Tish felt embarrassed for Dorian and wildly disapproving of Viorel. The flirting was shameless. But when she looked up she saw that Dorian hadn’t noticed anything. Eating mindlessly, eyes on his food, brow furrowed, he was clearly miles away, lost in worries of his own.
‘What are your plans this afternoon?’ Chrissie asked Viorel. ‘My husband’s going to be working, as usual.’ She rolled her eyes.
Dorian glanced up. ‘What? Working? Not the whole afternoon I’m not, honey. I need to look at some of the rushes of Rhys’s scenes, that’s all. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours.’
‘Yeah, right, and pigs might fly,’ muttered Chrissie. ‘I thought maybe Viorel could give me a tour of the local countryside. Show me some of the sights.’
‘I’d love to.’ Vio smiled wickedly.
The air was so thick with innuendo, Tish almost felt like covering Abel’s ears. She certainly wished she could cover her own.
‘But I’m afraid I already have plans. I’m taking a young lady into Manchester. We thought we’d do a spot of shopping this afternoon, then grab dinner.’
‘A young lady? Who?’ Tish heard herself asking. She didn’t know why, but the idea that Vio might have scored himself a date seemed to rankle.
‘You know her, actually,’ said Vio nonchalantly. ‘Laura Harrington.’
‘Laura?’ Tish choked on her Perrier water, sending a stream of frothy bubbles shooting out of her nose. ‘The girl who came to babysit Abel the other night?’
‘That’s her.’ Vio smiled.
Last Thursday had been Mrs Drummond’s bridge night, and Tish had arranged dinner with an old schoolfriend. Laura was the teenage daughter of the local vicar, and had offered her babysitting services for eight pounds an hour. All Tish could remember about her was that she had terrible grammar, and that Abel had been wildly impressed with her ‘princess hair’. Clearly, he wasn’t the only one who’d noticed her charms.
‘But she’s a child!’ Tish looked at Vio, horrified.
‘She’s eighteen actually,’ said Vio. ‘And very mature for her age.’
‘
Mature?
’ Tish scoffed. ‘Please. She was carrying a Miley Cyrus backpack! She gave Abel two chocolate cream eggs in an egg cup for supper.’
‘Did she?’ Vio beamed. ‘I like her even more.’
‘He was sick all over his bed.’
‘Yes, well, happily I’m blessed with a strong stomach.’
Tish’s glare intensified.
‘It’s only dinner,’ said Viorel. ‘I’ll drop her back home afterwards.’
After what?
thought Tish furiously. Boy, had she misjudged Viorel Hudson. Being a flirt was one thing, but using his celebrity to lure an innocent local girl into bed? He should be ashamed of himself.
Chrissie Rasmirez obviously felt the same way, if her epic pout was anything to go by.
‘Don’t worry, Mrs Rasmirez,’ Mrs Drummond piped up cheerfully. ‘I’ll have a word with Bill Connelly. Bill knows Derbyshire a lot better than Mr Hudson here. I’m sure he’d be happy to show you around until your husband’s free.’
Momentarily forgetting their mutual disapproval of one another, Tish and Vio locked eyes and smiled. Chrissie looked as if someone had just squirted lemon juice in her eyes.
‘Thank you,’ she said sourly. ‘I wouldn’t want to be any trouble.’
‘You should go, honey. Bill Connelly won’t mind,’ said Dorian, scoring himself no points with his wife whatsoever. ‘If the forecasters are right, we could be in for some heavy rain in the next few days. Maybe even enough to hold up shooting.’
‘Yay!’ said Abel, jumping down from the table and disloyally settling himself down in Viorel’s lap. ‘That means you can play with me more, right?’
As ever, Abel’s sunny, trusting little face brought out the lion in Viorel. He still couldn’t get his head around the fact that Tish was planning to drag the boy back to some ex-communist dump in a few short weeks. If he could, he’d have stuffed Abi in his suitcase and brought him back to America.
‘Of course.’ He ruffled Abel’s hair. ‘We can play computer games and eat Hula Hoops till our tongues fall off.’
Tish shot him a thunderous look. She was so easy to wind up, there was almost no sport to it.
Yesterday, Vio had walked in on a conversation between Tish and Mrs Drummond. Tish was droning on about her bloody charity work, again.
‘A lot of it’s about training the local staff on the ground,’ she was telling the housekeeper earnestly. ‘When we first came to the children’s hospital in Oradea, we saw seriously malnourished babies. The nurses were trying to spoon-feed them while they lay in their cots. Well, you can’t swallow lying down. It’s impossible. So that’s the sort of basic thing we teach them.’
