I laid the clothes out on the bed and while I was sorting through the options, I suddenly realised something.
He’d said Emma.
When he’d phoned, Simon had called me Emma.
He’d never started a phone conversation using my real name until today. It had always been ‘Mistress’. Said with a smile, as if he was laughing at himself for sticking to that respectful term.
This time, ‘Emma’.
And as I puzzled over this, my phone rang. It was him. Again.
Christ, don’t let the Dubai trip be back on, I prayed, snatching up the phone.
‘I had a thought. I’d really like to take you to one of my favourite Italian restaurants, which happens to be within walking distance of my place, so – do you want to stay over?’
Do I want to?
Do I ever! His offer was having the most ridiculous effect on me. I felt short of breath and my stomach was doing somersaults of nervousness and delight. Staying over … at his place … Dear God, what was happening to me? I hadn’t felt this way since I’d been asked on a date for the first time at the age of sixteen or whenever the hell it had been.
‘That sounds great,’ I said, and I could hear the delight in my own voice.
The call over, I turned my attention back to my wardrobe crisis, flinging clothes onto the bed in a frenzy of panicked excitement. What to take with me? I needed breakfast wear, something casual. A spangly black top just wouldn’t fit the bill for the next morning.
Eventually I packed two different outfits, to cover all eventualities. With that done, I did some housework, went shopping, rushed back to the folly for an afternoon session with another of my regulars. And then it was six o’clock. I filled the cats’ food bowls to the brim and made sure they had plenty of water, just in case – in case – we ended up doing something together the next day.
I jumped into the shower and gave my hair a quick wash. Dressing almost as fast, I put on my make-up and doused myself with the perfume he’d given me. And then I picked up my bag and locked the house behind me and walked through the darkening evening to the gate of the folly. Here, inside this little building, was where I would wait for him.
That was where mine and Simon’s meeting point would have to start and end. The folly represented the place where truths stopped and lies began. Beyond it was the reality of the personal world I was afraid to show him.
And yet, now, he was picking me up from there to show me his.
‘Don’t read too much into this,’ I warned myself out loud, stepping inside and turning on the light. ‘He wants some company for dinner, bed and breakfast. Basically, he’s getting a freebie, because he sounds as if he’s back to his old self, so if you think there won’t be any fantasy play involved, you’re wrong.’
Nobody, in my opinion, deserved a freebie more than Simon. The problem was, of course, that I didn’t want it to be just a freebie. I wanted it to be the beginning of something, but it could never be.
I frowned deeply.
Sitting in my unconventionally decorated cottage, forlorn thoughts suddenly at the forefront of my mind, I saw the Jaguar’s headlights swing into view.
Swiftly, I snapped the lights off, grabbed the keys and buzzed the gate open. I picked up my bag and stepped outside and when he pulled up next to me I was ready and waiting. A smile in place, conversation on my lips, Bob the Cat rolling on the paving at my feet. My doubts and insecurities locked tightly up inside the folly, together with my lies.
Chapter 29
I settled myself into the comfortable embrace of the Jaguar’s nut-brown leather passenger seat, and Simon turned the car around and set off for Sandton. I observed that he drove well, unlike most Johannesburg men with fast cars, who seemed to swap their brains out for an extra shot of testosterone when they took the wheel. And of course, the luxury of the ride only added to the pleasure of the experience.
‘This really is a beautiful car,’ I observed.
‘I bought it last year,’ Simon said. ‘I’ve always been a Mercedes man, actually.’
‘I’ve always been a BMW woman myself,’ I said, cleverly planting the seed in his mind that I drove a Beemer. After all, I had always aspired to owning one, so it wasn’t too much of an untruth. ‘What made you switch makes?’
‘Well, I decided on it after I was hijacked.’
‘How dreadful! What happened?’
