Sins (47 page)

‘No. Yes. Don’t stop now,’ Ella almost wailed. ‘I have to do it. I must.’

She was panicking, beside herself with anxiety and dismay. He couldn’t
not
do it. Not after all this.

Oliver looked at her. She was trembling violently, like someone who had screwed up their courage to breaking
point. His mind reacted bitterly to his choice of words. He eased himself away from her and got off the bed, standing up and going to stare out of the window with his back to her.

What the hell was going on? A bloody virgin. Whatever it was that was motivating her, it certainly wasn’t as, he had initially congratulated himself, her desire for him. He should have been furious, but surprisingly he discovered that he was actually intrigued and curious.

He turned round. Ella was still lying on the bed, but now she had pulled the sheet over herself.

‘OK,’ he said, ‘let’s start at the beginning. What are you doing here? And don’t bother saying because you’ve been lusting after me ever since we first met because I won’t believe you. What is this all about? Making the New York boyfriend jealous?’ he guessed.

Ella was so horrified that she sat up, saying fiercely, ‘No. He must never know about this.’

‘OK, so let’s see…You’re missing him and thought that having a quick fuck with me would tide you over until you see him? Oh, I forgot, you haven’t ever had a fuck, have you?’ Oliver’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

Ella clamped her lips together. This wasn’t turning out as she’d expected at all.

‘I would have done if you hadn’t stopped,’ she told him.

Oliver paced the floor and then stopped in front of her.

‘Why choose me?’ His whole manner made it plain that he was not at all thrilled that she had.

‘Because I thought you’d be good at it.’

Oliver digested her words in silence.

‘Why now? If you’ve saved it for this long you must have had a reason.’

‘Yes.’ There was no point in denying it.

‘Like what?’

‘Look, I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to get rid of it, all right?’

‘Nope. No explanation–no shag,’ Oliver responded promptly.

He was half expecting her to refuse to tell him, but he realised that he had underestimated her need to rid herself of her virginity when she exhaled and told him, ‘I need a cigarette.’

He produced two and lit them both, passing one to her. Only then did he see how much her hands were trembling. He drew deeply on his own cigarette before removing it from his lips to put to her own and then taking the one he was still holding for himself.

She obviously wasn’t a habitual smoker; her movements were awkward, the cigarette like the sex she had wanted: something that had to be endured as a means to an end rather than enjoyed for itself.

As soon as she felt strong enough, Ella stubbed out her cigarette and told Oliver, ‘Well, you see, it’s like this…’

It took him almost an hour and several cigarettes to get the whole story out of her: the nutty mother, her fear that if she fell pregnant and had a kid she’d end up the same, the unfairness of the pill not being available when she was younger, and then, last of all, her longing to impress and please Brad. Brad, for whom Oliver had suddenly developed a very strong surge of jealousy, for no reason that he could logically understand.

He stubbed out his final cigarette. ‘So basically you want me to teach you how to be good in bed?’

‘Yes,’ Ella agreed.

‘Bloody hell.’

What did that mean, Ella wondered apprehensively. She had made a total fool of herself and for that she could blame too many Martinis. She was now stone-cold sober, though, and beginning to feel sick.

There was no way he was going to do what she wanted, Oliver decided. Hell, the women he took to bed wanted
him
, not someone else. He had a sudden surge of need to have the satisfaction of making her want him.

‘You’re sure?’ he checked.

Ella nodded. He was going to do it? That feeling invading her belly had to be relief, she decided, and not a sudden desire to change her mind.

‘OK then, let’s get started.’

Rose opened her eyes cautiously, reluctant to wake up but not knowing why until she remembered the events of the previous evening. She was in Cadogan Square, in Emerald’s house and Emerald’s guest bedroom.

Emerald had quite obviously expected her to disappear, having driven her home, but Rose, mindful of what the doctor had said, had refused, pointing out that she had given him her word that she would stay.

‘Look, I am not going to have concussion,’ Emerald had told her.

‘You don’t know that,’ Rose had retorted, refusing to give in.

