She knew she had tried extra hard just then, haunted by pictures of him in bed with Tianne. Had the sex with his ex been so good that he couldn’t stay away? Was she some sort of siren,
luring him in to crash against her rocks?
Lara didn’t like to acknowledge to herself that she was envious of Tianne’s and James’s history. Especially as she noticed that sex had become much more perfunctory since she
had moved into his house. She hated to admit that it would slide very quickly into bored middle-aged, old-married-couple sex if they didn’t take care to address it. In the early days, at her
old Islington flat, their lovemaking had been much more mutually satisfying. And when she moved into his gorgeous boudoir of a bedroom and they became a co-habiting couple, she’d hoped their
sexual repertoire would only increase, but it had worked the other way. Okay, so they both worked long hours and were tired, but she was always ready to put her heart and soul into sex when things
were heading that way. She couldn’t remember him giving her an orgasm since she moved in, though, and somehow doubted the hedonistic minx that was Tianne would have stood for that.
Tianne
Tianne Tianne –
all roads seemed to lead back to bloody Tianne. Lara needed to know whether what Keely had said had been the truth. It was the elephant in Lara’s room. She started
off by bringing up the subject casually.
‘Was that okay for you? That’s your favourite position, isn’t it?’ she said, stroking the few fine greying hairs on his chest.
‘Oh, boy, yes,’ he replied with breathy pleasure. ‘And you’re so good at it.’
‘Have . . . have all your exes done that for you?’
‘Erm,’ he said, thinking. ‘Yes, at one time or another. Some enjoyed it more than others.’
‘Like who?’
‘What do you want to know for?’
‘It’s interesting,’ she replied, still stroking, still trying to sound light.
‘Well, if you must know, Rachel didn’t like it – said it made her feel fat. Chloe liked it, but then she had a great figure.’
Too much info, thought Lara. On top was bound to be okay if you had no wobbly bits and also the cocky confidence of the very pretty Chloe, who stripped off to her bra and very tiny pants to
model for catalogues.
‘Not that you haven’t got a nice figure,’ added James quickly. ‘Chloe was actually a bit too skinny for my liking. And I don’t like fake breasts. Plus, she was the
most boring woman I’ve ever met. She had a brain the size of an undergrown pea.’
That cheered Lara a little. Even if she wasn’t exactly thrilled about such a grey word as ‘nice’ to describe her attributes.
‘What about . . . Tianne?’ pressed Lara. The name was like a sour sweet in her mouth and came out almost in a spit.
‘Oh, well, her, she . . . she loved it. Then again, the sex we had was always on the spicy side.’
Spicy? What did that mean? Did he rub cayenne pepper over his willy? Did she shove a chilli up his arse at the crucial moment? She felt a green-eyed monster rear inside her at a sudden vision of
Tianne and her long, flowing dark hair bouncing wantonly on top of James, both of them screaming in joint ecstasy. She swallowed hard.
‘Do you ever see her?’
‘Who?’
‘Tianne?’
‘No,’ said James. ‘Can’t remember the last time I saw her. Why all the questions?’ He pulled himself away from Lara and propped himself up on the pillow.
‘What’s the matter, darling?’
It would be very bad form to quote his daughter, thought Lara. But then again – bugger it.
‘It was just something Keely said.’ She tried to make it sound as if she hadn’t been chewing it over in her mind for hours. ‘That you found Tianne
irresistible.’
She felt James tighten for a second, then his muscles suddenly relaxed and he laughed.
‘She’s winding you up,’ he said. ‘Tianne was a little tart. I was the older man with a wallet. That was my attraction to her. She even—’ He snapped his mouth
shut.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Go on.’
‘No, it’s nothing – really.’
But Lara knew that was a big fat lie. He had been about to tell her something intimate, and she had to know what it was now. ‘You have to tell me. What? What did she do?’
James groaned with equal measures of resignation and impatience. ‘Okay, okay, she used to pretend to be a prostitute in bed. She wanted me to tuck money into her knickers before we had
sex. She was a mercenary little cow. I had to fight with her to get the notes back. Satisfied?’ His head fell back forcibly onto the pillow.
Did that turn you on? Did you love her doing it? Do you want me to do that? Do I need to spice myself up? Rub my nipples with Tabasco sauce?
Lara’s brain filled up with ludicrous
questions. They were queuing at her mouth to jump out.
‘Did you like her doing that?’
Please say no.
