by Vina Jackson
Having manoeuvred himself one late-winter day into something of a corner with a particular character in the book not behaving as he had expected, which required him to tear up a whole chapter and rejig an important section so that the diverse protagonists’ psychological motivations made better sense, he was feeling both drained and aimless when the doorbell rang.
He was wearing his dressing gown and hadn’t shaved for four days. He buckled the belt tight round his middle and made his way downstairs. Probably the postman with a late delivery, he reckoned.
It was beginning to rain quite hard outside, he noted, as he passed the landing window, and the bell rang again, more insistent this time. The house’s porch afforded no protection from the elements.
He took the latch off, slid the key in the top lock and unlocked the front door.
‘Hey!’
‘Oh . . .’
Lauralynn stood there, holding a newspaper above her blonde hair in a vain attempt to keep herself out of the rain. She was soaked, her thin T-shirt clinging to her generous curves.
She was anything but her customary seductive self, all bedraggled from having travelled through the pelting showers, but her aura of sexiness was unavoidable. How could it not be?
‘Won’t you invite a wet girl in?’ she asked, a faint smile on her full lips.
‘Of course.’ Dominik opened the door wide and ushered her in. ‘This is a surprise, but it’s great to see you. Excuse my dishevelled appearance. I wasn’t expecting anyone.’
Lauralynn shook her head, a thin cascade of water drops flying in every direction. ‘I don’t think I’m looking much better,’ she remarked. ‘Pouring rain can do that to you. It began pelting down the moment I left the Tube station. You took a hell of a long time to open the door. Didn’t you hear me? There were lights on, so I knew you were in.’
‘I was in the upstairs study. Probably didn’t hear the bell first time.’
She wore a pair of skin-tight black jeans and her usual black leather jacket over a white T-shirt.
Dominik guided her to the kitchen. ‘Need something to warm you up?’ he suggested.
‘Absolutely. Some piping-hot beverage of your choice if you can manage it, to be followed in rapid succession by something stronger. I know you don’t drink, but I know you’re sophisticated enough to have a bottle or two stored away somewhere, no?’
‘You know me well.’ He switched the electric kettle on and searched one of the cabinets for a jar of instant coffee.
‘Instant?’ Lauralynn remarked. ‘I would have expected a sleek and shiny espresso machine at the very least.’
‘Sorry to disappoint.’
She’d been back in London for ten days already, she explained. The Yale maternity-cover contract had come to an end and she had been offered a further six-month extension, but being stuck in the suburbs didn’t suit her. She was too much of a big-city animal. Had it been New York, she would have gladly remained in America, but she had been growing tired of having to watch the clock and rush for the last train to New Haven from Grand Central whenever she’d gone roaming in Manhattan.
‘You left in a hell of a hurry,’ she later said as they sat down sipping their coffees.
‘I know.’
They exchanged knowing glances.
‘Victor is all right,’ she said. ‘Not that you asked,’ she added.
‘I didn’t.’
‘You broke his nose.’
‘Cheap at the price.’
‘Didn’t think you had it in you, Dominik.’
‘You’d be surprised.’
‘He’s also left New York by now. I heard he took up a position at the university in Kiev. The green, green grass of home and all that . . .’
‘I’ll know to avoid Ukraine in the future.’
‘I believe that would be wise,’ Lauralynn concluded.
‘So what are your London plans, then?’ he asked her.
‘Nothing much. I’ve a bit of money saved. In no rush to do much really.’
‘Where are you staying?’
‘I’m crashing on some friends’ sofa in Camden Town. I’ll soon have outstayed my welcome, though.’
‘Still have your sleeping bag all rolled up and ready to go?’
‘Of course. Have sleeping bag, will travel.’
‘This is a big house. There is still some space between all the books, I guess, corners where a sleeping bag could fit in.’
‘Is that an invitation?’
‘The nearest I’ll get to one,’ Dominik said.
‘In that case, I accept, Professor.’
‘It’ll be nice to have some company. There was a time when I was comfortable on my own, but things have changed. It was good with Summer while it lasted, but I messed it up.’
‘I think the problem was that you never knew what exactly you wanted, Dominik.’
‘You can say that again.’
‘I think what you need is a teacher.’
‘Do I? That would be an interesting reversal of roles, no?’
‘Want me?’
What did Lauralynn mean?