‘I was leaving a building site on my own after dark,’ he said. ‘I’d just climbed into my car when the door was pulled wide open. There were three men, two carrying guns. It was quite a surreal experience – it happened so fast. They forced me to get into the gap between the front and back seats, and off we went.’
‘Weren’t you terrified?’
‘As it sunk in, yes, but initially I was so full of adrenaline I didn’t realise how scared I was. Anyway, after everyone had calmed down and nobody seemed to be about to shoot me after all, I got into conversation with them.’
‘You what?’ An incredulous smile spread over my face.
‘Well, it seemed like a way to pass the time and I thought it couldn’t hurt and might help. We talked about cars. I asked them which brands they found the most popular and they said Mercedes, BMW, Toyota and Volkswagens, as you’d expect. I asked where the cars went, and they said that their bosses took the orders and that the cars were taken to countries north of here, further up in Africa. Then I asked them if there was any type of vehicle that was never carjacked. They told me no one wanted Jaguars – something about the parts being too hard to get, or them being too noticeable.’
‘So then what happened?’ I asked, fascinated by his story, and glancing nervously around as we stopped at the dark and lonely intersection before the main road.
‘They let me out on the highway, unharmed, and were even kind enough to give me some cash out of my wallet, which they took of course, so I could get home,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘I got a lift to the nearest service station – it was quite an experience standing by the side of the highway at night, trying to flag a minibus taxi down. I couldn’t even remember what the correct signs were to use. There’s one signal you use if you want a ride locally and another one you use if you’re going further.’
‘And you were sufficiently compos mentis to think about that?’
‘It’s funny what you do think of. But since I didn’t know what signal to use I seem to remember I ended up just waving desperately at the oncoming traffic. Anyway, the first taxi that drove past stopped and gave me a ride. I used the phone at the service station to call a friend to come and fetch me, and to notify the police, and the next day I went out and bought this Jaguar.’
‘Didn’t that experience make you scared about driving at night?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘For a while. But in a way it led to something positive, because a few weeks after the hijacking I decided to start up the Orange Farm development. I thought it was something I could do to help make things better here, in a small way.’
‘So good came of it after all.’
‘There’s always good to be found in a situation,’ he said. ‘That’s what I love about Jo’burg. For all the crime and the danger we’re exposed to, there’s so much to admire in the people who live here, and I’m constantly amazed by their kindness and fortitude.’
Ahead I saw the familiar high-rise buildings of the cbd. Simon drove towards the main shopping area but then turned left, left again, and then drove down a side street until he came to a double-storey building that looked a little like a Tudor mansion – if a Tudor mansion had had a row of wood-panelled garage doors below it – set in a large and well-treed garden. The elegant signboard set into the wall read: ‘Maude Grove’.
The security guard at the gate opened up for Simon and he drove in and parked in the garage on the far right-hand side. Then he steered me up a flight of stairs, carrying my bag for me, and led me to an imposing front door.
Simon unlocked it and opened it and, walking in ahead
of him, I found myself inside a luxury apartment that oozed contemporary elegance.
‘The main bedroom’s at the end of the passage,’ he said. If you could call a three-metre-wide and well-lit area with dazzlingly white walls a ‘passage’, that was.
In the bedroom, he put my bag down on one of the two armchairs by the clean-face ceramic fireplace. There were a couple of paintings on the walls that I could have stared at for a long time: landscapes and seascapes in soothing greens and blues. When I took a closer look I saw they were by Paddy Starling, a local artist whose name I recognised, and whose work I’d seen and loved in the past.
He showed me through to the lounge and I sat down on one of the cream leather sofas.
‘This is a lovely place.’ Finished, I noticed. With glass in all the windows, those pale, expensive-looking tiles on the floor, beautiful cornices. Oh, and a proper stove in the kitchen, and no loose wires dangling down from the ceiling. I had to admit, at this stage, my definition of ‘lovely’ really included ‘just about anywhere except where I live’.
