At the dreaded L word, we both grow silent, pensive, until at last Jess looks up at me through her fringe, all serious now, and says:
‘So you’re still sleeping with Paco, I guess. That’s why you’ve not been in touch, isn’t it?’
I feel myself slump down in my seat. ‘It’s a fuck of a lot more complicated than that,’ I tell her, and she raises her eyebrows, leans back and lights a cigarette, and just listens, as real friends do, while I unravel the whole sorry tale.
‘You and your appetites,’ she says at one point. ‘You’re always letting them get you into trouble. It’s like . . . I don’t know. It’s like you have to have the danger to get you going. It’s like your little drug.’
‘That’s not true,’ I protest. Sure, it was most likely true of Eric, it’s true of Paco and Carlotta, and of a whole lot of people in between. But it wasn’t true of Daniel. Perhaps that’s why meeting him was such a revelation for me, why the comedown was so bloody hard.
I carry on with my story, and at the end of it all, when I get to the discovery of the photographs of me in the bedside drawer, Jess lets out a low whistle between her teeth.
‘Jeez, Ally,’ she says. ‘Moving swiftly over the shock revelation that you’ve been batting for the other side, I don’t think it takes a genius to see that these guys seem to be really playing you for all you’re worth.’
‘I know that,’ I say, suddenly awash with self-pity and a feeling of helplessness. ‘But what the hell do I do to prove it?’
We sit thinking for a minute, and then suddenly Jess is grinning madly.
‘You hide in their room,’ she says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. ‘You find a time when you know they’re going to be there together, and you wait and see what happens.’
‘But I won’t be able to understand them. They speak in Spanish.’
‘Yes, that’s a bummer. But I’ll bet my bottom dollar you’ll see or hear something very enlightening with regard to your predicament.’
‘And how do you propose I go about getting in there and hiding without either of them knowing?’
Jess taps the side of her nose. ‘You just leave the finer details to me,’ she says with a wink.
The plan goes into action back at my flat, over a nightcap. Jess has me call Carlotta and apologise again for my sudden departure from the hotel and subsequent disappearing act.
‘Somebody had sent me an urgent email about flight changes, and I had to get back to the flat,’ I say coolly, with Jess nodding approvingly. Suddenly, with her by my side, I feel brave, able to cope with all this. ‘Then my mum called about some problems with my brother and I had to rush down there.’
‘No problem, baby,’ says Carlotta. ‘I just glad you back.’ Her voice has an undertone to it, and I wonder if she didn’t take advantage of my disappearance from the hotel to find the woman from the sauna, to attend to her own unfinished business. Not that I care anymore. She can screw whosoever she wants. I’m out of it.
‘You want to do something tomorrow?’ I go on. ‘What are your plans?’
‘Well, Paco isn’t performing, so we thought after he get back from some meetings late afternoon we chill at the hotel, order room service and a movie. We not spent any proper time together lately.’
I seize the opportunity. ‘Well, how say we go to the British Museum, take in some culture?’ I say. It’s a inspired plan because her hotel is between the museum and my house, and I should easily be able to think of an excuse to come up to her room for a few minutes on the way home. Then Jess can find some way of distracting her while I stake out a hiding place.
‘Cool,’ says Carlotta. ‘I book some beauty treatments in the morning, so how about you pick me up around lunchtime – one o’clock?’
‘Fine, see you then.’
I put down the receiver and Jess proffers me a cigarette. ‘Attagirl,’ she says.
We start with strawberry tarts at the restaurant in the Great Court of the museum, where I confess to Carlotta that I’m utterly bamboozled by where to begin, the place is just so huge. She’s seen enough paintings of late, she says, even for an aspiring artist, so in the end we agree to join one of the Eyeopener tours, the one about the classical world, about which we both confess to know little.
As we’re talking, I sit and look at her, with her fake blonde hair streaming down over her fake-tanned shoulders, taking little bites of her strawberry tart with her cosmetically whitened teeth. She stands out like a sore thumb here, in her black leather mini skirt and white and orange striped low-cut top, in her seamed stockings and silver ankle boots. The queen of trash in this great storehouse of culture. And yet in spite of everything, I ache for her. She exudes sex from every pore.
