‘What kind of a party is this, though? I’m getting a kind of vibe off it but I’m not sure if I’m reading the situation right.’
‘Do you remember the night I came to your place for dinner?’
I did. It had been a good night, far too much had been drunk and we’d both woken up on the living room sofas.
‘I had a bit of snoop while you were making that phone call to your colleague in Brussels. I found your secret stash of magazines.’
‘For fuck’s sake, Perry!’
‘Oh, hush, and don’t call me that, you know it makes me sound like a third-division basketball player. You can call me anything you like, up to and including ‘you bastard’, but please don’t call me Perry.’
‘Sorry, I’m sure.’
‘Anyway, what particularly interested me about your magazines was how very similar they are to my magazines. If you catch my drift.’
I caught his drift. You’ll know the magazines, I’m sure. Corrective Measures, Cheeks, The St Trinian.
‘As it happens,’ he said, ‘I’ve written a few stories for them. Readers’ confessions kind of thing. All made up, of course, and it barely pays, but I enjoy my work. Maybe you’ve read them?’
‘I tend to mostly get them for the pictures.’
He looked a little bit disappointed, then he perked up a bit.
‘You need the pictures because there’s a void in your life,’ he said. ‘A void in the form of a shapely female posterior.’
‘About sums it up,’ I said.
‘So you and Amanda?’
‘No. I never broached the subject. Meant to, many times, but when it came down to it, ah, you know. I was tired or she was tired or … She wouldn’t have been into it anyway.’
I got distracted then by a noise coming from one of the upstairs rooms of the house. All the windows were open because of the heat. The noise was a smack, smack, smack in strict rhythm. The fourth or fifth time there was a little cry as well, a man’s voice.
‘Sofia’s good at her job,’ said Peregrine. ‘She ought to get Julian to write her a review for the paper. But somehow I doubt he will. Anyway, have you finished with that drink? There’s somebody I’d like to introduce to you.’
Well, I was feeling a little as if I’d gone over the rainbow, to be honest. Here I was, expecting a relaxing country retreat, and I seemed to have landed smack bang in the middle of a kinky sex party. But I was curious, and I wanted to see more, so I followed Peregrine into the house. I’m pretty sure the director – I wish I could tell you his name but I’m sworn to secrecy – was getting sucked off by his boyfriend by then, right under the hawthorn. I didn’t think it’d be good manners to look, though, so I didn’t.
Peregrine took me into the main downstairs room; a living room, or drawing room, if you want to call it that. Big, though, with bay windows, lots of sofas and antiques and all the Peregrine stuff. Not to my taste, really, I’m more of a minimalist, but if you like that type of thing … Anyway. I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to the furniture, I’ll admit, because something else had caught my eye straight away.
In the corner, there was a woman, a young woman, with her back to us.
It was pretty easy to see that she had a great figure, curving in and out in all the right places – even with clothes on, that much would have been obvious. But she was only wearing a corset thing – basque, is it? – with stockings and suspenders. No knickers. She had her back to us so I got a bird’s eye view of her luscious bum. A gorgeous one it was, really full and round. She had her hair up in a clip on top of her head, but if it’d been down it would probably have reached down that low. The stockings were fishnets and she was wearing stiletto heels, too. She had her hands on her head.
I thought it was a bit strange that she didn’t turn around or do anything when she heard us come into the room. She must have been terribly embarrassed to be bare-bottomed like that in front of two men, one a complete stranger.
Peregrine was still rambling on about the house, and the village, and what the neighbours were like. He didn’t even mention her until he’d finished this anecdote about the retired army major down the road, and how he was trying to take over the parish council.
There was a bit of a natural break then, and all I could think of to do was clear my throat and look pointedly over at the, well, elephant in the corner sounds a bit rude. Maybe elegant in the corner? Heh. No. Sorry. But you know what I mean. She was right there, drawing every little bit of my available attention, but nobody had mentioned her.
‘You’ll be wondering, Richard,’ he said, in that fantastic old-school accent of his, ‘from which auction house I acquired our delightful new addition to the furniture?’
All I could do was nod. That arse. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
‘If she turned around, you’d recognise her,’ he said.
She moved then, a little tremor of the shoulders and I heard her draw in a breath, but she didn’t say a word, or turn around.
‘That’s got the wind up her. She’s terrified she’ll end up in the papers. But you’re a discreet man, aren’t you, Richard? I’ve already told her you’re a cousin of mine. And you’re far too rich to bother with blackmail or bribery. Honestly, anyone would think I’d yanked you off the street. If I were you, I’d take offence.’