The Blue Guide (8 page)

On the way back into central London, I have the driver stop by Liverpool Street Station, and we walk through into the plaza behind it, where office workers are sitting eating packed lunches or takeaway sushi in the sunshine. I point out the sculptures dotted around the place.

‘An open-air art gallery,' I say. ‘Free to everyone. And you can not only look but touch. Neat, huh?'

We stroll around Exchange Square for a few minutes, looking at the various pieces. Paco confesses that he's not wildly into art, that he's much more at ease with music, which he claims is in his blood. But he is much taken by a voluptuous reclining figure on the east side of the plaza, hips swathed in fabric but otherwise naked: the
Broadgate Venus
.

‘I don't like skinny woman,' he muses as he admires the figure. ‘Slim, yes, but a few curves are essential.'

I remind him that he's been photographed on the arms of some of the world's most emaciated women.

‘Ah yes,' he smiles. ‘My supermodel phase. But you'll notice it didn't last long. I was just making a name for myself. My agent encouraged me, said it would get my name about. And he was right. But it wasn't a whole lot of fun. I prefer women who love life, and that includes good wine, good food and making love. Making love spontaneously,' he adds, ‘not because of some cocaine buzz.'

He pauses, looks at me thoughtfully. ‘Like I said,' he continues, ‘the last thing on my mind was being unfaithful to Carlotta. But when I came in and saw you on the bathroom floor, when I saw how you sent yourself into some kind of delirium, I knew I had to have you.' He looks deadly serious as he speaks. ‘You are, in many ways, very similar to Carlotta. Carlotta is an extraordinarily passionate woman.'

We fuck again, on the way back to his hotel, this time with me astride him, riding his lithe brown hips. The subject of what we are going to do when Carlotta is back – whether this is to be an ongoing thing – isn't broached, and when he drops me off on my street on his way to the airport to fetch her in the very same limo in which we have been screwing like fury, I have no idea what is going to happen next.

At home I listen to my phone messages as I shower: there are two from potential new clients, enquiring about availability later in the year, and one from my best mate.

‘Ally,' I hear her say through the jets of water that are pummelling my shoulders. ‘It's Jess. I am, needless to say, absolutely creaming my pants to find out how it went with that gorgeous hunk of a flamenco dancer. So call me back the very second you get this. Love ya. Bye.'

I climb out of the shower, dry myself with a towel
and slip on my silk kimono. Part of me is dying to talk to Jess, to tell her what's been going on in my life. She was there for me when I was on my big downer about Daniel, and I even told her about the incident with Kip; in fact, we had a good laugh about it over a bottle of plonk or three at Gordon's Wine Bar one girly night. She's the first person I turn to when I need an ear, or a shoulder.

Yet I can't bring myself to pick up the phone and dial her number. I'm not ashamed, as such, but I am confused, and I'm thinking she might confuse me still more. Or rather, I'm thinking that she will raise blue murder when she hears what's happened, will demand that I put an end to it straightaway.

She's right, of course, but I don't want to hear what's right. I want to feel Paco's hands on me again, feel his dick parting me like a ripe fruit, surging into me. Just one more time, I say to myself. I'll just do it one more time, and then I'll stop. And in a couple of weeks he'll be gone and I'll forget the whole thing. It will have been no more than a strange but beautiful dream.

IT'S MIDDAY, AND
I'm standing in the lobby of Paco's hotel, waiting for Carlotta to come down. My hands are shaking a little, and I've half a mind to leave a message that I'm in the bar and go and calm myself with a few stiff vodkas, when she appears. Her hair is freshly washed and she has on a leaf-green halter-neck dress and gold stilettos with straps that wind around her shapely ankles like those of ballet shoes. Yet she looks morose. I know the reason for that: Paco told me on the phone that she didn't get the part she was auditioning for.

He called last night, his business-like tone indicating that he was with her. He would be in rehearsals all the following day, he said, but would like me to take her out for the afternoon, to cheer her up after her ‘bad luck'. It was strange to be talking to each other in such a detached formal way after the night and day we'd just spent together, and I felt my first pang of jealousy towards Carlotta, for being the one who would get to share his bed that night. For being the one who shared his bed at all, I reminded myself, since he had not conferred that privilege on me the previous night despite having just fucked me on the chair right next to it.