And then there’s the fact that beneath this brashy exterior is a brilliant artist and a sensitive soul with a profound knowledge and understanding of art. I feel that if only I could talk to her properly, tell her what I’ve seen of her work, tell her that Paco really isn’t worthy of her, then maybe she could break free of this siren’s role she has created for herself, and that has become her prison. But that would be overstepping the mark. Besides, it’s not my responsibility if she wants to squander her life. If her art meant that much to her, she’d fight him for it. She must know, deep down, how good she is.
It’s time for the tour, and we spend fifty minutes following a guide around some of the greatest treasures of the classical world. Carlotta hangs on his every word, studies each piece we are shown with great intensity, as if she’s trying to commit every aspect of it to memory. I find myself wishing I could read her mind. Then I might really know this frustrating, enigmatic, contradictory creature.
Afterwards, when the tour is over, Carlotta takes my hand and leads me back through a labyrinth of rooms to something, she says, that has caught her eye. It turns out to be a Roman version of a Hellenic Greek statue of Aphrodite/Venus, naked, crouching at her bath, placed in the centre of one of the smaller galleries. From the souvenir guide that I brought on our way in, we learn that the original statue was an important innovation in classical sculpture, since until then the female form had always been covered by some kind of loose drapery hiding the rude bits.
Carlotta is gazing up at it. ‘The way she try to hide her pussy and tits with her arm and legs,’ she says, ‘actually just draw our attention to her nudity, no? For me that is most erotic thing. I love her look of surprise at being seen washing herself – the most intimate thing of all, no?’
‘You think so?’
‘Maybe,’ she says. ‘OK, Paco fuck me up the arse, but I no let him see me washing it.’
Again, I’m floored by her insights, her almost brutal honesty when it comes to physical matters. I only wish she were so forthright when it comes to matters of the heart. Then, perhaps, this thing that took seed between us could blossom into something true, something strong. Something that goes beyond the fact that she is married to Paco, that rises above it.
She’s standing against me now. ‘I have to have you,’ she says simply but authoritatively. ‘Let’s go back to the hotel before Paco get home. Come on. We have time.’
She doesn’t even give me the chance to answer before turning and making for the door. I follow, happy that my access to the suite has been made so easy but more than a little repulsed now by the imperious way in which she acts and speaks. It’s funny how something that was a turn on not so long ago has become offensive to me.
In the taxi, I tell her I’m sending a message to my friend Jess about meeting her later. I don’t tell her the text actually reads:
ON WAY TO HOTEL WITH C. BE ON STANDBY.
She has her hand on my thigh as I’m tapping in the letters; she’s looking out of the window but squirming around in her seat. She’s obviously gagging for me. I try not to feel too guilty. She shouldn’t have made the prints without telling me first, whatever their purpose, whoever looks at them. She told me she wouldn’t and she did, and now she is going to have to face the c
onsequences.
We climb out, and I follow her as she stalks up the stairs into the reception hall. I feel I’m almost on first-name terms with the doormen now, I’ve been in and out of here so many times over the past few days. We get in the lift, and as soon as the doors close Carlotta turns round, shoves me into the corner and, pulling up my shirt, buries her face in my tits.
‘God,’ she’s moaning. ‘Oh God. I can’t wait. I have to have you now.’
She’s turning round, fumbling for the button to halt the lift.
‘No, Carlotta,’ I breathe. ‘Not here. We’ll be there in a minute. I want you on the bed, your bed.’ By which I mean the one Paco has always kept me away from, as if by not fucking me on the bed he shares with his wife he were not really cheating on her. If I’m going to do it one last time with Carlotta, and it’s looking increasingly likely that I am, then it’s damn well going to be on their own bed. I’m not some kind of leper, some taint.
We make it to the suite, against Carlotta’s will, but as soon as I’m over the threshold and we’re moving bedwards I get cold feet. I do not want to fuck this woman who’s been feeding me a tissue of lies. I will not fuck her. Not until I know what the photographs are all about.
‘Whoa,’ I say, pulling myself away from her, clothes dishevelled. I sit down on the bed, look up at her. ‘I can’t do this,’ I say, stalling for time. ‘I – I’m worried that I’m getting in too deep, that I’m getting too attached to you. In a few days you’re leaving, and I’m afraid of being hurt.’