‘I see, dear.’ Mrs Drummond nodded sagely. ‘That sounds marvellous.’
‘Except that it’s bollocks,’ drawled Viorel. ‘I know at least six girls in LA who can
definitely
swallow lying down. Perhaps I should send them out there, to train the kids?’
The look on Tish’s face had kept him smiling all night long.
Laura Harrington was a disappointment.
Notwithstanding her tender years, the vicar’s daughter had clearly been around the block a time or twenty. Having nixed the shopping plan (‘I can think of better things to do, can’t you?’), she’d taken Viorel out to a secluded part of Loxley’s idyllic ancient woodland, and slipped out of her clothes before he’d had time to blink. Indeed, her whole been-there-done-that, business-like approach to proceedings left Vio feeling deflated and – odd as it might seem in the circumstances – used.
Lying back, he closed his eyes and tried to enjoy the painting-by-numbers blow job that Laura was giving him. No doubt she would be cataloguing it in graphic detail on her Facebook page later –
blow by blow
, he thought, laughing quietly to himself. He tried to turn himself on by imagining it was Sabrina’s tongue darting around his cock, and not that of some chubby village slut with big tits and the IQ of a fossilized dog turd. But strangely, the Sabrina fantasy wasn’t working either. After weeks of denial, perhaps he’d come to associate her with frustration?
Laura looked up. His erection was still strong – a blow job was a blow job, after all – but she could sense his lack of enthusiasm. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing,’ he lied.
‘Would you rather just shag?’
Vio raised an eyebrow. And he’d thought Hollywood chicks were fast! ‘You don’t beat around the bush, do you?’
In answer, Laura straddled him, barely giving him time to slip on a condom before she lowered her pale, freckled thighs over his hips and slipped his cock inside her. She rocked back and forth, her melonous breasts juddering like water balloons, eyes closed in concentration more than ecstasy. Lifting her up, Vio turned her around so he wouldn’t have to look at her mooncalf face. Closing his own eyes, he tried to focus on Laura’s oversized boobs and not the sizeable arse that came with them.
At least I’m pissing off Tish Crewe
, he thought, increasing the pace of his thrusts as he tuned in to his anger. Before he realized it, he found himself fantasizing that it was Tish naked on all fours beneath him; Tish’s back arching in silent pleasure as he pushed deeper inside her; Tish’s breasts he was squeezing and kneading like two balls of softest dough. The fantasy repulsed and excited him in equal measure. Part of him wanted to stop, but Laura was clenching her muscles more tightly around him, bucking wildly in response to his own increased arousal, and he knew he was too far gone to turn back.
When he came it was Tish’s hair he was grabbing, pulling it painfully, wanting to hurt her as much as he wanted to satisfy her, wanting to punish her. But for what exactly? For taking Abel back to Romania, or for his own unhappy childhood? He didn’t know any more.
‘Ow! That hurts,’ Laura complained. ‘My hair. Let go of my hair!’
‘Sorry.’
Viorel released her, like a man coming out of a trance. He slumped back on the blanket feeling frustrated and dirty, aware that behind the confusingly erotic images of Tish, a different woman’s face hovered ghostlike in the background. He hated the idea that Martha Hudson could still get to him. That even now, after all his success, it was his adoptive mother who had moulded his relationships with women, sowing the seeds of self-destruction and distrust into his sexuality like a cancerous gene. He hadn’t contacted his mother since he came to England, nor had Martha made the remotest effort to contact him. But clearly his falling out with Tish, and the connection he felt with Abel, had raked over feelings in his subconscious that he would rather not have been reminded of. Feelings of loneliness, of abandonment and rage. What was that Philip Larkin poem?
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
Was Tish going to fuck Abi up, the way Martha had him?
‘Let’s eat.’ Laura’s grating voice broke the spell. ‘I’m famished. Where are you taking me?’
The thought of having to sit in a restaurant making small talk with this half-witted girl depressed Vio even further. But he supposed the least he owed her was a meal, and the alternative – heading straight back to Loxley Hall – was even less appealing.
‘Where would you like to go?’
‘Somewhere posh.’ The girl was unequivocal. ‘Harvester?’
It was late by the time Viorel got back to Loxley. In the clear night sky, a full moon bathed the house’s fairytale turrets in a gossamer haze of softest silver, with no sign of Dorian’s predicted storm clouds.
