here.

But he wasn’t. It was a waiter wheeling in a white damask-clad table with a bottle of champagne in a silver cooler, a single champagne flute, a pot of hot chocolate, a single cup and saucer, a plate piled high with small crustless sandwiches. A before-bedtime snack for one. For him or for her? When the waiter had left Amy rushed to the table and grabbed the white envelope, opened it and pulled the card from it.

Chapter 16

Tillie Tyler heard the Lagonda’s horn and looked up from the kitchen sink to see the car emerge from the dirt track through the trees. Wiping her hands on a tea towel, she opened the door and greeted Amy.

‘Need any help unloading the car?’

‘Just one trip between the two of us will do it.’

‘I thought you were returning yesterday,’ said Tillie as Amy handed her the two dozen long-stemmed lilies.

‘I was, I did, but I stayed the night in London. It was all very unexpected.’

Now Tillie with the flowers and the large box of chocolates, Amy with her briefcase, walked together up the steps and into the house. ‘What beautiful flowers and chocolates. Looks like someone’s courting someone?’

‘Could be, but at this stage of the game your guess is as good as mine. I got the flowers, the chocolates, but somewhere along the way I missed the man.’ Amy could not help but laugh at the puzzled look on her housekeeper’s face.

‘I think I missed something.’

‘So did I, Tillie, so did I,’ said Amy, and laughed at herself again.

‘Well, no matter, you look really happy.’

‘You know, Tillie, I am.’ They were in the hall when
Amy added, ‘God, I do like coming home.’

‘Good trip?’ asked the housekeeper.

‘A great trip.’

The two women walked together into the kitchen. ‘Coffee?’ asked Tillie.

‘Oh, yes, please.’

As Amy removed the paper from round the lilies she could not help but think about Brice, her stranger. He had never turned up at the hotel. He had never called. When she had awakened in the morning it seemed the strangest thing that he was not lying next to her in the bed. Unnatural.

He hadn’t been there but she hadn’t been disappointed because she knew that if he could have, he would have been. They had missed each other. It was as simple and uncomplicated as that. But what a magnificent effort he had made for her, down to the last detail. When, after breakfast in her room, she called down to the desk to say that she would be checking out, within minutes the maid had arrived to wrap up the flowers and a white envelope had been handed to her, a paid receipt for her stay.

The aroma of freshly perked coffee drew Amy’s thoughts away from her interlude with the stranger. With a knife she cut each stem on an angle before placing the blooms in water.

‘Shall I put the chocolates in a dish?’ asked Tillie.

‘Put a few in my bedroom in that small Chinese one I like, the one with the pedestal. And do have some for yourself. Anything happen while I was gone?’

‘Mr Silberzog called twice, and said it was important you call him. Some things came in on the fax machine. The post is on your desk. Mr Whately came round looking for you – I gave him a cup of tea. That was yesterday afternoon. And a stranger, a man, looked very foreign, arrived in a London taxi. I knew you weren’t expecting anyone so when I saw it coming down the track I went out to meet it. I know you don’t like anyone coming to the door who’s not invited.’

‘When was this?’

‘About two hours after you left for the airport to go to Switzerland.’

For a brief moment Amy had thought it might have been Brice, but she hadn’t even met him at that time.

‘How odd. Who was it? What did he want?’

‘He was looking for you and said he was an old friend and wouldn’t give his name because he wanted to surprise you.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘Very foreign.’

‘Tillie, come on now. I need more to go on than that.’

‘Sort of Chinese, I think, but not exactly. He had a lot of colour, like he sat in the sun a lot. Bald as a billiard ball. I didn’t like his eyes, they were what I call sneaky eyes, and he was being too slimy nice to me. He asked if you lived here. I didn’t say yes and I didn’t say no.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I told him what I tell anyone who comes here who’s not invited or we don’t know: “This is a private road and you’re trespassing. As it happens I know Miss Ross, and
the only way you’re going to get to see her is to leave a message in the post office in the village, or if you want I can give her one when I next see her.”’

‘I wonder who it was.’

‘An odd man. He smelled like a lady, of lavender. He wore a suit and all that plus a gardenia pinned to his lapel. Lots of gold jewellery round his neck and an embroidered shawl round his shoulders. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d had a hand bag!’