She looked at the bedside clock, groaning when she saw that it was almost ten o’clock in the morning. It was just as well she didn’t have any client appointments today, she admitted as she pushed back the bedclothes and pulled on the satin robe that Emerald had given her last night, along with what had looked like a brand-new set of expensive underwear–a satin half-cup bra ornamented with lace and a pair of matching French knickers–not her sort of thing at all.

Something in her expression must have given her away because Emerald had taunted her, saying, ‘They won’t corrupt you, or turn you into a sex maniac, you know. My God, that would be the day that anything or anyone could do that to Auntie Amber’s little darling.’

Emerald at her best–and her worse.

Rose sat down on the bed. Last night had, in its way, been almost as crazy as the night Pete had spiked her coffee. If anyone had told her that she would ever be in a situation with Emerald that would make her feel protective towards her, worried about her, she would have told them categorically that they were mad. And yet last night…Inside her head she still had an image of Emerald clutching her jacket, with tears in her eyes. Not acting or manipulating, but really crying because she felt afraid and alone.

Half an hour later, showered and dressed, Rose knocked on Emerald’s bedroom door. When there was no answer she turned the handle quietly and opened it anyway.

She had expected Emerald to be asleep, but instead she was awake, sitting up, looking fretful.

‘I’m going down to make myself a cup of tea,’ Rose told her. ‘Do you want one?’

‘No…yes…Rose, don’t go yet. There’s something I want to say.’

Was she going to thank her again, Rose wondered ruefully. That would make it another day to be highlighted in her diary.

‘I want you to promise me that you won’t ever say anything about last night to anyone, but especially to
Mummy. I know you’re her favourite, Rose, and that that was why you did what you did last night.’

Rose frowned. She wasn’t going to argue with Emerald about who Amber’s favourite was or wasn’t–there wasn’t any point–but she was going to put her right on one thing.

‘I didn’t do it for Aunt Amber.’

‘Then who did you do it for? Not for me.’

‘I did it for myself,’ Rose told her, and as she said the words she knew suddenly that they were true. A wonderful sense of strength and power and rightness flowed through her. She had done what she believed to be right, not out of fear or to earn herself favour but because it had been right.

She turned back towards the door,

‘Rose,’ Emerald stopped her, ‘you haven’t promised yet.’

Rose looked at her, on the point of telling her that she had never had any intention of telling anyone, and then thought quickly.

‘I’ll only give you my promise, Emerald, if you promise me that from now on you won’t have anything whatsoever to do with Max Preston.’

Emerald shuddered. ‘Are you mad? Do you actually think that I’d want to after last night?’

‘That isn’t the answer I want,’ Rose told her firmly.

Emerald badly wanted to laugh but her ribs and her face were too sore. Did Rose actually really think that she would take Max back after this? Emerald never wanted to see him again. The words he had hurled at her, as much as the blows he had inflicted on her, had touched
something raw and painful inside her; the vulnerability that came from knowing who had really fathered her, and what she might so easily have been without all that her adoptive father had given her.

No, she never wanted to see Max again because she couldn’t bear the pain of her own vulnerability.

‘I promise,’ she told Rose.

‘Then I promise as well,’ Rose smiled.

As she struggled to stand upright in the churning mêlée, Janey wondered if coming on the anti-Vietnam War march had been a good idea after all. She fully supported the marchers’ cause, but Charlie, whose idea it had been in the first place, hadn’t turned up at their designated meeting place. Then she hadn’t been able to back out of the commitment to go and get him out of bed, where she knew he was probably likely to be, because his friends were insisting that it was time to leave for the march. Now she was in danger of getting caught up in what was taking on the appearance of a very nasty fight indeed between some of the marchers and the police.

The original cause of the friction had been some of the more hot-headed marchers throwing bottles at the police cordon outside the American Embassy. Scuffles had broken out when the police had moved to stop them, and now Janey, carried along by the movement of the crowd, found that she was much closer to the violence than was comfortable. A missile of some sort, thrown from behind her, whizzed past her, just missing the side of her head, aimed for one of the policemen a few yards away. Some protestors were already lying on the ground
and being dragged away. Janey had lost sight of Charlie’s friends. The noise was deafening, especially when the police started using loud-hailers to order everyone to disperse.

