She looked sideways at her wine glass, but even there she could see his reflection, distorted by the swell of the glass, his face stretched and floating against a dark red background. He was everywhere.
And he was saying: ‘I haven’t seen you in over twenty years. Some of my happiest memories when I was a kid were with you guys. It’s all coming back to me, sitting here, looking at you – little Bella! I know we’re almost the same age, but back then you were always little Bella to me.’
His smile was beautiful.
‘Of course I’m free tomorrow night, you crazy girl!’ he said fondly. ‘Whatever I had booked, I’d cancel it to see you! This is pretty miraculous – it’s like I’m finding my family again, you know? I was an only, so you were like my siblings. And when you guys disappeared, you still had each other, but I didn’t have anyone. Ugh, that sounds like I’m playing the world’s tiniest violin, but you can see how much this means to me—’
‘No, no, I feel the same!’ she said, though her heart was sinking at Ronaldo’s artless comparison of her to a sibling.
He raised her hand, leant forward across the table, kissed her knuckles. It was her left hand, with the huge diamond engagement ring and her wedding band, but he kissed it anyway, and his eyes met hers as he did so.
That brandy sensation was stronger than ever, as if he had touched a match to the brimming snifter, orange-blue flames dancing on the surface as the alcohol burned. She wanted to reach out and drag off her rings, throw them on the floor of the pizzeria, let them roll away under another table for someone else to take, someone who wanted them.
They did not have sex that night. They managed, somehow, to wait until the next one.
Chapter Eleven
Four days later, much to the astonishment of everyone around her, Bella was still in Chicago. Nita’s poor assistant Tal was on the worst of terms with the travel department, who groaned every time they heard her voice on the phone. Because Bella had made the decision to stay on a day-by-day basis. Every morning that she had woken up with Ronaldo next to her, as soon as he had left to go home and get ready for work, she had rolled over, taken her phone from the bedside table, and texted Nita to tell her she needed an extra day in the city for work meetings and to make the arrangements accordingly.
Nita, busy rescheduling every single meeting in every city on her boss’s itinerary, had passed the travel element on to Tal, and Tal, by now practically sobbing, rang her contact in Travel with yet another fervent apology to tell them that every single booking they had made for Bella was defunct. The entire complicated line of dominoes that they had painstakingly arranged on end had been triggered to fall, and needed to be picked up one by one and stacked up afresh: flights and hotels, continent by continent.
Never before had Bella put her staff through anything like this, and the speculation in the London office about what was going on was rampant. But Chicago could only inform them that Bella seemed to feel she had a whole raft of unexpected extra concerns about their ability to push through the revamped points scheme, and that she was insisting on coming into the office for a few hours a day in order to rehash the brief over and over again . . .
Bella, meanwhile, was in such a haze of bliss that she was barely aware of how much trouble she was causing. For the first time in her life she was being utterly selfish, and it felt amazing. After sending the text, she would roll into the slight depression Ronaldo had left in the pillows and the feather mattress topper – a Sachs hotel signature, supremely comfortable. Putting her head where his had been, she would smell his scent, lying in the warmth left by his body, her eyes closed as she replayed everything they had done together the night before and just now, that morning; her body sore, the happiest and most relaxed she had ever been.
Not only had she spent a fortune, literally a fortune – Tal’s entire yearly salary – on silk underwear, slips, robes, sexy black cocktail dresses, sky-high heels, facials, make-up, at Bloomingdales in the last few days, she had even taken Robin’s advice and gone to MAC for a combined makeover and make-up lesson. She had walked away looking like the best possible version of herself, carrying two bags which were, as Robin had predicted, mostly full of brushes.
In addition, every day Bella had booked a hairdresser through the hotel to come to her suite for a blow-dry. How she wished she had let her hair grow like her twin sister’s, so that she had sexy long locks for Ronaldo to tangle his hands in, which she could toss around in passion, which would spill out seductively behind her on the pillow. If she had known she would be meeting him, she would have got the best extensions money could buy.
