Alex, my boy, real stupid...’ He was muttering as though to himself and the next instant, without a word of goodbye, he was walking away towards the waiting lift, entering its doors without a backward glance, his walk easy and free like a big relaxed cat.
She stood for a moment as though transfixed to the spot, listening to the sounds of the ancient machinery grinding downwards, her thoughts in turmoil and her body on fire. There was an ache in her body that was almost painful, each nerve-ending vitally alive and seeking relief. What was the matter with her? What was the matter? She almost stamped her foot in impotent rage and disgust at her weakness and heard the phone ringing in her flat with a mixture of irritation and relief. It would be Joanie, no doubt. ‘Hi, it’s me,’ Joanie said breathlessly. ‘Well, what’s happened? Are you all right? Did it go well? What did he say?’
‘It’s OK, it’s OK, no problem,’ Fabia said reassuringly, but the words sounded hollow even to herself. ‘I’m shattered though, Joanie. Can we talk in the morning?’
‘But what did he want?’ Joanie persisted doggedly.
‘Suffice to say the ball’s well and truly in my court and I’m not starting to play, but as I said I’ll explain in the morning. Night, Joanie.’ She couldn’t make small talk, she just couldn’t!
She put down the receiver on further protestations and after collapsing in a heap on the bed flailed herself yet again.
Why had she ever agreed to go with Joanie to that ill-fated function in the first place and, once there, what on earth had possessed her to act in such a way? She lay back on the bed as her thoughts raced. She knew why. Everything had so resembled the first time she had met Robin and she had rebelled, hotly and violently, against ever being put in the same position again.
The thoughts that she had kept back for months surfaced in excruciating clearness and she was too exhausted to fight them, giving in to their agony as she went back in time to that night, seven years ago, when she had been eighteen and thought the world was out there just for her.
She had been wearing red, she remembered tiredly, a red velvet evening dress that had moulded itself to her figure like a second skin, sleeveless, backless and incredibly daring. It had been hired specially for the great night; it wasn’t often a working girl like her won tickets for a ball that people would kill for, and the women in the shop had urged her to take that particular dress in preference to the one she had chosen, a more subdued little number in pale green.
She had only been in London four weeks and living in digs at the time, at a loss to understand the great city or its people, nervous, excited and wonderfully aware that every man’s eyes were being drawn to her that night, picking her out from the three other girls she had gone with in a manner that brought a flush to her cheeks and glitter to her eyes.
Robin had noticed her in the first five minutes, appearing at her side with two glasses of champagne, his light blue eyes frankly appreciative and his smooth, almost white blond hair and unusual good looks bowling her over. He had turned on the charm and she had been lost, a little girl alone in the big city and the perfect pushover, she thought bitterly, her mouth hardening.
Robin had been clever, she had to give him that. So caring, so gentle, so considerate at first. And then... ‘If you love me you’ll want us to be as one, darling,’ he had murmured night after night as they had kissed and fondled in his magnificently luxurious apartment or in the back of his white Rolls-Royce. ‘I love you so much, I want to know everything about you.’ He had wined and dined her, taking her to the best restaurants, the most exciting shows, dazzling and bewitching her, picking her up from work now and again, insisting that nothing was too much trouble for his ‘darling’.
She had realised later, when it was far, far too late, that he had used his limitless wealth and influence like a drug, increasing the dosage little by little until she was completely hooked. It hadn’t mattered that he was twenty years older than her at the time. ‘Age means nothing to us, sweetheart,’ he had assured her over and over again and, loving him as she did, trusting him implicitly, unable to believe her luck that this caring, handsome, tender man actually loved her, she had agreed wholeheartedly. Indeed there were times when, exhausted from a grinding day at the office, the very bottom rung in a massively tall ladder, she had felt years older than him.
He had assured her that the playboy image, the fact that he lived on the vast wealth he had inherited from his father without ever dirtying a finger in work, was all a figment of people’s imagination, and although, secretly, she had wondered at times, she had accepted that along with all the other lies.