A fight broke out in front of her between two of the protestors, and quickly escalated. Janey wasn’t the sort to panic easily, but the violence now sweeping through the marchers around her made her want to run. She could see a street opening a few yards away and began to make for it, struggling against the press of the crowd.

Somehow she managed to make it to the edge of the crowd. She could see the faces of the onlookers now, their expressions disapproving.

Suddenly the police moved forward determinedly, forcing the marchers back, causing some of them to turn round and plunge back into their own ranks. Janey could feel herself being swept back, away from the side street. Another few seconds and she would be dragged into the vortex of thrashing bodies that was the beginning of a dangerous stampede. If she lost her balance now she would be trodden underfoot. Panic filled her.

Someone grabbed hold of her arm. She tried to shake them off.

‘Janey…This way…’

The voice in her ear was familiar. She turned her head in its direction as she was pulled towards the safety of the pavement, falling heavily against her rescuer as he finally dragged her clear of the panicking marchers and into the relative peace of a nearby doorway.

‘John, what on earth are you doing here?’ she demanded
once she had got her breath back and had pushed herself free of her childhood friend.

‘I had some estate business to attend to,’ he told her, ‘so I thought I may as well spend the weekend in town. I was thinking of calling in at Cheyne Walk; your mother gave me your telephone number.’

‘Oh, yes, you must,’ Janey told him warmly. She was still leaning on him. He felt so nice and solid and safe, somehow, that she was reluctant to move away.

The sound of the confrontation was beginning to die away as both marchers and police moved down the road, leaving the two of them virtually alone.

‘You’re a true knight in shining armour, John,’ she told him affectionately. ‘I was beginning to get frightened. I wouldn’t have joined the march if I’d known it was going to turn violent. Charlie, my boyfriend, should have been with me, but he obviously overslept. I’d better go round to his flat now and wake him up. He’s got an audition this afternoon. He’s an actor.’

‘I’ll go with you,’ John told her, heading off her objection with, ‘I insist. It’s what your father would expect me to do.’

How Charlie would laugh when she told him about John’s old-fashioned protective gallantry. She would have laughed herself, Janey suspected, if she hadn’t been feeling so shaky and somehow so relieved to have his support and his familiar comforting presence at her side.

‘You won’t tell the parents about this, will you?’ Janey begged him. ‘They’d worry and I’d hate that.’

‘Only if you promise me that you won’t put yourself in that kind of danger again.’

Janey looked at him in astonishment. ‘That’s not fair.’

‘Risking your life isn’t fair either. I was worried that you might lose your balance before I could get to you,’ John told her firmly.

Janey’s heart melted. He had been worried about her. How sweet. Charlie never worried about her. She was the one who worried about him. This made an unexpectedly welcome change.

Charlie’s one-room, and the share of a communal bathroom, flat–for which Janey had her own key, since she was the one who paid the rent, and because Charlie was prone to locking himself out–was in a tall narrow terrace of Victorian houses off the Edgware Road, the majority of the other flats in the house also let to young students.

Charlie had the ground-floor flat and, just as Janey had expected, the curtains were still closed.

‘It looks as though Charlie is still in bed,’ she told John, feeling guilty on her boyfriend’s behalf when she saw the disapproval in John’s honest hazel eyes. Quickly she came to her Charlie’s defence. ‘Charlie is a night owl. He simply can’t sleep if he goes to bed too early.’

It was the truth. Even when they weren’t out somewhere partying with his friends, he preferred to stay up late playing his records until the early hours of the morning. He would then sleep well into the day, sometimes missing important casting auditions because he hadn’t woken up, and then complaining when, as he saw it, other far less talented actors than he got work whilst he didn’t.

‘He’s very talented,’ Janey felt compelled to add, even
though John hadn’t made any further comments. ‘He does a lot of modelling, but what he really wants is to get into acting, especially in modern plays. Charlie wants to focus on modern drama. He says that it’s immoral to keep on doing plays by someone who’s been dead for four hundred years and that theatres should be producing works by young playwrights.’