‘I can’t remember,’ James replied, the impatience rising in his voice now. ‘I suppose at the time, in the moment, it was . . . exciting.’
Lara felt him shrug. He was obviously lying and did remember. How could you forget that? She wished she could rip what she had just heard out of her head because now, in the dark, she saw an
XXX-certificate sex scene that even Ron Jeremy would blush at. Not only was there the right amount of sweat and groaning, a couple lost in the throes of erotic sex resulting in a mutual orgasm of
tsunamic proportions, but now there was the added element of a pair of knickers stuffed with twenty-pound notes.
‘Did you ever sleep with her again after you’d finished?’
‘Oh God.’ She heard James slap his head but she carried on relentlessly. She
had
to know.
‘Behind Rachel’s or Chloe’s back?’
There was a telling pause before he answered, ‘No, of course not.’ And he must have known that she noticed because he amended that to: ‘I slept with her once. Behind
Rachel’s back, okay?’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. We bumped into each other in a pub one night after work and, well, things weren’t going that well with Rachel. They were bloody awful, actually. I ended up going
back to hers for a chat and a coffee . . .’
He tailed off but he didn’t need to say any more, Lara could guess the rest.
She was like a drug. Heroin. Once he’d had her, he was hooked.
‘Oh,’ she said again.
‘The evil cow went straight round to Rachel’s to tell her what I’d done. That’s what sort of person she was. I hope I never see her again,’ James went on, with such
venom that Lara’s shoulders were instantly unburdened of half their tension and she felt the air escape from her lungs. Tianne Lee might have been a drug, but it appeared that James had
managed to wean himself off her after realizing what destruction she left in her wake.
‘Did—’ she began to ask, but James patted her arm.
‘No more. Go to sleep, darling,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to talk about her. Suffice to say that I wouldn’t touch anyone like her ever again, not even with a ten-foot
barge pole.’
Lara bit down on the stream of questions lined up waiting to be asked, but she knew they wouldn’t go away. They’d infiltrate her dreams and torture her through the night – if
she ever managed to get to sleep.
James had no such problem. Within minutes he was snoring gently. He had the ability to drop off immediately after an orgasm. His tensions were relieved; Lara only wished hers were.
She nestled close to James’s trim body and tried to force herself into sleep whilst wrestling dark-haired demons with money falling out of their pants. She wondered why women felt the need
to know details about a man’s other lovers when all it did was torture them.
Clare braced herself before ringing the number. It was ridiculous how nervous she became when phoning her own father. She was thirty-three, not three, for God’s sake.
It rang four times before a woman’s firm voice recited her number down the phone and asked who was speaking please.
‘It’s me, Mum. How are you?’
‘Alice. How lovely to hear from you, darling. How’s Martin?’
‘No, Mum, it’s me – Clare.’
‘Oh, Clare, how are you?’ Was it Clare’s imagination or had the temperature dropped a degree in her mother’s voice?
‘Fine, Mum. Are you okay?’ Damn. Her parents hated the word ‘okay’. How could she forget? ‘Good, I mean. Both of you?’
‘Daddy’s in the garden. I presume you’re ringing to say “Happy Birthday” to him. Your card hasn’t arrived.’ Dorothy Salter’s voice had the merest
nip of annoyance in it.
‘Oh, no.’ Clare’s heart sank. She had posted it days ago. ‘Has the postman been today?’
‘Not yet,’ said her mother. ‘Alice and Martin’s card arrived on Tuesday. Toby and Polly’s card arrived last weekend.’
Great. She bet her clever-clogs IT genius sister Alice had had the card biked over at enormous expense. And perfect bloody Polly would have posted Toby’s card for him. Her brother was
useless but her sister-in-law was an obsessive diary keeper. Mind you, she didn’t have much else to do except clean their eight-bedroomed mini manor in Harrogate and do a Zumba class when she
got super bored waiting for her QC husband to come home in his swanky suit from an exhausting day counting his fees. Well, today was the day when Clare would make her parents’ eyebrows rise
to the ceiling and beyond. She had wanted to tell them as soon as she found out, but had sat on this secret until now – an extra birthday present for Daddy.
‘I do hope the card comes today,’ said Clare. ‘I posted it ages ago so he would get it in time. Can I speak to Dad?’
‘Of course.’ She heard Dorothy turn away from the phone to call her husband. ‘Lionel.’ A rap on the window. ‘It’s Ali— Clare for you.’
