The Perfect 10 (28 page)

Cagney eyes the floor nervously. It is so clean it sparkles,
and he worries about the soles of his shoes, and the compost he has just walked through.

‘Please don’t worry about your shoes, Mr James. The cleaner comes every morning; it will give her something to do if somebody makes a mess.’

Cagney stares at Sophia Young’s back and wonders how she knew.

‘Besides, the compost is all my fault – I am in the middle of moving my delphiniums. Do you know a lot about gardening, Mr James?’

‘Nothing. Other than it’s a dirty job but someone’s got to do it.’

‘Quite right too. Time was I didn’t know the difference between a poppy and a pansy, but I thought it prudent to learn. With a garden that big, and nothing else to do, it seemed wise to use it to keep myself entertained. But I do worry that it is turning me into an old woman before my time. I mean, most girls my age go clubbing and get drunk, and I am planting snowdrops and daffodils in time for spring.’ Sophia Young spins around to face Cagney and smiles a brilliant smile.

Cagney inhales sharply.

‘But then I have never been one for getting drunk anyway. I have always thought girls who drink let themselves down socially. I know that must sound old-fashioned, but my gardening doesn’t make me say stupid things, or be sick, or have a hangover, so the way I see it, they may think they are having more fun, but I laugh last. And women who drink, well, they always seem so boisterous …’

Cagney’s mind is whirring. He has a feeling he is being played like an old guitar, but he doesn’t know how to stop it, and he isn’t sure he wants to. Sophia Young stands staring at him from the other side of the kitchen, as her fingertips dance on the kitchen surfaces and the mugs she has magicked
out of a cupboard, and the tea bags she drops into them, all the while looking straight at him.

‘Do sit down,’ she says firmly, but with a smile.

Cagney walks as lightly as he can to a Philippe Starck chair and sits as comfortably as the moulded perspex seat allows.

‘I know what you must be thinking – why daffodils, for goodness’ sake? It might not be grand, but I want the garden to be simple next year, but still riotous with colour. Not dainty or fussy – bold … and bright! I’m planting crocuses too. I know it’s absurd! And I am sure I will get some looks from the old busybodies around here, but I don’t care. Sugar?’

‘I’m sweet enough.’

‘Is soy milk OK? We switched months ago, because of Sheldon’s blood pressure. I actually prefer it now, to skimmed milk at least. It is very good for you, Mr James. It fights all kinds of disease.’ Sophia widens her eyes as she smiles to encourage him like a child.

‘If you soy so,’ Cagney hears himself saying. He knows that, in any other company, he would have gone without rather than drink anything with soy in it … more than that, he would have got up and walked out. Instead he makes a ‘word’ joke. Did he leave his shame in the car?

‘So …’ Sophia Young walks elegantly across her kitchen and places Cagney’s tea on a Conran coaster, before moving behind him and sitting herself at the top of the table, so that Cagney has to push back his precarious plastic chair and shift himself uncomfortably around to face her, while still trying to appear relaxed. ‘What does Sheldon want from you, Mr James? Does he think you might catch me in the act? Do you have a camera ready to snap snap snap me being a naughty girl?’

Sophia Young’s lips turn up at the ends into a slight smile.
Cagney feels something stiffen. Sophia flicks her hair, places her elbow languidly on the table, and cups her chin, focusing entirely on Cagney in a swirl of attentive glamour that he is starting to find intoxicating.

‘The problem for you, Mr James, and for Sheldon too, who wants rid of me now I know, is that I am just not that naughty a girl …’

Cagney crosses his legs. Sophia’s eyes don’t leave his.

‘I mean, we all want to be naughty, sometimes, but I don’t get the opportunity. I love Sheldon, I really do, but he has lost all interest in me, Mr James. I can’t remember the last time we were … together, if you understand … ?’

Sophia widens her eyes at Cagney, who nods once.

‘I mean, I’m sure that isn’t the story he has given you. You have had “the handyman story”, as ridiculous as it is. But, Mr James, you should meet our handyman – he is a lovely boy, but even the idea that I might let him … touch me … like that …’ Sophia lowers her eyes, and raises them again, looking at Cagney from below pale eyelids and long thin clean eyelashes. ‘He is just a boy, Mr James. Cagney.’ Sophia reaches over with her right hand and runs a line along the back of Cagney’s hand with her index finger.

