Private Lives (41 page)

He moved from room to room, past a library, a bathroom with his-and-her wash basins and a dressing room as big as his corner office at the firm. He wasn’t surprised that there were no photos of David in any of the rooms he looked in; Carla could be ruthless like that. Once she had moved on, she moved on. But there were reminders of the ex-master of the house everywhere. The study with his captain’s chair and golfing memorabilia, the weights machine and the muddy green wellingtons by the back door. Even though David had gone, Matthew still felt as if he was intruding in a stranger’s home – which he supposed he was.

He moved downstairs, to the basement and the gym, the laundry and the media room. His son had been living the life of luxury, he thought with bittersweet emotions, looking at the rows of velour seats in front of the cinema screen.

He walked over to the popcorn machine and turned it on. It hummed to life. He watched mesmerised as the kernels bounced along the bottom of the steel base, then began to pop like machine-gun fire, the glass drum filling with pale golden bubbles of corn.

‘Waste not, want not,’ he mumbled to himself, scooping the popcorn into a stripy red carton, then went over to the racks of DVDs and looked for something to watch, running his fingertip along the thin spines. Most were cartoons or children’s movies, with a few mainstream action films thrown in, certainly nothing Matthew hadn’t already seen. To one side were a group of boxes with neatly handwritten titles: exotic place names or occasions that had no meaning to him. Christmas – Barbados. Isabel’s 40th, Cap Ferrat. The Hamptons – Jake’s House.

‘Who’s Jake?’ he wondered aloud, cracking open the case and putting the disc in the machine. The huge screen immediately came to life, footage of a blue ocean and creamy white sand, a much smaller Jonas running away from the camera, then stopping and waving, before disappearing behind a palm tree. Then a jump-cut to a new scene: David walking along a wooden pier, his arm around Carla; she wearing a poppy-red dress, he wearing a straw hat. Tinny laughter, shaky footage, the sign of an amateur home video.

‘I’m not sure you should be watching those.’ Matthew turned, startled, sending popcorn all over the floor.

‘Bugger,’ he muttered, grabbing the remote and punching the eject button. ‘I thought I’d watch a movie,’ he said, trying to scrape up the spilled popcorn. ‘Wondered what Hamptons – Jake’s House was. Don’t get to the cinema much . . .’ He cursed himself for getting caught out like this, but in the low light he could see a smile curling at the edges of Carla’s glossy lips.

‘You’re early,’ he quipped guiltily.

‘I was tired. Or bored. Maybe both. How was Jonas?’

‘We had a great time. You should have stayed here. Tiring and yet never boring.’

‘I won’t hear the last of it tomorrow.’

He stood up, suddenly feeling uncomfortable in the media room.

‘Excellent popcorn machine.’

‘Amazing what money can buy you.’

‘I’m sorry for being nosy,’ he said finally.

‘I’d have done the same.’

‘I doubt it. I’ve got no media room. A thirty-two-inch telly and some Sly Stallone DVDs, that’s all you’ll find at my place.’

‘Don’t give me the sob story. You’re senior partner of Donovan Pierce now, you can afford the trimmings.’

She unbuttoned her coat and slipped it off, revealing a pale pink slip dress, silky, slim-cut and short, showing off her long, tanned legs to perfection. He tried hard not to stare too hard; then again, he defied any man to be able to tear their eyes away from Carla when she looked this good.

‘So why was the party dull?’

‘Everyone asking me about David, pulling faces like someone had died.’

She was drunk, he could hear it in her slightly slurred words and see it in her glassy eyes. He felt a pang of sympathy for his ex-wife. He knew how much she would have hated that: being pitied in some Knightsbridge society salon. She’d have knocked back the champagne to forget about it and then made her excuses as soon as it was polite to leave.

‘Do you want me to make you a coffee?’ he asked.

‘That obvious, is it?’ she said with a crooked grin. ‘I’ll do it, there’s an espresso machine just over here.’ She pressed the side of a cabinet and it popped open to reveal a bar. ‘Open sesame,’ she said. ‘Just like magic.’

She perched on the back of one of the velour chairs beside him.

