“Oh, Ness,” he murmured, his lips at her neck.
Oh God, what was he doing? Kissing it. More than kissing it. Sucking hard at the soft skin.
Meanwhile, he tugged with his free hand at her dressing gown cord, loosening the knot, then he got hold of her nightie and, with one fierce yank, ripped it open.
She kneed him in the groin and he groaned and let her go.
But before she could re-open the door or sort out her ravaged clothing or do anything, a flash burnt her eyes and when she could see again she knew that he had taken a photograph of her on his camera phone.
A photograph of her, full-frontally naked.
“What are you doing?” she yelled, beside herself.
“Whatever it takes, sweetheart,” he replied. “If you won’t see what’s good for you, I’ll have to play dirty. Because I’m going to have you back, Vanessa. No matter how, I’m going to have you back.”
“Get. Out. I’m calling the police. If you aren’t gone by the time I come back in here…”
She fled to the living room and picked up her phone.
While she was trying to still her fingers enough to hit the right buttons, she heard the door bang and his footsteps on the stairs.
He had gone.
She put the phone down and ran into her bedroom, watching through the window until the beams of a car’s headlights lit up the windswept Close with its darkened squares of apartment blocks standing like sentinels at evenly-spaced intervals.
She saw Dafydd’s big dark figure in its ankle-length coat come out from the shadows, open the door, talk to the driver, then get into the passenger seat.
As the car drove away, he looked up and she jumped back, flattening herself against the wall. The room was dark, but the light from the hallway outside was sufficient to allow herself to see her reflection in the mirror.
Torn clothes, naked body and…her neck.
She moved closer and put her fingers against the unmistakable dark red mark. That bastard had given her a love bite.
Was it assault if she’d let him do it? Could she call the police? Wouldn’t they ask her a million awful questions about why she’d let him in in the first place and disbelieve her as default?
She couldn’t face it. Not tonight.
Tomorrow she’d tell Ben what had happened and make an appointment with a divorce lawyer. She wouldn’t keep her park date with Dafydd. She was never, ever going to be alone with him again. And perhaps she should get an ammonia spray to keep handy. Or one of those shrill alarms. Or both.
Her mind working overtime, she sank down on the bed and cried and shook until a queasy October dawn broke.
Chapter Eleven
Lydia had had to call Karl-Heinz and ask him what the hell she was expected to wear to a dinner/play party.
“Whatever you are comfortable in,” he had said, unhelpfully.
So she had decided to dress for an ordinary dinner date, albeit with her best underwear and stockings underneath her plain little black dress.
As she sat before her mirror, screwing little emerald studs into her ears, she thought about Milan.
He wasn’t at all happy about this.
She couldn’t blame him either. He had sound reasons for loathing Julius Hackmeyer, and even sounder reasons for not wanting her to get into a sexual situation with him.
“But I won’t let him touch me,” she’d said. “And I want to ask him about what he did to you. I want to make him see that it was wrong.”
“Don’t talk about that. Don’t talk about me. Don’t go.”
“I have to go. I’ve promised Karl-Heinz. But I’ll leave after dinner. I won’t get into the whole BDSM scene thing. How about that?”
Milan huffed and puffed, then shrugged.
“Where does he live?”
“Oh, I don’t think I should tell you.”
“I don’t want the address. Just wondering if it is near here. If so, why don’t you come and see me afterwards?”
Lydia rather thought Karl-Heinz would want her to stay with him—unless he stayed after she left, which was a possibility.
But she tutted and sighed and said, “Belgravia, I think. Bit of a trek.”
“Oh, Belgravia, of course,” sneered Milan. “Hapsburg princes could not live anywhere else.”
“I do mean to tell him what a shit he was to do that to you,” she said earnestly.
“Ach, don’t. Leave it. Ancient history, Lydia, and now I am a virtuoso, so he has failed.”
And he took up his violin and played a cadenza with demonic relish, tossing his hair like fury.
She and Karl-Heinz made their separate ways to Belgravia, since it lay east of Lydia’s apartment and west of Karl-Heinz’s. She hoped he would be there before her and texted him from Hyde Park Corner Tube station, once she’d made it to ground level, just to make sure.