Clare bit down on her lip to offset the twinge of pain she felt at hearing her mother almost get her name wrong. In a moment she was going to deliver
the
line that might have her mother
calling Alice by Clare’s name for once, the next time they spoke. It was her Shirley Valentine moment, the moment after golden-knickers Marjorie Majors gets the answer wrong and Shirley, who
knows what man’s greatest invention was, is waiting to say the words that will revolutionize the way she is thought of: ‘The wheel, miss.’
‘Hello, Clare,’ came the brisk voice of her father, taking the phone from his wife’s hand.
‘Happy Birthday, Dad. I can’t believe my card hasn’t arrived.’
‘Yes, well, we haven’t had today’s post . . . Ah, apparently we just have . . . I think your card is here. Is it in a blue envelope?’
‘Yes,’ said Clare, with relief, because tucked inside the card was a voucher for them to go to Rockley Hall, a beautiful restaurant not far from where they lived and which they
frequented at least once a month.
‘How’s work?’ asked Lionel Salter. He always asked that early in a conversation.
This is it, Clare, your Shirley Valentine moment.
‘Well . . .’ Oh God, it was just too delicious to keep in her mouth any longer. She wanted to lead up to it slowly but her gob had other ideas. ‘I’ve been made a
partner.’ In her head she raised two fingers to her supremely snobby cow of a sister and arrogant arse of a brother.
Sit on that and swivel, Alice Salter-Frampton, and you as well,
Toby.
‘A partner?’ said her father, gruffly. As if she had just told him a joke that wasn’t very funny.
‘Yes, Dad, I’ve been made a partner.’ Oh, those words felt like the best flavour in her mouth. Better even than her speciality peanut-butter cheesecake on an Oreo base.
There was a momentary silence then Lionel Salter relayed the information to his wife in a voice that didn’t quite believe the words it was saying. ‘Dorothy, Clare has been made a
partner.’
There was some twittering in the background, probably her mother fainting and her dad banging his hearing aid against the wall in fear that it was broken.
‘Dad, Dad, are you still there?’
‘Yes, I’m still here.’ Her dad actually sounded as if he were smiling now. ‘That’s very well done, Clare. Very well done. We’re delighted. I suppose your chap
must be thrilled too?’
Clare raised her eyebrows in surprise. Her father rarely referred to Ludwig. Ironic, then, that he did so now when Lud would be going to Dubai in two days to possibly start the ball rolling on a
new life without her.
‘Yes, he’s thrilled.’ It wasn’t a lie. Ludwig was thrilled for her. The chance of a lifetime that she couldn’t possibly pass up.
Ludwig ticked all the boxes on her parents’ list of essential qualities for prospective partners: successful, grand job title, drove a top-of-the-range Audi. It was just a shame he
‘wasn’t British’, as her dad put it. Clare opened her mouth to tell her dad that they weren’t together any more and then shut it again. Today was not the day for any news
that would take away the shine.
‘Wonderful news.’ She could hear the elation in her father’s voice and it made her spirits soar so high they needed oxygen to breathe. ‘We’ll tell Toby and Alice
straightaway.’
As Clare put the phone down after the conversation her eyes flooded with happy tears. Despite the fact that a hard weekend of working in the office loomed, she was ecstatic. She couldn’t
remember the last time she had heard her father say he was going to brag about her to her siblings, instead of the other way round. Then she realized she couldn’t remember, because he never
had before.
Lara had a rotten weekend. James was in the office all day Saturday and ‘popped in’ on Sunday too, for an hour that turned out to be four. At least Keely was out
shopping with her one and only friend Paris for most of Saturday and stayed over at hers that night. Garth was on his Xbox playing some game that involved a lot of shooting and shouting to his
friends down his headphone mike. Lara felt more lonely rattling around in the house than she ever had when she was living alone in her cosy Islington flat.
She also had too much time to think. What Keely said about Tianne played over and over again in her head. She knew she was being stupid and immature. Tianne was an ex for a reason and James was
with Lara now. He couldn’t change the past any more than she could change the mistakes she had made with men. And, boy, had she picked some beauties. James had been honest with her and
admitted to sleeping with Tianne behind Rachel’s back. What more did she want? Mrs de Winter was dead and gone, long live Mrs De Winter. Then came the counter argument: he’d kept it
quiet about doing the dirty behind Rachel’s back until last night. She remembered him telling her in the past that he had never been unfaithful to anyone. However badly his relationship was
going with Rachel, bonking Tianne behind her back was cheating – full stop.