I tried not to give myself over to the luxury of self-pity: I'd known the score, I told myself, when I offered to bring myself off in front of him a second time, and I couldn't complain now. To ward off the return of the blues that it had taken me months to dispel, I made a
hot chocolate and busied myself preparing some tours arranged for the weeks after Paco and Carlotta's departure. There was life, I reminded myself, after him.

Just as I was getting into bed, my phone beeped. I checked the screen: number withheld. I clicked on the message icon and read the text:

ENJOY TOMORROW. WILL BE THINKING OF YOU. SEE YOU SOON, AND THANKS FOR A GREAT DAY. P X.

Unable to resist a smile, I lay back, let my unbelted kimono fall open and, clutching my pussy with one hand, tapped a message back with the other.

THINKING OF YOU TOO. SEE YOU WHEN? A X.

Now, fifteen hours later, he still hasn't replied. Carlotta's standing in front of me, blue eyes looking washed out and more than a little jaded with life. I'm shocked to find how easy it is to face up to her, now she's here, given what I've done. She looks so young, so unworldly – in spite of the glamour-puss get-up – as if she inhabits a planet where people don't go behind each other's backs, don't keep secrets from one another.

‘How about a little retail therapy?' I say with a cheery smile. ‘Paco said you love shopping.'

She shrugs, lights a cigarette. I think of a sulky schoolgirl, the sixth-form rebel, the one always caught behind the bike shed with the boys. There's something so intrinsically naughty about Carlotta, somehow coexisting with that unworldly air. Or maybe not. Maybe what Paco told me about their first fuck on the clifftop is giving me preconceptions. After all, what chance did this little thing have against the force of his will? Maybe she's just been caught up in the wake of this human whirlwind. I wonder if she's got any idea what she's taken on.

‘I was sorry to hear about the audition,' I say in the taxi on the way to Selfridges. ‘It must be difficult.'

‘What difficult?' She's staring out of the window, but there's suddenly a combative look in those eyes.

I hesitate, but it's too late, and she's onto me, turning in her seat and fixing with me her penetrating blue glare.

‘It must be difficult to be failure when Paco so big success, no?'

I look out of the window in turn; there's nothing to be said to that. If that's the frame of mind she's in, though, I'm not standing for it, money or no money. We'll do a quick tour of the designer floor and then I'll drop her back at the hotel and she can wallow in self-pity to her heart's content. I'm a tour guide, not a nanny to a moody child.

We've pulled up at the side of Selfridges, and I lead Carlotta through the high-street clothes department with its throbbing rock soundtrack, and through the beauty hall and perfumery, to the lifts. On the second floor we get out and begin to make our way through the designer clothes concessions.

I may not be wealthy but I pride myself on having a bit of an eye for labels, and on sussing out what people might like, and when I lead Carlotta straight to Versace, I sense her thawing a bit. She's in her element here, and has soon amassed a pile of outfits to take through into the changing room. I sit down in a leather chair by the till to wait for her. Twenty minutes later she's out and grabbing more clothes off the rails. It's going to be a long afternoon.

An hour later, her bank account a few thousand pounds lighter, Carlotta asks where the lingerie department is, and we take the escalator up to the next floor. She's definitely cheered up; in fact, she's positively bubbling now, all thoughts of her stillborn career erased from her mind by the adrenalin rush of spending
someone else's money. Her enthusiasm is contagious, and soon I'm joining her in flipping through the rails, secretly marvelling at the prices some people are prepared to pay for a transparent sliver of fabric with which to barely cover their Hollywoods.

‘What you think?' she calls over to me at one point, holding up a baby-pink bra and matching knickers in wispy fabric. They look like candy floss. I nod.

‘Paco will love it,' she says. I smile, nod again, hoping my cheeks aren't reddening. I know what your husband likes, I hear a voice in my head say. I know more than you think I do, anyway.

