Текст книги "Seduce Me"
Автор книги: Georgia Le Carre
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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 14 страниц)
Thirty-two
‘Are you cold?’
I shake my head. I am burning up.
He releases my hand. ‘Let me call you a cab.’
‘Take me home with you.’
‘It’s over, Julie.’ His voice is flat, final. He never calls me Julie. I am Sugar to him. But you know me. I don’t give up easy. No one can accuse me of not trying.
‘Can we have sex one last time?’
He starts to shake his head.
‘Then why did you do what you did in there?’
‘Because he would have destroyed you.’
‘What makes you think he wanted me? I am white trash from the council estate.’
‘Snoop Dogg is not black. He’s Snoop Dogg. You are not Julie from the sticks but Eve from the painting.’
It gets suddenly colder. A cold that eats into bone. I hug myself. The sickness of my need for him grows, like moss on my skin. ‘Do we always remain who we are, no matter how much we try to be someone else?’
He looks at me sadly. The realization is swift. He has already walked away from me. But I won’t give up. The gypsy woman said not to. ‘Why is Adam & Eve not for sale?’
‘Because it’s yours,’ he says simply.
‘Don’t you want it?’
‘No. I want no memories of you. You can sell it. Buy a little flat like Billie’s.’
I just about stop myself from wailing. But I don’t want a little flat like Billie’s. I want to live with you in a garret in Paris or wherever. Is this how it ends? The thought is impossible to comprehend. The pain spreads from my chest outwards.
‘You’re leaving. What harm can it do for us to spend one last night together? I came to your exhibition. Don’t you want to see my dance? I practiced hard.’
He says nothing.
I wrestle with the entirely futile desire to reach a hand back into the past and change it. If only I had not been so obstinate. So hateful. ‘Please.’
‘If you keep the story going long enough, it will always end badly for all the characters,’ he says.
I know I am begging, but I don’t care. I touch his arm. ‘It will be my goodbye dance. You can’t deny me that…’
He takes his jacket off and drapes it over my shoulders. ‘All right.’ The jacket is full of the delicious warmth of his body and I snuggle into it. It is another expensive gift from Blake. We don’t speak at all during the walk to the car, in the car and on the way to the front door. He puts the car keys on the table. Smith comes to greet Vann. His fur sticks on the black material of his trouser legs. He bends and rubs his head affectionately. I walk on ahead, take his jacket off and carefully drape it over the back of a dining chair. The flat smells of flowers. There are baskets of flowers everywhere, the congratulatory envelopes still unopened.
‘Want a drink?’
‘No.’
‘I have green chartreuse.’
My eyes open wide. What? When did he buy that? It can only be a good sign. I let my lips stretch in a smile. I’m in love with a handsome devil. ‘In that case, I’ll have a glass.’
I go and sit on the sofa and watch him pour the drink out for me. His shoulders are tense. Hardly meeting my eyes, he approaches with a glass of something amber and my drink.
‘What are you drinking?’ I have never known him to drink anything but beer.
‘Brandy.’
He sits on the same sofa, but there is at least a foot between us. One lousy foot. I can scale that. I bring the drink to my lips, aware that he is now watching me, and take a small sip. Shit. It tastes like cough medicine. I cradle the glass in the palm of my hand.
‘Why did you buy it?’
‘I don’t know. I saw it on the shelf of a shop and I just had to.’
‘Just had to?’
He sighs. ‘Just had to. Do you like it?’
I wrinkle my nose. ‘No.’
He laughs softly. Not the beautiful, irresistible rumble that comes from his abdomen, but I rejoice anyway—it’s the first since I confronted him. ‘It’s OK. You have to be ninety to enjoy it.’
The moment of lightness passes very quickly.
‘Finish your brandy. I want to have a quick shower and change into something more appropriate,’ I say, standing up.
He simply looks up at me with darkened eyes. For a moment I stand looking down on him. Someone once said, love is like wearing shoes that fit perfectly. He fitted. Perfectly. From the first moment I tried him on. But by mistake I took him off and someone has accidentally put him back into the shop window and now I’m terrified someone else might come along and take him.
I reach down and touch his lower lip. He belongs to me. Mine and only mine. Another day he might have sucked my finger. This night he does nothing, simply stares at me. I feel my loss. A sense of vertigo. I straighten. I’m not beat. I haven’t even started yet. He will forgive me. I will dance and crawl for him. Tonight I will be Yehonala.
