‘Someone,’ he pressed.
I couldn’t look at him. I turned my face away but he cupped it in his hand and twisted it firmly back.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘I might have heard a rumour.’
He merely flashed his eyes at me, inviting me to go on.
‘About you and your, uh, your tastes. Certain specialist tastes. And it made me think of Kiss Me, Kate.’
‘Delicately put. I need the provenance of this rumour now, please.’
‘I don’t want to get anyone into trouble.’
‘You can name the establishment rather than the employee. I just need confirmation.’
‘Oh God. People are going to get into trouble, aren’t they?’
‘Only people who deserve it, Caroline. People who deserve trouble will get it.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m not prepared to say.’
‘Sorry, are you?’ He looked supremely irritated for a moment, then he took a breath and seemed to change tack. ‘Well, we can come back to this. You didn’t come here to be investigated, did you?’
‘Um, no.’
‘You came here, knowing my tastes, having received two provocative messages from me. Certain conclusions have been drawn, Caroline. Am I wrong to draw them?’
I looked around me while I sought a mental escape route. The brightly painted sets lent a surreal air to the situation, as if we were characters in a pantomime. Perhaps we were.
‘Not wrong, maybe,’ I said.
I looked back at him.
‘Are you going to spank me?’
His smile was more guarded this time.
‘I think that’s what you came here for, isn’t it? At least …’ His long, thin finger drew the outline of my ear. ‘I hope so. Of course, it’s entirely possible that you only came here to compromise me …’
‘No,’ I said, trying not to sound too ‘actor-doing-sincerity’. I always found genuine emotion hard to express since theatre school. ‘No, I wouldn’t do that. I’m an admirer of yours. I always have been. And there’s no more to it than that. Nobody knows I’m here, and I wouldn’t tell a soul, I swear.’
‘Not even Emma Frayne?’
‘Not even her. Oh!’
She was busted, then. Oh well, it could
n’t be helped.
‘That’s good,’ he said, giving my earlobe a little tweak. ‘Because I set a lot of store by discretion. I wouldn’t normally go about things this way. But when I saw you in that scene, oh, Caroline, you convinced me. He was really spanking you, wasn’t he? That bronzed, muscular Adonis whose lap you decorated so well. He wasn’t holding back, was he?’
‘No,’ I admitted, my cheeks heating up.
‘And that was too perfect,’ he said. ‘I loathe musical theatre and yet I sat through this performance keeping a tight grip on myself, knowing what to expect and expecting disappointment. A hand that skimmed away just at the point of impact while somebody slapped the bench behind you. You can’t imagine how it affected me when I realised you were really being spanked. Because, you know, you can’t act a spanking. If it isn’t real, it isn’t convincing. The faces and the body language are always overacted. I’ve seen too many pathetic magazine shoots to be taken in any more.’
‘It was real, all right. I made Leo do it. He didn’t really want to.’
‘I think he did. But one must put up the weak protest, for fear of being seen as a monster.’