When the Siren Calls (5 page)

“You going to fuck Britta right here, or take me upstairs?” she demanded, and without waiting for a reply, pushed herself to her feet, rearranged her skirt, leant forward, and took his hand.

“See you in a while then, and take your time,” Jay said as he took a moment to extricate himself from his own distraction.Six

Isobel and her friend Maria left their cab and walked towards the long queue for the Alpha Lounge. It was six months after Isobel’s fateful meeting in Marrakech and the weather could not have been more different as London rain fell in sheets. Maria led Isobel past a close packed line of attractive girls, their hair extensions damp and long bronzed legs shivering from the cold. A heavy man dressed in black nodded in recognition and pulled aside the rope to let them in. The inside, so dark that it seemed inhabited only by shadows, broke into dimmed light as they wound their way into its heart. Isobel stood in bewilderment as they reached its centre, which swarmed with clones of the girls outside, amongst whom mingled dark, welldressed men who soared above them like birds of prey. Maria tugged her gently by the hand and led to her to a high table by the wall, which gave a vantage point to view the posing and the pouting all around.

“How do you like the place?” Maria asked with a barely concealed smile.

“It’s different,” said Isobel, sipping her sparkling water as tension stiffened her shoulders and a feeling of nausea began to settle in her stomach. She looked around the room, her face full of disapproval. “These girls are all wannabe Wags.”

“Oh Isobel, don’t jump to judgment, they’re only girls; girls who feel and cry, just like us.” Isobel felt the reproach like a bee sting, and hated herself for wishing to seem holier than thou. She looked across at her friend who draped herself across her chair, her eyes on Isobel but her body advertised to the room. As Isobel did her best to shrink herself beneath the gaze of two men from the VIP section, she thought about their friendship. Maria, the Venezuelan trophy wife of an American business magnate, was her friend from design rather than choice or chance; their closeness was the result of one of Peter’s business schemes, a carefully cultivated alliance that had in turn brought him closer to Arnie, Maria’s husband. Isobel dwelt in amusement on how that alliance had run its course, but their strange friendship prevailed, hedonism and conservatism in unlikely harmony.

Maria loved to shock Isobel with her lifestyle and chose to now, sensing her friend’s discomfort and seeking to alleviate it with her misdemeanours.

“I’m going back to Venezuela next week,” she announced, the sparkle in her eye inviting a question that she did not wait for. “Arnie thinks I am just visiting the family, of course, and he won’t notice anything different when I come back.”

“Oh god, Maria, not more cosmetic surgery?” asked Isobel in exasperation. “What’s the point of going to the trouble, and taking the risk, if Arnie isn’t even going to notice?”

“Risk makes life worth living,” grinned Maria, her dark almondshaped eyes alight with laughter. “In Venezuela, cosmetic surgery is more common than it is in Hollywood, at least amongst those who can afford it. And as you know, I am not just doing it for Arnie.”

“Ah yes, the lovely Angelo,” said Isobel with disapproving laughter, referring to Maria’s young Italian boyfriend, her latest distraction when she stayed in her villa outside of Lucca. “But surely Arnie will notice the difference when he sees you naked?” she asked in fascination, struggling to imagine how Maria must live.

“No, he does not examine me as closely as Angelo.”

“So what exactly are you having done this time?” She leant in closer, her eyes widening as Maria gestured to her lap.

“Nothing major, just what you might call tidying up. Something to make me a little prettier. And maybe a little tighter.” She giggled, revealing perfectly whitened teeth that could easily grace a toothpaste commercial.

“You don’t mean what I think you mean?” Isobel whispered.

“Don’t look so surprised,” said Maria with mock indignation, “it is a very common procedure. Particularly if, like me, you have had children.”

“Well, I can’t say it’s very common in my circle in Cobham,” said Isobel, playing her role with as much delight as Maria played hers.