Three months after they had met, when he’d considered she was ripe, he had issued an ultimatum, his eyes full of pain and his face woebegone. ‘If you love me, darling, really love me, you can’t let anything separate us,’ he had said mournfully, shaking his head gently. ‘This is killing me, to love you, to hold you in my arms and then have you draw back at the last moment. I can’t take any more, Fabia. It has to be all or nothing.’ He had ridiculed her idea of keeping herself chaste until she was married. ‘We don’t need to wait for that, darling. You know I love you, that I’ll always love you.’ And she had believed him. Utterly, completely. It had been so wonderful to have someone tell her that she mattered after the long years of being moved from one home to another, never really belonging, never knowing if she dared presume to put down tentative roots.
And so she had promised him. That weekend she would come to him. In his flat. She would stay the weekend, cook and care for him, and love him as he asked. Be everything he wanted.
‘Stupid, stupid, stupid...’ She groaned at the memory, rolling over into a tight little ball and putting her hands over her ears as though she could shut out the sounds of that woman’s screaming when she had discovered her and Robin in the huge bed with black silk sheets. And Robin’s rage. Rage that his mistress had come back from her trip to Paris too soon. Rage that he hadn’t consummated his affair with Fabia. Rage that he had been found out. Rage that his careful manipulating had gone wrong.
‘No more.’ She rose, pale and shaking, from the bed and, after stripping off her clothes, padded into the bathroom, standing under the hot shower with her head raised to the water and letting the cleansing flow wash over her until it turned cool. A twenty-five-year-old virgin in London. She smiled to herself soberly. There were probably more about than met the eye. She wasn’t unique.
Something had died in her that night. The humiliation and the aftermath had hurt too deeply, destroyed too many childish dreams of a knight on a white charger, for her ever to be the same again. She had lost all her self-respect for a long, long time but she had regained it now and nobody, nobody, would ever take it away again. She had had the odd boyfriend after a time but none of them had remotely stirred her dead heart. She viewed the whole male sex without rose-coloured glasses, seeing them as vain, selfish and shallow most of the time with the odd exception here and there proving the rule. And she would not be fooled again! Not by a tawny-eyed giant with a glib line in persuasion whose kisses were out of this world. She caught herself with a sense of shock. She didn’t need kisses and she didn’t need any complications in her life! She was a career girl who had got everything very nicely under control, thank you, and if, occasionally, in the dark of the night when sleep was a million miles away, she yearned for a different life, the cold harsh light of day soon put her to rights. White knights and white weddings were in story-books.
A pale watery dawn was creeping into the small bedroom when at last her eyelids closed in sleep, and she slept soundly and deeply until the shrill ring of the doorbell brought her jerking awake.
It had to be Brian, she thought furiously as she stumbled to the door, pulling a robe over the blue silk pyjamas she was wearing. Only Brian would be inconsiderate enough to ring the bell at eight o’clock on a Saturday morning.
‘Just returning the coffee.’ Brian’s face was a picture of innocence. ‘Didn’t get you up, did I?’
‘Yes!’ She was too tired to be polite, reaching out for the coffee jar as she spoke.
‘Sorry.’ He didn’t look it. ‘Who was that guy I saw you with last night? New boyfriend?’
His tone was distinctly hostile and brought her fully awake with a little thud. What now? She really didn’t need this on top of everything else. ‘I think that’s my business, Brian, don’t you?’ She made no effort to soften her words. ‘Now I’d really like to get back to bed if you don’t mind.’
‘Don’t mind at all.’ He had pushed past her into the flat before she was aware of it and walked into the small lounge with swaggering steps. ‘Busy night, was it? Strenuous?’ His meaning was unmistakable, as was the leer on his face, and for a second she felt a stab of fear before hot anger rose to take its place.
‘Get out of my flat, Brian,’ she said coldly. ‘I don’t remember inviting you in.’
‘You never do, do you?’ he said softly, his thick lips wet as the small eyes ran over her body. ‘Got to have a Bentley or something first, eh? Like lover-boy?’
‘You followed us out into the street?’ The windows were on the other side of the flats so he couldn’t have seen Alex’s car from there. ‘Just who do you think you are?’
‘Someone who can give you a good time if you’d let me.’ He took a step towards her. ‘How about it?’