‘You’re not exactly mutton,’ Cagney says, in an even tone.

‘I know, I know,’ Sophia smiles, and removes her finger. ‘But I don’t want to play with boys my own age, Mr James. I like real men …’

Sophia smiles at Cagney, and Cagney smiles back. Sophia giggles lightly.

‘I wonder how many women have fallen victim to that smile, Mr James,’ she whispers as she leans forward. There are mere inches between their faces.

A spade crashes noisily in the courtyard, and Cagney jumps in his plastic chair, which slides to the right on the shiny floor, and he jerks forward to stay upright, slamming
the table with his thighs, sending his tea flying in the air, raining down on his lap in hot splashes.

‘Fuck fuck fuck!’ Cagney jumps up and down, trying to pull his trousers away from his crotch, as Sophia springs up and unbuckles his belt. ‘What the hell?’ Cagney looks down at her nimble fingers, aghast.

‘It’ll burn and stain, take them off,’ Sophia orders, as she whips his trousers down to his ankles.

Cagney looks at his boxer shorts in horror, but thankfully the tea, although burning his thighs, has cooled his ardour. He breathes three times in quick succession.

‘Take them off!’ Sophia demands again, but this time more forcefully, and Cagney complies. ‘Now take off your shoes.’

‘Why?’ Cagney demands, coming to his senses. She is playing him for a fool. Blonde manipulation – he should have seen it a mile away!

‘Because you need to go upstairs and clean up and dry off, and I’ll bring your trousers up to you when I’ve got the stain out.’

‘Nope, I’ll be fine. Just give me my trousers back.’

‘Mr James, don’t be ridiculous. Go upstairs and I will sort it out.’

‘It is you who is being ridiculous if you think I am going anywhere in this house without my trousers on!’

‘But I am staying here, you arrogant fool – what do you think is going to happen? And I resent your implication. I am a married woman!’ Sophia has raised her voice but Cagney still thinks he can detect a suppressed smile in her tone. She is playing with him, the way she has played with all the men that Sheldon has sent here before him.

‘You weren’t so married five minutes ago, angel, when you were batting those icy blues at me and stroking my hand.’

Sophia Young stops suddenly, and her face drops. Cagney sees her eyes glaze, and fill with water. Oh shit, she’s going to cry. She is good.

‘Here, take them!’ Cagney lets go of the trouser leg he was grasping on to.

Sophia’s perfectly pink lower lip starts to tremble.

‘Where do I go? What room, what room?’

Sophia Young takes a breath, and smoothes herself down, regaining her composure, and Cagney breathes a sigh of relief.

‘Up one flight of stairs, the second door on the right, the master bedroom, you’ll find a pair of Sheldon’s jogging trousers on the side of the bed, you can slip those on until these are dry.’

‘Right. OK. Thanks very much.’

Cagney hurries out of the kitchen, round a corner and another corner and up a vast flight of stairs, past a piano in a hallway to the second door on the right, into a huge cold grey bedroom. The steely wash is broken by a single fuchsia cushion in the middle of the bed, which sits in the centre of the room, raised on a platform. His eyes scan the room for jogging trousers, but it is spotless; there are no clothes anywhere. Lifeless, soulless, joyless. Cagney’s eyes dart from a grey leather armchair and back to the bed again, to an antique table by some French doors, to a distressed armoire, but he sees nothing resembling trousers, or even a dressing gown. He hears the sound of feet moving quickly down the corridor and Sophia Young bursts into the room.

‘I can’t find any trousers.’

‘You have to get out!’ Sophia stage-whispers through clenched teeth, moving towards him and spinning him round.

‘What? Why? I will, but I can’t find any trousers …’

‘Now! You have to leave now!’

‘What? Why?’

‘Sheldon is home. He can’t see you up here with no trousers! You have to leave.’

‘Bunny? Are you in the bath?’ a man’s voice calls up the stairs.

‘Yes, I’ve just got in. Pour me a glass of wine and bring it up, won’t you, Papa Bear?’

