His Penniless Beauty

‘Your hotel, guv.’

The voice of the cabbie penetrated her self-castigation. Immediately she made for the door. She had to get out, and fast. Out and away. Away from Nikos Kazandros.

‘Stay where you are.’ His voice was harsh, and it was clearly an order.

She glowered at him.

‘The cab will take you wherever you want to go. I’ll settle the fare to cover it.’

He was turning his attention now to the other occupant of the cab. Sophie had no idea who he was, and cared less. She just wanted Nikos gone, gone. And then she could get the hell out of here.

Wordlessly, Nikos set about the task of making Georgias sufficiently conscious to get out of the cab. He could feel the thrum of the humming engine of the car as it hovered under the portico of the Park Lane hotel.

‘Out,’ he said brusquely to Georgias, thrusting him on to the concourse, where he stood swaying and blinking. He turned to climb out himself, then paused, looking one last time at Sophie as she sat there hunched, still shivering. One final question seared through his brain. His eyes bored into her as he leant towards her.

‘Why? Give me one good reason why? Whatever the hell you are—hooker, escort, good-time girl, whatever—why go anywhere near this…this sleaze? Take a good, hard look at yourself when you get home—a good, hard look, Sophie—and think about whether you like what you see. Ask yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing.’

His voice was low, audible only to her. Her eyes flashed up, and for a second, just a second, Nikos felt himself reeling as if she had physically struck him.

‘Why do you think?’ she bit out, hissing, like Medusa’s snakes. ‘I need the bloody money!’

Her face was contorted, her eyes like daggers, ringed with black mascara, like black hollows, and in that instant Nikos recoiled, as if seeing a death’s head. Then his face set and he hurled himself from the cab, slamming the door, pausing only to extract his wallet and, with grim, tight face, thrust a fifty-pound note at the cabbie.

‘Take her wherever she wants,’ he said. Then he seized Georgias by the arm and marched him into the hotel.

Inside the taxi, Sophie stared after him for one long, last moment, until he had disappeared. Then she started to get out of the cab.

‘Oi, luv, your fare’s covered,’ said the cabbie, sliding open his partition.

‘I need an Underground station,’ she said, in a low, strained voice.

The cabbie looked concerned. ‘Luv, he’s right. You can’t go on a train all wet the way you are. You’ll get attacked. Mugged. Or worse. Look…’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s not my business, but I’d be happier taking you somewhere. I don’t want to read about you in the paper tomorrow, OK?’

He didn’t wait for an answer, just started the cab moving again. Sophie went on sitting there, shivering. But it wasn’t just the cold that was making her tremble.

The cabbie went on talking, half turning his head to do so. ‘Listen, luv, I’ve got a daughter your age. I wouldn’t like to see her—well, in the state you are. And I’d tell her straight what I’m going to tell you.’ He took a breath. ‘Blokes like that—’ he nodded his head back in the direction of the hotel ‘—they’re bad news for girls. All flash and cash and that’s your lot. Stay clear of them. That’s what I say—and it’s what any dad would say. And if you ain’t got a dad…well, I’ll say it for him—OK? A dad wants to be proud of his daughter—and to know she’s safe.’

Sophie heard the words, heard them from very far away. From a life that had gone for ever. That could never come back. Never.

And the bitter, bitter irony of what the cabbie had said made her want to burst into savage, hysterical laughter.

Or into tears that would drown her in their bottomless depths.

Nikos stood by the plate-glass window of his hotel lounge, looking out over the darkness of Hyde Park beyond. His tie was undone, his jacket discarded. One hand was splayed against the chill pane, the other cradling a glass of whisky from the drinks cabinet. His face was dark. Blank. Eyes unseeing.

But he was seeing, all right. Except not what was real. Not what existed any more.

But it never did exist—it never did! The past never was what I thought it was, and it took the narrowest damn escape of my life to realise that!

And thank God he had escaped!

He felt an old familiar emotion convulse him. One he had not felt now for a long, long time. He had forcibly banned it from existing, though it had taken all his strength to do so. He knew why it had struck again—knew it was inevitable.