‘I bought this place after my wife died. I didn’t see any point in rattling around on my own in a bigger house, and I was doing a lot of travelling at that stage, which I still am, of course. It’s comfortable to live in. But I miss having a garden. And having animals.’
‘Will the travelling ease up?’
‘Well, when the Dubai project is over, yes, theoretically. The problem is that we’ve become known in that area now and we’ve had other offers, other opportunities. From Dubai and elsewhere in the Emirates, and Muscat and Riyadh. We can’t turn away the business because the money is so good. So, if anything, I’d say right now it’s escalating. What we really need is for somebody to move over there and open up a branch office.’
‘Would you go?’ I asked, wondering if perhaps this was what had been preying on his mind when he’d last arrived at my dungeon.
‘And give up the Orange Farm project?’ he asked with a quick grin. ‘It’s still under discussion, of course, but I’d rather keep commuting than base myself in the Middle East full-time. Luckily, there’s a strong possibility that Bongani, one of the other partners, will move over there next month to get things started. But anyway, enough about my work. Shall we have a glass of Champagne before we go to dinner?’
‘I’d love one.’
He opened a bottle and we clinked glasses. As he sat down beside me on the sofa I found myself telling him some of the anecdotes from my ad-agency days, and then, going further back in time, I told him some of the funny stories from my days on the sex lines.
‘One of the domination lines I worked on for a while was based in a big warehouse in a fairly industrial part of town,’ I told him. ‘The place was fairly old, the insulation was just about falling out of the ceiling, and it was very badly wired. When the phone line started up, eight different telephones and four computers all had to be routed to different rooms. You get the scenario?’
Simon nodded.
‘Late one night, the inevitable happened. A wire shorted out and a fire started in the ceiling. Nobody was hurt, and we got all the computers to safety, but there was quite a bit of smoke in one corner of the warehouse, and the partition separating two of the rooms we’d sectioned off started blazing merrily.’
‘So then what happened?’
‘The fire department arrived and set about extinguishing it. Which they did very successfully. Four strapping firemen, two high-pressure hoses, and in about two minutes the fire was out and the smoke was starting to clear.’
‘Go on.’ He leaned closer to me and I could hear the warmth in his voice, anticipating the humour that was yet to come.
‘They stayed outside the building for a while to make sure everything was under control. There was still a working plug point on the opposite side of the building, so we made coffee for them. While they were waiting, they asked us – a fair question, mind you – what on earth six ladies were doing late at night, working on telephones in soundproofed cubicles.’
Simon started smiling. ‘An awkward one to answer, that. So what did you tell them?’
‘We had a standard story that we used to give to anybody who had to come in and do work. We’d say that we did telephonic psychic and tarot readings for callers. We even had a couple of packs of cards in reception to back up the story. But when we told the firemen this, you can only imagine what their reaction was.’
‘Oh, hell!’ Simon burst out laughing.
‘Exactly. And if you think you’re finding it funny now, you should have heard them. They fell about laughing. That joke just didn’t die. They kept asking us why we couldn’t have foreseen the fire. One of them even wanted to know why we hadn’t predicted that he took two sugars in his coffee. It was seriously mortifying.’
‘But definitely a story to dine out on,’ Simon said. His champagne finished, he put his empty glass down and, almost without thinking about it, moved his hand as if to place it on my leg. It was such a natural gesture, but at the last minute, I saw the tightness in his face as he realised the complexity of our situation.
By then it was too late, so he placed his palm lightly on the top of my thigh. Before he could take it away I covered it with my own and we sat for a moment, smiling at each other, just as if we were lovers or partners, while the heat from his hand warmed my skin.
‘I thought, if you’re wearing the right shoes, we could walk to the restaurant,’ he said. ‘It’s only about five minutes away. But I don’t want to cause you agony and I’m happy to drive, or get a cab. So it depends on your footwear. What do you think?’