‘Well I’m sure you won’t be single for long,’ said Matt, trying to make her feel better. He quite enjoyed having a pleasant conversation with his wife; being friends, as Jonas had rightly put it. It was a change from the years of bitter snipes and exchanges that invariably came when a marriage had gone sour.

‘I think you’re wrong,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Good men get snapped up so quickly. Women are ruthless. A whiff that a marriage is in trouble and they hover, console, move in before the divorce lawyers have been called in half the time.’

‘I never had that.’

‘Good,’ she said softly.

Their eyes locked and he had to look away.

‘I’m not sure how well I’d have taken it if you’d got married again,’ she added as the coffee machine gurgled in the background.

Matt smiled to defuse the tension that was building in the confines of the dark room.

‘Well, I’d like to think I’m not on love’s scrapheap quite yet.’

‘So you’re looking?’ She turned to face him.

‘I never said that.’

She gave a little laugh, shaking her head gently. ‘Why am I jealous?’

The pace of his heart quickened. ‘We were married. It’s only natural.’

There was a long silence. Matt knew it was time to leave, but he couldn’t tear himself away from his spot beside her. He could sense she had something to tell him, and curiosity, ego, his pride that had been so bruised when she had betrayed him made him want to hear it.

‘I was wrong to leave you,’ she whispered finally.

When the words came, he could think of nothing in response.

She lifted her hand and brushed the back of her fingers across his cheek. He reached up to stop them, but as his hand gripped hers, the cool softness of her skin made something in his stomach flutter.

‘Don’t,’ he said, feeling the situation galloping out of control.

‘Why not?’

She stood up and stepped towards him. In her high heels they were almost face to face. At this distance he could see the tiny vein beneath her eye trembling like it did when she was nervous. He could smell the light scent of expensive wine and lipstick inhabiting the air space between them. Her mouth was inches away from his, her lips parted, waiting.

He couldn’t think of a single reason why he shouldn’t kiss her. Then again, logic always did fly out of the window when he was faced by the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

His hand cupped the soft, silky curve of her waist, slowly, carefully, pulling her towards him, and he kissed her on the mouth, on the soft fold of her ear lobe, on her long, smooth neck. He had forgotten how sweet she tasted; and yet the smell and taste of her were so familiar, it was as if the three years since any physical contact had contracted into nothingness.

‘I’ve missed you,’ she whispered, responding to his touch.

His hand brushed the thin spaghetti straps of her dress off her shoulders, one and then the other, so that the flimsy fabric slid down over her slim body and rustled to the floor.

She was naked except for her thong and heels. He stole a glance, wondering if she had ever looked so forbidden and exotic, then held her waist as she arched her back, teasing each ripened nipple between his lips as she gasped in pleasure.

His own arousal was unbearable. With his free hand he unbuckled his belt and slid down the zip of his trousers. Carla drew herself up, her lean, Pilates-honed torso as strong and elegant as a ballet dancer’s.

‘Jonas,’ he muttered as her fingers unfastened his shirt buttons. ‘He’ll hear us.’

‘Media room. Soundproofed,’ she said, raking her fingernails across his chest.

Their kisses were more urgent now. They stumbled back on to a two-seater sofa at the back of the room, the soles of her shoes crunching stray balls of popcorn underfoot. Matt kicked off his trousers and boxer shorts.

Carla lay back, propped up by some expensive-looking cushions, and parted her thighs, and he slotted his body between them, a perfect fit, as if they were made for each other. Her fingers pushed the wisp of thong to one side, and he guided himself inside her, slowly at first, but as she hooked one leg around him, he pushed deeper, groaning as they moved as one, in, out,
together
.

Somewhere in the back of his consciousness, he couldn’t remember married sex ever being this good. Nor could he reconcile the brittle, frosty ex-wife with this hot, responsive woman. When she came, he felt her whole body tremble. Then he felt it too, white-hot electric desire pushing him closer and closer to the edge, and then a sweet release deep inside her.

They lay motionless for a few moments, listening to the sound of their breathing slowing, regulating, and then he pulled himself out of her.

‘Not bad for a pair of thirty-something parents,’ he smiled, collapsing back on to the opposite end of the sofa.

‘I need another drink,’ she said, laughing.

He said nothing.