“Maybe it is more common than you think. I am told it is even available on the NHS, but by the time you get to the front of the queue your need for the tightening is well behind you.” Both women burst out laughing; Maria threw her head back in dramatic style, exposing her bare brown neck like an antelope inviting a lion. The men in the VIP section shifted in interest.

“Have you told Angelo then?” Isobel asked, keen to block out the rest of the room.

“Of course not. First I want to see if he notices the difference. If I told him, he would say that it was better, because he would want me to believe so. Angelo is like that. He thinks all the time about my feelings, and what pleases me. He wants me to be happy, and will say what he thinks will make me happy. Even if sometimes it is not true.”

Isobel pondered the intimacy of her words and their overt affection and, twisting her glass in her hands, asked, “Do you think it’s all worth it? What if Arnie ever found out?”

Maria shrugged. “Better to lose a husband than waste a life.”

“That is easy to say, until you lose him,” said Isobel.

“You must understand I am twenty years younger than Arnie. That is a quite a difference, particularly if you are, like me, young at heart. And Arnie has not kept himself in great shape over the years, so sometimes the difference seems more than twenty years. So, yes, for me it is worth it.” Isobel nodded as Maria continued. “I sometimes wonder if Arnie is happy to look the other way. That it is enough for him to have me on his arm, proof that he is not just successful in only his business. I know when we are together, he likes to know that other men are looking at me, and envying him. And I still take care of him in the bedroom. I do everything that he asks, which is in truth not very demanding. And mostly I do it without him asking. Maybe that is the price I pay for being what I am.”

Isobel looked at her in undisguised fascination, feeling envy and repulsion in equal measure. “I sometimes wish I was more like you, Maria. You are so free to live your life the way you please. I have been feeling like that more and more lately.”

“Just recently?” Maria leant in closer; Isobel rarely spoke of her emotions, let alone her insecurities.

“I don’t know when I first had them. Maybe as long as five years ago, I really couldn’t say exactly. All I know for sure is that I have them today.”

“But Isobel, you are not saying you are unhappy with Peter, are you? You always seem to be the perfect couple, so content with each other, and you have such a fantastic lifestyle. Everyone would say the same.” Isobel felt an edge or sarcasm, maybe even satisfaction, in her reply but she continued anyway, anxious to finally unburden herself.

“Maybe contentment is what most people settle for, whatever contentment is. But all I know is that whatever I have with Peter, it doesn’t seem to be enough. Not for me anyway, not right now. Maybe I need to go out and buy a motorbike or something, I don’t know. But I need to do something. I don’t think I want to look back on my life and think that this was all it amounted to. That I…I wasted it.” She stared at her friend in dejection, desperately seeking answers in her growing smile.

“So you are the spoiled woman who wants for nothing, but wants for everything?” said Maria with her normal sharp and irreverent incisiveness.

“Maria, I’m having this conversation with you because that’s not what I want to hear.”

“I am sorry. I am only teasing. So the problem is with Peter?”

“No, Peter is as he ever was, only now even more obsessed with his career,” she said with a sigh. “And he would never be unfaithful to me, if that is what you’re thinking.”

“I would not dream of thinking such a thing. But never? That is a dangerous word.”

“Not if you know Peter like I know him,” said Isobel, letting out a derisory laugh, and immediately regretting it.

“I am sure you are right, Isobel, but sometimes it is the most innocent who are the most vulnerable, who are easy prey.”

“Sex is not everything to Peter,” said Isobel, “and anyway, he has everything he needs at home,” she added hurriedly.

Maria sipped on her drink, eyeing her friend closely. “But it is not sex that a clever woman uses to turn a man’s head; it is attention, it is flattery, the very things that no man can get enough of.”

Isobel dismissed the notion out of hand. She was already Peter’s wife, waitress, and mother; how much attention could one man need? “The problem is definitely not Peter,” repeated Isobel.

Sudden realisation flashed in Maria’s eyes.

“So something, or someone, must be bringing out these feelings in you now, making you more aware of them?”

“I’m not having an affair, if that’s what you’re asking.” She said it quickly and indignantly, her mouth weak around the strong words.