My legs begin moving. The click of my heels is loud in the silence of us. I feel his unreadable eyes on my back until I am swallowed by the angle of the wall. I will use tonight the way it is meant to be used.
I take off the sexy little strappy dress that Lana and I chose together and hang it behind the door. Then I shower and dry my body so briskly it glows. I look at myself briefly in the mirror. My tummy is still toned and flat, but now there are curves, lush curves. I shimmy my shoulders and my breasts dance prettily. I turn and look at my rounded bottom. It’s become a handful. I remember that day he kissed it and declared it sinfully sexy.
‘It makes my cock throb like mad,’ he said. The memory is clear. But to be honest, I am not obsessed by what I look like anymore. I had nothing in those days. So I obsessed about my looks and Jack. Tonight I only care that Vann will like what he sees. Tonight I am a vase. To be filled and used.
I brush my hair and leave the glossy curls carelessly tumbling down my back. Tonight will see me painting my body…for you. First, I adorn my mouth with scarlet, bracelet my body in a red bikini, and then I tie a red velvet ribbon around my neck, tight enough so it constricts my throat slightly. With a brush and black eyeliner I draw a mole to bewitch just above my top lip.
But when I look at myself in the mirror, I see nothing but the too tight ribbon, a strangely erotic gash of red. It tells its own story: the tale of a selfish, shallow girl who became a woman at the hands of a selfless man—a man who put her pleasure before his own.
I pull on the new thigh-length black boots that I picked up from Camden Town and tie the black ribbons that hold them in place.
Now we will see if what he has taught me is enough to seduce the man I want.
I slip on a toweling robe and cross the silent flat.
Thirty-three
Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. —Matthew, 3:19
I stand in front of the door of the master bedroom, left slightly ajar. Take a deep breath and push it open. The lights are dimmed. He has taken off his bow tie, opened some buttons, and is lying in bed waiting for me. He turns his face to watch me. For a moment I am floored. He has made the bed with the red satin sheets that I ordered.
I close the door and flick on the fourth switch from the left. A spotlight illuminates the pole. His eyes swing to the pole then back to me as I walk to the stereo system. My CD is still there, on top, untouched. I slip it in and walk towards the bed. His gaze is locked on me. I was sleeping before he came. I am awake now. Unsmiling, I let my robe slip from me and fall around my boots.
There: there: that leap of desire. He wants me. That is what I needed to see. That live ember in the dying ashes.
The music comes on. El tango de Roxanne.
First the piano then the dramatic wails of the violin. A loud clap. More melodious violins. Then the voice, more raspy than sandpaper snarls: The man who falls in love with her. First there is desire. Then. Suspicion. Then. Anger. Betrayal. Jealousy, yes, jealousy will drive you, will drive you, will drive you MAD! I begin to walk towards the pole, my stride as strong and sleek as a Spanish dancer. A temptress.
I reach the pole and, as the throaty rasp roars Rooxannnnne I execute a perfect cartwheel and grasping the pole hard, throw myself into such an energetic low spin that it makes my hair fly into my face. I land on my legs open wide, almost in a crawl and facing the pole. Flipping backwards, the palms of my hands flat on the floor, I use my legs shaped into a V to hook and pull myself back onto the pole. With both hands I begin to climb it.
You don’t have to put on that red light.
Every time my hands move up to grasp the pole and pull myself upwards, my head and neck dip downwards like a ripened stalk of wheat in the wind. The movement, I know, I have seen, is elegant and full of beauty. It is like ballroom dancing—all the grace comes from the dips the dancer makes before he takes his next step.
You don’t have to wear that dress tonight.
I get to the top as the singer’s scratchy howl fills the air…Roxannne. I squeeze the steel between my thighs, the cold metal pushed into my pussy, and high in the air above him, I fling my hands out and let my body fall backwards into the air, my spine straight, my head upside down, my hair a waterfall of curls.
You don’t have to sell your body to the night.
For the first time since I began on the pole our eyes meet, lock. It is dark where he is, but what I see makes the breath leave my chest. There is a look in the rebellious Barrington’s eyes that is starving hungry, but something else too. Something dark and raw. An intense desire blazes forth that cannot be resisted and refuses all attempts to rein it. Any effort to do so will bring insanity.