The silence vibrated between them, and then she touched her fingers against his, as if willing him to say something.

‘I should go,’ he said quietly, putting his palm over the top of her hand.

She slid it out, her body pulling away from him.

‘I didn’t think that was your style,’ she sniffed.

He felt a stab of guilt for all the other one-night stands he’d had over the last three years. The post-coital excuses he had made to other women he knew he could not commit to. But this was different.

‘What do you suggest, Carla?’ he said quietly. ‘That I stay the night? That Jonas wakes up in the morning and sees us there, together in bed, as if the last three years hasn’t even happened?’

‘I’d prefer that to you getting up and walking out of the door the second after you’ve come inside me.’

He inhaled sharply, then looked at her.

‘I’m sorry. I just didn’t expect this.’

Her face softened.

‘Me neither.’ She pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on top of them.

His son’s words reverberated around Matt’s head:
Are you and Mum friends again?
He owed her more than this.

‘Maybe we should go out for dinner,’ he said without thinking.

‘We go to Ibiza tomorrow. But we could do something when we get back. The time, the space might do us good. Give us time to think.’

She tipped her head to one side, her blond hair cascading over her bare shoulder, and smiled so adorably that he felt himself start to get hard again.

He nodded his approval.

‘You don’t regret what we just did?’ she said softly.

‘That was the best sex since . . . since you,’ he said truthfully. In fact it had been incredible, and that was what scared him.

42

‘Darling, I could have told you he was a coke fiend. You didn’t have to send me to St Tropez with a camcorder down my knickers to find that out.’

Sheryl Battenburg rested her chin in the curve of her palm and smiled at Larry. He was fairly sure that if they hadn’t been in the rarefied environs of the Beaumont Bar at the Savoy, she would have come over and sat on his knee.

‘Well, pictures were what I needed, Sherry, not rumours.’ He smiled as the waitress brought his old friend a flute of Krug. It was one of the few places in London that did it by the glass; he didn’t want to waste a bottle when he wasn’t even drinking it.

It had only taken Larry a few phone calls to find someone who was going to Fabio Martelli’s birthday party, held on a yacht and at the Nikki Beach Club in St Tropez. Sherry was an old-school Chelsea good-time girl with bleached blond hair and a deep tan. She and Larry had indulged in a short-lived affair between wives two and three. Now pushing forty, she had never married and Larry had no idea what she did for a living, other than attend parties and launches. He didn’t think to ask where the money was coming from.

He looked down at his iPhone and scrolled through the photographs that Sheryl had sent him from the yacht party, stopping at a shot of a redhead lounging on the deck dressed in just a micro-bikini.

‘Looks like it was fun,’ he grinned.

‘I hope they are okay. I know you said you wanted something really fruity, and there were obviously people having sex all over the shop, but I could hardly go into the cabins and get piccies of them at it, could I?’

Larry nodded. He’d known that even someone as connected as Sheryl might have trouble getting snaps of Fabio actually taking drugs or in the act with someone other than Kim Collier, so he’d asked her to take pictures of people who were obviously part of Fabio’s party. And as he scrolled through the photos, he had to say she’d done the job magnificently. She had managed to snap shots of Fabio draped over a variety of beautiful women in next to nothing; she’d even caught him evidently in conference with some burly men dressed in expensive loungewear and chunky jewellery. It was better than he could have hoped.

‘Have you ever thought about going into spying?’ he said with a chuckle. The single-mindedness and world-class schmoozing that had allowed Sheryl access to the highest strata of society were perfect transferable skills, should she choose to enter the field of espionage.

‘Sorry the quality isn’t that brilliant,’ she said, leaning forward to peek at the photos – and give Larry a flash of cleavage.

‘Don’t worry, sweetheart,’ said Larry. ‘I’m not looking for David Bailey, just something to give me a bit of leverage.’

‘This is nothing illegal, is it?’ she said, looking at him earnestly.

He slipped his phone back into his pocket.

‘How can you suggest such a thing, Sheryl?’ he said with mock-outrage. ‘I’m a well-respected lawyer.’

‘You’re a shark, Larry. If you weren’t one of my oldest friends, I wouldn’t trust you further than I can throw you.’