‘Papa Bear? Bunny? This house is twisted!’ Cagney looks appalled, but Sophia just utters a tiny shriek and pushes Cagney towards the French doors. ‘You have got to be joking! You want me to jump? Have you lost your mind, lady? Besides, Sheldon won’t be able to say anything, because he knows me, he paid me, he won’t be able to do anything without letting on to you that he has hired me!’

‘And you were supposed to let me give you a blow job, were you?’

Sophia’s eyes widen as if to say, ‘Explain that!’

‘What? Did somebody get a blow job, and I missed it?’ Cagney is confused.

‘Well, Sheldon doesn’t know that, does he?’ Sophia spits back.

‘Why in God’s name would he think that?’ Cagney is still confused.

‘Because I’m going to tell him I did, unless you get out right now!’

Cagney shakes his head violently from side to side, mouthing, ‘No, no, no. Why would you do that?’

‘Because I don’t want him to know that I know that he hired you! This is the last time he messes with me! Now would you just leave?’

Sophia throws open the French doors and the wind whistles into the bedroom from a large balcony, and the curtains rise up and the material slaps the air noisily.

‘Rabbit?’ Sheldon calls from the bottom of the stairs.

‘Big Bear?’ Sophia calls back, pushing Cagney outside.

‘Which white?’

‘The Chablis!’

Cagney stands on the balcony pulling on his shoes, in his boxer shorts and a black roll-neck.

‘At least give me my trousers!’

‘I threw them in the bin!’ Sophia spits through clenched teeth.

‘Well, I am not climbing down a goddamn trellis in my boxer shorts. I am not a teenager!’

‘Trellis? What trellis?’ Sophia spins round as she thinks she hears footsteps outside, but a perfectly preened cat pads into the bedroom instead, and Sophia breathes out a perfumed sigh of relief.

‘Well, if there is no fucking trellis, angel, how the hell am I supposed to get down?’

‘Jump.’

Cagney laughs a derisive snort, as Sophia looks at him blankly. ‘Jump?’

‘Yes. Jump.’ Sophia nods her head as if she were explaining it to the slowest child in the class.

‘We’re a storey up!’

‘So?’ Sophia stands with her hands on her hips, her chin jutting out angrily, her teeth clenched in rage.

‘Oh, you are a peach, Mrs Young, you know that? Now I see why poor old Sheldon wants rid of the bunny!’

‘Oh, whatever, just get the fuck out!’

‘Nice language. You are one foul-mouthed rabbit!’

‘Mr James, if you don’t get out, right now, I am going to rip my shirt and go downstairs and tell my husband that you attacked me, and believe me when I say that he will take you for every penny you have! He might not want me any more but I am sure as hell still his property and he doesn’t let anybody piss on his property, do you understand
me, you cheap private dick? He’ll close you down. He’ll take your business and he’ll crush it …’

Cagney stares at Sophia Young in disbelief. The plunge pool in the Alps has frozen over, and he recognises that hair colour for what it really is – arctic blonde. Sophia pushes him to the edge of the balcony and he allows himself to be pushed. She points.

‘It’s not so bad. You’re going to jump into the pool, at least.’

Cagney glances down quickly, to see a large kidney-shaped swimming pool, icy cold and gleaming. He will freeze. His limbs will fall off in the ice.

‘Jump!’

‘Will I f –’

‘Rabbit! I’m coming!’

‘Jump!’

‘Fine!’

Cagney puts one foot over the railings, and then the other, holding on to the handrail behind him. He feels something sticky against his hand, and moves it off to inspect it, when he feels Sophia Young’s manicured hand shoved into the small of his back, and he flies off the balcony.

He hears her say ‘I’ll call you’ before the French doors slam shut behind him. He opens his mouth to scream but his belly slaps the icy water before anything comes out, and his vocal cords freeze on impact.

Dripping wet, shivering, with blue lips and fingers, and smelling powerfully of chlorine and faintly of cat urine, Cagney pushes open the door of Screen Queen, to be confronted by the worst possible sight imaginable. Sunny Weston. Of all the video shops in all of Richmond, why does she have to be in this one? Especially when he is soaking wet … and especially when he isn’t wearing any trousers.