The Look of Love (25 page)

‘The driver will be cross with us,’ Saul said, pulling her closer towards him.

‘Why is that?’ she asked.

‘Because we’re not doing what he told us to do. He said we have to kiss. So I think we should. It’s our duty.’ His mouth brushed the edge of hers.

‘I think we should too …’ she murmured. ‘It would be so wrong to disappoint him.’

This immediate post-coital moment was, Bella recognized, when she might possibly have been thinking, ‘Oh-oh, I shouldn’t have done this.’ ‘First date?’ she heard long-ago agony aunts raging at her from her teenage years. ‘You slept with him on the
first date
?’ She half agreed with them; what sort of woman does that? Mmmm,
this
sort, and with no regrets whatsoever, she thought happily from beneath Saul’s naked body, the most intimate part of which was still inside her. There wasn’t anywhere else she’d rather be.

‘Oh God, that was … just …’ Saul murmured, his mouth a millimetre from her left ear.

‘Shh, don’t say anything.’ She was afraid the ecstatic spell would break. Her heart was still thumping frantically, her breath was hard to catch and when she shifted slightly she felt yet another tiny orgasmic ripple,
feeble now after the cataclysmic main event, but as if her body was reluctant to let it all stop.

‘Earthquakes,’ he whispered. She could feel his heart thumping too, a counter-rhythm to hers.

‘Earthquakes and aftershocks,’ she whispered back.

‘You are such bliss,’ he told her, kissing her neck softly.

‘Or am I just a wicked slut?’ she giggled. ‘I didn’t exactly play hard to get.’

‘Well, neither did I,’ he said, still holding her tight as he rolled his weight off her. ‘In the interests of sexual equality I insist on claiming as much easiness of virtue as you.’

‘OK, we’ll share it then,’ Bella agreed.

‘You know what else just occurred to me?’ Saul pulled the duvet over them and snuggled down close to her. ‘We met because of a programme about what to wear. How to look good in clothes. And here we are, I’ve got you looking the most fabulous ever, in absolutely nothing. The viewing public is missing out. No one else gets to see you like this. Well, not tonight anyway. Of course, I can’t speak for tomorrow or yesterday.’

She thumped his arm. ‘Hey, no one else at any time. I’m not
that
much of a loose woman!’

The butterflies from earlier in the evening had all settled now. This was what had caused them to flit about for all that time: anticipation of the inevitable, as for the whole evening the erotic charge had been
zinging and building between Saul and Bella. In the restaurant it must have been obvious to their smiley waitress, who had clocked them inching closer together as the meal progressed, noticed their fingers so firmly intertwined by the end that they had only separated with reluctance for mere seconds so Bella could put her jacket on as they left. And she’d wished them a
very
happy rest of the evening with a knowing glint in her eye. And the rickshaw driver: he’d recognized a newly loved-up couple when he saw one.

Now, as the two of them lay in exhausted peace, the sounds of midnight Soho crept in from the street below. Bella could hear a distant police car, the whirr-clunk of a bin lorry, an angry drunk shouting, a bottle bank being emptied, the distinctive throb of a Harley-Davidson. Urban sounds, much the same in cities the world over.

‘I didn’t get to see your roof garden.’ She reminded Saul that this was what he’d promised her. ‘Isn’t that how you lured me up here? To admire the rooftop views and the plants?’ Scents of night stocks and tobacco plants wafted in through the open window. Apart from the city night sounds, they could be miles away in a country garden.

‘At the time there seemed to be matters more urgent than a house tour,’ Saul teased. ‘If you remember …’

How true, Bella thought contentedly, how wonderfully
unseemly and hectic their haste as they’d hurtled up the two flights of painted stairs. Saul had led her into the bedroom as if both were scared there was a fast-approaching deadline on this moment of passion.

‘Oh, I remember. I’m hardly likely to forget this, am I?’ she smiled. ‘But … I hate to say it, and it’s with more regret than I can bear to think about: I’m going to have to go home.’

Saul tightened his arms round her. ‘Are you sure you can’t stay the night? The garden is at its best in the early morning. Coffee on the terrace out there? All the cute little cockney sparrows lined up on the railings for crumbs of toast? And if pushed, I’ll admit the thought of letting you go is unbearable.’