Her wedding and engagement rings were still on her left hand, however. Every evening, dressed in one of her new slinky negligees, sitting in the dressing room off her bedroom as the hairdresser worked his magic in front of the make-up mirror, she sipped champagne to calm her raging nerves and fought the near-uncontrollable desire to pull them off. Tonight was no exception; her hair was being wound onto rollers, and with nothing to do but sit there and wait for Ronaldo’s arrival, she started to twist off the engagement ring, an unscrewing action. It seemed weirdly appropriate, a process of undoing something, opening it up, setting free what had been kept tightly inside.
However, every time she had worked it painfully over the knuckle – she had put on weight since the wedding – she stopped and twisted it back into place. She had been trying not to think about her husband at any point during these last few days, though that had been very hard to do. Spending so much money on sexy underwear and robes which Thomas would consider utterly impractical had, oddly, caused her the most guilt of all. When she was with Ronaldo, she couldn’t think of anything but the excitement she felt in his presence; away from him, however, thoughts of Thomas kept flooding in.
They had hardly talked since she had been away, as she had been doing everything she could to avoid her husband. Thomas didn’t require daily phone calls when one of them was travelling, so this hadn’t been difficult. He had rung and left messages, but Bella had texted instead of ringing back. Thomas seemed very understanding when she explained that, due to the demands of this hugely ambitious project, she was completely exhausted, much too tired to talk.
She knew all too well that she really, really needed to start moving. Board that plane to Dallas which had been painstakingly booked and cancelled for days now, complete the rest of her round-the-world tour, get back to London and take up the reins there once more. Every day that she lingered in Chicago was another twenty-four hours subtracted from working on probably the most important project she would ever undertake. The huge task of revamping the Sachs hotels was nothing to this.
But Bella could not bear to tear herself away from Ronaldo. Her sexual obsession with him was overwhelming. She couldn’t eat, she could hardly sleep: she lay awake beside him at night listening to him breathe, smelling his sweat, her head spinning, her body still throbbing from sex. She had lost four pounds in five days. It was a teenage crush made real, her hormones raging as strongly as if she were sixteen and in love for the first time.
But a teenager would be in love with the idea, not the reality. While Bella knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that she was head over heels in love with Ronaldo and that she always had been. She had been sure of it from the moment she saw him in the bar, her childhood friend all grown-up, that sweet, happy boy who had been so kind to her when she was small, and who was so wonderful to her now. Beside him, Thomas seemed entirely unreal. Her husband might as well have been one of those life-sized cardboard cut-outs of film stars they displayed in cinemas.
Her phone, in front of her on the dressing table, buzzed, and she grabbed it at once, assuming it was Ronaldo, who she was due to meet in just under an hour; please let him not be telling her he was late at work, or even that he had to cancel! This hadn’t happened yet, but obsession makes one paranoid, and she never quite believed that he would show up, night after night, until he did—
‘Hi!’ she said into the pho
ne.
‘Hey! Finally!’ responded a male voice which was definitely not Ronaldo. Bella pulled it from her ear, stared at the screen, realized it was not a voice call but a FaceTime one, and screamed at the sight of her smiling husband.
‘Everything okay?’ he asked, frowning, as she fumbled with the phone, turning the screen so that all he could see was her face; God forbid he saw the silky negligee falling opening at the cleavage, the matching push-up lace bra underneath it.
‘Yes!’ she said swiftly. ‘But I’m just—’
Thomas took in the make-up, the rollers in her hair, the stylist behind her, and his eyes widened in surprise.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked, a hint of disapproval creeping into his voice. ‘I thought you were working till you dropped every night?’
‘There’s a gala dinner with the Mayor’s office,’ she said, thinking fast. ‘I thought I might as well go. If there are any problems with the relaunch, it can’t hurt to have the local politicians and press on our side.’