His eyes tell me I am a goddess. That he had not expected such intensity, such strength or such skill. His eyes move away from mine, boldly roam my body. Slowly, deliberately I pull my body upwards and I stop thinking about him. I concentrate only on the music while I make love to the pole.
His eyes upon your face.
I twine myself around the pole and, with the same sinuous movements a snake makes, slip and slide down the pole until I sink to my knees with the pole against my back.
His lips caress your skin.
I stand and, holding onto the pole seductively, with pointed toe, high step around it. Just when he thinks I am going to push my ass up into the air and sway seductively, I flip my body over and touch the floor before grasping the metal tightly with both hands and lifting my legs clean off the ground. My body is now in a spread-eagled position perpendicular to the pole. Held purely by the strength of my hands I start spinning slowly around the pole, my legs held as far apart as the hands.
It’s more than I can stand.
As the music builds and picks up speed I increase my speed, the air rushing into my face, my legs scissoring the air, the knees bending, the legs moving upwards, all the while spinning faster and faster and suddenly I am upside down and still spinning like a top.
Why does my heart cry?
A whole orchestra of violins and cellos goes crazy in the most dramatic and sweeping ballad of the entire piece. I execute a turn with a bent knee and maneuvering myself upright on the pole begin the journey up the pole, the same deliberate dip and rise.
Just don’t deceive me.
At the top I prepare for the finale. I split my legs wide. Hold that spread position, with only the tiny strip of wet red net fabric to cover my opening, and wait for the perfect movement. When it comes I loosen my grip and begin my free fall head first. It is like the death drop. Even over the music I hear him gasp.
And please believe me when I say I love.
Two feet from the floor I squeeze my thighs on the pole and halt my drop. I am face down and perpendicular to the floor, held by my strong thigh muscles and the strength of one hand, the other outstretched over my head. At the sudden clash of cymbals I release my hold on the pole and fall flat on my face to the ground. Silence. Then. Guitar. Violin.
Slowly, I begin to roll towards him, pausing every time I am on my side. Like Cleopatra rolling out of a carpet towards Mark Anthony. The music grows and grows. Every movement I make is deliberately submissive, designed to captivate, like the animal that offers its throat to its mate. I reach the foot of the bed.
The timing is perfect. Many voices mingle to form the crescendo.
Roxannnne, Roxaannnne…
I am panting. Not just with exertion, but with need and desire. He appears at the edge of the bed and wrapping his large artist’s hands around my ribcage pulls me up, very much as one would do a mermaid from the ocean, onto the bed.
‘I need to get my mouth on that wet, unbelievably delicious pussy of yours.’
‘How do you know I’m wet?’ I pant, on my back.
‘Because, my little puss in boots,’ he says very softly, sliding my knickers down my legs and dangling the little red thing, ‘I saw this…’ And clearly I see the wet patch in the gusset. A small shiver goes through me. ‘And became very hungry for pussy butter.’ He goes to put his mouth between my thighs, but I palm his throat, as he had done to me on our first night.
‘No, this one’s on me,’ I say, and lifting myself up change positions. I straddle him; sit on his chest, on his good shirt. It is not sex, it is attention, it is flattery—that is what no living man can get enough of.
I shift down and unbutton his trousers. He is wearing white briefs.
‘White underpants? You know I can’t resist you in white underpants,’ I breathe.
A lone pulse beats in his temple. God, how could I have been so stupid? All the while my real feelings for him were staring at me. All the while I was falling deeper and deeper and my own stubborn stupidity kept me focused on Jack.
I bend forward and take him into the hot wet cave of my mouth, and suck the shaft in so deep there is nowhere else for him to go. What could he do but buckle and explode deep in my throat? Slowly I begin to unbutton his shirt. Expose the warm skin.
‘You blew my mind…’ he says, and expertly unclasps my bra. Sweat has glued it to my skin. He peels it off and my breasts pop out. He rolls the nipples between his fingers. ‘But I still need to get my mouth on those voluptuous pussy lips.’
I rise to my knees, straddle his chest, and push my crotch towards him. My pussy is so tantalizingly close to his chin he can surely smell my arousal. I look down at him. ‘What? These old, swollen things?’
He eyes my crotch greedily. Inside my boots, my toes curl with anticipation.
‘They do look a little…erm…used.’
‘Used and bitten and ravished. Three times a week.’
‘Come and sit on my face.’