With any luck, we’ll be shooting again tomorrow
, thought Vio.
I should get some kip
. The few lights left on in the East Wing gave the house a warm, welcoming glow and, as he crunched across the gravel to the front door, Vio was surprised by how much affection he’d come to feel for the place. Behind him he heard the rushing of the River Derwent as it skipped and danced its way through the valley floor. Above him, trees swayed gently in the night breeze, the rustling of their leaves soothing and rhythmic, like waves lapping on a shore.
Part of me will be sad to leave
, he admitted to himself.
Sad to leave Loxley. Sad to leave Abel.
A couple of weeks ago, he realized with a pang, he would have added Tish Crewe’s name to the list of people he would miss. Was he being foolish, maintaining this feud? Perhaps he should try to build bridges. But then again, why should he be the one to make the first move?
Once inside, he closed the door gingerly behind him, hoping not to wake the sleeping household. He was halfway up the dark stairs when a figure in a dressing gown emerged from the shadows.
‘You’re late.’ Sabrina’s voice sounded low and throaty.
‘Jesus.’ Vio jumped. ‘You scared me.’
‘So how was the date with your teenage dream? Did you have fun?’
He sighed. ‘Since you ask, no, not really.’
‘But you fucked her anyway, I suppose.’
‘Come on, angel,’ said Vio placatingly. ‘Don’t be like that.’
‘Like what?’ snapped Sabrina. ‘Pissed, you mean? That you can go out and get laid while Rasmirez has me stuck here like frikkin’ Rapunzel, twiddling my thumbs?’
‘Is that all you were twiddling?’ Vio teased. But Sabrina was in no mood to see the funny side.
‘I’m serious. I need to get out of here. I’m climbing the walls.’
‘So go out.’
‘How?’ Sabrina laughed. ‘Dorian’s spies are everywhere. He’d eviscerate me, and the Countess Dracula would have my entrails for breakfast.’
‘Poor baby,’ said Vio, hugging her. ‘If it makes you feel any better, the sex with Laura was terrible.’
‘It doesn’t make me feel better,’ said Sabrina, pulling away and tying her robe more tightly around her waist like a knight fastening his armour. ‘I hope you sleep like shit.’ She stalked off, slamming her bedroom door behind her.
Wearily, Vio continued up the stairs.
‘You should be ashamed of yourself, you know.’
That was all he needed. What was Tish doing up? Judging by the look of withering disapproval on her face, he assumed she’d overheard him talking to Sabrina about Laura.
‘Give it a rest, Mother Teresa,’ he said crossly, trying to erase the mental picture he’d had a few hours ago of Tish naked and desirous beneath him. ‘We’re not all gunning for a sainthood.’
Tish said nothing. She didn’t have to.
The contemptuous look in her eyes said it all.
The following morning the whole house was woken by the rain. The storm that had seemed so invisible last night had arrived with a speed and force that shook the ancient glass in the windowpanes and battered the trees in the park till they were bent double. Water pounded against glass and stone relentlessly, a wild cacophony of drumbeats accompanying the tortured howling of the wind. It was the kind of dawn in which you almost expected to see Cathy Earnshaw’s ghost at the window, her wrists bloodied on the jagged, broken glass, tormenting her beloved Heathcliff.
Dorian Rasmirez certainly awoke tormented. Half of the set village had flooded, with trailers containing not only people but also valuable equipment sinking feet deep into the mud. Chrissie, who’d taken a sleeping pill after they made love last night, was dead to the world. But Dorian had pulled Wellington boots on over his pyjamas and headed out into the torrent shortly after four a.m., to help Chuck and the crew with the salvage effort. Rhys had helped out too, God bless him, and some of the extras, but it was still an uphill struggle. At six thirty, exhausted and soaked to the bone, Dorian crawled back to bed, but the pounding rain made it impossible to sleep. There was no way they could film in this, and it might last for days, a delay they could not begin to afford.
I’ll go to London
, he thought.
See if I can wrangle a third loan out of Coutts. At least that way I won’t waste the day.
He’d assumed Chrissie would be delighted at the prospect of a trip up to town. She was due to fly back to Romania on Wednesday (it was two weeks since she’d last seen Saskia) and had been complaining ceaselessly that Dorian never made time for her, never took her anywhere, and that her visit had been a grave disappointment. But over breakfast she surprised him by turning down the chance of a London jaunt.