But he didn’t reply.
The lights were on all over London now that the nights drew in so quickly, and the wind was brisk and cold, so she plunged her hands into her coat pockets and headed in the direction of Eaton Place. The streets were canyons with high white plaster sides, all boasting huge porches and pillars and floor-to-ceiling windows and shiny painted black railings to prevent pedestrians tumbling down the basement steps. Behind the shutters and heavy curtains, golden light spilled out and Lydia imagined what all these rich people might be doing in their castles. Having cocktails before dinner, or receiving distinguished guests from distant lands. Or perhaps they were all watching EastEnders, like everybody else.
Well, now she was rubbing shoulders with the rich and powerful of the classical music elite, so she supposed she would get an insight into their lives.
Here it was. Eaton Place. Huge five-storey wedding-cake house, just like all the others she’d passed on her way.
Lights on in the ground and first-floor windows.
Please be here, Karl-Heinz.
She rang the bell.
The door was answered by a girl in a maid’s uniform. Except, when she looked a little closer, she saw that it wasn’t really an ordinary maid’s uniform. Its brief skirt was puffed out by layer upon layer of stiff lacy petticoats and the top was cut very, very low, exposing almost all of the girl’s cleavage. She was pretty and cheeky-looking with olive skin and overly-glossed lips.
“Good evening, Ma’am,” she said, a Cockney twang evident in her tone. “You must be Miss Foster.”
“That’s right.”
The maid shut the door behind her.
“Let me take your coat, Ma’am, and I’ll take you through to the drawing room for champagne cocktails.”
Lydia handed her coat to the girl, who put it on a stand in the huge black-and-white tiled hallway. A massive chandelier hung unlit in the darkness. A shaft of light from a room beyond some double doors illuminated a chunk of the lobby, so that Lydia could make out the shapes of statues and huge vases and a giant staircase heading upwards. Hackmeyer’s London pad certainly wasn’t your average pied-à-terre.
When the maid led her across the lobby, Lydia observed that the lower portion of her bottom, in frilly white knickers, was visible, as were the suspender straps fixed onto black fishnet stockings. Was she part of the evening’s entertainment too? Or was she just a maid, who would be serving drinks with a dash of burlesque style?
The double doors were opened wide and Lydia peered into a beautiful high-ceilinged room, exquisitely furnished and decorated in a 1920s manner. It could accommodate probably fifty guests or more, but the only people in there were a young man wearing only a studded bondage harness, holding up a tray of champagne glasses, and Hackmeyer and Sarah Latimer.
Lydia immediately felt overdressed.
Sarah wore only a black latex corset with a black net tutu skirt that didn’t really cover anything. Her shaved pubis was clearly visible, as was her bottom if she turned around. Thigh high boots laced up to the top completed her outfit. Her bright peroxide hair was set in a fifties movie-star do and she looke
d altogether like a kinky Marilyn Monroe, larger than life and a little bit intimidating.
As for Hackmeyer, he wore a tight black T-shirt and leather pants. His fair hair was combed back from his forehead and he had the style of a Viking biker, albeit a Viking who visited the optician. He was an attractive man, in his way, Lydia realised. His way just wasn’t her way.
The pair of them raised glasses to her and smiled in a manner that somehow didn’t strike a great deal of warmth into Lydia’s heart. And where was Karl-Heinz?
“Lydia!” said Hackmeyer. His tone of familiarity nettled her. The man barely knew her. He dismissed the maid and beckoned Lydia closer.
“Is Karl-Heinz here? Have you heard from him? Is he running late?”
Hackmeyer looked at Sarah and they shared a complicit laugh.
“This is Karl-Heinz von Ritter we’re talking about,” said Hackmeyer, taking a glass from the motionless tray-bearing man and handing it to Lydia. “The phrase ‘running late’ is not in his vocabulary.”
Well, this is true, thought Lydia, reassured.
“So is he here then?”
“Yes, he is just using the bathroom.”