I walk on my knees up to his mouth and suspend my sex over his mouth, the inner folds exposed, throbbing, and silently screaming for release. I am buzzing inside. Secretions of lust leak from me as if I am a faulty tap.
‘Don’t be gentle with her,’ I command.
He flicks his tongue out and I raise my hips out of reach. He grabs my hips and pulls me down onto his mouth.
‘Ohhh...’ My head falls back. The silky warmth of that dexterous mouth. The suction. The suction. It is killing me. I begin to sizzle inside. My fingers grip the headboard as if my life depends on it.
‘Oh God. Oh Vann…’ And I can no longer hold on. I grind into his teeth as the orgasm overwhelms me, my skin tingling, my mind a white flare.
‘Too soon,’ he growls and tumbles me over. He sits up. ‘Onto all fours.’ I right myself and obey instantly, my inner slut mewling. I hear the sound of the foil.
‘Don’t.’
He pauses.
‘I’m on the pill.’
For a second I feel his naked head against my soaked opening and moan and then my cunt becomes a sheath for his cock, as he grabs my hips with both hands and ruts and rides us both home.
Fucked, my cunt in a spasm, I fall forward and hear his ragged breath as he falls on top of me. Our bodies are slippery. I grip my muscles hard to keep his seed inside me but it trickles out helplessly.
‘God you’re beautiful.’
‘I don’t need to be wooed.’ My voice is hoarse, a stranger’s, my breathing viciously quick. ‘I need to be taken. Again and again.’
And that is what he does. Again and again. Until the night sky becomes pale and we are both so exhausted we curl up against each other and sleep.
Thirty-four
First gather your facts, then distort them at your leisure.
–Mark Twain
I watch him sleeping.
The lines that held his face so tightly last night are all relaxed. He looks so beautiful I want to weep. He opens his eyes. They are soft and slumberous and not yet attuned to the world. He whispers my name.
‘Julie.’
A smile ghosts my lips.
For an instant there is silent communication between us. An odd moment that we are both caught in it… A string of connection—like the first time our eyes met. When I was a bridesmaid and he the best man and he winked at me across a crowded church. Then he deliberately breaks the moment and, turning away, sits up. He pushes his hair away from his forehead. I squeeze my eyes shut. I won’t give up. I open my eyes and, reaching out a hand, touch his back. He stiffens.
‘Julie…’ he starts to say.
I sit up, the sheet falling away from my body, and clamp my hand across his mouth. His eyes travel down to my bare breasts. ‘Before you say anything else I want to show you something.’
He blinks and nods.
‘Thank you.’
We get dressed, get into his car and drive to Kilburn. I ask him to stop outside my house. We go up the stairs and down the corridor without exchanging a single word. My stomach is in knots. I am so nervous I feel like throwing up. In front of my door I stop and put my key into it. As soon as I open the door the stale smell rushes out, engulfing us. I look up at Vann. His face tells me everything I need to know. Shock. Disgust.
‘This is my house.’
He swallows. I take him to the living room. My mother is too shocked to stand or speak.
‘Vann, this is my mother. Mum, meet Vann.’
Vann moves forwards and takes her soft swollen hand in his.
‘Come,’ I say to Vann and take him upstairs to my room. I unlock the door. ‘This is my room.’
He follows me into my scrupulously clean bedroom. I turn around and watch him close the door, lean with his back to it, and look around him. His face is carefully blank.
I point towards the wall with the bits of Blue tack still sticking on it. ‘That wall there used to be full of photos of Jack, some even blown up to poster size, but I took them all down the day before yesterday. I wanted to tear them all into tiny pieces, throw them away and pretend I had never been so stupid, but when it came to it I didn’t have the heart. It would have meant that I wasted so many years of my life. They’re in that drawer.’
I point to the lowest drawer of my dresser. His eyes follow my finger. He seems bemused.
Here goes. Total honestly.
‘I kissed Jack on Friday.’
That makes his eyes jump back to me. The cobra rears its head fiercely.
‘I called him up, went to his house and asked him to kiss me. And he’s a good kisser, I’ll give him that, but you know what? I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing.’ I look pleadingly into his eyes. ‘Vann, you’re the one I think of all day, you’re the one I respond to even when I don’t want to. You’re the one I love. That crush I had on Jack was based on hot air. It was just a fantasy created by a lonely, terribly, terribly unhappy girl.’
He opens his mouth to say something, but I hold my hand up.