Amy went quite pale, and had to sit down. It could have been anyone but she was certain it had been Fee. Ever since the dream, she had half expected one or both of them suddenly to appear.

‘Are you all right? Did I do wrong? You look pale as a ghost.’

‘Funny you should say ghost.’ Amy recovered quite quickly from the initial shock.

‘Should I get you a little brandy?’

‘No. Coffee and chocolate will do me fine.’

Tillie poured the coffee and sat down opposite Amy, the silver-coloured chocolate box between them. ‘By God, you didn’t half give me a shock, Miss Ross.’

‘I’m sorry, Tillie. You just took me by surprise with your description. I think I might just know that man from a very long time ago … You did very well to shoo him off this property. I have no particular desire to see him if he is indeed the man I think he might be, but if he does come back and I am here, I have nothing to fear from seeing him either. If it’s convenient for me I will. He will give you the name Fee or Mr Yolu. There wasn’t
another man with him in the taxi?’

‘No. He was alone.’

‘If he returns, I doubt that he will return alone.’

‘Is something wrong, Miss Ross?’

‘Nothing. On the contrary, everything is terrific.’

In the days that followed Amy’s return from Geneva she busied herself with the sale of the Soutine. Pierre de Boulet called to say that a courier would be arriving with the painting at her house in three days’ time and that it was insured as she specified it should be. She waited for Pierre to say that he had given her name to a neighbour called Brice but he mentioned no such thing.

She rationed the chocolates out to herself one a day, wanting romance to linger that little bit longer. Once the chocolates had been consumed and the flowers had wilted, the little bit she had of Brice would fade into memory, become a past experience, something delightful that had been. Strangely she felt no sadness about that. Quite the opposite, she felt alive, on top of the world, wanting only to be ready and willing and able to meet every day and what it might bring.

Anthony Kramer, Amy’s long-time millionaire suitor, was a Sephardic Jew whose family originated in Turkey. They had, even to the present day, always been philanthropic to the country though they had been naturalised Americans for four generations.

Many years before, Anthony had told Amy that it was his intention to build a museum of modern art in Istanbul, a monument to his great-great-great-grandfather.
He had been working on the gift with the Turkish government for years. He and Edward Silberzog had been dealing with the difficult preliminaries in Turkey. All was in place and now had come the time for Amy’s input into the project. Hence the urgent calls from Edward, who had somehow forgotten to tell her that the project was on go and had been made official two months ago, the government now wanting to move ahead as fast as possible. Amy had years before been offered the position of curator. She’d rejected it but did agree to be one of the museum’s chief advisors until it was opened to the public and the curator and board of directors took over. She, Edward and Anthony would each hold a seat on the board. It was a dream-come-true project for the three of them who had conceived of the idea on a cruise along the coast of Turkey when Amy had thought she might make a life with Anthony.

The most pressing things to be dealt with were the location and the building they might want to buy or construct to house the museum. A selection of photographs, floor plans and specifications of desirable properties, and maps of areas considered for the museum, had arrived for Amy to ponder. Edward and she had agreed that when each of them had evaluated what was on offer they would make a shortlist, then go on a reconnaissance trip to Istanbul with Anthony.

When the current
Art News
from New York arrived, Amy had something of a shock to see herself on the cover with a three-page article about the project inside. She called Anthony at once.

‘I’ve just received the current
Art News
, Anthony.’

‘I know that tone. You’re angry?’

‘What happened to anonymity, staying in the background of things?’

‘You’re
very
angry?’

‘You’ve known about this for months and not said a word.’

‘Because we knew you would be angry. Will you let me explain?’

‘It had better be good.’

‘They wanted to run the story and we had no idea that they were going to use you or any of us on the cover until it had already gone to press. I promise you, I tried to stop it.’

‘Why me?’

‘Because you’re so accomplished and so fucking reclusive it gave the story more interest. Just what the caption says: “One of our more renowned art historians who prefers to remain in the background while acting in an advisory capacity to the Anthony Kramer Museum to be built in Istanbul.” But don’t despair, no address, no telephone numbers, not even a mention that you live in England, and not a word about your private life.’