‘I’d so love to stay, but I just can’t. I really do have to be back. There’s Molly … I know she’s pretty much grown up and she’s got my mother there too, but I don’t want her to catch me creeping in at breakfast time in last night’s clothes. Daughters don’t like to be faced with that kind of thing, trust me. It rates very highly on the – “Eeeuuw!” – scale.’

‘Hmm, fair point … plus I’d be driving you home and then staying for the day’s shoot. It’s “Shape” tomorrow. Real clothes for real women, according to Daisy. I try not to think what the alternative to that would be.’

‘Does Daisy know anything about “real women”?’
Bella giggled, wriggling free to the edge of the bed to look for her abandoned underwear. ‘I’m amazed she deigns to deal with the likes of anyone over a size 10, when her work life is all about people with no apparent space for internal organs.’

‘Oh, Daisy’s no fool. She knows where the money is, and the recession is kicking even the top earners. High end or high street, she doesn’t mind who she’s working with so long as someone pays her. Her job is as fragile as anyone else’s these days. She’ll make you all look great, no worries, because that’s what’s in her interests. Like I said, she’s no fool.’

‘In that case, I’ll look forward to it; I just hope I won’t look too knackered.’

‘If you look the way you do now,’ Saul said, pulling her back towards him and kissing her softly, ‘you’ll be stunning. You’ve got the most fabulous glow about you.’

It was only a lot later in the minicab home (on Saul’s company account) that Bella – half asleep – started wondering about Fliss. Since that one mention when he’d first brought the girl to the house (and oh, how long ago it seemed) that Fliss was – or had been – Saul’s stepdaughter, and the rather sad comment about not really knowing her very well, he hadn’t said anything about his connection with her. He and Fliss got on generally OK on a work level, but didn’t seem close
otherwise, which was possibly, Bella conjectured as the cab went across the Hammersmith flyover, because Fliss had been raised not by Lucy. Or had she been with Lucy till Lucy became too ill to cope and then gone to be brought up by her natural father and, possibly, a new partner of his? That could have meant a double agony for Saul – losing not only his wife but also the daughter he’d been helping her to raise. Or not. Fliss would have been seventeen when Lucy died; if Saul didn’t, as he said, know her that well, perhaps she’d grown up with her father from long before that, or even with grandparents. The situation was open to a huge range of speculation. Bella could wait, though curiosity could only hold out for so long. If this relationship were going to run, (and it was off to a promising, if speedy, start), all would become clear soon enough.

No one at home was still up, and all inside the house was darkness and silence. Either Shirley or Molly had left the outside light on for Bella, and, dog-tired but still elated, she set the burglar alarm and then went straight upstairs and took off her clothes for the second time that night, although this time they came off in a rather slower and less urgent manner. She should have showered, really, but she was too exhausted to do more than quickly brush her teeth and give her make-up a cursory wipe-off with some cleanser. Then she collapsed into bed and set the alarm for seven the next morning.
Sleep was unexpectedly elusive: behind her closed eyelids the whole evening raced past in delicious cinematic flashback, and she felt tinglingly tense and unable to relax.

Rick had never made her feel like this. Although they’d only had a few nights together, she’d soon realized he was a man who couldn’t make love without first arranging all the necessary accoutrements on the bedside table. She could almost laugh now, thinking of how, when they’d spent a night in a gloriously lush hotel in Devon, he’d carefully and very tidily lined up condoms, a box of tissues, his watch, glass of water and his mobile phone. The arrangement hadn’t included, she’d noted at the time with some disappointment, the frangipani massage oil she’d bought from the spa shop that afternoon, and when she’d suggested it could be fun to give it a try, he’d looked at her as if she’d suggested some outrageous perversion and rather starchily said something about not wanting to get oil all over the sheets. How like James, she now thought in retrospect, and, once again, what a lucky escape. She rolled over in the bed and hugged the duvet round her, still scenting a deliciously evocative trace of Saul on her body. Sleep, she willed herself, sleep; and then when she woke it would be such a short time till she saw him again.