‘There are other things you don’t know about me. I’m not a good friend to Lana. When you met me I was jealous of her and I hated her, or at least I thought I did, but the real truth is I hated myself. I hated everything about me.
‘Remember you once asked me about my dad and I didn’t want to talk about him? Well, my dad was a drunk. “You are nothing but an animal,” my mother would sneer as he walked through the door, and it would all kick off. He would hit my mother and my brother, but never me. He loved me. Sometimes when he was very drunk he would fall on the couch and lift one arm so I could climb in and the arm would come back down. It was warm and nice in there.
‘But one day after a particularly furious bust-up my mother packed a suitcase and we left home while he was still asleep. They temporarily housed us in a bed and breakfast on Cromwell Street. It’s gone now. They pulled it down and built something else, but then it was full of other broken people like us; prostitutes, asylum seekers, single mothers and their children.
‘We were having breakfast when my father walked through the door. He was swaying. His eyes were large, glassy and haunted, a drunk’s eyes. “I’ve come for Julie,” he said. My mother did a strange thing. She looked at me with cold, strange eyes and tight lips.
“Let her choose. Do you want to stay with me or go with your father?” I looked at her. At how cold her eyes were and I said, “Stay with mummy.” My father turned around, stumbled and walked away. I think I regretted my decision before he was out of the door, but I didn’t do anything about it. I never saw him again, until I was fifteen and we heard he died in a ditch. I’ve never forgiven myself for that decision. I should have gone with him. He needed me. She didn’t. She had my brother. She would have gone on just fine without me.’
‘It’s not your fault, Sugar. He was a grown man.’
‘And one more thing. Don’t think you’ll have changed my life by giving me that painting or that you can wash your hands of me that easily, because I’ll never sell that painting. It will be with me till the day I die. If you really want to change my life I suggest you take me with you wherever you go.’
‘Will you come with me to Paris?’
I am so shocked my mouth falls open. ‘Say that again,’ I whisper.
‘Come with me to Paris.’
‘Really?’
He smiles.
‘So you do care for me.’
He puts out a hand, pulls me towards his hard body, and starts kissing my neck. ‘Care?’ he murmurs. ‘How blind can you be? I’m crazy about you, Sugar. I have been since that first night. It was a knife in my heart to know that all the time you were with me you wished you were with him.’
‘My poor darling. I’m sorry I was so cruel. Sometimes I would feel it, those invisible strings pulling me towards you, but I was so insanely obstinate, I’d break them by mentioning Jack. The truth is I was only reminding myself because I had forgotten him.’
‘I even started to hate the guy.’
‘Will you ever forgive me?’
‘There is nothing to forgive. I love you.’
It feels as if my heart is going to burst out of my chest. His lips trail delicious kisses along my neck. ‘I can be a bit slow on the uptake. So,’ I pull my neck away from him and look into his eyes. ‘I want to know everything. Tell me what you felt from the first moment we met.’
‘When I saw you for the first time in the church, I could hardly believe my eyes. I had spent years travelling the world looking for something that would fire my blood and bring my canvas to life, and there you were totally unaware of your beauty. I had already decided to ask you to dance when I got an even better opportunity thrown in my path.
‘It was like fate saying, ‘here have this.’ But when I came to find you to say goodbye, I heard you refer to me as the son of a servant, and I thought, maybe I had been wrong. I certainly never expected you to turn up, so when I heard your voice on my intercom it shocked me. I thought to myself, play this cool Vann. And I did until I gave you a forkful of my mash and saw the way you ate it, I knew then you were starving, for food, for attention, for love. From that moment on there was no more resisting you. That night I was not teaching you how to be Yehonala. I was Yehonala and you were the Emperor. I had one night with which to impress and captivate you.’
‘You sure did that. I was astonished. The things you made me feel. You made sex beautiful.’
He chuckles. ‘The beautiful way you owned that pole last night?’
I am suddenly shy. ‘That was a bit brazen, wasn’t it?’
‘Totally.’ He grins. ‘I’ll be wanting a repeat performance tonight, by the way.’
‘You have to deserve it,’ I say with mock severity.
‘Let me see. How about my agent told me last night that I’ve got a Getty Center commission for a series of paintings in the same vein?’
‘Oh! Wow! I’m so proud of you.’
‘I couldn’t have done it without you, Sugar.’
