Lose Yourself (The Desires Unlocked Trilogy Part Two) (22 page)

It feels like the first proper day of spring. After
all the rain and cold, the temperature has risen and Valentina has taken the risk of coming out without her coat. Everyone appears to be stepping as lightly as she, lifted up by the bright skies and warm breeze. This is a London she could live in – learn to love. She wonders if that might happen, if Theo comes back to her.

After popping into the Lexington Gallery to see how she did last night, she has taken the Tube back to South Kensington to meet Leonardo for coffee, before he flies home to Milan.

‘So, are you pleased?’ her friend asks her, once they have settled down on high stools, two cappuccinos steaming on a counter in front of them. They are facing the street outside, looking out of the window of the café at the pedestrians as they pace by.

‘I sold them all!’ she says, brimming with pride. ‘I can’t believe it . . . I mean, even those really explicit ones of Antonella and Mikhail. God knows who bought them!’

‘That’s great Valentina,’ Leonardo says. Yet his voice is quieter than usual.

Her friend looks tired this morning, as if he hasn’t slept at all. She spots a grey hair in all the black and, although she had always assumed they were the same age, she wonders now what his real age is. She thinks he must be very heartbroken over Raquel.

‘So, are you going to tell me what happened with you and Raquel?’ She stirs her cappuccino, watching the creamy heart sink in the middle.

Leonardo says nothing for a moment, taking a sip of his coffee and avoiding her eye. ‘There is not so much to actually tell,’ he says, eventually. ‘She met someone else.’

Valentina turns to look at him, but Leonardo avoids her eyes, staring down at his coffee cup intently.

‘But I thought you guys had an open relationship. Shouldn’t that sort of thing not matter?’ She asks him softly, sensing that she needs to step carefully here for her friend to confide in her.

‘Well, it matters when she wants to end our “open” relationship and have a closed one with someone else.’

He looks up at her, and Valentina is astonished by the blaze of anger in Leonardo’s eyes. She has never seen her friend look even remotely cross, let alone angry and hurt.

‘So, is it because she wanted you all to herself? Do you think you could have done that?’ she asks tentatively.

Leonardo scowls even more. ‘Of course I could have, but that’s not what she wanted.’ He pauses, sweeping his hair back from his forehead with his hand.

‘That wasn’t it, Valentina,’ he sighs, no longer angry now, but sounding sad. ‘We broke up because she didn’t want me in her life anymore.’

‘She’s crazy,’ Valentina says without hesitation, putting her hand over his on the counter top.

‘When it came down to it,’ Leonardo says, ‘she was thinking of the future.’

‘You mean children? But you had agreed to have a baby together, to shut down the club. You were going to change your life for her.’

‘Yes, but it wasn’t enough. I am too much of a risk, Valentina.’ Leonardo stares straight ahead out of the window, as if hypnotised by the moving people passing by.

Valentina squeezes his hand. ‘How can that be?’

He pulls his attention away from the pedestrians outside and back to her in the café. He looks crushed. Valentina feels like giving Raquel a good shake. How could she let such a good man go? ‘Raquel wants a decent, stable environment for her children, with a man who has a secure job and a good income. She wants to make a proper family.’

Valentina shrugs dismissively, making her opinion quite clear: Raquel is a complete disappointment as a woman. And yet her friend loved her. She has to be careful not to be too harsh on her. ‘There’s no such thing as a proper family,’ she says carefully. ‘It is better for a child to have love rather than material stability. It is love that makes a child feel secure.’

‘I agree,’ says Leonardo. ‘But that isn’t Raquel’s opinion.’

‘I’m sorry, Leo . . . You know, I don’t think she was right for you, anyway,’ she ventures.

Leonardo smiles a little. ‘Really? And who might be right for me?’

Valentina thinks hard. Of all her friends, there is not one of them she can see with Leonardo, apart from Celia, possibly.

‘What about Celia?’

‘Maybe, but we are friends, really – like you and me, Valentina. She is also on the other side of the world at the moment.’ He pauses, taking another sip of his coffee. ‘Besides, I think I should be on my own for a while.’

Valentina can’t help feeling a little glad that Leonardo is not on the hunt for a new woman. It worries her that he might meet someone who will take him over and not understand their friendship, or be jealous of the time they spend together.