She noted his puzzlement. ‘You might know a lot about books and other arcane stuff, but there are many other things I could teach you, Dominik, about women, lust, control, what makes people tick.’
‘Is that an invitation?’ Dominik smiled.
‘And the lessons come free. With bonuses along the way.’
Dominik remembered the threesome with Miranda and knew exactly what the canny Lauralynn had in mind.
‘Where do I enrol?’ he asked.
‘Right now,’ she said. ‘So where do you hide your booze?’
Life went on, as it always does.
Eighteen months or so went by in a flash, time swept away in the peaceful flow of life with Simón and my music career.
I’d been out of town for a couple of weeks, playing gigs in Memphis and Charleston. Being on the road is like travelling in a cocoon, and I liked it that way, mistress of my own universe. It made a nice change from having to explain myself to Simón every time I wanted to do anything without him, even if it was just a walk to the corner store. I never even switched the TV on in my hotel rooms – just read trashy novels or listened to music, sometimes simply sat in silence and stared at a blank wall. The apocalypse could have come and gone and I never would have known about it. I didn’t give a damn about the daily news.
I ran every day when I was on tour. It was my way of making friends with a new city, taking in the sights and smells, ignoring the tourist trails and exploring the depths of suburbia instead. People were much more interesting than museums, anyway.
When I was back in Manhattan for just a few days, I took advantage of my familiarity with the shopping scene to buy a new pair of running shoes. I’d blown the toes out of mine, a fact that gave me no small thrill of satisfaction. I prefer my shoes worn in – they just don’t look right brand new – but I’d run all the cushion out of them and had no wish to turn an ankle, so I took the subway to Union Square, with a view to visiting the cluster of shoe shops on Broadway, both north and south of Astor Place.
The spring crowds were out in force, darting in and out of stores as if shopping was about to go out of fashion. After the relative seclusion of lonely hotel rooms, the pushing and shoving and queues for the service assistants to fetch the other half of the display pairs quickly got on my nerves.
Maybe I would get more peace south of Houston, where the shops were decidedly more upmarket and the crowds thinner and less frantic. It wasn’t as if I didn’t have the money to splash out a bit extra, and as a bonus, I’d pass one of my favourite ice-cream parlours on the way. I hadn’t had pistachio ice cream since I was in Europe and I suddenly had a craving for it.
I crossed the street at the first set of traffic lights.
The window of Shakespeare & Co. greeted me as I reached the opposite pavement. It was one of the last remaining independent bookstores in the city and somewhere that Dominik had alway
s liked to visit. He spent his time there while I went shopping at the nearby clothes stores and never seemed to mind how long I spent trying on dresses or shoes. He would have happily stayed and browsed the shelves all night if the staff had let him.
The window was its usual busy mess of volumes in all sizes and colours. I had wondered if Dominik had liked the place so much because it reminded him of the shelves in his own house, no order of any sort.
I was about to continue my trek down Broadway when the image of a violin on the cover of a book at the far end of the window caught my eye. I slowed down and peered through the glass.
I stopped in my tracks, frozen in shock, shoppers jostling me from both sides. A strapline across the cover stated it had been a bestseller in the UK, but all I could focus on was Dominik’s name emblazoned on the cover like a brand and a photo-like illustration of a violin. He had finished his manuscript, then, and managed to find a publisher.
I walked in and found a pile of his books on the new-fiction table at the front of the shop. I picked up a copy in the way that I might approach a hot plate on the stove. Tentatively.
I opened it, turned past the title page. There was a dedication:
To S.
Yours, always.
Acknowledgements
Thanks as always to our agent Sarah Such of Sarah Such Literary Agency and our editors Jemima Forrester and Jon Wood, as well as Tina Pohlman at Open Road Integrated Media in New York, and our foreign publishers in Germany, Italy, Sweden and Brazil, for believing in us, and of course Rosemarie Buckman at the Buckman Agency and Carrie Kania at Conville & Walsh for sterling work.
About the Author
Author photo © www.mattchristie.com
Vina Jackson is the pseudonym for two established writers working together for the first time. One a successful author, the other a published writer who is also a city professional working in the Square Mile.
Copyright
AN ORION EBOOK
First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Orion Books.
This ebook first published in 2012 by Orion Books.
Copyright © Vina Jackson 2012
The right of Vina Jackson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978 1 4091 2777 2
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