She comes closer to me, lowers her voice. Suddenly we are conspirators, something I wasn't prepared for.

‘He love it,' she says, looking into my eyes, ‘when he see my pussy right through my underwear. When he see my nipples. Bizarre, no? I think that strange at first. I think it will be sexier if he can't see me to start with. It funny,' she smiles, ‘the different things turn men on.'

I turn my head away, flustered; pretend to rifle through the racks in search of my size. I'm thinking back, in spite of myself, to what I was wearing yesterday, in the limo. It was my favourite Calvin Klein black bra and pants, plain, transparent. His favourite sort, without me even knowing.

‘What
you
like?' she says, leaning into me. Suddenly we are mates, it seems.

I grab something, anything, off the rail. ‘I don't know much about lingerie,' I lie. ‘I'm a bit of a Marks and Spencer traditionalist, I'm afraid. Give me a cheapo multipack any day.'

Carlotta looks at me curiously. ‘Really?' she says. ‘You no think you worth more than that?'

As a matter of fact, I do, but I want more than anything in the world for this conversation to end and
for us to get the hell out of here. I turn away, pretend to be inspecting a bra in ebony and nude lace.

Carlotta pays for a few items at the till and then asks if we can go back to the clothes section and find out if they stock any Moschino. On the way back down the escalator she places her hand lightly on my arm.

‘I sorry if you think I being rude about the lingerie,' she says. ‘It's just I cannot imagine not wearing best I can buy.' She looks away from me, surveying the scene below – a treasure trove of friths and froths just waiting for her to plunder.

‘I know I rich,' she adds. ‘But you can make best of yourself even with no money. I know – remember I was a starving artists' model once.'

Starving model my arse, I feel like saying. She doesn't look like she's known a moment's deprivation in her life. I also feel like telling her that I do take very good care of myself, as her husband will testify – I have regular Brazilians, facials and manicures, and my underwear drawer at home is positively overflowing with everything from Rigby & Peller to Agent Provocateur. With something to suit every mood and fantasy. She's preaching to the converted.

She finally changes the subject, twigging on, I suppose, to my lack of enthusiasm for the current topic of conversation. But no sooner has she started asking about other department stores she's heard about and would like me to take her to when she's spotted a hip new design concession and is making a beeline for it, cooing and cawing. And for another hour she's lost among the racks; I catch just the occasional glimpse of her and then she's gone again and I hear only the odd birdlike squawk to indicate she's still there in the shop at all.

It's actually very peaceful, just sitting there watching
all the ladies-who-have-lunched saunter in and calmly spend thousands of pounds on a single skimpy garment without so much as batting a false eyelash. It doesn't inspire envy in me, much as I enjoy dressing well and looking good; I value my independence far too much, and part of the attraction of treating myself to a new pair of slinky Joseph trousers or some Lejaby underwear is knowing that I have worked my butt off for it, have saved up and – often – denied myself other things in order to have it.

No, I think, looking at Carlotta strolling back over to me, arms heaped with yet more clothes to try on (we've had the bags of clothes she bought earlier sent to the hotel in a taxi, otherwise we'd have been too laden down to shop anymore): not for me the role of trophy wife, with nothing to do in life except nibble salad leaves before spending the day flexing my husband's plastic. I'd go out of my mind before a week was through. I'm lucky, I think, to have found a job that gives me a real buzz; the considerable perks are the icing on an already pretty tasty cake.

I smile up at Carlotta from my comfortable leather armchair. I'm having a relaxing afternoon; she can take all the time she likes. She's brandishing a scrap of reflective lilac material at me that, on closer inspection, reveals itself to be a strapless dress with crisscross lacing on the back and a deep slit at the back of the already breathtakingly short skirt. It's deeply horrible, but I smile and nod encouragingly.

‘Very chic,' I say, trying not to sound a note of irony. Carlotta's taste can only be described as Eurotrash, yet that doesn't stop her from looking fabulous. In fact there's something incredibly sexy about a woman who has the confidence in her body to wear such risqué things.

‘Not for me,' she grins. ‘I thinking of you. Come with me and try it.'