Lydia was aware of a huge release of tension in all her muscles but especially her stomach. She took a sip of the fizz and thanked her hosts.
“I…wasn’t sure what to wear,” she said, glancing at Sarah in her gothic sex fairy get-up.
“You look lovely,” Hackmeyer reassured her.
“Is the dress Prada?” asked Sarah with a falsely sweet smile.
She must know fine well it isn’t, thought Lydia crossly.
“Primark,” she said, deliberately obtuse, because in fact it was from Jigsaw.
Sarah looked at Hackmeyer, who frowned at her. Clearly she’d been ordered to be on her best behaviour.
Lydia began to see how the evening might be less horrible than she was expecting. If the egregious Sarah Latimer had to be polite to her…
Then Karl-Heinz entered through a side door and Lydia was immeasurably relieved to see that he wore his customary sharp dark suit. If he’d turned up in a pair of leather hot pants and a peaked cap she’d have had to turn tail and run.
“Ah, Lydia,” he said. “You are here, after all. And on time.” He smiled his approval and Lydia felt that familiar dynamic of dom and sub creeping into her consciousness.
He came over and linked his arm through hers, taking a glass of champagne for himself.
“Well, I am very impressed with your new place, Julius,” he said. “The bathroom was quite marvellous, all that mosaic, it reminds me of a Roman bath house.”
“Yes, that was the intention,” said Julius. “My uncle, who owns the house, liked to throw some interesting parties on a Roman theme.”
“Really? Roman…parties?”
“Writhing bodies everywhere,” laughed Julius. “I went to a couple. Barely made it out alive.”
In a way, thought Lydia, it was a shame Milan and Hackmeyer were at such loggerheads. They seemed to share a certain taste for sexual excess.
“Where’s your uncle now?” asked Karl-Heinz, peering towards the doors as if he expected a man in a toga to march through at any moment.
“Oh, he’s in LA,” said Hackmeyer carelessly. “For at least a year, I think. I timed this thing pretty well. The Lanesborough was starting to bore me.”
“Oh God, I had afternoon tea in the Lanesborough once, it was to die for,” exclaimed Lydia in a burst of enthusiasm, but she fell silent when she noticed the indulgent ‘isn’t she sweet and naïve’ look directed at her by the other three.
“I think dinner is ready,” said Hackmeyer, breaking an awkward silence. “Shall we go through to the dining room?”
The dining room was huger and more magnificent than the reception room. Everything seemed to shimmer and glimmer and even the diners looked wealthier and more beautiful in the golden light.
The brief-skirted maid was back to serve and take plates, while the man in the harness acted as sommelier, pouring the wine and taking orders for water or other drinks.
Initially, Lydia hung back outside the conversation, which Karl-Heinz and Hackmeyer dominated, talking of their respective days at work.
“And you, Lydia?” asked Hackmeyer, pausing after an account of the speech he had made to his new students. “I’m sorry, we are not letting you get a word in…is it edgewise?”
“Edgeways,” she said. She waited until both of the servants were out of earshot and whispered, “Do they always work here?”
Hackmeyer laughed.
“No, I hired them in for the evening.”
“What kind of agency…?”
“No, no. We are friends. On the scene. They enjoy serving.” He laughed again and rolled his eyes at Karl-Heinz and Sarah. Lydia felt very young and very stupid and resolved to shut her mouth until the subject of his terrible treatment of Milan could be brought up.
Sarah was being unusually quiet, she noticed. Had she taken a vow?
“What do you think of our new Leader?” she asked her, curious to get the harpist’s opinion of Vanessa’s vile ex.
“If Herr von Ritter is happy with him, then I bow to his professional expertise,” she said.
She sounded nothing like the outspoken bitch she’d scrapped with outside the Royal Albert Hall. What on Earth had come over her? Was it to do with this total power exchange thing?
“Well said, slut,” said Hackmeyer approvingly and Lydia gasped.
Didn’t she mind being spoken to like that?
“You look shocked, Lydia,” he said, smiling.
“I…it’s…” There seemed no polite way of putting it. “Isn’t that a bit harsh? Calling her a slut?”