Carlotta kneels down in front of me, takes my face in her hands. ‘ ’Licia, ’Licia,’ she says, over and over. It’s like a chant or an invocation, and I wonder if she’s trying to hypnotise me into bed. There’s nothing I wouldn’t put past this woman.
‘Listen to me, ’Licia,’ she continues, her big blue eyes penetrating mine. She is a witch, I think, to myself. Resist. Resist.
‘I love you, nene, and you no worry about a thing. I don’t want this to end when I go, and there is no reason why it will end.’
‘What are we going to do, then?’
‘Well, you come see me in Madrid, of course. I pay for you to stay in best hotel, and I come and see you there, bring you presents, chocolates, sexy underwear.’ She giggles. ‘You be my concubine.’
I smile nervously. She’s mad, I’ve realised. Mad as well as devious.
‘And we see each other in London too,’ she goes on. ‘Paco come here often, and you know how busy he get. I can even get him to pay you again to keep me company! And maybe next time,’ she adds, a touch mockingly I feel, a little condescendingly, ‘you let me see your little nest.’
‘Maybe,’ I say, trying to smile. Then I excuse myself, and in the bathroom I type a hasty text to Jess, who’s hopefully waiting in the corridor just outside the suite.
READY WHEN YOU ARE, it says. I’ve turned the volume down, but I see a message flash right back:
THUNDERBIRDS R GO.
I head back into the bedroom. Carlotta is on the bed now, head turned towards me, eyes watchful, calculating. No doubt she’s trying to think of the best way of getting me to take off my clothes and fall into her arms. She’s tried ‘I love you’, and that old chestnut didn’t work. Perhaps she’ll come up with something a bit more subtle if given time. But I won’t give her time.
‘Carlotta,’ I say, clutching my head. ‘I feel really bad. I’m just so tired and freaked out by all this. I need some space. I’m an emotional wreck.’
She sits up, looks at me squarely. ‘You love me?’ she says, and there’s an undertone of aggression there. God help you, it seems to say, if you don’t.
But I won’t say it, not even to placate her, and she falls back onto the bed, looks away from me.
‘Go then,’ she says. ‘Find someone half as good as me who fuck you.’
I stare at her. She and Paco are made for each other, with vicious tempers like that. They’re both children, quick to flare up when the world doesn’t go their own way. They deserve each other.
I start walking out, through the drawing room and down the hallway, past the prismatic glass sculpture that she used to taunt me, to make me choose between cocks and cunts. I get to the doorway, turn round and shout ‘Bye, Carlotta!’ Then I open the main door to the suite, clock Jess standing outside, and close it again. Listening out for Carlotta for a moment, I run back along the hall and dart around the corner and into the butler’s kitchen. Then I hold my breath and wait for Jess to take over.
Right on cue, the doorbell rings and I hear Carlotta swear in Spanish. A few seconds later she’s padding out of the bedroom, past the sofa and into the hallway, calling out ‘Who is it?’
I poke my head out from my hiding place, watch the gentle sway of her hips as she walks barefoot, see the smoke from her cigarette wafting up, wreathing her like a phantom. She opens the door.
‘Yes?’ I hear her say.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ I hear the familiar voice of Jess say. ‘I must have the wrong suite. I was looking for my friend Pollyanna Hargreaves-Smythe.’
I giggle into my hand. Trust Jess to think of some comedy name at a moment like this. I stay where I am, listening to her drawing out the conversation, trying to get Carlotta to give her directions. And I don’t suppose it’s with any real surprise that I hear Carlotta’s voice softening as she replies, as she notices that Jess is actually really rather lovely. Jess is like a far better version of me, really – a bit taller, a bit more auburn, a bit less freckly. People have often mistaken us for sisters, in fact. Perhaps, it strikes me now, that’s the real reason I never came onto her – the element of incest. The taboo of fucking your kin, or even – God help me – your own image. Narcissus eat your heart out.