‘If there are any repercussions to this publicity I’m throwing them right back at you, Anthony, remember that.’

‘I’ll make this up to you.’

‘That’s not necessary, just keep me out of the press and let me do my work. I know you love riding the band wagon of the art world, and you know I don’t. It has
sent me away before, Anthony. It could easily send me away again.’

‘I never have understood this obsession of yours with being a private person.’

‘You don’t have to understand it, dear Anthony, just respect it.’

‘Am I forgiven for being a coward and not telling you about it, because honestly that’s all I’m guilty of?’

There would be few people Amy knew who read
Art News
magazine who would call her about the cover or her role as advisor to the new museum; they knew her sentiments about being in the art world circus. But what about the people she didn’t know who would be impressed by the story and try to involve themselves in the project by appealing to her? However,
Art News
and her concern about her subsequent notoriety vanished within the hour because the courier from Switzerland arrived with the Soutine. Once it was out of the crate and on to the large mahogany easel, the machinations of the art world became nothing at all to Amy. Only the fine work of art in front of her and her concern to place it with the right public institution, at the price she was asking, on behalf of the de Boulets.

It was here in the boat house that prospective buyers would come to view it. Two New York museums, the Chicago Art Institute, one Paris museum and one from Tokyo had already shown a keen interest, and that had been from mere telephone conversations and faxes. And Amy had given only the barest hint as to how important a work she was so very discreetly offering.

To sell it privately would have been no problem. The Whatelys saw it the second day it was on display in the boat house and wanted to buy it, offering a signed blank cheque. All Amy had to do was fill in the sum. But they had little hope that she would do that. They were very much aware of Amy’s intention to sell to a museum where the painting would be permanently on display to the public. Dick could do little but play the waiting game and hope the museums, for whatever reason, would one by one vanish from the market place. Besotted by the two reclining nudes, every day he would boat over simply to sit and look at the painting.

A pattern emerged. Dick would arrive, would let himself in, and if Tillie was still there she would make him a pot of tea. Often he would bring cakes. If Amy wasn’t busy in the library, she might join him; he did not however disturb her except to call out, ‘I’m leaving, Amy, thanks.’ Then he was gone as quietly as he had arrived. Those times that Tillie was not there he would let himself in quietly, take his place in front of the painting and light one of the large Havana cigars he was so fond of. It was only the aroma wafting through the boat house that signalled he was in the house.

Tillie had already gone home, Amy was on the telephone in the library, and Dick was contemplating the Soutine when he heard a car crunching the gravel as it drew up to the house. He called up to her, ‘A car’s arrived, Amy, shall I see to it?’

‘Yes, please. I’ll be there in a minute.’

It was a bright sunny day and the boat house was
filled with shafts of light pouring through the windows, lovely angles of that special kind of sunlight that reflects off water. The beams of light criss-crossed dramatically through the ground-floor windows, from others puncturing the three-storey-high walls and those under the eaves at the roofline. Amy, finished with her conversation, could just about make out the sound of men’s voices at the front door.

From the balustrade in the library high above the ground floor of the boat house and overlooking the main room and entrance hall, she saw Dick standing to one side of the front door talking to a man. With bright sunlight behind him, the man appeared only as a dark silhouette. He was a big man who seemed almost to fill the doorway. He looked a dramatic figure etched into the sunlight all round him. Even from where she was, Amy sensed a powerful presence. Though she could not see his face, she knew that presence, just as on seeing it she knew the man’s form.

She felt strangely calm for a woman whose heart was racing so fast. She was not surprised that he should be there. She had half expected him to appear. There had been enough signs that he might.

She called down from her vantage point, ‘Dick, it’s all right, let Mr Sparrow in.’

Amy watched him walk through her front door and into a shaft of sunlight. She had to close her eyes for a second and take a deep breath. Jarret Sparrow, after nearly thirty years, was as handsome and charismatic as he had always been. The hair glistened more silver
than dark blond but it hadn’t thinned with the years. The two men walked from the entrance hall into the vast drawing-room. He was wearing probably not the same but a similar black cashmere coat with a velvet collar. It was as if time had stood still. Well, for the moment anyway. She was gazing intently down at him, he in much the same manner up at her.