There actually had been some sort of gala two nights ago, which Robin had suggested she attend, but Bella had said regretfully that she had far too many documents to review that evening, and promptly rushed back to her suite to get ready for Ronaldo.
‘You’ve got so much make-up on!’ Thomas commented, staring intently at the screen. ‘I barely recognized you!’
Bella was about to make an excuse, explain that there would be a lot of photographers and glad-handing at the gala and that she needed to look polished; but she hesitated for a moment, feeling something shift. Something that told her this was the way she used to behave with him, but no longer needed to.
‘Actually, it really isn’t that much,’ Bella said; she knew it wasn’t, having applied it herself. She wanted to look natural for Ronaldo, not plastered in foundation and fake eyelashes that would look as if she were trying too hard and would leave smears on the bedsheets. Above her head, the hairdresser nodded in agreement as he started to remove the heated rollers.
Thomas looked vexed.
‘Well, it’s more than you usually wear!’ he said.
The hairdresser halted momentarily, fingers hovering over the next roller for a second or two before he started to unwind it. Bella, who had been going to defend herself, paused too, and then, as it were, stayed paused by deciding that she didn’t need to answer this: it hadn’t been a question. Instead, she managed a smile for the camera, and said:
‘I think it looks nice. I had a very overdue lesson at MAC over here.’
‘Would you like some privacy?’ the hairdresser asked tactfully, putting a second hot roller down on the insulated pad he had placed on the dressing table.
‘No, I’m fine, thanks,’ Bella said, careful to keep holding the phone at an angle that hid her incriminating outfit.
‘I would, actually!’ Thomas said, his voice tinny through the speaker. ‘I would like a few minutes to talk to my wife.’
The hairdresser met Bella’s eyes in the mirror, saw her little nod, and, saying, ‘I’ll wait in the living room till you call me, shall I?’ slipped discreetly from the dressing room.
‘I don’t have much time—’ she started to say to her husband as she wedged the phone carefully on the dressing table at an angle which just showed her face and shoulders.
‘I got you a present!’ he interrupted, reaching down to his side. ‘It’s especially for all the travelling you’re doing.’
A wave of guilt flooded over Bella. Thomas was always so thoughtful about this kind of thing, bringing home little gadgets to make her life easier when she was on the road: clever charging devices, an inflatable ergonomic neck-rest pillow infinitely better even than the ones in first class for long working flights, a new silk eye mask to replace the one that was getting a little worn. He wanted to make her life easier, make her more comfortable. That was always the phrase: make her comfortable.
He reappeared, holding up a plastic packet, transparent, with a smart design on it that prevented her from seeing what was inside.
‘You’re always saying you run round so much when you’re on planes and having meetings and hate it when your underwear digs into you at the end of a long day,’ he said, which was perfectly true. ‘So I saw this brand advertised and I ordered you some. Look!’
He pulled open the flap of the packet and extracted something that Bella could not quite believe that she was seeing.
‘Wait, are those—’ she began.
‘Travelling knickers!’ he said blithely, looking down at the large beige pants he was holding in both hands. ‘Though you could wear them every day if you wanted, not just for travelling! They’re’ – he read from the packet – ‘laser-cut, with no seams, and invisible under clothes. The high waist and low-cut leg ensure full coverage and incredible comfort. With nothing to dig in, and a high Lycra content, they fit you – you don’t fit them. You won’t even realize you have them on.’
Bella stared at her husband in silence, vividly conscious of the knickers she was currently wearing: these were the smallest wisp of lace that she felt her figure could get away with, fastened on each hip with a satin ribbon tied in a bow.
‘They do look very – comfortable,’ she agreed eventually.
Thomas beamed. ‘I thought you’d like them! I got them in white, black and beige,’ he said. ‘Size medium. It’s a shame you couldn’t take them on this trip. But when you’re back you can try them on and see if they work for you.’
‘I’m sure they will,’ Bella said, staring at the granny knickers her husband had bought her. ‘I mean, they look as if they’d work for anyone.’