‘. . . come in for a drink . . .’ I’m sure I hear Carlotta say at one point, and I suddenly realise that Jess isn’t going to be able to keep going for much longer, that short of being lured in by Carlotta, she’s going to have to make a break for it. I don’t have much time. I stand up, have just the time to glimpse Carlotta standing in the doorway, one hand on hip, back slightly arched, thrusting her boobs out at Jess, who – I can tell from this distance – is trying not to laugh, before I’m across the hallway and into the bedroom.
I head for the left, into the men’s dressing room, which I imagine will see less traffic than Carlotta’s once they’re back. I leave the door ajar, otherwise I won’t be able to hear a thing. At once I’m bathed in light. Shit, I think – I wasn’t counting on movement-sensitive lighting. Perhaps it will turn itself off if I get inside the wardrobe itself.
I open the walnut doors with their distressed mirrors, climb inside, leaving just a small opening through which I hope to be able to hear what goes on between Paco and Carlotta when he gets back. Inside it positively reeks of Paco – that sexy mélange of sweat and Hugo Boss eau de cologne. I push my way to the back, through his suits and trousers and jeans and shirts, and huddle there. Outside I see the light die, heave a sigh of relief.
My breath rasps in my throat and I struggle to contain it, anxious not to miss any sounds from the rest of the suite. Blood is beating in my veins. It’s amazing what a noisy contraption the body is when you don’t want it to be. I inhale deeply, practise a few yoga techniques to quieten me down.
It seems to work: I hear the front door slam, hear Carlotta pacing back into the drawing room, muttering in Spanish. A moment late the words have been replaced by moans, which lengthen and deepen until I’m sure that she is having a wank, sprawled out on the sofa, satisfying the itch that neither I nor Jess would scratch. I wonder which one of us she is thinking of, or whether her mind is filled with Paco.
I stay where I am, listening to her moans fade and then her voice return to normal as she chats to someone on the phone in Spanish. Then she’s walking through the bedroom, heading for the bathroom past the door to the dressing room, turning on the shower. There’s a part of me that so wants to climb out of the wardrobe and go and watch her soap herself up,
but I daren’t risk blowing my cover. Instead, taking advantage of the noise of the jets, I phone Jess.
‘Where are you?’ she says.
‘In the wardrobe,’ I whisper. ‘Was I imagining it or did she come onto you?’
‘You didn’t imagine it,’ she says. ‘She really did.’
‘God, she’s like a bitch on heat,’ I say. ‘It’s really very insulting to find out she’ll fuck anything that moves.’
‘Thanks a lot,’ laughs Jess.
‘Oh, you know I didn’t mean it that way, babes.’
‘Course not. She’s pretty highly sexed, isn’t she? And with that body she can’t go short.’
‘You think she’s attractive?’
‘God, Al – understatement of the year.’
‘Don’t tell me you were tempted?
‘Let’s just say –’ She pauses, and when she speaks again there’s a coyness comes into her voice that I haven’t heard before. ‘Let’s just say if I was that way inclined . . .’
‘Well, I never thought I’d hear the day,’ I say. ‘You don’t think she’s a bit, I don’t know, trashy?’
‘God yeah, but that’s what’s sexy about her, in a way. I mean, I’m sure she’d be very sexy as she is, au naturel and all that, in jeans and a sweatshirt. But the way she presents herself – you’ve got to have a hell of a lot of self-confidence to do that. And it’s a turn-on, someone who knows they’re hot enough to carry that off.’
As usual, Jess has it in a nutshell, from having spent just a few minutes with Carlotta. In a way, I’m glad she sort of fancied her, even if she’d never do anything about it. It validates all this drama, all this trouble that’s come from me having fallen into Carlotta’s arms, into her bed. She doesn’t blame me, can see how I got into the mess that I have, and that’s important to me.
I’m just having a little moan to her about how hurt I am by the lies Carlotta’s been feeding me – about love, about us carrying on after this, about me being her bloody mistress – when I hear the main door open again and have to hang up quick. It’s Paco, I realise, as I hear him calling for Carlotta. She comes through from the bathroom, goes to greet him in the drawing room. I listen to the drone of their chat, then hear Paco head through the bedroom, past the door to the dressing room, and switch on the shower again. There’s no sound from the drawing room; I have no idea where Carlotta is or what she’s doing.
The Blue Guide Page 19