I was wearing boots. High-heeled, but comfortable. They wouldn’t turn into cheese graters after I’d taken more than three steps in them.
‘Good idea to walk,’ I said. After all, how often did one get to do that after dark in Johannesburg?
‘The area’s very safe,’ he reassured me. ‘I often walk instead of drive, especially with the traffic being so bad these days. Most days, in fact, if I’m busy on the mall refurbishment project, I don’t even bother taking my car out of the garage in the morning.’
He closed the front door behind us and we headed out of the gate, saying good evening to the security guard on our way. It was fantastic to be out on foot on Sandton’s streets. The pedestrian walkways might be uneven and narrow in places, but they were there, and to my amazement, they were being used. We passed a young businessman with a smart backpack slung over his shoulders, and a few joggers passed us, and I saw a couple of people who looked like tourists, and a few more who were obviously locals, waiting to catch taxis.
‘That’s one of the long-term aims of our development strategy for the precinct,’ Simon said. ‘It’s to get people back on the streets – to connect the malls and the hotels with the roads outside, rather than isolate them.’
Before I knew it we were walking through the main entrance of the five-star hotel and heading downstairs to the opulent-looking restaurant.
‘I know this place,’ I told him. ‘I remember coming to this exact venue when I was a teenager. But it wasn’t a restaurant back then. It was a swanky nightclub.’
‘You used to come here? So did I, sometimes.’
‘Not very often. It was a bit too posh for me.’
Simon laughed. ‘For me, too.’
‘I always liked the more bohemian venues, the cheaper places with a student vibe, just outside the old city centre. Like Yeoville, with its wildly popular bars and pubs. That was where I used to go with my friends.’
‘You did?’ Simon said, as the waiter was seating us and offering menus. ‘I loved Yeoville. My favourite place was a grungy little upstairs music venue called – dammit, what was it called? I remember it being very dark and really small. Just a few tables.’
‘I know exactly the place you mean.’ I was scouring my memory for its name too.
‘Black Sun,’ we said together, and started to laugh at the fact we’d done so.
‘I had friends who jus
t about lived in the Black Sun,’ I told him. ‘They went there every Friday and Saturday night, and I often joined them.’
‘I was there most Fridays. If it hadn’t been so dark I might even have seen you there,’ Simon joked. I smiled along with him, but inside I was feeling bereft, as if fate had been unnecessarily cruel by placing us in such
close proximity and yet never having allowed us to meet.
‘Did you have a ponytail back then?’ I asked.
‘Guilty as charged,’ he replied with a smile.
‘An earring?’
He lifted my hand to his ear, and my fingers felt the tiny scar in his left earlobe.
‘A dope habit?’
‘Not a habit. But I smoked the occasional joint.’ He regarded me with a serious look. ‘And you … well, you’d have had those same gorgeous hazel-gold eyes, of course, but I think your hair would have been shorter. You used to wear it in a bob, and you must have looked exactly like Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction.’
‘Are you sure you didn’t see me in the Black Sun?’ I asked, laughing in amazement at the accuracy of his guess about the hair, even though he was being wildly complimentary with his comparison.
He shook his head. ‘Perhaps I did. Who knows?’
We ordered wine and, studying the menu without really reading it, I allowed myself to imagine what would have happened if I’d met Simon there, half a lifetime ago. He’d have been at university by then, starting his architectural studies. His face rounder, his hair longer, but as tall and fit as he was today, with the same deep-blue eyes and warm voice, the same offbeat sense of humour and dark, intense sexual energy.
I wondered if I would have felt the same way about him if I’d got to know him then. He’d have been exactly the type I would have gone for. A ponytail and an earring. A dope habit and a head full of dreams.
Oh crap, I thought.
I’d stopped thinking of him as a flawed sexual deviant a while ago, and now I realised I’d stopped thinking of him as a client, too. I didn’t want him to be a client. I wished I could have met him some other way, a way that hadn’t involved his paying for my services.
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