Molly opened one eye and peeked at the greyish daylight sneaking in through the pencil-thin gap she always left between her curtains. She closed the eye again and pulled the duvet over her head. Last night’s awfulness hadn’t gone away in her sleep. She’d slightly hoped it would be like a tooth when the fairy came, leaving a pound under the pillow in place of a manky molar. Anything would do to replace yesterday’s news; it didn’t have to be a present, just so long as it was anything but the thing Carly had told her. But it was still there, at the front of her brain, crowding everything else out.

She longed to stay in bed all day, see if just a bit more time would do the trick. If she kept out of sight, lay still, breathed evenly and calmly and didn’t see anyone … no, it wouldn’t change anything. You couldn’t un-know stuff you’d been told. And you couldn’t un-know the thing your gutless boyfriend (
ex
-boyfriend) hadn’t had the nerve to tell you himself. ‘I’ll have to tell you, because I’m your best friend. And everyone except you knows, and that’s not fair,’ Carly had said, sitting on the mad purple sofa in the kitchen. Had there been a bit of excitement about her? A bit of wallowing in the drama of it all? You couldn’t deny it, in all honesty. And Molly accepted that. She’d probably have felt the same.

There were sounds of life downstairs. The crew would be coming in soon after nine and she’d have to be up and looking ready to rock, like a professional. Daisy was
going to dress them all up in real clothes at last, and much as Molly would rather slob out on her bed for the whole day watching brain-dead TV, she wasn’t going to let her utter misery get in the way of the chance to be made to look
totally
fantastic and show all the smirking, gossipy school bastards that Giles had made more than just the one massive mistake in his stupid, stupid life.

Bella was not only last to bed but she was first up, too. As she lay in the bath and saw through the window the weak daylight taking its time to appear, she was reminded that autumn really was on its way, in spite of the day promising to be another hot one. And there was something else about autumn – the near-spooky early quiet outside. The birdsong of spring and early summer was missing, as if they were all conserving energy and avoiding excess and frivolous activity to maintain body strength against the cold to come. And some, of course, had gone. In spite of the continuing warmth, the house martins that made their muddy annual nests under Bella’s gable eaves had already migrated with their fledglings, knowing from the day length that they only had a certain time in which to escape to safety for the winter.

The butterflies inside Bella, though, they were back with a vengeance. As she quickly dried her hair and pulled on her most flattering jeans (Daisy had asked for
them all to be in denim for the start today) and a loose, pale-turquoise linen jumper, she could hardly keep her hands from trembling. Saul would be along in about ninety minutes for the day’s shoot. How would they be with each other in front of all the others? If they tried to be cool and suitably businesslike would everyone (or anyone) still twig that something major had changed between them? Surely they couldn’t
not
notice the erotic sparks?

And … halfway down the stairs (not first down, she could smell toast and coffee wafting up from the kitchen) she actually stopped still and clutched the banister rail at the horror of an alternative possibility: suppose Saul had had qualms and second thoughts in the night? The last thing he’d said as she got into the cab was that he was falling in love with her. Oh, please, she prayed silently, feeling like a schoolgirl with a huge and thrillingly reciprocated crush, don’t let him have woken up with a whole opposite mindset. She shook the idea out of her head – it did no good to second-guess people and drive yourself to nervous wreckage. Instead she focused on the day’s immediate basics. Tea, breakfast, making sure Molly actually woke up on the right side of midday.

‘You missed all the drama last night.’ Shirley was there ahead of her, leaning on the worktop reading the paper and waiting for the toaster to deliver.

‘Did I?’ Bella rather thought she’d had plenty of drama of her own but wasn’t about to tell that to her mother, however much Shirley would relish a full-scale, detailed fess-up. ‘Why, what happened?’

‘You haven’t seen Molly yet?’

‘No? Why? Oh God, has something happened to her?’ She felt cold, suddenly. What kind of cruel cosmic payback would it be, that something dreadful happened to Molly while her feckless, selfish mother was out having raunchy, rampant fun? Maybe even the mothers of near-adults weren’t allowed by the cruel gods to do that, even when they’d put in the full number of caring years and deserved occasional time off. ‘Tell me, quick! Is she all right?’

‘She’s sort of all right. She will be, she’s young and tough and eventually she’ll get over it, even if just now she thinks she never will,’ Shirley said. ‘But her silly arse of a boyfriend, he’ll be stuck with what he’s done for a long, long time. He’s got one of the girls at school into trouble.’