“Why?” asked Hackmeyer, tearing off a wedge of goats’ cheese focaccia with his teeth and chewing it down. “She is a slut. Why not call her one?”
“But…don’t you mind?” Lydia addressed Sarah.
“My master is right. I am a slut. I’ve been had by everyone who comes into the house. He’s right to call me by my rightful name.”
“We looked into the possibility, didn’t we, of changing it by deed poll. So she could be Slut Whore Latimer.”
“Oh, you didn’t!”
“Well, okay, we knew it wouldn’t probably be allowed. But we went to the Register Office to ask.”
“You never did! What on Earth did the registrar say?”
“It was deliciously embarrassing for Slut, wasn’t it?”
Sarah, flushed to her peroxide roots, licked her lips, speechless at the memory.
Lydia burst into a peal of laughter, quite against her will, suddenly imagining opening a concert programme to find the harpist listed as ‘Slut Whore Latimer’.
“I’m sorry,” she giggled. “I just…that’s really…oh my God.”
“Control yourself, Lydia.”
Karl-Heinz spoke for the first time in this exchange, his voice calm but so authoritative that Lydia shut her mouth immediately and looked down at her plate, mortified.
“This brings us to the agenda for tonight,” continued Karl-Heinz. “Lydia is curious about your power exchange relationship, and you are answering some of her questions already. Of course, everybody is different and no two relationships are the same, but I wonder if there are any elements of your dynamic she might want to adopt.”
Lydia was not sure if she was expected to answer this, as Karl-Heinz was ostensibly addressing Hackmeyer, but she chipped in anyway.
“I don’t want anyone calling me rude names in front of other people,” she said. “That’s not for me.”
“But I hope you respect the fact that it is for some people, Lydia,” said Karl-Heinz, frowning.
“There’s a little formula we sometimes use,” said Hackmeyer. “Your kink is not my kink, but your kink is okay.”
“Oh, of course,” said Lydia, feeling hot in the face and humbled. “I never meant to judge you.”
“Good.”
Hackmeyer signalled the wai
ting staff to remove the plates, also signalling an end to the controversy, for which Lydia was grateful.
So why did she wade into even murkier waters with her next remark? She could not have explained it herself, except that she felt a need to steer the conversation away from sex. They’d only just finished their starters, after all. Surely it should wait for dessert?
“I was in two minds about coming here tonight,” she said.
“Oh?” said Hackmeyer, while Karl-Heinz frowned and Sarah sneered.
“I bet that’s something to do with that whacking great elephant in the corner,” said the harpist. “An elephant called Milan Kaspar. I can’t believe Karl-Heinz lets you see him. Julius would never allow it.”
Lydia saw Karl-Heinz’s brow darken at this aspersion on his dominance.
Hackmeyer remonstrated with a sharp, “Slut!”, and Sarah slouched back into her chair, temporarily silenced.
“That’s why I’m with a man like Karl-Heinz and not a man like Julius,” said Lydia. “We suit each other. He respects me and doesn’t try to rule my life. I wouldn’t want that. I understand that you do, and that’s fine, but I need more in the way of personal space and freedom. And yes, I did want to talk about Milan.”
Hackmeyer groaned. “I can feel my appetite slipping away.”
“Don’t you feel guilty for what you did?” demanded Lydia. “He obviously pissed you off and I can understand why you wanted to hurt him, but to do something that had such a terrible impact on his career…it’s horrible. And that wasn’t even enough—you’re still trying to sabotage him now, just as he’s starting to get the recognition his talent deserves. I don’t want to make a scene, really I don’t, but I’d like to ask you, quietly and without drama, to lay off him now.”
Hackmeyer sighed.
“I see Kaspar has given you only half of the story. Not surprising really. He loves to cast himself in the most flattering light. Well, let’s get this straight, shall we? He told you he had a fling with Sophie?”
“A secret relationship.”
“I suppose he told you he cared about her?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, he did.”
Hackmeyer shook his head. “It was a game to him. We were rivals, I had something I liked, he took it from me. That was how he felt about her. She was a pawn, to be used and discarded.”
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