‘So, that’s enough about me,’ Leonardo says, glancing at his watch. ‘I have to go for my flight in about twenty minutes. I don’t want to waste our last moments moaning about my sorry private life.’

Valentina leans over and kisses her friend on the lips. He tastes as buttery as her croissant.

‘What was that for?’ Leonardo says, looking pleased.

‘I do love you, Leonardo,’ Valentina says. ‘You are the best friend in the world.’

‘But what about your other friends?’

‘Yes, but you know me inside out. It’s a funny thing, since I have been friends with them all for far longer than you. Yet I feel like I have
always
known you.’

‘Like we were meant to meet?’ His brown eyes gaze at her warmly and she can see that her words have cheered him up.

‘Yes. It’s our fate to be friends.’ She takes a sip of her cappuccino. ‘Leonardo, I have been thinking about Theo and how strange it was that we ran into each other, right out of the blue, and then something occurred to me.’ She pauses, finishing off her crossiant and licking her fingertips. ‘Two of the pictures that were exhibited in the Lexington were very recent. I don’t remember sending them in my original submission, although they requested prints of them for the show. So how did Kirsti Shaw get to see them?’

Leonardo shifts in his seat, looking a little uncomfortable.

‘I knew it!’ she exclaims, pointing her finger at him. ‘Did you send the images to Theo? And then he showed them to Kirsti Shaw and pushed her to include me in the show?’

Leonardo says nothing for a moment, but he is blushing with guilt.

Valentina can see that she is on the right track. ‘And, if that is the case, Theo actually conspired for me to see him here in London. I think the whole Anita thing is to make me jealous like you said, so he can really see that I love him. He wants me to react.’

Leonardo reaches out and puts his hand on her arm. ‘Valentina, I have to stop you there,’ he says.

‘I can see that you are hiding something from me, Leo,’ she says triumphantly. ‘You did send him the pictures, didn’t you? He is trying to make me jealous, don’t you think?’

Leonardo shakes his head, looking quite sorrowful. ‘I don’t think Theo has any intention of making you jealous, Valentina, not since I saw him last night. Besides, he knows you are not the possessive type.’

‘Well, the funny thing is, Leo, I am a bit jealous. It’s never happened to me before. Usually, if I can’t have a man, I just shrug my shoulders and walk away, but I just can’t bear to lose Theo to Anita . . . I can’t understand it.’

‘You’re in love, my dear – really in love.’ Leonardo pats her hand, looking sad again.

‘But I don’t believe it is just a coincidence that Anita and I are in the same show. It can’t be.’

‘You’re right on that score,’ Leonardo says, not looking her in the eye. ‘But I am afraid it was me, not Theo, who sent your recent work to Kirsti. As far as Theo is concerned, he had no idea you were in the show with Anita.’

‘
You
sent the images directly to the gallery?’ she asks him, shocked that he would do such a thing without telling her.

‘Theo had told me about the exhibition. On the one hand, I thought it would be a great opportunity for you. I knew you had already submitted to the gallery, so I just reminded Kirsti Shaw of your existence and showed her some new work.’

‘I can’t believe you would go to so much trouble for me.’

‘Well, I also had an ulterior motive. You and Theo were driving me mad. He would email me asking how you were, and you would be asking me how he was, but, whenever I suggested to either of you to break the deadlock, you were both too stubborn, or hurt, or proud to do something. I just thought it was a terrible shame.’

He pauses, pinning her with a piercing stare. ‘You should be together. So that’s why I thought, if you were in the show, it would be a chance for you to bump into each other naturally.’

‘But, Anita?’

‘I had
no
idea about Anita. I was as shocked as you were to discover he had a girlfriend,’ Leonardo says, shaking his head and looking genuinely sorry.

She stands up from her stool and, uncharacteristically, she leans over and gives Leo a massive hug. She steps back and he looks completely mystified.

‘What’s that for?’

‘For caring so much about my happiness.’ She really is touched that Leonardo believes in her and Theo.

‘Valentina,’ her friend advises her, ‘don’t give up. The fact that Theo and Anita aren’t sleeping together speaks volumes. I still think you two could get back together.’