Carefully, Thomas slid them back into the packet.
‘Did you get them from the Telegraph catalogue?’ she heard herself ask, picturing the wide-banded, underwire-free, lace-panelled ‘easy-wear’ bras that were advertised in the back of the magazine, modelled on smiling thirty-something blondes but clearly intended for a much older, silver-haired clientele.
‘No, a travel magazine on the plane,’ he said, putting the packet down. ‘It’s very clever – they’re made with this special fabric which means they dry extra fast. Great for when someone’s travelling for a few days and wants to hand-wash their underwear as they go! Of course, that’s not an issue for you.’
He smiled, an acknowledgement that a Sachs who almost always stayed in a Sachs hotel would not be billed the extortionate costs that mere mortals had to pay to get their washing done.
‘No,’ Bella agreed in an oddly flat voice. ‘No, it isn’t.’
Thomas frowned. ‘Is everything okay?’ he asked. ‘You’re very quiet, and you’ve barely been in touch since you left. I know how hard you’re working, but still, that’s not like you.’
‘I’m just so busy,’ she lied. ‘Sorry. And I have to go out really soon – this gala—’
‘I’ll let you go,’ her husband said, to her great relief. ‘It was just that the knickers came this morning and I wanted to show you them.’
‘Of course! Um, thanks!’ Bella said rather helplessly.
Once more, Thomas beamed. ‘Well, good!’ he said happily. ‘Good stuff! I hope everything there’s going just as you want it.’
‘Uh, it is,’ Bella confirmed, feeling awful at how very true this was.
‘Can’t wait to see you back home!’ he said.
‘In the knickers,’ Bella found herself saying flatly.
‘Yes! Can’t wait! Well, love you, darling.’
‘Love you too,’ she said, her face contorting into a weird and strained attempt at a smile. She hated lying, and that was exactly what she was doing. Of course married people said they loved each other automatically without feeling a surge of passion every time, but those three words had had not a shred of emotion behind them. She was amazed Thomas hadn’t noticed.
He waved before reaching to the screen and clicking off the call. She sagged back in the chair, completely drained, and reached out for her glass of champagne, taking a long sip before
calling back the hairdresser to complete the removal of her rollers and the plumping out of her hair into thick, flattering waves. It was an overdone style for the kind of restaurant that Ronaldo took her to, hipster, off-the-beaten-track places where Bella Sachs would not be recognized, partly because the lighting was so dim that even the waiters could barely see her face.
But she wanted to look as beautiful as possible for him, wanted to feel their excitement build as they scooted their chairs closer and closer to each other, held hands under the table, worked themselves up to a state of positive frenzy until they could hold out no longer, threw money on the table to cover the bill and jumped into an Uber to race back to the hotel. Then, of course, they would have to let Ronaldo out a couple of blocks before the Sachs, so that Bella could return demurely alone to the hotel and be seen to go up to her suite alone after her business dinner. Ten minutes later, a tap on the door would signal Ronaldo’s arrival.
It was a delightful game: the secrecy, the choice of obscure restaurant for their rendezvous, and the sneaking around adding extra spice to the affair. Bella loved to feel the eager anticipation as she waited for him by the door of the suite, threw it open as soon as she heard his knock, bustled him in quickly so no one saw him in the corridor, and threw herself into his arms as soon as the door closed safely behind him.
She would have been bewildered, shocked, horrified, if she had known about the levels of perversity her sister Charlotte had reached with her lover Lee, the twisted games of rape and dominance they invented, the costumes, the accoutrements, the elaborate set-ups. This was not one of the myriad areas in which Bella had chosen the opposite path from her sister to avoid failing in the inevitable competition. She was, naturally, as vanilla as it was possible to be. All she wanted was sex with the right guy, one with a great body and a great cock that he knew how to use. Nothing complicated, no crazy positions that made you feel as if your hip was being ripped out, or that you were choking to death, or that he was able to see the less alluring parts of you in awkward, unseemly close-up.
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