“Completely sure?” Maria’s eyes narrowed in knowing scepticism but Isobel grew in certainty as she spoke.

“Of course I am sure. I couldn’t stand the lies, apart from anything else.” Maria was silent, watching and waiting.

“Late last year I did meet someone,” Isobel said. “But only briefly really, in the souk in Marrakech of all places.”

Maria leant back in satisfaction, her movement pushing up her round and pert breasts for the examination of the VIPs, who watched their conversation like hawks.

“So how many times have you seen him since, and am I allowed to know his name?”

“Jay. And I only saw him by the pool. Not since. It was just one of those holiday things, you know. And anyway I seem to remember he lives somewhere in the wilds of Cheshire.”

“So now you are, umm, pen friends?” asked Maria, biting her finger with highly charged nonchalance. The men in the roped off area shifted slightly and one beckoned their minder with the crook of his finger.

“He has some tourist project, near your place in Tuscany actually, and he is promoting it. He sent me some details and since then I’ve had a couple of invitations to attend events — with Peter. I couldn’t make either and wouldn’t have gone to them anyway. Except now he’s doing an event in Cobham, so Peter and I might go along.”

“So what’s special about him?” asked Maria, her tone shorter and more demanding as she watched the minder cross the room to the velvet ropes.

“I’m not thinking along those lines, not for one minute,” said Isobel. “But he was incredibly attentive, he really listened. The things I said in the souk, he played back around the pool like he had hung on every word.”

“A player, if you ask me. You’d better watch out!” Maria said with a grin, her eyes now meeting those of the burly minder who strode up to them. Isobel laughed as Maria leant in towards her ears, touching her face for the benefit of the audience. She whispered, her lips exaggerated and sensual, brushing Isobel’s cheek.

“Well, it sounds to me that you need cheering up. So come on, let’s go have some fun.”

“Mo and Safi,” said the minder, now level with their table and pointing to the two Middle Eastern men who were watching their conversation, “would like you to join them for champagne…in the VIP area.” He uttered the last words as if they were sacred, some Garden of Eden in this dark and sinful place.

“That is very generous,” said Maria, “but you must tell your friends that, sweet as you may be, we do not accept invitations via intermediaries.” Isobel exhaled in relief, glad, albeit shocked, that Maria refused them.

Maria returned to her probing. “So you would never just let yourself go, even for one night, even if you knew Peter could never find out?” she asked, locking eyes with Isobel so that she would not notice the tall man exit the roped area with purpose and lust in his eyes.

“No,” said Isobel, feeling increasingly uncomfortable as the lounge filled and predators circled. “I have too much to lose; and anyway, sex without love is a bit meaningless, don’t you think?”

“With love it is better, I agree, but sex without love is hardly meaningless, ask any man.”

“Men are different. They can…can detach themselves from their emotions,” said Isobel, not at all sure what she meant.

“And so can a woman,” said Maria, aware that the man could now hear her perfectly. “I do not succumb to Angelo; I merely enjoy him, as I enjoy a fine wine. If it is good I may come back for more, but equally I do not want to sip from the same bottle every evening.”

“Please, Maria, can we talk about something other than sex?” Isobel’s voice was low; she could feel the shadow behind her.

It touched her shoulder and she stiffened; moments later they were behind the purple rope, with Maria coaxing her onwards.

Mo might have been a gold trader from the amount of the metal that adorned him. Isobel wondered that he could lift his arm given the size of the diamond encrusted watch on his wrist, which he flashed consciously to the room.

“It’s a thousand pound per table minimum spend here,” he told Isobel grandly, filling up her flute with Cristal as he edged into her. His body pressed in ever closer as he told her at length of his wealth and her beauty, alternating between the two in a calculated seduction. She shrank from him but he put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer, one hand straying to her thigh. Like a frightened rabbit, Isobel pushed him away, turning to Maria for help only to find her absorbed in Safi, whose platinum Rolex was slipping into his sleeve as he surreptitiously worked his hand under her dress.