‘But to do that I have to break them up.’ Valentina struggles with the idea. ‘I actually rather like Anita. I don’t know if I could do such a nasty thing to her.’

Leonardo smiles benignly. ‘You may appear a cool customer, but you are just a big softie deep down, aren’t you, V?’

She sits back down on her stool, feeling a little self-conscious. ‘I don’t know; my mother tells me I am hard hearted . . .’

‘What does your mother know?’ He picks up her hand and squeezes it. She likes the feeling of her little hand tucked inside his.

‘Of course,’ Leonardo says, his voice dropping to avoid being overheard, ‘there are other ways around this conundrum.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, you said that Theo needs you to prove your love to him . . .’

‘Yes, but how do I do that?’

‘A man will always feel his woman’s love through sex, so, by enacting his ultimate sexual fantasy, you could show him your love.’

‘Yes, but I just told you, I don’t want to make Theo cheat on Anita . . . or break them up.’

‘Indeed, I am not suggesting you do so, for what do you think might be the common fantasy for most men?’

Valentina doesn’t even need to think about it. ‘Two women together, with him.’

‘Exactly,’ Leonardo says, his spirits obviously lifted again as he gives her a cheeky grin.

‘Are you suggesting that I win Theo back by taking part in a threesome with him and Anita?’ Valentina is appalled. Leonardo can’t be serious. ‘Apart from the emotional mess that could entail, isn’t it immoral?’ she continues.

‘Of course not. Look, I have thought about this whole question a lot. Not just threesomes, but orgies as well.’ Leonardo looks at her earnestly. ‘I mean, I was raised a Catholic, after all. And a lot of people who come to my club are motivated by a sort of twisted relationship with sex and religion. They crave to be sinners so that they can then cleanse themselves.’

Valentina shudders. ‘I have never felt like that, Leonardo,’ she says. ‘I never felt I was doing something bad, not if no one was being lied to or hurt.’

‘You see, the difference between the sex lives of humans and animals is erotic pleasure.’ Leonardo is becoming himself again: sexual guide and guru. His earlier distress about Raquel seems to be fading away now that he is talking about his favourite subject. ‘We don’t have sex seasonally and we don’t have sex just to procreate. We also have sex to experience sensual raptures . . . Is that not so?’

Valentina nods. She loves listening to Leonardo talk about sex and eroticism. She always feels she can learn so much from him.

‘I think, as soon as man became aware that he was mortal, then that’s when eroticism came into existence. Both sex and death represent a kind of violence that interrupts the regular order of things. When you climax, it has been called the “little death”, and thus eroticism can actually be a celebration of life within the knowledge of our mortality.’

‘You make it sound so lofty,’ Valentina says. ‘But other people would say we are depraved, unable to commit, lascivious . . .’

‘That is the problem for us all.’ Leonardo looks solemn. ‘When we begin to bring morality into the equation, it corrupts sex. Eroticism should have nothing to do with morality.’

It occurs to Valentina that her mother has said such things to her in the past, that, possibly, these are the principles by which her mother lives her life, and this may be why Valentina has found it natural to adopt them herself.

She looks outside the window of the café, watching the rhythm of passers-by, and considers Leonardo’s suggestion. Could this be a way to show Theo her love? Could she seduce both Anita and Theo, in which case she wouldn’t actually be stealing him away from the other woman, would she? It seems like a completely crazy idea, and yet it does appeal to her libertine heart. She found Anita attractive from the moment she met her. She didn’t like to see her dressed like her mother, but when she was blonde and coquettish . . . well, she did rather like that. Of course, really, it is just Theo that she wants to be with, but this could be a way forward, if Anita is open to it. It would be such a powerful message to Theo. Last year, the way he had shown her how much he trusted and loved her was by setting up different scenarios in Leonardo’s club. The three of them – Leonardo, Theo and Valentina – had been together inside the Dark Room, the room of her ultimate sexual fantasies. Theo had done all this to show Valentina that he loved her for who she is, and did not want to change her. Can she not do the same for him? She knows that Leonardo is right, for Theo has told her it is a particular fantasy of his – himself, Valentina and another girl – and, when they were together, she had been very open to the idea. Her heart rate begins to speed up. Could she somehow orchestrate this threesome? The idea of it is at once exhilarating and terrifying.