‘Vann?’
‘Mnnnnn.’
‘Who is Monfort?’
He sighs heavily.
‘You are afraid of him, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Only a fool with nothing to lose would not fear them. They know no boundaries.’
‘Why is Blake not scared of him then?’
‘Because Blake is one of them. In the strict hierarchy of the brotherhood Blake is far more powerful than Monfort, but because Blake is moving away from the agenda he is open to challenges. His love for Lana also means that he has become vulnerable. It is how they get everybody—find a weak spot, exploit it. But Blake walked away the winner last night.’
‘But you told Lana, it is her love for him that is saving him.’
‘With or without Blake the agenda will be implemented, but because of Lana and his love for her, he has discovered the humanity that he lost to the brotherhood.’
‘What is the agenda?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘It has to do with the deliberate poisoning of the earth and the extinction of mankind, hasn’t it?’
For an instant he looks surprised. ‘Lana’s diary?’ he hazards.
I nod. ‘Why? Don’t they, their children and their grandchildren have to live on this earth too?’
‘The answer is staring you in the face. They always hide everything in plain sight. Think. What is the one movement that is more inexorable and unstoppable than anything else? It pervades the entertainment industry, politics, military ‘breakthroughs’ and scientific circles. No matter who you are or where you are you will be exposed to it. You see it in commercials, music videos, movies, and hear about it being discussed at the highest levels.’
I frown. ‘I don’t know.’
‘You watch music videos all the time, don’t you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Lady Gaga, Will I Am, Jay-Z, Beyonce, Rihanna… What do all their slick videos have in common? What do they glamorize?’
In my old life I would have said, awesome designer clothes, catchy tunes, fantastic dance moves, and brilliant choreography. The new Sugar knows: it is not those things.
I shake my head.
‘Don’t give up so easily, Sugar. This is a little test to see how successful the controllers have been.’
The clue must lie in the names he has given me. I try to think with the destruction of the planet in mind. Lady Gaga coming out of an egg, Beyonce wearing riot police gear, Will I Am with his robot themed videos and Rhianna flashing the one eye symbol—come to think of it all of them flash that.
‘The coming police state and robots?’
‘Bravo to the brotherhood.’ There is no joy in his face. ‘The coming superhuman is disguised as a courageous and exciting project, but its true implications are vast and horrifying. Just like splitting the atom can go both ways. There is no desire or quest to ‘evolve’ all humankind. If there was then the one percent of the population wouldn’t own more than half of the world’s wealth.
‘The true aim is to alter the human genome to survive under a toxic sky, as two species; the new homo-superiors, in reality, the homo-predators and what is left of a successful depopulation strategy—the genetically engineered and chipped slaves. The agenda in a nutshell is the quest for godhood, to live for hundreds of years and rule with unchallenged domination.’
‘Do we do nothing at all about it, then?’
‘What do you want to do, Sugar? Tell everyone? They would only brand you a fruitcake or a conspiracy nut. It is as I told Lana: what you fight you become. Are the Inquisitors better than the witches they burnt? The real battle is inside you. If every single person on earth refused to lift a gun, propel a drone, hurt another human being in the name of democracy, or ‘freedom’, or whatever shit they call their murderous ways, this world would be a paradise.’
Finally, I understand the confusion and vulnerability Lana had shown in her notes. I am afraid. Hold me, I want to say, but I don’t because I don’t want to taint my happiness. No, no, I won’t react now. I will think of it all tomorrow. I can unravel it then. Tomorrow is another day. Now I will just love this man with all my heart.
Still, I must have looked mournful for he caresses my cheek, and says, ‘The only thing we can really do is live our life to its fullest. We may be among the last of the humans to live and die on this world.’
I smile softly up at him, relieved that he is not Blake. He doesn’t have to constantly watch his back. Lana is braver than I. I don’t know if I have the strength to risk my man to machinations of sinister men like Monfort.
In the car I call Lana. She sounds sleepy. ‘Don’t go swimming alone after you turn thirty,’ I tell her.
For a moment there is silence. Then she gets it and there is bubble of laughter. ‘Oh! wonderful. I’m so pleased. Is he with you now?’
‘Yup.’
‘OK, tell me everything later, but we go out to dinner next week.’
‘That will be brilliant.’
‘Speak to you soon, babe.’
‘Lana?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I love you, you know.’
‘We were always meant to be sisters.’
